Speaker 1:
Welcome to The Dr. Gundry Podcast, where Dr. Stephen 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. Gundry:
Welcome to The Dr. Gundry Podcast. Well, when it comes to diet health, women have often been told to follow the same guidelines as men. But what if that one-size-fits-all approach is actually doing more harm than good? If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I’m a strong advocate for personalized health strategies, and that’s especially true when it comes to women’s needs. That’s why I’m thrilled to welcome Dr. Mindy Pelz to the show today. Dr. Pelz is a leading expert on women’s health, best known for her transformative work on fasting and nutrition, tailored specifically for women. She’s the author of the best-selling book Fast Like a Girl, and now she’s back with a groundbreaking new guide, Eat Like a Girl. In this episode, we’ll explore why women need a different approach to health than men, the critical role of hormones, and practical strategies from Dr. Mindy’s latest book. So stick around. You won’t want to miss this one.
Why is it essential for women to approach diet and health differently from men?
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, so I think the first place to start this conversation is that when we look at hormones, for a man, you’re looking through a 24-hour rhythm, that testosterone is the primary driver of their hormone that they work off of, and it comes in and out every 15, 20 minutes in a 24-hour window. We are not that way. Women are built with hormones that are coming in and out in a 28-day cycle. And when you start to look, I always love looking at estrogen and progesterone as like twin sisters. We call them the same, they look the same, but they have vastly different personalities. And so there are different lifestyle requirements that those two hormones like us to live. So we should be eating different. We should be fasting different, we should be exercising different. Everything should be different based off of when estrogen comes in and when progesterone comes in and it’s in a monthly cycle.
Dr. Gundry: I have a wife and two daughters.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
I know, I remember when we chatted on my podcast years ago.
Dr. Gundry:
And my two daughters are very different. So maybe that’s the estrogen and progesterone, and actually it is. But anyhow, why is that so different? What effects are that hormonal changing happening on a monthly cycle? Why does that affect why you should eat differently than me?
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Well, okay, so let’s look at it this way. I like to think of estrogen as an extrovert. So when estrogen comes in in our monthly cycle, she brings with her, and I like to give them pronouns because they make them sound like friends, she brings with that her dopamine and serotonin and all these neurotransmitters. So your front half of a woman’s cycle, there is this more extroverted energy that you’re going to see women have. And I believe, I’d be curious your opinion on this, but I believe that there’s a biological reason for that. The female body, don’t hate me people who don’t have children, women that don’t have children was made to reproduce.
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
So when estrogen comes in, she brings all, I call it her girl gang. She brings all these neurochemicals that make her more outward, whereas when progesterone comes in, progesterone was made to help us recover so that we don’t push through that week before our cycle. So what these two hormones are doing is they’re creating vastly different experiences in our body.
So if we have that in place, then we have to go, okay, so what nutrition do these two hormones need? And when you look into the science on it, the nutrition is very different. Estrogen needs you to be insulin sensitive. If you are insulin resistant, you’re going to have problems with fertility, you’re going to have problems with things like PCOS. Progesterone, actually the week before our cycle makes us more insulin resistant so there’s more glucose in the system so that it has enough fuel to be able to make progesterone. Because what progesterone wants you to do is chill out and relax and recover. So really diving into these individual hormones helps you understand that there’s a whole different environment that they’re trying to create based off this neurochemical reaction that they bring.
Dr. Gundry:
Let me add one more thing, and correct me if I’m wrong, estrogen is a fat storage hormone.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
There you go.
Dr. Gundry:
For a very good reason. Because you are right, let’s not shame, you guys have estrogen because you’re designed to have babies and you got to have some fat stores to have babies.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Right, right. Right. This is going to blow people away, which is why maybe women were meant to carry more weight.
Dr. Gundry:
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Us trying to be thin and be a size two or four may look great for Instagram, but it’s not great for the female body.
