Foods and Herbs for Hormone Balance with Dr. Stephanie Zgraggen

Dr. Cates: Hi there. I’m Dr Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. On today’s podcast we’re talking about food and herbs for hormonal balance. My guest is Dr Stephanie Zgraggen. She is the clinical director of Lyman Lotus Healing Arts Center in Charleston, South Carolina. Her private practice is centered on functional endocrinology, lifestyle modification, and whole food supplementation. Her expertise includes functionally evaluating thyroid, adrenal, male and female hormone imbalances, and digestion. For mission is to empower women on how they can transform their lives and incorporate nutrition, supplements and positive lifestyle choices. She’s written for national publications such as Chiropractic Economics and National Awakenings and Nutrition Perspectives. Today’s interview focuses on women’s health and hormones and which foods, nutrients, and herbs are helpful for Adrenal, thyroid and sex hormone balance. So please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Stephanie, welcome to the SPA doctor podcast. It’s great to have you on.

Dr. Zgraggen: Thank you so much, Trevor. It’s so nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, so today we’re talking about women’s health, women’s hormones and foods, herbs, things that help support our hormonal imbalance. And so before we dive into the material today, tell us what, what got you so interested in working with women’s health in your practice?

Dr. Zgraggen: That is a great question because I’ve been there. It was a really big challenge going through school for myself at the time I was in chiropractic school, it was four years of going to school 40 hours a week. I was also working in a restaurant on the side for 20 hours a week. I was studying for boards, getting ready to graduate, getting ready to move across the country, get married, start a practice, you name it. And I was pretty darn stressed out too, if you can imagine all those things going on in my life at that particular time. And I started waking up with hot sweats at night, night sweats and hot flashes both. And I would literally be drenched in sweat. And at 24 years old, I was just thinking, this is not okay. Um, so I went to the regular routes of, you know, going to the gynecologist, having the labs done, and they told me everything was normal. And then when we looked at my cycle, my cycle was very unregulated as well. I had a very heavy cycle, lots of cramps, lots of sitting in bed during that time. I got to the point where I was having nausea and vomiting every single month. So basically my period was ruining my life and I didn’t want that anymore for myself. So once I had the test done, the doctor said everything was normal. I said, this absolutely is not normal. So that really started me on a track to find out really what’s going on, how can the lab say a normal, but I’m really this way and there’s, there’s no way. And that’s when I got more into functional medicine, really looking at different labs to do for women. And I did some functional labs on myself and I found out that I was a hot mess. My cortisol was really high, my estrogen was high and my progesterone was low and have higher testosterone than normal. And from there I was able to look at ways to balance that naturally. And it took me about a year to fix myself. But, I’m happy to say now I need an App to know when my cycle’s coming. It’s much more pleasant to deal with. And now my period doesn’t ruin my life. And that’s really what got me on the mission to help women and educate them and empower them on different options, different choices in ways that we can start balancing things naturally. Um, so that’s the story and that’s, that’s why we’re here today.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And so many of us have our own personal journey that leads us into specializing in a certain area. So I can definitely understand. And then also I think so often it’s confusing for women that are told your hormones are fine. There’s nothing wrong with you, it must be in your head, here’s a sleep med, here’s an antidepressant. You’ll be fine. You’re just getting older. I mean at 24 of course, that’s not exactly what you were told, but I think a lot of women are, they’re told, you know, it’s just, you know, it’s just part of being a woman or you know, this is, you’ve just been dealt a bad hand. I’m sorry, but your labs are fine. There’s really nothing wrong with you. And that’s a really frustrating place to be because like you said, it’s like wait now, there is something wrong here. I know there’s something wrong and you know when you’re told no, you’re fine, you’re normal, you’re like, no, it’s not right.

Dr. Zgraggen: Yeah. So as women I think were very intuitive creatures anyway, we just feel that something is off. And then you mentioned, you know, being given sleep meds are prescribed antidepressants. I can’t tell you how many women have gone through that route that I’ve seen personally that have said, you know, I know something’s off. The only thing they gave me wasn’t antidepressant. That didn’t feel right to me. That’s not what I wanted to take. And like I said, once we can really get some solid lab work for these women, we really find a lot of a lot of things that can be out of balance with them.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So what do you, what do you feel like the gaps are right now with women being treated with health plans and things? What are some of the gaps do you feel are happening?

