Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome to the Ad Heart Podcast, the podcast that inspires heart first living. This is where you'll get practical tools to reduce stress, inspire creative action, and energize your personal growth momentum, along with ways to apply these tools. And now here's your host, Debra Rosman.
Speaker 1 00:00:21 Hello, I'm Deborah Rosman and a warm welcome to our listeners to the Ad Heart podcast. The purpose of the Ad Heart podcast is to inspire our forward movement and heart powered intentions. And my topic this episode is really about how our heart can improve our hormones and hormone health. And my guest is Dr. Tara Scott, often called the hormone Guru. She is the founder of Revitalize a nationally recognized authority on hormone and wellness related issues. Tara is an O B G Y N and trained and certified by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. I thought that was interested. Both ends of the human spectrum, birth to aging. And her medical practice now is devoted strictly to regenerative medicine, hormone related issues, and evidence-based hormone therapy. She's a national speaker on the subject and also a certified HeartMath Health professional. Welcome, Tara. We are so glad to have you with us.
Speaker 2 00:01:28 Well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 00:01:31 You know, I picked this topic because I think the hormones are behind so much of the issues that we see today. On the surface, uh, you know, like chronic diseases, people are so much stress these days, including teenagers. They're going through so many hormonal changes. And just last week I was shocked to read a C D C report that in the US around in one in three high school girls have seriously considered attempting suicide and more than half reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless. That's a record high number. And the reasons include, you know, what adults will feel hopeless about the world situation, but more particularly bullying and loneliness, parental and school pressure and more. And it just sounds there's so cut off from the heart and the regenerative qualities of their spirit. What have you noticed? What is the effects you see of today's stress on female hormones, especially young girls?
Speaker 2 00:02:36 Well, I think you know, specifically for young girls, it started with the social media, right? And so with the advent of texting and digital communication, now remember when we were little, you had a phone, right? That hung on the wall and you know, you had to wait. You know, nobody could talk on the phone. And you had to put all your attention in that. And nowadays these kids are texting, which it is connecting, but it's not the same as hearing someone's voice, hearing someone's inflection, or even just spending time with someone. So there's a lack of human contact. And then we segue from that into covid. And so everybody is stressed. And so the biggest thing that we're seeing is I think the effect of these stress hormones on female and male hormones and neurotransmitters and the snowball effect that it's happening cuz the world is up just totally up at a level of stress that's un unbelievable in our lifetime.
Speaker 1 00:03:37 Yeah. You know, we hear the word stress and we become adapted to it cuz we think we can't do anything about it. And of course that's one thing that you HeartMath we're all trying to say, no, no, no, you can. Um, but underneath it is the internal pharmacy that's going on of our hormones and our immune system and, and how all that's changing In response to that, um, just in the 1990s we were delighted at Heart Meth Research Institute to discover that the heart produces much oxytocin, the bonding hormone as the brain, and also a lot of the other brain neurotransmitters. And how activating the heart can really help create that balance in the hormones. What do you see?
Speaker 2 00:04:23 Well, there's definitely a connection there. And so a lot of it is through our stress hormone cortisol. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so if you think about a female menstrual cycle, the whole purpose is reproduction, right? So you have day one, you have a female starting or menstrual cycle, then you have a follicle or an egg is growing and it's producing estradiol. So in the middle of the month you have ovulation and after the egg is released, the shell of the egg kind of pro becomes what's called the corpus lutia and produces progesterone. So that process goes on from puberty until menopause, but it doesn't exist in isolation from our stress hormone. So we have our adrenal gland that produces D H E A and it produces cortisol. Everything comes from cholesterol. So if you think of your ovaries as your monthly paycheck, you have your adrenal gland as your 401k.
Speaker 2 00:05:20 So what's happening with a lot of people now is they're living paycheck to paycheck and they're not investing in their savings account because we're having this chronic stress that's depleting these hormones of the adrenal gland. When your estrogen drops or your testosterone drops or even your cortisol, there's always a feedback back to the brain saying, Hey, it's dropping. You better send a signal so that we can stimulate more production. But there is not that signal for D H E A so that drops without people knowing it. So we're seeing a lot of men with lower testosterone, a lot of women with lower androgens as a result of stress. So we're first seeing a change in the hormones. Not to mention your brain doesn't know if you're running from a bear or you're stressed about covid or if you have a deadline at work, the physiological response is the same.
Speaker 2 00:06:14 You know, increase your heart rate, make you more alert. Let's fuel your muscles, let's break down your bones to get calcium to those muscles so you can contract and run from the bear. But that whole fight or flight was not designed to be, you know, it was fight or flight run from the bear and then rest and relaxation. Right? So back in the caveman days, he had stress and then he ran from the bear. He either lived or died from that bear attack, right? And that happened after that he went back to his cave, there was no electricity, so he slept 12 hours a night. He was hunting for food and eating that trendy paleo diet, right? So food was good and then he had rest and restoration. But all of us have had, thankfully a lot of us have not had a brush with death.
Speaker 2 00:07:00 But what we've had is chronic undulating stress at a higher level. And we're not designed to maintain that constant bombardment. Now we're just talking about stress. You know, that could be physiological, it could be, it could be mental, emotional infectious. It could be the lights, the screens, you know, who knows what the stressors are, we're bombarded with it. It could be environmental endocrine disruptors. It's just this toxic environment we're in this stressful environment in. And then the lifestyle of the go, go, go. You know, what's the standard greeting? How are you? I'm great, I'm busy. Right? It's like if you don't, if you say, well I'm doing really well. I sleep, you know, nine hours a night and I meditate and I go to yoga. Like people look at you like if you do, self-care is coming back in vogue with the millennials. But my generation, it's not. It's like busy, busy, busy, busy, right?
Speaker 1 00:07:55 Yeah. It's amazing. You know, you just reminded me why about something. I also read that throughout the world, and this is in undeveloped countries too, girl as well as here girls are reaching puberty earlier. Why do you think that's happening?
Speaker 2 00:08:12 And it's interesting, they are reaching puberty earlier. And so what does they care? Academy pediatrics do, they revise the standard age of puberty instead of saying it's abnormal, they change the normal range to lower the age, which that's not accurate. It's still abnormal to start it's estrogen in our environment that's stimulating breast development earlier, precocious puberty. It's endocrine disruptors, you know, that are causing est, you know, estrogen-like or whatever. It's the stress. It's our poor diet. And so I bet if you could find a community that still adhered to the sleeping and resting, I mean, just think about like what in Spain they take a a nap still, right? A siesta two hour lunch. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, everybody gets however many weeks of vacation. And when they're on holiday, they're not checking their emails, they are on holiday. Right. <laugh>. Yeah. So it's, it's us, it's, you know, it's us, it's United States. That's different than a lot of the other countries.
Speaker 1 00:09:17 It's amazing. And so I'm sure you have a window into this situation since you were practicing physician and you see all of this, how stress is affecting fertility and the 20 to 40 age range premenopause menopause. Do you see any con consistent, uh, insights into all
Speaker 2 00:09:40 That? Absolutely. It definitely, we're seeing more and more people with premature ovarian insufficiency or pri, it's called primary ovarian sufficiency now, which is used to be called premature ovarian failure. And we are seeing more infertility, you know, and the standard infertility workup doesn't assess the stress hormones. Mm. Stress ovulation. It doesn't fbr assess toxins. Are the tubes open? Do the sperm work, are you ovulating? There's there, I mean there might be some holistic fertility centers around that I don't know about. I'm just going by what our local centers do. Um, you know, and there there are more integrative and functional providers with this approach. A who, a more holistic that are addressing environmental triggers and diet stress triggers. Um, so there is that movement coming and now that is the benefit of social media, right? Creating awareness through the internet and social media so people have access to this information where, you know, when I went to medical school there was no internet <laugh>. So, right. So I think that helped that there is a plus to the, to to to,
Speaker 1 00:10:45 Yes, of course
Speaker 2 00:10:46 Internet. Yes, of course.
Speaker 1 00:10:47 How does, so let's look at the causal causality again, how stress affects hormones and then hormones affect other endocrine issues like insulin, glucose, thyroid, uh, the progression. Cuz I think a lot of people just go, oh, my thyroid is acting up or, and they don't do the causal links, which is so important or sleep, you know, just the sleep disruptions that most so many people are experiencing,
Speaker 2 00:11:18 Right? So if we look at actually the physiological response of stress and let's just say high cortisol on the rest of the endocrine system. I mean when you're running from a bear you don't need to ovulate. So it's very common for women to skip periods during stress, right? Or not ovulate. It's gonna prevent the release of any of the hormones from the pituitary gland. So that's F S H, lh, T S h. So your thyroid hormone also T S H is the release of T S H is decreased when cortisol is high from the pituitary gland. So if you don't have the thyroid T S H telling your thyroid to make T4 obviously, and it's such a subtle abnormality that unless you're really trained to detect it, uh, traditional clinicians are still just looking at T S H and not realizing that there's a problem.
Speaker 2 00:12:07 So thyroid is gonna be subclinical when you are in stress, either starvation, lots of stress, caloric restriction. The normal uh, uh, segue of the thyroid is to favor the production of reverse t3. And that's to make sure if you are so stressed and you're running from the bear, what you don't need to do is rev up your metabolism. You need to save those calories so you can run. So reverse T3 goes up in pregnancy and stress in low caloric states. So extended states, you're gonna have that shift with thyroid. You're not gonna get the conversion of T4 to t3. So again, unless you're trained to look at the nuances of the thyroid, we're missing a lot of subclinical hypothyroidism. Women who aren't ovulating, maybe they're skipping periods, maybe they're not skipping periods. The other effect of cortisol on the female hormones is that it slows down your detoxification of estrogen.
Speaker 2 00:13:00 So then you have the opposite, you have too much estrogen, not enough progesterone, estrogen dominance. And you have like heavier periods because your body doesn't clear estrogen. It's like charging on your credit card but not paying it off completely. It may not be a problem at first, but over time, you know, you have that finance charge that's gonna go up and up and up and even if 10 years from now you cut up that credit card and never use it, you're still gonna be paying on that balance for a long time. So we see a lot of women with issues with that. It also suppresses, again, if it's suppressing LH and F S H, you're not gonna make testosterone in the testes as a male as well. And we're seeing a lot of men, we joke that it's called menopause, right? You wouldn't see that till the sixties.
Speaker 2 00:13:46 But now I'm seeing men in their thirties and forties with low testosterone. Ah, why we're seeing more men in their thirties who haven't even had children yet who are having low testosterone. That was almost unheard of even five or 10 years ago. So many more men with low testosterone. Now partly it's still not maybe standard of care to check that. So there may be even more men walking around that have low testosterone that don't know. So there's a huge effect as far as the physiological function of the menstrual cycle. The male, the thyroid with stress. And then you mentioned a little bit further with the effect on insulin and glucose. Well if you think about when you're running from the bear, what do you need? You need glucose to be high to fuel your muscles to run. So cortisol wants blood glucose to go up, then insulin comes around and insulin says, Uhuh, we need glucose to go down.
Speaker 2 00:14:46 Then guess what? Glucose goes down and glucagon comes around cuz it doesn't know, is this a problem? Let's get glucose back up. And then it's a yo-yo and then cortisol and insulin are fighting to get blood sugar up and down. So you get insulin resistance because you keep trying to store these higher, you know, it doesn't work as well, it's not as sensitive. The receptors are different. So then what do you think people eat when they're stressed? Convenience foods, which are really high in carbohydrates, right? The standard American diet is cereal for breakfast, sandwich for lunch and meat and potatoes for dinner, right? So, uh, if you talk to people and ask them what they eat as far as vegetables, a busy person eating fast food and prepared food isn't getting very many vegetables. I think, I think, you know, again, there's still the movement of trying to be healthier too. So we've shifted a little bit, but I think it's a big problem in the effect of cortisol on the rest of these things. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:15:48 And I, this is very helpful. I think we need to educate people on, like I said, the causal chain, which is what we're talking about today. And you know, people, I know so many people say, I do everything right. I exercise, I eat right, I meditate and I still have disruptive sleep. What would you say about that? The sleep issues people are experiencing?
Speaker 2 00:16:11 Well, there could be a lot that is affecting sleep and, and certainly in a female progesterone helps you initiate sleep while estrogen helps you prolong, you know, maintain sleep. So there's those cortisol if it's disrupted, you know, if it's high when it's supposed to be low and vice versa. It can affect how you sleep. Blood glucose levels. If you are doing that, yo-yo we talked about in your insulin resistance, you're gonna have a low sugar in the middle of the night, usually 4:00 AM and then you're gonna wake up because you're having highs and lows in blood sugar. So there's a lot of things then we're talking about the blue lights and everything. So there's a lot of things that can disrupt your sleep as far as environmental triggers, cortisol and all of that.
Speaker 1 00:16:55 Yep. So now that we've talked about all these causal chain and problems that you see and is for this podcast, you know, we know that people need to improve their diet and there's so many things you recommend in terms of physical health, but let's talk about the emotions for a minute. What have you noticed and how attitudes of the heart affect the outcomes? Like people developing more self-compassion or kindness or self-care in different ways? What have, what does the heart in mean to you in terms of your work?
Speaker 2 00:17:31 Well, I, um, would have to say that's where the younger generation is better than us, better than my generation is they are pro self care. They are very vocal about their mental health struggles, about their attitudes. Mindset is very vogue now. So all of of these mind body techniques are a little bit more mainstream. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Whereas somebody my age might have thought they're kind of woo woo. Um, so I think that's a positive about today's day and age. Um, so it's interesting because, um, through my own personal experience, um, you know, we had an accident in my family and I started kind of digging into the research of how much mindset affects recovery. Mm. There is some published data, um, and one of the underlying themes is the hope, right? Yes. So the people that want believe they're gonna get better, the people that want to get better and maybe don't accept their diagnosis. Because how do we know, you know, day one you have three months to live, six months to live, or you're never gonna walk again or whatever that the diagnosis is that you're handed. Okay? So if you follow those people out, there's a couple things. One is the people that have hope. Um, so I'm trying to remember the quote that it's like hope. Um, there's a difference between, oh, I can't remember anything. Hope is the belief that everything's gonna be okay despite the outcome. And oh, I'm sorry, I should have remembered That's
Speaker 1 00:19:05 All right. Something about the feeling of what you're trying to say. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:19:07 Right. And there, there is data. And so there are people, the biology of belief by Bruce Lipton. Yeah. I mean, Bruce spends all these people with data on mindset. And, and so I see in my practice, you know, you, you do have to frame, you know, positivity, heart center thinking about like how you flip the switch. I I, I tend to be somebody who is a little bit half empty, glass is half empty, right? Something happens. I mean, it has to do with, you know, kind of like up my upbringing. Everything was my fault or whatever. And so I'm instantly, what did I do wrong? Instead of thinking like, okay, it's not me. This is a good experience. This happened because X, Y, Z and I'm really thankful. So you have to be so intentional. And that's what I love about the quick coherence, the heart focused techniques, you know, the heart math, you know, it's, it's also like you are going back to a feeling when you were happy when you're guiding someone through that, right?
Speaker 2 00:20:09 So think about Michael Phelps. He swam all of his races in his mind, right? Yeah. He already did it. He already won them. Beyonce already saw all of her best performances in her mind. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then there was one study in, I think it was a Joe Dispenza book that I read, that there were two pianists. One of 'em practiced, the other one just thought about practicing the piece. Wasn't allowed to move his fingers, but just was thinking about it in his mind. And they both equally were able to perform this piece because of their mind. Mm-hmm. So I think that data is out there and I think that's part of what HeartMath does is, you know, whatever buzzword you wanna use, heart tech center techniques manifesting your feet going through your life, feeling the feelings of the life you already want, right? Your body has already done it. So like Michael Phelps, so like, you know, any of these people you, they're doing it a lot with sports, physio of psychology. Yeah, too. That's
Speaker 1 00:21:08 Exactly right. You know, it's the visualizing that that creates the feeling and the hope and the uplift, which changes the inner pharmacy changes the hormonal cortisol, D h a balance changes the whole cascade. And it's, you know, like, like we used to have a, a motto at HeartMath that we, a change of heart changes everything.
Speaker 2 00:21:30 I mean, I think in your book, transforming Stress, that was what stands out so much that you had patients increase their D H E A and and decrease their cortisol with no supplements, just with doing HeartMath. That is amazing. You know? And so, you know, one of the things it took me a long time to realize is I was constantly trying to fix my cortisol, right? And it wasn't, it was take this supplement, okay, stop delivering babies, cut back your this, do this, adjust this, adjust this. Well I'd get through one stress and then it'd be another stress right around the corner, right? So it wasn't until one patient came in and she was older and she had a lot of stress and her husband had Alzheimer's and he was deteriorating that finally her cortisol looked normal. And I said, what did you know? What did you do?
Speaker 2 00:22:17 And she said, I took a class on meditation. And so I was like, wow. And so I started doing that. I started doing the heart math cuz there's, you can't control your life. And so now instead of telling people to reduce their stress, I tell them to work on how the stress affects them and whatever tool works for them, whether it's sitting with your cat, knitting, you know, reading heart math, whatever the tool is, we've gotta find a tool for you that's going to protect you. And heart math is easy because you can do it anywhere. You know, if they've got the transducer in the app, even better they're getting the feedback. But some of the techniques, you know, you don't need much to be able to do. You just need the practice and to have it on your radar to be able to do that.
Speaker 1 00:23:02 Absolutely. And the feeling shift that happens so quickly, that's what people are blown away often. It's like they do have more charred, more control over how they feel than what they have thought. They, we are not just victims of our emotional or mental state. We really can connect with our heart, activate our heart rhythm, coherence and shift how we feel and our mood. And that changes the hormones and the cascade. And that's what excites me about the mission or the work that we do is that empowerment, that self-empowerment, which is so important in self-care.
Speaker 2 00:23:41 Yeah. And like I said, this generation, the younger generation is much better than that, than my generation about it. And so that is great that that is out there. It's whether it's trendy or not, who cares? They're doing it right. They're exactly, they're threatening positive mindset. They're flipping the di diagram instead of like, you know, the scarcity mindset, right? Or the abundance mindset, whatever the buzzwords are, I really, I personally could stand to be so much better in that area as well.
Speaker 1 00:24:10 Right. Well we all have to help each other because it's a, you know, it's a shift in how humanity even perceives itself. There's a big shift going on as more people are realizing chronic disease is an epidemic, we have to do something about it. The mental health crisis. And like you said, there's more young people going, no, I'm not going to just be a victim of all this. And they are awakening to their power to care for themselves. And there's a hard awakening on the planet, which, you know, again, we all wanna nurture and feed and that's why we're doing, supporting each other, who are facilitating this, the work you're doing, the work we're doing. And uh, I just appreciate all, all that you are doing in coming together to do something bigger together than we can alone.
Speaker 2 00:24:58 Yeah, and I think I'm, I'm definitely seeing that and that again, that's a chalk up a benefit to social media. People can connect remotely in other countries where they normally wouldn't have connected. People can coach people online to do these kind of things. Be a mindset coach. You know, we have our health coach who's also certified in HeartMath. She can work with our patients remotely. So if a barrier is leaving work to be able to come into an appointment, you know, she can do that. So those are some benefits, although like it's taking away that social interaction. It's still allowing where there would have been none. No interaction.
Speaker 1 00:25:34 Exactly. Well this has been wonderful. Now we're going to do our heart meditation together on adding our collective heart energy to self-care, health, self-empowerment. So let's do that. Let's center in the heart and do some heart-focused breathing in through the area of the heart, out through the area of the heart, breathing a little slower and deeper than usual. Just this one tool can start to balance our autonomic nervous system, which is involved in balancing our hormonal and immune systems. So just this one simple technique to remember throughout the day is heart focus, breathing. And as we breathe in, breathe in a heart attribute or quality like love or gratitude, calmer voice. Breathe in that positive attitude. And as you breathe out, send it to all the cells of your body. You're warming your heart and increasing your heart rhythm, coherence throughout your body. Now let's radiate that love or compassion care, kindness, forgiveness, one of these heart qualities that have been shown to synchronize our heart and brain rhythms, radiate that to your brain and body to lift your spirit. And it also creates deeper access to your intuitive guidance system. Now ask your heart's intuitive guidance for more clarity or inspiration for some aspect of your life where you'd like to see a positive change. Could be in an attitude to hopefulness of health relationship. Ask your heart for some intuitive suggestions.
Speaker 1 00:28:49 Then radiate your love and commitment towards acting on what your heart suggests. And if you don't get anything, it's quite all right. Just radiate towards calm and ease cuz inspiration can come later. Now let's close by co-creating a reservoir of heart energy that each of us can access or draw on as needed over the next month to connect more with our own hearts balance and direction. Just visualize that and see yourself drawing from it as needed from this reservoir we're co-creating. Thank you so much for sharing that with me, Tara. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners?
Speaker 2 00:30:53 I mean, I just think don't wait to make this a priority. You know, don't wait till you're burned out. Don't wait till you're having these chronic diseases. Make this self-care practice part of your ritual earlier in your life. And I think you'll build resilience that you need to prevent any of these other issues.
Speaker 1 00:31:13 Oh, thank you so much. And as a gift to all our listeners, I wanna remind you that you can get free access to an amazing online video course, the HeartMath Experience, and learn several helpful self-care techniques for connecting with your deeper hearts intuitive guidance in your next steps. It's free. Please go to heartmath.com/experience, download it if you haven't already. And the third Tuesday of every month we publish a new Ad Heart podcast episode. So be sure to subscribe so you don't miss our next guest and topic. Thank you, Tara. Appreciate all you're doing. Thank you to all our listeners. Take care.
Speaker 0 00:32:01 Thank you for listening to the Ad Heart podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you can catch the latest episodes if you're wanting even more heart inspired content. And also the Heart Math Institute Instagram. Both organizations are committed to helping activate the heart of humanity.
