Health
Dr. Sarah Daccarett: Hormones, Stress & Why Women Age Faster Than Men
In this episode of Biohacking Beauty, Dr. Sarah Daccarett discusses the intricate relationship between hormones, stress, and skin aging, particularly in women. She emphasizes how hormonal imbalances, ...
Dr. Sarah Daccarett: Hormones, Stress & Why Women Age Faster Than Men
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Interactive Transcript
Speaker A
Foreign. Welcome back to Biohacking Beauty, the podcast.
Speaker B
Where we dive into the science and strategies behind reversing skin aging, enhancing longevity, and unlocking real radiance from the inside out. I'm your host, Amitai Eshel, and as.
Speaker A
Always, this podcast is brought to you.
Speaker B
By Yangoos Skincare, the world's leader in biohacking skincare formulas designed to restore your skin's youthful function at the cellular level. At Yungoos, we believe in skincare that speaks your skin's language. We're talking about ingredients like NAD precursors, spermidine peptides, antioxidant and epigenetic regulators formulated to actually reverse the biological aging in the skin. To explore more, head over to yungoose.com and you're welcome to get 10% off by using the code podcast. 10 now. Today's episode is packed with insight because we're talking all about hormones and not.
Speaker A
Just in the context of mood swings.
Speaker B
Or energy dips, but how your hormonal balance or imbalance directly impacts skin, your aging process, and even your ability to recover from stress. Our guest is Sarah Descartes, a founder of Inner Balance and an expert in.
Speaker A
Nervous system regulation, trauma healing, and hormone harmony.
Speaker B
Sarah brings a unique lens to hormonal health, bridging the emotional, energetic, and biological aspects of how our hormones shape our.
Speaker A
Appearance and overall vitality.
Speaker B
In this episode, we're diving deep into the connection between hormones and skin aging.
Speaker A
From how cortisol can affect it to.
Speaker B
Why imbalanced estrogen and progesterone and their levels can cause everything from acne to.
Speaker A
Dryness to the role of the nervous system and immune system in in hormonal healing. Whether you're dealing with perimenopause, psycho related.
Speaker B
Breakouts, or just feel off, Sarah's insights will help you understand how to bring your body and your skin back into balance.
Speaker A
Let's jump in. All right, Sarah, welcome to the biohacky Beauty podcast.
Speaker C
Thanks for having me.
Speaker A
Yeah. Our mission in 2025, one of the staples was to talk about women's hormone health, you know, alongside perimenopause, menopause. But I think we can do a better job there. What I would want to start just because it's something that maybe we talk about slightly less. Let's start by talking about how chronic stress and emotional trauma can accelerate aging and more specifically, even skin aging.
Speaker C
Yeah, definitely. It's a great thing to start off with since everybody is chronically stressed and even just environmental toxins can cause this type of stress too, on the body. But and it's a great topic to start with because it's overarching women's health. Like, it's really not just about perimenopause and menopause conversation. It's impacting younger women. Women in their 20s and 30s who are really experiencing. It can wreck your skin. One stress can lower hormones.
Speaker A
But I would.
Speaker C
And I think that's like, the most common way that we would look at it. But I actually think that what's happening to women is that their hormones are being lowered first and they don't have the capacity to handle the stress. The women should be. Should be able to do whatever they want. They can have the job and the kids and the wife and the spouse and the. And be able to. We should support that with the hormone therapy and not the other way around. Because we're telling women, hey, you need to slow down. You need to de. Stress. You're wrecking your hormones. If you would just lower your stress, then your skin and your sleep and your hormones will do better. And this is not actually fair to them because we shouldn't ask them to, like, stop being stressed because they want to have the. You should be able to have the life you want to have. And there's actually a healthy amount of stress that is healthy for people. And we're talking about, like, constructive stress, right? Like, this is appropriate for people to have this. Yeah, we need. And what's happening to women is that their hormones are dropping at a very young age, just like men's testosterone is dropping in their 20s, too, and it's going unrecognized. And we're telling women it's their fault. They're taking too much on, they're doing too much, they're raising too many, they're doing their kids in the job and taking it all on again. They should be able to do that. And instead we need to address the problem of why the hormones are dropping in the first place. I don't really agree with the. Hey, stress is causing your progesterone to drop. I think that the progesterone is dropping first, and then we're not able to handle the stress.
Speaker A
Yeah, it makes. First, first of all, it makes perfect sense because it all kind of is ex. Kind of go through the same centers in the brain, which then one would affect the other. I haven't looked into, I would say, like the chicken and the egg scenario there enough. But it, but it makes perfect sense. So why do you think that happens? Why do you think hormones drop so early? And do you Think it's different than what we evolutionarily were kind of what we evolved to be to have as far as like healthy hormone levels. And then is it also different than, you know, 150 years ago?
Speaker C
Yeah, I think the popular belief is that, for example women, the progesterone and the cortisol are the same pathway. So like when they get stressed, the body will prioritize the production of cortisol and then they don't make the hormone. And that's where that's coming from. But if you look at the environment, for example, and it's pro possible that it was always the case, like women, we die. Our ancestors died when they were 35 and now women are having babies when they're 35. So we have extended life in our lifespans for women tremendously. But our ovaries have not caught up. Like our health span is way behind. Women are living longer. Like they don't have a problem with lifespan. Women live longer than men, but they don't live well. And so it's possible that we always had ovarian function failure in the early 30s. We just are now trying to like live longer and have babies in our 30s. And we're doing more and are expected more like our ancestors. And our, my grandmother and great grandmother probably didn't have to work in their 40s and 50s. And now women have to. So there's. That component of media has always been going on and now we're recognizing it and acknowledging it. And the expectations on women are greater than they were in the past. And then also we have a ton of environmental toxins. Plastics, plastics, phthalates, parabens, pesticides, all of these bind to estrogen receptors. They don't bind to testosterone receptors. They're binding to the estrogen receptor. And when that happens, the body, it makes you infertile. Like it basically suppresses these. The production of your own natural hormone. Estrogen is protective, progesterone is protective. And when you block the function, if you have something binding to that receptor, your own protective hormone can't bind to it. And that's what wrecks your sleep and your skin and your stress level and everything is because your own hormones are not able to bind the receptors to protect you. These are really hard to get rid of in the environment. Even if you are doing everything, it's almost against us. Fragrances are in every single beauty products that women are using. Laundry soaps like they're in the glade plug ins like every. You walk into any building and they, they have like Air fresheners everywhere.
Speaker A
Yeah, it's the first thing they do when we go into an airbnb, go air freshener hunting.
