Not Convinced Diet Is The #1 Thing You Need For Your Hormones? Watch This!
What is the right diet for menopause and why do all the experts agree it’s so important??
Find out why why it’s practically impossible to have hormonal health without the right diet for menopause...
And how your diet & a healthy digestive system affect 7 different KEY hormones including:
So to recap...
Top doctors everywhere, Dr. Hyman, Dr. Axe, Dr. Gottfried, Dr. Northrup (the list goes on) are agreeing with what I've found to be true for my clients...
Having the right diet for menopause & hormonal balancing is really important. In fact it's the first thing you want to put in place when trying to manage symptoms of menopause.
In this video I really dive in to how your diet & digestive system affect your hormones so dramatically and how and why improving your diet can give such huge results and so much menopausal relief.
I also share the story of one of my clients and the results she did and didn't get from optimizing her diet for menopause.
I share how the right diet for meonpause fits into your overall menopause strategy and how it compares to and works with other natural remedies like herbs for menopause and bioidentical hormones.
And I talk about exactly how to get started on the right diet for menopause relief and hormonal balance. What's important and what's not! Because the idea isn't to become obsessed with diet, it's to use a few really smart strategies to get maximum results with minimum effort:) That's what I find works best for the real women I work with.
Links Mentioned in the Video
The Menopausal Woman's Roadmap is no longer available.. but get my current free resources here.
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Video Highlights
Make sure you didn't miss anything big...
2:23 What top doctors say about the impact of diet in menopause
4:52 Why diet is so primary for balancing hormones especially during menopause
5:20 Why the digestive system is a starting point for hormonal balance
6:00 Reasons why an unhealthy gut keeps hormones unbalanced
7:15 How diet & digestion affect your thyroid
8:30 The effect on insulin & blood sugar
8:54 Learn more about cortisol and how it’s affected by your diet during menopause
9:33 How serotonin is affected - this is your happy hormones
10:09 Melatonin which is your sleep hormone and how its affected by your menopause diet
10:31 Leptin is also affected - it’s your appetite hormone
11:10 How your hormones are affected by gut health
11:47 Here’s a story about gut health & hormones
14:24 How the right diet and stress management in perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause help you control balance your hormones and control symptoms
14:53 How to get this optimized diet for hormonal balance
Video Transcript
Sometimes you'd rather read than watch - I get it!
Hi everybody, welcome! I am so happy to be joining you today live on Facebook today. Go ahead pop in the comments and say hi and put your questions in there, let me know that you can see me and hear me.
Hi! I’m, Dana LaVoie and I help women use natural remedies to balance hormones so they can have an easy menopause and feel absolutely great afterwards and experience vibrant, healthy aging. I’m an acupuncturist and herbalist, the founder of Menopause Basics and I have about 15 years of experience specializing in women’s health.
And today I'm really excited to talk to you about the #1 thing you need to do to get your hormones balanced. This is like step number 1, this is where you start. So first I am going to ask you a question, how many of you feel like you know exactly where to start and what to do when your hormones get out of balance?
Like oh, I know what to do to fix that- I’m just going to do this, okay. So go ahead and put in the comments if you feel confident that you know what to do.
Because I’ve been working with women in menopause and after menopause for about 15 years now and I’ve noticed that so many women seem to be making the same mistakes and having the same confusion when it comes to balancing their hormones. And it’s true that there are a few different steps that can be involved and a few different things that can help, but the place you need to absolutely start, step number 1 is with the right diet and the right foods for estrogen, foods for progesterone, and basically - the right diet for menopause hot flashes, weight gain, and belly fat (not to mention insomnia and all the rest.)
And at the end of this video, I’m going to invite you to sign up for a FREE copy of my Menopausal Woman’s Roadmap and to save your seat at an upcoming free online live class that I’m teaching because that’s the very expanded version of roadmap. And in those FREE resources I'll be showing you exactly what to include in your diet for hormonal health - to build and balance hormones by following a few simple steps everyday. So you can balance hormones naturally, relieve menopausal symptoms, and relieve signs of aging. So in the roadmap and the class, I’m going to be showing you just what to eat - the right diet for menopause.
But today i want to talk about WHY DIET - IS IT REALLY THAT POWERFUL?? I mean if diet is the number 1 thing you need to do, why is your doctor recommending hormone replacement therapy or antidepressants and sleeping pills or saying wait a few years until menopause is over. Why is everyone talking about maca or black cohosh?
