The Endocrine System Decoded: Strategies For Hormonal Balance

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to Mastering The Meno(Pause) Transition 3.0. All new information, all new interviews, all the things to help you understand this wonderful time of your life.

Because around here, we celebrate menopause. We don't run or hide from it or wish it wasn't happening. We embrace the aging process. And that's what this is all about.

Helping you to get into that attitude, get into that mindset, and have the healthiest body you can to really step into and enjoy your sacred second act.

And so I have yet another I mean, all my all my people are amazing. But I've got another amazing, amazing, double amazing Dr. Michael Karlfeldt you may recognize him and as he too is a Summit host, and so he may be a familiar face to those of you that are DrTalks junkies and come to all our Summits and you're so super educated and Dr. Karlfeldt is just a man of many talents.

He's an inspiration to me. He runs a ginormous healing center in Boise, right? Boise, Idaho. And he is focused on cancer and chronic illness and women's health and all the things.

He's a naturopath. He's doing everything naturally, and he's got podcasts and books, and I don't know how he does it all. And still like, like he's 30.

So. So please tell us your superpower is in addition to educating us about the end incest. And welcome to the Summit. he's a dear friend and colleague, and I'm just so happy to be here with you.

Well, thank you so much. Dr. Stills. I mean, this it's always a pleasure. Is always so fun to get to hang out with you. And we we have had so many amazing talks and and it's so great to get to to have this opportunity on, on air to, talk about what, what people can do during this wonderful transition and, and some, you know, since I specialize so lot and integrate among ecology, you know, to kind of mitigate some risks that comes along with that.

so I'm excited to to chat a little bit about that today. Yeah. So we're going to really dive into, you know, the endocrine system and what you can do and what you need to be aware of because as we are aging, if we don't take stock and take care of ourselves, you know, we are more at risk for cancers and things of that nature.

And so we're going to kind of it's going to tie it all together today for you in a nice little bow. So let's just let's just dive in and let's just talk about, you know, what is happening in the endocrine system and what's going on as we're going through these hormonal changes.

Well, and it is as as we all know, the hormonal system, the and the Endocrine system is, is a very, you know, fine tuned machine. It's a it's a network that it's all interrelated.

All the hormonal systems, they they work together. You get the hypothalamus, pituitary, thyroid, adrenal, you get your pancreas, you get your ovaries, that all of that works in a beautiful, you know, interconnected way to make sure that the body stay healthy.

The immune system is up and running. Your heart is healthy, bone healthy muscle. All of that is is going on at the same time. And so as we're done aging, you know, we and we're dense.

The ovaries start to slow down a little bit. And this production then of of of its hormones, of estrogen and progesterone, then we, we need to then kind of shift the, the, the production shifts a little bit differently.

So now we're leaning more on our adrenals, you know, to take over some of that responsibility. So a lot of the adrenal hormones then are then like, you know, the ones that are produced are then are kind of matured in the, in the fatty tissue.

And, and becomes things like estrogen. And then also you have it will start to promote, the production of progesterone and, and so the adrenals are taking a heavier load as we transition.

And the adrenals before we it's, it's our stress handling glands. So it, it helps that to deal with stress. And it helps us to deal with inflammatory processes.

That helps us with energy. And so we've been leaning on them quite a bit through our lives. And now all of a sudden, you know, they are. Then it's an added, responsibility that's given to them during that change.

So if those adrenals are not really ready for that, if we have exhausted them, we've been pushing them and we haven't been eating right. We've been, you know, all of a sudden they're not ready for that additional thing.

And and there's a lot of things that are happening then and that are detrimental to the body. If we have not nurtured our, our adrenals and we haven't prepared them for this change.

And most of us have not nurtured our adrenals, and by the time we get to this point, you know, because, hey, life, right? We're you know, it's hard to get through life without having stress.

It's it's kind of part of the human condition. And it's it's really learning how to dance with your stress rather than just thinking you're going to avoid it.

So so let's talk about the adrenals. What are like your favorite things? How do you evaluate the adrenals? What are your favorite things? What can you offer to the to the listeners that they can do to give some TLC to those little tiny glands that are sitting on top of their kidneys?