Speaker C
I do too. I take them all out. They smell awful and they're very, they're terrible. And women are being disproportionately impacted, I would argue, but they're definitely impacting men. But they, they bind to this estrogen receptor.
Speaker A
How do you do? So we talked about stress and then we talked, and then we talked about, you know, and then we talk about, let's say physical, physical binding to receptors. Where's the kind of middle ground between like stressing about these things of it Maybe to the extreme, which then we cause, you know, some chronic, some chronic stress. I mean, we, we see it with diet, we see it with, with exercise. We really see it in every, I would say every kind of society imposed type, you know, preconceived notion of, of like an ultimate goal we should reach. We have people stressing about that too much. Is it that we're doing it there or should we do pure. Or should we be puritans and, and kind of try and like eliminate all plastic from our lives?
Speaker C
I think we can be, you know, it's hard to not. We can overstep and become neurotic about it, right? There's this like induced neuroticism, which is not a fun way to live either. And it's almost impossible to, you know, I think everybody, you should be diligent about it, what you can control. So if you can control it, great. But I think the point that women need to understand is that they do have control. If you keep your hormones optimized and you keep them at the right level and you can do this with supplementation, that, that's okay. And then you're, you're protecting yourself against these. If, if, if you have your body full of estrogen and progesterone and testosterone, your protective hormones, it'll prevent the chemicals from binding in the first place. Like, you're not going to be exposed. If you get exposed to mold toxicity for something or for example, it shouldn't impact you because your immune system will be strong, right? So like, if you're, oh, hormones are at the core of this health of health. If you were just, instead of being neurotic about everything, if you were, I always say that hormone replacement therapy, if you were to focus only on that and your hormones, you would get the biggest bang for your buck. You'd be able to get 80 or 90, whatever. You're, you know, the Bulk of what you're trying to get, and then you don't. And then you can kind of be neurotic a little bit about the other stuff, the diet, the exercise, the supplements, the peptides, the. There's all this other stuff that we could be doing.
Speaker A
Yeah, it's. I had a conversation with a chiropractor. No offense to chiropractors, but it was a pretty famous guy, actually probably the most famous chiropractor. And he was basically taking a stance that women shouldn't people in general. But the conversation was with my wife, and he was saying, you know, hormone replacement therapy is a. Basically is a kind of. As an excuse not to live a healthy lifestyle, et cetera. And that we could do without hormone replacement therapy. And to me, that was. And obviously he was. He was also quoting, you know, studies that are. I would call them irrelevant. And basically what he. He said is that if you are doing hormone replacement therapy is because nothing else worked. And it's not about optimization. And to me that that is the first kind of cardinal sin is that we are not working with our hormones towards optimization. Because as a, As a, as a podcast that, you know, our goal is to have, let's say, people's skin performing the best way possible. Anything below optimal would not serve the same purpose. And it goes both for men and women. If someone's hormones are below optimal, they are aging at a. At a. At a faster rate. They are accumulating more unrepaired damage than someone that has optimal levels.
Speaker C
You're absolutely right. I mean, that's sad. That. And first of all, he's a guy shouldn't be talking about women. He absolutely has no. It has no place. And he doesn't understand what women. Women really have to really struggle. They have really complex neuroendocrine systems. They have complex immune systems. Like, it really is important that their hormones do not drop. They age, like, very dramatically. But it's not just the aging that we need to worry about. It's actually mental health. It's autoimmunity. These. When the immune system ages, we age. Like, immune immunity is every. Like, if you think about how we can probably prevent. And the best biohacking really that you can do is to keep your immune system healthy and for women. And we can talk about why I think the immune system is the most important to target. But hormones telling somebody that they're not doing enough, they're not dieting and exercising is just basically telling them that they're the problem. Again, you're. You're more or less gaslighting women even more, telling them that they need to do more. And I think that we're kind of tired. Tired of hearing it.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker C
Because it's. We need to as a practice, especially provider. Like he's chiropractor but he's still a professional that people are listening to and oh, it's my job to make sure that I can support women. Right. Like I need to be like helping her. She does. I don't need to be telling her to do more. She's already doing everything. Obviously. She's, she's like trying. People try their hardest. They're doing the best they can and just. That's really sad. I fear you're not the first to. I hear that a lot. You cannot fix hormones. You cannot fix hormones with a diet. Diet, that's the thing too. You can't. It's like the one thing you cannot achieve with a supplement or a diet or exercise.
Speaker A
You know, I kind of assume that people who say that come from a well meaning place. Maybe they are contrarians that are trying to be the opposite of a doctors saying, hey, I only have 15 minutes and whatever you want, I'll give you. I get that. But I mean it's the same, it's the same trap. It's. It's not, you know, again, it's like not looking at the person in front of you and making, you know, making every effort to make their lives better.
Speaker C
And, and people do better when they feel better. Like women will start diet, they'll start actually eating better and working out more. If you get their hormones in check, if they get their hormones optimized first, then they start caring for themselves more. Like sometimes the other one has to come first. You don't just expect people to just start going to the gym every day, three times hours a day or whatever. Not that we shouldn't have to do.
Speaker A
That anyway, but yeah, but. So let's talk about the immune system. Like this is something that again is not talked a lot. Sometimes if I have like some weird rapid fire question someone asked me on a podcast, they're like, hey, what, what system should we make sure, you know, we target in aging? I'll say, okay, the immune, but it doesn't come up a lot. So maybe we talk about that. Why should we focus on immune anti aging if you would first?
