6 More Hazardous Signs of Low Estrogen Your Doctor Still Misses | Solo
45 min
•Jan 31, 20264 months agoSummary
Dr. Tina Moore discusses six lesser-known signs of low estrogen that doctors frequently miss, including sleep disruption, alcohol intolerance, migraines, urinary frequency, poor wound healing, and hair loss. She emphasizes the importance of hormone testing in your 30s and 40s before menopause begins, and warns against the misuse of GLP-1 medications for vanity weight loss.
Insights
- Low estrogen manifests through non-obvious symptoms decades before menopause, requiring proactive hormone testing in 30s-40s rather than waiting for hot flashes
- Middle-of-the-night insomnia (vs. difficulty falling asleep) is a primary estrogen deficiency indicator with severe metabolic health consequences
- Sudden alcohol intolerance, migraines, and urinary frequency changes are reliable biomarkers for hormonal shifts that warrant immediate testing
- Hair loss, poor wound healing, and skin fragility in middle-aged women are estrogen-related collagen and vascular issues, not just aging
- GLP-1 microdosing has been bastardized into standard dosing for vanity weight loss, creating nutritional depletion and bone density risks in young women
Trends
Preventive hormone optimization moving earlier into 30s-40s age range rather than waiting for symptomatic menopauseGrowing awareness of estrogen's role in musculoskeletal conditions (frozen shoulder, joint pain) among regenerative medicine practitionersMisuse of GLP-1 medications for cosmetic weight loss creating unintended health consequences in young women (hair loss, bone density, muscle loss)Increased social media-driven medicalization of menopause creating both awareness and misinformation about hormone replacement timingScalp microbiome shifts during hormonal decline emerging as key factor in hair loss, requiring holistic rather than topical-only treatmentYoung women with PCOS and early-onset hair loss increasingly seeking hormone optimization rather than pharmaceutical interventionsConcern about cosmetic procedures (masseter Botox, buccal fat removal) accelerating age-related bone density loss in jawlineShift toward bioidentical hormone replacement therapy post-WHI study reinterpretation, with emphasis on transdermal delivery over oral
Topics
Low estrogen signs and symptoms in perimenopauseHormone testing protocols and timing in 30s-40sSleep disruption as estrogen deficiency markerAlcohol intolerance and hormonal shiftsMigraines and progesterone deficiencyUrinary frequency and UTI prevention via estrogenHair loss and follicle health in menopauseWound healing and collagen lossSkin atrophy and fragilityGLP-1 microdosing misuse and health risksBioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT)Regenerative injection therapies for musculoskeletal conditionsScalp microbiome and hair healthBone density and estrogen in aging womenWomen's Health Initiative study reinterpretation
Companies
Sunlighten
Infrared sauna manufacturer endorsed by Dr. Tina for home sauna therapy supporting circulation and detoxification.
Puori
Grass-fed whey protein brand with third-party testing for contaminants, promoted for clean protein supplementation.
Monocora
New Zealand manuka honey producer providing bioactive-rich honey for immune and gut health support.
Kion
Essential amino acid supplement brand offering EAAs for muscle protein synthesis and recovery optimization.
People
Dr. Min
OBGYN and former breast cancer survivor featured in Dr. Tina's episode on estrogen therapy for cancer survivors.
Quotes
"Get your estrogen checked and handled long before you think you need to. I'm talking in your 30s and 40s."
Dr. Tina Moore•Early in episode
"If you waited personally until my period stopped, I would be in a complete nightmare situation right now."
Dr. Tina Moore•Mid-episode
"Not having your sleep dialed in is going to be far more detrimental and damaging to your overall health than you could possibly ever fathom."
Dr. Tina Moore•Sleep discussion section
"When you need a hormone, you need a hormone. There's no kind of faking around that."
Dr. Tina Moore•Hormone necessity discussion
"You do not want to go into your elder years depleted of estrogen with low bone mass and low muscle mass. That is a recipe for disaster."
Dr. Tina Moore•Closing remarks
Full Transcript
On this episode of the Dr. Tina Show, I'm going to be sharing with you six signs and symptoms that your estrogen may be low. And this really is a part two because I've already done a part one going over some of the most obvious signs and symptoms that most doctors don't even realize. So let's jump in. You are tuned into the Dr. Tina Show with Dr. Tina Moore. For more, visit drtina.com. All right. So for part one, I went over several signs and symptoms that your estrogen may be declining that your doctors really aren't aware of. These are not popular symptoms, but they are actually very, very common. And so you can go back and listen to part one of this. I highly encourage you to because it's going to resonate with a lot of you. But we're going to move on to part two because several of these have popped up with clients and patients of mine and I myself included, and I wanted to make sure to go over them because many of you really think that, oh, low estrogen means hot flashes and that's it, right? The hot flashes haven't started. I'm still menstruating. I'm fine. That is not the case. And data has shown what I have been trying to tell women for decades, which is get your estrogen checked and handled long before you think you need to. I'm talking in your 30s and 40s. Get your estrogen checked and handled long before you think you need to. The data has come out very clearly in the past few years that your risk of several disease processes and bone density issues are going to be mitigated with starting estrogen within the magic window, which I believe and several studies are starting to lean towards and many clinicians are starting to get on the tip of, which is before you stop menstruating before you are full on into menopause. The signs and symptoms that I deal with every single day, personally, with my patients and clients, listening to my followers, these things are happening long before the period stops. All right. So if I waited personally until my period stopped, I would be in a complete nightmare situation right now. There's no version of that that I want for you, for me, for any of us. I know that estrogen therapy has been sort of all the rage. I completely acknowledge the fact that there is this seemingly strong movement to medicalize menopause. I don't agree with that. I don't think that's really what's happening. I think there are several very well-intentioned doctors, particularly some with very large followings, who are very excited about the fact that they are making huge changes. And we all are excited that I am, that they're making huge changes to how menopause is understood and handled in this country. That said, since the black box warning, thank God, came off of estrogen, we now have a worldwide shortage of estrogen transdermal patches is what I'm understanding. That's what I'm hearing. A lot of women are being prescribed the estrogen pill, which I'm not a fan of. I'm not going to go into all of that here. I actually am developing a course where I'm going to cover all of that for you. But the bottom line is women are asking for it. Doctors are starting to actually prescribe it without fear. Thank God. But that said, I think a lot of women are still being made to wait. So without going into testing and when you should test and what you should test and how you should do this, find yourself a hormone literate doctor. Not someone who just started a few weeks ago when the black box warning came off, but somebody who's actually literate at this, who's been doing it a while. This is not something you learn in a weekend course. This is something that takes years to hone. If you're a sensitive individual, if you have histamine issues, etc., go back and listen to that episode I did all about histamine. There are people who don't tolerate standard dosing of hormones. That doesn't mean it's not for you. And it doesn't mean that you can't handle estrogen or that you don't need estrogen. If you are somebody who has had estrogen-positive breast cancer or you've had any kind of cancer in the past and you've been told you're not a candidate, please go back and listen to my episode. I did a whole episode about this with a wonderful OBGYN, Dr. Min, and she covered it all. She is a former breast cancer survivor herself, and we covered that as well. I'll answer the question up front that everyone says, well, what if I can't take estrogen? What if I can't handle estrogen? What do I do then? I do not have much to tell you because there's nothing that mimics estrogen, right? There's just, it's kind of like when everybody was trying to find nature's ozempic. There's no such thing. There are things that might stimulate your own endogenous production of, but if your ovaries are petered out, they're petered out. If you're not making estrogen, you're not making estrogen. And if your cells want estrogen, then they need estrogen to bind. There's no kind of faking around that. There are medications out there that might help mitigate some of the symptomology. But when you need a hormone, you need a hormone. So I'm not going to get into all of that here. I just wanted to address it because I realize it's a thing. It's worth acknowledging. I understand that not everybody can access this. I understand that everybody cannot utilize estrogen. This is not medical advice. This is not prevention, treatment, or cure. This is simply educational. I just want to get you guys thinking that these seemingly unrelated symptoms that just mysteriously are appearing in middle age are probably connected. I remember being back in chiropractic college and back then, the way that we were being taught was very musculoskeletal and things were in silos. Like this is musculoskeletal and this is what we're sticking to. And I would sit there in class and learn about all of these conditions, whether we were learning about it from a pathological standpoint, whether we were learning about it in bone pathology, where we were actually seeing it on x-ray, which was fascinating to actually see these disease, disease processes happening in real time on bones, on x-rays and imaging. But it was so interesting to me that it kept happening to women between the ages of 45 and 65. Predominantly female, predominantly 45 to 65. When you learn disease processes and differential diagnosis in medical school, you learn about the group most commonly impacted. And I kept raising my hand and I was like, well, isn't this estrogen? Isn't this a problem of estrogen? like isn't this if it's happening predominantly to females between the ages of 45 to 65 it's not a disease process it's estrogen leaving the body I really want to drive this home because then fast forward to clinical practice I'm talking 20 years ago patients would come in and they would have a myriad of conditions and whether it was me working with my mentor for decades or it was my own clinical practice we would try to explain to these women that you're sitting in that age group and this is likely estrogen leaving the body. This is likely hormonally related somehow, right? And people just didn't want to believe it. And of course, that Women's Health Initiative study didn't do anything to, gosh, I mean, the amount of times I had to convince women and show them on lab work that their hormones were low and then convince them that it was relating to their symptomology and then convince them that it was safe to proceed with bioidentical hormone replacement was like a whole thing, right? And it took, I remember with some patients just giving up because they were so adamant or their doctors were so adamant that they were gonna die if they took estrogen. So a lot of women just went on with their chronic joint pain. And remember my practice was predominantly regenerative injection therapies for musculoskeletal conditions and joints. So I was seeing it in real time. That said, we didn't have a lot of data back then. It was anecdotal. And I worked with some amazing hormonal practitioners throughout my entire career. And they taught me this stuff. We saw it anecdotally. I'm really excited that we're starting to see papers about it. I'm really excited that we're starting to hear about it on social media. I make some posts. They catch fire. Everybody copies them. Now, everybody's talking about frozen shoulder and low estrogen, which if you ask any of the doctors, I've trained hundreds of doctors in regenerative injection therapy. And if you ask any of them, I was teaching this to them 10, 15, 20 years ago. And I'm so glad that it's finally catching on. but who does that happen to? Middle-aged women, right? So without getting into the details of it, I want you to go back and listen to part one of this. I talked about just chronic debilitating pain. Particularly spinal pain, particularly bilateral pain. I talked about ligaments and tendons ripping. I talked about breast and labial atrophy. Lip labias, labia down there, your lips start to atrophy. If your lips are atrophying on you and you're running to go get filler, why don't you look at your estrogen status? And there were several other things I talked about in that episode. So I'll leave that for you to go listen to. Otherwise, I'm just going to repeat myself. But I want to get into this today. The one thing I did want to say about that last episode is I talked about depression and flat affect, meaning that wonderful thing that happens to us, you know, when you hit 40, you're in your 40s and you're like, I don't give a fuck anymore. That wonderful experience and how it even gets more severe as you hit your 50s. And then I hear it's really prevalent in your 60s. That's estrogen leaving the building. That is, estrogen is your caretaking hormone. As it wanes, you stop giving a fuck. And when you're out of fucks to give completely and you are flat on your face, you're meaning emotionally, you're like, I don't care if I'm coming or going. I don't care what happens. And it's starting to lead to depression. That is estrogen leaving the building. and I highly encourage you to seek out help from somebody who knows what they're doing. The knee-jerk response of the medical community in that case is to hand you an SSRI. I'm not going to get into that here, but there is data and anecdotal evidence to show we've been using SSRIs off-label for menopause symptomology for years. And I don't always think it's the worst idea. It's not treating the root cause though. So I just wanted to throw that out there. If that's something that you're utilizing, no shame on you at all. I think it's actually the mechanism of action of some of these medications where you think oh it's an antidepressant sometimes the mechanism of action is really profound for the menopausal woman so please do not throw the baby out with the bathwater but don't neglect finding out about your estrogen levels and if you're going to use estrogen you're going to have to use progesterone if you have a uterus and I highly encourage you to figure out what your testosterone status is so I'll leave that there. Real health isn't built on quick fixes or viral trends. It's built through consistent practices that help your body adapt and recover and become more resilient. And you already know this. There's no one-size-fits-all protocol. Those are BS. What matters is doing what works for your body and your life. That's why sauna therapy is one of the simplest tools I use. Heat supports circulation, detox pathways, nervous system regulation, mood recovery, heat shock proteins. 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Go to puori.com forward slash DrTina, that's D-R-T-Y-N-A, and use code DrTina at checkout for this exclusive offer. but here are some other signs and symptoms you may not have even pondered i know these snuck up on me number one you're waking up in the middle of the night when women say i can't sleep i ask them can you not get to sleep or can you not stay asleep not being able to get to sleep as a progesterone issue not being able to stay asleep is an estrogen problem if you're waking up at three in the morning ding yes your adrenals are probably involved yes you probably have some liver stagnation issues, yes, your circadian rhythm is probably screwed up. But the most obvious culprit in that case that I have found clinically is estrogen leaving the building. So if you are low in estrogen, you will wake up in the middle of the night and you will be wide awake. You may wake up drenched and some people call those hot flashes. I call them hot flushes. I did a whole podcast about why hot flashes are very, in my opinion, very dangerous. That is a vasoconstriction throughout the entire, vasospasm, I should say, throughout the entire body. And it's leading to the symptomology of a hot flash. I have been told I was fear-mongering for talking about that, but that is the honest to God truth and there is data to back it up. So go listen to that episode. We're gonna link a lot of episodes in this one, guys. But if you're awake at two, three in the morning, wide awake, you wake up and you're like, I'm awake. You're probably, and you're in middle age, you're probably looking at estrogen leaving the building. I will tell you this, not having your sleep dialed in is going to be far more detrimental and damaging to your overall health and your metabolic health and your hormones than you could possibly ever fathom. So don't let that go on. I plead with you not to let that go on. I cannot emphasize this enough. I know women in their 60s and 70s, a whole generation of women got completely screwed out of hormones. We're just going to put it out there. Like they just got completely screwed out of it. And I'm so sorry that happened. And I'm so glad that Generation X is finally getting a chance to step back into what women before the ridiculous WHI, well, it was an interpretation really of the study. The study wasn't bad, the interpretation of it was. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for a whole generation of women because I was treating them in my clinic the whole time. I wasn't afraid. But I know that out in the wild that was not happening. These women were left to not sleep. And what even a few nights of not sleeping well can do to your metabolic health, it literally puts you into an insulin resistant state. It's devastating to your overall health. And if your metabolic health is thrown off, as you know, if you follow me for any amount of time, everything is messed up. So please, if you are waking up in the middle of the night, get yourself to somebody who's hormonally literate and can help you figure out what's happening. And don't be afraid of the estrogen because I would be far more afraid of the insomnia. And this came up for me. I was probably 46 or 47. I had just met my current husband. We were dating. And something I loved about him was that he was a great sleeper. And I'll tell you, middle-aged men too, men, if you're listening, your testosterone is leaving the building. It's called andropause. Go get it checked and handled because if you're not sleeping, your spouse isn't sleeping. And I had dated man after man after man who were admitting sleep problems to me. And I was like, there's no version where there's a second date. There's no version. If a man would tell me that they had sleep issues or insomnia, there was no version where there was a second date because it just wasn't, everything was going to be a mess. And I wasn't going to, my sleep, I protect with my life. Like it is everything to me. If you mess with my sleep, out. If you snore heavily, out. I just, I'm not having any of it. And so I meet my current husband, we're dating, and he tells me that he sleeps like a log. And I was like, check for the win here. Like, you know, the checkboxes you go down of what you're looking for. And he's tried and true, 9.30 hits. I call it the position. He's in the position and he's out. So if you're not sleeping, you are sabotaging your metabolic health, which means you're sabotaging your hormones overall and your hormonal clearance, and it's a whole big hot mess. So please, I implore you, get that checked. All right, on to the next one. This one is actually a huge deal and it creeps up on you sometimes earlier than you would think. It's not necessarily something that shows up after 45 years old. And who knows when perimenopause hits? I hate to use that term. I would like to just say your HPA axis is in your hypothalamic pituitary whatever axis, whether it's going to your ovaries or your adrenals or you name it, it starts to wane. But I'll tell you, the more stress you have, the worse your diet, the worse your lifestyle, the worse your overall health, the worse this whole experience is. So going into menopause unprepared and in poor health is a very bad decision. And going in under muscled is a very bad decision. Your muscles carry you through. So, I mean, truly, metabolically, and in many ways, your muscles carry you through. So go into menopause. If you're in your 30s, ladies, and you're listening to me, or you have a daughter who's in her 30s, tell her she best get serious now. This is no time to be, as my husband calls it, fiddle-fucking around. Get serious about entering into menopause as best you can. I trained for it. I trained for it for years and it still is hitting me and it's still not incredibly wonderful. Like I'm not saying it's awful and it's nowhere near. My girlfriends and I who are hormone literate, who do know how to manage this and who are managing it for ourselves and for each other. We still are like, what do normal women do? Like what do women who don't know all that, who don't have access to all this stuff doing? because this is still, you know, it's a little rough still, but it doesn't need to suck. Menopause does not need to suck. It can actually be a much more even keel experience of you riding into it and coming out of it. And even I, I was in complete denial that I was low estrogen and that I needed more. My labs actually look normal. Depends on when you run them. Really, you probably heard that. That's why doctors say, oh, don't test them perimenopause because they're all over the place. That's the truth. They're all over the place. But I had the symptomology. So this is the other big one. And this showed up for me hardcore in my 30s, alcohol intolerance. If you have a glass or two of wine and you're waking up in the middle of the night and you're wide awake and you are like, oh, hi, I'm awake. Kind of like the insomnia I was just talking about. And sometimes you feel like you've been poisoned and you are sweating. You are feeling like you are in an inferno. And it's not necessarily a hot flash. I just wake up like I have been on a Bunsen burner. Suddenly all my covers around me are just hot. I'm not sweating. I'm never sweating. I'm just hot. I'm so hot. I have to strip off everything and throw my covers back. And I'm not having a hot flash. I just get hot. And I'll add to that. It's not just hot flashes. It can be cold intolerance too, where you just can't warm up. So that's hormones, ladies. So if you're suddenly like, I cannot handle any alcohol, that is a sign that you should go get your hormones checked. I'm not saying go on hormones so you can drink more. I'm telling you that alcohol intolerance, in my opinion, and what I've seen clinically, or changes in alcohol response are pretty indicative that your hormones are doing a little bit of a roller coaster ride. And remember, with perimenopause, it's like this, right? I look forward to the day when it actually all is over because then I can just supplement the hormones and have way more control over the situation. But right now it is a shit show and it's like a 10 year ride. I call it the gauntlet. It might be 15 years for you. It might be longer. I see young women on social media saying, I'm in perimenopause. And I'm like, no, you just are in a hot mess of health. I mean that with all due respect as someone who was in a hot mess of health at that age. You're in a hot mess of health and it is causing you to have a really unstable hormonal milieu. It's not perimenopause. It's something else. But yes, your hormones are probably a mess. I treat the person. I don't care what age they are. I test the hormones and I treat what I find and I treat symptomology predominantly. So that's important. Another one is migraines. If you are experiencing crippling migraines, even if you're in your 20s, you need to have a look-see at your hormones. Usually that one's a progesterone issue, but don't neglect that. It's not just, it's vasospasm as part of it. When I look back on my entire life, the times when I had migraines, the times when I had some of this symptomology that I've talked about in part one and now here in part two, I was really thin. And when you're really thin, you lose a big part of your hormone depot. It's not just your ovaries that make your estrogen. It's your fat stores. It makes estrone. So if you get really skinny and all of a sudden you've got six-pack abs or you're, you know, I'm microdosing a GLP-1, but really you're just taking a standard dose and calling it a microdose. And you're doing it for inflammation, but really you're just doing it to get bone thin. If you're rocking all of a sudden, you know, washboard abs and you start feeling like you're losing your shit and your emotions are all over the place and your period's weird and you're spotting and chaos is breaking out and you're not sleeping. you just lost your estrogen. Your poor hormones are like, please, please help me. Body fat helps with that a little bit. A little bit of body fat is not a bad thing, ladies, especially as we age Another big one is urinary frequency And I talking all of a sudden you got to pee and there no holding it Like I used to joke with everyone because I could hold my urine. It's not healthy to do. You guys don't make a habit of it, but I could hold it on car rides, in class, during procedures. It didn't matter. I could hold it. And all of a sudden I'm like, I go from thinking about I have to pee to I have to pee. And there's really like I can barely get to the toilet. And this is happening to a lot of women and they're not talking about it. So there's this like, oh, I'm leaking or I can't hold it very well. It's probably because you need a little estrogen. And it's not just topical estrogen. I wish that this was solved with vaginal topical estrogen. I wish that that would solve this problem. But very often I see that that woman needs systemic estrogen therapy. So if you are having frequency. Young ladies, if you're having a lot of UTIs and you are very thin, you might want it. Yes, your flora is probably all catawampy. And yes, you need to take a hard look at your partner because their flora might be all off. And sometimes we're just allergic to certain partners and we shouldn't be sharing microbiomes with them. I'm just going to say it. I've seen that on repeat. But the times when I was struggling with UTIs really badly, I was stressed out of my mind and I was really thin. So again, that might've been an estrogen need. And I really wonder if even if we were to offer those young women some topical estrogen that they would apply vaginally, it might make a huge difference in this chronic UTI. I know we think of that, at least those of us who are hormone literate think of that for older women who are getting chronic UTIs, but let's consider that for the younger women as well. It might be worth a look-see. And this isn't a forever thing. This is very often intermittent. I have treated many a young woman with a little bit of estrogen, whether it was systemically or topically, and it was just for a time until we got them over a hump. And sometimes that time would be who knows how long, but same with young men. Sometimes they need a little bit of help in the hormonal area and we just do what we need to do and we get them over the hump. I will say in most cases, really high levels of stress is the culprit. So, but so then we're treating palliatively until they can get the stress under control. 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That's getkion.com forward slash Dr. Tina for 20% off. another huge one is flaccid skin or skin that cuts and rips really easily if you look at old folks you know how old folks bruise really badly and their skin rips really easily and they don't heal as well that's not just age and atrophy that is estrogen leaving the building so if you suddenly find that you're um gosh i see it all the time in women with wounds on their hands i've had it happen to myself i'm like why is that skin ripping like i brush up against the edge of a rough box and all of a sudden my skin becomes a braised somehow. And I'm like, what? I thought my skin was thicker than that. You'll also start to notice atrophy in the tops of your hands. Some people get filler for that. I think that is insane. If you understood the vascularity and the anatomy of the vascularity of the back of the hand, you would not be putting filler in it. You guys, it's insane. Pretty much the same for the face in my opinion, but that's just me. We'll talk about that another day. But just that, you know, or wounds that don't want to heal, that is estrogen leaving the body. And so we start to see this in middle age and women don't really complain about it. They don't put two and two together, but that's a big one. And so I think that just knowing that poor wound healing or skin that cuts too easily, yes, it's probably nutritional too. Yes, stress is going to impact it. Stress is going to impact everything, but it's thinning and collagen loss due to lack of estrogen and that can become problematic. And it's just quality of life for women, right? I've had patients that were just chronically like, I just can't heal. I'm like, we need to get you on some hormones. And I was doing regenerative injection therapies. I'm not going to inject somebody who's not in a good healing mode. That was one of my intake questions. That's why I know this. One of my intake questions with new patients before I inject them is how do you heal when you cut yourself and do you get abrasions easily? And if they said yes, and I don't heal well, I'm like, okay, you are hormonally not in the right place. And that might be testosterone too. It's usually a mixed bag, but they're not in the best place and that is worth having your hormones checked. And then the last one I'm going to go into is hair loss, hair shedding. You might not even notice any kind of pattern to it. I don't need someone to wait for a pattern where they call it the Christmas tree pattern when you start to thin on top. There's different reasons for hair loss. I'm going to do a whole hair loss masterclass here I'm working on, but I have been deep in the weeds of hair health, scalp health, hair integrity. And I will tell you that estrogen leaving the body causes the hair shaft itself to become thinner. So it's just the diameter shrinks. You do not grow as robust of hair. So you might be experiencing breakage. You might be experiencing split ends. But what a lot of women report is just sort of hair fall. And it's diffuse, meaning there's no particular pattern. They might start to see thinning on the sides. Yes, stress is going to make that worse, for sure. GLP-1s, I'm going to talk about that in my masterclass. But GLP-1s are a culprit. And it's not just, I do not think it's just because of severe weight loss. I think the higher doses are a concern. I have been saying this since day one. I had some girl come at me on Instagram the other day. Just she was on a bender about everybody on GLP-1, some functional nutritionalist and nutritionist, sorry. And she was just on a, she looked like literally a crazy person in her stories. I was like, this person is crazy. I'm blocking them. But she was like, oh, Dr. Tina got everybody on GLP-1s and now they're losing their hair because of GLP-1s. And doesn't she have a market for that now? And I'm like, what? I never have been in support of high doses of GLP-1s, ever. My message has been so skewed in translation, and I'm going to do more content around this, but I don't want to get into it because I'll get all frustrated. My message has been so skewed. I'm talking a fifth to a tenth to a fiftieth to a hundredth of what the rest of the world thinks is a microdose. and you're all out there micro, like thinking you're microdosing. My girlfriend sends me this text literally like an hour ago. This is the text. She's a clinician. She says, things that make me think of Tina immediately. Patient, a nurse practitioner started me on terseptide. Doctor, oh, how's that going? This is my friend, the doctor. Patient, it's great. I've had one dose and I'm having a lot less hunger. Doctor, cool. What dose did she start you on? Patient, a microdose. only she started her on a standard starting dose. She found out and it's like, I roll emoji, you know? So yeah, I do think there's a problem. And I think a lot of this comes down to the hair follicle itself, whether it's in a growth phase, whether it's in a stall phase, whether it's died off and it's not gonna come back. But estrogen has a huge impact here. And I believe the other hormones do as well. And if you take too much testosterone, you will start to lose your hair as well. So your hormones are critical. Your nutrient status is huge. Are you converting your testosterone to DHT? Is your sebum sitting too long on your scalp and that DHT is piling up? There's all kinds of things here. But bottom line, when a woman comes into my clinic and she says I'm having hair loss or hair sheds or just a ton in the drain, I immediately test her hormones. That's the very first thing I do. I test for nutritional deficiencies. And I can tell that by looking at someone. I can just look at somebody and see whether they're malnourished. And I test for hormones. Like I want to see what their hormonal milieu is, all of them. So that is slow and low and insidious when you hit perimenopause. And all of a sudden it starts and you're like, oh, I'll deal with it later. I'll deal with it later. and I think that there is probably a microbiome shift on the scalp because we have a microbiome shift everywhere as we start to lose estrogen our gut changes our gut health changes our vaginal tissues and health changes that we change when we lose estrogen and when we lose our other hormones the microbiomes that were there before when those tissues were robust and healthy start to shift And biomes are opportunistic, meaning if there's bad guys, we all have strep in our throat. When people say, oh, I caught strep throat. I like no you didn Your immune system just tanked out So the strep that was there decided to have a party And then maybe somebody in your family had a more virulent strain and they shared it with you And now you all compromised So it the same thing like with your biome everywhere and including your scalp. So scalp health is really critical. And that's what I've been doubling down on and then taking care and not being an asshole to the rest of your hair shaft. And that has been game changer for me. I have been using a new line. I've shared a bit, a bit about it and I will continue to share about it because I am having really profound, positive impacts with my hair. And if you look at my hair from a few months ago versus now, you're going to see a different head of hair and it's not just because it's longer. So go back and watch some old episodes and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. But I'm loving it. I've tried many products in their line. I have vetted this. I am OCD when I go on the rabbit hole. Every morning and every night, late at night, my husband's like, get off your phone. And I'm like, I'm researching. And I'm usually on something like a topic. I'm topically sort of obsessed about something and I'll hyper fixate on it. And I have been hyper fixating on hair loss for years now because I've been trying to figure out what is going on. And it is so multifactorial. And I've always treated it holistically, clinically. And then I've also done regenerative, a lot of regenerative injection therapies, PRP to the scalp and doing that a long time, long before it became popularized. I was thrown PRP everywhere on people, vaginal tissues, scalp, long before we had some of these more standardized protocols. And they don't work unless that person's healthy. So I would have women come in and say, I want you to do PRP on my scalp. And she was clearly depleted. She was anemic. She was in chronic pain. She wasn't healing well. I mean, this is like many patients, right? And then I would turn them away and say, you're not a candidate. And sometimes they get very upset, but like that's huge. And when you think of a healthy woman with good robust estrogen, I think of those girls, I think of like a German beer maid, right? Like the Oktoberfest beer maids with their mugs and, you know, ample breasts and nice tight waist and ample, you know, buttocks, the curves, when the curves are there and then the big bouncy hair, right? There's something to that That's real. And like, I'm not built like that. I've always just been like a straight board. I'm not a curvy girl, but I can build, usually build some muscle and then lay down fat over the top to get more curves. You can kind of sculpt yourself with strength training. But when my estrogen was leaving the building, I suddenly just got flat as a pancake everywhere. Everything just becomes deflated. And when your curves deflate, your hair shaft and follicle are deflating as well. And then when the hair shaft isn't there anymore, that in a healthy way, I'm sorry, when the follicle's not in a healthy way and the shaft is starting to thin out, it falls out because it can't hold it. Same thing happens with our teeth. I'll just end with this. Elderly women start to lose their teeth and patient after patient would come in and say, oh, I had dental work in Mexico 10 years ago and it was obviously bad work. Or I had discounted dental work for whatever reason somewhere and it was obviously bad work. And I'm like, no, you have osteoporosis. And as your jaw is dissolving from the osteoporosis, your teeth no longer are seated appropriately and they fall out. So I freak out when women are now doing masseter. This is the muscle, the masseter. It's our, I freak out that it is trend now to not only remove the buccal fat, but to do Botox on the masseters to atrophy it. That is the muscle. That is the main muscle putting mechanical pressure on your mandible, which is this jawbone here, which literally starts dissolving on women as they age because of lack of estrogen. And we have so much data showing that estrogen is so critical to bone health, but so is activity. So is chewing when it comes to these. And that's a real slippery slope I'm not going to get into. That's a topic for another day. but as the teeth start to fall out, it gets harder to chew. And as it gets harder to chew, you get more atrophy in the muscle. So please don't speed this up, ladies. You young women listening, please do not put Botox in your masseters. Please. I don't even want to see the fallout from this. And then those women are microdosing GLP-1s and putting themselves into osteopenia by being malnourished and underweight because they're not microdosing. They're just standard dosing. It's a total disaster mess waiting to happen. I do not want to see the end result of this, but we're going to see it in about three to five years. And we're going to see these women having a very difficult time with aging. You do not want to go into your elder years depleted of estrogen with low bone mass and low muscle mass. That is a recipe for disaster. So I will leave it with that. I hope this was helpful. Again, not fear-mongering. I'm just telling you what's up. This is the truth. This is why you guys come and listen to my show because I'm not going to BS you. And this is how I talk to my patients. So if you are interested in the hairline that I'm using, it is focused predominantly on scalp health. That is why I decided to try it. And I will put a link in the show notes for you guys to check that out. I am absolutely in love with it. I'm going to continue to research it and then I'm going to come out with more content. I'm going to do a whole masterclass on hair loss because you're all asking me for it. A lot of you ladies in middle age are struggling. A lot of you started in your 20s and 30s with PCOS and having hair loss and now you're in middle age and you're like, oh my God. So I think it's an important topic to address. And it's not just about hair care. It's about having a healthy scalp, but we have to address this holistically. I did do a Hair Loss 101 episode. I'll link that in the show notes. We're going to have a lot of links in the show notes. But hopefully this ties it all together for you guys. And I have a series of courses that I'm going to be releasing here soon. So hang on. I'm getting my thoughts together and figuring out how I want to address this GLP-1 microdosing bullshit head on because I feel somewhat responsible in that I created a monster. I opened Pandora's box. I was trying to talk about a strategy that I don't think most of you still even understand because you're still thinking it's a weight loss strategy and it's not. And it's been completely bastardized and twisted. And the thing that bothers me the most is that a lot of people are using it for vanity weight loss that they don't need to lose. And they are putting themselves in this predicament. I just described. And the reason I feel responsible was because I got deplatformed at 232,000 followers off of Instagram for talking about microdosing GLP-1s. And I have a feeling it was big pharma. I have my reasons for believing that and they're pretty sound. And the reason you don't... So what happened was that conversation took off, but I wasn't allowed to defend my stance. I wasn't allowed to give details. And I was afraid to talk about it here. I was afraid to talk about it anywhere because I really, like I have been on, if you were back with me during COVID days, I was on Big Pharma's radar. I didn't, I couldn't believe there I was again, kind of looking down, you know, the barrel of like, oh my gosh, I'm on their radar again. And I have it on good word that they don't like me. And that has been problematic. The good news is, is that they've all come out with multi, or they're going to be coming out with multi-dose vials here soon is the rumor. But they also have, you know, the day, or I should say the week I got deplatformed was the week that they released the vials. So they went from pens to vials where you could go direct to the company and get the vials. And they were not multi-dose. They don't have a preservative. But somehow that same week, my Instagram goes down. And so I wasn't allowed to defend my stance. I haven't, and I've never been able to really explain it on a podcast because it's deep. And you have to be smart and understand some biochemistry when I explain it. So I will be doing more content around that in the near future because I really do want to address this problem. I feel like the inmates are running the asylum and I think most of you have got it wrong. And there are going to be consequences, in my opinion, to having it wrong. When you don't need to be on an actual standard dose of this, but you're being told it's a microdose and you're on it anyway and you stay on it indefinitely. I think there's going to be problems and I want to share with you what it is, how my original hypothesis works. but we're going to have to do some biochem and I'm going to have to do a slideshow. I'm going to have to do a slide deck and show you guys because it's not that straightforward and simple. But anyway, I digress. I hope you guys found this valuable. I hope that you will heed my warning and it's not trendy. It's not like, ooh, let's go get on hormones. It's if you need them, you need them. And a lot of young women out there are struggling with symptomology that could benefit like a PCOS woman. I don't care what age she is. She comes into my clinic. She gets progesterone. period. 25, 35 doesn't matter. I don't want to see women suffering. I've been using progesterone since I was a teenager, you guys. Thank God I had a mom who was smart and was on HRT and had a cool doctor who was like, you need to put your poor girl on progesterone because I was losing my mind. So I implore you to consider that maybe a lot of your symptomology before you go down the like vast pharmaceutical route, consider that there might be some need or necessity or help with even intermittent or short-term HRT supplementation in there and find somebody who's hormonally literate. So I'll leave you guys with that. I appreciate you so much. I hope this was helpful and I will see you guys on the next one. Thanks for listening to The Dr. Tina Show. This is a Wellness Loud production produced by Drake Peterson. Theme song is by John the Gilt. You can watch the full video version of this podcast inside the Spotify app or on YouTube. As always, you can email the podcast at podcast at drtina.com. That's D-R-T-Y-N-A. And if you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite podcast app. You can also find all of my offerings on my website at drtina.com. For more shows by my team, go to wellnessloud.com. See you next time. and thanks for listening. This podcast is for general informational purposes only. It does not constitute the practices of medicine, nursing or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice. I am a doctor, but I am not your doctor. No doctor-patient relationship is formed. The use of this information and the materials linked to this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content on this podcast is intended not to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice from any medical condition they have, and they should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. If you struggle with bloating, gas, constipation, digestive issues, yeast overgrowth, well, you may already know about Digest This. It's the podcast hosted by me, Bethany Cameron, also known as Little Sipper on Instagram. 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