Dr. Gundry:
No, I take care of an Olympian volleyball player who could not get pregnant. And I said, “Look, I want you to gain 10 pounds.” She said, “I’m not going to do that.” I said, “You’re going to gain 10 pounds. Gain it.” Calls me back, “Hey, I’m pregnant.” I said, “Well, of course you are.” Because you guys, I’ve talked about this for a long time, you guys literally have a fat sensor that says, “Hey, if I get pregnant tomorrow and the famine hits, I’ve got enough fat to carry a pregnancy to term.” And it won’t, you won’t release that egg unless it senses that.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
That’s right.
Dr. Gundry:
Otherwise, it’s a waste of time.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
That’s right.
Dr. Gundry:
And so I see so many of these body challenged women, and we won’t go there, but yeah, let’s realize that estrogen is there to make you store fat.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
That’s right. Yeah.
Dr. Gundry:
And guys, man boobs, guess what? It’s your elevated estrogen level that’s making you store fat. And if you look down and happen to see that you’re pregnant, that’s your estrogen making you store fat.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
On that note, I just want to point out that one of the most interesting things that I realized from Fast Like a Girl going out in the world is the number of 20-year-olds, and even 30-year-olds, but especially the 20-year-olds, that messaged us and said, “Well, I don’t have a cycle. So how am I supposed to time food and fasting if I don’t have a cycle?” And of course the logical thing would be like, well, what birth control are you on? Maybe there’s a manipulation there. But when we dove deeper, what we found is that that generation is just packed with cortisol to your point, so the body’s not safe enough to have a cycle, and they’re in massive calorie restriction. And their thyroids are completely damaged from that, and that their whole hormonal and metabolic system is off because of this desire to be so thin, to your point.
Dr. Gundry:
Okay, that’s a good segue. So wait a minute, your bestselling book is Fast Like a Girl.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry:
And now you’re saying Eat Like a Girl. I’m so confused.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
It’s because you’re a man.
Dr. Gundry:
So let’s get into this because there is a way for a woman to fast, obviously, and there are benefits to that. But in terms of the cycle, tell me about what’s the principle of Eat Like a Girl?
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
So this is really fun. One of the things we saw with Fast Like a Girl is women got such amazing results that all they wanted do was fast. And I was like, “No, you got to eat.” Eating is medicine too. So I started to see there was this very dysfunctional relationship to food that women have. So that’s the first place.
The second thing, let’s go back to estrogen and progesterone. When you dive into understanding these two hormones, you realize that estrogen really thrives with a lower carbohydrate diet. We’ll talk about that in a moment. And progesterone really thrives with a higher carbohydrate diet. So I know you probably watched the trend with the ketogenic diet. I know you’ve written books on it. And there has become this messaging to women that the ketogenic diet is harmful to the female body. And so that started to take away that tool. I mean, ketones are a powerful tool.
Dr. Gundry:
sure.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
The ketogenic diet is an incredible tool for dropping weight. It took that tool away from women, just like we were trying to take the tool of fasting away from women because women’s hair was falling out.
So in Eat Like a Girl, I wanted to bring back two different food styles, one that I call ketobiotic, which would very much align with your thinking, which is let’s eat nature’s carbs, but let’s keep them low glycemic when you’re going into this more ketogenic state, when estrogen is making her appearance. And then when progesterone is trying to make her appearance, let’s go into what I call hormone feasting foods, where we’re bringing things in like squashes, and we’re bringing in tropical fruits like mangoes and bananas, and things that are really important nutrients to help progesterone come along her path and make her appearance in the body.
So easy to say, two opposing one’s, low-carb, one’s high carb. Both of them are nature’s carbs. But it’s easy to see where you can’t just fit one diet for a woman. You have to cycle these two diets.
Dr. Gundry:
So what you’re saying is the munchies that you tend to get at that point of your cycle, which is, from personal observation, is true, you can actually feel good about the munchies as long as you’re choosing the right things to munch on.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yes, yes.
