The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

Hello, I'm Kimberly King, and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, we're all told to maintain a balance in our lives, and we'll learn a little about how we can do that with our hormones, plus later we'll find out what's happening around town, but first stuff. We're happy to welcome back, Dr. Linda Markaz to the show.

Dr. Linda is a chiropractic wellness doctor and author that has been practicing since 1993. she's licensed in several states, including Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, Tennessee. And of course, right here in California, she's also a wellness educator, certified nutritionist and personal fitness trainer, and we welcome her to the mother's market radio show, Dr. Linda, how are you? I'm doing great. It's great to be back.

Well, it's great to have you, and for those of you in our audience that may not be familiar with her mission and her work, why don't you fill them in before we get to disease, my mission is basically to go out and just educate people on alternative health and wellness, and what things that they can start doing today to implement in their lifestyle so they can live productive and fruitful lives. Excellent, well, today we are talking about the way hormones affect our daily lives when it comes to sleeping, aging and burning fat, and I think we just hit the trifecta of things we all seem to care about. So Dr. Linda, what are hormones?

Hormones are chemical messengers, basically, they're made in one part of the body, and they send a signal to another part of the body to perform the function, and I like to use the analogy of a 440 relay.

It's like the first runner hands the baton over to the second runner and he tells them run, go, so he's the messenger, takes it to the third runner and does the same thing, that's how hormones work in our body as well, so when they're off-kilter, then you can be way off. Absolutely.

Okay, so how many hormones do we have in our body?There's over 600 hormones in the body. And we're gonna go over each one of them right now.

So just a kid, there's gonna be a test that the is right now, there's different types of hormones in the body, their hormones that help us fall asleep at night, there's hormones that keep us young, there's hormones that cause our heart rate to accelerate, there's hormones. It causes to wake up in the middle of the night to urinate, there is poor ones, it also causes to fall asleep in the middle of the day, and of course, there's even hormones that will cause us to crave sweets after week meals, especially lunch and dinner, a lot of people eat and they're like, I'm craving sugar. Well, that's because of a hormone, in a hormone imbalance in the body, that's the one I wanna get rid of, a...

How do I subtract that one?

That's the sugar one.

Okay, so what hormones are responsible for aging, and at what age point do we get these hormones, when do they act up?

Well, insulin, I think having high insulin is one of the hormones that accelerates the aging process, it's interesting because Brown University was experimenting with this and they showed that if you're a block or minimize the production of insulin, the entire body stays healthy or longer, and that also showed that insulin directly regulates the the pace at which a person ages, so bottom line is keeping your in 11 and soon levels low so that the cells become stronger and they're better able to fight off infection and are later diseases such as cancer, dementia and strokes, the secret is adopting a healthy lifestyle with foods that minimized the relief of insulin into the bloodstream, so that after each meal, the insulin level stayed low and they don't become stored as fat tissue.

So if you're careful to do this, you will find that losing weight and maintaining weight will be a lot more effective.

Another one is testosterone. If you have low testosterone levels, it'll affect your energy level, your muscle strain, which directly affects a person's desire to go work out, to exercise, to have a healthy sex life, and there are many studies that clearly link exercise to usefulness because of the stimulation of testosterone, which is one of the anti-aging hormones and also one of the fat-burning hormones, and then another one is high cortisol levels, high cortisol is having high cortisol levels, which means it's a stress hormone that responds to emergencies, but if you're constantly stimulating it, that's gonna accelerate the aging process, I'd like to use the analogy, it's like driving your vehicle and driving the round all day with wind foot on the break and one slot on the accelerator. Well, what's gonna happen by the end of the day? The breaks are gonna be wearing out much quicker, just like your cortisol is because you've been stimulating it throughout the day.

I'm gonna go back for a second because you mentioned insulin, testosterone and cortisone. How do you take these supplements or how do you take these with these... Well, these are hormones like testosterone can be stimulated by exercise, men and women see their hormones, testosterone, high-intensity exercise will stimulate... Is there's... Recently, I was reading through a book, they said one of the myths was that exercise is not important, and a healthy lifestyle or losing weight, I was like, How can you write that tests one of the anti each in hormones is one of the hormones that increases your energy and very much has a lot to do with a person's ability, you can said to burn fat to age gracefully and see if you see a gentleman that's been working out all his life, he looks like he's 10 years younger than his counterpart that hasn't done any exercise or very minimal.

