Dr. Afrouz Demeri: All right, everyone. Welcome to Week Four. Now, we're going to dive into my favorite part, which is how to use herbs, teas, powders, and even supplements to help regulate and balance your hormones. So, let's get started. If you guys remember, we did this hormone quiz the first week, and hopefully, most of you have had some sort of lab workup, and we're not just guessing, although that quiz will definitely tell you what's off. So, imagine the cortisol stress, you already know you're stressed, it's really good to do the test because then we'll know are you are making too much cortisol or are you just flat-lined and not having a proper curve throughout the day. Or are you making too much at night and not getting some deep sleep?

So, today what I want you guys to do is just go back to that Week One and see what did you do on that quiz? How did you score? And then let's go about fixing that really safely this week with herbs. So, a disclaimer, I'm not your doctor, and I want to make sure that we are not having you guys go out there and just purchase everything and then take things without your doctor's permission. So, please find a naturopathic doctor or herbalist, a Chinese medicine doctor, or even a functional medicine DO or MD in your region who you can just check all the things I'm telling you to do by, and make sure it's safe. I try to really make this week very safe that even if Joe Blow from the street just were to go buy these herbs and make a tea, it's not going to cause a heart attack or stroke. You're not going to end up in the ER, okay? So, this week, pretty safe. Next week I'm going to get a little bit more complex into advanced treatments so that you will absolutely need your doctor to run everything by.

Okay? So, we have three things that I want to go over. When you're talking about hormones, a lot of doctors I'll see, they'll test something, something is low, and then there's a very linear pathway to fixing it. Meaning, if I'm low in thyroid hormone, I'm just going to take thyroid hormone. If I'm low in cortisol, I'm just going to take something that increases my cortisol. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. What I want to do this week, though, is just go into a bit more advanced way of thinking about things, and that is the three things I have listed here on the left. So, do you produce enough? Is there a production issue? Or, is there any issues with regulation of that hormone, right? Or are there issues with eliminating that hormone? So, these three factors have to be considered when you are looking at any hormone, and I’ll go through how we do that today.

So, when the production is right—so let's say the ovaries or the testicles for sex hormones, or the adrenals, or the thyroid gland—which I have nicely covered up today—the thyroid gland. When these guys are making enough, because the dictator here—the brain—is telling them to make enough and they can, then we can tick off the production issue. So, I'll go through a thyroid, for example. A lot of people make enough, but what happens is the regulation of it isn't correctly done, which is done in the liver. So, when this is all done we get a healthy stress response, we have a healthy menstrual cycle, which means that your twenty-eight, twenty-nine days, you don't know it's coming. It's bright red blood from the beginning. Your husband or partner doesn't know that it's coming because

you've been so moody and a completely different person. You're not irritated too much. You're not too sad.

It's important to realize women do get tired, and so our tolerance to handle a lot during that time is not going to be the same as after our period. Now that's not called PMS. There's nothing wrong with that. That's actually healthy and normal. And then menopause, when we are going through not having our periods anymore, you want to make sure you're not a completely different person, remembering where you parked your car, having hot flashes all day, not being able to sleep because you're drenched and soaking the bed, and that your bone is not deteriorating, and you're not getting osteopenia, and then you're not getting calcifications in the joints. I see a lot of men as they get older and women, their joints stiffen up, and that's calcium depositing and leaching out of the bones into the joints, and things are more stiff in the morning.

Women will get calcifications on their mammograms. All these are signs that either the body is really acidic, and the body's trying to accommodate by leaching out minerals from the bones to help with that acidity, or that the hormones are low.

Enhanced brain function. This is huge. I think Alzheimer's is going to be listed in twenty years as the number one cause of death surpassing heart disease and cancer. So, brain function, we never really thought about hormones for brain function, but Dr. Bredesen, who has a book out on Alzheimer's, he defines a type of Alzheimer's that's linked to women who get a hysterectomy and oophorectomy, and they don't get that extra estrogen. Estrogen vasodilates. It opens up the vessels so blood can get to the region to your heart, to your brain, to your bones. So, it's very important for memory and cognition and focus and concentration.

You'll see women going through perimenopause. They'll just say that there's something wrong, my brain's not working well. Then obviously depression, which is the prefrontal cortex not getting enough oxygenation, blood flow, and making serotonin.

Improved sleep. So sleep, one of the most important hormones for that is progesterone for women. For men, sleep is very important, and having enough cortisol and then not having too much cortisol. So, a lot of men I see, they're in that work mode, they're in their head a lot, they're stressed, they're the provider, they have many different hats they have to wear and that pressure they put on themselves to perform, do well, make money, and at night sometimes either they pass out too quickly. Like literally, there'll be watching TV, and they're always dozing off, or it takes them a while to fall asleep. But you know when someone's not in good shape when they can sleep instantly. It should take you three, four, five minutes, or even ten minutes to fall asleep. If you literally can fall asleep just all the time anywhere, there is a dysfunction there that you want to talk to your doctor about.

Improved mood and then obviously a healthy weight. Weight is so tricky. Weight is so much to do with more than just hormones, what you eat, how much you exercise. And often people will know what the issue is with their weight unless there's been some rapid weight gain or weight loss that they are confused about, and they say, "Nothing has changed in my life," and that's when we come in and really check their hormones, check their thyroid, check their adrenals, make sure everything is okay.

So remember, we talked about the hierarchy of hormones, and I said that if anyone has a low cortisol, that is the first area that they need to address before looking at anything else. What does that mean? That means like if your child just cannot go to school, because let's say he got mono and is just passed out and is tired all the time, you're not going to be trying to get him to remember things and do this and that and fix everything else until that mono is resolved, until the energy of that child is back, and until they're revitalized and back to normal, or as normal as they can be. Same thing goes for adults. When your adrenals are burnt out, like I said, there's no curve on that cortisol curve on the Dutch test. Or, you're doing a blood test, and you find that your morning cortisol is like five or eight or nine. That means that your brain kind of thinks it's nighttime, and there's no difference between day and night. So, in those cases, we have to fix that first. And nothing in your body is operating on its own as one organ going off.

There's always a triad, I say. And here's the first triad that I commonly see as the main issue, and it's thyroid, adrenal, and insulin are off. So, what you want to do is obviously test all these things and look at even your B vitamin status in your blood test. You can test for B6. You can test for B2, B1, B12. You can test all these things on the NutrEval by Genova or just a regular blood test by your doctor. Now, they're not always accurate in the regular textbook tests because they're looking at that value outside the cell, right? In the serum, which is kind of where things float around. That's not exactly what's going into the cell, but it's still a really good thing to look at. It's better than not knowing anything.

Insulin, you have to do a fasting insulin test, right? And then looking at fasting glucose, and making sure it's not too high. That's your pancreas doing a really big job by making this every day for us so that the glucose can go into the cell. So, I say insulin is that hormone, like the bus that takes the kids to school. The kids in the bus are glucose. And as I said before, once that school bus arrives at the school, you want to make sure that there's enough, and the doors are open so it can go in, and there isn't that insulin resistance. Hemoglobin A1C, that marker for that three months, obviously, and then C-peptide and then looking at your liver health. Because when your body is in a fasting state, it has to go and get glucose out of the liver and use that as fuel. So, these all contribute to energy, weight, sleep, and mood.