Dr. Gundry:
And we don’t have to shame ourselves. You probably aren’t advocating that they should have a quart of ice cream.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
No. So check this out. One, I really started to understand progesterone and what we needed to do to create… I think of our bodies like a chemistry-
Dr. Gundry:
To do to create… I think of our body as a chemistry lab. What do we need to do so we can make this phenomenal hormone called progesterone that calms us and causes that uterine lining to shed? You see that they’re higher glycemic foods, and then as a woman, I was like, “Wait a second. Every week before my cycle, I couldn’t fast, I had already seen that with Fast Like a Girl, and all I want to do is eat carbohydrates. Is this because the intelligence in my body is asking me to bring my glucose level up?”
Then I started talking to every other woman. I do not know another woman on the planet that, I haven’t met one yet that, will tell you that they aren’t ravenous the week before their cycle. Every woman’s like, “I can’t follow my diet. I don’t want to work out.” It’s like, “I’m so undisciplined at that time, all I want…”
Dr. Gundry:
That you’re hangry?
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah. I’m hangry. You’ve been the…
Dr. Gundry:
The brunt of it, yes.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
… The brunt of that, but that’s normal. This is what I’m trying to bring forth with these books is there are normal rhythms of behavior patterns in a woman’s body that are driven by hormones, and one of them is our appetite. You are going to be more hungry the week before your period, and you’re going to crave carbs, you’re going to crave sugar, you’re going to crave chocolate.
Really, if you were smart about those cravings, then you can literally have your cake and eat it too, but to your point, we’re not eating, I’m not advocating for the Western standard diet.
Dr. Gundry:
No, I know you wouldn’t.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, but isn’t that fascinating, because we shame ourselves? We’re like, “I’m undisciplined the week before my cycle. Why do I crave all these things?” Then what women do is they turn on themselves, and so Eat Like a Girl, what I’m trying to do is free women of that.
Dr. Gundry:
It’s okay to admit that you’re under control of a hormone that is making you have these desires, and us men, of course, are never under control of hormones, but no, but that’s the point. Most advice, even in medicine for women, was done by men. I’m sorry.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
No, thank you for honoring that and seeing us, because this is a big problem.
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah, and I’ve said that from day one. My practice is mostly autoimmune now, and they’re mostly women, and they’ll go to eight doctors and say, “It’s all in your head,” and blah, blah, blah, and women do not… You guys get the short shift of all of this.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
We do, yeah.
Dr. Gundry:
I think it’s exciting and important for you to tell women, “Hey, you’re going to have different times of the month. You’re going to need eat differently during times of the month, and I think it’s important that those munchies or whatever we want to call them, are real and you shouldn’t, “Oh, I got to push past this,” and you should embrace it in the right way, right?
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Right, exactly. In the right way, and in Eat Like a Girl, I have lists of like, “Here are progesterone fueling foods,” and I think people will be pretty excited about that list, and, “Here are estrogen fueling foods,” and all of a sudden-
Dr. Gundry:
Can you give us a few just for…
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, okay. Well, here’s my favorite for progesterone is a sweet potato. Nature was like, “Here’s my gift to women. Here’s a sweet potato.”
Dr. Gundry:
Smear it on your arms.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, exactly. Smear it all over yourself. You’re going to make some progesterone. You’re going to calm, you’re going to then have a calmer way about you. Chocolate. Chocolate, if you eat high quality chocolate, that actually has a lot of magnesium in it, and women crave chocolate before their cycle. I’m not saying you go and eat the crappy chocolate that you can get at the fast food place. I’m talking good, quality chocolate. Bring that into the equation.
You know from really hanging out with the ketogenic world, that so many women who decided to go low-carb fear a banana, or a mango, or a papaya. Those tropical fruits help make progesterone. When I’m talking high carb, I’m not talking a box of pizza and a tub of ice cream. I’m talking, “Here’s what nature provided for you.” We are very synergistic with nature.