So by keeping a higher testosterone levels, especially with men, because as we were talking earlier, I did a whole seminar on this with Andrew pause, that's like the equivalent of a woman going through menopause, it's like a man, he feels like his life is falling apart and it's usually because of low testosterone levels, so it's really important to be able to stimulate those naturally so that you have vitality, and I said You have a healthy sex life. That's really important also.

Hmm.

Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Are there any particular system or a gland that plays a greater importance in how our harm loans work?

I think there's different ones, the thyroid is very important, it's what I call the fat-burning, the fat-burning gland.

The thyroid sets the metabolic rate for all the rest of the cells in the body, so it regulates temperature and the metabolic rate, and if you have a healthy thyroid, it's going to say set the metabolic rate for all the other cells in the body, so it's important that you have a healthy thyroid, see what happens with what the thyroid is, it's interesting because your body will make two different type of thyroid hormone, the T4 and the T3 hormone, the T4 hormone is something that's inactive. You have a lot of IT, 93% of your thyroid makes that, and then you have the T3, which is the active one, that's what speeds of the metabolic rate in your body, and that's what keeps all the cells humming beautifully. But what happens is, because we have such a low amount of the very active thyroid hormone, it has to be converted from T4 into T3, and that usually occurs in the liver and the gastrointestinal tract, so you have to have a healthy liver and also a healthy gastrointestinal tract.

So, I don't know, we say that there's one that's more important than the other, it's just maintaining a balance physiology for all the systems in the body to work together to maximize your energy and your vitality.

Wow, this is interesting. Wow, there is a lot to think about here, but again, it does come back to eating healthy and also exercising too, with the changes that are coming our way for men and women equally.

Okay, well, we're gonna take a quick break right now when we return, we'll have more information on hormones, but we'll be right back, dot-com or... Welcome back to the mother's market radio show. And we wanna remind you that if you missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market or download the show from our website, mother's market dot com, click the link for radio and listen to past shows, plus download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com.

And now back to our interview with Dr. Linda markets and we're talking about hormones.

So, Dr. Linda, going back to our last question, I wanted to know about which hormones are responsible for burning fat, I think all of us, I've heard of the gross hormone, which is stimulated by exercise and peak during deep sleep cycle. So that's really important for people to know. Testosterone, which you stimulate during exercise, and both men and women should be exercising at high intensity in order to stimulate the testosterone, another one is left in... And a lot of people are not aware of leptin. Of course, there's many other hormones that are responsible for burning fat, but I just kinda want it hit upon these three, because Lepton is actually a hormone that's made and fat cells, and it tells the body that it's had enough to eat.

Now, there's a term out there that's been coin left and resistance, and that means that the cells are turned off, and so it's not ever giving a signal to the brain that you've had enough to eat, so you just keep eating and eating, eating. And so a person has left and resistance as a result of a lot of the environmental toxins, the estrogens and stress, so they will start to have something called leptin resistance, but one of the things that I tell patients to remember me when it comes to Bernie, that is not to stimulate three particular hormones, which we talked a little bit about insulin earlier, cortisol and estrogen, insulin is stimulated when you have highly processed food and sugars, so when having elevated insulin levels will promote weight gain and aging quickly, but also cortisol and Colin Cortes will kinda go together. Cortisol is a natural, it's a hormone produced by the adrenal glands that responds to any type of stress, stress can come in many forms, physical emotional, what you're eating foods that are inflammatory that we talked about earlier, that will create an inflammatory process in your body, so your body responds to it. Well, that's stress.

So if you elevate insulin levels and cortisol levels, that will contribute to actually storing fat and then course estrogen, that's why women are... We have a little bit more fat in our body and gives us that nice shape because of estrogen, but we are getting extra estrogen and a lot of the foods and the grains, and they're called Zeno estrogens, which we're seeing with the big controversy right now as we were talking earlier about the gmos, so those are all estrogen mimics, so if you can remember that, remember the acronym for ice, it's something that you don't want to stimulate the production of ice of insulin, cortisol and estrogen, otherwise you're going to be adding more fat to your body, so just remember that. And we talked about by minimizing insulin surges in your body and eating foods that will help you maintain even insulin levels that will help a person maintain their weight or even burn fat.