Speaker C
So for women, pregnancy is like the perfect example. So we have to carry a foreign body. So the body is intelligent. Right? It has built the body in such a way that when a woman gets Pregnant, she has to carry a foreign body and not attack that foreign body, but have the immune system high enough and boosted enough to protect her against, against disease or like a virus. Or she has to be pregnant and not get sick, but also not attack the baby. This requires a really robust and well organized immune system in order to do that. If you think about what the body has to do for pregnancy in that. Those nine to ten months. So this is actually directly modulated by estrogen and progesterone. They bind to B cells, they bind to T cells, and the hormones get the T cells in the right ratio. So like the helper cells and Th2 cells and the Th1 cells are in the right ratio and the B cells as well. And when we look at what is inflammation? Okay, so inflammation is really. Everybody asks that. I throw around that word like it's like just a common language. And I'm like, what is it? But what, what really is inflammation? Inflammation is a dysregulated immune system. What it is is the. They help our cells and the T cells and the B cells are in the wrong ratios. The immune system is not orchestrated. It's chaotic. It doesn't know what to do. And it starts fighting things that are not actually foreign instead of. So when you're, when you, you're have inflammation, true inflammation, you start getting sick in the winter because you can't fight the viruses that are there. But then you start getting eczema because your immune system is like fighting your own skin. Or you get hashimoto or you get a lot of pain around the body and the immune system is completely disregulated.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker C
For women, their hormones, when they drop, we see a huge rise in autoimmunity. We see like, this is like hypersensitivity to things in the environment, food sensitivities. The immune system is complet. At the core of diabetes, cancer, heart disease is inflammation. The immune system. And then as we. And then you have an aging body. So then this immune system is aging, but then it's already becomes dysregulated because the hormones are not present. It's something that we don't understand. Like people don't, I don't think really understand this because they don't talk about it, but it's not that complicated when you talk about it. Women, men do not have, I would argue that they don't have the rates of autoimmunity that we do. They don't have it because their immune system is not as they don't have that pregnancy. They don't have that complicated. I'm not sure if testosterone even regulates their immune system. I would argue that it does. And so men, when their testosterone drops, they also probably get more sick. But for women, it's like obvious they'll just be sick all winter long. But when you put them on hormone replacement therapy, all of a sudden they're like not sick during the winter. They're, you know, people get like oral herpes, for example. Those go completely away because their immune system is able to keep those viruses dormant.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker C
Heart disease, diabetes. A lot of these diseases of inflammation are prevented by hormone replacement therapy. It's, it's really, it's something that we. It is the core of health that it's actually very. It's so easy. It's almost like too easy.
Speaker A
Yeah. You know, again, if I need to speak to someone who really doesn't, who, you know, it could be that you speak with someone and inflammation to them is, is too scary of a word and it will scare them off the conversation. It would be to them something that they either read when they take an nsaid, like when they take like whatever, like an Advil and they understand that it has something to do with how they feel, but the minute you start to get technical with them, it scares them and they walk away mentally from the conversation. Or it could be something that people feel like is unresolvable. It's just like kind of bucket that fills. Nevermind what. As we grow older, they see their parents, they understand something's going on there to these people. A lot of the times I start the conversation by explaining that inflammation could be replaced by the word information. That this is the ability of, that is the information for things that are not functioning correctly in the body. It could be an injury, it could be anything. But this is information for attention in the body. And what happens when the problem is, and kind of what you've said, in other words, is that the problem is accumulation of unresolved inflammation. It is the inflammation that our body cannot instantly resolve in the correct amount of time that stays behind. And then we have an overload of information. It's like trying to get a signal through when there is like, you know, when there is fake news or static noise in the background, it's very hard for our body to start resolving issues and that starts piling up. And things that have, you know, seemingly nothing to do with the, the core inflammatory process that, that started it all are now, are now affected because there is the, the, the body cannot break through that noise.
Speaker C
I love It. And if you think about hormones, they are this. These keepers of information. They actually help regulate the signaling. So they're CEOs of the body. They regulate every process in the body. And I, And I, I kind of fear this. Like, oh, well, progesterone helps you sleep, and testosterone helps with libido, and estrogen helps with your skin. And we tend to segregate them. But when you look at the body holistically, it's not the case. When you look at blood pressure, we need estrogen and progesterone both to maintain blood pressure. We need everything. Like every process requires all of the hormones together and things like skin inflammation. Like, there was. I saw something about how the sun, like, you know, eczema. We know that the sun will help reverse a lot of this inflammation. Why is that? And it's. There's been some theories that when you get a sunburn, the immune system responds, but it organizes in order to attack the sunburn. But it organizes itself. It has something to fight, which is the sunburn. And that's why it treats the chaos. Like, because you're giving it the proper amount of like, something to. To. To target. The immune system is like, always on, right? It's always on. Like, it's gotta fight something. So the rosacea, for example, is one of the hardest things for women to treat. I would say, like, in. In terms of like, skin in this, you know, but at a core, it's hormonal.
Speaker A
I would argue melasma. Same thing. I'm one of the only men that I know with melasma, but it's made predominantly women. And that's why a lot of the times people write to us and say, hey, I heard your anti lasers or anti. Basically things that drive inflammation in the skin, which then the skin needs to repair. And it's a hard thing to explain, but this is kind of. This. I think what we've spoken about up to now, we'll kind of explain it. It's not that we're against them, is that there. There are. There's significant housekeeping you have to do before. Before you engage with something that would require that amount of inflammation mediation.
Speaker C
You're not treating the root cause. Like, like, ultimately, when you're using a tool like that, you're getting that response when you need it, but you're still like, this is sunburn. Like, okay, well, I temporarily treated my eczema because I got, like, for a minute, I got it to organize. Like, the laser would do that or micro needling or whatever. Like, Temper. You're having like a controlled injury to the, to the site, but the core problem is still there. Like you're not addressing the underlying body. You're not like, in order for us to heal, like truly, you have to address. You have to give the body the foundation and the environment in order to heal. Not that tool. Yeah.
Speaker A
Now I feel like, and that's something that also really intrigued me coming to this conversation that you've, you've verbalized something that I was, that I, that I, that I had on my mind, but I couldn't, I couldn't verbalize it as well. I think there, there is, within the world of hormone replacement therapy, there is a little bit rigidity or inflexibility as far as the options available for women to, to access. I really feel like many times in medicine, you know, allopathic medicine is good with taking away your headache and making sure you don't die and everything in between. It's more difficult. And you said it best. Not to me, but to someone else. I think it was. Jeffrey Gladden, if I remember correctly, was that most solutions were meant to 55 year olds. Maybe we can talk a little bit about that.
Speaker C
Yeah. The hormone replacement therapy is like, we're still prescribing it like it's 1990. It's like we're decades behind and we've solved the problem I would say pretty well for men. I would. We have a lot of work to do for them as well. But for women, it's been very sad. We've. Doctors don't. I think it's pretty much getting out that they don't have any training. They also think it's kind of beneath them. And then we don't view hormones, even hormone replacement therapy doctors or longevity docs really aren't looking at it in terms of this foundational health prevention. That is something we need to be starting to look at very early. Like in the 20s and 30s.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker C
You can't treat heart disease, you can't treat Alzheimer's. You need to prevent it. Like you need to prevent aging. You can't. Like, you can kind of reverse the aging, but like preventing its best. And so the formulations have always been as a treatment, we have always wanted to treat hot flashes.
Speaker A
I think it's what you're saying. It's so, so poignant because what you're trying to. What we are trying to do by reversing aging or by treating a symptom, like you said, right now, we're trying to, we're trying to Reorganize chaos. It's extremely difficult. Once thing, you know, fray, it's very. It's. It's. Science doesn't even know of everything that's going wrong. Where prevention is so much easier because what you're trying to do is keep things together rather than trying to even understand what went wrong or what is going wrong.
Speaker C
Yeah, no, you nailed it. Like, it's. Once it starts, like, especially the body. I mean, you want to keep your health. Like, I have women tell me, like, why don't want to start hormonal placement therapy till I absolutely need it. And you're like, why would you wait? Why? You don't wait to start brushing your teeth and taking supplements and doing a good diet. Like, you let your body age for another year or two, and you've done that destruction, and it's much harder to get. Of course you can get it back, but you're giving. You're making it harder for yourself. Like, why would you wait? Why would you wait? This has not been, like, the thought or the approach. And in fact, even just saying that is pretty revolutionary for women because it's always been this. You have to wait until your period stops at age 51. You have to wait until, like, you don't need estrogen until your period stops, which is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard. We don't tell men that they have to wait till they stop making sperm before they need to take testosterone. I mean, you're laughing, see, like, you laugh. And they're like, we did. We tell women all day long that they. They have to be infertile before we. And we don't even know that, like, women will have a period for a decade and not be ovulating, actually. So this is really sex. Sexist that it's. It's. Sure. It's just not paying attention or it's not really, like, giving women, like, what they deserve, but this, like, idea or concept that we don't start estrogen therapy or the appropriate amount of HRT until you're, like, 51 and above. You're almost too late. Like, almost like, I'm glad that people are getting that we're having this conversation, but it really needs to be thought of in the 30s when it's happening to women.
Speaker A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't start talking to a partner just before you get a divorce.
Speaker C
Exactly. You want it like. Or, like, you know, when you gain weight and somebody's like, I just. I grew two belt sizes. You're like, how does no, no, there's like warning signs like that, you know, you each little hole.
Speaker A
But we're not good in increment. Really. Human beings are so bad at incremental change. We're not good at it. That's, you know, I love the joke, I make it too often. But that's why McDonald's still in business, right? Because we're not good at understanding small incremental change. So what would, what would be the roadmap? Like, what is the roadmap for? Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
Speaker C
No, I was going to say like I was leading into your next question, the roadmap. The problem is when you. If, even if we were to change our way of thinking about it. So even if we were to say, okay, we need to treat a 30 year old woman or a 20 year old woman or anybody, anybody that needs it, we should be able to offer it to her. The formulations are exactly how do you get the hormones into the body is actually like a very challenging way. It doesn't go through the skin. For example, the pore size, it's not big enough. Like the progesterone is a massive molecule and you're trying to like, like drive it with these really bad bases. Like you're pretty much have a, something that tries to open up the pores, the skin and get it through. It doesn't work. We have patches that don't work. We have women. If you were to give a 35 year old a patch and a pill and a Lotus vaginal cream, just like we give a 55 year old, she's not even going to notice that. It's like spitting into the ocean. It's like micro, we don't micro dose men with testosterone. Here, let me just give you like a little tiny testosterone patch. Can you imagine if I came to you with like a little testosterone patch? I would be like, what are you doing? But we do that to women. We do, we tell them that their hormones are dangerous for them and we don't give them appropriate therapy like oral. Hormones are not a way to take a hormone. We know that when you take a hormone and you swallow it, the liver degrades like 80% of it. You get this first pass metabolism and all, you get all these metabolites that make you sleepy. We're basically putting women like just making them groggy during the day. But here you'll feel better, honey, you'll sleep like. How is this okay with any woman? I don't know. We don't give men oral therapy. We, we inject men. That's like the. I think if women understood the difference, like the stark contrast and how much progress we still have to make in terms of even just the way we're trying to get the hormones into the body. Women need to know that formulation matters, the delivery matters. It's not just the hormone itself, but they need to understand how you're trying to take it. Impacts metabolism, your side effects, everything.
Speaker A
Maybe, you know, this is, this is aside the point, because I actually want to go back to the roadmap, but I think injection is considered masculine. I think just the form of introduction of something to the body as an injection is considered masculine. And I Wonder, maybe, maybe GLP1s are going to be somewhat of a game changer there. Just as a perception, maybe, I don't know, that's like a whole different conversation.
Speaker C
Maybe it's interesting. We used to give men cream, like testosterone cream, and then we found that it didn't go through, only through the body. And they got all over the kids and the pets and the wives and then they caused a huge problem.
Speaker A
You're the 1 year old with the. With abs.
Speaker C
Exactly. I was going to say, like, you know, hair growing in places you don't want your 1 year old to grow hair. And so everybody, everybody freaks out. And so they switched them to injection pretty quickly because they were giving men appropriate doses as well and they were having to do it in a cream. And so with women, I also think there's a problem with injection. In that one, we get away with being able to inject men like twice a week and it's okay, they get like a little bit of a peak in the valley. But with women we really need stability. Like we need a date, we need a daily dose. Like we would have to inject daily. We have periods that we. If we would bleed, if, you know, like. So there's a stability and that needs to happen with them. And that would be harder to achieve with an injection. Potentially. I think it's. We need to do it and figure it out and solve that problem. But like my formulation or my approach would be an example. Like it's a. You have to have like this consistency though. So that's also a problem that would need to be solved for women.
Speaker A
So obviously you started the very interesting project. We talk about it, we talked about it off air. But was that kind of the prep the problem that you, you saw? The problem was how do we introduce hormones into the body? That's number one. And then how do we have a cadence that corresponds with, with our, with women's natural biology.
Speaker C
Yes.
Speaker A
And obviously age. Which, which.
Speaker C
Yes. And something that's like so appropriate dosing, formulation, delivery, like getting it into the body, something that's like appropriate for young women. What if a woman wants to get pregnant? We know that like we can't overdo it because we still need to, you know, what potentially impact these pathways if we have a younger patient. You know, we didn't even talk about birth control and how awful that is. Like that was one of the reasons that I missed like in the beginning about how that's probably impacting hormone levels and making them really low. Like what if they take birth control for a year, they get off of it and they never really recovered from that.
Speaker A
Yes.
Speaker C
And so this is doing more damage to fertility potentially for women than hormone replacement therapy would. But all of these questions needed to be answered. I was 35 when I went through it, for example. So I was definitely. When you try to solve the problem, you have to look at it in a new way. We have not, we're not really doing that. We stick to our old ways and our old formulations and our old dogma. Doctors are very resistant to change.
Speaker A
Yes. I mean, first of all, what you said about, you know, the notion that the, I wouldn't argue with the notion that the pill maybe in the 70s kind of liberated women to some extent. I don't have an opinion about it. But what I do know is that I think anything that created a positive change and you hold on to that for too long, there's a point of diminishing return and definitely the point of diminishing returns was for health was very, you know, probably, you know, 10 years later in the 80s. Right. The question is, and of course this is insane that we're prescribing it to 15 year olds. Bananas.
Speaker C
This is bananas.
Speaker A
Insane.
Speaker C
It's insane. And we won't give a 40 year old HRT, but we'll give a 15 year old birth control or you know, so I, I think you're right. There was this point of like where. And birth control has its purpose. It's like for a reason and we still need it. But it's not a treatment for heavy period. That's not a treatment for acne. Like it's given for acne like all day long and there's no informed consent. You take an 18 year old who has acne and you give them birth control and the doctor's not telling her, hey, I'm going to reduce your hormones to zero, which is what birth control does, it suppresses your own production and that's how it makes you infertile. And then I'm going to increase your risk for all these diseases because I'm taking away your natural hormones. I'm increasing yours for stroke and cancer and like a lot. And they don't. They just hand it out like it's candy.
Speaker A
Exactly.
Speaker C
And then, and it's not solving the root problem of the acne and you're creating, you know, unhealthy women. Did the 15 year old that took birth control now is the 25 year old with endometriosis and PCOS and potentially like a lot of mental health issues now on antidepressants and stimulants and trying to make it through her day probably potentially like it's always, it was always meant to be like the risk and benefit. Birth control has its benefits if you're trying to prevent pregnancy, but the risk, if you're using it to treat acne, it's too big. Like it's not an acne treatment.
Speaker A
No. And I think within our relationship with providers has a form of, as you said, has a form of friction that basically hints at the, at the severity of side effects. Right. That's how it should be. I mean, that's really how it should be. It's very hard for me to get, not so much in the United States, but it should be extremely difficult for me to get an opiate in the United States. Right. It should be near impossible for a, for a, someone who's not, you know, on their deathbed to get an opiate prescribed to them. And that should, in that, that should hint to the general population, what are the side effects? Because as we said, it's extremely difficult for us to imagine side effects that we are not experiencing or cumulative damage. That is how we also determine that a certain violation of the law is more severe than another one. And that's definitely a discussion also, by the way, in sexism in the law as well. But what is the punishment for this versus that? And birth control versus HRT for someone, for a woman in their 40s is completely, I mean, it's completely on its, on its head. The medical establishment is hinting that there are no side effects for birth control since it's so easy for you to, to get it prescribed and vice versa.
Speaker C
It is ignorance. Like, it's, it's, it's like the, the FDA is even, I mean, as slow as they are, I mean as slow as they are and like asleep at the wheel. They even say that over the age of 35, birth control is contraindicated due to the risks. It is not HRT. And I see women that are 50 and they're switching from their birth control and they're starting hrt, and you're like, what did. You've been on birth control for, like, 30 years. And no, the providers, like, the doctors do not understand that it's not hormones. They think it's hormones just because they. And they call it. And if they. I think people are understanding now that birth control is like a chemical. It's not a hormone, you know, but they. The doctors still think they're hormones. It's wild. It's been, um. It's actually really devastating that we only study it, too. So when you look at women, we've made this fake progesterone. We call it progestin.
Speaker A
Yeah, Right.
Speaker C
And it's derived from testosterone, and it makes them infertile. And all of the studies are done on progestin. And there's only, like, even if you look at appropriate reference intervals for laboratory testing, there's only five papers in, like, the entire world on progesterone, which is the real hormone. And there's like, thousands of papers on birth control.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker C
And this is like, why? And so then when doctors read it, they think that the birth control is the hormone. And then they're all confused because they think that the receptors that. There's this belief that they teach pharmacists and doctors that the receptor antagonism doesn't matter. If something binds the receptor, it has the same response. Yeah, but that's not true. We know that the chemicals in the environment bind to the receptor, and they have a completely different response. Birth control binds to these hormone receptors. It has a completely different response. So even doctors who are trained and professional are not even thinking about it. I would. I would understand that Women aren't thinking about it. They're not trained. They shouldn't have to understand it. But doctors have no excuse. They should definitely know.
Speaker B
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Speaker A
Let's go back to the roadmap. Like, let's say someone is listening and they are in their. In their 20s, for that matter. Should they care about how they feel first and then figure out if their hormones are out of whack? Should they do a periodic, you know, panel? How. How should someone in their twenties even approach that?
Speaker C
I think that we should. We could get to the point where if you're truly into biohacking and health and everything, you'd want optimal health, that you should always be watching your hormones.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker C
Even if you're feeling okay. So you could be like, this point where we kind of know where it's tipping, but I don't think we're there yet. I think women, we're very reactively treating people. Women are kind of, like, feeling terrible for years before they finally, like, are recognize that it's hormones they're blaming on other things. So I think a 20, like in that younger age group, 20 and 30, the problem is the lab testing is not that great. There's not a lot for them to, like, hold onto. The lab testing is very inaccurate. There's things like FSH that they can order. But even then, they might be normal women when they think of hormones, since they are regulating everything in the body, you can't attribute it. The hardest thing is, like, if you have one symptom, if you're like, all right, I have pcos. Okay. No, no, that's not. That's like a PCOS is like a collection of things that's definitely hormonal. So I was going to say, like, if you're just tired postpartum, let's say you're just tired, that could do because you're up all night with baby. Okay. So that's to just Be that you need to fix that. And you're better if you've just been gaining a little bit of weight but your diet's been crappy, okay, then fix that. And that's just it. But usually that's not the case. Usually you have insensitivity to food. You have anxiety, depression, irritability. You're. You're struggling to go to the gym because you're tired. You have bad skin. You're. You're starting to. The skin for women, it's like massive. Like when you start to see this decline.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker C
And it happens right after the hormones drop. You should start to see like your skin. You're not going to be happy with it. Your hair, your sleep. You have. When you. And gut health and like, everybody's like, oh, I have high cortisol, I just need to lower my stress and I just need to like, clean my leaky gut and then my. Everything will be better if I just like, cure my gut. If you have like this collection of things, I would say that gut health, for example, is not a sim. That's just a symptom. It's not the cause. That's not a real cause of anything. So hormones are the ultimate root cause. And if you have more than one thing going on, it's hormonal. So if women can even just recognize that they have more, if they can count like on their hand more than one thing, they need to be thinking about their hormones.
Speaker A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 100. And then, you know, how do you get from that, from that realization to starting a company? Like, I mean, for us, you know, the funny thing is that we talked about how the skin is a very bad delivery system to whole body interventions. That's what we tried to do with nad and for two years we failed. And then we understood the skin is great at using nad if you gave it, obviously it's very difficult to have it absorbed, but let's say you got it to absorb. The skin's gonna keep it. So we definitely come from this world. I understand completely why you would start a company to, you know, address a kind of a fundamental system in the body. But how, how is it to start a company, to start a product that, that, that kind of tries to solve an issue? Was it, was it smooth sailing? I'm. I'm really wondering.
Speaker C
Not smooth sailing at all. I would say that we're in one of the, like, noisy, chaotic, you know, pretty. Like there's a. So much confusion for hormone deficient therapy for women that we're, we're not creating controversy, we're stepping into a lot of it. And but I, I start. You start. I started it one, it was, it's like 12 years in the making I guess too. Like I, you know, so I, the solution was for myself. I was like patient zero. Did everything to myself to feel better because I wanted to have like a vibrant life. Whichever. It was just me. I was like, I want to feel like I'm 35. I want to look amazing and feel amazing as I'm aging and that's it. Like I, and I want, and I had the tools to do it. And when I really realized how bad the formulations were for women and a 35 year old trying to search for it, I just came up with my own solution. It was something that I would be able to put into my body and get it to work and absorb based on the science. And then I started a clinic and started treating men and women. And then you see the stark contrast and then you really see the need. When I had, you know, women will come into my office and beg. And I was like, you don't have to beg. Don't worry, I'm going to give you hormone replacement therapy. It's actually like really sad that you feel like you even have to do that because they've been to four other doctors and the four other doctors told them, told them no and they didn't know how to do it or they tried all these other formulations. They've been struggling for years. They've been told to change, change their diet, change their exercise. Like they've already tried all these things. You know, it's not going to work for them. And so then the online company is, is really to, hey, like I've been doing this in Idaho and Utah for years. Like this is something that should be nationwide. And it's really about this. We can do it better. And women, like we could do so much better than we are doing now for them. And it's, yeah, I met my business partner and that's also how it happened as well. Because online treatment is completely different than clinic. Yeah.
Speaker A
So how would an online treatment look like?
Speaker C
Well, so we democratized it essentially, right. We made it more accessible. There's not a lot of barriers. Although you still have to follow up with our clinical team. Like we have a whole clinical team in customer service to follow you. But the product, you can sign up and try the product online. So we have a formulation that's easy to use. Right. You can use it vaginally. And so this gets Away from the injection like you. The vaginal delivery is like very porous. It goes right into the bloodstream. You have no issue of getting progesterone into the body. You can get it continuous and stable blood levels. You get less side effects. Women find that it helps with mental health a lot more than the other formulations you have. It's easy to use, you don't have to inject. Right. So we getting away from this and it's like a tiny amount of cream every day and vaginal dryness, libido. I mean we're talking about the things that we do for men that we're starting to normalize. We normalized erectile dysfunction, for example, and these kind of common things that were for men and now we're trying to do the same. Like can we normalize something like vaginal dryness? It's really common for women, but like it's hush. Like it's so shameful. Nobody talks about it. And it's like, here, look, we got the perfect solution for you. You're gonna feel like a 13 year old girl again and you're gonna love it. Like, it's just, it's okay. And so trying to do this and you can we send, you know, we just ship it like it's, we ship the prescription. So we have a, like a telehealth service and this is how we're doing it online. Everything's prescription and everything's like we use the national pharmacy. So I don't know if you have any questions around that, but that's how we're trying to do it.
Speaker A
Yeah, I have a question around the, you know, technicality. You know, I have a, I have a friend that has a big hair hair care prescription company. And it's crazy the amount of customizations that they need to do within that. And what I think they have a harder time than, let's say you would have is some kind of baseline that people start at. So is it something that you guys, you know, customize from day one? Is there kind of a base base product that people start with and then see how they behave? How does it go?
Speaker C
It's better to do with hormone placement therapy like a base product and then optimize from there because you don't actually know where to get started. And the other thing too is that the laboratory testing doesn't help you. Like we kind of hinted on it, but you know, if my level, if somebody comes, two women come in with different hormone levels, it doesn't matter because if you give them like People think that, oh, because my hormones are higher, I need less.
Speaker A
Yeah, right.
Speaker C
So this is like the 35 year old that like thinks she needs less hormones. And it's actually, no, girl, you need more and the 55 year old needs less. And what happens is you suppress these feedback loops in the brain, like you suppress your own production. And so these two women that came in with different hormone levels, they're going to end up actually at the same consistent level, you know, based on like the formulation. And this is the better way to do hormone replacement therapy. And then you, you, then everybody's individualized. So people are like, well, it's not custom or individualized or personalized. But that's not what make it. You're, you're starting those. It's not what makes it personalized. Your metabolism, your genetics, your diet, like everything that you're doing actually impacts the way that these hormones are being eliminated and passed through the body. This is what we need to work on an individual basis. And you don't know until you get started. And then you get started and then you can follow with labs. So this is our approach is that, hey, we are going to put you on a starting dose and then we're going to optimize from there. So we can always go up, we can go down. Like, we can, you know, work with you on that. But I don't have a crystal ball, like, I don't know like what to get you on. Right. So I can see that the formulations for like hair care would. I can see them wanting to customize it because people kind of are more familiar with the ingredients and maybe they want like specific things. But with hormone placement therapy, what we're trying to do, it's the same thing with men. Like, so men, every man in the country takes the same amount of testosterone, the same amount, like, literally. And it works like, we're basically like, you raise your here at like zero and we're going to take you and bump you up high enough that you feel great. Same thing with women. Look, I know you're low and I'm just going to raise your hormones up enough that you feel great and it doesn't have to be. Well, I don't know if that's what you were in your 20s because I don't have your baseline test when you were 20.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker C
So I can't actually make it that personalized for you.
Speaker A
I'll explain what I saw with hair. So the company is called Roots. Shout out to Roots. The problem with hair is that you can't see the person a week, a month later, you're an online company. Right. And ask them there for their opinion on how, how thick their hair became in a month. So you really need to be, to do it. They do a genetic, genetic test, which one would argue is like the best way or not, but they need to basically get the best guess of what's going to work six months in the future from day one. And the reason, as you explained that I think in hormone replacement therapy it's also more accurate, more successful, easier and more, more allows for interaction is because a person will feel a difference much more rapidly. And the difference is also not not only rapid, it's also more substantial. Where. Yeah, as you, as you, as you.
Speaker C
Said, we do need the care. Like even though we're online, you can't have healthcare without the care. So even though I, we, we actually may have to meet with our doctors and stuff. Yeah. Whereas the hair care you don't have. Yeah.
Speaker A
Even if you did. So I see someone a month, what are you gonna do, you know?
Speaker C
Yeah, it's true, it's true. Yeah. So, but like here we have, you know, some, like a certain percentage of women will have breast tenderness and some side effects. So we manage that. So there you, you can't just sell an HRT cream and then let them go. Like. So there is. So we kind of knew that I already knew that we would be providing this care. So it was okay if we didn't get the dose quite right. Like it's actually okay because you're gonna, you come back to us and it's a relationship. Right. Let's work on it together and we optimize it. We, we might get to the point someday where we can, you know, genetics is actually the best way to look at hormone replacement therapy. Can we do a genetic test? And then I can predict more accurately if you're a fast metabolizer or slow metabolizer hormones and then how much to give you. Yeah.
Speaker A
Having said that, you will always have that, you know, that environmental factor. Right. Like you mentioned, you know, you mentioned xenoestrogens.
Speaker C
So diet.
Speaker A
Yeah, you'll, you'll always have, you always have the relationship between, for example, like your methylation pathways, like how well do you methylate hormones, for that matter, and then how. My brother is a vegan that has, I mean, the guy lives off of soy. I mean, I love the guy, so obviously I give him a hard time, but he definitely has more interaction with estrogen like compounds than I do. So if, you know in the. Let's flip it. Let's say we were women. The although we're very similar genetically, he's going to have a different response to estrogen than I would.
Speaker C
100 and like this is so like women do not understand or like people in general, but women especially like we don't understand like that you said it, I've never even heard anybody say it before. But we, people don't get that they're methylation pathways. So like the you they're impacted substantially. And then diet like fiber, fiber and protein are the two biggest things that impact, you know, metabolism of estrogen. If you eat a lot of fiber, it will like lower your estrogen to zero very quickly. So vegan and vegetarian diets, they have a harder time like getting their hormones up and optimal even though they're touted for being very anti aging and longevity. You know, we don't have to talk about which diet's the best. I'm just knowing, yeah like women which like they, they just need to be aware that the diet that you choose really much impacts your like your hormones. Like if you choose a high protein carnivore type like diet, you are going to be able to keep your estrogen around a little bit longer because it slows these methylation pathways down. It like slows that big machinery, the big machine that's kind of plowing through everything. So they don't, they don't think about it. They just think the HRT and then it's about the dose and it's like no, no, you're, you're, you're eating like a ton of beans and nuts and seeds and this is really impacting your hormones.
Speaker A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course, you know, there is a big debate with cholesterol and hormones which is a whole. Yeah. And again it's something funny because you come, your response to diet, this, you know, in Israel where I come from the dinner table, you don't talk about politics, you don't talk about religion. Same, same. I think diet should be another thing you shouldn't talk about if you want to help people because it, it polarizes. But you had, you have the same response, very similar response to what I would have which is I don't think I am like I know less than chatgpt. Okay. Like I don't know everything. I, I know as a matter of fact, I don't know the best diet for anyone, for everyone. But what we know is where science is as far as like what's going to contribute to you know, faster or slower skin aging. And I think you come from the same place where, hey, I'm not telling you, you know, you could have done one too many ayahuascas and now you can't touch, you know, meat. That's fine. But here's, you know, here's what you need to, what you're going to handle. You know, that's, that's now this is.
Speaker C
Your path just to understand it. People just need to understand it and if they're, and then make the choice, you know, but it's hard. There's a lot of like misinformation. But I love it. It's true. Diet does polarize.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
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Speaker A
You know one thing that I didn't mention, I just like it's bugging me that I, I didn't mention when we, when we talked about estrogen creams as delivery systems, I think most like 99.9 people don't know is that if you do have a tendency for pigmentation, that's something that is actually very ill advised to use estrogen creams on the face which is becoming extremely popular and I don't know that I'm against by the way. I think there is, there is room for them if, if, if they are indeed beneficial. But I think people should know that it, it estrogen also increases melanin expression so they're going to get pigmented if.
Speaker C
Yeah, I would love to talk about this with you. I know we running out of time but it's like the we we see, you know, I wonder because estrogen is also supposed to evenly distribute the melanin. So it increases it, but it's also not supposed to collect it into like these concentrated areas and you are supposed to end up with like less melasma. So I'm curious if it's like a different pathway or something else that's also impacting the estrogen. It's like is it just the estrogen or is there something else going on with her that you. We can advise people like if they start the. Because the estrogen has so many, like even the estrile, which is this really weak estrogen and that's what's being put in the face creams, can they benefit still? But can we advise them like hey, is it a liver, a liver pathway or is there glutathione deficiency or something that's causing the melasma?
Speaker A
You, you could do that. Actually you could do things. There are, there is a two categories that are, that are being confused which are brighteners and lighteners. So brighteners would be in things that are going to make your skin luminous from backup going to use like commercial terms but like more luminous. And you know, lighteners are going to be things that are evening pigment. They're not going to make you white if you're black or anything like that. And lighteners are normally interacting with the enzyme that stimulates melanocytes. And these enzymes a lot of times are not working evenly in the skin and they're affected by things like inflammation and they're affected by, you know, previous assaults to the skin. They're affected by glycation and they're affected by where skin is thick, thinner and thicker. Thinner and thicker? Yeah, blood flow, things like that.
Speaker C
So if you were to combine them with like, if you were to come put the S trial with like a potential something else like either edge, I don't know, tretinoin or so so yes.
Speaker A
That would be good. That, not necessarily together but that, that might be good. But what a lot of the times what we say is like you have to have a, you know, you need to eat a lot of antioxidants going, going back to diet, you know, zinc oxide, there's a sun protection is actually really good because it also lowers inflammation and it also works as something that decreases photosensitivity due to inflammation which is a lot of why people get pigmentation. And by the way, vitamin C is a fat based vitamin C like thda, sodium ascorbates calcium, ascorbate, all of the ones that are based on lipids are, are also good at lowering, lowering the enzyme that simulate tyrosinase. The, the enzyme that, that stimulates melanocytes. And so these kind of. And another very, very strong antioxidant that's called ergothioneine because it upregulates glutathione. It's like the best way to upgrade, regulate glutathione. So the, the, the, you need to, you need to be, you need to start with a low dose. You need to start lower than 2%, which is normally what is in the creams.
Speaker C
No, for estrogen. You're talking about what, estrel. Estradol.
Speaker A
Yeah, yeah. And then make sure that you, that you are not incurring inflammation, that you, again, that you are using zinc oxide and then that you use together with the, the cream that you do use, you know, ergothioneine, vitamin C. And what.
Speaker C
About alpha lipoic acid?
Speaker A
Alpha lipoic acid is great. It might be sensitizing ala in the skin. Like we looked at formulating a lot with it orally. It's incredible. It might be skin sensitizing. So I mean, if some company knows something that we don't, and there is a great company that does that, that would be a great idea. Most of the time it's from compounding pharmacies and I would not recommend it specifically. Having said that, again, ChatGPT might have a different opinion and it's very smart anyway. But I would say that probably zinc oxide would be the first thing that would be beneficial before anything else that I said. So zinc oxide. And starting at a lower dose than maybe again, most studies are anywhere from 0.5% to 2%, I believe. So starting at a lower dose and then starting at an area that tends to get less pigmented, for example, around the eyes. That's also where studies have shown best results. Right. So thinner skin is getting thickened, which would be a positive thing. So starting there as opposed to like.
Speaker C
Right, right here where you.
Speaker A
Yeah, yeah. Well, that, I don't know if people are going to want benefits there per se. You know, you mentioned for people who listen, you, you, you, you show like your hairline. I don't know. That's where people would want, people normally want, where do they want benefit? Their 11 lines, their forehead and their nasal labial folds. That's where they want normally. But if you think of like the mask or of pregnancy or where we get, we tend to get more pigmented. It's kind of there. So I would start around the eyes and really monitor results over time and go from there.
Speaker C
Interesting.
Speaker A
And another thing is opt for. For ones that are actually creams. So there are serums, for example, like a company that makes a good serum with a very low amount of estradiol is Quicksilver Scientific. They have a skin product. The issue there that it's the serums penetrate faster and deeper. So I would not do a serum, I would do a cream until I feel like I'm one of those people that don't get affected at all. And. And maybe add a serum.
Speaker C
Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. Okay. Because we get that question often about melasma and even just estrogen therapy. You know, it comes up, you know, and we're usually kind of like there might be something else going on there, like thyroid. We, we really try to look at like the. What's going on with thyroid.
Speaker A
Yeah. Liver. Yeah.
Speaker C
Liver glutathione.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker C
Because it's really. It's not actually that common to get to start hrt. I know it's a fear women will be like, if I'm going to start hrt, is the melasma going to come back? And generally it's actually not that as common, but.
Speaker A
No, no, it's more common if people are going to use a lot of. Not a lot, but there are people who are going to be prescribed a cream, like an HRT cream, and they are going to use it as a face cream.
Speaker C
Yeah.
Speaker A
And that is where we see more of that, where people come and say, hey, I did this. I want to correct that.
Speaker C
I always wondered in my, my thought was that they were not doing enough progesterone. Because you're not. Yeah. So it's like the imbalance ratio because progesterone is the main hormone and it's regulating so much more. So if you have, like with our formulation, we don't see. Which is. I was referring to that you don't see a lot of melasma because it is mostly progesterone. Right. We're trying to make sure that you don't get that estrogen progesterone ratio. If you're putting estrogen just on the skin without any progesterone.
Speaker A
Yes.
Speaker C
Right. That. Then you're just, you're basically doing this.
Speaker A
Yes. That's another big, big thing that we, you know, we allude to. But it's very difficult, again, it's a very difficult conversation to have. And then imagine people would basically like make life decisions according to a five minute Podcast segment. But I wouldn't do anything unless I first addressed whole body hormones, hormone replacement therapy, therapy for that matter. You know, if someone comes to me and says, yeah, hey, I heard probably from an influencer that this, you know, under eye cream, for that matter, which has a little bit whatever, right, Hormone pick, your hormone of choice is going to help. Should I do it? You know, first and foremost, are you on hrt? Like, are you. What's going on there after that? You know, that's. I think that's the most important, like balanced hormones, as you said. By far the most important.
Speaker C
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's interesting because like progesterone has been so beneficial for reducing that inflammation, for example, that rosacea that we were talking about. So if you already. And then you just. I didn't actually occur to me that you when you said the melasma can happen in the places where there's the inflammation.
Speaker A
So I'll even tell you that dysregulated growth hormone will cause, you know, disbalance of, of melanin. Could be more, could be less.
Speaker C
IGF1.
Speaker A
IGF1. IGF1 is. Listen, IGF1 is. Again, it's, it's another, it's another crazy. It's crazy that people don't talk about it. You know, if I, yeah, could we.
Speaker C
Just tell people to stop eating dairy and then their melasma would go away? Like, is there like some quick thing that we can say like, hey, your IGF one is through the roof because you're eating a bunch of dairy and.
Speaker A
All these keto diets and yeah, you know, IGF1. So IGF1 is insulin. Insulin, like growth, like growth factor one. It is as, as mentioned. So, you know, bodybuilders eat a bunch of like grapes, sugar after training because they want more. IGF1, for example, it is closely, closely tied with insulin. So, so people that have, you know, this dysregulated relationship with insulin, you know, I don't want to say pre diabetic because I think there should be pre, pre and pre, pre diabetic. But, but let's say people are pre diabetic, they're going to have higher expression of IGF1. And I'm normally telling people if you want to be like Nostradamus and like diagnose people with pre diabetes, you should like see if they have skin tags around their neck because that, that is a relationship with extra growth unless they, they've been pregnant. IGF1 definitely is, is a factor for, for growth, for stimulation of melanocytes. But at the end of the day, I think again, it's such a, you know, that should be, that shouldn't be the first thing you're worried about. You should again, like, you should be worried if you're pre diabetic, if you, if your IGF one is out of whack or your hormones.
Speaker C
Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating. Interesting.
Speaker A
Anyway, Sara, we're trying to keep it less than an hour. It never works, but we're trying to keep it less than an hour. Let's take a few minutes and understand how someone can engage with you with working with you either online or in person. Where can they find you?
Speaker C
Only online. 40. We're in 46 states now and it's www.innerbalance.com and you can just sign up and we'll start working with you essentially, like our team reaches out and you can follow up. We have a really easy way to get a hold of our clinical team. So that's. It's that simple.
Speaker A
Good. I have a note for once again, I'm so bad at it. So, okay, so people can get $50 off first month by using code podcast. Dr. Sarah, I'm so people. People don't know. They should hate me because they could have saved so much money by me actually remembering to give people promo codes. Anyway, so $50 off the first month.
Speaker C
Yes.
Speaker A
That's great. And yeah, if you're not optimizing your hormones.
Speaker C
You'Re not doing that.
Speaker A
Anyway, thank you, Sarah. It was great having you and I wish you continued success.
Speaker C
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker A
Thank you.
Speaker C
Sam.