Putting on weight, you're tired, you're not sleeping, mood swings, loss of sex drive, don't get your hormones fixed.

We get so many questions saying I've had either repeated miscarriages or difficult time.

Getting pregnant. I recommend that they're immediately on a methylated multivitamin do a whole assessment of their diet. Pull out the follic acid component. You got to get away from the sugar. Am I sleeping? I'm depressed. I have hot clashes. I don't have an interest in sex? And I cannot lose weight no matter what I do. I recommend. Ultimate human.

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the ultimate human podcast where we go down the road. Everything anti-aging, longevity, bio-optimization, and everything in between. This is an episode that lots and lots and lots of our followers, and listeners, and watchers have been begging for. They said, Gary, do you ever work with women? Do you do anything for women? Because we seem to be male dominated on our podcast. Ladies, listen up. This podcast is for you. Lots of estrogen in the room today and very little testosterone between the estrogen sandwich. We are absolutely blessed to have our clinic director, a mentor of mine, someone that has worked in our clinics now with me for more than eight years. She's a board certified OB-GYN. She's a regenerative medicine physician. She's also a gynecological surgeon. She has two master's degrees in functional medicine, and at least a nozone certification, a peptide certification that I'm aware of that she got during her tenure with us. And she is a phenomenal, phenomenal doctor practicing regenerative medicine, although her degree is a medical degree. Welcome Dr. Carrie Sardo to the podcast.

And I'd like to add, I think you've delivered over 8,000 babies.

Yes.

I have. I forgot to also introduce my wife, Sage Workinger. Welcome, Sage Workinger, to the podcast. So what Sage did was she combed through all of the questions, and there were hundreds and hundreds of them, and she tried to count up what was the most commonly asked question, and we thought we'd target the podcast to some of our listeners' questions. And then we can always do additional podcasts. I love the feedback that we're getting from you guys. You can go to theultimatehuman. Com, and you can not only sign up for my free newsletter, but you can also submit questions there. And we'll do podcast episodes on just the topics that you guys are fascinated by or interested in getting more information.

I read through, there are so many female questions because as females, we got a lot.

Going on. No.

A lot.

Going.

On. No, don't be so hard on yourself. So this episode is to make the men out there have a little bit more patience for us.

That's not turn into a men versus women thing.

It is, though. I mean, this would be good for everybody to just understand what we go through. I'd also like to point out that a lot of the problems in female lives start with the beginning, M-E-N.

Wow.

Yeah.

So we're going to start. -there's not much that Dr. Sartik can.

Do about that. We're going to start with menopause. -can't fix that. Oh, wow.

Menopause. Could you just make a funny menopause?

So, yes, menopause was one of the main ones. All these females are like, all the questions, what is it? What does it mean? What are the symptoms? How am I going to feel? How do I get through it? I also would like to know this because I'm 45 years old and I'm terrified of it. I think that you have such great knowledge of it in calming our patients down and helping these women get through this miserable time in our lives to make it not so uncomfortable and awful.

No, exactly. I think if I want to say anything, it doesn't have to be that way. No longer are the days you're just getting older, or this is just what happens, or you're past your prime. It's terrible.

It's terrible. They don't have to deal with it.

There's things that we can do to treat it. Absolutely not. You do not. There are ways to eat. There are hormones that you can take. It's all about balance. I think if I could sum it all up in one word, as long as you're in balance, this isn't going to be a miserable process. And as long as people around you are helping you recognize maybe that these men, maybe recognizing that you're different or that something is out of balance, rather than get so frustrated with it, let's go figure out balance.

I.

Like that. And where do they start? Do they start with a blood test? What things are you.

Looking at? I think we have to understand that before menopause is perimenopause, which just means around menopause, that's what the definition is. And that generally is about 45 to 50. And it's getting younger and younger as time goes on because we're so out of balance. Our diet, our weight, all those things affect our hormones. I think that we need to know that every organ system in our body has receptor sites and cellular sites for hormones, right? And hormones are not just estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. There's also thyroid. You have to understand that it all has to match. I think first, it's going to be diet. I think nutritional deficiencies are going to be one of the biggest things that you can do to help yourself. And then probably the number one cause is going to be stress. So if I had to list the top 10 causes of perimenopause, stress is probably top five. We're not going to be able to avoid that we age. That's the one we can't do anything about. But we sure can go down fighting.

Yeah, you've helped so many of my girlfriends. Literally, their feedback is that when they talk to their girlfriends, where they got on a good protocol with you, they talk to their girlfriends who are going through it, and they're like, Why? Why go and suffer? I feel great. I'm not having the hot flashes. I'm not having the anger or the temper issues. So what are some of the corrections?