Dr. Zgraggen: I think some of the biggest gaps are really in testing. We’re not doing functional testing. We’re looking to see if women have maybe fibroids or endometriosis or polycystic ovarian disease. And some women don’t have the diseases at this point, but they still have imbalances. And so I think that’s where we’re missing. I call it the gray area. You know, you may not have a disease yet, but you have a lot of symptoms that are, that are moving in that direction. And I’d much rather get a woman to when she is out of balance, but not completely broken yet. Um, and really work on it from that perspective too because there’s so much we can do prior to that point.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. And so with these especially lab testing, this is not something that most, well at least not conventional doctors are running. This is something that functional medicine doctors as well as naturopathic doctors are ordering. And can you say anything about the labs that you like? I mean, you don’t have to mention names of labs or if you, unless you want to, but what are you kind of looking for in your practice that you’ve found that really helps.

Dr. Zgraggen: We’re really looking at, so just the women’s cycle. So if a woman that still hasn’t period and menstrual cycle every month, I want to see that entire cycle front of entire month. You know, we go and get lab work done just on one day. We’re only seeing a very small shot of what her hormones look like. But there’s this beautiful dance of the hormones with your estrogen’s up just from the testosterone. And if we can do labs that track the entire month, we can really see exactly where there might be a problem in that woman’s cycle because she might be good at the beginning of the cycle, but come ovulation. So at a time her menstrual cycle starts again, it’s, it’s, it’s a total mess. So with those kind of labs, if you’re having a menstrual cycle and you’re seeking out someone to find some help and really look for someone that can do a full month cycle. So that’s one piece of the puzzle. The other thing I think we’re lacking of testing just in medicine in general, is looking at our adrenal glands. Our adrenal glands are producing cortisol women these days, we’re doing so much, I mean, we are powerful, amazing creatures, but we’re also really pushing ourselves and sometimes not taking enough time. So I really find it was a lot of women, their cortisol levels are off, their DHEA levels are off. So I’m testing those types of hormones a lot for them as well.

Dr. Cates: Okay. So you do the testing in there. A combination sounds like a blood or saliva or maybe some urine tests, are different tests that you run now.

Dr. Zgraggen: And I’m typically doing blood and saliva most commonly with women. We’ll do some stool samples when we need to, but that’s generally not the case for everybody.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Okay. And so, you know, I think what we’re talking about here is that different tasks require different routes of testing for them, some is blood, some is saliva, some is urine and you learn different things in different places. For adrenals, the best places, saliva, right?

Dr. Zgraggen: Yes. I love the saliva testing for the adrenals because really when we’re looking at cortisol levels, that’s usually where it starts. For a lot of women within balancing their hormones, they get stressed out, cortisol levels go high, and if their stressed out long term, we can really track that. Cortisol is one of those hormones that has a nice rhythm daily. So it should be a high in the morning, that’s the hormone that helps get you out of bed, get you going for the day. And then it should start trickling down throughout the day and be lowest at night. So I love the saliva panels that will do all day testing because then you can see, well what is my total output of cortisol for the entire day? Is a good in the morning? Is it really bad at night you know? I’ve got some of my patients, I call them that the tired and wired patients where their cortisol should be dropping at night, but they shoot back up again. So we can really see that on lab tests and based on what the labs say, we can then really give some specific, either time for some prescriptions that we want to do as far as herbs or eating certain foods, or we will know if they need to raise or lower certain forms because so many times we might have a hormone that’s high or low, but it’s still gives the same symptoms. So just because someone tells me what their symptoms are I can’t necessarily tell them what hormones are necessarily out of balance due to that.