With estrogen, estrogen does really well with the leafy greens, like dandelion, and radicchio, and parsley, and a lot of those low glycemic, and blueberries, and some of the low glycemic fruits. Estrogen does really well when we eat those foods. I’m not saying ketogenic diet, a lot of people believe you never eat fruit again, but let’s break that into the high glycemic and the low glycemic, and put them in where they’re needed in the cycle.
Dr. Gundry:
What the heck is a fasted snack?
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
It’s my favorite part of the whole book.
Dr. Gundry:
All right, good.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
In researching everything that I did for Fast Like a Girl, I found some research on something called a fasted snack, and what the study showed was that you could take two groups of people, and one group you can say, “Okay, you’re going to fast 13 hours, and then you’re going to break your fast. The second group you’re going to go at 13 hours, and then we’re going to ask that you go two hours more to 15, but that you eat what is essentially a fat bomb.”
You’re eating high fat, it is low calorie, and it is low protein, because we know protein will pull you out of autophagy. You want to have this pure fat bomb, and it had some very specific requirements. They did this over a 30-day period, and what they found in the study was that the group that elongated their fast by having a fasted snack lost more weight, and most of it was around the belly, and had greater improvements in their metabolic numbers.
Whereas if somebody just went 13 hours and stopped there, they had less of a result. In Eat Like a Girl, I wanted to bring in the fasted snack, and bring back this idea that there are some things you can eat, and I actually had my chefs create some recipes of things, that you can eat in the fasting window that will continue all the healing of fasting, but you’re eating, and that kills the hunger.
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah, and that’s been in my actually the last three books, a lot of this is work from Dr. Walter Longo.
Dr. Gundry:
Yes, yeah.
Now, he has a bar that he used. It’s mainly a nut bar, and nuts in general won’t break your fast. You’ll stay in ketosis.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry:
You’re right. I don’t know where this idea came from that a 12-hour fast is fasting, and that it’s good for you. All the studies show that 12 hours of not eating isn’t really going to benefit you. You’ve got to push that window, and you’re right, a lot of folks, it’s hard to get past that 12 hour window. We’ve been brainwashed. Okay, you stop eating at eight, and you can start again at eight.
That’s 12 hours, and that’s really good for you. It doesn’t bear out in human studies. You’ve got to go farther than that, but you’ve got to get past that, “Oh, my gosh, I’m dying of hunger,” or, “I’m going to go exercise, and everybody knows I need to eat before I exercise.” Let’s not go down that.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, we can talk, that’s a whole nother episode.
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah. Our hunter-gatherers didn’t eat before they exercised.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
No, they didn’t, no, they didn’t.
Dr. Gundry:
Modern hunter-gatherers don’t eat before they exercise. You exercise to go eat.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
That’s right. I’m so grateful to align with you on this because in Fast Like a Girl, I mapped out six different length fasts, and when we first mapped it out, I had so many people say to me, “Nobody wants to do a three-day water fest,” and I was like, really? I built my whole YouTube channel off a three-day water fast.”
When I actually laid out what you’re saying, think of it as a healing state, and then you get to decide, how long do you want to hang out in that healing state? What we have found is every January, we do a three-day water fast. Last January, we had a hundred thousand people worldwide do a three-day water fast with us. People want to fast that long, but tools like a fasted snack now help us train ourselves to get to those positions. I want people to see the miracle their body is when you go into those longer fasts. I love that we align on that.
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah, and there’s a really cool Chinese study that I wrote about last couple books. They did a 14-day water fast on volunteers, and half the group 14-day water fast. The other group were given a hundred calories of prebiotic fiber, undigestible by them, but fed the gut microbiome. The guys, it was a male study, sorry, but the guys who got the prebiotic fiber, 14 day water fast had absolutely no hunger. It’s because you were feeding the microbiome. If you’re going to do a water fast, please feed your microbiome.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
I love that you bring this to light, because in the book I have what I call the Foundational Five Food Principles for women, and one of them is eat for your microbes, not your taste buds. If you always are thinking about your microbes, as you know, your taste buds will change. We have done that in these long fasts, where we’ll take a prebiotic powder and have people put it in water, and the hunger goes away.