You know, all those types of things why aren’t they all just talking about diet. And I wanna tell you that a lot of the really smart people are talking about diet. So some of my favorite doctors are all saying the same thing right now that diet is the number 1 place you wanna start. And it’s true that after you have the right diet, adding some really customized, targeted supplements can be helpful but without having the diet in place first those hormones or herbs are not going to work out well, and that’s part I want to talk about today, why that is.
So one of my favorite doctors, Christiane Northrup who wrote "The Wisdom of Menopause” and has been an expert in this field for so, so long and is so, so knowledgeable, says, diet first, before anything else, for balancing hormones during perimenopause and menopause. Diet first!
Dr .Mark Hyman,another wonderful functional medicine doctor and the author of "Eat Fat, Get Thin" says, menopause symptoms are all treatable symptoms of underlying imbalance in the sex hormones, and these symptoms will usually disappear when women get their sex hormones back in balance. And the right diet becomes your #1 reset button for hormonal balance.” So again, diet is number 1.
Dr Sara Gottfried, author of "The Hormone Cure" , says,
Diet first before anything else… She says, “My #1 recommendation, number 1, my number 1 recommendation for women who want to balance hormones is diet. In fact she says - try diet first, before anything else.” And that’s exactly what I see, do diet first and if you still have symptoms and still need more help, add in some other remedies and they will work great.
And Dr Josh Axe, author of "The Real Food Diet" and "Eat Dirt" says, “If you want a remedy for menopause relief… eat foods that help manage menopause symptoms.”
So they are all saying the same thing, diet first. Diet first.
And I want to talk about why, why diet first. Why diet is so primary and so important to balancing your hormones naturally. So your body was designed to keep your hormones in balance and if it’s not doing that it is because something is interfering, interfering with your body’s natural ability to keep hormones balance.
And a lot of that happens with your diet, and with your digestive system, a lot of it starts there. And I want to talk a little bit about how that works exactly. So there’s a wonderful doctor, Dr. Shel, who talks about this a lot, a lot of different people do but basically she says, If your gut is not balanced, if your digestive system is not healthy. She says if your gut is not balanced, your hormones can not be balanced. So okay, even with hormone replacement therapy or other treatments that you might be doing… Without a healthy gut, your body can’t use the remedies you’re giving it. An unhealthy gut actually keeps your hormones unbalanced and here are some of the reasons why:
If your digestive system is not healthy, you can easily develop something called - leaky gut or if your digestive system is inflamed, the cells aren’t healthy. In leaky gut, the nutrients inside of your colon, right, are able to leak through the walls of colon and get into your bloodstream and into your body instead of staying in your colon and going out through your bowel movements. And one of the things that happens with this is that certain aggressive estrogen metabolites that end up to your gut, which are supposed to be flushed away, because these are the types of estrogens that causes estrogen dominance and estrogen related cancers and estrogen problems. Your body doesn’t want those hanging around. So your body grabs them and puts them in the gut that’s like the outbox and says, send these away. But if your gut is leaky they leak back to your body, back into to your bloodstream and then they stay in your body and cause estrogen dominance.
And so that’s one reason why if your gut is not healthy your body is unable to balance estrogen and progesterone and keep them in the right ratio and at the right levels.
Another reason your hormones are not going to be balanced if your gut is not healthy, is going to be thyroid. Thyroid is a huge hormone closely interrelated with your female hormones, estrogen and progesterone. And there are different thyroid hormones, there’s T3 and there’s T4. So T4 is something that your body can get what you take when you take synthroid or anything like that but T3 is the one your body actually uses, so if you get T4 and then your body has to turn it to T3 for you to feel like you have thyroid hormones, for you to get relief from thyroid symptoms. And a part of that conversion, a big part of the conversion from T4 into T3 which is the stronger and more active thyroid hormone - that conversion happens in your gut. And if your gut is not healthy, your body can’t make that T3. So it can’t give you relief from low thyroid symptoms which can be you can’t lose weight, you’re gaining weight, your hair is falling out, your eyelashes, your eyebrows are falling out. It’s not a good feeling and it affects your estrogen and progesterone. So your gut needs to be healthy for your body to keep your thyroid hormones at the right levels.
Another reason is insulin. Insulin is your blood sugar hormone and it’s a huge hormone that strongly affects your other hormones including estrogen and progesterone. If your gut is inflamed, and not healthy and your not giving it the right foods, it’s pretty much impossible for your blood sugar and insulin hormone levels to be well balanced.
