– Welcome to the “Dr. Gundry Podcast,” where Dr. Steven Gundry shares his groundbreaking research from over 25 years of treating patients with diet and lifestyle changes alone. Dr. Gundry and other wellness experts offer inspiring stories, the latest scientific advancements, and practical tips to empower you to take control of your health and live a long, happy life.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Can you briefly explain how your own hormone hell became the catalyst for your professional endeavors?
Dr. Taz Bhatia – Definitely. I mean, this was not a specialty or an area of medicine that I planned on. It was very much an accident. I actually trained in pediatrics and emergency medicine and was working in the emergency rooms, but got sick, quite honestly, and went on a journey trying to find answers that was kind of hopeless. I went from doctor to doctor and was told everything from I was stressed, I was anxious, to maybe I wasn’t sleeping, or, you know, whatever it was. But meanwhile, I was just getting sicker, looking like a different version of myself, acting very differently as well. And finally, you know, when I couldn’t get answers, I was put on some different medications that had really devastating side effects. I sort of resolved that I had to figure this out on my own. And so for a lot of digging and studying and looking at Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine and nutrition and looking at the world of holistic medicine and finally doing the Integrative Medicine Fellowship with Dr. Andy Weil out in Arizona, I fixed myself. Long story short, was I had a hormone issue, I have PCOS, and I was having a little bit of a thyroid imbalance at the time as well. And the two together were triggering almost like an autoimmune type syndrome in my body where I was losing hair, had acne, I had a lot of joint pain and joint swelling, and just really was becoming a very different version of myself. So, you know, as I fixed myself, I realized that a lot of women go through this journey and have trouble getting answers. And it really evolved into my practices, which are here in the Atlanta area, and then we have telehealth as well, CentreSpring MD. And the story, even 20 years later, is not really that different. People are still not getting answers, hormones are still not getting checked. And the root of many common symptoms for women, and I focused on women, but I would even venture to say it’s partially true for men too, is hormones often, but we don’t check ’em, we think it’s just for OB-GYN or just for the endocrinologist, but they’re so linked to so many other aspects of health. So I’m really desperate to get that information out there.
Dr. Steven Gundry – How did you figure out that this was, in fact, the problem number one, and-
Dr. Taz Bhatia – Well. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the way I figured it out was initially through Chinese medicine. And when the Chinese medicine physicians took a look at me, they were like, “Oh,” like their words were hilarious. They were like, “Very bad, very bad qi,” you know, and I’m like, “What are you talking about? What does that mean?” You know, and at the time, you gotta remember, I’m like 28 years old. And so they started to break it down for me. They’re like, “Oh, well the liver’s really boggy, so probably your hormones are not doing what they’re supposed to do.” So they have their own way of explaining, right, and their own terminology, but basically what I gleaned out of it was, “Okay, they’re saying something’s wrong with my hormones. I need to get these numbers checked.” So that’s the first time after their recommendation that I actually went and got hormone levels checked to see what was going on. And sure enough, a lot of what they were alluding to played out in the numbers. I had high testosterone, high DHT, had a very low TSH, which is one of the ways we look at thyroid function. So they helped me initially put some of these pieces together, for sure.
Dr. Steven Gundry – And that really, because you were able to do this, really morphed your practice from pediatrics and emergency medicine into this hormonal practice, particularly with females.
Dr. Taz Bhatia – Yeah, I mean, it was definitely, and I always call it the most unexpected journey. I opened a practice. I intended to focus the practice on women and children. Initially, it was gonna be a consult practice. It was not gonna be something that, you know, was gonna be real busy or real big or anything along those lines. But what happened was we got slammed, and the next thing I knew is that people wanted me to see their brother or their dad, everybody. So today, you know, 15 years later, this is our 15 year anniversary coming up in 2024 of running these clinics at CentreSpring MD, we have over 12 providers, we have two locations, we have a telehealth platform, but it is a full service family practice is what we’re essentially running today. And we see everyone. And a majority have been over the years women. So probably about 30, 40,000 women have come through, and many of them, you know, I would say probably 60% of them have some sort of hormone story, and again, like a hormone story that was hidden, you know, and very connected to other symptoms and other diagnosis that they have. So it’s been an absolute joy to see them get better and to be able to provide them with information. But we know that, first of all, not everyone can walk through our doors, secondly, people aren’t getting the answers, you know? And everywhere I go and everywhere I speak, you know, it’s like you’ve got these camps and everyone’s kind of very locked in their opinion, but no one’s integrating the information, putting it together, and really helping people dive through it and find solutions that work.
