869. Too Much of a Woman

Many doctors automatically put young women on birth control to regulate their periods, and more times than not, those pills contain estrogen. Estrogen is a growth hormone. It’s what makes ladies beautiful, but too much estrogen is a bad thing. 

If you’ve followed Dr. Martin for any time, you know how he’s interested in hormonal balance. Finding this balance is a tightrope walk for most women. Your levels of estrogen and progesterone need to be in balance.

Join Dr. Martin as he talks about birth control pills and what it means to be too much of a woman!

TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE

Announcer:  You're listening to The Doctor Is In Podcast, brought to you by MartinClinic.com. During the episode, the doctors share a lot of information. As awesome as the info may be, it is not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease. It's strictly for informational purposes.

Dr. Martin:  Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to another live this morning. Hope you're having a great start to your day and to your week. Nice to have you on this morning. Now guys, what I want to talk to you about this morning is the birth control pill. Okay? Now, why do I want to do that? It's been around a long time and I have been talking about that for a long time, because I was a horror-mone [inaudible 00:00:55], endo-crime. Look, the vast majority of women, it's been around a long time, we're given a whole generation of estrogen-based, mostly, birth control pills. And look, what does a man have to say about birth control? Okay? Well, the reason that women would come to me, first of all, was because I was actually very interested in their hormonal balance.

Whenever I would test hormones, I always emphasize the significance of balance in hormones and I've been teaching you that. Anyone that's followed me for any length of time on this podcast, you know I talk about balance of hormones. Men, eh, who cares, men, they got hormones, men have hormones, but it's not a matter of balance with men. Women, it's a tightrope. We've talked about that many, many, many times. But here we have, and I was a guy sort of looking in the future, now listen, I'm not a prophet nor the son of one, but I've always said that taking the birth control pill over a length of time is going to result in catastrophic problems for women down the road catastrophic. Because what it does, because guys, ladies, it is meant to be temporary. Okay? Meant to be temporary. Now a lot of doctors would put young ladies on birth control because of bad periods, right? I've talked a lot about this, but there are three hormonal events in a woman's life, the first time they experience menses, first time they have their period, having a baby, and menopause.

Men, what do we know about that? They don't have to go through stuff like that. That can be an enormous shock to a woman. Now, some women fly through that. You know my illustration of turbulence, they got smooth skies and they fly through it. They have their periods, they're regular, they might get a day of heavy menses, heavy bleeding, but other than that, they're pretty good. And women are tough, much tougher than men. We could never have a period men. We couldn't have a baby. We couldn't have a period. We would shoot ourselves. I'm one, so I know. I've always admired women because first of all, yesterday was Father's Day and my mother used to say every day is Father's Day. My mother, tougher than nails, 11 kids, tough. My wife, tough. I remember, I think I went in on number four in the hospital when my wife was delivering number four, the doctor who was delivering the baby was a friend. And he said, "Don't worry about your wife, I'm worried about you. You're going to pass out."

We're not tough compared to women. Okay? So you have these traumatic events and doctors, God love them, a lot of times a young lady comes in to the office and they've got bad periods and the doctor puts them on birth control. But what they are doing is giving them estrogen and I was always against that. Again, okay, let me state it's easy for a man to talk about these things and not experience number one, bad periods, but I was very sympathetic because I made my mission to understand these things. I wanted to help. And I used to tell a lot of young women, lots of them that let's try and balance your hormones without the birth control pill. Let's get that balance. So you don't have to take a pill that down the road, and this is what I've said consistently, when you give extra estrogen, you're asking for trouble.

Estrogen is a growth hormone. It makes you beautiful ladies. It does. It's not that I don't like estrogen. Estrogen's a wonderful thing. It is in balance, in balance with progesterone, has to be equal. So you get bad periods, you know how you get bad periods? You got too much estrogen and not enough progesterone and I've shown you this. Now for those on a podcast later on, you're not going to see this, but I used to in my clinic, I tested for estrogen, but one of the best tests was thermal imaging. Because if you learned to do this right, you could actually see estrogen. What usually thermography was looking at was inflammation. I got no problem with that. I like that. It's often used as a breast screening. I didn't do it for that. I wanted to see how much estrogen was on the skin and women would be shocked because I often showed a woman that looked like she had leopard spots. Never thought of it, but so much estrogen, especially around the breast tissue.

