In this episode, we highlight past conversations with our experts about endocrine-disrupting chemicals and their impact on the body. Thanks for listening Uterinekind!
We bathe in chemicals, breathe in chemicals, drink chemicals, and even eat chemicals, many of them being endocrine-disrupting chemicals or other hormone disruptors. Why does this matter? EDCs are the cause of many hormonal imbalances and could be the root of the majority of our uterine problems. The abundance of these EDCs is such a constant, serious issue that we’re bringing you a special episode focused on many of our best moments discussing this very problem.
We revisit some highlight conversations with beloved experts to make sure you leave this episode equipped with all necessary EDCs info! Our featured clips include Episode #9: Hormone Imbalance and Giving Doctors Orders which is a great introduction to hormones and their imbalances. Following is Episode #26: Environmental Impacts on the Body with Dr. Shruthi Mahalingaiah, a great episode showcasing the importance of cleaning our environments. Next is Episode #11: How Clean Beauty Can Transform Your Life and Hormones with Jeannie Jarnot of Beauty Heroes a Hello Uterus favorite that deep dives into EDCs and the incredible changes your body can make when removing them from your life. Finally, we end with Episode #22: Exploring the Mysteries of PCOS with Dr. Marla Lujan, a wonderful episode detailing the world of PCOS.
Lastly, we end on a high note! We give thanks to everyone here.
Carol: There's what we don't know and there's what they don't want us to know. They are the companies that make the thousands of endocrine disrupting chemicals that we bathe in daily. I'm Carol Johnson, and this is Hello Uterus.
This is a special episode, a best of focused on endocrine disrupting chemicals and their impact on the female system. Out of all the topics I research, I come back to endocrine disrupting chemicals as the culprit responsible for our deteriorating health.
I may or may not be right. It's a personal opinion. We don't have the research that shows the causation, although we do have research that shows association. and in some cases we actually do have research that specifically indicates that endocrine disrupting chemicals have an impact on the development of the human system.
How do we know this? Because of an incredible person named Theo Colburn. Theo is the person who coined the phrase endocrine, disrupt. A trained pharmacist, Colburn had an interest in wildlife from an early age. After completing her master's degree in Science in 1981, she was awarded a PhD in Zoology in 1985, at the age of 58.
Let that sink in. like, if you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking, you know, my career's baked, I, I can't really have an impact on this. I, there's nothing I can do. Uhuh, like Theo is a prime example of somebody who extends the prime of her life and in her fifties and sixties and seventies up until she died.
I believe 2014 Theo made a major impact on our understanding of endocrine disrupting chemicals. She undertook research on contaminants in the Great Lakes on the Canadian US border, and it was this research that demonstrated how endocrine disrupting chemicals were entering the environment and altering the development of wildlife.
She co-authored the book, our Stolen Future, and in 2003, founded the Endocrine Disruption Exchange. It's known by the acronym TEDx. Don't let that confuse you and have you think of TEDx the presentations. Although I, she has done, TED Talks, I believe. This particular organization that she founded is a nonprofit that aims to reduce the production and use of hormone disrupting chemicals, and I believe that since her death, if you go to the website, they maintain all of the information there, but I don't believe that they're adding new information.
So as I was researching her, I came across an interview with the co-founder of Chem Trust, a UK non-profit focused on getting these toxic chemicals replaced with non-toxic alternatives, which is doable, . It's totally doable. And Elizabeth Salter Green, who is the co-founder, had this to say about,
theo Colburn figured out that chemicals could disrupt our development. She was working in the Great Lakes on the Canada US border in the 1980s and could see that the populations of top predators were decreasing. She worked out. With the help of colleagues that once these persistent chemicals were in the mother's bloodstream, they could be passed across to the child, be it an egg or a fetus developing in utero, she could see that these chemicals had the ability to act like hormones and that they were disrupting the offsprings development before they were even born.
They were causing fertility problems in mam. Raptors shells to be too thin, and that was why the population of top predators were decreasing. In 1991, she brought together 21 scientists from across the world to descr to discuss hormone disrupting chemicals in the environment. They adopted the wing spread statement, which became a landmark and a crucial reference ever.
So she's working on this research in the eighties, the time period. Many of you probably don't remember the eighties. I have a clear, perhaps slightly ptsd, remembrance of the eighties. And one of the shows that I remember being big in the eighties was Dallas, which was all about the oil barons and you know, how they lived this Kardashian style life.
They were I don't know, maybe like, I mean, a lot of stuff went on on that show, so I don't think anybody's like, wow, I wish I was like the people that were on the show of Dallas. But, they were certainly projected . As, as this wealthy ideal. and here, while we're watching that show, there's evidence being uncovered that the petrochemical.
Is literally poisoning us, poisoning us daily and then in 1991, we're in 2022. In 1991, she brings together 21 scientists. they get very clear about hormone disrupting chemicals in the environment and the impact that it's having on animals, reproductive and ongoing. So we've known for decades and while massive changes have happened abroad here in the usa, those in power prioritize the petrochemical industry, deregulation of industries, lobbyists, pushing corporate agendas, mainly founded and run by those who were not born with a uter.
And politicians cosing up to those corporations in order to maintain power. Right? So they prioritize all of that over health, over human and animal and planet health. And I am just done with that. it's, it's insanity. it's like finding out. That, the person that you're living with is poisoning you and you're just, basically, there's nothing that you can do about it.
it's why one of the. One of the segments that we're gonna air today takes us back to our interview with Jeanie Yau of Beauty Heroes, and it's why her mission has had such an impact on us at Uterine Kind, because she is unwilling to compromise her ethics. But meanwhile, I. Billions and billions and billions of dollars in record profits has a way of chipping away at one's ethics and morals, and that it makes it easier to be willfully ignorant,
and that to me is a crime. So one of our missions here is going to be to draw attention to endocrine disrupting chemicals, to create noise around the need to change the way we market these things and the way our government allows for the continued use of thousands of chemicals that have been banned in other countries, but not.
so it's everything from additives to food to the packaging that we interact with, to chemicals used to coat things, to, to organizations that are honest about the chemicals that they're using in their products to things like, the recent trend of vegan leather , vegan leather. I mean, okay, I guess you can say it's vegan, but vegan has this healthy connotation to it, right?
Vegan leather is an, is a petrochemical product and unless it's been studied and unless there's new changes to how it's produced, these vegan leather products, Are, they're essentially plastic. It's just more plastic. More plastic that is offgassing or whatever the, the proper scientific term is that in our spaces.
Like in your car or in your house, you know, at the gym. Gosh. I mean, carpets, fabrics, all of. It's all really problematic and I, wish that we didn't have to always point out these kinds of problems and that we could be celebrating successes, but right now, I guess we're the generations that are gonna need to be pointing out a lot of problems, and hopefully we will change the way our planet is treated and the beings on our planet are treat.
For future generations because this can't continue. This is a problem, , and it ties back to this idea of, just looking at the symptoms rather than the root causes. and of course we need to treat symptoms, but with all of the money spent on developing treatments for symptoms, perhaps we can be spending a lot of that.
on looking at the root causes. I found it interesting in one of the videos that I watched where Theo was, speaking about research that the amount of money that it costs to do some of these studies, it's astronomical, right? So I believe it's 26 million, give or take a million that's spent on studying endometriosis.
This was a 2021 figure. I. That might cover three studies. Just three studies. Not even necessarily complicated, probably not involving a lot of humans. it's very expensive. So if we don't demand equal money, Spent on understanding the root causes of these common conditions that are associated with hormone disruption in our bodies, that ultimately we believe in theory cause some of these chronic conditions if we don't get money.
To research that and we're just gonna be medicating symptoms and we're gonna, we're gonna exit this life not having lived a really full, high quality of life experience. And there's no excuse for that. You know, profits are not an excuse for giving up your right to have a healthy life.
So we need to really pay attention to the petrochemical industry. Pay attention to communities that are built around these industries, and the effect that being exposed to those chemicals that are now largely. Unregulated in terms of how much they're pumping out into the atmosphere that this is causing major, major health issues in our country.
and a lot of these people do not have access, easy access to healthcare and even if they did have easy access to healthcare, we can start to layer on the other issues that, that people can tend. Dismissing symptoms, misogyny, and racism in medical care. So it is a soup, right? it's a hellacious soup.
but I believe that the thing that can make us feel better instantly is to become informed, right? and to just recognize that you're not taking a deep dive down some rabbit hole. Where, you know it's gonna be depressing or it's gonna, it's gonna seem like, you can't have an impact on something.
But instead look at it as you taking some time to educate yourself on your body and its system, and how things in our environment can impact it. And then you can make. Good choices for yourself. And understanding the why I think helps to make these good choices. Like when people say, eat less, move more.
I'm like, yeah, doesn't work. It just doesn't work. But if you explain the why, and that means educating people about how their system operates and then they can become more intimately involved with the management of their system, much like they would if they ran a piece of equipment as part of their career.
Then we can improve slowly and surely over time and we can also demand that we not be exposed to these chemicals. So that is my endocrine disrupting chemical soap box, which will be a regular fixture. hopeful. Interesting, but definitely a regular fixture on this show. And we are gonna have a little, best of and feature some of our expert guests who talked about endocrine disrupting chemicals and, really give this issue the importance that it, deserves.
So, couple things before we head over there. listen to Theo Coburn's letter to the president. Which we will share on our Instagram channel at Uterine Kind. It is on YouTube. So if you wanna just go ahead and do a a search, go to YouTube and search theo Colburn, t h e o c o l b u r n, and then get ready to fall in love.
She's amazing. Listen to her words. This was recorded about nine years ago. And then take action in your own space, for you and your loved ones. Like, don't fall into the trap that if it's for sale, it must be safe. That's not true, sadly. I mean, we, had just, were seeing lawsuits being filed.
L'Oreal was hit with a lawsuit because of, the chemicals in their products causing cancer. And another organization was just hit with a lawsuit last week as well. These will continue to happen. But just remember, big companies with big law departments and, I mean, the petrochemical industry has had its most profitable year in the history of its existence.