Dr. Steven Gundry – I’ve talked about this before. Why do you think that mainstream practicing physicians, for lack of a better word, don’t listen to women?
Dr. Taz Bhatia – I think that it’s just the history of medicine, to be honest. I think medicine was founded in a very patriarchal system. We only thought about women’s health when it came to getting pregnant, going into puberty, or menopause. We didn’t really think about it. Or if you had a disease, right? There wasn’t, you know, it was very much not set in the fact that women can be vital and productive and even better on a day-to-day basis if they had something like their hormones balanced. And especially for women going into perimenopause and menopause, the idea there is that, you know, for many women while they’re done, they can’t get pregnant, right? So it’s a little bit of like, you know, what value is there after that. So I think that’s changing, as women have entered the workforce, as they’ve entered medicine, as they’ve demanded answers, they want to have a different quality of life than their parents or their grandmothers. And so I think medicine has to change. And so, I don’t know… And I would say, you know, I would push back a little bit, it’s not just male doctors that don’t listen to women, it’s even female doctors that don’t listen to women and get super stuck in like, “Well, you know, this is all we can do.” You know, and it’s very unfortunate because especially women, we’re very complicated. We’re not linear, you know, we’re not linear creatures. You know, everything’s very interconnected, intertwined, and we need a partner in helping us understand how to connect the dots and how to put our health together.
Dr. Steven Gundry – All right, that’s a good segue into your new book, “The Hormone Shift.”
Dr. Taz Bhatia – Yes. Here it is.
Dr. Steven Gundry – And there it is. So you talk about five key hormonal shifts in your new book. Can you elaborate on that?
Dr. Taz Bhatia – You know, it’s been shocking a little bit to me, I guess I do this day in and day out, but it’s been shocking to me how much that is what everybody is so fascinated by. Now, here’s the deal. You know, again, same idea. We don’t talk about hormones until we’re talking about these major life changes like pregnancy or puberty or menopause, but in actuality, your hormone chemistry is being set throughout your life. So when you are entering puberty, that is the first hormone shift. And you can either shift well or you can shift down. And what we see there is a lot of our young girls having more and more issues today with the nature of their cycles, how heavy they are, how frequent they are, they’re not getting them at all. And all of those are important signs and signals because it’s affecting their mental health, it’s affecting so many other aspects of their overall health. So we need to understand what’s going on there, because whatever pattern is being established there, whether it is their gut chemistry is off, their nutrients are not where they need to be, they’re not sleeping, they’ve got inflammation, whatever it is, it carries into the second hormone shift, which is in your early 20s. And most of us as women, we’re hustling around that time, right? We’re up all night, we’re working our butts off, we are eating really crappy, we’re out a lot, maybe drinking a little bit too much. But that is sort of like this high cortisol phase, right? So a lot of stress. And that’s where young women start to experience incredible anxiety. They have a lot of trouble with sleep. They start to have issues, more physical issues too. They’re starting to notice, you know, changes in their skin or hair, maybe they’re starting to notice the earliest changes in weight. There’s so many subtle changes that are happening there. So I want these young women to be aware of it. And if you’re gonna burn the candle at both ends, you should have a plan of replenishing and repleting yourself so that someone doesn’t wag their finger at you five or six years later and say very bad energy, very bad qi, right? And then you move from that shift into the third shift, which is where we’re settling down a bit, we’re in our late 20s, but again, you know, maybe we’re thinking about getting pregnant. Now, that is becoming challenging because we’re coming off of high cortisol, which has caused a decline now for a lot of women in their thyroid levels and their progesterone levels. So things like getting pregnant or even just feeling good are now becoming a challenge. In this third shift, this is where I often see autoimmune diseases first express themselves, you know. So we’ve got all this going on, three shifts, no one’s checked, no one’s asking questions, and those are the women that now go into perimenopause and menopause, your fourth and fifth shifts, and, you know, have a lot of discomfort and literally feel like they’re turning into different versions of themselves. So then we’re walking into the fourth and fifth shift completely unaware, unprepared, and then those shifts become very difficult and hard to experience. So I really want women to know, you know, how to prepare for a shift, how to take care of their bodies, and how so many different aspects play into their hormone health. It’s not just about the hormone, it’s very much about all these other aspects of their health that are influencing, you know, what’s happening and how they’re shifting, so that, you know, we can really be prepared for the shifts and we can shift up and not shift down.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Cool. You know, we’re living in a world with exposure to what I call xenobiotics, like phthalates, like molds, like glyphosate, in the food we eat, in the air we breathe, in the scented candles in our house. And what strategies do you recommend for individuals to mitigate against these influences, which clearly influence our hormones?