And I'm showing you, hold on here because I've saved a few from the clinic. We used to see estrogen on the belly, in the chest. I'm going to show you here estrogen. Now these are, again, I'm showing this, so see especially on that breast right here, you see a lot of estrogen. Now again, if you're on a podcast, you have to imagine what I'm showing you. Very, very dark and black on the black and whites because I used to look for estrogen. Again, estrogen on its own is a beautiful thing ladies, you need estrogen. Estrogen makes you a woman. Estrogen's not a bad thing. Estrogen becomes a bad thing when it's out of balance. And I used to teach that, teach it, teach it to physicians, even endocrinologists, gynecologists, and God bless them. Like I said, they were trained to give estrogen. I wasn't big on estrogen. I was trying to decrease it in order to balance it. And so I used to get women come in, bad periods, sometimes it started with the first period.

You know how many young ladies I saw from the day of their first menses they were upside down, and especially when their period would come. A week before, terrible, terrible PMS, they would get depressed and almost suicidal they were so bad. Can you imagine the quality of life? And then they'd have bad skin. A lot of them bad skin acne coming out their wazoo. You know why? Because estrogen, when it's dominant will increase in a woman testosterone and women used to come to me, "Doc, what's my testosterone?" I don't care. I didn't care because that wasn't the key. The key wasn't your testosterone. You were growing hairs on your chinny, chin, chin, bad skin, that's testosterone, but testosterone in a woman never gets elevated without estrogen taking off compared to its progesterone partner. Got that? So we would have young ladies come in completely out of whack and the doctor wanted to or already had put them on the birth control pill. It's amazing that that seemed to help a bit.

But whenever I would have a patient, a lady patient, in my office and they were suffering migraines that was a big, big, big thing. Migraines in a woman is a hormonal [inaudible 00:11:39], a migraine in a man, eh, usually they're dehydrated and they just don't know it. They're deficient in electrolytes, but women horror-mones, estrogen dominant, bad skin, estrogen elevating testosterone, hair in the wrong places, estrogen elevating testosterone. Now follow me ladies, follow me on this. When your estrogen is dominant, your thyroid doesn't work properly and you have millions, millions of women, their thyroid slows down and they gain weight. And one of the side effects of birth control is weight gain. They're giving you estrogen.

But even without it, estrogen dominance messes up the conversion of T4 to T3 and your finicky thyroid gets messed up. Women would come into the office and I would observe, I'd look at their eyebrows, look at their skin, look at their hair, estrogen. Can't live without it ladies, but it's got to be in balance. And then women, especially on their backside, saddle bags on the lakes, the thighs, that's estrogen, it's estrogen dominance. It's the thyroid not working properly. The metabolism slows down. I would tell them even without getting all the results of their testing, "You got too much estrogen, my dear." "What?" "Yeah, and it's messing you up." Weight, gain bad skin. You know what we're seeing today, one of the big results of estrogen dominance is PCOS, polycystic ovarian disorder, polycystic things grow in the ovaries. What makes it grow? Estrogen. It's a growth hormone. Why do you think we see so much breast cancer today?

You do a combination. Okay? You do a combination of estrogen makes you a woman, right? Insulin makes fat, and cortisol, stress and you have a perfect storm for breast cancer. Why do you think we see so much today? What angers me, this is a righteous anger by the way, I'm not sinning by being angry about this, it's righteous, what angers me today is women who are dropping like flies with breast cancer, all the emphasis, let's defeat breast cancer. Yeah, brought to you by the pharmaceutical industry. And they're not winning the war on it. They're losing the war. Let's knock your estrogen down. Let's knock your insulin down. That's in the kitchen. What happens in the kitchen don't stay in the kitchen. You know that? Eh? what do I mean by that?

Well, insulin is a growth hormone and insulin happens in the kitchen. It's what you eat. Estrogen in a lot of ways happens in the kitchen too. What you clean with, are you drinking tap water? Don't do that. Not without filtering it because you have a lot of xenoestrogens there. The plastics in your kitchen, the air fresheners in your kitchen, the antibacterial soaps in your kitchen, the fragrances in your kitchen, your soaps in your kitchen. You see ladies, the world is against you in a lot of ways because we live in an estrogen dominant world. It's as simple as that. Now men, okay, just a little sidebar for men, estrogen's not good for a man and we get prostate cancer. And why do you think prostate cancer's so high? And here's a statement from the Martin Clinic, most men after 50 have more estrogen than their wives and that is in direct proportion to their testosterone.

Testosterone goes down, estrogen goes up. Now we're not as affected as much by the environment as women are and there's a reason for that, guys. Because our body, a man's body, is not looking for estrogen. It's looking for testosterone. Women, your body is an estrogen driven body. Your body wants estrogen. And I know the old thinking, well, doc, I'm going into menopause, I need estrogen. Eh, no you don't. You don't need estrogen. You need to have a balance between estrogen and progesterone at every traumatic area of your life, whether it's the first day you have menses, whether you had a baby, or whether you're in menopause or going into menopause, your perimenopausal, you need balance. You don't need extra estrogen. Believe you me when I tell you that. How many women, millions, have been put on the estrogen birth control?