So pretty much you can guarantee about 85 % of women are going to have the hot flashes. That's your first tall tale sign. Sleep disorders, depression. I don't even like to use and call it depression because it's really hormone imbalance. But I think in general, they feel like they're getting depressed or just lack of luster, certainly loss of interest in their libido. That just goes out the window. So if you're having hot flashes, if your sex drive is down, if you find that you're not sleeping as well, if you're more irritable, then please check your hormones. Please do that. We have an amazing program, I think, that looks at each and every one of them. And you can see where a woman goes out of balance. And I don't know about you guys, but I'm so shocked at how that age is getting younger and younger and younger.

And I know that from working with you and seeing you treat so many patients, some of the fixes are relatively simple. We have so many women that come in, and they're pre or perimenopausal, or they're just even before that stage, and weight gain has been a huge issue for them.

Yes, middle, that belly, middle weight gain. Or how many women have told us they just feel like they're retaining fluid? Right. That's generally... It's not that they're drinking more, more. It's not that they're voiding less. They're literally collecting fluid mostly in their gut, in that middle.

Belly area. And a lot of that has to do with the estrogen dominance, right? Absolutely. And I know when we look at labs very often, when you get a hormone panel, your hormones could be in the right range, meaning it's perfectly normal for women, depending on where they are in their menstrual cycle, to have estrogen, let's say, in the teens, and it's perfectly normal in other parts of their cycle to be in the 400s. But it's when it gets out of ratio and out of balance, which is, I think, what you're.

Referring to. Correct. Or that estrogen dominance like we talk about. That's what you'll generally see. I see just terrible progesterone levels, and I see these high estrogen levels at the wrong time of the cycle. We have to remember that estrogen is a hormone of growth. It's a hormone of stimulation. It's a hormone of holding on to water and feeding the fat. Where progesterone is the opposite. They're Yang and Yangs to each other. And then you have your testosterone coming over. Women need testosterone. We always think of that as men. And the first thing that goes in women is their testosterone and their progesterone. It's the first thing. And generally, because you're shuttling it all over to adrenaline and cortisol and dealing with getting up in the middle of the night or no sleep or things like that. So we sacrifice our progesterone and we sacrifice our testosterone. And what's left? A ton of estrogen. Plus, if we start as we age, our weight ratios do tend to change. We know our society, our weight ratio is tending to change a little more adipose tissue, and that feeds that estrogen even more.

I've noticed that I've had personal experience working with clients, with you, with you managing their case. And I've seen miracles with simple changes. I'm not saying this is the simple change to all estrogen dominance, but I've seen women come into the clinic and say, I just don't get it, Dr. Sarta. I wake up in the morning, I'm fasted, I go to the gym, I do Orange theory five days a week. I've been watching my diet, and I've been doing this for three or four months, and I haven't lost a single pound. And then you look at their hormone levels, and you see that their estrogen is way out of whack to their progesterone. I've watched these women that take simple things like dim, diandolomethane, and the progesterone capsules, you put them on at night. Within a few weeks, sleep's restored and the water retention is off. It's not always a massive intervention with hormones and a complete takeover of their system. Sometimes it's just.

Little guardrails. Little adjustments. And it's not forever either. If you can get somebody balanced, and usually, realistically, probably 4-6 months, if you've messed your pattern up, it's going to take you a second, but it's not forever. So if you just bathe the body with a little bit of progesterone, especially at night, it helps you sleep. It's very calming, very, very calming. It just slows the brain down and slows the mind down. I love to use, you well know, to use youall know to use Progesterone at night. And notice also, a lot of women won't talk about this, but they have terrible vaginal dryness and terrible trouble with intercourse. And if you just add in a little bit of that Progesterone at night, and sometimes even more, but a little bit of even estrogen, too. But in general, if I just get the progesterone up, I use the DIM to make sure that they're breaking their hormones down correctly, they feel great.

They feel great. Hey, guys, I think the most important website you may ever go to is theultimatehuman. Com. That's theultimatehuman. Com, because on this website, we can directly interact with one another. You can give me suggestions for podcast guests and topics that you'd like to see me cover. You can ask me any question that you'd like. More importantly, you can sign up for my entirely free newsletter. It comes out every single week. I write this so I can get the information to the masses on how to live a healthier, happier, longer, chemical-free life. You can also sign up for a pre-order of my book. And if you'd like to take the genetic test that I talk about all the time, it's available there too. And lastly, you can even see all of the products that I use in my daily life for a chemical-free, healthy living style. A lot of people ask me, What do you use in your daily life, Gary? What do you brush your teeth with and clean your countertops with? Well, it's all there if you'd like to see it. And you can again ask me any question that you'd like and get my.