Okay, that's interesting, but yeah, I wanted to mention also something, 'cause we didn't... We didn't talk about... You know, when you had asked me earlier if there was a particular system or gland in the body that had an important role in how our hormones work, I mentioned BYOD being the fat-burning gland, but I also wanted to let our listeners know that delivered the gastrointestinal tract and your adrenal glands also play an important role. The liver is where the fat-burning hormones are activated, so if you don't have a healthy liver, you're not gonna be able to convert, convert the fat-burning hormones, so it's really important, and it's also important because the liver also detoxify any chemicals that are coming into our body, whether it's by touch, whether it's by smell, whether it's by food that we're consuming, it accident as a detoxify because there's over 600, 600 actions of what the liver does, so it's also really important in... And also the gastrointestinal tract, because 60% or remain system does reside in our digestive tract, and as we talked earlier, it's important for the T4 hormone to be converted into the T3 hormone, which is the powerhouse hormone that'll cause your body to rev up that metabolic rate. And another one is something called serotonin, and a lot of us have heard of serotonin, which controls a mood and sexual behavior, while serotonin is a transmitter that is also made in the gastrointestinal tract, so you see how all this comes together and it's not that one is more important than the other, but they're all working in harmony. And also the adrenal gland, which produces cortisol, and you mentioned cortisone earlier, and most people that once they have a cortisone shot, they usually gain weight, and it is a natural anti-inflammatory, but when you utilize too much of it, your body makes too much of it at extended period of times, it'll contribute to weight gain in Aging, so it's important to have also healthy adrenal glands, so you have to have a healthy thyroid, your fat-burning glam, the healthy liver, have a healthy GI track and also healthy adrenals.

Well, I like the way you're explaining this and it makes sense... Thank you.

Okay, what is the connection between sleep and hormones... Well, during sleep, especially during that deep sleep, called of the debt of sleep, your body starts to increase the hormone production, especially something called melatonin. A lot of people will take melatonin so that they can sleep better. Sleep to probation or lower leptin levels, we were talking about leptin levels earlier, left, and once again, is one of the hormones that I started at that tells your body, you've had enough to eat, if you sleep less, you're going to increase left and resistance or in other words, you're going to decrease the ability of your body to tell you I'm full, which will lead to overeating, also sleep deprivation would lead to that weight gain, but it also affects your body's ability to produce melatonin, which has anti-oxidizing effects, though. That's really important to know. Have you ever noticed that a person that is sick always looks older than someone that is not, and you look at people that are on medication for diabetes, they usually age a lot quicker, and they're not getting into a deep sleep, there's so many problems associated with that and there's just a big connection, you have to remember that during sleep, your body is actually more active than when it's a week, because healing is going on, that's why it's called also the way the cycle beauty, sleep or the kids are going through a growth spurt when they're sleeping, how many of us have heard that term?

And so it's very important. melatonin levels are responsible for good sleep cycles and they also influence that home, the human growth hormone, and so we know that the human growth hormone also influences your body's ability to burn fat, to build and regenerate healthy lean body tissue and to repair. Collagen is necessary for healthy skin formation and to improve the bone density in a tendinitis, so we just wanna make sure that we go back to getting a good night's sleep, so that you can improve the human hormone secretion and how it's utilized in the body.

You're talking about the human growth hormone and were on... Talk about that in just a minute. Well, I guess I have a question about the hormone replacement therapy, so that's different than the human growth hormone... What is the hormone replacement therapy? That's a little controversial, and I wanted to find out what your thoughts are on that.

Well, yes, and I have patients that usually come in and that's something that they maybe have done...

I'm not an advocate for that, I believe that there is a time and place for that, but I believe to too many women and men are given HRT without any consideration as to the long-term effects on that, and I tell people that once you give them a hormone, you're basically shutting the bodies Glan down from its own ability to produce it on or its own, so that they continuously due... They're gonna continuously need that hormone and it's gonna come from an exogenous source, it's not gonna come from internally, I always like to use the example that, you know, it's better to teach a man to fish so that he can get fish for the rest of the life instead of giving him fish every day, well, that's kind of the same analogy, if you continue to give somebody a hormone that their body can produce, it's like Why not stimulate the body, get everything in balance so that they can make its own hormones at the natural and normal rate that it's supposed to... I understand that there is a time and place for that if someone has had their thyroid removed or other pituitary gland removed... Yes, I believe that it's important that they have the proper hormones replaced in their body, and they do need HRT because it's vital just to keep the normal physiology and their body. So there is a time and place for that, but you know, I think as practitioners, you really have to play detective and find out what part of the system is not working properly, and what do we need to do to correct it?

So that's kind of my input on that, 'cause I said I do believe that there is a time and place for it, but it's given away so freely and I'm not a proponent for that, I really think you just have to go back to diet and lifestyle and to address those aggressively, and we have to play our own part in our own health and take, I think and just be very active in our participation of what we want as far as the outcome instead of continuously just bringing in exogenous sources.

