The BIGGEST Mistakes Women Make With Hormones, Birth Control, and Conventional Medicine

Dr. Austin-Links, welcome to Miami and welcome to Biohacket. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to sit down with you since we chatted in London. You brought up something when we had dinner together about how people are constantly chasing symptoms. Well, yeah, it's easy to do when you have a lot of symptoms going on and a lot of unknown reasons as to why they're happening. I think you can start chasing your tail pretty quickly. And it takes a lot of work to figure out what's going on. It's kind of like being an investigative analyst, like you have to really dive deep and oftentimes we don't have the time or the resources to do that. And when it means, like, in my opinion, sometimes people do you think they just kind of come up with symptoms as well because something else is going on there projecting other areas of their life? Is it almost like avoiding things that are unhealed? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think, you know, much like when you get sick, I think you start having, you know, you feel malaise, you feel seeing, do you have running nose? Like you just don't feel very well. And it starts creating this dysfunction within your system to where it's easy to become like a hypokondriac about what's going on because when you're aware of what your body is trying to tell you, you start trying to figure it out on your own. And so every little thing becomes a potential problem when the reality is sometimes just part of living in this world and other times there really is an actual issue. For anybody listening, why do you think conventional medicine fails so many people every single year? Well, it's kind of like what I was saying before. Like it takes a lot of effort and time to figure these things out. And also we have a system that profits off the sick. Whenever you're rewarding people for not helping people to get better to their full capability, you're going to create a system that is very toxic. And I think we're seeing the full effect of that now with our, you know, the fact that we spend the most amount of money and the world on healthcare. And we have one of the sickest developed nations in the world. It's like there's evidence. I, you know, I always look at other countries that are, you know, kind of spend on healthcare and stuff. And I was like, why are they doing better than us? Like, is it? Do you think it's just down to the fact that from a pharmaceutical industry is so intertwined in our government and it's become so corrupt? Or do you think it's across the board from agriculture to how we're training people in medical schools and turning out doctors these days? Like, where do you see the largest piece of the problem? I think the largest piece is going to stem from our beliefs as a culture that we can put all our trust, or all our eggs in the basket of conventional medicine, thinking that they can solve all our problems because that's been the indoctrination since the, you know, early 1900s is that, you know, your doctor knows everything health-related and they don't. They're training specific areas of health for sure and are really good at it, but they are not the end-all-be-all when it comes to health. And so our culture, especially our grandparents and our parents, they think there, you know, there's a pill for every ill and that's all you really have to do. You don't have to do any actual work. But then that stems into, yeah, agriculture stems into our workforce, it stems into what happens in the home and it creates a very vicious cycle. When we, you know, we were there for the inauguration together and, you know, we were so excited to bring in Bobby Kennedy and I think the HHS has done some amazing work. However, do you think they're as far along currently to date as we had maybe hoped or expected? I think probably not as far as we would hope. I think it's realistically though, it's probably as far as we could have gotten to this point. There's a lot of undoing that we have to do to kind of get real progress. And I also understand that there's a lot of, there's a lot of temptations or active threats going against our Bobby Kennedy and the whole organization because there's a lot of money to be made. And I think the advancements with technology and AI is really something that we probably don't fully understand the full consequences of that yet. But it's coming under the guise of like, what's this better for the health of the people when the reality is, it probably may lead to more control. I saw this little clip, I think it was a couple of weeks ago and it was President Trump. Bobby Kennedy was obviously in a doctor's house and it was perhaps the CEO of Pfizer, but definitely somebody from Pfizer. And they were talking about like, they're funding and what they're going to do with it. And I just stood back and I just shook my head. I was like, this is not by giving you guys more funding. This is about looking deeper into what a lot of the products that they have created, not a single product that has come out of Pfizer has led to a cure ever. Right. And so for me, that was a little like disappointing almost because I was like, listen, like we all know what's going on here. But that's where I say that the pharmaceutical companies have such a power over our government because of the amount of funding that they have brought in that I don't think any government, these guys have definitely done a much better job, are completely free of that. Well, again, I think if what they were doing was leading to healthier nations and populations and it's great, you know, but it was just about, hey, instead of getting at the root cause of things, now we're just going to create a new product with a different angle that's going to help you treat the symptom and not actually fix the problem. It's like, well, we're just like, it's revolving door of what we've already been exposed to. So I'm hoping that we actually have a true desire to heal people, but when you look at people like the World Economic Forum, where they have a stated depopulation agenda, I don't believe, but that's really what we're trying to do. Yeah. When you, if you were like actively part of HHS and you could work on certain policies and stuff, what are three policies or things that you would like to get funding for and what policies would you have like to put into place? Yeah, it would be policies for having like micro agriculture, like more local, to where people can actually have food being exchanged in a very local space that food doesn't have to expire and be exposed to the things that it is and have to have the preservatives and all that stuff in it. They don't want to be supporting the nuclear families so that we can have women if they want to work, like that's fantastic, but allowing for more flexibility so they can be at home with their new babies or supporting their families and having roles for husbands to take on that where they can make more money to buy good healthy food. Like, these are all very like, you know, maybe not so practical, but they also are very practical at the same time. It's like, we want to have a nuclear family, we want