She was a labor and delivery nurse. She told her husband, her mother, her family, and every medical professional she saw that something was terribly wrong. She was prescribed 13 psychiatric medications in four months. Her symptoms never resolved. She was not crazy — she was hormonally depleted and medically failed. And she is not the only one.
Prompted by the high-profile Lindsey Clancy case, Dr. Ana Lara sets aside the legal narrative and speaks as a physician about what she sees as the central medical failure in this story and in countless women's stories that never make headlines: no one checked her hormones. She explains the dramatic hormonal cliff women fall off after delivery — progesterone dropping from 214 nanograms per milliliter during the third trimester to effectively zero after the placenta is delivered, estradiol crashing from peaks of 30,000 picograms per milliliter to nothing — and what that physiological free fall produces: insomnia, racing thoughts, anxiety, paranoia, emotional dissociation, brain fog, and a feeling of losing one's mind that is not a psychiatric disorder but a hormonal emergency. She walks through the clinical data: progesterone levels optimal range of 15–24 nanograms per milliliter in a menstruating woman, the pattern she sees regularly of young women — even teenagers — testing at under 1. She explains the role of progesterone in sleep, nervous system regulation, brain protection, and mood, and the role of estradiol in memory, emotional regulation, serotonin function, and sleep architecture. She names the specific hormones every woman should have tested — progesterone, estradiol, pregnenolone, DHEA-S, testosterone, cortisol, vitamin D, B12 — and why postpartum screening for hormone depletion should be standard care. She closes with a direct message to women: you are not crazy. Your hormones need to be checked. Don't wait for a crisis. And she mentions vitex (chaste tree berry) as an herb that supports the body's own hormone production — safe postpartum, safe while nursing, and appropriate across the lifespan.
Timestamps:
0:00 — Introduction: what prompted this episode and Dr. Lara's medical lens on the case
1:25 — A woman who sought help — and wasn't helped
3:24 — Postpartum depression vs. postpartum psychosis: definitions and distinctions
5:45 — Baby blues, postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety and rage: who is affected
7:13 — The birth history: traumatic deliveries and what they leave behind
10:06 — Three children under five, two traumatic births, and a depleted hormone tank
11:32 — Progesterone: the hormone that keeps women calm, sleeping, and mentally resilient
13:24 — Why psychiatric medications cannot fix a hormone deficiency
14:36 — Her reported symptoms — and the medication list: 13 psychiatric drugs in four months
17:43 — What a proper postpartum workup should look like
18:20 — When hormones are balanced, medications don't resolve symptoms — and they didn't
19:29 — The millions of women silently suffering the same way
20:50 — Progesterone deep dive: optimal levels, luteal phase timing, what depletion looks like
23:48 — The pregnancy hormone cliff: 214 nanograms to near zero after delivery
25:18 — Estradiol: what it does, what the numbers look like, and the postpartum crash
27:21 — What balanced hormones feel like — from Dr. Lara personally, at 47
29:10 — How to show up for the women in your life who are telling you they're not okay
35:44 — The full hormone panel every woman should request
39:21 — Vitex (chaste tree berry): a postpartum herbal option that supports hormone production
40:44 — Closing: you are not crazy — get your hormones checked
If you have been told your labs are normal but you don't feel like yourself, Dr. Lara works with women on comprehensive hormone evaluation and root-cause care at Raíces Naturopathic Medical Center — schedule at raicesndmedcenter.com.