What are other options other than hormone replacement therapy, there are other options for balancing our home, our hormones, I think diet and lifestyle to restoring normal physiology, the body, it gets important on... And as we were talking earlier today, I believe that we just put so much stress on us today compared to 20 years ago, and I say this person from personal experience that I believe that that's one of the causes why our hormones are so out of balance, so it's just going back and simplifying your life, eating the proper foods, getting the proper rest, exercising, having the positive mindset, so it's just not one thing that you can do, you have to do... There's various factors to take into consideration, whereas a lot of people, they go and get hormone replacement therapy, they just depend on getting the hormone injected and it's like, Okay, I don't have to do anything else, but... You have to work at it. It's like anything worth having... It takes work.

That's a good point.

How does a person know if there is a hormone imbalance that's contributing to your health, I think one of the Gold Star Standards for figuring out what's going on with my body, do I have a hormone on balance, especially women as they start going through menopause or after they've had their first or second baby, is actually doing saliva test... I think it's important to know where you are right now. What are your progesterone levels? What are your estrogen levels? What are your testosterone levels? What are they right now? And where they're going to be a year from now, you have to have something to gauge by if you don't... And how do you know where you want to be? I kind of use the analogy that if you go into... Everybody starts January 1st, New Year's resolutions. They all have a goal and say, Okay, I want to lose weight, Well, it's not always about losing weight, but I say, Why don't we make it the goal, I want to lose fat, you first have to know Where are you as far as... How many pounds of fat do you have on your body right now and then have a goal to where you want to be, it's the same thing with your hormones, you have to know what your levels are now, are they within the normal ranges and if they're not, let's have a goal and a plan to get them back into the normal ranges, but you don't know unless you've been tested, it's just like taking a stab in the dark and trying to figure a problem out without having all the clues.

So what can we do to balance our hormones?

One of the things, as I mentioned, is one, get tested now where you are to guessing about your health, too many times people come in and they've read so many... So many articles, they've read in the paper, oh, I need this, or picked up a magazine, their friend told them, If you take B-vitamin is gonna give you more energy, or if you take this supplement is gonna help you burn, that everybody's... Physiology is a little bit different. So I think what frustrates me the most is people expect to have the same result is another individual that your body physiology is unique, so you have to find out what your body physiology is, and do you do that by testing, but also making positive lifestyle changes like diet and exercise on more life foods that are organic and Life Foods, I mean anything that's wrong, like your fruit that fruits, vegetables, not seeds, increasing your legumes, drink more water and just people are not drinking enough water at your wild caught fish. I hear the Farr farm raised fish. That's an oxymoron. Even to something I have called salmon or the common ones, you get movies, it's exercise.

I read in a book several months ago that on the average, a man, a man would walk at least 10 miles throughout the day just to go out and look for the food and do the things that he needed to do to provide for his family. Why is the woman walked an average of five miles, that's nothing compared to what we're doing. I don't think men are walking 10 miles a day, or women five miles a day, it may be a mile, if that and that's kind of pushing it, so just having... Just get out there and move. Our body was designed to move, it wasn't designed to sit, getting a good night's sleep, too much of us are compromising our health so that we can stay up and we can learn more... I'm guilty, I'm an avid learner, and I'm going to be a student for a student at life. So I'm getting a good night's sleep.

And when... Stop the negative self-thoughts.

I think that's a huge key right there, we wake up every day, it's like, Oh, it's gonna be one of those days. I think you need to wake up with gratitude, wake up and design your own life, you need to go out there and just say, This is gonna be a great day, and whatever you think about that, what you're going to anticipate. So a lot of times we destroy our own health in our own life just by the thoughts that we're thinking and just have fun and enjoy life. We're here too, I think too, to help other people, to bless other people to be fruitful and to make a difference in other people's lives, so I just say enjoy life... Stopped taking it too serious. go borrow some kids, if you don't have... If you don't have any hang around them for about an hour, they all just... They have those belly laughs in you just a lot of times, we just forget that we just need to enjoy life and stop taking life so seriously.

Great advice, I love it. It makes you just wanna go out and have a good lab.

Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Linda, and we look forward to having you on again that in the mean time, you can learn more about Linda on her website, Dr. Linda marks dot com. Also look for her new book, it comes out actually later this year, juicing the fast tractor great health and weight loss. I can't wait to read that. Learn more about how you can stay healthy, we look forward to our next visit. Thank you and thank you, God. The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition,