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Wendy: Hello, everyone Wendy Myers here from myersdetox.com. I have another free bonus talk for you guys. This is part of the Medicinal Supplements Summit, where I brought together all of the health experts, some of the best health and nutrition experts in the world for this summit because I’m truly committed to helping you experience vibrant health by making the right supplement choices. You can learn more at medicinalsupplementsummit.com.
Today we’re discussing the best supplements for PMS and optimizing your hormones. And a lot of women out there are struggling with this, and there are natural remedies to help you with PMS.
Our expert today is Diane Kazer, the doctors’ nutritionist. She helps clients all around the world, but most specifically in Orange County, California, where many doctors entrust their patients to her to teach them self-love through nutrition, meditation, fitness, and fulfilling their dreams. With a 7-year clinical background and lifelong experience, Diane is a passionate expert on reversing autoimmune disease, detoxification, natural fertility, digestive challenges, and energy upgrades.
She’s written programs and e-books to teach her clients how to thrive, such as the Sexy Belly Guide, Hashimoto’s Guide to Reversing Autoimmune Disease, and The Warrior Cleanse. They were born through her own health struggles, which she reversed through the tenets that she teaches. Her recent passion project is The Heart to Happiness Summit, where she herself brought together 25 experts from around the world to enlighten us to a greater version of ourselves through the heart to find happiness and reconnect with each other and our purpose.
Diane’s background is vast. She played pro soccer in both Germany and the US. Owned a financial planning, practiced for 8 years, then became a personal trainer, yoga teacher, and then nutritionist. Her awards, education, and certifications include a national level bodybuilding competitor, NASM personal trainer, RYT, global yoga teacher, functional diagnostic nutritionist, and she’s currently studying to be a naturopathic doctor. She’s got a lot going on!
Diane, thank you so much for joining us on the summit.
Diane: Hey! What’s going on,Wendy?I feel like I should shorten that a little bit. My attention span is low. I was like, “Hmmm, let’s get on with it.” But the woman’s struggle with PMS to find solutions, right? That’s how that whole background was born anyway.
Wendy: So what’s your story on hormone destruction that feed your passion for helping women to liberate their symptoms of PMS and find their sexy body.
Diane: Yeah, that’s just it, right? We use the term sexy so much and so often today. And it’s like what really defines sexy for each person is different. But I think when I was 17, my version of sexy was feeling not so blood-clotty and not so cystic acne-y, not so depressed, and really just being able to stay on the soccer field.
I love Paul Chek. You may have heard of him. We’re both FDNers. And that’s how we know each other. And thanks again for being on my summit, I enjoyed our interview because we’re both detox sisters. And I think this is such an important piece of thriving today to living 110. I mean, detox is like something we have to be ahead of instead of responding to.
So what Paul Chek said that I have embodied since he said it, which I was like, “That was a perfect [inaudible] moment.” And I interviewed him for my former radio show. He said, “Our dream has to be bigger than our nightmare. And if our dream is bigger than our nightmare, we’re likely to fulfill and attain goals, and attain a sexy body.
But if our dream and our goal is like, “I just want to feel better. I just don’t want to have these cramps. I just want to get rid of this acne, and I feel like my whole life will be better.” There’s this “I just wanna” stuff that we create, and that’s really just sweeping up the dirt without remodeling the house to make it look prettier. That doesn’t sound like a very sexy dream – “I just want to get rid of cramps.” It sounds like hell.
I don’t want to help women do that. And that’s what I was suffering from when I was 17. And that was when I started the birth control pill, and it pretty much all went downhill from there.
Wendy: Yeah, and that’s a lot of women. I mean I take the birth control for 25 years and constantly struggled with yeast infections taking it. And no libido – pffft! – killed that. I never really knew what that was. But what does hormone imbalance look like for women, specifically estrogen dominance?
Diane: It is said that the root of PMS – the root of the symptoms of PMS is estrogen dominance. And it’s like, “God, estrogen, you sound so bossy. You’re so dominant.” And that’s actually really the case. What happens in a woman’s body is that estrogen is high relative to progesterone.
And so women and menopause will be like, “Well, that sounds great. I would love more estrogen.” But it’s not necessarily that it’s high estrogen. It’s high estrogen in relationship to progesterone because they have a marriage.
Estrogen and progesterone – they have a marriage. And so they need to be in complementary levels in order for us to feel sexy, look sexy, think sexy, act sexy, sleep sexy, sex sexy, make babies sexy. And that’s just it – you take the pill and you don’t feel sexy because it causes a lot of the same symptoms that are what PMS feels like.
So it’s like, if you look at all of these, if you look at PMS symptoms, if you look at estrogen-dominant symptoms, and if you look at Candida, they’re very similar. So PMS, Candida, and estrogen dominance. And what is Candida? It’s a fungus that grows in our body. So we’ll get to that.
But – what was the question? What does it look like, or what’s it caused by?
Wendy: Yeah. So what does it look like for women? What kind of symptoms would they be having?
Diane: Symptoms – okay. I want to make sure I cover all of them, so I took some notes. But the main ones if somebody is suffering from PMS and estrogen dominance, they’re very similar. So I’m going to list just a few that come up when I hear PMS. And I thought of the seven dwarves.
So you got bloaty, moody. You’ve go snacky. You’ve got achy, sleepy, yeasty, and skin-ny. Now, by skin-ny I don’t mean trim. I mean like the things that happen with your skin so that it does need some clarification. It could be zitty skinny. It could be yeasty, where you’ve got like maybe a little dandruff going on. Maybe your hair is falling out. Could be cellulite-y. So there’s all different kinds of skin issues that erupts from as a result of PMS symptoms.
And when you break down bloaty, you’ve got like pudgy, which you’ve got extra fat. Maybe some extra around the waist, around the thighs. You’ve got clotty, which could be thick bile from high estrogen that’s stored in the gallbladder, and we’ll talk about that, too.
You can feel poopy, and that could cause you– this is women’s poo. It’s pink. It looks just like this on the way out. But you can feel poopy, and that’s a big problem that we’re suffering from with estrogen-dominance, too. When we’re not pooping enough, then we have a back-up of excess estrogen and Candida. So we’ll talk about that later, too.
So a lot of these are PMS symptoms. And then when you look at Candida symptoms, they’re very similar. So you feel lethargic or tired. You feel like you’ve lost your memory a bit. You got some brain fog going on, headaches, and migraines, which also happens during PMS. Sugar cravings – you’re going to go crazy on the sugar cravings. Yeah, I know – me, too.
Chocolate is okay. I saw you in a video the other day promoting chocolate.
Wendy: Yeah, I know. I basically white knuckle it for chocolate around that time. I get achy, too. It’s just a lovely picture – achy, eating chocolate, watching reruns of Law & Order.
Diane: Or in my case, documentaries about how to help women more. Reruns of– I don’t know. I don’t really watch reruns I guess. But Sex and the City, would be one of them. And I tell my boyfriend, “You’re not coming over unless you have chocolates.”
And women, it’s okay to eat chocolate. Just try to make it a dark chocolate if you can. Cacao is the highest antioxidant support for magnesium in the body, and so that’s actually what we’re deficient in typically when we have PMS or hormonal imbalances.
So side note – acne, skin infections, sinus infections, mood swings, vaginal yeast infections. So then you have that looks just like PMS. So those were just Candida symptoms.
And then you’ve got estrogen dominance symptoms, which is like painful, heavy clotting, facial hair, PMS, PCOS, mood swings, ovarian cysts, acne, weight gain, menopause, migraines, breast cancer, hypothyroid, and hair loss. Don’t they all sound familiar? Don’t they all sound the same?
Wendy: Yeah, sounds like so much fun.
Diane: That actually is what frustrates me the most – is that, why does it have to be this way? Actually probably now 14 years old when we’re starting – even 12 and 13 is when little girls are having their periods early. They’re having symptoms of breast swelling early. And a lot of that is caused today by xenoestrogens, which are artificial estrogens that are in our food supply, in our water. They’re in our personal care products, and we’re going to talk about those today, too.
So it happens at an early age. And what I really want to impart upon women and their mothers, and their grandmas, and their sisters, and their girlfriends, and their cousins – just everybody. And even their significant others that are male counterparts. We’ve got to know how to support women because women are what makes this world go round. We’re the nurturers. We’re supposed to be anyway, but when we’re PMS-ing, we don’t want to nurture anyone. We’re too busy nurturing ourselves in the bathroom, and then we can’t nurture anyone in the bedroom because we don’t have a sex drive.
So it just shouldn’t be this curse. It should be actually something that’s a beautiful detoxification process. And menopause, in tribal countries, they’re celebrating that phase of their life. So I really want to make this a video where women can learn more about how to make this a celebration , how to learn even more about the lunar cycles, and how to be an activist about our hormones – to learn more about ourselves, and to learn what these symptoms mean so we can actually do something about it that’s natural, instead of just demonizing what’s happening down there. Is that a good summary?
Wendy: Yeah, absolutely. It’s strange because how does one hormone have so much influence on society today, from economics to family dynamics, and sex life, marriage, divorce rate? So much is tied up in estrogen.
Diane: Yeah. And you do HTMAs. You’re awesome. I love your mineral program.
And what I learned when I did mine in 2013, Wendy, it was my hair tissue mineral analysis – that’s what that stands for – and I’m a huge advocate for natural birth control.
Natural birth control – what does that even mean? The natural fertility method, just knowing what it means where you are in your cycle. Like today, I’m on Day 14. It’s my lucky number – 14. That means that I’m ovulating, and that means it’s a perfect time to get pregnant if I wanted to. I have a perfect 28-day cycle which is what we’re supposed to have.
But a lot of women don’t have that. And when women don’t have that, they bleed twice a month. Maybe they bleed once every three months, or maybe they bleed like consistently throughout the month, or they have PCOS or endometriosis inflammation going on down there. Those just don’t sound pretty.
And when a woman isn’t happy, there’s a lot of arguments going on. And it makes me sad to think that a lot of women literally think they’re going crazy because when our hormones are fluctuating the way that they are, cortisol – you know cortisol. I mean most people know cortisol.
Have you talked a lot about cortisol in the summit so far?
Wendy: No, not really. Not very much. A little bit when we talked about adaptogenic herbs and things like that. A little bit, yeah.
Diane: So stress, any kind of stress – and this is what you’re going to hear from your doctor. Your doctor is actually going to say, “Oh, reduce stress.” Well, what does that even look like? We then think that stress is this thing that we’re imparting upon ourselves. It’s only emotional. And we’re like, “But we feel emotional because of our periods. And now you’re saying to deal with it better, but I don’t know how. I’m overwhelmed.”
And stress can come from all areas. It could come from, like I said, the environment. It can come from the foods that we’re eating. It can come from our kids. But if we’re not able to respond to stress well, it’s typically because of what I call the Tao of women’s hormones. And that’s your thyroid, your adrenals, and your ovaries. They are all responsible for creating and manifesting, and metabolizing different hormones.
Hormones are metabolized by the liver and the colon. We’ll get to that later. But if those three are off, then our whole body is off, and we don’t feel like we’re our self anymore – we’re literally out of the body.
And in the mind, there’s receptor sites for neurotransmitters, and those are happy things that chemicals bind to parts of the brain that tells us to feel something, which is GABA calms us down, and serotonin calms us down, and makes us feel good.
When we’re stressed, our body makes cortisol. That’s like the first priority. Any kind of stress – cortisol. First priority. My dog is snoring. I have to throw a pellet. So she has no cortisol right now because she’s sleeping hopefully. She’s resting. Melatonin is what calms us down and puts us to sleep. We can’t sleep if cortisol is high, right? So hey, good segue.
But if we have a lot of cortisol, it competes for those receptor sites in the brain. And so GABA and serotonin can’t do their thing. And so we’re feeling literally wired and tired.
And so when we’re experiencing that we’re not sleeping well, we’re not sexing well, and a woman thinks it’s all on her, and this is something she was born with. There’s a crisis. Her mom has made you this way. And it’s not necessarily the genetics that are passed down to us. It’s more like the microbiome, the bacteria in the vagina. Then when we pass through our mom’s vagina, she gives us our immunity with the microbiome.
Now, there’s a new thing called the estrobolome that actually creates all that. We’ll talk about that later. But if we’re not self, then we’re not whole for our significant others, or our work. And the most missed work for women is cramps. Women are missing 2 to 3 weeks a year because of cramps.
If you think about that, that’s like if the average woman makes 4 grand a month, that’s like 2 to 3 thousand dollars a year going to waste just from cramps. So if you fix one thing today, we’re working on PMS, imagine your life if you can start to fix that.
Wendy: And so estrogen dominance. So what causes estrogen dominance exactly?
Diane: It’s a good question, Wendy. It’s from a lot of things. Estrogen dominance – I would say that the number one thing that we need to talk about today is, when a girl is 15, 16, maybe she’s starting to experience the side effects of too much estrogen. Because at that point, you’re like, “Oh, it’s her ovaries’ fault,” right? You’re thinking like it’s her fault.
It’s really not. It’s what we’re supposed to– and the lack of education– then maybe our moms don’t even know. Maybe our mom has bad PMS problems, too, which that was the same case with me. Did your mom had bad periods, too?
Wendy: You know what, she didn’t. That’s one thing I’ve never really had an issue with. But definitely, she never really had issues. But once I had an issues for a little while, but when I really cleaned up my diet and cut out sugar and detox my body, I don’t even know that it’s coming. It’s just like smooth. I don’t have cramps. It was nothing. That’s how it should be, how it can be for a lot of women when they clean up every area of their life.
Diane: Right. And then so that’s really the answer–what you just mentioned is how does it even come about? And that is poor diet. So it’s diet, lifestyle, lack of movement. Everybody knows we should be moving more. Everybody knows that.
But specifically, our body is made up of about 75 percent lymph. It’s crazy because doctors test blood tests, but no one is really testing for lymph. And lymph is like the garbage disposal of our body. And if 75 percent of our body is lymph or approximately around there, then why aren’t we focusing on detoxing that because that’s where a lot of the estrogens get stored. And lymph is detoxed best when we’re moving.
So that’s why when you think about all these lymph nodes, where they are in the body – they’re here. They’re in our armpits. They’re in our groin. So our body is moved like this and it stimulates the release of bad lymph, let’s just say the waste. And so we’re not moving enough. So it’s stagnant lymph which is holding on to estrogens throughout the body, and so it just keeps getting recirculated throughout the body. So that’s a big one – movement.
And you know – go jump on a trampoline. A lot of that’s coming back now. Like there’s a bunch of trampoline parks I know. Probably not a lot in LA, but in Orange County, there’s like trampoline parks everywhere. So go be a kid again. That’s part of it, too. Reduce stress. Go be a kid again. Increase oxytocin, and have some more sex. So these are all things that we’re not doing much of and enough of joy. So that’s the second piece of it.
And then the third piece of it is diet. So we really need to eat more vegetables. And I don’t know how else to say this, but maybe I’ll make like a cute littl e superwoman shirt with broccoli coming out of my head or something, And then go to kid’s schools and talk about the importance of bringing back cruciferous vegetables and knowing where they’re coming from, and getting organic ones, and maybe even going to an organic farm and seeing how they’re raised.
But fiber in our diet is so important. Fiber in our diet specifically from these cruciferous vegetables and they’re in the indole family. So you’ve got kale – I know – kale. The last thing you’re going to want to hear nutritionist say is “Eat more kale” but it’s so true. Do you ever prescribe food like that as well?
Wendy: I do. Yes, you have to eat more of cruciferous vegetables. You can’t get enough sulfur.
Diane: Yeah, you can’t. Broccoli, Bok choy – cook them in different ways. Just enjoy them and rotate them. Don’t do something over and over so much to the point we get sick of it either because we have a lot of people who eat like the same foods throughout the week and they’re like, “I’m so sick of broccoli.” Well, keep them variable. There’s elements that are called DIM and indole-3 carbon. And in these vegetables, those are the compounds that help detox estrogen from the liver.
And a lot of us are constipated. We’re not getting rid of this enough in our lives, so we’re just holding on to literally toxic wastes, and it just keeps getting recirculated throughout the body. It’s like taking a bath and then leaving the water, and then taking a bath in the same water the next day, and then taking a bath in the same water the next day. It’s like, “Eew!”
So if we don’t get our body circulating these deadly toxins, and I mean deadly by way of their cancer causing. They stimulate cancer growth in the body, and not just any estrogen but too much estrogen and a lot of these negative xenoestrogens that is the fourth piece of this, which is we’re getting it a lot in our food supply.
So if you are eating vegetables like I just mentioned, try to get the more organic, guys, because the pesticides and the herbicides and the fungicides that they’re using to grow these are extremely xenoestrogenic. And so what they do, what that means, is that they’ll bind to an estrogen receptor site and act just like our own estrogen in the body, and it confuses the body.
And so the body thinks there’s enough estrogen, and it will down -rate progesterone. Progesterone is so important to keep inflammation down. Also to prevent blood clotting and to have beautiful skin glow. So they’re both important, but as you can hear, they’re important in the delicate amounts.
And then the next question you’re probably going to ask is about estrogen in birth control pills. That’s also the thing that doctors prescribe to help with the symptoms of estrogen dominance, but then actually creates more of the same thing, which is a double-edge sword, like a catch 22.
Wendy: Why is that not a good idea?
Diane: Yeah, right? It’s not a good idea for a number of reasons. So birth control, specifically, and that’s what started this whole thing. It’s like our dream comes out of our nightmare sometimes. And that’s exactly what happened with me in this situation, is that when I was 17, my dream was to be a professional soccer player, and I’m not going to do that when I’m missing three days of school in a row from cramps and all the other problems that I had.
So I started birth control when I was 17, and that’s what actually started all of the other cascade of problems. This is for me, but also what I see in a lot of the patients and clients that I work with around the world and locally here, is that they’re prescribed birth control, which will increase synthetic estrogen of the body and confuses the body. The body is like, “Oh! Well, if you got this, then I don’t need to make any. So you’re good. Cool.”
So that’s why getting off of the pill is so hard, but it also decreases vitamins that are super essential for [inaudible]. Magnesium is one of them, and zinc is another one, which is if you’re low zinc, then you’re low sex drive.
B vitamins are super critical. Those are important for energy. They also make hormones, so B+ cholesterol or fat makes hormones. So if you’re on a low -fat diet, rethink that also. That’s important – the quality of fats.
And then also birth control, when it increases the body’s synthetic estrogen, it says, “Hey, Candida, let’s grow.” And so Candida is that fungus I talked about earlier. And when we have a lot of Candida in the body, we have similar symptoms of PMS. So those three all sounded very similar. When you’ve got high Candida, the immune system is low also, and then you also have maybe an autoimmune disease.
I got an autoimmune disease. When I went to the doctor, I was 22, and I was like, “I swear there’s something wrong with my thyroid. I looked it all up online.” And there was online back then. That was 15 years ago. And they’re like, “No, your thyroid is fine.” They checked three things. They checked TSH, T3, and T4. They didn’t look at my antibodies, which is super important. And they said, “Everything looks fine.”
And I kept going, “No, it’s my thyroid.” Now, I come to find that estrogen dominance is actually one of the potential causes for hypothyroidism because estrogen, cortisol – these things, they’re bossy. Estrogen is bossy. It goes in and it can bind to where the thyroid hormones would bind to the thyroid receptor sites, and so thyroid can’t work.
And then hypothyroid is very likely. That’s probably what happened to me when I took birth control pills. It was all these things. And then also gallbladder dysfunction, high gallbladder issues – a lot of women, when you get high levels of estrogen and then can’t get them out with peeing enough – well, a lot of women actually get up like two in the morning to pee, and that’s likely a cause of liver congestion and trying to get all the synthetic stuff out – estrogens.
And they’re not pooping enough, so they just keep recirculating. And when that happens, it gets stored somewhere. It gets past and it gets in the gallbladder as bile, high cholesterol. Again, the estrogen keeps cycling, and then, “Oh, well, maybe let’s take the gallbladder out. Ooops!”
So it just keeps happening – these things. You may end up on 5, 6, 7 different drugs and the removal of some parts down the road if you don’t get to the root cause of the problem.
Wendy: So what are some of the root causes of estrogen? Talk about one that’s really under-addressed when approaching hormone balance today.
Diane: Yeah,that’s a good one. So we just talk a lot about the liver just now. It’s also important to talk about the gut, so the colon. And remember that word I said earlier – estrobolome. Have you ever heard of that?
Wendy: No, I have not.
Diane: So the microbiome, the gut is being researched so much. Gut bacteria so important and probiotics are all the craze. Get as much probiotics as you can, but then you got to be careful about some probiotics. Now if you look at like kombuchas and stuff, some of them are really high in sugar. It’s like you said earlier – it’s important to keep a low-sugar diet because sugar feeds Candida. Sugar feeds estrogen.
And then ones I know or that I did mention earlier is the copper IUD. It’s one thing that women are doing now as birth control. But as you know, and you probably talked a lot with your clients about is that copper attracts estrogen and attracts yeast. When I had my copper IUD, I felt like as a psycho person. I know three of those of things were super high.
So going back to the question which was the gut – so this is the one thing that is going and addresses the estrobolome, and that is a lot of focus on when you put something in your mouth – when you take a bite.
Every time you take a bite, you’re either feeding the good guys or the bad guys. So who do you want to feed, Wendy – good guys or bad guys?
Wendy: I want to feed the good guys.
Diane: Yay, hurray! We will feed the good guys. The princess poops–we want to have princess poops, right? So we want to feed the good girls in our case. And being the good girls would be things like probiotics, prebiotics, kimchi, sauerkraut, fiber, and then also making sure that you’ve got a good, healthy microbiome to begin with.
So I recommend taking probiotics every day. If it starts to aggravate your gut, maybe every other day because everybody is different. There’s all different kinds of probiotics that are out there. The future of research for pretty much every disease begins in the colon. As Hippocrates said, “All disease begins in the colon and in the gut.”
And so now what we’re learning about this microbiome – taking probiotics adds to our microbiome, which is the species of gut bacteria that govern like everything. They release and synthesize vitamins and hormones even too. They make hormones. It’s like this second endocrine system. They call it the second gut, and now they’re calling it the second endocrine system.
And so while we’re feeding the gut microbiome, we’re also supporting the estrobolome, which is the species, this little sisters in the sorority that support the metabolism and the synthesization of the bad and the good estrogen. So you may have heard of like the hydroxyesterones, where there’s like a 2, 4, and 16. And there’s a lot to talk about this now in breast cancer research. The 4 and the 16 are the “bad”. This is current research anyway. So the estrobolome helps to get rid of the bad ones from the gut and the liver. And the 2 is the positive. So when we look at women who have higher rates of prevalence of breast cancer, endometrial uterine cancer, these women had more 4 and 16 metabolites that weren’t being flushed.
And so what we want in the gut is we want more good guys than bad guys. We’re still not really sure what the exact number is going to be, like percentage of good guys and bad guys. We’re still trying to figure that out because everybody’s microbiome is as unique as their thumbprint.
So one thing that’s not going addressed is, “Hey, if you’ve got PMS, if you’ve got any kind of hormonal imbalances, why don’t we look to the root?” And if you think about the tree, the root comes out of the soil, and our soil is the colon.
And if there’s more bad guys than good, even things like bad guys would be like yeast. And yeast releases waste in the body. And that waste looks just like estrogen of the body. So it’s another cue that the body goes, “Wait a second, there’s enough estrogen.” Then that starts going in and poking holes in the digestive tract, and it starts leaking everywhere, and then you have hair issues, migraines, headaches – it just keeps going on, and on, and on.
So I hope that was a pretty succinct way of explaining it, that we need to get to the root of all these things instead of just working with these upstrain symptoms.
Wendy: Exactly. I know so many people that have liver issues. The liver metabolizes excess estrogen. Just millions of people have fatty liver disease and their livers are just so overloaded dealing with all these toxins, and dealing with sugar, and refining grains in the diet. And it’s a wonder that people have estrogen dominance.
And so a lot of women suffer during their menstrual cycle. So what exactly is it that causes PMS symptoms?
Diane: Oh, yeah. PMS symptoms could come from a number of places.But the root of PMS symptoms are in the estrogen dominance and Candida. So it’s so interesting and sad that PMS can come from– the body goes, “Oh, estrogen – it’s running around the body.” And we can create our own autoimmune reaction to Candida and estrogen because the body is just confused. It just starts attacking our own estrogen.
And then what gets into the cells are the synthetic estrogens. So there’s a whole bunch of different things that can cause that, but that’s one that’s also not being addressed – are we literally attacking our own self when it comes to PMS? Is it even more complex than that?
The solutions don’t have to be complex, but the underpinnings of all these chemicals that we’re being exposed to, that are getting into the cells, need to be adjusted first – and they’re not. I say this lately. It’s been kind of a way for me to explain it to clients is that, 90 percent of foods in the drug store are drugs, or foods in the grocery store are drugs.
When you think about all the additives, they’re not made from nature. When you get a package of Sweet n’ Low – “Oh, I got that from the Sweet n’ Low tree.” No, this doesn’t grow from a tree. A lot of these things are made in a lab, and they’re made to taste like something else to trick the body.
And when we’re consuming things like artificial sweeteners, the body goes, “Oh, well, we got to prepare for sugar.” And then there comes the food cravings. And so that’s the part of it, too – the foods. Even the MSG, they’re neurotoxins. They are cytotoxins. The body actually wants more of them and we continue to eat more of the things that are estrogen-like.
And the things that are estrogen-like in our food and personal care product supply – we’ve got meat, dairy, and eggs, which I already talked about, which have a lot of hormones. Poor cows today. I don’t know if you guys have seen documentaries like Food, Inc. and Forks Over Knives. But I’m not a big advocate of meat-free.
But I’m an advocate of “meet me.” I’m going to meet the client where they’re at with respect to their body because the Paleo diet is pretty heavy meat from our perception of it. But you can still eat Paleo but just eat higher amounts of vegetables. So what proportion of meat is right for you is different for each person. I don’t do so well with a high meat diet, and that’s going to depend on each person.
So it’s just following macros that everybody else says that you should as per what I was told as a bodybuilder doesn’t work. And that’s another thing. Women are told, “You should eat six meals a day, and eat like bikini competitors.” No, that actual excess meat, especially depending where it’s coming from could actually raise estrogen levels in the body.
It is a study, Wendy, and I don’t advocate vegetarian for all clients, but I do say that lots of vegetables obviously are really powerful in detoxifying dangerous estrogens or even just metabolites of normal estrogens in the liver, so that they don’t recirculate. But the cruciferous family, it’s tough because we need to get about 2 pounds of the broccoli and the indole-3s. We need to get 1 to 2 pounds of it. So we’ll talk about supplementation last.
But those are important to flush estrogen and it’s important to get those in vegetables. But they do find – and this is one of the studies that I came across – that women who eat vegetarian diets and more plants, they have 3 to 4 times more estrogen metabolites in their urine and in their stool, in their princess poops, than women who eat a lot of meat.
So these are just things to consider. Just because you hear someone on a body-building diet doesn’t mean it’s for you. Just because you hear someone say, “Eat 6 meals a day” does not mean that’s for you because we really should give our body 4 hours of space in between our meals.
And trying to snacks so much on the high-sugar things – “Oh, but it’s gluten- free.” 75 percent of people think that they are eating a healthy diet, but it’s because of all these labeling. So just because careful about the labeling that you see, and then, of course, more xenoestrogens is BPA.
So I recommend people drink out of water bottles like this and using things like the Berkey water system, which is a really inexpensive way to filter out the things that our municipalities can’t because tap water contains a lot of pharmaceuticals, specifically benzodiazepenes, mood-altering drugs, estrogens from birth controls that we just can’t filter because they’re too small.
And then stop drinking from plastic water bottles. Stop drinking from plastic water bottles, please. And then parabens, personal care products. It keeps going on and on, but that’s just a little sampling of it.
Wendy: Yeah, and so what is a way that women, since we’re so bombarded with all of these estrogen chemicals, do you advocate infrared saunas for sweating out all these estrogens?
Diane: Yeah, sweating is good. I actually learned this from you, Wendy, because there’s so much to learn about detoxification. And, of course, I’m an advocate of sweating. The number one way that we detoxify is through the breath. And so when we also detoxify from our skin, our largest absorbatant organ and our largest organ, we’re actually releasing things from the higher levels like the lymphs – it’s right next to the skin. And so I learned that for me the infrared sauna is better than just a regular sauna. So I’ve been incorporating that into my client’s lives and doing that myself. So yes, big time.
But, of course, I also like hot yoga. Not like crazy intense 105-degree all the time hot yoga, but just more like 80, 90-degree yoga. Deep breathing is also huge for reducing cortisol, so the receptor sites can welcome in good hormones like progesterone in the right amounts.
And also, of course, sex. Sex is another good way of reducing stress and detoxifying the body. So what was the question that you asked when you asked about the sauna?
Wendy: Well, just for women that want to detox these excess estrogens,I think the infrared sauna is an amazing way to do that. And that was my only question.
Diane: Yeah. And I also like enemas.
Wendy: Yes, coffee enemas. Enemas are great.
Diane: I love coffee enemas. In fact, when I first started doing coffee enemas,I ran across several tutorials on YouTube. I was like, “These are so boring, scary, and intimidating.” So I actually made quite a few YouTube videos on how to an enema where you could actually can see me doing an enema. Not all the way down, but you’re getting the idea.
And people found it pretty funny. We really have to literally, pun intended, lighten our load when it comes to some of these things and be mature about it, and make it a priority because most people wait until they’re like 20 to 30 percent of functionality before they do anything. And you know, Wendy, we want people to feel like 60, 70 percent at least – not 20 or 30 when cancer hits and autoimmune disease hits, and they’re like barely making it even across the street.
Wendy: Yeah,don’t wait until you can’t even walk anymore. Don’t wait until you’re so exhausted you can’t work. If you feel tired today, now is the time to start doing something because something else breaks down the road. So fatigue I think is one of the first signs of issues.
Yeah, I love coffee enemas because a lot of people, like I said, their livers are thrashed. And the liver detoxes as it metabolizes extra estrogen. And the coffee enema – amazing way to detox. I get it, working better and get rid of those excess estrogens.
And so let’s talk about supplements. What are some of the heavy-hitting, like heavy bleeding solutions that you can offer to our women warriors who are listening that they can start now to help stabilize our hormones, and to free up their fat and their fatigue and their frustration.
Diane: Yeah, big time. I actually did a video series in it’s going to be part of my free gift today. Free the fat, fatigue, and frustration because I know that’s like the number one thing that people are feeling right now. They’re just frustrated. They’ve already tried a number of the drugs that I talked about it today.
And I’m not demonizing doctors, and I’m not demonizing the people who are prescribing them because it’s what we’re taught. In fact, I was even looking at a slideshow that showed what doctors are taught today if like a patient asks, “I have low sex drive,” and the doctor is led to say or trained to say at least in the slideshow I saw, “Well, you know, everyone feels this way.”
Like we said earlier, maybe it’s totally common, and like a lot of your sisters and cousins and girlfriends are feeling this way, but it’s not normal. Like to have any symptom is not normal.
So you probably haven’t prescribed other things and maybe you’re looking to get off of them. So if you are, please work with the doctor because none of these – and I’m sure you put all the disclaimers before this, Wendy, you’re a smart chick. But none of these is intended to be any kind of medical advice that you might get from your doctor. So that’s number one.
I love B vitamins and I talk about these earlier – B vitamins are like the co- factors. They’re the BFFs in your body that get things done. Kind of like the Uber.Theytakethingswheretheyneedtobe. They’reareahugeco-factorin estrogen metabolism, and also getting rid of the bad estrogens even in the colon.
So there’s a huge preponderance of things that B vitamins are responsible for. They make hormones also. Adrenals make sex, stress, and sleep hormones. And when stress is number one, we’re burning out our B vitamins pretty quick. So who has stress in their life?
Wendy: Me.
Diane: Who thinks it’s going to go away any time soon? So as long as you’ve got stress in your life, you’ve got to have B vitamins to help because B vitamins make hormones.
So when you need more hormones to help you when you got stress in your life, B vitamin is really important. B vitamins and then healthy fats, of course, too. And then they also help you elevate your mood with neurotransmitters. There’s a whole bunch of things that B vitamins do.
I like to wrap B vitamins in a healthy, like multi-mineral, multivitamins, and most of it is already included in that. Some people like to keep it separate. They’re more perfectionist about it. But I find that most people really want to simplify things. So as much as I can help people simplify the good B’s, making sure it’s methylfolate and not folic acid. But those are all in one, if you can get it that way, if you’ve got a good one that’s not going to have a lot of other things that you don’t want.
The other things is the phosphatidylserine is just a side note for a lot of people who really– and this is more advanced. People really just can’t get rid or they can’t control their stress. So they’re kind of always in stress mode. It helps to reduce cortisol in the body. So if you’re not really up for doing yoga or chilling out, if you’re like a high-powered woman, you’re like go, go, go. then maybe that will work if other things happen. So that’s just a side note.
A big, big one is primrose oil. So you may have heard of primrose oil. I like to say it’s the primer. So primrose is like the primer in our body, in our blood. Really, it’s an essential fatty acid, meaning that we can’t make it on our own. We can get it from plants. So a lot of the stuff we’re going to talk about today is plant-based. It’s not in the cream. And I’ll side note that later on why taking this progesterone cream is not really the best idea.
But the primrose I take it and I have clients take it from the first day to the 14th day of ovulation, but specifically there’s the essential 6’s, essential omega-6’s that support what’s called prostaglandin production. And that helps reduce blood clotting and inflammation.
So there’s a lot of bits of primrose oil that helps support our PMS and I would say ovulation cycle in general. And you could also cut up a capsule. Sometimes I’d put it in my face as an oil and so it also helps with the skin glow, if you will.
So primrose oil, I love it. And then, also things like, of course, we talked about zinc earlier. Zinc is also created by our microbiome. Like the bacteria in our gut – they make vitamins. They synthesize vitamins. And the estrobolome, right? Needs things like zinc which also plays a huge role in hormone production and balance. And it’s one of those vitamins that helps to increase progesterone levels and lower estrogen.
So I’ve seen so many people, and I find it so irresponsible that people are receiving things from the doctor. They’re taking progesterone creams. They’re taking progesterone enhancers, whatever they are. But those can be so disastrous. Because, again, progesterone, yes, it’s low and that’s the problem. But looking back to the root cause of why it’s the problem and supporting that, you won’t have to address it again. You may have to be in a progesterone cream for a longer period in your life and they see that high levels of progesterone. They get stored in fat and bile. They got higher odds of cancer.
I was on the progesterone shot, Wendy, the Depo-Provera? Wendy: Yeah.
Diane: I was on that for 7 years. I didn’t have a period for 7 years. And so, therefore, it increases our odds of ovarian cancer because those tissues aren’t releasing. It’s just not a good thing. It’s like saying, “Hey, we’re not gonna flush the trash for 7 years.” But I shouldn’t call our goddess garden ‘trash.’
Wendy: [Laughs]Yes.
Diane: So that’s another one. But more than 70 percent of women don’t have enough zinc. That’s why, “Hey, oysters! Mmm, aphrodisiac.” And then men, too. Men don’t get enough zinc most of the time. So if you can get enough zinc, that’s also going to help to increase progesterone naturally. And so, these are things that I recommend to clients.
Another one is black cohosh. So there’s a lot of things we can get from nature, and then black cohosh is another one. It serves as a natural building block of progesterone, and it’s the only known natural substance that can raise progesterone levels that we know of, or the research that I’ve found anyway. So it was used a long time ago for medicinal purposes. So it’s like making a comeback.
And then, it’s important to understand too that – you know Wendy, if we do all these tests and run a test to see where people are at with their estrogen and progesterone, we can be running tests forever. And estrogen and progesterone are doing this, but it’ so hard to capture that. It’s invasive to do a 30-day test to look at hormones or 28-day test to look at hormones the whole time. We’re doing urine tests. People are coming to us over-tested a lot of the times. They’ve done a lot of tests, but they’re still not getting to the root.
So it’s important to understand that some of these things that you can take, like black cohosh is one of them, that can help your body stabilize on its own. So it’s not about giving your body what it doesn’t have because it’s hard to capture that on a test. It’s giving the body this ability to regulate it on its own.
So we’re supporting the glands, we’re not supporting the body by giving it hormones. And I hope that makes sense because our glands are what makes the hormones, and so too does that microbiome. The liver makes hormones too. But the glands are primarily what makes the hormones, the Tao – thyroid, adrenal, ovaries. And so, we want to support those to be released in unison, and then detox properly through the liver and the stool. So that’s another really big one.
And then, magnesium. I mean, I’ve got amounts of how much you guys – I suggest that you might consider taking on a daily basis for each one of these things, but magnesium is huge! Magnesium is important for so many things. But it’s required to metabolize estrogen primarily. And so, when we’re talking about estrogen dominance, it helps to flush the bad estrogens out. It helps to regulate the estrogen and progesterone to natural levels that your body needs, and likes, and wants. And it also will help to support sleep patterns.
So when I take magnesium, I know I get more drowsy in the right times. Drowsy in a good way, like my body is queuing me to go to sleep. It also helps for princess poops too. So a lot of constipation, right? So magnesium is also very powerful to help support the digestive system and the bowels.
And then one last one that I really, really enjoy, this is the seventh one, is ashwagandha, and that’s an adaptogenic herb. I also think that taking things like these adaptogens everyday are a good idea, especially for women today because we have so many responsibilities. And with stress not going anywhere, it helps our body adapt to stress around us. Number one thing is to reduce stress if you can, but number two is to help our bodies support the natural phases of adaptation if we have stress.
So those are seven of the more upstream ones, and then we’ve got like the downstream ones too. Do you want me to talk about those?
Wendy: Please. Are those the supplements you’re going to talk about to help with PMS?
Diane: Yes. So all of these are real supplements that are helping with PMS. Specifically what I wanted to say too about ashwagandha is it helps to reduce cortisol. Like we talked about earlier, cortisol is more bossy than estrogen. It goes and it binds receptor sites, so our body can’t function normally. We’ve got kind of this state of fight or flight at all times.
So all of the things that I just talked about are really helpful for PMS symptoms. But the next ones are the liver and the colon. We really want to support our body’s ability to detox stuff and get it out of the body. And then also in the colon, the less crap we have in there, the better that we’re able to create hormones and balances that we might need because that’s the estrobolome, right? This new research that says that our bacteria, which make up 99 percent of us, can actually turn on the right DNA that synthesizes and makes healthy hormones.
But we talked about earlier, Candida can actually make bad hormones too and release yeast throughout the body that the body gets confused by. So that is why probiotics are the number one staple that I recommend in anybody’s health regime because we use to get probiotics from the soil, and the soil used to have like hundreds of– I think like 80-something minerals plus nutrients. And now it’s like 4 or 5, something crazy like that.”
So we’ve got to make up for it somehow and that’s why I like soil and spore- based probiotics because it fulfills what our food did not. Like it takes now three or four heads of broccoli to get the same nutritional value of what it used to be, right? So same thing, and that’s why I recommend probiotics on a pre- regular basis.
We also know that the one that I do like and I love is megaspore. It is the only one that has been clinically tested to support the lining of the intestine and which helps to heal the leaky gut. And this is why a lot of the GI doctors would not recognize leaky gut as an issue. But it happens when you got high levels of Candida, which is the estrogen dominance PMS triage.
And so, you’ve got Candida that’s like poking holes in the lining of the intestines and allows the fungus to go throughout the body and travel which we don’t want because it starts degrading our hairs and our nails, and then we gain more weight because the fat has to go somewhere, the estrogen has to go somewhere, and gets stored in fat, and tissues, and organs.
So if we take something like a probiotic that will not only restore the good bacteria in gut and crowd out, bully out the things like Candida, but also can seal and heal the lining of our intestines. So even if we do have some Candida, it can’t travel all throughout the body and cause systemic damage in all parts of the body.
So it’s our immune system and we really want to support that. And if it’s making vitamins, if our microbiome is making vitamins and getting rid of the bad stuff, we want to support that because that’s the biggest heavy hitter. We might be able to cover like 10 vitamins which has one probiotic. I’m not saying that’s you, but if you’re deficient in a lot of vitamins, you’re probably deficient in the good bacteria that help to synthesize those vitamins. So I think that’s really important – adjusting colon health.
And then liver support – we talked about DIM a little bit already earlier. Like I said, it takes 2 pounds of those vegetables in order to get the proper dose that you would need to flush the bad estrogens from the liver. So I also love taking DIM. Also Vitex Chasteberry helps balance the estrogen and the progesterone ratios. Indole-3 carbinol, like 300 milligrams daily. This is all in the books so you don’t have to remember all of it. It helps the liver to metabolize the estrogen.
And so, if you have less estrogen, then you got a better immune system and you probably have less Candida. So the root ones that I would never want to see a woman get rid of her PMS symptoms or hormonal problems, and then just, “Oh, I got there. Okay, I’m done. I’m gonna be lax now about my diet or my supplements, or my personal care product regime.”
These are things that I recommend as a core 5 to anybody who supplement regime – supporting the gut with probiotics, supporting the liver because I have so many jobs to do and it gets so congested so easy, and then supporting the body’s ability to metabolize food and get food out of the body like the waste products of food.
So the liver support, there’s all different kinds of things you can do for liver support. But lemon oil is really powerful. When you go to the restaurants, I actually don’t drink tap water from restaurants. I’ll bring my own and then I put some essential oil drops because the lemons that they give you sometimes can have like a lot of bacteria on them too. So lemon is very powerful for flushing a lot of bad estrogens in the body. I can keep going on and on about this, but a lot of it is in the book.
Wendy: Yes, and I love that too. I love a glass of water with essential oil and lemon in it. Fantastic! I love that like first thing in the morning, so I like that, too.
Diane: Yes.
Wendy: And so, why don’t you tell the listeners where they can learn more about you.
Diane: Sure. This is the fun part,other than the poop that we talked about too.
There’s one thing that I have made. I like to make things too. So a lot of people are becoming like– the newest revolution now is that people are wanting to learn more about the individual ingredients that are in their supplements. I hope that the people you’ve interviewed, and I’m sure that they have talked about individual ingredients and the bioavailability in the body. So what are harmful? What are not? So I suggest you guys listen to as much of this. Pun intended, absorb as much of it as you can.
So something I made myself, I like to make my own little roller balls. And this is actually one of the things – I don’t really get PMS, Wendy. I’m just like you. Like, when I hear my client say, “Oh, I can’t go to the gym today because I just started my period.” I’m like, “So what? So you started on your period.” We got to work on that ladies. We got to work on that because you shouldn’t have to not do the things are in your life because of your periods, right? Your PMS.
So I have this. I actually like this for anything. I got a little crampy sometimes and that tells me I need probably take some of the DIM, flush some estrogens, maybe do a coffee enema. But this has geranium oil. It has chamomile, clary sage, and marjoram. And a lot of these oils you can put anywhere in the body. You can put it around your neck. They support the endocrine system. And they support PMS. I put them down here on the belly. You can put them on those areas that you’re feeling – your problem points during PMS.
I wanted to share something. This just happened yesterday. One of my clients, she had a lot of history of PCOS and a lot of history of PMS. Just a lot of history of a lot of female problems – women’s health hormonal issues. And I gave her just a really simple protocol with some essential oils and a few other things, just cleaning up her diet a little bit.
She hadn’t had her period for 4 months and she got her period back 2 days after she started the protocol. It was like immediate. And she called me screaming of joy. She was just, “Yay, I got my period!” And it was a good thing. So essential oils can be powerful. We just think that sometimes they’re used for fragrance, but this is stuff that was used for thousands of years before prescriptions.
So a lot of these oils really support the body’s ability to stabilize and harmonize progesterone, estrogen, and the detoxification pathways of the body. So I wanted to offer that because, to me, it’s so exciting. And to me, it really is nourishing to hear a woman scream of joy because her period just showed up.
Wendy: Yes [Laughs].
Diane: Any questions at all, you can schedule at my website, dianekazer.com.
Wendy: So how do you spell your website just so we could know?
Diane: Yes. Do I remember how to spell my name or my brain clogging from PMS? Diane, D-I-A-N-E-K-A-Z-E-R-dot-com.
Wendy: Great. Well, thank you so much, Diane. It was so informative because so many women are having trouble like this – having trouble with PMS and mood swings. And then down the road if that’s not addressed, you can have other health issues, autoimmune disease, cancer, endometriosis, reproductive issues. And these aren’t difficult problems to solve. You just have to be aware of excess estrogen and the factors that contribute to it.
Diane: Absolutely.
Wendy: Everyone, thank you again for listening to one of our talks on the Medicinal Supplements Summit. So many women are struggling with PMS, but there’s so many things you can do to make that time easier. One, being leveling out your hormones to supplements.
If you enjoyed this talk, please enjoy 36 more talks by purchasing the Medical Supplements Summit. We discussed every aspect of supplementation: how to take supplements properly, what ingredients to avoid, the best testing, the customized supplements of your body – it’s all covered on the Medicinal Supplements Summit. You can learn more at medicinalsupplementssummit.com.
This is Wendy Myers, and my hope is that you experience the health that you deserve. And that all begins with taking the right supplements for you.