to have good healthy food and we don't want to treat our homes like hotels. I think if we can avoid that, we would start seeing a lot more health in our nation. You know, it's funny you talk about how women should have more choice. I think feminism was terrible. The first wave of feminism where we were able to vote and have our own bank, because of amaze. Yeah, obviously. But the second wave of feminism that came in, I think, is completely being toxic to the family system because it is taken away traditional gender roles which made us women stay in our feminine and men in their masculine. And when I look at America, because I'm obviously Pakistani, I spend a lot of time in the police as well, when I look at America and what's happened to the men in this country, when it comes to being providers and protectors, which at the end of the day is the two main purposes of being a man. Right. If you're not alignment over there, then what do you do? Right. But so many stories, I hear them all day that people men in this country are so disconnected from understanding that that is your role and function to provide safety and security to your partner and to provide financially to your partner. Right. Well, I think, again, culturally speaking, we've created this fear, at least what I've experienced as a white male. It's like, I feel bad for being a white male who wants to protect my wife. Why? Because that's what we've been told for, since I was a kid, that this is a toxic masculinity thing. The reality is, when what I realize, and then I have four kids and been married for 12 years, being a male is hard. And if anything, it's a lot of responsibility. Right. It's not that I get to abuse my leadership. If anything, if I'm going to be a good leader, it means that I have to die to myself. I have to sacrifice. I have to give up what I want to do for the benefit of my kids and my wife. And so I think there's a picture of true masculinity from a biblical perspective that doesn't align with what our culture says masculinity is. So that's part of the problem. You know, I wouldn't even look at it. Like that, and I'll pose this to you and you tell me what you think. I think it's not even giving up what we want, but it's repositioning the narrative, because a woman also adds so much structure, and a woman's energy is naturally a manifestation. Right? So she creates that structure at home and brings in that creativity for, and tells a man, I'm going to give you peace in the house so that you can go on into the world and create. And you can go on into the world and bring home abundance for us, because I'm providing you that safety as well. It's almost like an energetic exchange in some ways. And women are, I think, choosing the right partners is very, very important. But I think that, again, needs to be shifted as a narrative. Instead of making men feel like they're sacrificing, it's that together planning so the man still feels supported as well, but understands the woman's also taking on a lot of responsibility. Especially in this country where child care is next and possible for a lot of people, right? Very expensive. I think that's such a part, like I think about my wife, and I like most of my business success I mean, almost all of it has been because of her. Like, she stays with some of our kids, by design, like she wants to. Like, that was what we discussed before we even had kids. And when she worked at different points when our early in our marriage before we had kids, and she actually provided most of the financial income when I was in school, because she had to. Of course, yeah. And then, but when we were first married, I told her, it was like, look, we want to have kids. Like, you want to stay at home, even though you could go out and do anything that you wanted to. And so we took a financial hit up front, you know, to, for me to have one income. But by us doing that, she provided that peace and stability within our home to where we would have amazing meals. Like, we would have a peaceful environment. Like, our house would be very maintained. We'd have a lot of guests come over. We'd like host a lot of people. And, you know, since we've had kids, it's just kind of continued. So I 100% agree with you. Like, that is an energetic exchange that if it wasn't for her or wasn't for me to working together, it wouldn't have happened. Yeah. And I don't think you can almost put a price talk on that sort of a beautiful harmony between the two, right? And I think when we look across the world in any cultures, I think both people understanding their roles, understanding what they bring to the table, improves their health, improves the community that they're part of. And I think that's where we've gone wrong in this country is we've become so disconnected from understanding our own personal identities. And that's where I think a lot of women are also, women are 30% more susceptible to autoimmune disease, but I think also women are living out of design, women are chronically stressed. Right. So pushing ourselves to do things that we're not necessarily designed to do. And we're constantly like, we, our cordial levels are unwired. Well, that's, I mean, I always, I've always said, you know, when you look at things like PCOS and NIMI and TROSIS, and really what you're seeing is the reversal of the benefits of female hormones. You're switching from like, you know, femininity to masculinity by design, because like you have to, that's a cortisol response. And so I think whenever I'm working with a female client, it's always, I'm always trying to portray that and help them to analyze areas that are live where that's not happening, where it's like, where are you adding extra cortisol or extra stress? Unnecessarily sometimes. And sometimes because you have to, like, you know, there's just certain things you have to do. But more times than not, when you have this culture that's saying like, do more, do more, and you start getting less and less, like you have to understand the connection hormonally as to why that's happening. And that's, that's the whole point. If you are taking protein powder, you definitely need to hear this. The Clean Label Project tested 160 different proteins from different vendors and brands across the US. And you're gonna be shocked at the discovery that they made. Nearly half of the top selling proteins in the US tested high for lead. 