Dr. Gundry:
Oh, yeah. It’s called the Gut-Centric Theory of Hunger, and I think it’s absolutely real.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry:
Okay, so let’s talk about it. What happens in perimenopause and menopause, and how do we have to adapt to those changes?
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
I think the first thing that women need to know after 40, because of the decline in estrogen, and progesterone, but it’s mainly estrogen, you are becoming more insulin-resistant. The diet you ate at 35 is not going to work for you at 45. That’s just a female fact. We also know, based off of work from Lisa Mosconi, is that the female brain, as she goes through the perimenopausal journey, becomes less sensitive to glucose and more sensitive to ketones.
In that perimenopausal time period, knowing how to either tack a fasting window onto your food, like in Eat Like a Girl, I talk about how we have fasting windows and eating windows…
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
…and eat like a girl. I talk about how we have fasting windows and eating windows all day that we should be looking at. So you want to make sure you have that fasting window. But perimenopausal women are going to really help in making themselves more insulin sensitive if they go lower carbohydrate. And so this is why I keep my keto version is keto biotic, keto plus we’re feeding our microbes.
And if you do that, you won’t get the menopausal belly fat. You won’t get these incredible cravings, you won’t get the brain fog because you’re now keeping your glucose low and you’re relying on more ketones to fuel the brain that’s in this changing process. So I think that’s the… Full transparency on my YouTube channel. The most watched views are any time I talk about menopausal belly weight, that’s all women want to know is what is going on here. And this is where you need to know how to eat more low-carb. And you need to learn how to start looking at your day through the lens of you have an eating window and a fasting window. You might’ve gotten away with it 35, but you’re not getting away with it at 45.
Dr. Gundry:
The same time period, those cravings seem to become more intense for sugar. So help us, how do we get through that period?
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah. So I think the first thing this comes back to eat for your microbes and not your taste buds. When you start looking at what feeds your microbes, I think we have to break it down into polyphenol, probiotic, and prebiotic foods. That’s sort of the way I look at it.
And so make sure that every meal has one of those three pieces to it. Let’s use an easy one. I put hemp seeds on everything. Great prebiotic. Nuts and seeds are a great prebiotic food. I don’t know a health expert on the planet that… maybe a SIBO expert that will tell you fermented foods are bad. We should be having fermented foods. You might chime in on this, but fermented foods are important for adding that probiotic good bacteria in there. So if sauerkraut doesn’t work, maybe you do coconut kefir yogurt, but adding some of these good nutrients in that feed your microbes start changing those cravings that appear during perimenopause.
Dr. Gundry:
Most of the fermented foods, the microbes are not important because they’re going to be killed by stomach acid. What they’ve done for you is they’ve actually pre-digested polyphenols for you, but more importantly, they contain postbiotics, which your microbes actually have to have. There’s an assembly line to make for instance, butyrate. And you have to have other short chain fatty acids to actually empower your butyrate producing bacteria to make butyrate. And if you don’t have those, they can’t make the final product.
And so fermented foods are actually pre-digested foods that are loaded with postbiotics that then can be used by the bacteria.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
By the bacteria.
Dr. Gundry:
So I don’t-
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
And important right?
Dr. Gundry:
Incredibly important.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Gundry:
Postbiotic.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
The other interesting thing on this change of cravings that happen during perimenopause is a new study I saw recently about the GLP-1 hormone that is made by our microbes. And what destroys them is fat, toxic fat. So you go into perimenopause, you’ve been eating the canola oils, the cottonseed oils, the corn oils, safflower, sunflower, the toxic versions of those destroying these microbes that were actually making the hormone that killed hunger. But we can bring that back through food and making sure we stay away from bad fat, eating good fat. So those little nuances in the conversation of why am I getting menopausal belly weight become very, very important.
Dr. Gundry:
All right, let’s transition to menopause. Controversial topic, hormone therapy. Yes? No? Pro, con. Why or why not?