And then I want to talk about, cortisol - so cortisol is like your stress hormone and again it’s closely interrelated with your estrogen and progesterone and if you have a leaky gut and an inflamed gut, often your stress response triggered much more easily. So you get stressed out much more easily. So you’re going through your day and you keep getting these waves of stress and anxiety, you keep releasing stress hormones which starts a cascade through your whole endocrine system that prevents your body from being able to be in happy, healthy hormonal balance.
And I saved a couple of the best ones for last, so I want to talk about serotonin-- serotonin you know antidepressants are your SSRIs selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors- so serotonin is kinda the thing that keeps you from feeling depressed. It’s like your happy hormone. And about 80 percent, I think 80-90% of serotonin is made in your gut. So if your gut is not healthy, you can’t make this hormone that helps you to feel happy and keeps your brain happy. Like a neurotransmitter brain chemical. So without a healthy gut you are so much more likely to struggle with depression.
And also melatonin which is your sleep hormone. You need a nice surge of melatonin to be able to sleep well. Melatonin is made in your gut. So this is another reason that if your gut is unhealthy and inflamed and you are not giving the right foods you can have a lot of trouble sleeping.
And there’s one more I want to talk about, which is leptin which is a little less known about I think. Leptin is a hormone that regulates appetite. It’s like your appetite hormone - and so if it’s not in a healthy level it doesn’t signal your body when you’re full. So you’re just going to feel hungry all the time even when you should be feeling full. So you want to eat more and more and that’s not a good feeling and you can gain weight easily. It’s really nice when leptin levels are healthy because you just eat and wow I am full, I don’t want to eat anymore until you’re actually hungry again. So without that you can really struggle with eating the right amount.
So all those hormones, your happy hormone, your hunger hormone, your stress hormone, your sleep hormone, your blood sugar hormone, and your estrogen, your female hormone, are all directly affected by gut health. Your body’s built-in ability, right, to balance hormones naturally and keep you feeling good pretty much requires the right diet and a healthy digestive system to be able to do that--to keep those hormones balanced.
When it comes to diet, if you don’t know where to start or what’s important, It’s like FORGET IT! It doesn’t happen
And I want to talk to you a little bit about how this plays out in real life.
So a couple of weeks ago, I had a consultation with a client I had start working with 3 months before. Her name is Maria and she got hit with menopause hard and early. She was in her very early 40s and suddenly --- her periods stopped - and she started having hot flashes so severe- she was having 10-12 per day and her entire face and neck turned bright red - she was just boiling hot and I mean 10 to 12 a day, so happening all the time and she’s pretty much up all night with sweats as well.
So it pretty much took over her entire life. She felt terrible. She was exhausted, it was incredibly hard to do her job or concentrate at work.
She actually works in healthcare. She knew that diet was important in hormonal balancing. So she knew all about it. So she committed to the right diet. She changed her diet. She started doing stress management and just by really getting the right diet and doing a little stress management she was able to bring her hot flashes down to 4-5 per day. So from 10-12 down to 4-5. So they weren’t as hot as they had been and she wouldn’t get as red in her face and neck.
So she was feeling a bit better and she wasn’t having any night sweats but she was still up from about 1:30 til about 4:00 am every night. So still not feeling well though she could tell that by eating the right diet her body started to get really good handle on hormonal balance. Things weren’t as bad.
And so then that was when she called me and we had a consultation. I recommended a custom combination of herbs specifically for menopause for her and had her stay on the right diet.
She continued to practice stress management, she added in these herbs and then three months later, I spoke to her (it takes about that long for the herbs to really kick in.) So when I spoke to her she said her hot flashes were down to 1-2 per week and she said they weren’t even that hot, only warm. They were so mild that they didn’t even really bother her so much. and 8 or 9 out of 10 nights she was sleeping through the night.
She said she felt like a completely different person.
And so when women get hit so hard with menopause it takes over their lives, the hot flashes, insomnia, the night sweats, the mood swings, there are so many different ways it can hit you. It can be absolutely debilitating, and I want you to know that with the right diet and a little stress management, you can get most of that under control. And then if you need a little extra help, you can go ahead and add in some targeted, just a few targeted herbs, a little bit of hormones and they will work like a charm. But without that foundation of the gut working and the body’s natural hormone balancing mechanisms working, nothing’s going to work, nothing’s going to really get your hormones under control.
And there’s something else I want to mention which is getting this good diet for hormones, it’s a diet for helping your body’s ability to build and balance hormones. If you start this diet in the second half of your 30s or 40s, when your progesterone is already starting to decline it’s really going to help you have an easy perimenopause and have an easy menopause, it’s a great time to start with this.
And if your post-menopausal completely, after menopause this is a great diet as well. Because you still want to avoid estrogen dominance and you still want to help your body keep the hormones that you have left, keep those levels as high as possible because there’s a ton of anti-aging benefits in that. So this diet for building an balancing your hormones is great for a wide range of ages.
And so that’s what I wanted to talk about you today, is why diet is so, so powerful, in fact, necessary for hormonal balance.
And then I want to invite you, I have free resources that can help you get started with the right diet because, well, a lot of people are talking about this, starting to talk about this now, that the right diet is so important and you need to have a healthy digestion. But you know, eating right so your hormones will feel so much better, that is a little bit easier said than done, right. Cause you go to look what’s the right diet, and it can be really confusing, it can seem really complicated it can seem like something that’s going to take you all day, every day to figure out or to prepare.
And I find that a lot of women are like.. That sounds good… But - you know how many days this week did you actually do it? Not that many because it’s just too confusing.
They didn’t know where to start, they don’t know what’s important. They didn’t have time to do all these different things. And so what I have done, i really want to help women get started with the right diet in a way so simple and so easy that it’s realistic to do it everyday.
So it’s not a diet, you can eat anything, and there’s no counting calories.. .It’s just: Here are the most important building blocks that your body needs to make hormones and detox extra hormones. So the build and balance hormones, it’s just super simplified without leaving out anything that’s of key importance.
A healthy hormone diet sounds good.. But how many days a week do you actually do it? That’s why I make it easy - so easy. Find out the 7 (yes 7!) Key hormones that require the right diet & a healthy digestive system to find balance.
And so I have a free download. I’m going to put a link below, it’s called The Menopausal Woman’s Roadmap. It will help you get started on this diet right away. Plus avoid The TOP 3 biggest health mistakes that women make. I’ve also put together an online masterclass. It’s an online class that I teach periodically, and it’s coming up, I am going to put a link below where you can register for the next class that I am teaching. And it’s like the expanded version of the roadmap, it’s a full hour jam packed, it’s full of information that talks about the most important things to include in your diet every day. I actually teach my 5-step framework - for what you need in your diet - it’s the same framework that I teach in my paid program, Menopause Basics: What to Eat. So it’s a great free resource and I really hope that you will take advantage both of those, the roadmap and the class because you out them together and that’s just a powerhouse.
And of course I am so happy to have been here with you today, I’m Dana LaVoie, I’m an Acupuncturist and Herbalist and I specialize in women’s health and helping women have an easy menopause naturally and experience radiant, healthy aging afterwards. And I would love to help you. So please go ahead post in the comments below if you have any questions or if you have any comments. I will will come back and monitor the questions. I am always here for you guys. I want to help you figure out what you need to get started on this healthy track. And if you know someone who might enjoy watching this video, please go ahead and share this video or email it to them, or tag them because I really love to share this information, this free information, with as many women as possible. Because when I see a woman who I have been working with and I realize that she knows what to do to control her hormones and to change how she feels and she’s like - now that I feel better, you know, what do I actually want to do with my life? In menopause and beyond, in mid-life, when I see that happening I feel like I’ve had a good day.
That’s my goal. That’s why I want to share these informations. So let me know your questions, let me know if you’re having any trouble getting started. I can help you. So share this around. Join me in my free Facebook group Menopause Basics, it’s completely free to join. I’m in there just about every day answering questions, and there are hundreds of women in there. It’s such a wonderful community. We share information about menopause, about what we are struggling with about hormones, about anti-aging. It’s a really really fun group.
So I’ll see you inside and then so before I leave, I would love to answer questions. There are a few people who are here today. So if you have any questions pop then in a comments right now and I will see them pop-up on my screen, and I would love to answer them for you. Like I said, I get different questions, I tried to pack answers to a bunch of them in today’s presentation. And if you’re watching the replay, you’re very welcome, so many people watch this video on the replay, to go ahead and pop your questions into the comments below and I will be coming back monitoring the comments so I can answer those for you. And feel free to get in touch with me if you’re struggling right now and I will help you get started.
Thanks so much for joining me today everybody - have a great the rest of your day. I’m Dana LaVoie and I’ll see you next time.