Dr. Taz Bhatia – Yes, and I’m so glad you brought that up, because what all of those things are doing is really crashing liver health, right? The liver is how we detox hormones, how we clean them out, and they’re really influencing what’s happening with our hormone profiles. I always tell patients, or even some of my own viewers, you know, the place to start is to start with food, because food influences the nutrients we need for hormones and food influences how well your digestive system is going to work. And one of the things we catch over and over again in the exam room is that when people are eating, you know, a relatively unhealthy diet or a lot of inflammatory foods, or they are having a lot of gut symptoms, and sometimes they’re having symptoms they’re not aware of, sure enough, they’re having a hormone issue as well. We know from science, for example, that the microbiome, all those gut bacteria are responsible for metabolizing something like estrogen. There’s a whole estrobolome, right, just responsible for estrogen. You can’t have a healthy thyroid if you don’t have a healthy gut because we need T4 to convert to T3 and all these other things. So, you know, starting with food is really the biggest win in sort of the gut-liver conversation. So, you know, easy things, like eliminate processed foods, get rid of the dyes, eliminate packaged foods, really watch alcohol. Alcohol, at the end of the day, everyone pushes back on this, but alcohol is sugar, it is a toxin, it wears the liver down, so really watching your consumption of that and keeping that ideally under about two drinks a week, watching sugar, that’s a starting point. That in itself will help the body to function more efficiently. And then after that, I usually talk to people about graduating. You know, once you accomplish that, then let’s do some more. Let’s bring in those healthy fats. Let’s bring in like really dense, nutrient-dense foods, brightly pigmented fruits and vegetables. Let’s make sure you’re getting protein. Because if you’re not getting enough protein, you’re gonna have a lot of blood sugar instability. And then starting to look at your personal food intolerances, things that your body may be having trouble digesting. So to me, that’s like ground zero. What I find in practice is that many women today have something called fat malabsorption where they’re not breaking fat down effectively, or they’re fat phobic, where they’re just not eating the healthy fats. But we’ve gotta remember that fat at the end of the day is the hormone builder. So if you don’t have enough, you know, cholesterol on board, you’re gonna be in a depletion state, you know, no matter how old you are. So I think it’s really important to look at food and to look at gut health and really start those. And that’s what I did, right? Like a lot of my journey personally was, “Hey, you know, all this stuff is crashing around me hormonally.” But the root at the end of the day was the fact that I had a gluten intolerance. So I had to remove gluten from my diet, get in a ton of healthy fat. I was a child of the ’80s, so, you know, Diet Coke and popcorn were, quote, unquote, healthy, right, ’cause they were fat free, but I was able to turn things around just personally, paying attention to the role of fat, getting rid of inflammatory foods, and really optimizing my nutrients. So to me, that is starting point. And that’s exactly how a lot of our visits run in practice as well.
Dr. Steven Gundry – So when you make these suggestions, are you tracking people’s hormone levels, are you tracking their mood levels, are you tracking their autoimmune markers, or all of the above? How do you guide them at that point?
Dr. Taz Bhatia – So in the book, there’s a hormone symptom checklist, and that is one way to just be like, “Hey, I’m not feeling great, you know. Is this in any way connected to my hormones?” So that’s an easy guide to use for sure. We definitely use it in practice. This is a part of the history taking that we’ll do. But when it comes to labs, to answer your question, yes, we’re checking it all. We’re looking at hormone levels, we’re looking at inflammation levels, we’re looking at key gut markers. Now, we may not do that every single visit, right? We’ll definitely do it the first time. We definitely do it every six months. But in between that time, we’re, like, personalizing it really to the patient. For everyone out there, though, they should know some of those numbers, right? You should know where your hormone levels are. You should know what your normal is because sometimes the conventional ranges are, quote, unquote, normal, but they’re not right for you, you know? And inflammation, I know you are too, but I’m a huge believer that we should be tracking that. You know, why wait and get in trouble, you know, and wait for a disease? Know when your numbers start to shift in the wrong direction. That way you can be more proactive.
Dr. Steven Gundry – So hormone books become quite popular. Why is “The Hormone Shift” different from other menopause and hormone health books? Tell us about the 30-Day Reset.
Dr. Taz Bhatia – I would love to. So first of all, keep in mind that the hormone shift is very much a comprehensive approach to balancing hormones. Meaning we’re taking the best of Eastern medicine, Western medicine, merging it together, talking about everything from food and gut and liver, even your emotions and how that plays into it, and then really sort of curating this program to reset hormones before you even talk about hormone replacement therapy. The 30-Day Reset does a couple of different things. I think you would actually love it. The first week is all about building qi or building energy, kind of back to that idea that many women today are depleted and walking around fatigued and nutrient deficient and highly inflamed. So the first week is about let’s just build your energy before we ask you to do too much. So we’re putting in foods and nutrients to do that. The second week goes into kind of cleanup. We wanna get rid of the inflammatory foods, we wanna clean up the gut, we want it to be functioning well, we wanna support the liver. And then by the third week of the 30-Day Reset, we’re really trying to find your dominant hormone pattern without lab work. So based on a series of questions, we’re trying to understand, like are you insulin dominant? Do you have androgens? Are you low progesterone? Are you storing estrogen? And then we sort of split the plan out in three different directions depending on your hormone type. And from there, you know, you have a series of things you need to do. So we’ve really tried to customize it. And then the very last week brings in this idea of the mind-body-spirit connection, and where you stand emotionally on the emotional frequency scale, right? They’re very negative emotions and then they’re very positive emotions. How that’s going to influence what your hormones do, and really what your life looks like is going to influence what happens with your hormones too. So you build out that last piece of the puzzle there. And so that lays the foundation for whatever you’re gonna do next. And so whether you decide from there, “Okay, I feel great, I don’t think I need a whole lot more, you know, this is enough, if I follow these guidelines, I’m in a good place,” or, “I’m better, but I’m not 100% there and I actually think I may need further support,” at least you’re starting that conversation with yourself and you’re prepping the body, by the way, for hormone replacement therapy, if that’s something you need down the line.
Dr. Steven Gundry – What do you say to the woman who’s listening or more her spouse that, for goodness sakes, you’re working a job, you got two kids, you are trying to put food on the table, and get kids to 14 different school activities, and you got mommy brain, and of course you feel like crap, that’s normal, shut up and deal with it.
Dr. Taz Bhatia – Ah, don’t make me cringe. So I think we’re really tired as women of hearing that that’s normal. Yes, we have a lot on our plate. Yes, we’re all running around. However, remember that if you’re changing, I think the change is the key, if you’ve gone, and that’s what had happened to me, you’ve gone from being super high energy, able to do all of this to now there’s a distinct change, that’s not normal, you’re having a hormone shift. And I think it’s really important for women to stop accepting those lines. This is normal, you’re getting old, it’s in your head, you know, all of that needs to be trashed because at the end of the day, to be honest, like if we slow down for just a moment, we know our bodies, we know what’s happening, and we need to listen. And when we don’t listen and we sort of buy into this dialogue, that’s when women really suffer and literally feel like they’re going crazy. And then there’s fallout, right? The relationships suffer. They make career decisions and career choices that may not be in their best interest. So for me, you know, yes, it’s about hormones and chemistry and medicine and all this other stuff, but boy, what lights me up is when we get people balanced and they’re like, “Wait a minute, I can start that business,” or, “I can take that job,” or, “Wait, I actually really like my husband,” or, “Oh my gosh, why am I putting up with this?” You know, whatever it is, you know, they’re able to make that decision.
