134. Girl Talk, Part 1 with Dr. CJ Kleene and Dr. Hannah Anderson

Dr. Calla Kleene 0:06

Everybody needs a multivitamin. Everybody needs Omega three probiotic and vitamin D

Dr. Stephanie Gray 0:16

Welcome to the your longevity blueprint podcast. I'm your host Dr. Stephanie gray. My number one goal with this show is to help you discover your personalized plan to build your dream health and live a longer, happier, truly healthier life. Today you get to hear from Dr. Hannah Anderson and Dr. Ecology and clean this is part one of a two part series today we'll discuss female anatomy pros and cons of birth control how important informed consent is and how to support women who choose to take birth control. Next week in part two, we'll continue the discussion on how we can support these women. What non hormone birth control options are best and share non toxic feminine care products and lastly, how to detect female hormone imbalances. Let's get started Welcome to another episode of The your longevity blueprint podcast today I have two guests Dr. Hannah Anderson and Dr. Ecology and clean who are chiropractors are back in line Family Chiropractic in Hiawatha, Iowa. Dr. Anderson specializes in pediatric and maternal health with trainings including a cicp from the International chiropractic Pediatric Association, neuro emotional technique and Mercier therapy. In addition to Dr. Cleans many chiropractic and myofascial training, she has a diplomat from the American Academy of anti aging medicine. Both doctors passionately guide patients from a holistic perspective, whether it's through pain or wellness planning. Welcome to the show, Dr. Anderson, and Dr. Claims.

Dr. Hannah Anderson 1:35

Thanks so much for having a step.

Dr. Calla Kleene 1:37

I said, thanks for having us. For those subscribers.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 1:39

You may recognize Dr. Kleene's name, she actually wrote the foreword on my book Your Longevity Blueprint, and was one of my very first guests over 100 Probably over like 120 30 shows ago, I think it was episode number two. So I highly encourage you go back and listen to that episode, if you have not yet, but on to today. First, I would like to hear from both of you kind of the story behind the creation of your girl talk events and how you became so passionate about advocating for such discussion. So through this conversation, I'll just let you guys take it away each answer, we'll see how this goes.

Dr. Hannah Anderson 2:12

Like she said, I specialize in pediatrics and women's health, which leads me to see a lot of women in practice whose lifelong health has been dominated by this idea really, that their body is inherently faulty or trying to trick them in. So they're often come in with these ideas that I feel like start a lot during puberty where like acne and painful periods get blamed on fluctuating hormones, because they don't necessarily have the resources to get to the root cause of those issues. In that, like any parent, my self included, parents don't want to watch their children's struggle in the parents and find a doctor who thinks giving hormonal birth control will fix it, you know, or just do something if because if it's the only thing they know how to do. And unbeknownst to them, the doctor prescribing that birth control often might not know how to get them off of it later. Like there's no exit plan. They never initially told them like the pros, cons and side effects of it. And they didn't offer any support while they were on it, which would all be great things to have a plan for. So then they wind up in our office either months or years later, because they don't like where things are at. And you're like at this point, I'll try anything, even that weird chiropractor, my friends coach. So then they ended up with us because they feel like they've kind of hit the end of the line somewhere else in Yeah, I kind of feel like it's that story repeated a bunch plus the fact that I have two daughters. And I genuinely don't want that to be the only option for them when things get frustrating with their bodies around that time. And I want them and all their friends to know that they were perfectly designed and are not faulty in the least and that there's a different way to care for women's bodies. And they might not listen to me, but I'm not going to say nothing. It's going to be there. So that maybe they can go back to it when they are ready to hear it. Yeah, that's the short and sweet of it is we've just seen a pattern over and over stemming from a similar issue. And I'm sure CJ has their own walk. But that's kind of I think that the route of mine

Dr. Stephanie Gray 4:13

very well said, Yeah, CJ, what do you think? Yeah. So

Dr. Calla Kleene 4:16

it was a couple years ago when I came to Hannah. And I said and it was probably the one I'm like, hey, I need you to adjust me. My adrenals are hijacked. And you know, we're talking and I'm like, hey, if I see another 12 year old girl that comes in as a patient that had one or two really bad periods, and the next solution was to go right on birth control. I feel like I'm repeating the same conversation over and over again. I'm like, I think we need to talk about this like on stage and invite Mothers Daughters and like really just have this really incredible conversation about how cool our bodies and our physiology is. And I think even the whole journey like once I became pregnant and becoming a mother, you know, that was really transforming Additional that even after chiropractic school and all the schooling I had heard, I still didn't really understand the cycles. And so he and I just started having more and more conversations. And then we wanted to get nerdy with it, but we wanted to, you know, empower our daughters to have autonomy of their body, but to have autonomy, you have to understand it. And there's so much societal of, you know, worry that we're going to hyper sexualized our kids if we talk too much about it, or introduce it at inappropriate times. But then there's also like the swing of but where are they going to find out about it, if it's, you know, the internet, or set, you know, some just misinformation. And so it's really just a really fun event that women come to it's invigorating dialogue. And, you know, I had from the first girl talk that we had, I had girlfriends that approached me after, and they're like, I'm 45 years old, and have, you know, four kids and I learned more about my vagina than I've ever been taught my whole life. And so I think that makes it you know, so fun. But again, it's just this dialogue about the uniqueness of your hormone, and your body's journey compared to mine, compared to our daughters, and so on. But just having great conversation together, makes it really fun for me.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 6:10

Great. I remember the I think it was the first event you guys had I remember Hannah, specifically you talking about just like, the shame almost with, you know, women talking about their female parts and anatomy and how we shouldn't have that shame. And I think you may be even you had everyone say vagina and say some of these things. People were laughing, but that's really important. And so let's kind of maybe go to that for a second. Like, let's talk about the importance of learning female anatomy, how important that is for women's health.

Dr. Hannah Anderson 6:38

Yeah, I mean, take it is wild, because even so, part of my background is that I taught college anatomy and physiology. Like I grew up in the as soon as I was in a cadaver lab in undergrad, I was like, This is my space, which, like 2.001% of people living on the planet would say that, but I was like, This is my home, I this is my language, I get it. And so I T aid the whole time I was in grad school, and then I taught college anatomy and physiology. And so when we do the event, the first half of the event is I take walk everyone through like here's what the true names of all of the female anatomy parts are. And even some of them like there are like the Latin word peut eiendom is what we would now call the vulva. But like cute denim in Latin means shameful. So like, at some point, right? I'm guessing it was like a big group of men were like sitting around the table, and trying to decide what to name female anatomy. And they were just like that, that's all shameful. So that's kind of a wild one to start with. But there's so many important reasons. But a big one for me is just it provides respect for what you're talking about. So you know, if you give it a jokey name, then it becomes a joke. And it's also a safety thing. Like if your kids don't know what their body parts are called, if something God forbid, would happen to them, they can't give you an accurate description of what's going on, if they don't think it's okay to tell you about it. But yeah, also just that idea of like, I mean, like I said, I have two two girls, they are currently five and two. And if, you know, if we tell them something, and we laugh about it, like then they think it's funny, you know, it's that's like, why jokes catch on with kids is if they get one laugh out of it, then they will do it over and over again. So you do have to play that straight face, even if you're uncomfortable. And we talked about that the event too, is just if you have if you're uncomfortable saying some of these things out loud, you need to figure out why you are uncomfortable as the parent or as the adult or as the teacher, is there something in your background or how you were raised in people will get embarrassed, and they will struggle with this part. And I sometimes they think it's because they're being a bad parent or something like that. And I truly think everyone is doing the best they can with the tools that they have right now. Right? So like my parents did the best they could with what they learned and how they were raised. And I'm just doing the best with what I know. And I was raised. And so it's not that everybody isn't doing their best. It's just we're trying to kind of improve every time and it just wasn't always out in the open. So yeah, also, sometimes I go through the anatomy and people are like, Oh, I didn't know that was the right word for that. So even as adult females, it's not like they've gone through and double checked at all and all that stuff. So

Dr. Stephanie Gray 9:20

CJ, what do you think? Do you want to add anything to that? How important knowing our female anatomy anatomy is? Yeah, I

Dr. Calla Kleene 9:25

think you know, knowing it, but even like connecting to it. And we'll get into this as we talk more about birth control, but just really connecting with every part of our body, you know, from breath work, you know, so important to diet, nutrition, but really, if we understand that our harmony and throughout our cycle, women have a 28 day ish cycle where men have a 24 hour ish cycle. And so I was always raised and again, to reiterate what Hannah was saying. I was raised with my parents doing the best that they knew with what they had and about lot of times I was taught I had two brothers. And I learned a lot from being a sister with an older brother and a younger brother. But I was always taught, and I'm grateful for this as well. But I was taught anything a boy can do, you can do too. And I think that's been helpful for a lot of parts of my life of just being able to be resilient and strong through it. However, you know, kind of where I'm at now in life is just because I can do everything a man can do doesn't mean I should, if we understand the physiology and the harmony of our cycles, and that, you know, when I look back into high school, and even some maybe knee injuries and stuff like that, I can't help but wonder, did that happen? Maybe when I was on the pill, or did it happen during various stages through my body, like baby, I was having my period, and I pushed it too hard at Cross Country wasn't getting a risk. And that put me at vulnerability. So knowing the anatomy, but also take it even dirtier just the physiology that, you know, the first half of our cycle, compared to the second half of our cycle are different. And if we can teach each other, and our daughters, they might be able to do better and listen to the intuition of their body and where they're at.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 11:08

Awesome. Yeah, let's go to birth control. So that's, that's, I think, maybe the blunt of this conversation where that's gonna go. So I want to know, kind of what you both see as pros and cons of birth control. And we can get into informed consent maybe after this or the lack of informed consent, I should say. But let's first talk about what like pros and cons you see of birth control are,

Dr. Hannah Anderson 11:28

I think, the major pro coming from a supertype a person probably to stuff as another super tiny person. Right? It's just that idea of like knowing exactly which day, things are going to happen. And I do genuinely think that's why a lot of people rely on it is because it's been a part of their brain, they think that they get to shut off as they're like, Oh, that is handled by me doing simply taking a pill every day. And as long as I remember that, I don't have to think about any of that. And you can kind of like wall that off, which isn't really how it works. But in theory, I can see how that is really appealing. And if you don't know the side effects, that sounds great. For me personally, like I genuinely didn't want to have a child while I was in grad school. So I went to my day of graduation and counted back nine months, and went off birth control like that day, just because I wanted to make it through all the way. So obviously that part. And then I don't necessarily know if it's helpful, but I do think it is desired as a pro for it to, like be an answer to these hormonal questions. I just don't necessarily think it's like the true answer. CJ, am I missing anything as far as pros? Oh,

Dr. Calla Kleene 12:40

I think it's just that freedom of control, is you know so much of it. But I think now, with birth control from if I have a son and a daughter, and my daughter has asked me and I take her to the doctor, right off the bat, they're gonna say, oh, let's put you on birth control. But if I take my son with acne, they're gonna give him an acne medication. You know, or if my daughter has headaches, they're going to give her birth control, but my son is going to maybe get something else. And so birth control we often forget, yeah, it's to control pregnancy, which is usually the idea. And that was the intention behind it. But now, what we're seeing is that birth control is given for so many different things, from PMS, to PMDD, to Polycystic ovarian, to all these other different things. And so, one, so much of the control, I understand that I have a bigger concern to with birth control is being prescribed for things other than preventing pregnancy, and it's only in the female population.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 13:35

I would agree i You guys answered that. Well, ladies, I should say, I do think for some, for some women, even myself, I had very heavy cycles, didn't know I had endometriosis. At a young age, I didn't take birth control, but it was certainly recommended. And for some people, it does alleviate pain, it does limit heavy bleeding, right? It's a short term Band Aid solution. It's not something I mean, it's not getting to the root cause of the problem. But for some women, you know, for a short period of time, it alleviates some of their symptoms. So I guess I could see how that's somewhat of a pro there. But let's get into more cons. And I think, though that can kind of overlap into the next part of the question, which is kind of how thorough you think the average birth control prescriber is with informed consent. I mean, I can tell you when I was young, and was recommended birth control, they didn't tell me anything. Any side effects, any nutrient depletions that could occur as a result of that. It was just offered to me and my mother was absolutely furious when I told her that. And thankfully, I had a mother who was advocating for me back then, and took me to a chiropractor who recommended herbs for my periods. And you know, I was very blessed to be in the situation I was in and I think I was definitely in the minority, especially back then. But let's let's talk about informed consent and then also kind of some of the cons of birth control. Long term use.

Dr. Calla Kleene 14:49

Yeah, and I guess if you don't mind before we talk about that. I think it's important to explain maybe how birth control works, go for it, right. So there are several different types of birth control from the IUDs to the NuvaRing to the implant devices, I think it's called the implant in and then there's the oral birth control. And so there's there's various degrees of it. But essentially the mechanism of interaction and how it works in our body is that it's extremely high doses of synthetic hormones. So now you can have estrogen only birth controls, or you can have combo pills that have progesterone and estrogen. And then you can have like the mini pill, which is just progesterone only, and they all have various degrees of differences.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 15:31

And I have to correct you because I have to say it's progestin. Thank you. That's natural progesterone. Yes. For the listeners. And we can differentiate that in a bit. But yes, but you're correct with those, those three, the last being a progestin synthetic Yeah, only FedEx.

Dr. Calla Kleene 15:45

Yeah. So thanks, synthetics, think think that they're bad. They're not the exact same molecular structure that our body manufactures. But it's enough of a hijacking that it tells our brain to stop communicating with our breast tissue or uterus in our ovaries. And it says just shut that down. And so it's this chemical alteration to our body into our brain, which then kind of cascades some other other issues down the line with all hormones. But when we have that high dose of synthetic, that also tells her breast tissue and uterine uterine lining and ovaries to stop making your own natural hormones. So for some people were really suppressing suppressing hormones overall, but then really toxic in the liver with high high doses. And then to something I don't know if you have any good info graphics that maybe you can include, but just what the cycle looks like, of estrogen and progesterone throughout the 28 days, that we can include, because you'll be able to see that days one through five, most of our hormones are very suppressed while we're bleeding. And then there's a soul progression of the estrogen to rise. And then that big high spike tells the brain to release luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone, then that estrogen goes down. And then the progesterone really dominates the second half of the cycle. And so when that's just a different single hormone cycle, every single day or picture of our own hormones look like when we're on that synthetic, it is just high doses the entire time. So we look very chemically different when we're put on birth controls.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 17:15

Yeah, absolutely. I, I don't like that either. I think we were created to have these natural rhythms, right. And so then we just slam women full of this, this dose many times for the oral pills, right? It's three weeks out of the month, and then they take nothing the sugar pills week one and then back to just kind of you're slammed on those those higher synthetic doses which prevent ovulation, which can you know, and can prevent implantation and whatnot. So they prevent the pregnancy from happening. But some other bad things can happen in the meantime.