Dr. Cates: Okay. So let’s talk about this on the, I think in, when we’re talking about hormones, we’re talking about not just sex hormones, right? Like you were talking about cortisol, adrenals, we’re talking about thyroid. We were talking about these are the most common things that we talk about in practice, right? So let’s talk about some of these, because I want to talk about food because food is such powerful medicine and I think it often times gets overlooked. A lot of times women are like, okay, well do I need to go on hormones? And I’m like, well, hold on before you even talk about hormone therapy and if that’s even necessary, let’s talk about what you can be doing at home every day because your choices that you make every day are so powerful. And food is powerful medicine. So when it comes to, let’s talk about adrenals person, things like Cortisol, um, what are some of the foods that are really beneficial for helping with adrenals? Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Zgraggen: I think the adrenals are definitely the place to start because if those are out of balance, that really does give a trickle down effect to love the other hormones and I needed the thyroid gland. So my favorites I guess tips to give the ladies that are working with their adrenals. Getting enough protein. So making sure that each meal that you have … we have fat, we have protein, we have carbohydrates, but the adrenals really, really thrive on protein. And one of the signs that your adrenals might not be working to their speed and to their efficiency is if you crave salt a lot, that’s one of the hormones. We need a lot of salts to push those pathways. So women that crave salt or maybe just want to go straight for the salty food or potato chips? We can look at the adrenal glands. So really looking at making sure that we’re adding good salts, so if we areeating really clean foods. If we’re eating not processed foods, we really do need to add some good sea salts to the diet. So making sure we mad at that. And then as far as nutrients go that are going to help with the adrenal glands, your B vitamins, your c vitamins and selenium I think are the most important. Um, so the way that we can do that very easily on a daily basis is for the B vitamins. Just one good hearty cup of greens per day. So whether you throw it in your smoothie whether you have a nice big green salad and steam some veggies for dinner? That’s, that’s how we can get that in. For the vitamin C one citrus fruit per day, that’s it. So even just drinking water and squeezing lemon or lime into your water throughout the day would be perfect. One thing that I love to eat is mushrooms. They’re high in vitamin C as well. And then for selinium, … nuts, seeds, fish. But if we want to get our daily dose in the most efficient power pack, it’s Brazil nuts. So two brazil nuts per day is the daily dose just to get the selenium in. So those are really easy ways that we can add these foods in to really start affecting on a daily basis. And if you are just to these foods and keep just doing it day after day, you will, you will see the change. Yeah.

Dr. Cates: And I don’t want to remind everybody, because I talk a lot about skin on the podcast, is that my specialty, and I want to remind you that these are all important for skin. I mean first of all cortisol, balancing cortisol and again, and having healthy adrenals is important for healthy skin, especially skin inflammation issues, inflammatory skin issues.Balancing cortisol is really key in helping with managing those and B vitamins, vitamin C, selenium, those are all crucial for skin health as well and the right kinds of proteins. So when you talk about protein, what are good sources of protein and you’re in from your perspective?

Dr. Zgraggen: Yeah, we can obviously do meat. So, um, chicken fish and when we talk about me, it’s, I really encourage my women, especially when they have hormonal issues to eat clean sources of meat. I mean if we’re going to do beef or any kind of that meat, I really want to make sure it’s organic. We don’t have hormones in the meat because that can exacerbate some of our other issues. So really eating clean types of meats. If we’re going to do fish, we’re doing wild fish and not farm raised. And then we can look at nuts, seeds, legumes or beans, chickpeas, hummus, you know, all of those are going to be high in protein. We even have veggies that are high protein, Broccoli is a great vegetable that has a higher content of a protein as well.

Dr. Cates: Okay, great. It’s also a good source of vitamin C to, yeah. Okay, great. Um, and so that is with just kind of overall adrenal support, keeping the adrenals balanced, not one direction or the other. Right. And so what about herbs? Are there any herbs that are particularly good for that you recommend for adrenals?