Yeah, exactly. And that's Exactly. You mentioned that the sit on top of your kidneys. So and yeah. And Swedish they're called kind of assistant kidneys you know or you know by kidneys.

And obviously here with its adrenal and renal you know being kidneys as well. So it is important to understand that, you know, the health of the kidneys strongly relates also to the health of the adrenals and the health of the kidneys.

What do they do? Their filtering system. So the more toxins that we expose ourselves and the more the kidneys have to filter the the less quality water we're drinking.

Yeah, that's going to impact the kidneys in a in a negative way. And if we eat a lot of acidic junk food like, sugar and white flour and, and all these kind of very acidic foods, that's going to put a lot of stress on the kidneys as well.

And that will then translate into stress onto the adrenals as well. So so it's not just adrenals in itself. We gotta look at at both functions. And with the kidneys, you know, you have, you know, regular measurements like the GFR, you have created and you can check your bond level.

Yeah. So there are number of measurements that you can do at a regular CMP with your adrenals. The, the best. What I think and they're, they're different naturopaths or doctors I think you know maybe this test is better than that test.

I would suggest either a saliva test and you want to do saliva test so that you do it four times throughout the day, or something like the Dutch test, where you look at the metabolites you know, throughout the day is another way of looking at it.

But what you want to do is that you want to see the pattern throughout the day. You want to see, you know, what is that morning adrenal, you know, look like I'm able to respond to waking up.

Yeah, we were supposed to have that kind of adrenal surge. Yeah, we're ready to get going for the day. And are we able is our body ready ready able to handle that.

And then also how is the adrenals. Are they able to kind of maintain some kind of a curve throughout the day. Do they or do you just have that kind of initial sprint energy and then you just crash or you know, do you crash?

And then all of a sudden when you're about to fall asleep, then the adrenals start spinning because you're so exhausted and you've been trying to get to get some energy up.

And then when you're finally relaxing and you don't have any stressors, now all of a sudden when they don't have that resistance and they start spinning, and now you can't sleep and you're, you know, they're they're all elevated and you have elevated cortisol level.

So so I think that is those. Yeah. Either like a saliva test or doing a urinary kind of metabolites, this is much better than just kind of checking the blood.

and then again, checking throughout the day is really important. So you get the full picture of what's going on. you also have, you know, things that I know you do.

I do, you know, heart rate variability is a really good way to check as well, to see where our nervous system is at. You know, are we in that sympathetic mode all the time?

You know, fight or flight that's just kind of burning our systems down? Or are we able to go into parasympathetic state, you know, where we're able to relax, regenerate, detoxify, and restore, you know, are we able to go into that state?

And so there are a lot of then techniques and therapies that you can use in order to be able to facilitate the nourishment of your adrenals. And then also to really put your body more into that parasympathetic state.

And we can talk a little bit more about that, but it it's it's I've, I think just kind of seeing assessing where you're at is important even before going into menopause.

And obviously when you're moving through that change to really know what am I working with as I step into menopause? I wish that I wish that we did adrenal testing, you know, starting when we were 20.

And it was just something that we, we did every year so we could see and respond and, and AI to run the metabolites. And I run the saliva, and I feel like the saliva to me gives so much more information, like if I have the metabolite, it's I still want to saliva test.

If I have the saliva test, I don't necessarily right. Because just like you said, we want that, we want that rhythm. And then we can be specific because your adrenals can be ping pong and all over the place, and maybe you need them boosted in the morning and you need them quieted down in the afternoon.

And so it's, you know, it's such an easy test to do. It's not that expensive to check your saliva. It gives so much information. And if you did this like you're saying, even if we started at 30, then we could say, right, we could be preparing, oh, my adrenals needs some support because that is going to make the transition so much easier if your adrenals are on board.

But if your adrenals are shot, then it's just, you know, we're we're we're looking to the adrenal to take over and the adrenals are like, yeah, not happening.