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So appetite, like grillin, leptin, cortisol, melatonin, all those hormones are being regulated because of your circadian rhythm. And so when you're awake in the morning time, you're starting that circadian clock. And so when you eat food in the morning, that kind of breaks your fast, right? That's what we have breakfast. A lot of women that I work with, they are told to fast, right? And so they're skipping breakfast, but they're yet having caffeine, or caffeine with sugar or milk, or whatever it in it, breaking their fast, and that's their breakfast. And so they're starting their day off with this dysregulated circadian rhythm already. And so now all of a sudden, insulin, which is gonna be regulating your sugar, coming into your body, which is essentially energy, it's gonna be say in like, hey, let's store this as fat because we're gonna need it for later for a rainy day, instead of utilizing it for energy, uptake throughout the duration of your day. So now you're gonna start having fatigue, you're still having more fast storage, just because you had a bad start to your day. And so if you do that frequently, and then you have other stressors of like, you're eating toxic food, like a lot of processed food or ultra-process food that's adding even more, but burden to your system, or maybe you're exposed to mold, or maybe you have parasites, or heavy metals, or just radiation from your phone. Now all of a sudden, your cells are very toxic laden, and they're having to work on all these extra stressors, which is essentially what's happening to your body. So oxidative stress is essentially what's happening. And a lot of women are just not really able to fully see the dots that they're connecting as far as like, why they feel the way they feel, and why their cells are not functioning well, and then subsequently why they have thyroid issues, or sex hormone issues, or infertility issues, because all that stuff is connected back to it. So it's so funny you're saying that most women wake up in the morning and tend to, so I was having black coffee in the morning, and then it'd go workout and then I'd come back and have a protein breakfast, right? And then a dear friend of mine, Dr. John Kim, was like, I don't think you can do that, because your hormones are so wired right now, your cortisol's really high, so he taught me this recipe, it's called a Russian custard, have you heard of it? Yeah. It's basically two egg yolks raw with a little bit of sea salt and honey, and he's like, the first thing you do is besides have water with electrolytes and minerals, right after that you're gonna take this shot of this Russian custard, and then you can have your coffee. But that is what you have to do, because your body has to absorb the nutrients before the cup of coffee hits your stomach. Yeah, because caffeine spikes cortisol, and cortisol's gonna spike your need for blood sugar. And so you're gonna have more sugar cravings, you're gonna be more hungry, you're gonna be more likely to have snacks in between meals, and all this is just causing this dysregulated circadian rhythm, so that when you do go throughout your day, now you're gonna have a big crash in the afternoon, or... That was happening to me. Yeah, and then when you do eat a meal, you're gonna wanna overeat, and then when you do it a bed, you're gonna have dysregulated sleep, and then you're gonna start this whole vicious cycle. So circadian rhythm would be the first thing that I would say would be what you need to fix as a female. Second thing would be, I think just ensuring you understand what your toxic burden is, right? And so I kinda mentioned this a little bit already, but a lot of them don't know, they don't know what they don't know, right? Just like most of us, if you don't test, you don't know kinda what's going on, you're not gonna have any idea where to start. So if you've been exposed to mold, or you have a history of mono and EBV, or you've had issues of parasites or heavy metals, like all these things I said, if you have that kind of brewing the background, and you're taking, you know, your supplements, you're eating the right food, and you're trying to do all these things, exercise, but you have these underlying stressors to yourselves, you're gonna be kind of chasing your tail for a while, and that's what I was mentioning with your symptoms before. If you don't know what you're really trying to fix, and you're just trying to fix a symptom, there's a lot of reasons you can have certain symptoms. And so it's not always just like, oh, I have a runny nose, it's this, or I have joint pain, it's this. It's like, well, it could be many things, and so you have to kinda get out the root of that, and that's where I would say to be the second thing. Comments on that? Or? No, I think a lot of times, like you said, we're so focused on the symptom, that we forget that we have to zoom back and look at the larger picture. How are we sleeping? How are we eating what are external stressors in our life? How are we getting enough sleep? So when my hormones were completely out of whack this summer, I realized it wasn't getting enough RAM or deep sleep at all. And when I started fixing my sleep hygiene, having a proper nighttime routine, making sure I'm in bed by 10, trying to put away my phone, turning off my phones, I'm not getting any of the EMF, a radiation coming through, and I just checked my sleep score, my sleep score after four months, for the first time ever, five months was like 98. Wow. And I had two and a half hours of RAM sleep, and I would have a deep sleep and I was like, wow. Big difference. It makes such a big difference, but that was getting my body the right nutrients, circadian rhythm cycling, and then from there, making sure that I'm working on my sleep hygiene. Yeah, and it's the boring stuff, right? Like it's the things that really, but that's a beautiful part. It's a free stuff that people don't realize. Start with the things that are free before you go by and now there's supplement before you get on this. And even before you tell me if this is right or wrong, before you consider getting on harm or replacement therapy, I think you need to fix certain functions in your life and make sure you're creating certain healthier habits and then adding in the hormones. Yeah, that's always been my stance, because if you just add hormones to a broken system, you're just gonna feed. You're gonna feed the wrong pathway that is causing the problem. So a lot of women will get testosterone, although they'll get estrogen and progesterone, but if they're already having a dysfunctional hormonal pathway, they're just gonna re-emphasize the problem and so it's gonna exacerbate it. And this is the same with paramedicost too, like a lot of women that are going through paramedicost entering menopause think that, well, this is like a dysfunctional thing, but the reality is paramedicost is happening for about 10 years up until menopause occurs, right? And so a lot of conventional doctors be like, well, once you don't have a cycle for 12 months, now you're menopausal, you're post-menopausal. It's like if you were pregnant and the doctor's like, well, you're not pregnant until the baby's here. Correct. It's like, no, like you've been pregnant this whole time leading up to it. Absolutely. And so I think a lot of people will throw hormones at a problem when they don't realize that there are symptoms like, you know, PMS or mood swings or weight gain or fatigue or brain fog happening for 10 years leading up to menopause that needs to be addressed. And if you address those things, then menopause is actually, you go from fertility to stability, right? Like if you have good hormonal balance leading up to it, it can be a great experience for a female to become, you know, transitioned into a different phase of life where you can be a stable force rather than like a fertile force. And I think that it all gets back to like the foundational problems that were persisting before