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Normal labs don't always mean nothing is changing. In this episode, Dr. Barrett walks through seven early signs that a woman's hormones are shifting - often years before a standard lab panel catches it. Geared toward women in their mid-30s to 50s, he covers changes in cycle length, sleep disruption, PMS symptoms, anxiety and stress tolerance, body composition, libido, and exercise recovery - plus practical, nutrition-first recommendations (protein, targeted supplements like maca root and DIM, and testing labs while you're still feeling your best) for each one.
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Watch the episode on YouTube here!
DISCLAIMER
This content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Barrett Deubert and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to replace medical advice or treatment from a physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding health questions and concerns. Neither Dr. Deubert nor the Real Health Co. takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All audience members, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement, or lifestyle program.
. . .
Watch the episode on YouTube here!
- (00:00) - Intro
- (01:02) - The 7 Signs Framework
- (01:33) - #1: Cycle Length Changes
- (04:03) - #2: Sleep Disruption
- (05:22) - #3: PMS Symptom Changes
- (06:24) - #4: Anxiety & Stress Tolerance
- (08:15) - #5: Body Composition Changes
- (09:45) - #6: Libido Changes
- (11:28) - #7: Exercise Recovery Changes
- (12:56) - Recap & Nutrition Foundations
- (13:29) - Closing Thoughts
DISCLAIMER
This content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Barrett Deubert and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to replace medical advice or treatment from a physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding health questions and concerns. Neither Dr. Deubert nor the Real Health Co. takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All audience members, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement, or lifestyle program.
Creators and Guests
What is The Real Health Podcast?
You've tried everything: extreme diets, expensive specialists, and medicine with side effects. Yet you're still stuck. This show is for you. The Real Health Podcast is hosted by Dr. Barrett Deubert, a practicing chiropractor and functional medicine provider who treats patients dealing with exactly what you're dealing with: weight that won't move, energy that never comes back, chronic symptoms doctors can't explain. Each week, he digs into the actual root cause behind things like weight loss resistance, hormone imbalance, autoimmune flare-ups, and metabolic dysfunction. No fad diets, no miracle supplements, no blaming you for not trying hard enough. Just real, evidence-based answers for why your body hasn't been working the way it should, and what actually helps.
On today's episode of the Real Health Podcast, we are talking about the seven signs your hormones are changing before your labs even show that they're changing. So today we're going to dive in deep about hormones and what symptoms you need to be aware of or what signs and changes you need to be aware of that tell you or cue you in on that your body is changing, your hormonal profile is changing, and what you need to do about this is geared towards the female body, and we're specifically talking about women that are between the ages of really like 35 to maybe 45 to 50, and your cycle's been regular up to this point, but now you're starting to see, okay, there's some changes happening. Are these normal? Do I just assume that they're normal? My labs say they're normal, but we're gonna go through why everything looks normal, yet it is absolutely abnormal.
Dr. Barrett:The symptoms that you need to be aware of, the symptoms you need to be mindful of because normal labs don't automatically mean nothing is changing. And so today, I'm giving you seven signs your hormones may be changing before a routine lab panel makes the picture obvious to you. The number one, let's get into it, is your cycle starts to change. This would probably be my number one sign. When you look at a female cycle, it should be consistent and regular.
Dr. Barrett:And whenever we start to see maybe you've always been twenty eight to thirty, thirty one days, and now we start to get into a shorter cycle, maybe it's twenty four or twenty five days, or thirty two, thirty three, thirty five days. And it's not necessarily every month, but it's maybe one out of three or four. All right, so there is a signal here that something is happening. So we can look at this and have some understanding of whether or not we are in a healthy space, in an optimal space, right? Because we don't want to just treat when something is wrong, we want to optimize.
Dr. Barrett:So, we're really talking about optimization of your hormone body so you can go into peri and menopause in a really healthy way. So one of the best things to do is track your cycle. It should be, whether it's with an Our Ring or a Whoop device or whether it's just you having knowledge about your cycle, but it should be regular and consistent. What that means for you is you specifically, not someone else's cycle, but what yours has historically been. And when we look at tracking cycle length and duration and symptoms, it queues us in on a ton.
Dr. Barrett:Like if our cycle is getting short, that means we had a really poor luteal phase. If it's getting super long, it's probably an anovulatory cycle where there wasn't ovulation signaling strong enough, where we didn't get that estrogen surge. And that data helps point you into maybe a soft correction or an optimization window to say, all right, we need to strengthen ovulation or we need to strengthen that second half of the cycle. One of my favorite things that women can do on a daily basis that supports their cycle length and keeping it consistent would be Maca Root. Maca Root is a fantastic supplement that you can get in powder form, add it to your smoothies, or just take it in a capsule form, but maca root is hormone balancer.
Dr. Barrett:It's fantastic for women in this age space, especially when your cycle starts getting different is what we'll say. Number two, your sleep starts to change. So let's just say you're consistent sleep seven to eight hours a night, you sleep through the night, and all of a sudden you start waking up at two a. Or three a. M.
Dr. Barrett:What does this mean? It means your hormones are changing. Is it your estrogen being too high and your progesterone being too low? Potentially. Is it cortisol that's spiking in the middle of the night?
Dr. Barrett:Maybe. Is it blood sugar regulation? That's very possible. But if you are in a season where you're waking up between those hours of 2AM or 3AM, it does absolutely mean you are in a fluctuation of your normal healthy cycle or hormones, and your brain's recognizing it. So, what's my correction here?
Dr. Barrett:One of the best things that you can start doing is making sure that you have balanced blood sugar. So, consume more protein, less carbohydrates, and make sure that before bed you get a good balanced meal of proteins, fats, and clean carbohydrates to stabilize your blood sugar levels. A little bit of L theanine and magnesium before bed can also help significantly curve that cortisol awakening response that might be happening at two or 03:00 in the morning. If you're waking up middle of the night and that's not consistent for you, your hormones are absolutely changing and you need to get ahold of it. Number three, your symptoms around your cycle are changing.
Dr. Barrett:Maybe historically your cycle wasn't a big deal, but this week all of a sudden it's now like I'm super anxious. I am irritable. Don't talk to me. I'm aggressive, right? You start getting in tenderness on certain parts of your body and you feel more inflamed, you get headaches, right?
Dr. Barrett:Like this is really important to queue in on. If your symptoms, PMS symptoms are different, then this absolutely is an indicator that your hormones are changing. Potentially, it's that your progesterone is too low relative to your estrogen levels. As your estrogen levels climb relative to progesterone, then we are in a situation where you can feel more anxious, irritable, a little more angry, it's important to look at this and say, all right, what do we do here? One of my favorite recommendations if this is you is to take two hundred milligrams of DIM daily.
Dr. Barrett:Is didylmethane. It's a fantastic methylator for hormones. It comes out of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, and it can be a massive hormone improver, especially with those aggressive PMS type changes. Number four, anxiety or stress tolerance changes. So, maybe you have more anxiety, maybe you feel less tolerant to stress, and nothing in my life is dramatically different, but I just don't handle things like I normally would, right?
Dr. Barrett:That is the conversation we typically have with our patients. And so, when we look at this, things feel more overwhelming and you're just more irritable, right? Maybe you actually notice some heart palpitations. This is important to understand that your hormones, especially hormone transition, can interact with your serotonin levels. And through this, your serotonin signaling, your sleep and stress response symptoms start to change.
Dr. Barrett:And the research also suggests that the menopausal transition represents a period of increased vulnerability to depression, right, because of that hormone fluctuation impacting serotonin. Serotonin is a monoamine neurotransmitter that can be supported with B vitamins. So a solution here, if you notice an increase in anxiety or less stress tolerance, maybe your vitamin B system could be depleted. Look at that. Look at it through some functional labs or consider a broad based methylated B vitamin support, and that can usually help address some core issues.
Dr. Barrett:You should always look at iron too. Iron plays a massive role here. So don't look at just iron. Make sure you're looking at ferritin on those labs. Number five, your body composition is changing.
Dr. Barrett:What does the body composition change typically? It's fat, right? It's holding on to more fat. And so, if you're eating exactly what you used to but your body doesn't respond the same way, it means that your metabolism is shifting. When we look at this, it's not just, hey, my estrogen levels have dropped and my body fat has increased.
Dr. Barrett:Yes, that can be true, especially menopause. Fat is an estrogen producing organ, so as estrogen declines, your body fat increases. So could you be gaining fat because your estrogen levels are declining? Yes, you absolutely could. That is a potential issue.
Dr. Barrett:So, why don't you do this? This is my recommendation for number five. Make sure if you are healthy, to start looking at your hormone profile when you're healthy, not when you have symptoms. Run labs, see what your estrogen and progesterone levels look like when you are feeling your best so you know when your estrogen levels are lowering relative to when you felt the best and whether or not that could be the issue, that you're gaining fat when you are doing everything else to not gain fat, right? So, do you need a hormone supplement recommendation here?
Dr. Barrett:Potentially. Right? There's some black cohosh and dunkai work great. Phytoestrogens from plants are fantastic. But more importantly, make sure we're running labs, looking at our lab values, assessing them relative to when we're healthy, and as always, prioritize protein.
Dr. Barrett:Protein is massive when it comes to a healthy estrogen system. Number six, your libido changes. Your drive, your energy, specifically your sex drive starts to lower. It's another symptom that women don't necessarily correlate or think about much, but it is massive implications when it comes to hormone fluctuations. So maybe it's desire decreases, arousal isn't the same, or maybe we start getting into some vaginal dryness.
Dr. Barrett:Those symptoms are major implications, again, that your hormone system is changing. And when we look at this, we typically think testosterone, but testosterone is important here and it could be the reason, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. There's another monoamine neurotransmitter called dopamine, and dopamine here is your reward hormone. Maybe you've been burning out on a cell phone, right, looking at Instagram, looking at guys, this is important to understand here. If you're burning your dopamine levels, you're going to start to deplete your reward system.
Dr. Barrett:And yes, B vitamins can help this, but making sure that we're not getting our reward from something else, our dopamine from something else, can also increase your drive in libido. As always, like I said in the previous number five, make sure you're running your testosterone levels when you're healthy. What is your baseline? What level are you at when you are feeling your best? And the last one, number seven, your recovery from exercise just isn't the same.
Dr. Barrett:You don't feel like you are recovering at the same rate. You feel burned out. You feel super sore for a long period of time. Energy isn't recovering the way it used to. And maybe you've been doing a ton of high intensity interval training.
Dr. Barrett:We probably should pull back from that and do more strength and zone two work. But again, I wouldn't tell someone, hey, this is because of a very specific hormone depletion. It could be, but it's a signal to investigate, hey, what does my hormonal system look like? One of the biggest issues in this block, my recommendation to you, would be it's nutrition. It's so nutritional biased here.
Dr. Barrett:Make sure that you're eating three meals a day, high quality protein, good clean carbs, balanced fats, because this is what's going to allow you to get all the micronutrients like iron and B vitamins in your body to help create balance in your hormone profile. That helps a healthy thyroid, that helps you recover and sleep well at night, stabilize your blood sugar levels, right? So low energy availability and iron deficiency can absolutely create a even masquerade, hormone problems. So making sure that you're getting these key nutrients in will usually help you solve number seven. These seven things are symptoms that you should be looking at before your labs show you to be abnormal or out of range.
Dr. Barrett:And if you're having any of those seven symptoms, it's time to do something about it because they aren't if you're 35, 40 years old, they aren't normal. They are common, but not normal. So it's important to make sure you're investing in those areas. When we look at heading forward in longevity, healthy hormones are so essential to longevity of brain, of bone density, of energy levels, of drive. And so getting it right now is a lot easier to optimize today than try to fix something that's broken in the future.
Dr. Barrett:I hope it's super practical for you. I hope it added a lot of value to you today in your health journey. And as always, thanks for listening to another episode of The Real Health Podcast. Hi.