How many women have been given estrogen? I never, ever, ever, ever recommended that. Oh yeah, but my gynecologist put me on estrogen. I beg to differ, but I was always reticent, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, endometriosis. You know how many thousands of cases I saw of endometriosis? And it was estrogen plus insulin equals the growth of the endometrium. And how many women's lives, where talk about poor quality of life, when that endometrium, that lining started growing and grow, grow, grow, and get in and attach itself, I saw this hundreds of times growing into the intestine. Major, major issues, major bleeding, anemia, iron deficient, cancer, obesity, fat. Women talk, I just look at food, I don't have to eat it, I just have to look at it. Yeah, there isn't a man on the planet that gets fat by looking at food. There's not a man on the planet that gets fat by looking at food. There's millions of women that get fat looking at food. You want to know why? Because of estrogen that's messing up their thyroid.

"Oh doc, but my thyroid numbers are normal." "I know. I don't care. You're messed up hormonally." You know how many times I had women crying? Not because I was telling them a sad story, I was giving them good news. I know what your problem is. They start crying. And [inaudible 00:21:16] that worked with me for years, we went through more Kleenex in my office. It was never men, it was women. When I told them I know what your problem is, "What? How come nobody's ever told me that before?" Because they were poorly trained, that's why. They're relying on the lab rather than your symptoms, rather than observation. Hormones 101. Hormones 101. And I'll tell you, when you get into a hormonal storm, ladies could write a book about it, messed up from their head to their toes. Ain't no fun. Okay?

Now you didn't think I was going to leave you there did you? I want to give you good news. Hormones can be fixed. Hormones can be fixed. Even if you're on the birth control, hormones can be fixed. You dim that estrogen down. Get the estrogen down. When you get the estrogen down, your progesterone will level out with it. I used to dim it out, dim it out, dim it out, thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of women, tens of thousands of women in practice, I would hammer their estrogen down. I could prove it to them on before and after skin, estrogen testing, hormonal testing, knock that estrogen down. Same lady, see? Okay and again, if you're listening to this on a podcast, you can't see it, but close your eyes and try and visualize it. I'm showing you a woman with an enormous amount of estrogen. See the black and especially in that breast. Here is the same woman a year later when I gave her my hormonal plan, same woman. Look at the breast tissue. Where's the estrogen? It's gone, gone, gone. Is she still a woman? Absolutely.

They decrease their risk of cancer. They decrease their risk of breast cancer and every woman that gets breast cancer, every woman has estrogen receptive cells. Every woman. "Oh doc, my cancer wasn't estrogen receptive." "Eh, yes it was." Your body, ladies, loves estrogen. It loves it. Breast tissue loves estrogen. It sees estrogen, come here, over here, I want you. So I used to dim it out, knock it down., Hormonal formula, knock it down. Always, always, always talk the diet, always. Nobody ever left my office ever with any kind of hormonal problem without a plan, a food plan. "Here's your plan. Listen, Linda, listen. Estrogen and sugar don't get along. Estrogen and carbohydrates don't get along." Why is that? I used to teach them. Insulin is a growth hormone. You want to grow fat, insulin is a fat storing hormone, so is estrogen. And it's a double whammo because the more fat cells you have, okay? What a double whammo, you have fat cells and guess what happens? They produce estrogen.

That's why men get more estrogen than their wives. When they're over 50, they get fat cells, especially belly fat and visceral fat. It's producing estrogen. You know how often I would say this to a woman, "Well doc, what's my problem?" "You're too much of a woman." And they'd look at me like, "Oh yeah? How come I have no libido? I don't feel like a woman. How come my skin isn't womanly like?" And all I said, "Well, you got too much of it. That's all. Okay? You're too much of a woman and we're going to level that out. And we're going to balance that out." Ladies, I know you identify with this and it's a big problem in our society today. I didn't even get into depression. I didn't even get into that. How many women are on SSRIs, diagnosed with depression, when at the end of the day it was a hormonal problem.

Thousands of times I saw that in my office, not getting to the root issue of hormonal imbalance. That was my practice guys, 90% of it was that. Okay? And of course I saw thousands and thousands of diabetics and whatever, but oh, when women come in, oh boy, unique. Ooh. Okay guys, we got a great week coming up. We got a great week coming up. Some real good studies I want to talk about. Friday of course is question and answer Friday. And we want you to send your questions in. We want you to send you questions in. Okay? Are you getting our emails from martinclinic.com? If you're not, sign up there, make sure you get our emails and you can become part of our private Facebook group. Now I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but there's a lot of new listeners every day there is.

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