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I noticed sometimes you have these women, you'll do a basic hormone panel, and then sometimes you'll take a deeper dive and you'll do something called a Dutch panel, a Dutch test, which is a 24-hour or 48-hour urine test. You'll really look at the cycle. An interesting crossroad between Dr. Sardo and myself is I've really dedicated the balance of my lifetime to studying genetic methylation. You've dedicated your entire lifetime to studying the female body and delivering babies. But interestingly, there's an intersection here because there's a gene mutation called COMPT, C-O-M-T, catacolamethyl transferase, and it appears on the Dutch test, and it's part of this estrogen metabolism. I think it sends estrogen down the E2 pathway. And if that gene mutation is present, and you're not supplementing for it, isn't this a part of the reason for the rise, the accumulation of estrogen not being rid from the body? Right.

So if you do not get rid of your estrogen, you will literally reabsorb it and recycle it. So you also, even more important than that probably is the fact that if you don't go down that right pathway, you will go down a more dangerous pathway in estrogen. So in other words, we start worrying about estrogen that change DNA, estrogen dominance, and then you start worrying about breast cancer, uterine cancer. Estrogen needs to clear the healthy pathway, and it needs to be eliminated. Right. And when you have that CONT, SNP, that CONT gene, you need to pay special attention to that. You need to make sure you have your nutrients, your B vitamins, and things like that because you need to help clear estrogen. And you also need to watch what estrogen you're consuming.

Right. You mean if they're taking hormones.

A big thing that you helped me with, and this was three years ago when I dealt with my methylation imbalance was, I have the COMP T break. I was supplementing with the vitamin that had folic acid and cyanocobalamin, both synthetic vitamins I cannot process. And my estrogen levels, and when I look back at the lab values, I'm shocked by it, but it was 700 % estrogen dominant. I was a crazy person. I remember I did. I had that little gut.

I actually vividly.

Remember this. I know you do. It was a beautiful moment in our relationship. But you truly helped me get through that because, and it was just a short course of a little progesterone and -.

Dym, I think. Dym.

Diantholomethane.

Which comes from crucifero.

Vegetables, by the way. Just in case you're wondering if that's a- Remember you can also eat to this too, your vegetables. And we laugh about that time that you were going through, but unfortunately- You too laugh about that. Let's just clarify. But unfortunately.

There's so many.

It happens to so many people. Every day, all day long, we can fix this.

Which is why I like to talk about it and lay my crazy out for everybody, because I know that if I share that story, somebody else is going to raise their hand and go, Well, that's happening to me, too. I'm not crazy. Let me get my labs checked. Let me talk to my doctor about it.

And I think it's also important to know that if you don't fix this, you guys, it's dangerous. It is dangerous. It's dangerous for dementia, your relationships, your inflammation. And we all know what inflammation... You could get cancer. I mean, it's just-Yeah, and your mental wellbeing. Absolutely. And of course, your sexual wellness is important. It's so directly related to your hormones. So it's been a big focus of mine to balance hormones. I use bioidentical hormones. So in other words, I use it, and we're pretty strict about that because we want hormones that your body can recognize. It's hard on the body when it doesn't really know what to do with a substance or it's like mimicking something. You already have to detox and process so much. So we do like to do bioidentical hormones. And there is bioidentical estrogen, and there is biodental progesterone. And so that would be my recommendation.

And bioidentical testosterone. Correct. And I've also noticed that sometimes you'll use, as a part of this balancing process, getting progesterone and estrogen into balance, using things like dim from crucifix vegetables and progesterone at night, but also looking at their testosterone levels, because remember you telling me that when women get very deficient in testosterone, we've seen this on hundreds and hundreds of labs, their red blood cell production tends to decline, their hemoglobin levels tend to decline not to the point where they're anemic, but to the point where they're tired, and they have brain fog, and they're not sleeping deeply. I've watched what you've been able to do with minimal amounts of intervention, just balancing testosterone alone, moving that back into the optimal range for a woman, which I think a lot of women are resident about thinking about taking testosterone. I don't want to get male characteristics, and big muscles, and facial hair, and aggression, but putting their own.

Testosterone back into the normal range. Absolutely. And the biggest thing with that, my push for that and my demand for testosterone being a part of it is your brain, is cognition. It is so important to protect it with testosterone, is how you're going to do that. So I definitely consider all three hormones. And I think that doesn't happen often in the traditional model that I was trained in. It was the lowest amount of hormones for the shortest amount of time. And all the studies, the big studies, Women's Health Initiative back in the mid-2000s, all those studies were based, again, on synthetic hormones. Studies have long, in a sense, shown that if we stick with these bioidenticals, since about 2017, it's generally been more accepted that hormones are good and there's not an age limit. It doesn't matter if you're 65 or if you're 70 or if you don't have hormones, let's give you hormones. Let's give you testosterones, let's give you estrogen, let's give you progesterone. We're not going to do it at pharmacologic levels. We want to do it at physiologic levels. That's what we're so big about, is restoring physiology. In our lab work, we trend.

We follow trends. We don't want to wait till you're there. So that's all I'm asking is that women don't wait until you get all those symptoms the second you get them, you might be 35, you might be 30. If you're putting on weight, you're tired, you're not sleeping, you have mood swings, loss of sex drive, go get your hormones fixed.

And is there a way to better eat for hormone balance?

Yes, absolutely. Totally. I mean, hands down, you got to get away from the sugar. Just hands down. And for many reasons, besides even just hormones, and you have lots of podcasts about that, your gut health and sugar. But sugar just makes your brain and your hormone is crazy. They just do. I think the part we're missing is we're not getting enough fats. Our omega-3, especially for women. So for food-wise, avocados, fish, coconut oil, wonderful. Cocoa oil, olive, right? Lots of nuts. Lots of nuts, yes. But you know what? If you're not going to do it, then take some omega-3. I think nutrients are... I think we would be not fair to women if we didn't at least address that we're short on our omega-3, we're generally short on our vitamin D, our B12.

Sometimes.

Dhea. Correct. Dhea, that's over the counter. Dhea is a great way. It's a prohormone. It's before the hormones. And if you don't have the prohormone, how are you going to make the hormone? And then I also really, in my practice in the last few years, I've been doing a little bit moreiodine just to make sure I do that in the form of Celtic sea salt or you can do the Himalayan sea salts. But I do... That's all interplayed because as soon as you mess up your traditional female hormones you're thinking of, what do you think is next? Next, your thyroid. And everybody always wonders because they're connected. It's your thermostat. And it's connected.

The pituitary regulates all of those. It's the master puppeteer regulating a woman's menstrual cycle, regulating a woman's thyroid level, regulating your body temperature, your metabolic rate.

So is that why hot flashes happen?

Yes. It has to do with having an abnormal feedback. You just literally... It's that progesterone estrogen imbalance that does it. And that's where you get what are called basal motor symptoms or just changes in your blood vessels and things like that. Itsays we pay a lot of attention to hot flashes. What I don't like is people think, Oh, I got through that. I don't have hot flashes anymore. Oh, so they're over with that. All that means is that you don't even have the ability to melt that response anymore. You're just sicker. I spend a lot of my day explaining to people, you don't really get through being deficient. You either correct it or you don't. And if you don't correct it, it gets worse. I think the biggest fallacy that has somehow been created, and I think it came to the traditional model because I remember how I was taught, was okay, so 50-55 or something like that. But again, because you're not flashing anymore just means you're sicker.

Yeah. It doesn't mean that you've.

Gotten through it, and it's in your - You don't get three menopause. You have to fix it.

It's a great point. Is it funny that I actually look forward to menopause because I run so cold? My hands are so cold right now. They are. Always. And it always has been that way. And so I laugh. I'm like, I feel like I'm going to look forward to hot flashes, like not being.

Freezing all the time. I still think you could make an argument for the fact that if you are abnormally cold, or I think again, you have to go back to, what is it about your internal clock? What is it about your homeostasis that keeps you cold? For you, you don't have a lot of thermal regulation, you don't have a lot of fat. But also, we have to look at your thyroid, right?

Because that's controlling your temperature. My thyroid, I think, is good. I always wondered if I had Renown's syndrome.

You could. I think again, though, you still have to look at am I balanced? Where am I balanced? Do you have enough iodide? Do you have enough Selenium? Are you supporting your thyroid enough? Are you converting from inactive, even though your thyroid might look okay? Do you really going from inactive to active? We talk a lot about full lic acid to going to full lic. It's that same concept. Do you have the good stuff? Do you have the active stuff? Your body doesn't recognize that stuff. It has to activate.

It, right? The T4 into T3. The thyroid hormone, T4.

You're burning. Because T4 is just a reserve. It's T3. Every cell on the body has a T3 receptor. Remember, we said it's a regulator. And for: energy, metabolism, temperature, brain. We have to make sure that those cells get full. That happens in the gut, mostly. Where is it that we have all of the -the trouble gut, right? And what's that from? Diet, right?

When we say gut, it's the gut region. A lot of it is converted in the liver, T4 into T3, some of it in the gut, the actual testinal tract, and then some of the periphery, just to be hyper-specific. But that gut region, meaning that it occurs outside of the thyroid. I think a lot of times when you look at panels in your blood work and you see, Oh, I have low thyroid hormone, and you immediately think thyroid. But the truth is that 80% of that thyroid hormone is actually converted outside of the thyroid liver, periphery, and also the gut, which is why gut dysbiosis can lead to thyroid problems. The two seem so disconnected. There was actually an amazing book written by Dr. Ron Perlmutter called The Gut-brain Connection and The Gut-brain Axis.

Dave Perlmutter?

Dave Perlmutter, sorry. He's from Naples, where we started our clinic. It's a great read if you haven't read that book, but he really goes deep into the science of the gut biome and what happens in the gut region and its impact on hormones and what have you. I love this whole systemic approach that you have because it's not always going straight to hormones. Sometimes it's putting up the guardrails, DM, DHEA, Selenium, the things that your body needs to do its job on its own. And then we also have the capacity to intervene with bioidentical hormones when things are not.

Responding, right? Right. And you will reach an age, all of us will eventually, where your ovaries aren't putting out hormones anymore. Now, I think the misconception about the ovaries is they will continue to eke out a little bit of testosterone. That's chronic. That doesn't really ever go away. And that's what's supposed to be there for you in your menopause years, although we just traumatize our bodies too much and we don't always get that production. But you do continually make a little bit of testosterone throughout your life, even at menopause. And then in general, your diet, your periphery, your fat cells, your adrenal glands, they're supposed to take over for the hormones that your ovaries aren't making anymore. And that's where the big mishap happens is we just don't do that well anymore. We're under too much stress. We're exposed to too much toxin in our diet and just in our environment. And so much of what we are around acts like estrogen. We call them mimickers.

Oh, yeah. No, the.

Estrogen, the mimickers. Yeah, the best phenols. We've got bisphenols, or PPAs. In our meat, right.

Plastics. What about soy?

Soy. Soy, for a long time, and consumed organic and in the right amounts did a beautiful job. Unfortunately, so much of our soy is - GMO. -is not so good, and we're getting too much. Much and yam, things like that, or other things that can give you an estrogen boost.

Yams can too?

Yams can too. The problem is we've just altered our food source so much. I do think that it is hard at menopause to eat enough to make up your hormone difference. I do think it's time to.

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So if they're going to go talk to their doctor about having a hormone panel done, what hormones are they looking at? I mean, most physicians, would they know primary care doctor? Would they know what hormones to pull on a female? Because I know they're not a part of a standard blood panel.

Right. They generally have to be extra. And a lot of times you'll see estrogen and progesterone and you don't see testosterones drawn, and you don't see the sex hormone binding globulin drawn. And that's important because it is what it says it is sex-hormone binding. Right. So you might have an okay level on your hormones, and it's all bound up. It can't get to that cellular receptor. Shbg or sex hormone binding globulin is another one.

I noticed that sometimes you'll specifically address the SHBG level in a way to address the hormone level. When people are not converting testosterone into free testosterone, for example, this binding protein, which is a sex hormone binding global as a protein, and when it rises in the blood and gets to a certain level, it's relatively easy to push back down into the normal range, and then their hormone levels have a tendency to come back on their own.

If you do it thousands of times. Yes. I use a lot of long Jack. I like to use that. We've had medications over the years, but I think we all would rather maybe do it a little more natural.

Less sublux. I've seen them.

Use boron to bring down the C-S-P-G. Yes, boron does as well, long Jack. And it does it very quickly, 14-30 days, 45 days. It'll drop down. It'll just free up more hormone.

And they always say their libido came back like a freight train. Yes, yes.

Well, one time I did, my testosterone was low, so we tried to do a shot and it actually messed my methylation up, and so it didn't work for me. Which is why I think it's important, too, to... I've never promoted anybody to do the pellets because I've seen so many women where it was the testosterone was too much, and then you're stuck with it for six months or whatever. I like the idea that you could do an injection or you could do a.

Pill.

Or a cream.

Or dissolve under the tongue. Yes. So then you can definitely go through it. Definitely with those short term methods, you can control and have pretty good control of the dosing, and you can adjust accordingly. So that's the nice thing about doing those methods over the pellets you are. For at least four months, you're pretty much going to.

Be.

Stuck with your dose. They are getting a little better, I think, at looking at labs and formulas and trying not to just pound these women with levels. But if you have extra testosterone, you can get a little worried, rage here. Yeah. I love it.

So the Alpha or the long Jack that you're talking about, so that's something females could try, too?

Yes, it is. Because really, we work both males and females because by just lowering the binding up, you're going to just free up hormones. So in men, that tends to free up their testosterone, and women that tends to free up their progesterone and their testosterone.

We might have to try that. What were some of the specific questions.

That they have. I had another question about, you touched on it a little bit earlier, anemia, but maybe talk about heavy menstrual cycles.

Yes, I'm so glad you brought that up because I think that's forgotten, too. That's why iron becomes such an important, and eating foods with iron in it, your leafy green vegetables, things like that. But we want to... Especially menstruating, there's a lot of people, and there's some pretty decent data around menstruating women should all just be on iron, or at least during the time that you're menstruating, about 30 milligrams of elemental iron is what you're looking at. We like the iron bisglycinate because it just absorbs so nicely and you.

Don't have- And you got less reports of stomach upset, less reports of constipation. It was iron bisglycinate.

Right. That's what I love, too. That 30 milligrams, at least, of elemental. And you can take that during your menstrual cycle, that works well. And-in that at the time where you start to lose your menstrual cycle, you still have to remember that you still need oxygen and you still need iron. And with that, we need our follate. So we would be follate and iron, and again, our vitamin D. The nutrient supplements are going to be, if we can't eat it, you're going to have to supplement with it.

And touching on that, if you could go over the differences between folic acid, follate, and the liniic acid.

So they're different forms of - The vitamin B-9. Right, vitamin B-9. They're different forms. And it has to do with their availability or their bioavailability. So we know that the foleyc acid for many of us, at least 25, we think, % are more of the population. I think that's really underestimated.

Actually, when we were doing some research for the book, we found studies as low as 44 and as high as 60.

Percent of the population. You see those, it's definitely- You cannot process full of acid. They just can't process. And honestly, even for those that can, it's still just extra work. It's extra work on the body. We couldn't have enough, we got.

To do. I remember sending you both an article that I read. It was on the CDC website. And in the same article, and I actually love that we find this, in the same article, it admitted that people with MTHFR gene mutation cannot process follic acid, and it would be better for them to just take five methods of follate. But in the same article, it then said- True story. -but if you're pregnant or nursing, then you should, even with an MTHFR gene break, take follic acid instead of follate. Why in the world would they.

Say that? Why not just recommend follate? I think anybody out here with common sense is going, What? But it's what the studies have been done on. Studies have been done on follic acid. There's quite a bit out there for the benefit that occurs in pregnancy if you have, but it's foleyate. At the.

End of the day, they really talk about foleyate.

It's just whether or not your body- The studies have not really been done on methylated B-9. I think they just coped out there.

A little. I get a lot of people that fight us on the foleyic acid thing, especially, and I hate to say this, but my nurses, friends of ours, your daughter and son are both in nursing school, and they just push heavily on the follic acid thing. We all just laugh. Madison will take a test, and she knows she has to answer how - Just to rethink it. She has to answer it how they want her to answer it.

Not how she would want to. Look at the cost difference in follic acid and foleyed. Look at this, especially in the traditional model, all the studies are based on that. I think that needs to change. I think it is changing. I think so, too. I think that it makes sense if I have to do the extra job to activate something, and Jeez, I might not even have the ability to do that very well. They've only 40%.

In other words, take the methylfolate.

Rather than the full acid. And it's so easy. It's so easy.

To do. It's getting easier and easier. It was hard to find methylated multivitamins.

And now - That was a big issue.

I remember when we first started eight years ago, we couldn't find it anywhere. Even when we went to manufacture our own vitamin. They tried to push. They really did. The manufacturer really pushed us to not use it. And he said, I can get cyanocobalam and so much cheaper. It's so much more bioavailable. It'll lower your per capsule cost. I can get follic acid.

That's what everybody else is doing. That's what they told us. We're like, Yeah, that's precisely why we don't want.

To use that. Exactly. Now there's lots of good brands that have methylated foley and don't have the cyanocobalamin. They have the methocobalamin.

But we've also had patients that when we go through their medicine cabinets and they have an MTHFR gene break and some of the other ones, too, I've been shocked that literally we had a patient who was prescribed a pharmaceutical prescription grade-.

Polic acid.

And cyanocomelan. -polic acid, cyanocomelan, combo. I'm like, no wonder you're nuts.

And she would take it in the morning, and she had to take Xanax or Valium by the afternoon because her anxiety was so rampant. Through the roof. The recommendation was just to.

Get off that. I just hate to think about it, but I did it for years in my early training. I knew we needed B vitamins. I knew they were missing. I just didn't have the knowledge base or the experience. And when we got into this gene testing and this methylation, especially if you have several breaks or you have influence from both parents coming at you, it's just night and day difference.

I want to get to this, because I know we're trying to keep this to 45, 60 minutes. I want to get to some of the questions that you.

Specifically got on that. I do have specific. So leading into that is as an OB-GYN and sadly seeing so many women going through miscarriages and infertility issues, do you think that that has something to do with methylation and being prescribed or told to take different types of vitamins they can't process?

We know that it is now. What's that? The MTHFR and not having the right methylated vitamins. And it's one of the easiest ways. Honestly, at the end of the day, it was recurrent miscarriages that brought the whole MTHFR thing to light. That was something that we were working on a decade ago. We get so.

Many questions from young women that are saying, I've had either repeated miscarriages or difficult time getting pregnant. And for those, you'd recommend that they.

Take methylet- I recommend that they're immediately on a methyletic multivitamin. And then also that they do a whole assessment of their diet. You've got to pull out the folic acid component in your diet.

Which is foods that are fortified or enriched.

Sugar, baked goods tend to be processed food. I tend to, if it's white, it's not right thing. If someone's just, What can I not eat? Let's just start with flour. Two big things always are, let's pull out flour, let's pull out soda, let's start on vitamin, and I make sure vitamin D is included in that. Let me see in a month. That right there, it changes their ovulation, it changes their menstrual cycle, their sleep, their mood. It's simple as that. In women, oftentimes, especially with heavy menstrual cycles, I will add in the iron, at least during their menstrual cycle. I oftentimes will make sure that they're on some Iodine, Celtic sea salt, or some extra substitute there. And that seems to be the secret. And then we look at their cycle and decide then, Okay, do we need progesterone? Do we need to balance you? People tend to come to me at this point, they've tried a lot of things. So I'm getting some pretty sick people. So I got to dive right in with a lot of people. But in general, if you're just at home going, I'm not sleeping, I'm depressed, I have hot pluses, and I'm not interested in sex, and I cannot lose weight no matter what I do.

I recommend your B vitamins, your omega-3, vitamin D, and iron, and getting extra salt, like a Celtic sea salt. We don't want table salt. Remember, Celtic sea salt, and there's a lot of good ones out there. It retains about 76% of its mineral content in this one. And in comparison, table salt is about 1%, 1%. So no wonder it's not very good.

We've used Baha salt, Celtic salt, and then we were recommending pink Himalayan sea salt for a while, but then we started reading all these studies about the level of heavy metals, especially in the sea salt coming out of China. So we try to steer clear of.

The- I took a lot of shit on Instagram for that. Yeah, you sure did. But the video went viral because it does help people with migraines. Because if you're severely dehydrated, you taught us the sea salt Soleil trick. Can you tell us.

About that? So what I like to do, just simple, easy, one quarter teaspoon of Celtic sea salt in the morning. You can put it on food. It's just easy, really, just to throw it in some water and drink it in the morning. It's so good for your hydration status. Lots of minerals. It helps you re... Because we forget that we're thirsty. We don't even know what it is to be thirsty anymore. It resets your thirst. It really helps those adrenal glands get you up and get you going in the morning. And again, that whole balance we're talking about.

Okay, I love that.

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Those were the ones I had for today. I mean, this was a huge...

Wow, we really ripped through a lot. I know, we actually got through-And I survived being the only male on the panel in the estrogen sandwich?

I think the only piece that since we did touch on infertility and miscarriages, maybe a little bit more on that. I know people will... They'll hear the menopause and they'll hear infertility or miscarriages. Any other advice that you have.

For women that are suffering with that? Yes. So if you're not cycling normal and if you're having symptoms, it is really hard to get pregnant. So back up and start there. Those nutrients I was talking about and those food changes, get your cycles back to normal. There's ovulation kits out there. If you're not passing your ovulation kit, those are easy. You can pick them up anywhere. You check them days 11 of your cycle. So if you even spot or bleed, that's day one of your cycle. And then day 11 through 14, check those ovulation kits. And if you're not ovulating, you're not going to be pregnant, right? So for the infertility people, it's making sure you're ovulating. You can do that on your own. Make sure you're taking those few nutrients that we talked about. And then symptom wise, if you're having symptoms, you still probably need to see your OB-GYN. And for the miscarriage person, it's traumatic. There's no doubt about it. No matter what week you are, it is traumatic. Whether people know you're pregnant or not know you're pregnant. And your hormones are all out of whack. It takes about 30 days to recover from a miscarriage from a hormone standpoint.

So we definitely the methylated vitamins and vitamin D are probably the two biggest things that I would recommend.

Methodated vitamins, vitamin D, good EPA, the.

Hea, fish oil- The omega-3? The Omega-3 fish oil.

And to get the YTS out of your diet and the sugars: white flour, white rice, white bread, white pasta, and that is fortified or enriched, and then see how things go over the next month. And if things are not getting better, then get your hormones checked. Is that a good summary?

Yes, it is. Remember, gluten-free junk food is still junk food, right? Yeah. I always have to put that caveat in because you do have to change your diet and you want it to be those good fats. It's really good fats. That's what women need. They need it to make hormones. They need it to make babies. They need it to get pregnant. Good fats.

One thing that I admire about you, and always I share this story with everybody that I introduced to you, is you've been an OB-GYN for 27 years. You've delivered over 8,000 babies, but you weren't able to have a baby yourself. And so you adopted four from your patients.

I did.

And I love that about you. And I want to share that.

You know what? They are the four best things that the good Lord ever put on this planet, and they were exactly made for me. But I got to tell you, and maybe that's why I'm so passionate about this, they were tough years, and it was hard on my body. I had no direction. I'm a physician. Physician. I could get to anybody. I had top specialists, and I had no direction on simple things like taking five methylfolate, omega-3. My vitamin D level was nine. I would beg to differ that I have probably some of the most years of education number wise. Exactly. And have access to pretty much whatever I want. And there I was. And it was miserable. It was miserable. Now, luckily, it's not like that today. But it definitely was in my era. And I'm just so thankful that I was able to help other women, and I was able to help the women that gave me my children.

Yeah, I love that story.

It makes me love you more. I like that story, too. She is an adoption magnet. She's adopted dogs, she's adopted cats. It's your story. She's adopted kids.

If you need a home - Her sister has.

Adopted children. If you need a home, just send info@drsarton. Com, and she'll adopt you, too.

I want to be adopted.

I love it.

Every time I talk to her on a Zoom call, I'm like, What is that? She's like, Oh, this is a new cat. I'm like, When did.

You get a new cat? Oh, it's a little strange. I do re-home them just for the record. I'm not the cat lady running around with 50 cats in the house. But I do bring a lot of them and cats and dogs, and I nurse them back, and then we find really great homes for them. But you slow down on the humans. And sometimes I would like to do that with my children, too.

So if you're looking for a home, Dr. Sardo may have the place for you. This has been amazing. I'd really like to take some more questions from our audience, and we got a lot of interest in female hormone therapy and more about females that have been on this journey with us. I'm going to try to invite some of the women that have had a positive journey with us on to talk about their experience. But if you guys are watching this podcast, you're enjoying this podcast, or things that we missed, or things that you would rather see us talk about with Dr. Sardo, or some of our other doctors, neurologists, or what have you, please submit those at theultimatehuman. Com, and we'll try to get a podcast episode surrounded by those. We end every podcast episode is a surprise question with the same question. We ask every guest we have on the podcast. What does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

To me, I would have to say the first thing that came to my mind was balance and peace.

I like that. Wow. That's the first time somebody said that. That's amazing, balance and peace. Have you ever answered that question? Have I ever answered? I know you wrote a book called Becoming the ultimate human, so I guess you could say it's a 28-page answer.

I don't know that I have balance and peace in my life, though. It's a lot of chaos.

That was amazing.

We really enjoyed having that. I definitely got to take a second to plug you guys' book, too. It's amazing. I've got the opportunity to have a little bit of a sneak peek at it, and it's definitely going to be.

A- We definitely put our heart and soul into it. And I have the utmost amount of respect for anybody who's ever written a book before because it is not. You get halfway through it and and you hate it and you start over and then you hate the beginning and you start over, and then you hate the beginning, and you hate the story, and then you want it to be entertaining. Change your mind. You want it to be educational. And then in our case, we have to cite references for every.

Because people are going to try to rip us apart. Although, you know what? It'll be 98 % of people I think will have good response.

Very good response. But we used a lot of real.

Life stories from real patients. A lot of evidence-based. I think in this day and age, lots of things are anecdotal, but you've got to have evidence-based medicine and evidence-based decisions now. All the stories are.

Personal patient stories that.

Have- A lot.

Of them are your patients.

Yeah, they're your patients. Yeah, because we can't see patients, so most of them are your patients, so we should give you some credit, too. But I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you have any other questions you'd like to see us cover on a podcast, go to theultimatehuman. Com. You can sign up for the newsletter there. You can actually pre-order our book. You can get the gene test that Dr. Sartar was referring to. You can even get set up for blood work, or we can give you some information on what you might want to be asking your doctor to do when they look at your blood or you look at your hormone panels. And back again with another episode soon. And as always, that's just science.