I'm already you're already warned me out. I'm tired. I'm going to the beach. And peace. Peace out. Yeah, yeah. And I'm glad. I'm glad you mentioned the kidneys because I always find there's, like, certain organs, but, like, we all talk about the liver, and I know we're going to talk about the liver, and that's important.

But no one really ever talks about the kidneys, right? Kidneys are like, you know, they're not so sexy, I guess. So we don't really talk much about them, but they are I mean, they're so crucially important and so intimately related.

And the kidney is something you have a lot of the serotonin production. You have a lot of neurotransmitters that that's produced there. You know, obviously we have it in the brain, we have it in the gut, but a lot of it takes place in the kidneys as well.

Yeah. So if you see that the kidneys are faltering then sometimes it's really hard then to kind of get your neurotransmitters where they need to be. And so and neurotransmitter matters is obviously crucial for how we feel.

Yeah. How we deal with stress and how we view ourselves and how we relate to other people. so the kidneys play, play a huge role in all these different things, you know?

So, it's a it's a fascinating organ, obviously. And Chinese medicine plays a huge role as well. It's it's a main function. and you have that, that direct, you know, interconnected relationship between liver and kidneys, not just that the, you know, the the kidneys have to deal with whatever the liver is spewing out and detoxifying.

But they're they're both supporting each other. They're nourishing each other. So by supporting the kidneys, you're then also helping and nourishing the liver.

And like you're mentioning, the liver plays such a huge role. And regards to then the hormonal balance and and and so we'll we'll talk a little bit about that in a little bit.

But I was thinking in regards to the adrenals. Yeah. What, what can we do to support the adrenals. So we have hormones like cortisol is, is a common one that a lot of us are familiar with.

Yeah. When we we're under stress we produce cortisol. And we were an inflammatory state and we have kind of that initial immune system surge. But then the immune system gets exhausted after a while.

Like we're continually in that kind of elevated cortisol level. So we need to then figure out, you know, what can we do to balance that, that cortisol level.

And there are a lot of different tools that we can use. You know, we we have our breathing techniques, you know, just simple breathing, diaphragm breathing, becomes really, really important.

And just simple things like, you know, meditating, yoga, exercise in regards to exercise, some of us like to really kind of go, go, go and hit the gym really hard, and that can be good.

But you also have to then recognize that sometimes when you hit the gym too hard, it can then be exhausting to your adrenals and you will have the opposite effect as what you intended.

You know, you made them break down the body more then you're healing the body. You may gain more weight rather than losing weight when you hit the gym too hard.

So so knowing kind of what your your adrenal levels are, that can also determine kind of how much exercise and how much strenuous things that you're willing to do.

But then to bring in, let's say we do the saliva tests and we check and say, well, I see it at such time in the day, my my adrenal levels are low, you know, what can I do to bring it up?

You know, maybe bring in a little bit of like, pressure to help, to kind of boost up the, the adrenal function at that time. Or we see that it's very high, you know, towards the evening.

And we wanted low then maybe bring in something like, you know, like phosphate turtles, sarin or. Yeah, you know, kill or magnolia or something to kind of bring, bring down during that time.

So there are a lot of different tools that are available out there to help to kind of when, when we know where the adrenals are at to, to help, to kind of correct and, and support them so that they, they are ready.

You know, our hormonal system is is tip top shape one way we step into menopause? and what you're saying is so important why we say tests don't guess because licorice is fantastic, right?

It extends by half life of cortisol. So if you're low, it's going to be a beautiful thing. But if you didn't check and say your levels are high, now you're exacerbating the problem.

and so it is so important because I see a lot on, on, you know, social media that, you know, these are signs your cortisol is high and these are signs of cortisol is low.

And I'm like, I wish it was that easy because it's you know, I could see a patient and think, oh yeah, it sounds like you have those high cortisol signs.

But when you test, you're often surprised, like, oh, you're actually not high, you're low. And so it's really important to know and just, you know, easy tests to do and gives you so much information.

And I also just wanted to go, you know, I'm glad you brought up. I was about to say it. And of course, you said it because great minds think alike. Right.

But, you know, you're talking about the kidneys and, yeah, how important they are from traditional Chinese medicine. I mean, that's our life force are jing and fear is affects the kidneys and family and partnership, all these things that are associated with the kidneys, they open to the ears and like I think, you know, a great thing to do for your kidneys is to like, go make friends with your local acupuncturist, right.

And start getting acupuncture treatments and treat the energetic aspects of the kidneys, because that can really support you through menopause, too. I think acupuncture, we think of acupuncture for, oh, I have pain.

I'm going to go see my acupuncturist. But acupuncture as a support for your system is such a beautiful gift to give yourself as medicine. Not just as, a cute thing.

I have a headache, so I'm going to go get acupuncture. So thank you for making that up. Yeah. Yeah, I acupuncture is is amazing. It's just like opening up all the rivers or or it can look upon at us.

You know, when you run electricity, you know, through a machine, you want all the electricity, all the cables to work, you know, you don't want, you know, four out of five, you want all five to work.

And acupuncture just kind of opens up that flow of energy through all the different organs to just kind of feed them with life force. And that's, I mean, who doesn't want life or.

Not take some place. Okay, okay. All right. So let's, let's flow from the kidneys. Let's talk a little bit about the liver and its impact and how that kind of relates to the endocrine system.

Yeah. So so the liver and a lot of people don't realize we just think of the liver as something that detoxifies. But it and it does liver has, you know, it's an organ of a thousand functions.

So it does a bunch of different things. It's a hearty organ, can do a lot in hand, a lot of abuse doesn't mean that you should push it to its limit. It just means that it can handle a lot, but still be cognizant of its limitations.

And one of the things that it does amazingly is that it actually regulates the majority of your whole hormonal system. So if there is any kind of, miscommunication through the hormonal cascade, then focusing on the liver and addressing what it does and how it's able to regulate hormones becomes so, so important.

And so obviously you have groups like milk thistle and dandelion and you have beautiful herbs that really supports the liver function, also support the kidney function.

and then also bringing in, you know, we I'm sure a lot of people are aware of the cruciferous vegetables that I see and, sulforaphane and, you know, all these, these different, sexy names that we hear out there.

But it's essentially it is just to kind of bring good live food, and nutrient dense food with lots of fiber. And what the fiber does is that as the liver then detoxifies, you know, the unwanted hormones that we don't want, that the fiber locks onto that and helps to tear that out of the system because hormones this you know, that the body is made in such a way.

So it's very energy conserving. It doesn't want to keep remaking hormones. so but at the same time, we as individuals, we are exposed to toxic hormones, like in plastic, heavy metals, other chemicals.

All of these are our hormonal substances that, you know, we want to get rid of. But the body is not used to having these heavy metals and chemicals around itself.

So it's things that any time it sees a hormonal substance, it want to recycle that and reuse it. so we need to then bring in fiber in order to be able to kind of lock on to these hormones that we don't want, that the liver is detoxified and put it in the intestinal tract so we can kind of brush those out and get rid of those, because those hormones, you know, the toxic hormones, they stimulate things like the different cancers, obviously breast, endometrium, ovarian, but even other ones that we may not even consider, like colon cancer, for instance, you know, it is a very strong endocrine type of connection.

so and pancreatic as well. Yeah. So things that we, we don't think of that by cleaning out unwanted hormone and supporting liver function, we then reduce our risk and these different areas and obviously supporting the adrenals, liver, kidneys, you know that that becomes key when, when we want to achieve our goal to feel healthy and vital and not have to deal with this concern of, of cancer.

As you step into this next phase of life. so I guess my kind of putting a bone in my last question would be, you know, what would you say to the women listening?

Or if there's any men who are listening with their wives because happy wife, happy life. what would you say? Like are things that they should, you know, because a lot of women, men as they age, especially if there's a family history, they start to worry, right?

Oh, my mother got cancer, diagnosed when she was 62. And I'm going to be 62. And we start, you know, our mind takes over. So what would you say are like the biggest risk factors and what can they do to alleviate those risk factors.

Yeah. So the things that you really want to know we talked about the adrenals. Yeah. So we really want to make sure that they stay healthy. you know the liver is sometimes a little bit harder to assess because the numbers look good until they just don't look good, you know?

So, so it's harder sometimes to assess the liver function. It is good to kind of do the there's a number of labs out there we can check, you know, whatever, chemical load, heavy metal load, you know, glyphosate load and start to clean up the terrain in the body.

and that is good to do as a preventative measure. because it is it's so much harder to deal with things once you have the diagnosis. So to kind of take that step, I mean, we all we are the majority of us have insurance.

You know, most of us, we have a seatbelt on us, we're driving a car. So we do all these preventative measures in those areas. So we should then bring that type of habit into, you know, when we talk about cancer as well, to then check and see, you know, what are my levels, what what is my terrain in my body?

What am I dealing with? What of my risk factors? and I think that that is much more important than just thinking. Do I have a Brockett gene or. Yeah, one one of those, because we know that genetically, you know, it's it's about 5% if that of a driver.

The rest are all these other lifestyle factors. Our exposure is that we are, that, that we're dealing with. And then their labs where we can check things like circulating tumor cells, you know, there are number ones out there that are really good.

You know, you have signatera as a good one. You have guitars. Another one that's really good. So there are great labs out there that where we can check and see, you know, is that is this something that that's there and that I should be concerned about?

and, yeah. So these I would say kind of just making sure that you assess your, your level where you're at. And then obviously in regards to we talked about how the adrenal hormones, they kind of mature and fatty tissue to become estrogen.

So if you have a lot of fatty tissue, if you're overweight then you are then going to bombard your body with more, more estrogen, you know, which is, if excess of it is very stimulating and can kind of support that growth.

and then also we have, you know, blood sugar issues becomes a big, big deal because sugar, feeds cancer and sugar in itself is inflammatory. so we want to kind of check and see what is my A1.

See, I want to keep it at least between 4.8 and 5.2. And then we want to check and see what's my, am I insulin resistant? So do you check your fasting insulin?

check your homocysteine. You know, if your homocysteine is elevated, then that in itself can then also drive you, cancer. So, there are a lot of different factors that would be good to look at.

and I'd not describe a lot of them in my book, A Better Way to Treat cancer. And that's a lot of, lot of labs that I talk about in there, and a lot of habits that you can develop in order to be able to reduce the risk for cancer.

And obviously, if you have the diagnosis, then, you know, steps that you can do as well to, to kind of address that more effectively. a lot of important details in there.

I just want to go back and highlight what you said about toxicity, because I find that as well, when a patient comes in who has had a cancer diagnosis, the first thing I'm doing is like, well, we got to lighten your toxic load.

And so what you said is so important. I hope everyone really heard them. If you didn't, I'm going to say it again, that prevention, that looking at your toxic load, not waiting till the diagnosis but actively looking and seeing and taking steps to lighten your toxic load.

We know that toxins are driving so many cancers and so don't wait. Do it now. Like like you were saying, we wear our seatbelt. You know, you go to the dentist to get your cleaning.

So what are you doing about your toxic load? Because the the truth is we all have one, right? the earth has become a, you know, a place of a lot of toxicity, and you can't escape it.

So what is your strategy? And that's on a, you know, a daily, a weekly and monthly, a quarterly basis. What are you doing? And do you even know what kind of are you carrying plastics.

Are you carrying metals? Are you carrying, like you said, glyphosate. There's so many toxins out there. And this is not to be like a Debbie Downer. This is to like empower you and say, find out and see because you might you know, I run these tests and sometimes I'm surprised and it's like, oh, look at you.

You were like a really efficient detoxify. Or we just got to work on this one thing. And so knowledge is power. And getting that knowledge before the diagnosis, like Doctor Michael said, is key.

So prevention prevention, prevention right. This is a wonderful time to pause. And maybe you never looked at your toxic levels before. So when we're pausing when we're going through this transition, when we're looking at our hormones, let's also look at our toxic levels, because that is going to be such a gift to yourself in preventing a cancer diagnosis or a neurodegenerative diagnosis or not.

I immune diagnosis or you know, you pick your pick your diagnosis. And so tell us I have I have one of your books coming to me so but for everyone else it's not as lucky as I am.

How do they get a copy of your book? What is the name? Do they just go to Amazon? How do they find it? Yeah, it is on Amazon. So the best way is just to go there.

a better way to treat cancer. I started just thinking that is going to be a 200 pager and a smaller format. And then all of a sudden I realized that that was an impossibility.

So ended up being 500 plus pages in a larger format, so I could still fit in the content that I wanted. So it's it's a great manual, looking at the different aspects that you need to consider, in preventative medicine and also in regards to when you're in active treatment or if you are at that stage, no evidence of disease.

and I want to kind of highlight a little bit more regards to what you say. It is important that we don't, only focus on on symptom medicine, you know, where we wait until we get the symptoms and then we bring in medicine.

You know, the key is to do preventative medicine, like your measure. You know that you mentioned that we we bring that in before symptoms before because symptoms means that the body has had enough.

It can't compensate anymore. It's tired and it's gone down way down the road. And a lot of times when we look in regular blood test, yeah, it doesn't show until it has gone way down, you know.

So talk about the liver enzymes. You know they are fine, fine, fine until the liver just can't do it anymore. Same with blood sugar. It's fine fine, fine until it can.

So just looking at blood test and you know your your primary doctor says oh everything looks fine. You're healthy. It's not enough. You know, you get to do these other type of tests.

You know that. You know, Dr. Sharon does I do and a lot of it is outlined in my book and Yeah. Yeah, I see that. I just saw that I just had a patient a few hours ago whose bloodwork looked, you know, fine.

But her thermography scan, her liver was blocked. Her gallbladder was paradoxical. Her immune system was blocked, her pancreas was blocked. And so no signs nothing in the bloodwork.

But we know we have work to do. And that will ultimately prevent a serious chronic disease, such as cancer from developing. So go get his book because this man does nothing small.

I am you know, I have my 7000 square foot clinic opening early in 2025. And then, you know, of course, you have a you had a 7000 square foot clinic, but now you have how big is it, 40,000 or how many square feet?

I'm not sure that that that's, that's the next step. Right now I'm might 17,000 or so. But I always get these. This is the man I look up to. I go, okay, 7000.

I mean, I think that's overwhelming and stressful. I just call him and talk to him about his, almost triple the size. So he's up to great things. Be sure to check him out, read his book.

website. When? Where else can they learn more about it? So, there's a huge amount of information on my website, thekarlfeldtcenter.com. and obviously you can give us a call as well, you know, (208) 338-8902 but on thekarlfeldtcenter.com there's yeah.

Resources. We got ebooks. You know I have two podcasts that I run, one on integrative cancer, one on integrative Lyme solutions. Have a lot of old radio shows that I've done probably about 100 plus of them, where I interview leaders, you know, in the world, on different subjects.

also, I have a couple of TV shows that I've done in the past, you know, so you be able to kind of, go in there and find those as well, you know, interviewed like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld.

yeah, that's true for you. And, so it's a lot of resources there that you can go and find. Yeah. Like I said, a wealth of information and doesn't do anything half assed.

So, of course, your book is 500 pages, so I just I adore you, and I'm so blessed to know you and so grateful for all the amazing work you're doing and all the people you are helping.

You are certainly a gift to our society. So thank you for just for being you and for being in my life and for being on the summit and for sharing your wisdom and helping my audience to, to learn and grow and get educated.

So thank you. Thank you for sharing it. It's always a pleasure and always such a joy to be in your presence. And, and ditto to all of that. Yeah. You're, you're you're an amazing individual and you truly live and walk your talk.

So, so it's always an honor. Thank you. you are so welcome. Thank you for your kind words. And thank you, everyone, for being here. So, you know, there's a there's a lot we talked about actually.

And you know, I'll just say prevention is key. But go back, take notes. Lots of good stuff in here. Get your adrenals checked. Get your toxins. Check. Love your liver. Eat your fiber.

And I will see you all soon in the next talk. So bye.