Meanwhile, people are reducing what people believe they are reducing their reliance upon the petrochemical industry. But it's in everything. We have to really root it out, kind of focus on ending that industry for the sake of humankind and the planet. So, don't buy, skincare products off Amazon from companies you don't know.
Don't do it. I could make a skincare product in my bathroom without washing my hands, like using toilet. To mix it up and I could sell it on Amazon. There's no FDA regulation of these products, which is why I, am so in love with Jeannie Sarno's mission at Beauty Heroes because nothing gets by her, like nothing.
She will fall in love with a product. There'll be one tiny thing in there at a, like the smallest, non-measurable amount. And she will not accept that product in her. So we should be as discriminating, and there's ways to do it where it doesn't cost extra money. The big challenge, one of the big challenges that we have, which is something we really need to focus on, is to make sure that we make Whole Foods accessible to everyone.
So there are communities in this country that lack grocery stores. They lack hospitals, that we need to be able to make sure that these human beings who have just as much of a right as every other human being on the planet to health. That they have access to healthy foods and that they're not forced to eat highly processed foods that contain multiple endocrine disrupting chemicals.
We need to stop doing this. So I leave you with our clips from our episodes on endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
Episode 9: #9: Hormone Imbalance and Giving Doctors Orders
Carol: So, hormones, what are they? Well, essentially, they keep you alive and literally, they run around in your body using the bloodstream as transportation and turn the dials of organs and processes to keep you in an optimal state, state of well-being.
They're like the playground supervisor. They're the adult on duty, except sometimes they kind of lose their way. Well, really, it's not their fault. They would operate perfectly if they weren't inundated with a wide variety of things that disrupts the balance that they need to maintain in order to effectively manage your exquisite system.
Hormonal imbalance plays a role in some things. Are you ready for this list? Oh boy. PMs, P C O s, fibroids, endometriosis, Edo myosis, thickened endometrium, infertility, fibrocystic breast tissue, sleep issues, mood issues, exhaustion, digestive problems, pelvic pain, painful periods, heavy periods, irregular periods, missing periods, painful sex, weight gain, mood swings, low sex drive, insomnia, chronic fatigue, hair.
Are you still with me? Oh, so that makes it seem like the majority of chronic uterine conditions and their symptoms are caused by hormonal imbalances. And these symptoms, it's not just like you get one or two, they can come and clusters, you could have multiple symptoms, none of which are easy to deal with.
Because of disruption, our relationships suffer. Our career suffer. Hormonal imbalance is not separate from fibroids, PMs, heavy periods, and those things take us out of life and we fail to connect the dots, which is not your fault.
So it's fascinating that we've likely all dealt with some or many of the symptoms of hormonal imbalances. And what has our collective experience been? I don't have the exact data on. But I know that every single day I read multiple stories about being told to take birth control pills for essentially everything, or hormone replacement therapy to fix your heart issues or something.
And I guess I get it in the sense that hormones do run the show. Basically, so you would think like, well, maybe we just need to give a little bit more of this hormone or a little bit more of that hormone. Yeah, no, no. The first thing, after you unload those symptoms on your care team, if the first thing is we're gonna put you on birth control pills and see if that helps your symptoms, you get up and you leave, and I would recommend also asking for your copay back before you walk out of that office.
So let's say you're not even looking for birth control, but that's what we just tend to call them. But hormonal balancing meds take these, well, what if those exacerbate some other condition? now we're in this like cycle of hell where we can't get a grip on what's really going on because we're processing and metabolizing our hormones.
Other hormones were, it's like a free for all. So before we dive into estrogen and progesterone, we're gonna start with a few overall hormone facts.
Scientists have identified over 50 hormones in the body so far. The, so far is the really important part in that statement. Not that there's 50 hormones that they've identified, but that they're still identifying hormones. Hormones in the glands that create and release them into your bloodstream to go about their work are called or referenced as the endocrine system.
The endocrine system regulates all the biological processes. In your body for your entire life, including the development of the brain, the nervous system, the growth and functioning of the reproductive system, your metabolism, blood sugar levels, the female ovaries, male testes, and pituitary thyroid and adrenal glands.
Are major players in this endocrine system. Now, while the uterus doesn't secrete hormones, the ovaries and placenta do and hormones affect uterine processes. The hormones and the uterus are tight, so that means that they communicate, and when they're communicating well, things are going really well. When that communication is bad, it means that they're out of balance.
And that as a result, you won't be experiencing optimal wellness because again, the hormones regulate your entire being. Statistics show that 80% of uterine kind suffer from hormonal imbalance, 80%. 80%, so estrogen and progesterone. These two hormones, like our bodies in general, need balance in order to be effective and cause no harm.
So what's estrogen? Estrogen drives cells to grow and multiply like breast tissue cells, endometrial tissue cells, and even fat cells. In addition to regulating the menstrual cycle, estrogen affects the reproductive tract, the urinary tract, the heart and blood vessels, bones, skin, hair, mucus membranes, pelvic muscles, and the brain.