Dr. Steven Gundry – All right, give me a quick takeaway for the listeners. What’s one thing that might surprise them that women can do today to support their hormonal health?
Dr. Taz Bhatia – That might surprise them.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Might surprise them.
Dr. Taz Bhatia – Okay, let’s see. I don’t know if this is-
Dr. Steven Gundry – Maybe surprised you.
Dr. Taz Bhatia – Well, this surprised me, but this might be so simple. Women, according to Eastern systems of medicine, need to sleep from 10 P to 5:00 AM. If they’re not sleeping continuously between that window of time, then Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine predicts that they’re going to have hormone disruption and that they’re gonna drive themselves faster into a hormone crash or into early menopause or perimenopause or many of these things. So many women tell me, for example, I slept in, or I sleep in on the weekends, or I do this, or I do that. They were very specific about the 10 P to about 5:00 AM. So that was surprising to me, very connected to hormone health. I think the other thing that is very surprising for many women is the importance of protein. You know, I think many women don’t understand that their blood sugar fluctuations and instability impact hormones directly, and vice versa. So if they can get, you know, blood sugar smart, a lot of times they can balance their hormone shifts much better.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Perfect. All right, before you go, I’d like to ask you to join in the audience question.
Dr. Taz Bhatia – Yes.
Dr. Steven Gundry – We teed this one up for you so I want you to hit out of the park. Now, so this comes from Voyage Vixens on Instagram. Is it possible to avoid any kind of menopause side effects by either diet or lifestyle practices? And if so, how?
Dr. Taz Bhatia – So this is a great question, and part of why I wrote the book, because the short answer is yes, you can avoid menopause side effects with a healthy diet, a good healthy gut that’s working well, minimizing toxins, and really focusing and prioritizing on sleep, and structuring a life that works for you, right, where at least 80% of the time you’re sort of living in kind of an easy, not easy, that’s not the right word, a very even pace. So that makes your hormone shifts much more bearable, sometimes not even noticeable. A lot of our patients sail through perimenopause and menopause without any side effects whatsoever. So the answer is yes, and I write about it here. This is a whole book to help you get balance and avoid it. Now, some women, despite their best attempts and really trying hard, still have side effects. Well, there are remedies that help with that. There’s everything from nutrient remedies, herbal remedies, then of course there’s hormone replacement therapy. So there’s a really big toolbox to help women. And I hope every woman listening will reach in, grab the one that works for them, and really get answers rather than kind of suffering in silence.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah, I think that’s a great answer. I spend a lot of times visiting with people in longevity communities, and it’s interesting when you talk to these people about perimenopause and menopause, a lot of them look at you like, “What are you talking about?”
Dr. Taz Bhatia – Oh my goodness. Yeah.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah, it’s like, “Huh? What do you mean by that?” And you’re right, they just kind of, it’s a passage through that they don’t even notice, really.
Dr. Taz Bhatia – They don’t know, and I also think there’s a lot of negativity around the words, right? Like, in fact, when the publisher put, like, midlife and menopause on here, I’m like, “Are you sure you wanna put that on there?” ‘Cause there are a lot of women that are in their 40s and 50s and like, “Wait, that’s not me,” you know, ’cause it’s very negative. So the other thing we inherit from older systems of medicine is that this is not a negative time of life. This is actually when women come into their power, they actually give birth to themselves. And if they can do this right, there are really exciting things ahead. You know, there’s no reason to feel like you’re done or you’re expired or all these other terms that we hear. So I think we want to know these terms and to embrace them, but take the negativity out of them. I think that’s what needs to change.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah, that’s a good point, very good point.
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