They contribute more to that. But these are the main things I see in practice that people will complain about. And if this resonates with you, then these are the three we need to optimize. Now, you might find your doctor saying those

numbers are fine, your adrenal is fine, your thyroid numbers look good. You're not pre-diabetic, you're not diabetic, you're okay. But I'm telling you that there's a lot of people those ten years before things go off that it starts dysregulating and not regulating right and then we want to prevent that. We want to not make it go to where it is. So, this isn't what– We're talking about functional tests. We're not just looking at is it completely out of range, or is it tending to go out of range.

So, what do we want to do with these herbs and food this week? We want to provide thyroid support, we want to improve the adrenal glands functioning, and we want to make sure it has everything it needs to make cortisol and DHEA, which are those two hormones that it makes. We want to make sure the thyroid has everything it needs to make thyroid hormone. And then, we want to make sure that it's not getting the brake put on. So, remember, I said reverse T3 is the brake system. Often doctors will test TSH, which is what the brain thinks you have and thyroid, but they're not testing reverse T3, which tells you, okay, the car is working fine, you're on the gas pedal, and that's working fine. The engine is working fine, but you also have your foot on the brake. And if you're on brake, nothing's going to work well. There's a stressor, right? If we have to slam on the brakes, it's usually because we're scared we're going to hit someone.

Same thing with the thyroid. So, you want to look at what inhibits that, what makes your thyroid scared to produce more. And one of the main things is stress, which is why adrenals are in the triad here. When your body's under stress, your body is smart. It doesn't want you to metabolize. It doesn't want you to produce more and burn. It wants you to gain weight. It wants you to be so tired. It wants you to lose all your hair, and so that you wake up and go, "Jesus, what's happening? Why is all my hair falling out? Maybe I need to go to the doctor. Maybe I need to sleep more, or maybe I need to realize I'm stressed."

So, regulating blood sugar is probably the most difficult one I find for all of us because we think we're doing a good job. But a lot of the busy, busy, busy-ness in this world, we’re skipping meals. We're not eating complete meals. We're not on a regular regimen where one weekend we'll overeat, overindulge, sleep late, have alcohol, then the next week we're totally great, and we're back on. And that up and down often is what actually stresses out the adrenals. The adrenals love consistency. They love it when you go to bed at nine-thirty, ten every single night, no matter what day of the week it is, no matter what holiday it is. They don't care. They don't know any of that, right? So, they want to know, What did she do yesterday? What did he do last week? What do we need to get into the rhythm of? It's all about the rhythm, rhythm of life, which is why I love dance and drumming and music, because when you're more in tune with that, your body actually has more of a rhythm, and it's not very unpredictable. And you'll see people will feel very overwhelmed when they've lost that rhythm. They don't have that pattern in their day, and they're just trying to catch up with that to-do list and just barely making it and trying not to drown in the ocean instead of really being in charge of swimming and knowing exactly where they're going.

So, what are we going to do this week? If this is you, if you know on the quiz you had some thyroid issues, adrenal issues, or possibly insulin issues, or you did your blood work, and we found out that yes, indeed these are not optimal, this week I want you to pick one or two things that you're going to do from this slide. Remember, I said one or two. If you are an A+ student and you want to go more because many of these things you're already doing, fine, do three. But don't overwhelm yourself either because we want to be able to do things next week and the following week and keep up with the reset diet and the things that we've talked about lifestyle-wise, dry skin brushing, cold-hot showers, lemon water in the morning. We want to maintain those and add one or two things this week so that it's not overwhelming, and we can maintain it after this course is over.

So, for the thyroid, selenium, and zinc are needed for the thyroid hormone production. Now, where do those come from? Selenium is in Brazil nuts, and zinc is in pumpkin seeds. So, one of the easiest things you guys can do this week—especially for men, men need their zinc for testosterone production—you can add some pumpkin seeds, one tablespoon, two tablespoons every day in a salad, in your smoothie, or just straight up eat it. For women and men, selenium is also really important for viruses. It's an antiviral. It's an antioxidant. It's really good for the immune system, and it's especially been helpful if you have Hashimoto's—two hundred micrograms a day or more. Speak to your doctor about this. But selenium, you can get in one or two Brazil nuts a day. If that's too fatty for you, then just cut it out. Just have one a week, or obviously, then you can go into supplements and get these afterwards, if you can't get enough from food.

Iodine, which is so rampantly low in almost everybody I test, so I've given up on testing people anymore because I feel like I already know. It's in sea vegetables and seafood and sea salt. However, it is a gas. So, if your salt is sitting out, you're not going to get much iodine from salt because it's evaporated. So, I usually like it– I have my patients eat more seaweed salad or those seaweed snacks that you can get that are salted naturally. Fish, obviously seafood, you just want to make sure it's not high in mercury, and you're not getting the chemicals from the ocean.

So, I usually personally take it in a supplement form or recommend it in a supplement form in patients depending on whether they have Hashimoto's, they can't take too much iodine because they may reactivate and flare them up, versus someone else who just has low thyroid function. It's not optimal. They don't have Hashimoto's. It's often from iodine deficiency. So, iodine is needed by the thyroid gland, but it's also needed for breast health, and it's also needed for ovaries and non-cyst formation. So, if you tend to form cysts, you know someone who has fibrocystic breasts or ovarian cysts or polycystic, anything cystic, that might be from iodine deficiency. And if you work out and you're sweating, your muscles need twenty to thirty percent of the iodine intake every day, so it's really important for muscles as well. Need magnesium. Tyrosine is a huge one, and then B vitamins.

So, herbs this week that we're going to love to incorporate are Ashwagandha, which is, I always say, like the Indian Hall of Fame herb. Ginseng, which is the Korean or the Chinese Hall of Fame Herb. Licorice, one of my favorites, but a huge disclaimer and warning here—you cannot take licorice if you have high blood pressure. I'm going to say that one more time: You cannot take licorice if you have high blood pressure. Licorice raises blood pressure. So, if you have low blood pressure like me, you're going to love licorice. Now, licorice root comes in a tea that you can drink, or you can take it in a supplement liquid tincture, which is nice and sweet. That's how I like to take it. But it's all often in many herbal decoctions. Licorice is energy from an herbalistic and Chinese medicine perspective—brings synergy to your formula. So, anytime I'm making a formula for a patient, I always add licorice if it's safe to tonify the entire formula.

Cinnamon is important for the thyroid gland, and it's really helpful for regulating blood sugar, right? So, you've heard, add cinnamon to your coffee, add cinnamon to your oatmeal. If you have any sugar cravings, if you have any prediabetes in the family or diabetes in the family, and you're headed that way, load up on cinnamon. Put cinnamon in everything.

Gotu kola, one of my favorite herbs for the brain and for the thyroid, and then Iris versicolor, which is really good for the thyroid and in many thyroid formulas. So, this all stimulates thyroid function. Okay, so that's in the production phase that we were talking about.

Now, if you have Hashimoto's or Graves' disease, that means your immune system is attacking your thyroid gland. You want to consider immune-modulating herbs—Ganoderma, rosemary, Rosmarinic acid, Rehmannia, and Eleutherococcus. Don't worry about What do I do with all this? We're going to get to it. Obviously, it'd be really, really great to make a tea every day for yourself that incorporates the best herbs, and that has to be prescribed by a physician or herbalist. I'm just giving you all the data here and saying it's pretty safe. If you want to go try having some licorice tea or you want to go having some Ashwagandha, those are very, very safe, and then listen to your body. If you don't feel good, if something's not right and you're getting heart palpitations or headaches or diarrhea or anything, please, please, please stop and ask. Ask someone, "Is this normal?" Or ask me in the Facebook group.

Anti-inflammatory herbs, because the thyroid gland does not like inflammation. A lot of times, I'll actually protect my thyroid because I've had Hashimoto's in the past, and I'm in remission. I don't want sprays and perfumes and creams and things getting on top because it will inflame it. It's right under the skin here. So curcumin, turmeric, Boswellia, and then essential fatty acids in fish oil or in krill oil or an algae if you're vegetarian or vegan, are really great for the thyroid and the whole entire body.

So, diet. You don't want to have a lot of cold food. Now, what is that? Cold food are things literally that come out of the fridge or the freezer, but they're also raw food. Things that bring that body's temperature down, like watermelon,

cucumbers, yogurt, these things what they do is they literally will bring the core temperature of the body down if you eat enough of it.

And the whole point of thyroid is to boost your metabolism. It's your thermostat, it's trying to warm you up, right? It's trying to bring up that burn in that factory. It's turning things on. So, if you want to help it, you don't want to have too much cold, or if you know you have an issue with this area, don't have a lot of raw food like raw vegetables, raw broccoli, raw celery. Celery is another cooling one that lowers blood pressure. So, having a lot of celery or celery juicing or juicing in general too much can actually inhibit the thyroid. So, most people already know this, I've always had thyroid issues. I've always been on the cold side. My hands and feet were always cold. I have low blood pressure. If I eat too much raw, I will get more cold, and I actually get tired, right?

So, a lot of times, I'll crave the hearty foods, the soups, the stews, the warm foods, especially if it's winter out. In the summer, what you want to do is listen to what is in nature and locally grown in your area and have it in moderation. However, if you're imbalanced in this, you don't want to have too much.

Exercise. You want to do short but high intensity. You don't want to go for a two-hour run. You don't want to go for a six-hour hike. You want to do a twenty-minute HIIT training—high-intensity interval training. You might want to do some resistance training with some weights, heavier weights, but shorter time, shorter reps, versus an hour of five pounds or three pounds or leg workout. All right, so that's on thyroid.

Adrenals, love vitamin C. I always say your adrenals release vitamin C every time they release cortisol. So super, super important, one of my favorite things to take daily or what I remember, especially if it's cold and flu season or someone around me is sick, is this product by Genestra. I'm going to go through all of this with you this week and next week, so don't worry about jotting down or knowing what it is. You'll get a list of everything. But vitamin C, you can take it in ascorbic acid form or ascorbate. Ascorbate is the natural mineral form that it's found in vegetables and fruits. Or you want to eat more vitamin C-rich foods, right? But I find I just can't get enough vitamin C in my diet and if I'm going through a lot of stress, if I'm flying a lot, if I'm speaking a lot, if I'm not able to sleep one night because my kids are up and in my bed and then I know the next day my adrenals are going to be a little burnt out, then you want to have some extra C. Magnesium, Tyrosine, and again, and you start to see, wow, how important B vitamins are, how important magnesium is, how important tyrosine is for all of these.

Now, I have the last one here, L-theanine. If you've never heard of L-theanine, this is like the Xanax of the natural products that we have. L-theanine helps calm the nervous system down. It's been found to be very low in anxious patients or in patients who have panic attacks. So, it's one of my favorite things to add to someone if they absolutely need it, and I don't want them to be medicated. I have the sun coming in right in my eye here.

Herbs to support healthy adrenal responses. Again, Ashwagandha, Ganoderma, Astragalus. Astragalus was one of my favorite things literally to have daily, and I think I just overdid it, but Astragalus has so much good research to help the immune system. It's an immune-modulating herb and to help the adrenals out. So, if you've never heard of that or you've never taken it, I highly recommend looking into that with your doctor and considering adding that and seeing how you feel because it's an amazing, amazing herb. It has so much research on it. That and Rhodiola and Ashwagandha, I would say, the top three researched herbs for health and longevity and cancer.

Holy basil, a great one. I'm sure you've heard of the tulsi tea. This is very easy to get in tea form. It's in many supplements for helping a healthy stress response. Schisandra berry, my favorite, full of vitamin C, and this is another berry I'll often add to a decoction when I'm making a tea for someone because, like licorice, it's a great herb to help everything. There's nothing Schisandra berry isn't good for, or it's contraindicated from what I know. Eleutherococcus, again. If they're weak and need stimulation, meaning if your cortisol is low or you're finding that they're just flat-lined and they're not working, then Panax ginseng and licorice root can be helpful.

And then next week I'll go through—sometimes that's not enough. If someone has very little cortisol all day, they may actually have to take adrenal cortex, which is an animal product. It's literally taking bovine adrenal cortex, and here's one that I love, that I've been using forever and it works like a charm. So, it's called Adrenal-Cortex, fractionated cortex, by Integrative Therapeutics. There are lots of other companies, but I'm telling you the ones I've used forever that I know work well and that they're safe and tested and a professional line. You don't want to just take bovine anything without making sure it's the best. The other one that I love is called Adren-All, and this has bovine-concentrated adrenal gland as well as the eleuthero, Rhodiola, Schisandra, licorice.

So again, this is the linear way. Remember, I said if you're low in something and you can just take a supplement, but this week instead of jumping on board to take a supplement, we really want to see if you can get in the habit of making yourself a tea. Teas are a great way to get these herbs in. And also, the ritual of making tea every morning or every afternoon after work is so calming to the nervous system that it's not even so much sometimes about the tea. It's the ritual of making it that you are showing your body self-care and self-love. So, I want you to get in the habit of that and not just getting a Lipton bag or just a teabag, but actually putting the herbs and having a system, or getting excited about a new teapot and a mug, and adding maybe some coconut milk in there, or adding an almond milk in there, or adding something if you don't like the taste so much.

But getting in the habit of making yourself tea using these herbs is an amazing way to get what you need. You don't always need a supplement, but there's a "but" to it. Remember the hierarchy. If you do not make cortisol and you are flat-lined like I have been when after I had my second child, I craved coffee

every morning because I was just so tired and getting up every two hours. Then you have to take adrenal cortex. Now, I say "have to" because most doctors will tell you there is no other way to get your brain to all of a sudden tell your adrenals to make cortisol, right? So, we don't want to force it, but in a way, we have to replace what's missing. It's more harmful to go about every day not having any cortisol. You will become inflamed. You will have joint pain. You will be tired. You're going to crave sweets. You're going to crave coffee. You're going to start having all these bad, healthy habits just so you can get by. Why not just take your adrenal cortex in the morning and boost that cortisol? And most people will tell me, "Wow, I have so much more energy since taking that," or the adrenal supplement that I showed you.

If you suspect you have high cortisol—meaning your body thinks there's a lion in front of you and most people don't know that this is the case—most of them tell me, "Yeah, and a little anxious in the morning when I wake up," or, "Yeah, I have a hard time falling asleep. I don't know if it's stress. I feel like I've been like this for a while." Then herbs to help you are oat straw, wood betony, and then Scutellaria. I love these three. Often, I will put this in many mothers and fathers who are very busy, and they just have a lot of stress, and they're just kind of basically in survival mode, and we call these "nervines."

Other nervines that you can even get– So Wise Woman Herbals, a great company that I love for herbs, has this nutritive tea. So, I might give this to someone who I feel is just so pale. They look so tired. You can just tell that they don't have the time to make really nutritious meals for themselves. They’re sort of on the go. They've been go, go, go for a while, and they're just very depleted. So, nutriently they're depleted. So, I use these herbs in here to help give them a little bit of these vitamin C’s, and the magnesium, and the things that are naturally found in plants. So, this nutritive tea has peppermint, chamomile. Chamomile is amazing for calming the nervous system down, and it's also great for the digestive tract. So, growing up with a grandma who was an herbalist, we literally had chamomile tea every day, and then we would have it after food that was heavy.

So, if we ate like bone marrow and lamb and some really heavy fatty meat, and then let's say by accident we would have some fruits after that, the combination of all those is very hard to digest. So, my grandma would always give us chamomile tea before bed to make sure our digestive system was relaxed, and we were calm so that we could sleep well. I mean, now research is coming up with, oh chamomile tea very good for anxiety, for stress responses. So, we've known this for thousands of years. I love fresh chamomile, the flowers, the yellow flowers, and it smells so nice and calming. So, making chamomile tea throughout the day or at nighttime or in the not-too-late-at-night. You don't want to drink a lot of tea before bed because then you'll be urinating and waking up, which we don't want.

But those herbs, oat straws, wood betony, Scutellaria, and adding chamomile can be very helpful if you're just high strung, high stress.

This also has dandelion leaf, which is really good for the liver. Gotu kola, which we talked about for the thyroid. Horsetail. Horsetail has a lot of silica, which is very good for the kidneys and for hair. So, with hair loss horsetail is very good. Marshmallow root. Marshmallow root soothes the lining of the gut, so it's very good for leaky gut or anyone who has acid reflux, or just feels like digestively they're not doing well. Raspberry leaf, very good for women's health and women's hormones. Rosebud is high in vitamin C. And then stinging nettle, high in iron and a blood tonic. So, this is safe for men and women, super, super nice tea to drink. And actually, I like the taste, but it's hard to get dandelion roots. I mean, you saw me juicing it, but I don't get to do that often, right? I don't want to clean my juicer three times a week, and sometimes dandelion isn't in season and I can't find it. Same with stinging nettle. I'm not going to be touching nettle and getting stung, right? So, it's nice to take these in herbs. Nettles are also really good for allergies and anyone who has eczema or itching or rash on the skin.

So, with the adrenals, you want to have frequent meals. If you have that type of– If you know that you can't go fasting for long, right? Remember, I talked about this. I want to get us to the point where we can fast for a whole day. However, when your adrenals are burnt out, that is a stressor. So, eating smaller, frequent meals is only the exception if you fall in this category.

For the rest of us, it's actually not good for us to snack six times a day and have six small meals. But for someone whose adrenals are burnt out and it's very low all day, you cannot fast because when you fast, your brain says, Where's the glucose? When there's no glucose because you're not eating, the adrenals have to release cortisol, which is called the "glucocorticoid" to help balance your sugar, and it gets off doing that, right? It's shut off. It's asleep. So, what happens is you actually make things worse, and you want to make sure you're getting enough protein and healthy fats every time, and some complex carbohydrate—that is huge. So, let me say that again: If you have low cortisol production, you do not want to skip carbs. You have to have sweet potatoes, yams, squash, some plantains. You want to have something that has a carbohydrate that's complex, right? Not white rice, not cookies, not sugar that way. But something to help your hormones and to help progesterone production that converts to cortisol. So, you definitely want to make sure before ovulation for women and before your period you are not doing fasting, like I said, and you're not skipping on the carbs.

And then exercise gentle. If you are adrenally fatigued and burnt out, you are not allowed to be doing a lot of cardio and doing anything heavy-duty. You have to do very, very gentle walking, yoga, maybe some light stroke swimming, things that are easy on the body otherwise because exercise is a stressor, right? And your body's already burnt out. So, you don't want to add more to it, but you want to do something that incorporates breathing, like yoga, but restorative yoga, gentle yoga, right? Not a hot yoga that you're sweating out all your electrolytes or minerals, and now adrenals are even burnt out more.

To regulate blood sugar, one of the favorite nutrients, chromium, and vanadium, which you'll find is in a lot of supplements for prediabetes and for diabetes and then herbs to help stabilize blood sugar. Anything that's bitter, so bitter melon, we talked about cinnamon. Gymnema is an amazing one, which literally means to cut sugar. Fenugreek, Ashwagandha, licorice, and barberry. So, barberry has been researched. The active ingredient in there is called berberine. Berberine is like the drug metformin. I use it in my practice more than I prescribe metformin ever for anyone who's pre-diabetic or getting their glucose fast. It also helps cholesterol, so it's one of my favorites. If that's something that you think you might want to try and you're seeing your A1C go high, and your blood sugar is not good, and you're worried about your insulin, adding berberine or barberry in a tea, or even cooking it—like we Persians put barberry in rice. We have a chicken dish where it's yogurt, turmeric, and barberries cooked in a rice cooker and chicken in there. And so, we eat a lot of this. It's very sour. And so again, it's good for the liver. So, you can add these again to the tea that you're using, or you can just take cinnamon in a supplement form, or you can take chromium, vanadium, bitter melon in a supplement form.

There's a product called Ultra Glucose Control by Metagenics that's a protein powder that's been researched to help regulate blood sugar. So, sometimes I'll have my patients take that as a shake, as a meal to help balance their blood sugar. And it comes in a really nice chocolate flavor, and it's amazing. Like you'll never think, How is this helping my blood sugar? It's too good to be true, but it works.

Again, you want to avoid excess cold, raw, and damp foods. So, damp foods are things that are sticky like anything deep-fried, bananas. Bananas are high in sugar, right? It's high on the glycemic index. So, anything like that you want to avoid because it's going to spike that insulin and like rice, breads, pastry, all of that does not help your blood sugar.

Exercise, again, you want to combine cardio with weights now. So you do want to do a run maybe and then, or, a compounded movement. So, you're doing a lunge at the same time. Then you do a lift shoulder press. Or you're doing a squat, and then you do a bicep curl. So, you're utilizing two or three muscles at the same time, so your heart rate goes up, and you start sweating. So, those are my favorites. All right.

Example of herbal formulas that I use for these triads I put here. So, the loose herb teas, you'll have to find an herbalist or herb shop. They're all over the world. This is not something that's hard to find. So, if you're having a hard time just Google them. A lot of these you can also get online. But I usually like to go see a practitioner myself and have them order it for me, and then I pick it up from them. But you can also go and find these and just make your own mix and match and experiment with it. Like I said, these are all safe. So, always start with one cup, drink that, and then see how you feel. Listen to your body. As I said, if

you don't—if it doesn't feel right, don't keep having it and then end up in urgent care saying that you did this course.

But like I said, none of these herbs I've ever found to do that. So, I'm just joking. I'm saying that just so you know, and you're well aware, and obviously, for liability issues, I’m not your doctor, so I can't tell you to go take something. I'm just giving you the information that these herbs can really help.

And then the decoction. So, what is a decoction? Decoction is different in that you get the powdered herbs. So, the herbs come in a little powder, and you have a little scooper. And often I'll just add a cup of water, two cups water, and I'll put it on the stove, and I put all these powders in there, right? So, you'll have to get a ratio of like one scoop Ashwagandha or half a scoop of blue flag root—which is for the thyroid gland, a scoop of cinnamon, two scoops of Rhodiola, half a scoop of ginger, half a scoop of Ganoderma, or tablespoons, the way they'd say it.

So, then you basically decoct it, meaning you bring it to a boil, and then you put it on low, and you'll just let it simmer until all the active ingredients have come out. And then you basically are like doing a little shot, so it's not like a big cup of tea. Now it's very active, it's very concentrated, and then you drink that. Usually, these don't taste fantastic. I mean the decoctions, but I don't care. I always say if it's good for you to do it. It's better than, in my opinion, taking fifteen different supplements a day. This goes straight to your cells. So, the absorption for these is a lot better, I think, than having pills and taking too many things orally. Whenever something is in liquid form, it's much easier for it to go through the cells of the gut and into the bloodstream. All right.

Diet-wise for the thyroid, you've heard of goitrogens. I'm sure a lot of you have heard the myth that broccoli and the cruciferous vegetables are bad for you. They're not bad if they're cooked, and no one is going to sit there and have a gallon of cabbage that's raw, or a gallon of broccoli that's raw. You would be so gassy that you wouldn't do it. So, I would say, don't worry about all that. Half of that is a myth. It's not true. But you also want to make sure you're cooking these tyrosine-rich foods. Like if you're having soy, make sure it's non-GMO organic, and don't eat a lot of it. If you know you're sensitive to it, just don't have it. Many of my patients are. It is a phytoestrogen, so a lot of people think soy is bad, but in research, soy has actually been to help prevent breast cancer because it's a phytoestrogen, and it will block the bad estrogens from binding to the breast tissue.

In men, I'm not a fan of soy too much, right? You don't want that phytoestrogen. You want more testosterone-building foods like pumpkin seeds, spinach, watercress, sesame seeds. Sesame seeds are great toasted, but you can also get it in tahini. Tahini is the sauce that is very high in calcium, and that's one of my favorite things to get into people if calcium is an issue. I prefer them not to take too much calcium in a supplement form, but to get it through tahini every other day or daily as a sauce on their salad or in their bowl.

So, other foods that contain these goitrogens, I've listed them all on here. Cruciferous vegetables are big. That might block iodine utilization, right? So, you don't want to have a lot of these raw. All right.

So, the next triad for women is the estrogen/progesterone, testosterone, thyroid, adrenal. So, we never start with sex hormones first, like I said, or at least I don't. Many of my patients will say, "My doctor said I was having this symptom, and then they prescribed that even sometimes without testing." And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But for the purpose of this course, I want to see if there's anything we can do before that. Or, if you're getting there, try to get these herbs and teas and decoctions or even supplements so that you don't need the heavy-duty hormones that we're going to talk about next week. So, in terms of estrogen/progesterone, and testosterone, the Dutch test, you'll see that there's a gene on there, the COMT or the MTHFR. These are genes, fancy words, basically for methylation. What is methylation? Methylation is something that every single cell of our body does. We are carbon-based humans, not like Star Wars or Star Trek, where they're silica and they’re different forms.

But basically, because we are made out of carbon, we have to do something called "methylation." Let's not geek out on that too much. Just trust me that that's an important thing that has to be done. And that has to do with, remember, the three parts of the hormones—the elimination of the hormones. So, you might make enough, but let's say you're not making the right kind because your body's not converting it to the right kind, which often is done in the liver and needs these genes to work properly.

So, what does this mean? Sometimes I say basically, let's say you're going to photocopy a book for someone. But that book, the pages, one of the page is half bent. And so, when you photocopy it, half of the letters are missing and that person can't read that. And then let's say that person goes to photocopy it and there's a little corner that's folded, and then that page gets something missing.

These are called "gene mutations." So, every time we have a child, we get mutations from mother, father. Thank you, Mom and Dad! And most every child has more mutations than their parents did. So, some of us have these amazing genes that make us not break down estrogen and progesterone and convert or methylate these hormones well. So, in these people, if you already know you have the MTHFR. If you know you have the COMT. COMT I find commonly in patients who are very anxious. MTHFR can cause clotting, strokes in the family, heart disease, homocysteine will go up, even miscarriages. But really it's important to get your greens in because of that extra folate. So, if you have that MTHFR gene, this week, other than the herbs, you've got to have your greens—your kale, your broccoli, your bok choy, your Swiss shard, your collard greens. And the ingredients that we need are B6 and folate, B12. And then for thyroid, we already went through, and then adrenal we went through.

So this is—most of my women after the age of forty, forty-five—this is the triad that needs to be addressed, and they may have weight issues, sleep issues, temperature regulation issues. So, a lot of women will say before they had kids, they used to be very cold, and now after having a kid, they're not cold anymore. But then as they get closer to perimenopause, they're kind of all over the place. They're not too cold, they're not too hot, but they don't like hot-hot, they don't like cold-cold. And then, as we get through heavy-duty estrogen changes, what happens is we'll start having hot flashes and then during the night we'll get hot and sweaty sometimes.

So, those are all changes in hormones. I just want to pause here and just say for the women watching who are having hot flashes, there are always two causes of hot flashes. You either have a hot flash, and it's called an "adrenaline flash." I just made that up. It's an adrenaline hot flash, or it's an estrogen hot flash. So estrogen, when it changes throughout the day, if it goes up and then down, and if any of you are perimenopausally have had your estrogen change, sometimes it will be high, sometimes it will be super low, and then the next month it's high, and then super low. That up and down change is what causes a hot flash. An estrogen hot flash can happen at night when you're asleep, you're not thinking. But, always pause before you have a hot flash and go, what was I just doing? Was I thinking about something?

If you're having a thought about anything, worrying that’s stressful, you're late. Someone said something to you, and you subconsciously got defensive, and you have a hot flash—that's an adrenaline hot flash. That's your adrenals releasing adrenaline, and that brings on the heat. So, that's different. Some people I address their adrenal, I fix their adrenals, and they no longer have hot flashes and they thought they needed hormones. And some women, I'll say if you're having it at night because you're usually not thinking and you're not awake, it's involuntary, then it's your sex hormones. All right.

So, that's temperature, mood, and then cognition. Cognition is huge. A lot of women are thinking that they have dementia, memory loss. I'm not as sharp as I used to be. I used to be able to do math at the top of my head. Now, I always need a calculator. I used to be able to drive anywhere. I didn't need a map. Now, I forget things very easily. I can't focus, I can't concentrate. Same with men. And it's these three triads, right? When the adrenals are burnt out or overtired, you're in survival mode. Your brain does not care where you parked the car. Your brain does not care about your accounting, and what you’re told are your numbers. It doesn't care about those things. It doesn't care about your hair. Doesn't care about your toes. It doesn't care about your fingers. So, those are all extremities. It wants all the blood to come into the vital organs. And so, a lot of hair loss is stress-related because the body, again, does not need hair to survive. It needs your heart, your liver, it needs all those organs to work well. So, it will let go and say, "We're under stress," and so instead of you stressing out about it, and often it's a loss of control because when you lose clumps of hair, you feel really out of control. You feel like, Gosh, what's happening? I can't control this. I need to stop it. And it makes us even more stressed. I often tell my women and

my men to stop stressing about it. But let's look at where the stresses are in your life and give love back instead of causing more stress.

What do we do herb-wise for women in this department? Men in this department? I love this herb called motherwort. Isn't it amazing that it has the word mother in it? Because mothers tend to be very nurturing, over-giving, and not always asking for what they need and not even aware of what they need. Not very good at saying no. And this is a really good herb, especially if you're feeling worn out. You get heart palpitations when you lie down at night, or you're just kind of—you're on edge. You just know that you're in go mode and then eventually one day you might just break down and you're so scared that if you break down, how is everyone going to go on without you? Now, men might feel the same, so you can still take this. It's not just for women, it's just that's what it's called.

Oat straw is a great herb for the nervous system. Lemon balm, my favorite one. This is called Melissa officinalis. So, lemon balm is a very calming herb, and I have this always in the car. At home, I have a little tincture bottle in my daughter's bag that I send to school because she has a tendency to overthink and stress and worry. And so, some nights she'll come out and say, "Mom, I can't sleep. My body is doing this inside," because I try not to label my kids with anything. So, they don't know the word "anxiety." They don't know the word "stress" too much, but I'll say okay. And I usually just quickly give her some magnesium and lemon balm, and it's amazing how this plant just relaxes the body and relaxes the mind. So, I love this. If you've never tried it, even growing a lemon balm plant in your yard.

When I was studying herbalism, they would get us to touch the plants and just sit with it for an hour and just feel it. And I knew nothing about herbs or which one it was. This is the one I chose, and it's so interesting that the gentleman, my teacher, came and asked me, "So what do you feel when you're around this plant?" And I didn't know what it was. I don't know anything about it. And I said, "It reminds me of my grandmother. It's very, very nurturing and calming." And he smiled, and he said, "Oh, wow, that's amazing. That's exactly what it does. It's called lemon balm." And so, it's twenty years later, and I always remember that story because it spoke to me. So, it's one of my favorite herbs for calming the nervous system.

Red clover is amazing for women with hormonal issues. Women will take this for hot flashes and going through menopause, and they don't need hormones sometimes. Nettles, raspberry leaf, ginger. And then the herbs to decoct, these are so good. So, so, so good. I wish every OB/GYN when they saw women with issues, they would learn herbs and give them this, because my patients feel so amazing when they make Dioscorea, Rhodiola, Ashwagandha, maca, licorice. I mean, it's fantastic. So, please try one of these this week because I really think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Men—haven't forgotten about you guys. The guys watching, if your wife's forcing you to watch or force you to take this course, I'm so glad you're here. So, with testosterone, progesterone isn't important, but estrogen is because testosterone can convert to estrogen. It's called "aromatization." So, it can aromatize to estrogen, and you want to make sure you're not having that, right? So, we don't want man boobs that can increase risk of breast cancer. Yes, men get breast cancer, and most men will get a little belly pooch, which is done by beer. Beer does that. Beer aromatizes testosterone to estrogen, and hops does as well. So, in some women, we give them hops, we want that, but that have high testosterone and not enough estrogen. But for my men, I always say if you're gonna drink, don't drink. But if you're gonna, don't have beer. Beer is the worst alcohol to have for a man because it converts all the testosterone to estrogen. Not all, but it can if you have a lot of it.

So, we want healthy testosterone levels. We don't want too high. Too high will make your sex drive very high, make you angry, can give you acne, can cause hair loss, but you want the right type, the right amount. So, you want to be usually in the mid-range. You don't want to be right at the top. And you definitely don't want to be on the low. Now, I don't see a lot of men with high testosterone. I would say unfortunately I see more low T, so I see even twenty-five-year-olds with low testosterone. It's a pandemic right now of how many men don't have their number one sex hormone, and it's– I blame it on the toxicity. I blame it on the phytoestrogens in our plastics, in our environment, in our dishes, in our soaps, in our cleaning detergents, in our everything. All these xenoestrogens we call them.

That means it's an estrogen-looking-like molecule that comes in the body, and it messes up the men's hormones. And so, men are having a lot more pre-ejaculatory problems, not getting their morning erections, which is a really good sign of health and vitality. Low libido, hair loss, and yeah, just not enough muscle strength and muscle weakness, or difficulty maintaining muscle or losing muscle, and just being very tired, and not feeling vital, and being depressed and low in mood. So, testosterone is so important for both men and women. I put it on this slide just to make the men feel special, but women absolutely need testosterone too. So, it's not as it used to be thought that this is what men need to replace. We, as women, also need to have healthy testosterone. It’s just as important as any other hormone.

But the body is smart. It never floats around as testosterone forever. It converts, remember? So elimination and regulation of this hormone is important. Adrenals we've talked about, and then insulin, so this is the other triad for a lot of my men. I find this is where they're stuck. This is what needs to be helped. So, it will affect their weight, sleep, energy, and cognition, and mood.

So, things to help them—we want to use herbs called Damiana, holy basil, old straw, nettle, skullcap, red clover, and saw palmetto berries. So, saw palmetto, I use in my women too who have PCOS as it helps regulate their testosterone. But for men, we also use this a lot in prostate cancer patients, and benign prostatic

hypertrophy, or if you're urinating and you're having that dribbling, or the forceful urination isn’t there, or it stops and goes and stops and goes. Obviously, you want to get that checked out by a urologist. But saw palmetto is very good for the urinary prostate testosterone levels.

There's a product I like that I use called tribulus. Tribulus is a supplement that you can get. It's hard to get in a tea or a decoction form. I get it from Australia, from a company called MediHerb. Tribulus can be very helpful in women and men who want to build up their testosterone naturally. But this is another product called TestoGain by Douglas Labs that I'll use in a patient who I don't want to prescribe testosterone bioidentically or in women. And the number one ingredient that helps build up testosterone is—this is the best name ever, whoever came up with this name—horny goat weed, right? So, I always laugh because it's amazing. I love the meaning of the plant is all in there, so it makes you horny, right? It boosts your libido because it's increasing testosterone. So, horny goat weed.

Mucuna is called velvet bean extract, and mucuna actually also is researched to help increase dopamine, and dopamine is needed to help you feel motivated to do new things. So, a lot of antidepressive medications are increasing the dopamine between receptors, and one of the herbs I love to use for that is this. So, that's also on this to help boost the motivation. Damiana is in here. Maca root is in here. Eleutherococcus is in here. Panax ginseng is in here. Ashwagandha is in here. So super, super great formula for men and women if you need testosterone to be boosted. Now, these can take sometimes two to four months for you guys to see an effect. So, don't expect a week of it that your libido is going to be back, and you're going to feel vital and excited again.

All right, so decoction of herbs. You want to get these in powder form, very similar to the last one—Ganoderma, Eleutherococcus, Rhodiola. You're starting to see how good Ashwagandha and Rhodiola are. Just a quick note on licorice. Again for men, if you're high blood pressure, please do not add this in there because it will make it worse. You will have higher blood pressure, and then I won't be able to sleep at night, so don't add licorice. Ginger is great for the gut as well, and it's an anti-inflammatory. I was going to say that maca is a special one. So, maca is a root, a Peruvian plant and a root. They are thirteen different kinds of maca that we know of or that I've studied, and it's nice to know what kind of maca you're getting.

Now, generally, if you're going to Whole Foods or Sprouts or any health food store in your local store, is it safe to just get any maca and throw it into your shake? Yes and no. We don't know the answer to that a hundred percent. I don't know exactly where that maca came from. I don't know which root it was from. I don't know hormonally what that particular maca has been shown to do. Whereas licorice, I do know. Ginger, I do know. Rhodiola, I do know. So, with maca, I say it's pretty safe, see how you feel on it. But some of the products that I use are the only ones that I know on PubMed actually have research backing up their use for hormones. And so this company called Femmenessence—

Femmenessence is an amazing company that I use and I only exclusively usually use their maca when I'm prescribing it to a patient, and I will have them open up the capsules and put it into their shake, their smoothie, or make a decoction out of it.

So, for the herbal powder to decoct, I always say it's safer to use one that you know is better for testosterone. So, they have one particularly only for men. And so, that maca has been shown to help increase testosterone. This one, this yellow one, is for women that are young who want to have a baby, who maybe have pre-menstrual issues, are very stressed. So like from twenty-year-olds to forty-year-olds or forty-five-year-olds, right? So, different hormonal patterns are seen with different maca roots. This one, for example, you see is purple. There's another pink one that they have. So, they have different ones for different stages of life. So, this is their perimenopausal one. So, if this is for someone and they’re forty-five to fifty, maybe some hot flashes, maybe some cognitive issues. So, just be careful with maca.

I'm throwing that out there and not a lot of even– I find doctors know they prescribe maca, but maca has very different types, and you want to make sure you're taking one that's specific for your hormonal needs. So, the yellow one, again, if you want to have a baby. If you don't have your periods, they did research on that, and the pregnancy rates after taking it for three months was significantly higher, and it was published on PubMed so you can look it up. So, that's just my two cents on the maca root. The other thing I want you guys to do this week, if you're female—if you're a male, I just want you to have pumpkin seeds. Okay? And enjoy other seeds. Seeds and nuts, and don't think about anything. Now, if you take these herbs, it doesn't mean your estrogen is going to go up, or your testosterone is going to go up.

Zinc in the pumpkin seeds can help you make testosterone, right? But it doesn't mean there's no research showing that people had a cup of pumpkin seeds and their testosterone in their blood went from one to twenty, right? That's not going to happen. So, where does this come from? This is called "seed cycling." It's been around for thousands of years. I learned this in naturopathic medical school. However, it does come with a disclaimer that there is no randomized double-controlled study that shows this actually increases or boosts estrogen. So, I just got this off the internet. Again, I want to put that disclaimer out there that even though I'm a scientist, so this doesn't mean that it helps boost these hormones, but it can help regulation. Remember, the second part of the hormonal health that we talked about on the first slide. This helps regulate them and eliminate them. It doesn't help you make them.

So, from day one to day fourteen of your cycle for the women that are cycling you, and even if you're not cycling, some people will say they still feel that monthly flow, even though they don't actually bleed. You can still do this with the moon cycle. So, day one is a first day that you bleed. You have one or two tablespoons of flaxseeds ground. Okay? It doesn't say they're ground. It has to be ground. You don't just throw that in there, and you're just going to poop it

out. It doesn't do anything. And same with pumpkin seeds. So, what I do is I make a bag, you get a Ziploc bag, and I grind flaxseeds every week—organic ground flaxseeds. I throw it in there, and then I grind up the pumpkin seeds. I throw it in there, and I'll just put Week One and Two on there, right? So, I remember what that's for. Throw it in the freezer every morning. If I'm on the go, I'll just take two tablespoons and literally just put it straight up in my mouth, put it in a smoothie, put it on your salad. I don't care how you eat it, just get it in there.

And from week fourteen or from ovulation until your next cycle, you do the sunflower seeds and the sesame seeds. Same thing. You grind it up, or you just chew on it, right? It's just easier when you grind it up because I find that I can add it to anything and it tastes really good.

So again, from day one to ovulation, you're doing two tablespoons. I prefer if you really have a hormonal issue, if you're super healthy and doing well, you don't need two tablespoons. One tablespoon is enough. And then from ovulation until your next menses, sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds.

Okay, just before I leave today. So, your goal today, and this week is to find the herbs and try to make yourself a nice cup of tea. Okay? Sounds simple. But sometimes it isn't because people freak out. Where do I find this? What do I do? I don't have an MD. Don't go there. Don't let your mind confuse you. Don't let your mind overwhelm you. Don't let your mind come up with a negative thought that's going to block you. You can go on Amazon, you can go to your health food stores, many—I mean, I've lived in Canada and the US and Australia. Many health food stores have loose herb teas. There's usually an herbalist there. You can ask them and say– Take a picture of the slide and say, "I have an estrogen issue. I have a thyroid issue. I have an adrenal issue. What are some safe herbs that I can take out of this that you guys have?" And then come home and make yourself a tea. I mean, it's just plants. The plants I've listed here do not cause harm, so have fun with it. Get excited about this. Don't let your mind become an obstacle and get in your way.

This week, I also wanted to show you because the most common question I get from my patients are, what do you recommend for this? What do I take for this? So, I'm such an MD at heart that I love to treat the root of the problem as less invasive as possible with herbs and food and lifestyle and meditation and all that first. But sometimes we're just suffering, and we just need help, and some of my patients will be like, "Dr. Demeri. I love that about you, but can you just give me a pill for this? I just don't have energy, and I need to not have my family fall apart." Or, "I need to sleep. And I really love that you're addressing the root cause, but just give me something. I don't want to have to take an Ambien or Xanax or something." So, absolutely we don't want to deny someone a supplement because I have issues with only jumping to supplements and treating someone linearly first.

So, I'm going to share with you some of the things that I have at my house. I have a massive dispensary here. I have people that come over, and I want to make sure if I'm not at the clinic, if someone's constipated, if someone has a rash, or if someone's having allergies, that for friends and family, that I can just grab something and give to them.

So, here we go. Nutritive tea we talked about. So, this is the herbal tea that is generally safe for anyone. It has a little bit of licorice in there. Actually no, this one doesn't have licorice. So, it's safe for anyone to use to help you. They have a nervine tea, which is for the nervous system. If you're feeling super anxious, they have a digestive tea. So, Wise Woman Herbals, there's lots of formulas and companies like this online also that make you decoctions themselves. So, you don't have to go out there and make it. But I always find it so individualized and fun if you get one specifically made for you because someone's taking your case, or from this course, you just take what I've told you to take.

Number one in the hierarchy, low adrenal function. So, once again, adrenal cortex, you want to take the adrenal fractionated cortex, one or two in the morning to help boost that cortisol. Sometimes, that usually is enough for everyone. They feel the boost, but sometimes in the afternoon, they might need one more, like one or two o'clock. So, you just want to make sure you're not taking too much. And then the other favorite product of mine that I use all the time in patients who I cannot get them to wind down at night, they know everything they have to do, but just life is very stressful, and they have high cortisol at night, which prevents them from having a good night's sleep, and they're waking up with this high cortisol. Their cortisol is too high on waking, which tells me during the night it's creeped up, right? So, this is called Cortisol Manager, and one of the most active ingredients in there that's been shown to help lower cortisol as far is phosphatidylserine and magnolia. So, this has Ashwagandha, L-theanine, which I mentioned, magnolia, and phosphatidylserine. So, this is very safe to use. It's not going to cause any issues. You either sleep or you don't. It's not going to make your insomnia worse than it already is.

And my other adrenal product that I love is for women who are have low blood pressure, so nineties over sixty, a hundred over seventy, they get lightheaded when they stand up really quickly. The adrenal low blood pressure, so L-BP, this is by Restorative Formulations. This has, as you can probably guess, a lot of licorice. So, licorice is the first ingredient, has a lot of it, and this is beautiful. Holy basil, eleuthero, Rhodiola, alfalfa. Alfalfa is high in iron, and then Hawthorn leaf. Hawthorn berries are very good for women. When we're so deficient, and we have a low blood pressure, then our heart has to work extra to beat the little bit of blood that we have to our extremities. So, women will get the heart palpitations, or the smallest thing will make their heartbeat fast. I love, love, love this one, works really well.

And then, the other adrenal product I showed you already, that is amazing for energy—I don't want everyone jumping on and going to buy this, but it

definitely helps you feel energized. Now, I had high cortisol, and I was just testing this out once, they brought a sample. And at the time, I hadn't tested my cortisol for over a year, so I didn't know that I had high cortisol, and I do want to say that I thought I was going to die because it just revved up my system, so I didn't need the boost of energy. I was tired because my nervous system was exhausted, right? And making too much cortisol. But most people love this. I think I was the anomaly, so I shared that with you. I think the niacin in here—there's twenty milligrams of niacin—you can get a niacin flush if you've ever heard anyone who is on cholesterol supplements. Niacin is something we use, and then some people get a niacin flush. It's normal, and it's healthy. There's nothing wrong with it, but I just didn't know that that was going to happen to me. And so, I literally looked like a lobster. I had the doctors coming in. I was panicking. I almost said to them, "Say goodbye to my kids." I thought I was going to die. Talk about overreaction. But yeah, I think if you don't know about that—again, I've never had a patient have that reaction, so I don't know why that happened to me, but I'm letting you know. Like, if you're already doing a lot in your life, don't just take that, make sure that you need it, and your cortisol is low.

Vitamin C, lots of good vitamin Cs out there. I usually say at least a gram a day to two. You don't want to take vitamin C all at once. It doesn't get absorbed. You absorb about fifteen-hundred milligrams an hour orally. Some people get IV vitamin C to help their immune system, they have a lot of viruses, and they're adrenally burned out. That can help. But not everyone has access to IV vitamin C. So, taking vitamin C daily—one of my professors in naturopathic medical school, he used to take twelve grams a day, so one every hour. He was like, "This is the most important vitamin that we do not get enough of from our soil being depleted." And then the other one would be magnesium. So, taking magnesium at night. Magnesium glycinate is one of my favorites. You can take that, a hundred and fifty milligrams at night to help you just get your magnesium that you need.

Vitamin C can help with constipation, so if you tend to be towards that, take more. We say to take to bowel tolerance, that means you'll know when you've taken too much is it'll give you loose stools. Some people take twelve a day, and they still don't get loose stools.

Some of you might want to test that out and see, but anytime you feel like you're getting sick or someone around you is sick, or you're getting that—I get that little scratchy throat, and that's how I know. I will load up on this. I give this as a Christmas stocking stuffer for all my family, and I've been using this for twelve years now by Genestra. There's lots of other good ones. Thorne has a good one, Metagenics has a good one, but I love that one. It has bioflavonoids and a gram of vitamin C and I barely get sick. So, I nip it right at the beginning and very helpful.

The other basic supplement that most often I prescribe are minerals. Trace minerals—Designs for Health has a good one—Complete Mineral Complex.

So many of us are mineral-deficient because our soil is deficient. Our soil does not have the minerals that it used to. So, even if you're eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, you're not getting everything you need. And I know this because I test people and I see. I've never had a patient with really good numbers ever. So, this has calcium, iodine, magnesium, zinc, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, potassium, boron, and vanadium, which everybody needs. So, three or four times a year, I'll go through a month of taking my minerals every night before bed. If you have issues with nausea or it upsets your stomach, it shouldn't, but if it does, then just take it with food. It's like food. It's in food so you can take it any time of the day. It doesn't have to be at night. The other one is a B-complex, so Active B-Complex by Integrative Therapeutics, or Metagenics has a good one. That's another favorite of mine.

So, when it says "active," it means for those patients who have MTHFR, I remember I said you want to take methylated folate, or you want to take methylcobalamin. You want to take the Bs that come in the form that the body uses so that the body doesn't have to do extra work to convert it to the form that it needs. I'm going to leave the other supplements that I have for next week, where we will get more into advanced treatments for certain thyroid conditions.

If you're hypothyroid, is there a supplement you should be taking? I really wanted to address the adrenals this week because that was number one on the hierarchy. So, most of us have an adrenal issue, so I want to make a tea or a decoction or perhaps one of these supplements this week. That is the goal, and until next week, I will see you guys. So glad to have you all here. Next week we're going to be talking about bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, whether it's needed, what does the science show, birth control pill, and what can men do for low testosterone, and what supplements do I prescribe for more advanced cases? All right, guys! Have a great week. See you next week. Bye-bye.