Dr. Calla Kleene 17:42

Well, and you said that to I don't mean to interrupt you, but just to even highlight the suppresses ovulation. So if we think about it, what happens when women are on birth control for 1415 years, and they have been suppressing ovulation? And the traditional standard is what you know, the primary care the prescribing physicians, you know, for this, they're saying, Oh, it takes three months for your body to rebalance. It's like, how is that possible that for 15 years of hormone suppression, that we've been shutting our brain down to our to our ovaries that all of a sudden, we think we're going to start ovulating, three months after going off birth control? And then the you know, there's the argument, you know, I have several friends and family members that have been conceived while on birth control. And so then I think people think like, oh, but it's not a problem. People get, you know, pregnant on birth control all the time.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 18:28

It's not all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, I get that, I get that.

Dr. Hannah Anderson 18:33

So to talk about the informed consent part, I think just to like, outline what that's supposed to be is so in any healthcare profession, right? Whether it's us adjusting someone as a chiropractor, or you practicing how you do, we're supposed to go through to the best of our knowledge, the pros and cons of a certain treatment, then leave that open to our patient to say, yes, I'd like to do that. No, I do not want to do that. And that should happen, you know, whether it's us giving a supplement or, you know, a treatment and that discussion should always be on the table. And if if the patient wants to walk away at that point, that's totally fine. That's in there. That's the they're informed that they can consent or not consent. And so what we struggle with oftentimes, I mean, in like you said, the how you got offered a birth control prescription is very similar to how I did where there was no, pro or con like there I was given no cons at all. I

Dr. Stephanie Gray 19:30

was basically told to take it Yeah,

Dr. Hannah Anderson 19:32

exactly. Yeah, it was like, here it is. And I you know, there was no like even you might feel tired, you might you know, it this might happen. So, when no cons are given, then that's not true, informed consent. And I don't think it's a super ethical way to practice on my personal opinion. So that is a huge issue for me, especially now to the point where I think there are you know, teenagers that will go to appointments by themselves. Oh, it was and I think that probably up to a lot during like COVID stuff, right where it was like, well, you can go in by yourself because we only allow one patient at a time or whatever. I'm sure that guy increased the time. And while sometimes it is easier for parents, you know, like, they're like, oh, they can finally drive themselves to doctor's appointments and that sort of thing. It's like, Yeah, but they're also their teenage brain doesn't know to ask, like, Could you please give me the pros and cons. And also, I'm going to fully digest them in the five minutes that I'm sitting here, make an informed choice, and, you know, commit to something that's not likely in my head. So yeah, I do see that as an issue, they aren't being told, you know, there's a stroke risk, or like, me personally, like, I do have a history of females having strokes on my maternal lineage. That was a huge red flag for me, I didn't know about it until I was already on it. And that was part of the reason I was like, Well, I gotta get off as soon as like humanly can, because that's a big deal to me. Part of why it's such a big issue for us is worth it, we think it is often given without true, true informed consent happening.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 21:05

Yeah, kind of, kind of scary. I think I want to go back to what you were saying CJ on, there's just so many comments I want to like make, and what you were saying the return to fertility is which isn't important, you know, for a 19 year old, but some women who maybe do take birth control for 10 years, and then they find their significant other get married want to have a child, right, they probably aren't educated on that return to fertility could take a year or two years, right, they just kind of assume like you're saying they stopped the pill, and they can get pregnant when they want. And it's just not that easy. And I would also maybe even argue that it may be more difficult for them for that individual to get pregnant. Anyways, back to the root cause as far as why they were put on the birth control in the first place, they probably had some underlying hormone issues for which they were now masking the issue with the birth control. So then longterm, their ability to get pregnant may actually be more more challenging, unfortunately,