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
I think it’s individual. I think what we have gone from is a cultural hush around menopause where we’re like, “Yeah, she’s going crazy, but nobody talk about that,” and then we go into our doctor’s office and we were given prescriptions for antidepressants. That was as little as two years ago. And now we’re in cultural chaos. And women are in a frenzy where they’re like, everybody’s running back to their OBs and they’re like, “The studies, the influencers, everybody’s saying put me on HRT.” Now, I have sat with a lot of women that have done HRT, bioidenticals. There is no one size fits all. So I think two major things on it. One, if you choose to go on those, you do not get a free pass from making lifestyle changes. You still have to make lifestyle changes. And I have found that the women that make the lifestyle changes like the ones, many that we’re talking about, just don’t require as big of a dose of HRT. And you probably have seen this.
Dr. Gundry:
Same thing.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
So we’re losing the self-empowerment. And everything I want to teach is about how women have more control over their body than they’ve been taught. And we have to make sure that we don’t lose the power of lifestyle in this HRT conversation. And you need a really good doctor that’s going to help you personalize this because there is no one size fits all. And some women do incredibly well with HRT. I know women who have been suicidal with HRT. So we can’t just stand up and say, “Hey, women, time to do HRT. Everybody just do that.” We need to have a nuanced conversation like we’re having right now.
Dr. Gundry:
I follow mostly the European literature on hormone replacement therapy. And I personally think there’s probably a three to five year window of opportunity at menopause to, lack of a better word, safely use bioidentical hormones, certainly transdermal estrogen, not… please don’t anybody swallow estrogen, please. You can swallow all the progesterone you want. After that time, I think in my experience with my patients who they’re 60 or 65, even 70, and they then start hormone replacement therapy, I have a good friend who’s a gynecologist who makes them sign a 20 page document that they are fully aware of the risks that they are taking.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Wow.
Dr. Gundry:
20 pages. I’ve read it.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Wow. For the older-
Dr. Gundry:
For the older person that starts late. And yes, there may be a reason for it, but I’ve unfortunately had several women who started late and developed breast cancer or developed ovarian cancer. And I’m not saying there’s a cause and effect, but in the retrospective scope, I actually warned all three of these particular women. I said, “You’re just playing Russian Roulette. And that’s okay, as long as you know,” and then they go, “Yeah, what the heck? You were right.” I’m just telling you the literature. So I think there is an opportunity and I prescribe it, but I think we have… And you’re right, it’s individual. And I assure every one of my patients, and I have lots of super old people that I follow and follow super olds around the world, none of these people were on hormone replacement therapy. None of them.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Bingo. Yeah.
Dr. Gundry:
And they seem to do very well.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah. Bingo. I mean, my 85-year-old mother never did any hormone replacement. Now she had some osteoporosis, so could that have been affected? Possibly. Her brain works incredibly well at 85. She is incredibly coherent. Her memory is really sharp. And so I see living examples of women that… because she grew up in the era, we didn’t do hormone replacement. So again, I’m hoping that the conversation is going to move to, you need to know when to do it. So that three to five year window is really interesting. I would agree with that. You need to make the lifestyle changes, and you need a doctor that’s going to help alter and change the amounts that you’re taking because you’re not at 55 supposed to have the same hormone level you had at 35.
Dr. Gundry:
Oh, thank you for saying that. And by the way, you’re not supposed to have the same bones at 85 as you are when you’re 30. Sorry about that.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yep.
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah, you’re right. You’re not supposed to have the same hormone levels. And we’ve been remiss in telling women about this, and I have some women that’s going to menopause, their brain does not work right and they know it. And I’ll put them on the lowest dose of transdermal estrogen. Almost… I mean, the measurements of estrogen in their blood are microscopic, but they go, “Boom, that was it. Yeah, that’s it. I’m fine now. Thank you.” And I go, “That’s amazing. You were less than five and now you’re 10, and that’s all it needed. And I don’t need to get you up to an estrogen of 100. You’re fine now. Okay. That’s your dose. That’s what we needed to titrate for you. And you just told me that that works. Okay, good. We don’t need to give you any more.”
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
What do you think the three… what’s the three to five-year window?
Dr. Gundry:
Well, so the European studies, a lot of this was done out of Denmark, in Norway, and they looked at when hormone replacement was started, and what they found was that there seems to be this window of opportunity where it will probably benefit your heart, probably benefit your bones, and won’t increase your risk of cancer. After you leave that window, it actually probably hurts your heart, vascular system, hurts your bones and increases your risk of cancer. So I’ll leave it at that.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Is it the transition?
Dr. Gundry:
I think it’s the transition.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, that’s why I-
Dr. Gundry:
I think it’s when you… Like I say, that’s how I approach my patients.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
So I think that year doesn’t get talked…
Dr. Gundry:
… For my patients.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
So I think that year doesn’t get talked about enough. The one from the time that you have your last period until you’re deemed menopausal, that is the window that I think hormone replacement would be the most helpful because now you’re really going with the lowest amount of estrogen that you’ve ever had. So now Lisa Mosconi’s work, she came out and published a study this summer that showed that the estrogen receptor sites in the brain stay active for six years after your last cycle.
Dr. Gundry:
So there you go.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, there you go. You put that all together, that seems like the most pivotal time to me to be going in with hormone replacement.
Dr. Gundry:
And Dale Bredesen, who wrote The End of Alzheimer’s, who’s become a good friend, particularly with the APOE4 patients that he and I see, he’s a big fan of low-dose estrogen for these women. Again, depending on when I see them, but he and I are both big fans of pregnenolone therapy. And luckily, despite what we were taught, pregnenolone for most people is not converted to estrogen or testosterone or regestrone as adults. When we’re young, yes, it’s the master hormone, but maybe 5% of women that I put on pregnenolone make a little bit of estrogen, but most people don’t.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
So even into their 60s, 70s?
Dr. Gundry:
Oh, yeah, 60s, 70s, 80s.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
I like that.
Dr. Gundry:
And most people, most of us stopped making pregnenolone in the mid-50s, pretty much stop making it.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Oh, wow. Interesting.
Dr. Gundry:
And Dr. Bredesen says the reason he thinks most of us become forgetful as we get older is we no longer make pregnenolone. And he thinks pregnenolone is just this miracle hormone for the brain.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
So then my food brain goes, well, is there anything we can eat or do to get-
Dr. Gundry:
Not really. And the nice thing is pregnenolone’s over the counter, so you can swallow the dumb stuff.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yes.
Dr. Gundry:
So most of my female patients, we give them about 50 milligrams pregnenolone. Most men need about 100 milligrams.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Amazing.
Dr. Gundry:
And it’s amazing, it’s just usually… And we follow these levels in people. So we really agree, great, lot of people agree with me, yeah. Actually, people who [inaudible 00:35:25] I learn from people who disagree with me.
Interviewee:
Says the man who writes books on paradoxes.
Dr. Mindy Pelz:
The paradoxes.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
I can’t believe everybody would agree with that.
Dr. Gundry:
All right. I just actually got an email from an educator from junior high, and it was on a similar subject. She said, I am so distressed with the amount of anxiety, depression, emotional distress in my students. And I am convinced that this is because, among other things, the food they’re being fed, and isn’t there some way to help this? And I know you talk about this in the book.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, thank you.
Dr. Gundry:
Can we finish off with that?
I\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry:
Is there a ray of hope?
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry:
Or what are we going to do?
IDr. Mindy Pelz:
Well, the ray of hope, we might have to table that one for a hot moment. But what the food system has done to our food is atrocious. And I believe the female body is actually suffering more than the male body because there’s so many of these foods have these endocrine disruptors in it, and it’s throwing estrogen off and all that. But as you know, it’s also destroying the microbiome.