Dr. Zgraggen: Yeah, so I love the adrenals. There are so many fantastic herbs for them and a lot of the herbs are what are called adaptogenic herbs. So what those are, those are herbs that you can take and whether or not your body needs to raise cortisol or lower it, the body will do what it needs to do with that particular herb. One of my favorites is Ashwagandha. It’s also called Withania. So that’s a fantastic herb. It’s a great adaptogen that can help raise or lower cortisol, whatever needs to happen. I love that herb specifically for women that are the tire and wires that we were talking about earlier. Those women that are maybe tired in the morning, they might get a second wind at night and they can’t go to sleep or they have sleep issues. Withania, Ashwagandha is a great herb for that. I also love the herb rhodiola. That is a fantastic herb for getting you going in the morning. So if you’re the one that needs those three cups of coffee, I’d rather cut down on the coffee and move more towards, you know, certain herbs like Rhodiola, Ginseng is also another great herb. You know eleuthero is fantastic. Licorice is a great adaptagenic herb as well. So we have so many great ones to choose from. So whether you do it in an herb form, a pill form or a tincture, or even doing a tea, all those can be effective at helping for restoring the adrenal glands.

Dr. Cates: Okay, great. All right, well let’s talk about, let’s talk about thyroid and you know what, actually before I move on, you know, it’s really interesting. When I was creating my skincare line, I actually used put some adopted to mimic adaptogenic herbs and the skincare products because your skin gets stressed and with adaptagenic herbs there’s actually HPA access on the skin. And so we believe that it has a balancing effect on the skin. So when your skin is stressed, it needs a little support too.

Dr. Zgraggen: It does and that’s probably where it’s going to show up first is your skin, hair and nails. Because as far as the body is concerned, it’s going to make sure that you’re breathing, that you’re digesting and that your heart’s still beating. Things you’ll see first is In your skin. So that makes perfect sense.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Right. Yeah. So all right, let’s talk about thyroid. So what are some, some good foods for helping balance thyroid?

Dr. Zgraggen: For the thyroid, we once again need some selenium. We also need vitamin E, vitamin D and iodine for a lot of people. So those are what’s lacking in a lot of our patients. So as far as being able to create the thyroid hormones, but even more importantly, I think for thyroid gland is really looking at how well their liver is working because a lot of the hormones that we need that are active for the thyroid really aren’t made in the thyroid they’re made in the liver. So we shovel those hormones from the thyroid to deliver. We need to reactivate them in the liver. So if you have a really sluggish liver or you’re really eating poorly or maybe taken a lot of medications that can slow down the body’s processing ability to create those hormones. Um, so really looking at are we eating enough good liver support foods too. So liver support foods are going to be things like your cruciferous vegetables, your Broccoli or cauliflower, your Brussels sprouts or Kale. Once again, all good foods for your skin. Um, Avocados are great. So Lemons, ginger, Tumeric, you know, all those anti inflammatory foods, beets are fantastic. Or artichokes. So hopefully most of your listeners like a few of those and can start incorporating those so that will help the liver processing. And then as far as vitamin D, You know, getting out in a little bit of Sun, a little bit of sunshine, but of course using sunscreen where necessary. Cod liver oil is great for your vitamin A and vitamin D. We already talked about the selenium, but those would be some of the foods that we can start incorporating as far as the thyroid goes. And then for iodine, one food that we really don’t eat a lot of as Americans is seaweed and that has a lot of iodine into that can be really helpful for the thyroid as well.

Dr. Cates: Right. And of course if anybody’s listening, watching and you’re under treatment for a thyroid condition or any of these hormonal condition conditions, talk to your doctor about, you know, what’s best for you as far as the foods and how to prepare them. I think that, you know, for example, if someone might want to be avoiding the raw forms of these are eating those limitations. They might want to have steam versions of some of the cruciferous vegetables for some, some people with thyroid problems. Right?

Dr. Zgraggen: Yes, yes. I’m definitely recommending my hypo thyroids eat them cooked and my hyper is eat them raw. So it really just depends on what your labs look like working with your doctor, to get the right levels, especially with iodine you definitely want to be within the right limits and right levels for that as well.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, great. An

Dr. Zgraggen: d what about herbs? Herbs for the thyroid gland? I love laderach, but that’s only if you’re hypo, that wouldn’t be one to take for the hyper side, but there’s good herbs for that. It really, all thyroid cases are also adrenal cases. I’ve never met a thyroid patient that didn’t also have some adrenal issues as well. So I think that it probably starts with the adrenal gland and then that then trickles down to make the thyroid gland work not as efficiently. So all of my thyroid patients, we also work on the adrenal glands as we’ll also using some of those other herbs so Withania, the Ashwagandha, the licorice … whatever that patient might need based on their lab work, we tend to create a protocol that will include some adrenal support as well to them.

Dr. Cates: Okay, perfect. Okay, so we talk about sex hormones, there’s some different ones. So we don’t really, that’s the same for the other glands too to a certain extent. But when we’re talking about sex hormones they get a little bit more complicated, but well, let’s hit on some of the, you know, some of the big ones, you know, estrogen, progesterone for women. What do we do for balancing those as well as testosterone? And, um, I’m always surprised that even though I say this all the time, women have testosterone, just someone’s always like what? We have testosterone? Yes, we need but not to the same extent, but um, the end of course there are some foods that we can eat with helping with the sex hormones, right?

Dr. Zgraggen: Yes. And as far as the female hormones go, if we’re looking at raising estrogen levels. Obviously we have all of our phytoestrogens, but soys, the legumes those kinds of foods. So that will help from a food perspective. But if we’re really looking at herbs, maybe you’re moving into perimenopause, maybe starting to get some hot flashes and night sweats, a little fatigue. I love wild Yam for that. That’s my first go to for a lot of my women with hot flashes and night sweats. I’ve also found that as long as they don’t have a thyroid issue, a lot of women are low in iodine and adding supplementing iodine … little amounts of iodine with some of the wild Yam or black cohosh, it really does help balance out those hot flashes for them. Um, so that’s been one of my magic tips, with the ladies to really help get them sleeping better because if they’re not sleeping well and they’re tired the next day and then that whole cascade of fatigue starts. And if you have a cycle still. We’re looking at maybe, you know, we’ve got too much estrogen and we need to balance out progesterone. I love chase tree for that. Vitex is fantastic, it’s also called chase tree. It’s great for balancing out progesterone levels. And not only does it help balance progesterone levels, but it also helps with Melatonin production. So ladies that are having issues with sleeping, I will always recommend that they take their chase tree at night, so we can get maybe a better, better night’s sleep. And then if we’re moving into menopause, one of my favorite herbs for ladies is tremulous. It’s one that we don’t talk about as often, but it is fantastic for increasing our estrogen levels. Sometimes DHEA starts dropping as we age as well. So really helping with stamina with energy for women that are post menopausal. And yes, we do have testosterone is ladies and sometimes some of the ladies have too much. Um, so if we need a lower testosterone for them, I’m white peony cause my favorite are for that. So women that have pcos issues too much testosterone, maybe they’re starting to have some hairs where they don’t want it. So typically what happens is hair leaves where they want it and shows up where they don’t want it. Right? But white peony can you really can help with the balance of the testosterone with that as well.

Dr. Cates: And what about foods? Are there any foods that you recommend for hormone balance? For sex
hormone balance?

Dr. Zgraggen: Yeah, the biggest thing for foods is really just eating a clean diet. Um, I think probably taking away more of the triggers are probably a better choice or better place to start really limiting alcohol. Eliminate sugar. Because as you know, with too much sugar, we get systemic inflammation that creates havoc on our body’s ability to make our hormones. And then really looking at stress levels as well because we’ve seen this cascade of when, when we get stress more cortisol goes high, that kicks our estrogen into gear, that messes with our insulin level. That depresses our thyroid gland. So really coming back to eating as anti-inflammatory possible. So trying to avoid a lot of processed, packaged foods, just eating cleanly, eating real food, you know, if it came out of the ground or, or you know, fell from from a tree, eat it and really avoiding a lot of the grains, the inflammatory foods and going more with fish, chicken, those kinds of things will be helpful as well.

Dr. Cates: Right. Okay. And then when we, we look at the liver and the liver function too, you mentioned that already, but you know, of course that plays a role in these hormones too and, and making sure that the liver is functioning properly, right?

Dr. Zgraggen: Yes. I think that’s a huge role just because if we have to, not only do we process thyroid hormones in the liver, we also have to process our estrogen in the liver. So we don’t have really healthy livers. We tend to keep the estrogen recirculating. And so I think this is probably one of the issues we have as ladies in America was having too much estrogen compared to our progesterone levels. So really looking at how can we keep the liver clean? How can we just make it work more efficiently? So beets, a couple of artichokes, all those cruciferous vegetables are all going to be helpful. And even getting just the fruits and vegetables in general, with the fibers are going to help conjugate those estrogens and allow us to be able to excrete them out through our digestive tract.

Dr. Cates: Right? Right. Cause there’s, there’s this feedback mechanism that happens in the body. If it’s not, they’re not breaking down properly and it’s about the whole feedback mechanism doesn’t work properly. And then your body gets confused and maybe you’re at a time when your body’s already confused. And then compile that. But add on top of that, all of the hormone disrupting chemicals that we’re exposed to in the environment, including skincare products. That’s just gonna make it even more challenging for the liver. So I always like to go back to the liver then really emphasizing that we’re taking about foods and herbs and hormone balance, right?

Dr. Zgraggen: Yeah. And some many women that come in with maybe, you know, 10 different things going on. They’ve got like a hormone issues, they have thyroid issues, they have adrenal issues, they have gut issues. I always need you to start with the foundation and because yes, we just dive right in and start working with female hormones, you may not be as successful with our protocols, you know, if we can make sure that the liver is functioning correctly, that the gut is working right, then I know that by the time we get to working on her hormones and balancing that, it’s going to be so much easier, quicker for, for that woman. So at so many cases I’m always starting with like with gut, with digestion, maybe some gut flora issues with those women. And then go on from there. And I know you mentioned the skin care products and what else does that, as far as estrogen goes, that’s huge right now, because it’s not only skincare products, it’s anything that we’re putting on our bodies and have extra estrogen. So if we’re not eating organic fruits and vegetables, if we’re eating meats that have hormones in them, if we’re using roundup at our house or having bug spray, you know all that compounds I think with, with creating this, this perfect storm, if you will, as far as hormonal balance goes.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And it’s true. And you know, we don’t want to wait until menopause, perimenopause for paying attention to these things. The sooner we can start this, the better. And I know sometimes it’s tempting, for our human nature I think is, unless it’s broken, you know, we’re not going to really think about addressing it. But the sooner I think we can do that. And, and, and, it was unfortunate that at a young age you had these, these health challenges, but at least it made you pay attention early on because I’m sure that you see in your practice these patterns of women, maybe they’d go through their 20s and they have certain symptoms and issues. Maybe they go and they’re treated maybe conventionally or they’re put on birth control pills, and they get kind of like maybe they’re not having symptoms and then they start to go through menopause and all of that comes back, right, that if they didn’t address it earlier on, then it just gets worse. So the sooner, you know, we see these patterns of the hormone imbalances, the sooner we can address those better. Right. Don’t you see that in your practice?

Dr. Zgraggen: Absolutely. I think some of the patterns that we’re seeing with younger women now is patterns of more chronic fatigue, patterns of sleep disturbances, patterns of unexplained weight gain where they can’t lose it no matter what they do. And also patterns. They’re thinking that they’re going through menopause. They’ll their periods for four or five, six months in their thirties now. And the way that I explained that to them as your adrenals are so stressed out, that everything just kind of shut down for a bit. Um, you know, it’s not their time yet to go into menopause in their mid to late thirties, but their body just can’t do it anymore. It’s really interesting because once we can start with the gut working right, once we can start on supporting the adrenal glands their periods also please come back. So it’s not physiologically, you know, for us to go in menopause my thirties, but when the body is so stressed out, it’s going to conserve energy any way that it can. And that’s usually one of the ways.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So what are some things to maybe like talking about the different ages that depending upon where someone is coming in, like a woman is, where she is right now, what are some of the things that people were places that people can start? So, to start making some changes.

Dr. Zgraggen: Yeah. I think at any age, really just cleaning up our diets would be good. Cleaning up our diets, clean up our toiletry items, cleaning up our personal care products that can be done at any agent’s going to be helpful no matter if you’re in your 20s, 30s, forties, 50s. But if you’re in your 20s really looking at, you know, do you want to have children one day? So really looking at is my, is my cycle regular? Am I balanced? Maybe doing some preconception care not only for you but also your husband or partner because the men are definitely involved in this as well these days. When you’re moving into your thirties, you know, we do see a lot of period changes. For some ladies it starts getting a little different. So if you’ve noticed that your period and has become more lengthier, heavier, those kinds of things, those are some of those symptoms to really look out for. So once again, the prescription would be the same as far as the Diet goes, you know, eating clean, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, getting enough fiber. Um, but I just want to impress upon people that just because we’re getting older doesn’t mean that you saying should necessarily be happening. So just kind of being on the lookout for that. If you feel like you want some testing on, find someone that does more functional testing and get your numbers looked at at that age. And if you are still on a cycle, once again doing a test that’s gonna include a whole month. So you really see the estrogen and progesterone dance throughout the month and really see what’s going on. As we’re moving into our forties and 50s, things start slowing down. I tell women just like, you know, puberty didn’t happen overnigh, menopause does not happen overnight either. Yeah. It’s usually a two to eight year process. So my ladies don’t like to hear that. But the whole point too, is not that you take away every single symptom that they’re having necessarily, but if your symptoms are to the point where it’s really affecting your daily life, where you can’t sleep, where you have no energy, that’s when there’s something that’s possibly out of balance that you might want to get looked at.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. and I know that one thing that comes up before menopause is birth control and, um, I’ve had a doctor Jolene brighten talking about Birth Control Syndrome on and talking about alternatives to birth control pills. And so, and do you have any thoughts on, cause I know that’s always a big thing before hitting menopause. I mean, even, even women in their forties, right? We’re done having children, but there’s still a possibility. And so, you know, but certainly when you’re in your twenties, uh, you’re trying to get, you know, go to college and you start, you started your life. So timing is always an interesting thing of that. Any suggestions, any thoughts on birth control?

Dr. Zgraggen: Yeah. I think that if you are taking birth control is really important to replace the nutrients that birth control is taking out. So I think that’s one thing, but that’s not really discussed very much when the gynocologist gives us the prescription. But a lot of our B vitamins are depleted. A lot of our minerals, selenium. It Is very interesting because the nutrients that are depleted with birth control are all nutrients that are needed for our adrenal gland support. So once again, putting those back into the body, If you’re going to take birth control if you’re wanting to get off birth control or a patient progress. And so I would always ask why is this really for birth control purposes isn’t really controlling your cycle. So we kind of work on the why. So if it’s due to controlling the cycle, then we work on balancing their cycle. If it’s due to I don’t want to have a baby, then we work on teaching people natural family planning. Cause I’m always happy to teach all my patients natural family planning methods.

Dr. Cates: Okay. Excellent. All right, well thank you so much for the information. Tell everybody where they can find you.

Dr. Zgraggen: Yes, the quickest and easiest way to find me is probably my website. It is drzgraggen.com and there you can get more information on me. Look at what we’ve been, what we’ve got going on. We had different programs online that we can look at that would be great for your viewers. So yes, I’d be happy to continue the conversation online or on social media.

Dr. Cates: Okay, great. Thanks again for coming on and sharing with us all kinds of information and tips on hormone balance

Dr. Zgraggen: Thanks so much Trevor, I appreciate it.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr Stephanie and you got some great tips on how to practically start balancing your hormones, things that you could be doing with your foods, your lifestyle, start doing today. Now, if you do believe that you have hormonal imbalances that are impacting that you have symptoms and it’s impacting your health, I do recommend seeing a functional medicine or a naturopathic medicine doctor who can really test and get to the root cause and help support you and a treatment plan. But the tips today should be able to help you on some diet modifications and some lifestyle things that you can start doing today to help with hormonal healthy hormones and hormonal balance.

Dr. Cates: To learn more about Dr. Stephanie, you could go to TheSpaDr.com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you can find her website there and some tips and tools that she’s got to help you with your hormones. Also, while you’re there on The Spa Dr. website, I invite you to join the spa doctor community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows and you can get some valuable tips and resources from us as well. And if you haven’t taken the skin quiz, I invite you to do that. Just go to theskinquiz.com and find out what messages your skin’s trying to tell you about your health. That might include your hormones. You can go to theskinquiz.com to find that out. And I also invite you to join me on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and youtube. And I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.