Dr. Calla Kleene 21:58

to sorry to interrupt but back to, you know, the informed consent. And so when we look at literature for what the pharmaceutical companies are giving providers for patient education, and there's some patient education material that says that birth control tricks your body into thinking that's pregnant, you know, and really kind of dumbs it down and I really liked how Dr. Jolene Brighton said the body isn't that stupid, right? You know, and it's this oversimplification of what it's doing, you know, to us, but really like that informed consent should be like a page long, that says, it's a known grade one carcinogen, on average, one to 2000 girls die each year on birth control. So that's just death, which sounds awful. But you know, people think, oh, that sounds like that could be rare, though. But that's not the statistic of well, then how many girls are injured, because they had a stroke and have to relearn how to walk. You know, and I don't mean to then overdramatic ties, what could happen, but then to one of the biggest things that I don't think is talked enough about is the mental health, you know, aspect of it, one of the studies that we came across was a Danish study that said, girls put on birth control. And there's a lot of talk about before the brain is fully developed, because this is the rate high growth rate of brain and brain development. And so when we're chemically altering with some of these hormone receptors, so so many, like our heart has estrogen receptors, which makes the estrogen and progestin so potentially traumatic to the heart, because it could be prone pro inflammatory, but we have all these hormone receptors throughout our entire body. And if we're suppressing that natural production, but then hijacking it with high doses of this synthetic, we are going to alter our brain chemistry. But this Danish study said that girls, if they were put on birth control, around 15 to 19 years old, there was a 70% chance higher rate of depression. So then it's kind of in that cascading drug that okay, he went on the birth control, and then six months later with the depression, so now here's the antidepressant, or here's the anti anxiety. And then there was another study that said that passionate vaginal rings tripled the rate of depression. And then since 1975, there's been a 400 increase of 400% increase breast cancer rates and women which I don't think is just the birth control. I think that's a lot of things that you've done. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Hannah Anderson 24:23

Well, and I would say I say that clinically support the first statistic of birth control, then antidepressants or anti anxieties, I see that clinically supported like, almost to a tee. If I have someone, especially someone in their 20s that has been on birth control since they were a young teenager. They are almost always on to medications, and it's rarely just a birth control. That is like that is slim pickins to come through the door. So it's just I mean, it is wild to see it, read it and then watch it play out in real life.

Dr. Calla Kleene 24:55

With so many patients, girls and women, they don't need then correlate that their birth control is on medication, like in our intake forms, and they'll people will come in for infertility or hormone issues. And they don't even mark down that they're on birth control. And so sometimes they'll be like, Oh, wait, so you're on birth control. They're like, Oh, yeah. And it wasn't even at the forefront of their mind that like that is a medication.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 25:18

I see that a lot for IUDs to patients don't write it down. And like knowing that it is definitely releasing a synthetic medication in your body. Gosh, I want to comment on so much of this, I think it would be super interesting to actually for listening graduate student to do some sort of, you know, study on statistics for informed consent for birth control, because I literally, I bet it's like less than 1% was actually thoroughly, you know, provided this informed consent. And I actually think that's probably true for a lot of medications. I think that we here at our clinic, at least we spend quite a bit of time going over pros and cons of the hormones were prescribing. But I would say I think for statin medications for blood pressure medications and for reflux medications, I don't think you know, proper informed consent is probably happening. But obviously, you know, today's discussion more pertains to birth controls. I want to go back to the clotting that you said Hannah, because I literally just before we started recording, I grabbed this book off my shelf was which CJ just mentioned beyond the pill by Dr. Julian Brighton, who I'd love to have on the podcast here. And I literally just opened this up and the page that I had bookmarked was around just genetic risk factors for things like stroke. So I actually have this underlined here in reference to patients who are on oral birth control and also have the MTHFR genetic variant. They have huge increase. So okay, so this is saying, again, I literally just open to this. Let me read this real quick. So another study places the threat of stroke in women, okay, this is with factor five, taking oral contraceptives as high as 35% fold increase women with MTHFR 677. T T, using oral contraceptives had a 5.4 fold increased risk of stroke. So whether you have like factor five clotting issues, or MTHFR, clotting issues, I guarantee your provider who's prescribing your birth control isn't asking about that, or is not aware, is it

Dr. Hannah Anderson 27:07

checkout lane? Like what a world if that was even screened for? Like what if that was required screening, screening before someone got prescribed? Right? Like how big of a difference would just that make? There's just little, little big stuff like that, that could change the game?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 27:23

Absolutely. Absolutely. The other.