that. So your wife has had four beautiful, gorgeous, healthy babies. Is it true that when a woman gives birth, her body almost experiences right after that, like a menopause like for a little bit? Yeah, I mean, that's why you don't, you don't have a cycle, right? There's a lack of a cycle. And how long do you not have a cycle for? I mean, it depends on the woman. So a lot of it depends on breastfeeding. So like if they're breastfeeding at night for like my wife, she's still breastfeeding and she just had her cycle and she's like 12 months post-livering. Okay, wow, okay. So, but she was feeding our baby like all throughout the night until a couple months ago. Yes, her circadian rhythm is not. Yeah, so she's, but she's still, her body's still requiring that. So I, our neighbor for example, she, you know, or I can't remember maybe more of my wife's friends, she, she starts having her cycle like eight weeks after she's over. And she was breastfeeding her now. She, her breastfeeding is different from, and I don't even know who this person is, but it's just my wife is told me. So either way, it just, it varies quite a bit, depending on where you're at. You know, I feel like the female body and I had another guest on in London when we were together on the podcast and this man told me he's like, we always place this idea of like strength and courage and all in the men, but the women are really truly resilient. More than men could ever be or dream of being, because imagine a woman who gives birth. And she does not sleep properly sometimes for years. I have friends who are like, don't really have an auntie or doing everything themselves. The baby's always with them. And some of their kids are like two and a half years old and they have not slept properly for two and a half years. Yeah. And they're still functioning at work. They're a great hands on mom, they're a great wife and I'm like, man, if you do that to a man, he would fall apart like a man going through two years of sleep regression. Yeah. They wouldn't be functioning. Well, it's hard to, it's just, it's such a hard, and it gets back to what you're saying before. It's like there's different, there's, we have different skill sets and different abilities. I think men, because of our cycles, our 24 hours on the clock, like we're very stable in that sense. And so we can handle a lot of load and do, we actually do better with it. I always say men are like trailers, like we pull straighter with the heavier load. And like, I think that is true. And that means that we need a lot of responsibility. We need to kind of know what direction we're going. And we need to be kind of like very aware of that. I think females, again, there's a consequence of those things. Like I don't want women to think that I can do that because I'm tougher, and then it like leads to issues. Yeah, of course. That's why most women use most of financial health dollars in the world in the United States, because they do have 80% of the autoimmune issues. They do have more issues of heart attacks. They're more likely to die after a heart attack. But they're using more of these dollars because our society has not treasured them enough to protect them enough and understand that, hey, you're not getting enough sleep. Maybe we should be putting more burden on you expecting you to work out or doing these extra things with your career. Like maybe we should take a bit of a sabbatical from that so we can protect you. Absolutely. And so I think it's important to kind of understand where we are with that stuff, because there's a bit of a cultural issue on that. Like we were saying before. And when it comes to women in their 20s, 30s and 40s, obviously every decade is so different for a woman than a man. How can these women, listening to the podcast, start optimizing their hormones from 20 year olds to 30 year olds to 40 and into their 50? I mean, you, again, I would, I would do the circadian rhythm thing really well. I would figure out what kind of potential toxic burdens you've been exposed to are dealing with. I would make sure you understand what a good self-met regimen looks like for you. Okay. And it's individualized, correct? Yeah, I'll talk about the common ones that I feel like are most, most appropriate for most women and just people in general. But I think for most women, they need a good method to be complex. I think that's such a critical. And why is that? So about 60% of women have MTHFR. And so that's that issue with you don't, you don't basically detoxify, you don't methylate very well. And that's genetic variant. So there's nothing you can really do about that. I have that, my wife has that. Most people probably have it, unfortunately. And so if you have that, you need, you need these methylated B vitamins that can be easily absorbed so that you can then make energy detoxify and methylation happens about 300 billion times a day. So it's like a very important process that needs to occur. If it's such an important process, how does 60% of the population have this disruption? I think, I've researched this a little bit, but I think that has, some of it has to do with folic acid that we're putting into our foods and fortifying cereals and things like that. So it's become worse over the years. It's hard to say that with confidence. According to my research and what I've read, we don't know that for sure, but there definitely seems to be some worsening of that, or at least more awareness to it. But either way, it's a big problem. And so you can very easily mitigate that by taking a methylated B complex. And some people don't do well with that, depending if they have like comp tea or some like that. But most of the time, it's a good option. And so you can get methylfolate into your system. The problem is a lot of women that are pregnant will give, will take folic acid because that's what they're told in their prenatals. And folic acid, if you have MTHFR is like a toxin, it's very, very toxic for your system. So you'll be able to- And they're not even checking these women. No, they don't check them. So they're told to take folic acid to prevent like strebo palsy and all these certain kind of things. And, or no, spina bifida, I think is maybe what it is. But we're taking it. And then afterwards, they're having a lot of postpartum depression. And, according to, again, to my research, it's because of the folic acid detoxification that they're having to get out of their system. And so they'll have this postpartum depression. So taking a methylated B complex is critical, in my opinion. Omega-3 fatty acids are very, very low. So we should have like a one-to-one ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s. We're like a 20 to one ratio. It's kind of where the most people are in the population. And that's super helpful for your cell membrane being flexible so you can get things in and out yourself. So that Omega-3 would be a really important one. Obviously, magnesium. I'm a huge fan of magnesium glycinate. It's a good jack-voltrease. It can be taken on an empty stomach. It does very well for people. Taking it 200, 400 milligrams of 4-bed is usually a good option. And then vitamin D can be a really good one as well. Yeah, with K2. Because so many people have vitamin D deficient. It's very, very, very common. It's very common because when you're deficient, it often means that you're inflamed. So your body is actually utilizing that vitamin D to help you. So you can't see it on a lab test because it's not floating around your blood. But if you were to look at most people and if they didn't have high inflammation, they probably have sufficient levels of vitamin D. The other issue is when you take too much, and it's not converting well because you're not taking K2 or you don't have enough magnesium, you start to deplete those resources. And so you can actually create more problems if you're taking, especially if you're taking D2, which is synthetic, and your doctor's giving you 50,000, I use once a week. And it doesn't get paired with magnesium or vitamin K2. Now also you start calcifying your arteries or your joints and things like that. And it can cause a lot more problems. So you've got to be careful with that. And you've got to make sure you kind of know what your issue is and then pair it with the right supplements. So that would be the other one to consider. Yeah. And for women who are trying to conceive, let's say. So this is, you know, we told everybody 20, 30, 40s, these are vitamins that they need to get on. We talked about three different things based on optimize themselves from circadian rhythm, making sure they're obviously, you know, careful when they sort of depletion. When it comes to additional things that they should be doing, is there anything else that women should be start checking or be like, okay, in this decade of my life, this is what I need to be paying attention to? Yeah, I think in your 20s, I would, the mindset I would have is don't abuse your body. Like just start to appreciate it and treasure it and take care of it. Stingently drink a much alcohol, you know, not taking vitamins at that point, skipping breakfast, fasting, doing all these high intense exercises, especially not respecting where you are in your cycle. Yeah. Just getting a decent understanding of how your body should function at a foundational level would be the 20s. The 30s would be kind of understanding that the reason that disease is kind of persist or developed is that you spend more time in a state of deficiency. And so when you start seeing like, oh, I'm 35 or I'm 36 now I'm starting to have these issues just came out of nowhere. In my opinion, it's like, well, you've been deficient from these things for 15, 20 years. And now you're starting to see the fruity or labor. So kind of getting understanding of that and then starting to counter it by actually taking those things, having good sea pyjee and understanding it again, that less is probably going to be more at that point in time. And I think for a lot of us, we don't have much peace. Like we don't have much Sabbath, we don't have much rest. And if we have these bad habits from our 20s, our 30s just kind of exemplify that. They kind of exacerbate it a little bit. So I think getting some rhythms in your life to where you have some stability of in peace and calm would be really important in your 30s. And then your 40s, again, it's the extension of all these things I just mentioned, but I think in your 40s it would be understanding like why your body is transitioning and why that's important. And so again, for a female, it's understanding that pyramid opauses is actually a good thing. It's by design, it's not a problem. But then understanding that you can use things like biidentical hormone replacement therapy to kind of specifically target your deficiencies, but it's not a replacement necessarily. It's like a supplement. It's like you want to use it supplementally to kind of fill a gap a little bit. But I think if you just do that and not do anything else like we said before, it's not going to do as much as it could for you. At least long term. And if we want to educate the audience also on biogetical hormones, right? And obviously the difference between synthetic versus non-synthetic and then also where they should be starting with that. Obviously going to see a specialist like that. For sure. Yeah, you definitely want to get with, I mean, the way that I work with my clients is that I don't prescribe medications. And so we like to work with them before or after they've done biidentical hormone replacement therapy. But if you're... And do you partner with a hormone specialist, like somebody who can give them the hormones if they need to do too? Not right. No. Like we found that there's just so many people out there that do that. Okay. That like we're usually working with them before they do it. Or after they're like, hey, I've already tried this and it didn't work. Now what should I do? And so we're trying to get them to like optimize so that they can then adjust their doses accordingly. But so what was your first question? The first question was teaching women about like hormones, like biidentical hormones and stuff. All right. And then outside reverse kind of the question I mean, like how do you prepare these people for that? Is it things where we spoke about the three kind of points or is there additional stuff that you guys add in? Yeah. I always start with the foundational things first. So we just said, and then depending on the person, the woman, we'll then look at them individually and say like, okay, this is what your apparent issues are. And then we'll walk them through a detox of parasites, heavy metals, radiation, mold, just to make sure that we kind of know that those things have been addressed. And then from there, it just depends on like, if we need to do a Dutch test or whatever to kind of identify specific deficiencies. But more times than not, once you correct the cellular level, their hormones start to be corrected at the same time. So you don't really have to, I think the emphasis is rarely on getting more about identical hormones, it's more about reducing the dosage that they were already on or not having it at all. And then what is your take? I wrote this down about DHEA. Do you like it? Do you not like it? Do you ever recommend it to your patients? Yeah. It's a mixed bat. Yeah. It means to be very low dose. I think a lot of women that are getting it, they're taking like 25 milligrams. And again, it's feeding this cascade of hormonal events that is feeding it improperly. And so, so like, for example, if it's kind of hard to pick, I have like this picture in my head. So if you have like cholesterol, which is a building block your hormones, and you have pregnant alone, and you kind of go progesterone, cortisol, over here you have like DHEA. And from there, it kind of goes into like testosterone and estrogens and all this sort of stuff. If you're feeding something, if you're giving something DHEA, and it's not converting well, but it'll likely convert to like, antigens and become unfavorable in terms of testosterone. So if you just give somebody DHEA, and you don't correct anything else, at least from what I've seen, it doesn't usually vote well for them. How can you tell if DHEA is not converting properly for somebody? I mean, you'll probably just have a worsening of your symptoms. You could probably have worsening of like, thinning of hair in your head, maybe facial hair in your face, maybe more issues with estrogen becoming, yeah, like you're not detoxing from estrogen. So you're becoming more estrogen dominant. So if you're taking, if you have a cycle, it could worsen your cycle a little bit. And again, this is like more of a longer term perspective. I think short term, it could probably be like, oh, I feel better for the first couple of months. Yeah. And then after a while, you're like, now listen, things are going wrong. So it just, it has to be nuanced with the client, for sure. When it comes to the role of emotions with women's health, I think I thought it was yesterday I saw something on Instagram by Dr. Mary Claire. And she talked about how now we know the ovaries themselves are an entire ecosystem. And I found that post really, really fascinating because we just thought, okay, the ovaries, you know, are this organ that kind of makes you like, no, the ovaries are so hyperlinked to your nervous system that they take all the biofeedback to your state of fight or flight or if you're in a state of rest and digest, the ovaries fill it. And what happens when you're aging, the ovaries become more and more and more and more sensitive to that. And so it's this massive ecosystem that is playing and is regulated by your nervous system. Which I don't think any of us have really stopped and thought about that when it comes to women's, women's of her own health. Yeah, I think, and again, that should be well known in like the healthcare space, but it's not, we don't really emphasize that enough because, you know, your hypothalamus, your pituitary gland, your adrenon glands, your thyroid and your gonads, they all work on this access. And so it's like, when your thyroid is influenced by stress, then your adrenon glands are influenced and then your gonads, which is your ovaries. Right. That's the reason you're putting on your sex. Like that's all working within this ecosystem or this access that is influencing each other. And so, you know, when women are going through paramedics and they're transitioning to postmenopause, they no longer make a gestorone of their ovaries. They only make it in their adrenon glands now. So you make this huge switch from your ovaries to adrenon glands. That's why stress becomes a much bigger factor when it comes to balanced health. And that's why women start to experience a lot of hot flashes because if you get a lot of stress one day, or your blood sugar spikes, or you had poor sleep. No fatigue. Yeah, you're gonna spike that. And you're gonna have a sudden epinephrine rush or adrenaline rush. And that's where you have a hot flash. And so a lot of women are getting that in the middle of the night throughout the day. And it correlates so much back to your nervous system, 100%. And then so when you're working with these women in your practice and stuff, how do you support them with the emotional side of stuff? If it's so important to their overall health and to their hormones and everything? I think a lot of it gets back to just having the conversations up front about the importance of it and understand that like, hey, this is something that you are able to have an impact on. Like you have control over this as much as you can. And if they have a partner or spouse, it's like saying, hey, we need to get them involved to understand what their role in this is as well. And also if you have kids, like they need to know that moms are in a state of healing or whoever this person is, that they're in a state of healing. And just like if you break your wrist, you're not gonna just put a cast on and take the cast off on the weekends to go play basketball. Like you're gonna be on a healing journey. And the healing journey is gonna require that you have some stability at home, that you have good sleep patterns, that you have good adherence to your diet, that you take your supplements. And the family needs to know what you're doing and why. And then they can help to support you because if we don't bring that up though in the beginning, then they're just, they're not gonna be thinking about it enough to actually do something with it. I feel supported enough at home. Yeah, I feel supported. And so I think there's that component to it, but also they need to have a belief that what they do makes a difference. And so like if they're going into a meal and they understand that like, if I'm eating this food in a rush state or my nervous system's all wound up, I'm not gonna be able to digest this food very well. So maybe I should be praying before a meal, to kind of like do some deep breaths and kind of make sure I'm correcting my nervous system. I can do it right now. Yeah, I can regulate a little bit. Or like what you can do before bed, if you're all wound up and you're having racing thoughts, like you know, you can take my using three and eight, you can do box breathing, you can do these different things that kind of control this. And just giving them the tools and the belief that if they do it, it'll actually work. I think helps quite a bit. And I also went to jumpsons, we're speaking about women's health and hormones for young women who are on birth control. What is your advice for that? Don't do it. Yeah, just don't do it. I mean, I think controlling a cycle with birth control or helping to control symptoms, it's just the whole, it's the epitome of what our conventional medical system is. And it's just honestly kind of disgraceful, especially for young women that are missing out on the peak phase of their cycle, like the best time that they could experience is like being eliminated. And the reality is, a lot of these issues are metabolic issues. They're issues that need me control through what they consume, how they regulate their chocatin rhythm. And not... Inflin resistance. Yeah, insulin resistance. And not just taking a pill that would, to pleat B12, B6, fully zinc, and create a whole host of other issues with auto-immunity estrogen dominance, PCOS, like the list goes on and on. So this would happen to me when I was younger, I got diagnosed with, I was getting a lot of a variant cyst, and in a PCOS, so I would just get really large cysts. And they put me in birth control when I was really young. So then I went through years on birth control, obviously became really deficient in all my minerals and stuff, those leached out of me. And then as I got older, as I entered my thirties, I'm 42 now, I started having like, things I would get migraines, it wasn't feeling well, I feel really drained, I was starting to look really gone. And it wasn't until I found a functional myosin doctor who said you have estrogen dominance, you have candida, you need to completely get a birth control, you shouldn't be touching it, you're completely depleted. And until I started working on that foundational health, I didn't feel well my entire life. So 30 years of my life was spent kind of not feeling well. It wasn't until I kind of my mid thirties when I started taking this different route and started supplementing and taking care of myself, that the building blocks started back up. And so like you said in your twenties and thirties, if you're spending your time being so depleted, then in your forties everything just hits you like, you know, I guess I'm just getting older. Yeah, and it's just kind of hits you because your body's been running on fumes for so long, I cannot sustain itself anymore. And so that's when I was like, oh, I'm vitamin D deficient or this on the other, I need to supplement, it's because I spent so many years on this birth control that took away a basic minerals that my body needed. And they were trying to treat my ovarian cysts with birth control, which by the way, didn't always work anyways. And all it did was disrupt my cycle when nobody bothered treating my estrogen dominance, which was causing the rancest to begin with. Yeah, and that's a story for most women, you know, and I think it's very unfortunate. And I again, I don't know what else to do except for what we're doing right now and to talk about it and to kind of bring more awareness to it because conventional doctors just don't have the bandwidth of the resources to really properly fix it. And following the algorithm that they've been trained in, that's the next best step is birth control. And then it's a partial hysterectomy and then, you know, and here's some more pills after that. And so it just, it's a cycle. It's a huge cycle and a physical system. Yeah, it's hard because doctors aren't, like they want to help people most of the time. It's just, they've been trained to think that, if I don't know it, then nobody else knows this. And so that creates this hierarchical issue to where the information that's being passed down to them is what they're studying and being trained in and becoming an expert in when we're ignoring this whole other section of health that needs to be implemented and tied back in. So I don't know, it might take a few generations to see this truly change, but I'm hopeful. And research, I think women's health for the longest time we were told, oh, women are just small men and we're not at all small men. We're completely different. And I think that kind of like putting women to the side and being like, we're not gonna study your health. We're definitely not gonna study your hormones. We're definitely not gonna look at your ovaries and we don't care about what's going on over there has been such a disservice. And I feel that, quote unquote, like feminists, if you're pushing for anything, you should be pushing for more research on women's health. So women can go back into being true to their form and design. Yeah, as you said before, most studies are not looking at women, they're looking at men. And they're not looking at pregnant women and they're not looking at different stages of where women are in a cycle and not controlling for those variables. It's yeah, you have a very lopsided perspective on this stuff and it's just, yeah, they're not little men by any means. No. I wanted to quickly talk about us and your personal journey from traditional kind of medicine into kind of this whole space. Yeah. You know, your brother had gotten sick. And so how did that impact you? I know your brother was diagnosed with leukemia. Yeah, he had leukemia when he was 14. I was 12. That was, that really motivated me to want to get in the health space. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with it. But it was, yeah, it was kind of shocking as a 12 year old to kind of be in the hospital and see him lose his hair and then like get injections all the time. And just, you know, he survived and he got through it and he's doing well now. But he had, you know, two like knee surgeries and he's had some issues after that because like the chemo and radiation just destroyed his bones. And, you know, he's had three kids and he's actually survived really well. But it's still, it had a huge ripple effect on my parents, my mom, my dad, all the issues they had to go through and then they started getting their own health problems. And, you know, there was, there was definitely some issues in terms of our lifestyle factors and high stress and just trying to survive. And so I really got this exposure to all these things and what the consequences of it are. And it made me just motivated to help, to want to help people not have to go through that. And so that's kind of why I am now. Speak about what you do and practice what you do. Yeah, and I had my own issues. I had chronic pain, chronic fatigue for like 10 years and I was like 18 to, no 16 to like 40 years old. At your peak, at your health as a man. Yeah. Like I had, I was taking ibuprofen all the time because I got a back injury from football and then I had like more back pain that the chiropractor couldn't fix. And I was just like, well, what's going on here? And it turns out I had stomach ulcer that was happening from the ibuprofen and H. Pallori and all these sort of issues. And then yeah, just like tons of antibiotics and just all the typical stuff. And yeah, so gut was destroyed. And then thankfully I met my wife and she showed me what cooking real food look like and you know how to provide. And you know, and she, like the whole energy exchange at your time, I was like exactly what happened. She exchanged that with me and just showed me like what that was like on a practical basis. And it was a whole combination of things. Like I met this other provider who cured himself from cancer, he had like this big tumor he fixed naturally and he showed me these bunch of people that were very insightful to my. Practice. Yeah, my practice and my mind. Because I mean, this is important. Like I'm not a physician. So like I don't prescribe medications. Like I've never done that. And so it's really, it's really always forced me to want to fix things from a. Helicine. Helicine. Yeah. And honestly, I always, I didn't want to go down the conventional medical route. Like my business partner and calling a keys in MD and he know like he, he's kind of regretful that he actually did that because he spent years trying to untrain himself from the things that he learned. The programming that he had in medical school. A lot of indoctrination can happen. And so I think the good news is that you can work with somebody that's been trained in a certain way and they can still come out of it and still see things from a very complete perspective. But yeah, like there's a lot of indoctrination that happens to all of us. And when it comes to even social media, I know you've talked about being in social media jail because you've tried to educate and talk about things that you've learned or experiences you've had. How did you kind of overcome that with the algorithm? Because the algorithm is very unforgiving to that. Yeah, it's, I don't know, honestly. I think I just stayed persistent with it and didn't give up. And I've just threw a lot of prayer. I, you know, back in the day, I prayed that, you know, God would open the floodgates and bring people to me that wanted help. And that night I had a viral post go crazy. And it was like kind of the beginning of it all. But I've had ups and downs. I got banned on TikTok. Still haven't got that back. And I've had to be careful with a lot of things. And I kind of share as much of the truth as I feel like I can without getting too far. And then like people that are in my community or my clients, I kind of go as much as, as safe as I need to. But yeah, I just had to be kind of tackful with it. Yeah, TikTok is very unforgiving. Even more than I would say Instagram because it can be something that is, you know, it's a piece of advice you want to give online. But it says no, like this is not. With the terms of our community and stuff and they can completely like shut down your account or flag you and then the flag stays forever or they lock out your account because it's not according to community guidelines. But it's in somebody's practice, you know, advice that they want to share. The worst part is I've had people come out from my license. I've had like some, just to be honest, like they've been very liberal people that have kind of filed complaints against me. And they're not even clients. Like they're just people. That's why I don't understand how somebody can go out of their way to be so cruel. Yeah, and so that's created a hassle for me. And to me, it's just part of the job. It's worth it to me because I know that people, I've been able to help a lot of people from it. So it's part of the job. But yeah, it's just been kind of amazing the amount of resistance. And I don't want to call it persecution, but in a way, it's kind of persecution that you face if you're trying to share truth. And I don't get everything right. I'll be the first one to tell you, like I've gotten a lot of things wrong. But I still feel like the movement that I've been a part of, like the Mahal movement. And I mean, I'm not like an official member of the Mahal movement. But like, we are very supportive of it. That's what we all believe in, right? That's what we hear. We want to make America healthy again. That's a good movement. And so I think we've all had persecution in different ways. And to me, it doesn't make sense why we should do that if we're just trying to help people. Yeah, so. I think it's the heavy indoctrination and the deep-seated programming. And it's also fear that people need to look at their own decisions for their family and their health and be like, maybe what was their role to play? And I think people are too scared to go inwards. And they're like, oh my god, like what these people are talking about. Maybe I had a hand in that and maybe set person my family that I've got cancer or set kid. Maybe by child has certain conditions. And maybe I overlook certain things. So they're angry. They're angry with themselves and they projected onto other people, which is I think it's a lack of self-awareness, right? Well, it takes humility to do that. A lot of us are very proud. When you're proud, you don't want to make changes. You don't want to admit that you're wrong. And again, I've had to do what I've had to admit when I'm wrong. And I think that's, again, as a Christian, I feel like if I can't be humble and I can't grow and learn, then what's why be a Christian? Why have that? Because that's really the backbone of, for me, that's my backbone. But for people who don't have faith, they're going to make their God their political party or their conventional medicine. They'll make that the religion. And so it's going to be very hard to go against your religion when you're being told that it's wrong. And so for me, health is not my religion. It's my idol. So I just want to be humble with it. And it's easier to accept your mistakes at that point. I wanted to leave a piece of advice from you to our community for them listening to this podcast. We've had such incredible takeaways, but what is one piece of advice you'd like to leave them with? I mean, for me, the most important thing is just against my faith. That to me, at the end of the day, if I have perfect health or terrible health, if I still have Christ and I still have my faith, then I have a joy that comes from a place that's sustainable beyond anything else. And so if you don't have that, then that would be my recommendation is to find that because that will give you a superpower of healing and self-control and discipline that nothing else can give you. No, like self-health, Tony Robbins, all those things are great. But for me, it comes from a place of, where's my foundation? What is my belief? And how does that change how I operate in the world? So I think, you know, my name in Arabic means faith. So I'm on actually a legitimate means faith. So I went to this seminar, this guy was giving, and he explained what faith truly is. And he said, real faith, having faith in creator in life, it's something beyond yourself is the following. He said, imagine you have a bill to pay, but you have X amount in your back account, and you have a bill coming in that you have to pay. That is not having faith. Imagine that you have a bill to pay, and you know you have money coming in. It's not quite in your account yet, but it's coming in. So you know, okay, that's not faith either. Blind faith in creator is knowing that you have a bill to pay, and you might have nothing in your bank account, but you know their creator is going to take care of it. That is the unwavering faith that you need to have, operating through life, that you know something higher than yourself, bigger than yourself, is going to take care. But that is true faith. When you have no way of understanding where it's going to come from, but it's going to get resolved. Yeah, that's the piece that surpasses understanding. And I think our culture has very little peace if anything, we have no peace. We also don't have much faith. Yeah, we have no faith, we have chaos. And I think there are a lot of good people out there, though, that do have faith, that do operate in that mindset, and they don't get enough attention. We only focus on the negative things, but I think, yeah, that's perfectly said. Yeah, I think whether you're like us, and you're from one of the Abrahamic religions, or like really just believe in source and God and creator, I think it's really important to believe in something beyond yourself. In his, I think spirituality is the core foundation of living well. That for me is extremely important. Yeah, I think that's what holistic health is supposed to be. Correct. We've subtracted a huge element of health when we do that from people, because you can't study that very well. You can't study the conscious mind. And we like to act like we know what's going on. It's fair to out of you. Yeah, we like to act like we know what's going on. Most of the times. At all times, we have very little knowledge of the world in front of us, let alone the world to happen before us. And I think we just have a lot of ignorance and a lot of pride, again. And a lot of arrogance. Yeah, a lot of arrogance, for sure. Thank you, Dr. Austin Lakes, for finding out. Thank you for being on the show. And I know my audience is going to absolutely love this episode. Appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you for tuning into Biohack It. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a short review. It really helps us reach more listeners just like you. Follow us on Instagram at biohack-it for inclusive content and the latest updates. Remember, your health is in your hand and curiosity heals.