This hormone is in everybody's business. Remember when we talked about the long term effects of hysterectomies, heart issues, brain issues? Hmm. Connecting the dots while we await research is what we do. Progesterone causes cells to differentiate and mature. It helps regulate breast tissue growth. It helps regulate your menstrual cycle and it can help with weight loss.
So these two hormones kind of work hand in hand in balanced, create like homeostasis. Happy. Right? Happy. According to the National Library of Medicine, one primary action of both of these hormones is to regulate the development and function of the uterus. And that's why we're talking about them. So what happens if they're outta balance?
Estrogen dominance can affect you in a lot of ways. We talked about the symptoms at the start of the episode, but let's just revisit specific to estrogen heavy, painful periods, PMs, headaches, decreased sex drive, bloating, mood swings, fatigue, anxiety and depression, breast tenderness, endometriosis, fibroids, hormonal weight.
Low progesterone may cause irregular or absent menstrual cycles, mood changes, particularly anxiety and depression, hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, and headaches, or migraines in women who aren't pregnant. Symptoms of high progesterone are similar to PMs. And can include anxiety and agitation, breast swelling and tenderness, depression, fatigue and weight gain, but there's more slight dizziness, waking up, groggy or on edge, bloating, sense of physical instability, spinning sensation, discomfort, or pain in the legs, water retention, anxiety, or just feeling tense changes to libido.
A decreased sex drive. Holy crap. Like when you listen to all of that, that's what we talk about all the time. Like all of those symptoms, those symptoms are discussed by people who are trying to feel better in problem consultations with their physicians. Like I would say thousands of times a day is probably pretty accurate.
These are really, really difficult symptoms to deal with, and I wanna just underscore that because I know. That if you're dealing with them, you're likely minimizing them. Just after reading all those symptoms, I want us all to have a group hug so we can just kind of cry gently on everybody's shoulders and not have a single person tell us that we're hormonal cause we're crying.
Let's talk a little bit about estrogen dominance.
So I'm stating the obvious here, but what drives estrogen dominance? The most from our research para menopause, when progesterone declines and estrogen increases, and the body is meant to handle that right para menopause and menopause are normal cycles that those with a uterus go through. It doesn't mean that our experiences with them are.
It just means that the cycle is normal. So don't let anybody be like, oh, no, that's just the beauty of being a woman. No. Mm-hmm. , no, it's not . So Para Menopause definitely contributes to an estrogen-dominant situation. Birth control pills often insanely suggested. To people who are in para menopause, why do I say insanely suggested?
Because birth control pills are not recommended for women over 35. The older you are, the more complications you can experience from taking birth control pills and long-term usage of hormonal medications is not. Great for the body. Your diet can contribute to estrogen dominance. There are foods that elevate estrogen in your body.
Plastics and microplastics, which are in so many things that we put on our skin, which is the largest organ that we have. Which when the things that are absorbed through the skin can go directly into our bloodstream.
So avoiding plastics and microplastics and, and really all endocrine disrupting chemicals. Another thing that drives estrogen dominance.
Absolutely. So what drives progesterone dominance? A reduction in estrogen birth control meds, again, hormonal based medications. Pregnancy drives progesterone dominance as the progesterone is used by the uterus to maintain the pregnancy. These best friends who occasionally fall out need to be in balance.
The list of stuff that can go sideways is wild. Now. You know your body better than anyone, better than your doctor, better than your mother, better than your partner, and it's your experience with it that matters. Lay out all your symptoms without apology and demand a diagnosis. That is the best piece of guidance that we can give you is to not think that you're broken or that there's something wrong, or that you're doing something wrong.
And so if somebody sits down and listens to your tail of whoa and says it's normal, here's some birth control pills.
That's not a collaborative learning environment that's designed to treat the root cause of your symptoms.
Episode 26: #26: Environmental Impacts on the Body with Dr. Shruthi Mahalingaiah
Carol: So, so let's segue over to the environment hormone disrupting chemicals. And I guess just in general, you said that we sort of walked through the world and were bathed in numerous chemicals that our bodies couldn't have had the opportunity to evolve to metabolize in any healthy way, given.
Recent invention of these chemicals, relatively speaking, and our exposure to them. Can you talk to us a little bit about HDCs
Dr. Mahalingaiah,: I think historically, There has been a tendency to look at individual chemicals or an individual class of compounds, but unfortunately the truth is we are, we are bathed in mixtures and the field has moved towards mixtures, but there's just so many molecules out in the world.
It's almost impossible to isolate and then remove critical. Exposures or understand the kind of component effects of each one. I think if I were to think of big picture exposures, of course pollutants in the air, so air pollution, then there's the food supply and the water supply and understanding like what is actually cleaned when the water goes to the water treatment facility, and how does that, there are some places that have excellent water quality and others that don't. How do our pharmaceuticals that we metabolize and then excrete into our sewers?
Then get detoxified outside our bodies. And how much can not only our bodies and the earth tolerate of this kind of cycle and potentially accumulation of our chemical, Waste in the body. Sometimes there are chemicals that are called lipophilic or that are attracted to fat.
These molecules can actually get gobbled up or differentially get absorbed into our fatty tissue. And so in some ways, we are repositories of our exposome but then there are those shorter term, short term chemicals or water soluble chemicals, hydrophilic chemicals that kind of come into contact with the body and we excrete more readily, and there's a potential for kind of bioaccumulation. But those are things like the bisphenols and th. Preservatives, things like that.
Right. fragrances, there's a huge body of literature that shows that many of these chemicals, and again, there's thousands and thousands have hormone effects.
Carol: There were, um, two studies that come to mind when bringing together the idea of chemical exposure and disrupting our hormonal balance and medicating diseases with what we have to medicate them. Right, so I'm talking about birth control here. So one of the, one of the studies was in Denmark and it, it was over a million people where they followed people before they were put on hormonal birth control.
And then throughout the course of time through their public registry. I'm just gonna just quickly detail it. So anxiety and suicide ideation and depression, those were the three things that they really focused on there. And as I said, they evaluated over a million people over 10 years.
And according to the study among 15 to 19 year old females, those taking. Oral combination birth control pills were diagnosed with depression at a 70% higher rate than non-users, and progestin only birth control created even higher rates of depression and antidepressant use. Oral forms of the drug doubled the use of antidepressants among young women.
And IUDs nearly tripled the number of both depression diagnoses and antidepressant use among the studies younger participants. So that's one study, but, and then just briefly, I wanna mention the other, just a snippet of a study around P C O S and just mentioning the increase likelihood of stroke, and that these risks are exacerbated by oral contraceptive.
Stating that like, we don't know everything, right? We haven't f figured it all out so when you hear a data like that, how do we deal with this ? Because first of all, we're not antibi birth control pill at all. We are so pro access to birth control. We are just pro research and we're also pro proactive. You know?
Dr. Mahalingaiah,: Yeah, no, I hear all of those concerns, and I counsel patients every day
either it's like, yeah, I'll try anything you say, or, here's what I've been reading online from either the literature to what's on Reddit. And why they will or won't do what I say for what I recommend, and it's a conversation and it's an exploration of what makes sense for the individual. But when if I can anchor us in counseling patients on what it is that they might need, and I'll give you the P C O S example, one of the key components for my approach to managing women who have a new diagnosis of P C O S or who have an established.
And they kind of want to make sure they're, they're on their right pathway, is the concept of protecting the uterus in some individuals. And we see if we've studied a population of women with ovulation disorder, P C O S, who have certain risk factors, like a higher body mass index, maybe pre-diabetes. Poor physical activity and certain dietary factors like high fat, high sugar diet, or simple sugar diets that are mostly kind of refined carbs and fast foods.
The risk of endometrial hyperplasia or overgrowth and cancer is increased. That increased risk is gradual. It accumulates over time and is proportional to these risk factors I mentioned, as well as the number of times a woman has an ovulation or a menstruate. Ovulated that year. So for a true ovulation to happen, the body selects an egg.
It ovulates, there's progesterone that's made by the corpus labium and that progesterone matures the lining, and then that lining sheds due to a withdrawal from the decline in progesterone. That has to happen at least four times a year for the uterus to remain at that kind of less risk of endometrial hyperplasia and cancer.
because what's happening is with the estrogen that's in your body, the estrogen that's also made by our fatty tissue, it's giving signals to the uterine lining to grow when you get the signal to grow chronically.
it can lead to overgrowth in cancer. And that's some of the physiology and the pathways that underlie in abnormal growth response and can lead to cancer. And that's why we need to have that happen. So when I talk to patients who are really concerned about what they read from a variety of different sources, I talk about like what is it for them that I'm trying to do with the hormone?
And there's a lot of different strategies to use. There's, you mentioned the I U D or or other. You know, implantable, contraceptions. There's also very short courses of progesterone. Like if our goal is just to protect the uterus, can you please do a 10 day course? And we have our protocols and make sure they're safe.
Every couple of months, every two months. Some people, if they go for more than three months, they end up hemorrhaging. And I'm like, we can't have you go to the ER every three months because you're afraid of. There's a balance, so we negotiate around what they can do and how they can do it and what makes sense.
Some people might be on a different kind of ovulation disorder spectrum where they might have hypothalamic a where. , they're not ovulating because maybe there is perceived stress or physical stress or over exercising and under nutrition.
Mm-hmm. . And you know, we also have to assess their risk, which might not be the same in terms of the requirement to have a similar kind of ovulatory response for uterine health. But then there's also lower estrogens and we need estrogen for bone. And I, I really think it's important to understand medication risks in relation to the risk. If you don't get on a. . I, I completely agree. When we initiate a birth control pill, there's a lot of like this one or that. And I've only this kind of one and this group of people, but I do think that there's so many hormonal formulations specifically for the progesterone component, which as you mentioned, can drive a lot of mood and other things. I think it will help to be able. Identify who might benefit from like the innovative, even lower dose IUDs, and will that help what their goal is?
Because as you heard, for me, my goal of using hormones is very different than maybe a pure birth control standpoint. It's really to reduce the overall chronic risk and of. Health conditions that might happen from ovulation disorder.
Episode 11: #11: How Clean Beauty Can Transform Your Life and Hormones with Jeannie Jarnot of Beauty Heroes
Carol: Ingredient to avoid? Like one thing that is just a deal breaker for you?
Jeannie: Fragrance. Fragrance has so many things in it. Um, so yeah, and it's a real tricky one because if they're not defining what's in the fragrance EU brands that are registered in the eu, and if they're just using essential oils, they actually need to put parfum.
And fragrance on the ingredient list. But then they'll define it and they'll say, okay, it's got a little bit of cedar and chuli and you know, a little whatever, Jasmine. So that is fine. But if it's just fragrance and nothing full stop, which you is very common. I mean, if you were to go to any drugstore, fragrance is probably in almost, you know, 99% of the products.
There could be anything in that fragrance. They don't need to define it. It's like considered proprietary. There's usually a lot of ingredients that make up that fragrance. And I will say the one thing, if I could tell all of my girlfriends transition from conventional perfume to truly clean fragrance, Because there's just a lot of stuff in there.
The number two thing that I really don't love or that I think is really potentially the most harmful are chemical filters, UV filters. So I'm big on sunscreen. I think people should wear spf, but I like a mineral-based spf. Those chemical filters, there's many of them.
There's not as many in the US as there are in Europe. They are really engineered in a way that the layperson doesn't understand, but mineral SPFs are, are really good. There's really no reason for those UV filters in my opinion.
You know, oxybenzone is a really common one. Hoal, these are common ones in the us they're like glass, but they're like a chemical.
That somehow filters out UV rays and they've been engineered that way. Versus a mineral is literally a particle that just sits on top of the skin and it like blocks the UV ray from touching your skin. So it's just a physical block. It's like putting a rock. In front of your face, you know? And so if you, I imagine all these like little pieces of zinc oxide on your skin, they don't get absorbed.
You want non nano zinc oxide and it just stops UV rays and obviously wear a hat. My biggest tip for SPF is not a product, it's a hat. It's not an SPF product to wear.
Carol: Yeah, a hat. When you go and travel to places where they have coral reefs, you'll probably be told that you should not wear traditional or common sunscreen there because it kills the coral.
So if you just think about that for a second, the product that you're putting directly on your skin is going to go on your skin into the water, and it is somehow so problematic that even though you're not allowed to touch the coral, you can't rub up against it with your body and.
Offset that product, it kills coral reefs. That should be a heads up. And I know that there was like, about five years ago, there was a big sort of dust up around the sunscreen and um, I don't know if it was the FDA or, if it was FDA regulated, then well actually the sunscreen does have to go through the fda. ,
Jeannie: Yeah these chemicals do need to be approved by the fda. They are considered a drug, and actually any sunscreen that wants to be sold in the United States, um, needs to go through FDA approval. And that's one of the other interesting issues is that there are a lot of different UV filters that are being manufactured around the world, but if they're not approved by the fda, there's a small handful of them that are approved by the fda.
And I think there might be better filters out there on the market. But I think the fda, there's lobbies all around all of this, so they may not want different filters approved. . But I will just say in general, you know, those chemical filters, particularly in the United States, they make me nervous really?
And we're spraying them all on our kids and slathering our kids and just makes me really uncomfortable. I think there's so much more when it comes to ingredients that I would like to steer people away from, but those are like, if I could tell every woman that I know not to spray on, you know, conventional perfume, if you're using that, just transition because, It's aerosol, you're like missing it into the area.
You're inhaling it and there's beautiful products out there.
The thing is, it's really not a sacrifice. We don't need to give up anything. And they're gorgeous. They're so much better than what, than the conventional products to begin with, that it's just an upgrade.
Carol: When you brought up your experience with infertility, did your shift away from conventional products happen before that? Or what, how did, how did that factor in and was there any sort of, um, learning that you had that you could share with people listening who were dealing with chronic conditions just from your personal experience?
Jeannie: I Didn't start Beauty Heroes because I was diagnosed with a hormone disorder at all. I really started being interested ingredients from a professional standpoint. So I wasn't really thinking about how these products affected me personally. It was never even really on my radar.
I was using the products that I was selling in my spots, so I was using really clean products, but I wasn't super strict about it. And I wasn't like scared for my own health or really concerned. I wasn't like, oh, let me use these cleaner products. Maybe they'll make my hormonal acne go away, . I just, you know, genuinely thought, you know, this is what we should be doing in the world.
And it was bigger than me, for sure. And then I turned 33 and I wanted to get pregnant, and I tried to get pregnant, couldn't, and they diagnosed me with P C O. I said, oh yeah, you've had ac you know, this really terrible acne and weight gain and, you know, irregular periods. And they told me I had an 8% chance of ever getting pregnant, which I thought was harsh.
I really rejected that completely in my body. It didn't feel true to me.
Um, which you're so good. But yeah. You know, and it took me a long time. I went through a three year battle with infertility. That was just extremely depressing. It was towards the end, you know, I was vetting another, a brand and I was looking at ingredients and I was like, man, this, you know, these ingredients are hormone on disruptors.
And I was like, wait a second, we're talking about hormone disruptors over here. And I've been diagnosed with a hormone disorder and like, you know, I'm at this point where I'm going to the blood lab like several times a week to take my hormone levels. And I mean, I was really like, I was trying to, we were trying to pinpoint if I was ovulating and I was ovulating super into the hormones.
I was like, hormone disorder, hormone disrupt. Oh,
Carol: that's it. Right, exactly.
Jeannie: I was like, shit,
This is actually affecting me personally. And what I did that weekend was I took that little cheat sheet, that list that I had on my desk, and I went through everything in the house, from the laundry detergent to the cleaning supplies to the medicine cabinet, and threw away things that I didn't really even, never even thought about.
Like Vic's vapor rubs, you're rubbing that like on your chest. Right. And it's supposed to make you better. It's full of petroleum and all kinds of, you know, endocrine disruptors. My laundry detergent at the time, you know, which was, you know, I thought I was being clean, was like the Armen hammer, uh, baking soda, you know.
Carol: Wait a second. I thought that was clean. That's not clean
Jeannie: Yeah, so did I. You know, I mean, it's been a really long time since I've looked at any of these products, so who knows what's in there now or if that's even changed. I mean everything like my toothpaste, everything. I looked at all those ingredients and I was pretty, I was kind of like this rabid woman that couldn't have a baby.
I just threw everything away and you know, went to the store and found a few clean replacements for some things that I really needed, and lo and behold, it really was like eight or 10 weeks. And granted, I was doing a whole bunch of other holistic stuff that I got pregnant. I always wonder, I don't know this to be true at all, but I always wonder if it was that little key, that little piece that needed to be unlocked to get me to get pregnant.
That's kind of was my story. What happened after that was that my acne went away completely. I mean, to me, like I've never done anything to my skin because I'm so grateful that I just don't have this hormonal acne. Like I couldn't want any better skin than the skin I have now because it was so bad for so long.
They'll say, oh, Jeanie have beautiful skin. I haven't done a single thing to it except use, you know, really great products, get holistic facials regularly. You know, I think it feels healthy. I'm using really beautiful, clean things on my skin and it's good. I feel good about it. So yeah, that was pretty profound for me.
And now I have a healthy 13 year old. And by the way, you said earlier, my son, he's just started using deodorant and his skin care. Like it's important for boys to low sperm counts, acne hormone disruption. Super important for boys. They use a lot fewer products than girls. That's one good thing for boys.
Episode 22: #22: Exploring the Mysteries of PCOS with Dr. Marla Lujan
Carol: You said something interesting, you said ovaries are hormones. They're in organ, but they are hormonally activated, right?
Dr. Lujan: It’s the source of, it's the source of our, of our hormones, right? Not all of our hormones but you.
But they respond to hormones that are produced by the brain, and they in turn make hormones and those hormones that are produced by the ovary, in order for them to function, they have to interact with a receptor. They have to interact with those receptors on other organ systems. And essentially our body, like essentially those receptors for ovarian hormones are everywhere.
Are everywhere in the body. And so that's why that communication exists. Between the ovaries, the hormones, and the other parts of the body.
Carol: So hormones are in every conversation around chronic uterine conditions, and as non-clinician, we kind of get them, we know that they exist and we know that they're often weaponized.
You know, like when someone says like, why are you so hormonal? And, but I think we don't really understand, I guess, the relationship we need to have with our hormones, which, which will then get us into un talking about diet and exercise, which are kind of weaponized in a way. But let's start with the hormones.
Like what do we need to unders. Stand about hormones to have a better relationship with them, to not feel like we have to fight against them, but that we can work with them.
Dr. Lujan: Sure. So hormones are essentially messengers. They're communicators. They're a way in which an organ can tell another organ, act this way, or function this way.
The interesting thing about hormones is that we tend to think of them as existing within a narrow and specific. Right. And then once those hormones are low, or if they're too high, then we're in hormonal imbalance. And then inevitably right, that, uh, symptoms will arise and in, and in severe cases, disease will ensue.
And so our hormones, again are those communicators and, and we are built to maintain our hormones and in these relatively narrow and fixed ranges. And I think what we should know is that that's okay. That's the way the system works. And, and it's been helpful because understanding those ranges have helped us to develop diagnostics to, and so when an, an individual presents with different symptomology, right?
You could look in the blood and try to decipher whether or not there's a system, an an endocrine or a hormonal system that's out of balance. And so I think from a reproductive perspective, we're unique in that as it relates to ovarian function, our hormones fluctuate. That's really cool. And so at, in certain.
Parts of the menstrual cycle. If we use that as an example, some of those hormones are low and at other times of the reproductive cycle, other hormones are high. And one of the really cool things about those distinct fluctuations is that those distinct fluctuations are what we think confer health benefits over time.
And so having this dynamic changes in your hormones over time should confer health benefits. And so a good example of that would be something like estrogen and progesterone, which we know are very dynamic. They change over the menstrual cycle. They act at the level of the uterus to bring about changes in the endometrium or the lining of the uterus.
And if you shed that uterine lining, to some degree, it may provide health benefits. However, not everybody responds favorably to those fluctuations and hormones. And unfortunately we don't have a grasp as to why that continuum exists and, and we don't have good baseline predictors to sort of be able to.
Let individuals know, you know, what, you're at risk for having these types of responses to these different fluctuations.
Carol:That makes me go back to the word evolution. Do you have thoughts on the changes that are happening in our hormonal system, whether it's environmentally impacted or cuz it feels like, you know, trying to herd kittens all the way around.
When you deal with, with hormones, it feels like hurting kittens because when a patient goes in and presents with symptoms and a physician says, we're gonna start you on some hormonal medications, Even that is like a trial and error experience and it, so it feels like we're constantly, you know, trying to like capture butterflies or whatever the, whatever the metaphor is.
It's not like, oh, you have this, like for instance, acid reflux. You have acid reflux and this is the medication that's going to suppress the acid or what have you, like when it comes to hormones, it's just like, well, we'll give it a. That's sort of how it feels like.
Dr. Lujan:Yeah, and, and I think in part it's because of that, that narrow range, right?
Like we're supposed to keep our hormones within this narrow range. And then the question becomes, and I, I think I had also said something related to understanding that narrow range is helpful because it helps to infer diagnostics. The main issue with our diagnostics, and this is true till this day, is that those diagnostics or those normative ranges are based on very limited data and often time those normative ranges, right, were developed decades ago in homogenous populations, et cetera.
And then the additional layer or limitation is that it, it's one thing for there to be variation in levels of the norm, right? Norms exist on a spectrum, and so we're all individuals, we're gonna exist on that spectrum. The one thing that we don't have a good handle on and is incredibly. To quantify is this notion of the sensitivity.
Everybody's sensitivity to these hormones. As I mentioned, hormones need to interact with a receptor. Right? You know, what about the variability and how sensitive are these receptors or cross populations? That's a huge part of this trial and error notion that you mentioned, right? Because we're, we're trying to find a sweet spot for how this in specific individual may have a hor mono imbalance and then we're trying to correct that imbalance based on norms that may not be representative to that individual in a context where we don't understand the sensitivity of that individual to, to that specific hormone, right?
So while I think theoretically , it would make sense to a clinician to try to normalize, it's incredibly difficult and it is in fact trial and error. There's really no way around. Part at this current time, to the best of my knowledge, I, I don't know how one figures that out,
Carol: so that's wild. That levels up the complication of this beyond my ability to actually parse it.
I didn't even consider the fact that it's not just the hormones, it's the receptors too. And, and there could be some kind of a disruption at any point along that process. So you really are like, you're Nancy drew this thing, but you don't have a whole lot of reliable data that sort of helps you accelerate the, the solving of the mystery.
It, it's like we're in this time period where, where we're using old ways of addressing a condition because we don't yet have the new ways . In a way, I'm kind of really glad that you're pointing this out because sometimes I think we all feel bad that we feel like we're kind of ganging up on doctors. You know, we're like, diagnosis better, faster.
Dr. Lujan: it's difficult. It's difficult. We're, we're, we're individuals. Right? Yeah. And, and I think, you know, that's incredible. It's important. It's important for us to be individualized. And I think that's why this notion of precision medicine, personalized medicine, primarily precision medicine is so attractive.
Right? Because we haven't even touched on the genetics yet. Right. . You know, so we haven't even touched on the genetics and like you mentioned, environment. We all live in different environments, right? And so our exposures are going to be different, right? And so there's a long way to go, but at least we're starting to think about these things.
And I think it's difficult to be a clinician. I, I don't envy that challenge.
Carol: Today's ending on a high note. Shout out the team at Uterine Kind. Many of them live with chronic uterine conditions. They've pursued careers that enable them to make a difference, and we are grateful to have them on our team.
Rhea. Aria whose story you heard on this podcast and is a must listen if you need to study up on endometriosis. That's episode number 14. Monet, who also was kind enough to appear on the podcast. Angel and Mariel.
Who produce the podcast, your passion drives our mission improving uterine care for everyone and it's, it is so lovely to sort of wake up each day and see a person come into our orbit. Who found us in some way, or we found them and reached out to them and they get the mission. And together we know that we'll be able to produce content and we'll be able to make noise in Washington and within boardrooms of corporations.
That produce chemicals that poison us and we will, we will affect change. And we're also so close to the launch of you by Uterine Kind, the app that we're building to help you better monitor and measure your symptoms and improve your body literacy through really easy-to-digest content that's interesting.
And that's written by people who, who many of whom are living with chronic uterine conditions. So the high note is the team back at Uterine Kind and we couldn't do it without them. So thank you for being here. We'll be closing out the year on many high notes, including our upcoming launch and have so much to share about that.
So tune in next week and until then be well be cool, be kind.