Dr. Hannah Anderson 27:27

This might lead us to like a different thing. But the other big thing for us is one of the big cons is B vitamin depletion for people who are on birth control, which probably leads to a multitude of other things. So but again, personally, like we get interested in stuff, obviously, that affects us personally. But so when I, I've been practicing for about eight years, I when I started interning with Calla, I had just gotten off of the birth control. And I was like, I am so tired. And she just kind of on a whim was like, I want to try to be complex. It was like, Yeah, great idea. You know, just, I'm on I'll kind of try anything at this point. I'm a new graduate. I'm like, let's figure it out. I describe it to people like after two weeks, I felt like I had coffee in my veins. Like, I wish I was so awake. And I mean, I was also coming off of like four years of grad school where I studied constantly, I didn't sleep. But but I it was honestly that quick and to I don't know if someone thinks like two weeks is a long time for a medication to kick in or a supplement. But like, it felt very fast to me, and there was nothing else that had changed. And that is a huge thing when we talk about like, how do you support someone, even if they do want to go on it? Right? Because if we have true informed consent, they know the drill, they're like, I still think it's worth it. They want to go on it. Well, then there's another aspect of like, how do we support them while they're on it so that their body doesn't unravel? Well, they're using that product. And I think a B complex is a big way to do that. and a high quality one, one that's methylated so that they can actually absorb it all in again, talking about like Little Big Things that would make a huge difference. That's another one in my book where it's like that should that should be like baseline stuff for a prescription.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 29:20

I totally agree. And I think that probably has something to do with the stance, CJ said as far as nine months later, the risks of depression and anxiety, you know, going up on birth control that probably is due in part to the B vitamin depletion. So absolutely, let's stay on that. I like it. Let's stay on that topic. So what are some other non traditional ways to support women who are on birth control?

Dr. Hannah Anderson 29:41

I guess another one I would think of is just like being able to flush out excess hormones like making sure that you're detoxing so having things in place like the sauna or the castor oil packs that you do stuff something like that, so that you know you are getting rid of the stuff you are not using but that's kind of the first one that comes to my mind. CJB is something which

Dr. Stephanie Gray 30:00

Which starts was pooping. I mean, quite frankly, you have to be eliminate you have to not be constipated. And a lot of these young girls they don't have the best diets yet we're getting good fiber they're not you know hydrated, they're not pooping, they're not eliminating some of these more toxic and metabolites from these synthetic hormones. So, yes, elimination detoxification is great and starts with pooping which the castor oil packs can certainly help. Sorry to interrupt, but yeah, CJ, go ahead.

Dr. Calla Kleene 30:24

Yeah, well, I think for me, and then I deal world before a girl goes on birth control. It's like, okay, it's almost like choose your own adventure. Are you going like, are you ace asymptomatic? And you're only going on it? Because you're trying to prevent pregnancy? Or B, are you really symptomatic? And this is, after you weighed the pros and cons of everything. This is still what makes the most sense for you, right? Because a lot of times, you know, there is a large part of population that they want to do it because they want to prevent pregnancy. So that's almost like okay, well, you're asymptomatic. Let's do these tests before you go on, like a nature of our complete blood count the full thyroid with antibodies, because to the ugly reality is that birth control can start that autoimmune cascade, it can start messing up the gut, changing the gut biome. And so it'd be really nice to get a good healthy baseline, or a preliminary test, and then even, you know, six months or 12 months on birth control, and then get a retest and see how is their body on it. That Genova that nutria Val, just so we can kind of see so kind of like how Hannah was explaining. So in order for, especially for the birth control, the oral birth controls to work, they call it a micro a drug induced micronutrient depletion. So the body to absorb the birth control, and for it to be effective, if you will, it's going to metabolize our B vitamins, and so you can have like a car, and that car might get, you know, 50 miles per gallon, you put it on birth control. Now that car, your body is only getting 20 miles per gallon, so it's going to need more metabolic support. So Hannah, specifically, she had been so depleted on her B, vitamin stores and her B vitamin metabolism. So that's why she had so much more that therapeutic benefit to replete where some people wouldn't step I don't know, you probably see it too. You put them on something like I don't feel any different. It's like, Good, that's okay. But we're just trying to make use of that you never get deficient where you get symptoms, right? Yep. But you know, if the patient's symptomatic, then there's still a little bit of preliminary that's like, well, let's make sure that your symptoms aren't because you're already like, you gotta mess up thyroid, or you got food sensitivity that you can't help get them more healthy from a holistic perspective in general. But let's say that somebody's listening to this. They're like, Okay, well, I'm on birth control, what do I need to do right now, I think back to the foundation, everybody needs a multivitamin. Everybody needs Omega three, probiotic and vitamin D, if there's no such if they if access to testing is not realistic, that big foundation and then there's always extra credit, right, that they can do on top of it, that you can get symptomatic wise, you know, if there's acid reflux, or if there's, you know, excess bloating, you can do digestive enzymes, magnesium, calcium, a whole lot of things. I didn't mean to make that hyper complex, but to support women, I was like that individualized approach, but again, it's a blanket statement, the big foundation for

Dr. Stephanie Gray 33:19

my Totally agree and I also echo what you said as far as once you're on birth control because it's depleting nutrients that can negatively impact thyroid function because you need the nutrients to make the thyroid hormones also. So you can end up with secondary hypothyroidism from things like birth control pills, but I totally agree that kind of foundation you need a multivitamin definitely be complex as you were both saying the birth control can impact your microbiome. So that's where kind of a probiotic would come in which can help with regularity. Vitamin D is important and then fish oil also can help thin the blood to mitigate the risk of stroke. Can I mean fish oil can help with a multitude of

Dr. Calla Kleene 33:55

and and all the mental health a lot of the depression a lot of anxiety is high omega three can and vitamin D. And the B vitamins and the lack of B vitamins really has been known to see like here's the anxieties and here's the OCD and a DD and ADHD is because you don't have properly supported B vitamins. And just

Dr. Stephanie Gray 34:11

to explain to the listeners you require your B vitamins, specifically B six to make things like your neurotransmitter serotonin and dopamine and norepinephrine and epinephrine right things to help your mood. So if you're on a medication like birth control, which depletes nutrients that help you make neurotransmitters, your mood can suffer as a result of that. I want to just say a couple more things as far as what else in my opinion we could do for patients who are on birth control. So we certainly could also recommend liver support so they could be doing something like a liver detox they may especially if they have history of cysts and fibroids do a family history of breast cancer sometimes taking dem will help them clear out excess estrogens eating more cruciferous vegetables, whatnot. But I think those are the main the main core nutrients right that we could could help these patients with who are taking birth control

What an awesome conversation We should know our anatomy and our cycles and be provided with thorough informed consent on birth control options. I hope you stay with us for next week's episode, where we continue our discussion on female hormone imbalances and safer non toxic feminine care products. Be sure to check out the links in the show notes to books and products we've mentioned in this week's show. Be sure to check out my book your longevity blueprint. And if you aren't much of a reader, you're in luck. You can now take my course online where I walk you through each chapter in the book. Plus for a limited time the course is 50% off, check this offer out at your longevity blueprint.com and click the Course tab. One of the biggest things you can do to support the show and help us reach more listeners is to subscribe to the show. Leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I do read all the reviews and would truly love to hear your suggestions for show topics guests and for how you're applying what you learn on the show to create your own longevity blueprint. This podcast is produced by Team podcast thank you so much for listening and remember, wellness is waiting. The information provided in this podcast is educational no information provided should be considered to be or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your personal medical authority.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai