Are Your Hormones Out Of Whack? – [Video]

Are your hormones out of whack? Why?

 

Summary

 

Transcript of the video

by Dr. Vikki Petersen

Why are your hormones out of whack? Why are your kids’ hormones out of whack?

Endocrine disruptors

There’s something called endocrine disruptors, and they are all over the place. So, while I don’t want to get paranoid about air pollution (something you can’t control), there’s a lot of things we really can control.

Endocrine disruptors affect fertility, mood, women’s hormonal cycles as far as creating polycystic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis and even sperm count in men. Very much affecting fertility.

Remember, our sexual hormones are not just about making babies: they’re also about how we feel about ourselves, our mental stability, our mood, energy metabolism. They affect us in a lot of different ways. Furthermore, endocrine disruptors are related to the leading causes of death in America: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and obesity.

They affect us in pretty much every way you would want them NOT to affect you. So I want to just go over some basics. We have to just start making steps. Okay? Whether it’s for you, for your children… steps to get away from as many of these as we have control over.

Eliminating hormone disruptors from our kitchens

Now, we definitely have control over (to a degree) the water we drink. Reverse osmosis systems that you can put under your kitchen sink are not terribly expensive, and they are very effective. You just have to remember to change the filter. That’s pretty easy, and that makes a huge difference.

Plastics are everywhere, but you can choose to use your reverse osmosis system and put your water in a nice metal container. If the metal heats up, your water heats up. But that’s very different than in a plastic container where it might heat up (for instance, you leave it in the car in summer) and all those chemicals from the plastic are now imbuing your water with endocrine (hormones) disruptors. So stainless steel is your friend, plastic is not.

Similarly, microwaving food. I very rarely go to a restaurant, but occasionally (historically, more than now) I would. And I wouldn’t finish my meal and I’d ask “can I have a to-go container?” And they’d put it in a 100% percent plastic [container]. Then I’m like, “okay, now I’m gonna throw it out because the meal was still warm and the plastic went into my food”. So try to ask for the cardboard type of stuff when asking for that sort of thing.

But what about when you’ve gotten food-to-go, you put it in plastic, and when you get home it’s still warm, or you heat it up in the microwave. Or you had leftovers from dinner at home, and you have a plastic container and then you’re microwaving the leftovers: heat and plastic and food. Not good bedfellows. You really want to stay away from that.

… And from our toiletries and clothing

As far as our children are concerned, having children stay away from cosmetics at a young age. Also, the new thing that’s coming out: athletic wear. I’m gonna go through some of the chemicals here. Triclosan is a very interesting chemical. It’s known to affect the thyroid. So it is in the category of an endocrine disruptor because the thyroid has so much to do with hormonal balance throughout the body and metabolism, etc.

But triclosan is a chemical that was actually banned from soap because of the known endocrine disruptor ability: yet, it’s still in some toothpaste. So that’s an easy thing. You can just Google your toothpaste or whatever search engine you like, and find out if your particular brand of toothpaste has triclosan or not.

I found that among some of the natural brands, some had maybe six different types of toothpaste: and one had it [triclosan] and one didn’t. Even under the more natural. So not hard to find, but a very worthwhile decision to make, to make sure you’re getting away from triclosan. So, banned from soap… but still in some toothpastes.

It’s also in things like yoga mats, and also in some athletic wear. And recently, one of the more famous brands of athletic wear was taken to task because it’s one of the chemicals they use in their products, their yoga pants, shirts, etc, that makes them don’t stink.

And if you think about it, and I have some of these products myself, and it didn’t really dawn on me that they don’t start to smell the way other cotton would smell. So what does that mean? These chemicals are coming out into your body because you sweat. They specifically were talking about women who work out in yoga pants and don’t want to see a panty line. So they work out with no underwear and the chemicals coming off of that, is going into their vagina and creating upset in hormones.

That was kind of a new one, which made me think about getting rid of all my yoga pants and starting to get back to the nice cotton that stinks when it’s dirty.

These are things that sound cool, okay, “it wicks the sweat and it doesn’t smell”, but then, what’s happening inside you?

Some decisions to make.

More endocrine disruptors

Also non-stick pans. There are some ceramic non-stick pans that don’t have these dangerous chemicals. But a lot of the classic non-stick pans (again, you have to do your due diligence on the type you have) as soon as they’re scratched, as soon as somebody uses the wrong kind of utensil on them (stainless steel instead of plastic), they scratch. And now those chemicals have come out.

As long as there’s no scratching and the surface is unmarred, it’s fine. But it’s very easy for somebody to do the wrong thing. Then they say, “cook your food with the plastic”, but now you’ve got hot food with plastic again.

I’m not trying to overwhelm you. I just picked three things that you can start doing yourself and make a difference.

One of the big ones as far as women are concerned is antiperspirant. And I only say women because the aluminum in antiperspirant has been potentially related to breast cancer, but there does seem to exist a stronger link with that.

Now, men using antiperspirants, aluminum’s not good for anyone. It’s particularly dangerous for brain health.

The thing about your skin is your skin eats whatever you put on it. So if you’re putting an aluminum product on it, it’s being ingested by your skin. And again, for women using these antiperspirants, find a natural deodorant. Okay, you might be a little damp. You know, it’s all right. Maybe men might wear an undershirt. Women can do different things. You’re going to have to decide. I stopped using antiperspirant a very long time ago.

The deodorant aspect is still there, so you’re not stinky with the natural products, but the prevention of sweat is something that you want to avoid because of the aluminum.

And by the way, when it comes to smell, let’s talk about that. Sweating is very normal, but really foul smelling sweat is indicative of you being toxic. So being able to know what your sweat smells like is a good indicator of your health and that something needs to be done to improve your health.

I recently was doing a bit of a detox, and sure enough, all of a sudden I was like, “that smells bad”. I thought I was detoxing. And indeed I am. So the human body tells you things that are kind of important. And if you have an aluminum-based antiperspirant, you can’t even be aware of these things.

What else did I want to go over with you?

Household cleaners. There’s a lot of great more natural cleaners. You want to just see as many things as you can. We had a little issue with our dishwasher and I tried various things because it had built up some calcium. Sure enough, guess what worked? White vinegar and baking soda, that that’s what worked.

So you can go online and find a whole host of uses on Instagram. There are channels that just talk about natural ways to clean things. And again, and again and again, you’re hearing about white vinegar and you’re hearing about baking soda, and neither of those are endocrine disruptors. Have some fun with them. This will save you a lot of money, and they are extremely effective at cleansing, taking the smell out of towels.

If your towels start to smell a little bit — I feel like I’m turning into a home cleaning channel; I’m not, I’m just talking about endocrine disruptors because the problem is our fertility levels are going down, our anxiety and depression are going up. Our kids are more anxious than ever. And this link is very important to understand. That’s why I’m doing this.

Oh, microwave popcorn. Just stay away from that. Loaded with chemicals.

Hormone imbalance is not unavoidable

That was mostly what I wanted to tell you about. If you’re stuck with hormonal imbalance, there’s too much talk about, “oh, that’s just the way you are. You’re a stressed person, you’re an anxious person”…

There are a lot of tools that can be used to get to the root cause of why your hormones are out of balance. Fertility is out of balance.
Mood swings, anxiety, depression. There’s a lot of root cause basics that can cause your body to be producing these symptoms. And it’s NOT because you’re “destined” to be that way. “It was in your family”.

There are a lot of things in my family that I don’t have, just because I’ve worked harder to compensate for them. Genetics, interestingly enough, is less strong for most diseases and syndromes than you would think. We talked about Alzheimer’s yesterday. 6% to 8% is genetics. Okay? That leaves 92 to 94% that’s not. So the majority of factors is diet and lifestyle. We can do a lot for ourselves. We can do a lot for our children.

I hope this was helpful.

 

Additional resources

Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: An Endocrine Society Scientific Statement
Epigenetic Transgenerational Actions of Endocrine Disruptors and Male Fertility
Women live half their lives without hormones
Optimizing hormonal balance

If your hormones are imbalanced, consider learning more about Root Cause Medicine. For appointments, call the front desk at 727-335-0400