Dr. Gundry:
Oh, yeah.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
And so as these toxic foods get thrown into kids’ school lunches, you’re starting to see a complete decimation of these healthy microbes, along with what these chemicals are doing in food is that they’re creating this dopamine response, so we are having to eat more and more and more to get the same enjoyment. So through that lens, it’s horrible enough. But the part that I wrote about in Eat Like a Girl that really was disturbing to me are the obesogens, and that there are chemicals that people are eating every single day in their food that are hijacking their stem cells, and the stem cells that we’re making bone cells now get reprogrammed and make fat cells. And if you dive into just that literature, you can even see in places like the UK where kids who we have a lot of stem cells, as you know, when we’re little, they’re getting reprogrammed, and the height of kids is shorter and shorter, and kids are getting fatter and fatter. That is coming from foods that are being poured into our system. And that is a crime and needs to stop.
So ray of hope, we educate ourselves. In the book, I have a whole page on how do you read an ingredient label and what toxins and obesogens are you looking to avoid. But I think big food and big pharma, they’re married to each other now and…
Dr. Gundry:
No.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
… I think that there’s no stopping them because profits are so high. So we as individuals have to start to become aware of what these chemicals are doing and go to farmer’s markets, grow your own food, start buying food that doesn’t have a label. Those are big steps we can take to avoid these chemicals. But it’s horrible. We’re in the most toxic time in human history.
Dr. Gundry:
Good news is it’s only going to get worse.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, it’s only getting worse, so the good news is you have control because you can educate yourself and vote with your dollars by going to other stores. I will tell you, when I’m not in LA, with my ability to go to [inaudible 00:38:57], I’m going to farmer’s markets, and that takes more time, but that’s where I will go. And I will meet the farmer, I will talk to the farmer, and I will understand how my food has been grown and made. And that’s what I bring back to my home.
Dr. Gundry:
Funny story on that. A few years ago I was lecturing in Phoenix and there was a farmer’s market near the hotel, and I went over there and they had pastured chicken. And I go, “Oh, great.” And I go over and I say, “What do you feed your chicken?” This lady said, “What do you mean what do I feed my chicken? My chickens work for me. I don’t feed them anything.” They’re farm workers.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
I love it.
Dr. Gundry:
Oh, I love you. Thank you. What do you mean? I don’t feed them anything? They work for me.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, who wants to eat a lazy chicken?
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah, that’s a great answer.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
That’s been sitting on its butt, not working for its food? If you think of the lean mass in the muscle, yeah, it’s really smart.
Dr. Gundry:
It’s time for the audience question.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Excellent.
Dr. Gundry:
And I want you to take this one, because this is right up your alley. Okay. Audience question from jstoy86 on Instagram asks what foods or beverages are best to consume during my monthly menstrual period? We left that little piece out.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
But she’s 86.
Dr. Gundry:
No, this is her handle.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Oh. I’m like, “Wait a second, second. I’m really confused.”
Dr. Gundry:
Well, if she’s 86 and having a menstrual, we want to meet her.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah, exactly. Whatever you’re doing, just keep doing it. So when we say our monthly cycle, again, we have to break that down. So I think she’s meaning when she’s actually bleeding.
Dr. Gundry:
That’s what I think.
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Yeah. So day one to day seven women bleed anywhere from two days to seven days. This is a great time to be more lower carbohydrate. So I like if you eat meat, you would be eating meat and you would be eating low glycemic vegetables and fruits. So that’s all of your vegetables, all of your berries. And, again, I put lists in the book. But I want to see you bring your glucose down and get your insulin get really strict with…
Dr. Gundry:
So you get to really indulge in the pre?
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
That’s right.
Dr. Gundry:
Okay. And then cut it off?
\Dr. Mindy Pelz:
Which is interesting because a lot of women say to me, “But wait, once my period starts, I have all these cravings.” And what I have found is that’s because you didn’t do the week before your cycle right. If you bring your carbohydrates up the week before your cycle, what will happen, I’ve seen this over and over again, is once your period starts, your hunger goes down and it’s easier to do more of a keto style diet. It just becomes effortless.
Speaker 1:
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