During my last interview with Brigitte Mars: Herbalist, nutritional consultant, and raw food chef in Boulder, Colorado; She Talked about Herbs and Foods for Thyroid:

In Chinese medicine the kidneys govern the bones, the teeth, the hair on our head, our libido, our sense of hearing, and the emotions of fear and willpower.

Rather than targeting the complaint, “There is something wrong with my thyroid,” I think we need to look at the fact that it’s the water element of the body. Somehow there may be an imbalance of minerals.

We do know that fluoridated water—and I don’t know if they fluoridate where a lot of the listeners are—can inhibit thyroid function. Rather than going for a drug as a first resort, maybe we need to look at the cause.

Our thyroids as well as our kidneys can benefit from eating more black foods like sea vegetables, wild rice, black beans, black sesame seeds, and sun-cured black olives.

Eat more black foods. Sea vegetables are so high in minerals. They support the kidneys and the thyroid gland. I know there are a lot of people who think that if they have thyroid problems, there are a lot of foods they should omit from their diet, things like millet and peanuts.

However, I don’t agree that everybody needs to stay off of all the cruciferous vegetables unless they’re well cooked.

I think we can make the cruciferous vegetables more digestible by marinating, fermenting, soaking and dehydrating, but I think we lose the anti-cancer compounds in that family when they are heated.

Rather than avoiding all of the raw cruciferous family members—which, by the way, include broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, and rutabaga—just eat more seaweeds. It’s really a ratio thing.

As long as we’re getting enough iodine, I don’t think the goitrogens from that family of plants—the cabbage or cruciferous family—really has to be an issue. Of course, nature blesses this planet with all kinds of herbs to help the thyroid.

If you go into a health food store, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Ask whoever works there what kinds of formulas they have. You’re going to see products that contain sea vegetables and herbs from the ocean.

This will include bladderwrack, kelp, wakame, dulse, and hijiki. Maybe there will be some amino acids in there. Tyrosine is good for the thyroid gland, as well. I also think the thyroid gland needs some full-spectrum light. I tell people, “Get outdoors. Don’t wear a scarf.

Let your neck area be exposed to full-spectrum light. Think about doing some exercises that energize that part of your body.” This might include the Lion’s Pose, neck rolls, or should stands.

If you eat enough sea vegetables you won’t need as much medication. That could be like getting a double dose. I don’t want to tell people to just stop taking medicine if they’ve been on it for many years, but I’m always in favor of people educating themselves so they are their primary health care professional.

Then they can ask for help when needed. If we would eat more sea vegetables, we wouldn’t be having all of these thyroid conditions to begin with. I’m not in agreement with quite a few things that modern medicine says. However, I am really in cahoots with a lot of the traditional medicine, which is all about food, herbs, homeopathy, and essential oils. It’s not that I think all medicine is bad.

It’s just that there are so many natural things that people could do first that would result in a need for much less medication. Medication has its place, but that’s the fifth or sixth thing you try after you’ve done steps one through five. Look at emotional things. Are you expressing yourself? Another thing to look at with the thyroid is this: Are the words getting stuck in your throat? Are you being heard? Then look at the herbs.

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In our interview last week, she shared that her passion began with a very personal story.

In 1993, Dr. Turner was very conscientious about her diet and exercising an hour a day, but she was gaining weight. She got to the point where she was experiencing confusion and fatigue and knew something was very wrong.

Following her visit to the doctor, her blood work showed a severe deficiency of thyroid hormone. That’s when she started to focus on hormones, which resulted in her powerful book, The Hormone Diet.

She shared with us that if you’ve struggled to lose weight or keep it off, it’s due to hormonal imbalance. She estimates that 80% to 90% of the population today is hormonally imbalanced.

Hormonal imbalance is a huge problem for women AND men, and we’re only now beginning to be more aware of the impact of hormones on our metabolism.

For those trying to lose weight, especially belly fat, this is significant. It’s not all about ‘calories-in minus calories-out equals weight loss’. If your hormones are not in balance, that caloric recipe for weight loss no longer holds true.  

There are a number of hormones that impact weight loss, water retention, food cravings, quality of sleep, stress levels, energy levels, digestive process, and metabolism; and we discussed the eight fat-packing hormonal imbalances that sabotage weight-loss efforts regardless of diet and exercise.

Sometimes we have no idea that the simple things we’re doing every day that we think are good are actually setting us up for failure. Dr. Turner recommends a change in diet to first detoxify and then bring hormonal levels back into balance.

It’s not about cutting calories; it’s about changing the proportions of your protein, carb, and fat intake over four weeks, which significantly curbs appetite and boosts metabolism.

She also shared that the type of exercise you choose is incredibly important. The key is to prevent a rise in cortisol, which breaks down muscle fiber.

And muscle is vital! The more muscle you have, the lower your insulin and the better your ability to burn fat and keep it off. Insulin is the only hormone that is constantly telling your body to store energy as fat.

In this interview we also talked about:

• A quick trick for reducing carb cravings in the afternoon.
• The best kind and amount of exercise to combat belly fat.
• Sleep remedies that really work without the risk of side effects.
• Top foods and supplements to optimize hormonal balance, boost energy, and reduce food cravings.
• The impact of hormone deficiency on hair loss, and how to remedy this.
• The first sign that your metabolism and insulin levels are becoming imbalanced.
• Grocery shopping: the best brands to select to promote hormonal balance

Simple, doable changes in diet and exercise are two of the most impactful things you can do for your health and hormonal balance. And the most amazing thing is that you can change your hormonal balance with your very next meal.

If you feel that you don’t have cravings, are energized after you’ve eaten, and can go three to four hours without needing to eat, then you’ve just eaten a hormonally balanced meal. It’s really that simple! 

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Last week I interviewed Julia Ross, the author of

A study just came out showing that 1 in 10 adolescents and adults is on an antidepressant drug. That’s millions and millions of people.

According to Julia Ross, amino acids are still the most effective weapon for fighting false moods. It’s the key to her book and the key to the work she does in her clinic.

These amino acid supplements are the exact nutrients that the four or five parts of the brain that are capable of producing positive moods are made from.

For example, serotonin, our natural antidepressant, is made from one amino acid. There are 22 basic amino acids, but we only we need one to produce our natural antidepressant chemistry.

You see, we’re eating the most stressful diet ever known. Ironically, over 70% of us eat the very worst junk foods in order to relieve our emotional stress!

Those amino acids, over time, grow more deficient. Our serotonin levels drop and then negative moods take over.

Again, we lose serotonin because of our diet, because we’re under stress, because of our genes, in the evening and winter, and due to lack of exercise.

Between the months of October and April, many of us grow depressed. Days are shorter, nights are longer, and lack of warm sunshine affects us physically and emotionally. Many of us end up overeating and experience unnecessary weight gain.

Most of us can balance these ‘winter blues‘ with our love of winter and cozy thoughts of holidays and winter-night fires. However, our ability to cope with the long winter months depends on the level of serotonin in our brains.

Because serotonin is naturally produced by sunlight, we may lack enough of it during wintry, cloudy days. Basically, the more sunshine we soak in during winter, the more serotonin our brains produce, naturally lifting our moods.

Unfortunately, many turn to poor substitutes for that ‘good feeling’. We eat sugary, starchy foods that are high in carbs, or we turn to alcohol or mood-altering drugs like Prozac.

However, such strategies may also lead to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and addictions.

Here’s another interesting fact. Julia mentioned that people with gluten intolerance also have low levels of the antidepressant/anti-anxiety brain chemical serotonin.

Gluten has been implicated in mental illness, as well in everything from bipolar disorder to schizophrenia to chronic depression. People are amazed, if they have a problem with gluten, when they get off of it.
 
The grains in this family are really hybridized grasses. We’ve been playing around with these grasses for centuries.

Particularly in the United States, we’ve been hybridizing to increase the gluten content of our grains, which makes them much more elastic and gluey, so we can make puffy pastries.
 
Actually, we’ve increased the amount of this highly irritating and addictive substance called gluten in these grains. The thyroid is one of the things that is most affected, but it also affects digestive function, like chronic constipation.

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Excerpt of my Interview with Dr Carolyn Dean

She explained Why such as birth control pills, deplete magnesium in our bodies.

The way drugs are created, they’re created in a lab usually from coal tar products. They’re synthetic, and immediately that identifies them by the body—by the immune system and the liver—as being a foreign substance.

The body has to break down that foreign substance for the best way to eliminate it either through the urine or through the kidneys.

Any drug that you take puts a strain on the liver. With the birth control pills you get an imbalance of zinc and copper, magnesium and the B-vitamins.

It’s most likely because of the metabolic processes that have to occur in order to break down the birth control pill that causes the over-utilization of these supplements or these nutrients.

In her book The Magnesium Miracle she mention  that any sort of cramping, spasming, or pain in the body can be related to magnesium deficiency, and a lot of women get rid of their menstrual cramping just by taking magnesium.

In fact, infertility can be treated with magnesium. That’s the type of infertility that is caused by spasming of the Fallopian tubes.

The Fallopian tubes are the tubes that run along the uterus up to the ovaries and help to bring the egg down into the uterus where it meets the sperm that comes up through the vagina.

If those Fallopian tubes are in spasm, the little ovary is not going to get down there with its egg to create the sperm-and-egg production of a fetus.

The Fallopian tubes in spasm is infertility. I’ve seen many cases of women who, just by taking magnesium, overcome their infertility.

There are so many natural things we can be doing that are not even in view of the medical treatment of infertility.  It’s very distressing.

Also, you’re drinking coffee and alcohol, if you’re stressed, if your eye is twitching, if you get charley horses, if you get migraine headaches, if you have any sort of cramping. That will lead you to identify a possible magnesium deficiency.

In this interview we also talked about:

~The main cause of estrogen dominance, the symptoms, and what we can do to decrease it

~The vital role of magnesium in balancing hormones ~Synthetic and bio-identical hormones – do we need them
~How to naturally alleviate premenstrual tension
~The connection between childhood weight and early onset puberty

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Dr. Natasha Turner:  I believe it is absolutely impossible to restore hormonal balance and to maintain it unless you’re sleeping enough and properly. Our sleep impacts our hormones, and then our hormones impact our sleep. It’s a bit of a Catch-22. Let me give you an example.

For instance, if we’re stressed, we’ll have too much cortisol and we’ll have the classic pattern where we tend to wake up between 2:00 and 4:00 AM and can’t fall back to sleep.
 
Yet, at the same time, simply not sleeping enough causes us to wake up in the morning with higher levels of cortisol for the whole day. We know that people who wake up without enough sleep and have higher levels of cortisol will have increased appetites.

They have increased cravings for the foods that they shouldn’t eat, like comfort foods.

They will have more blood sugar imbalance as compared to people who are well rested.
 
That’s just one hormone that is impacted by sleep. There are so many other ones, and it’s just about impossible to maintain appetite control and cravings because of the direct impact of sleep on the appetite hormones.

It’s almost impossible to maintain a dietary program when you’re not sleeping properly. When I say ‘sleeping properly’, the majority of us have absolutely no idea that there’s a proper way to sleep.
 
I talk about first of all creating the perfect environment for sleep. I call it the ‘Bedroom Detox’. You get rid of all the things that disrupt your sleep, and then you follow the rules for sleeping.

If you don’t follow these rules exactly, you won’t get the release of the recuperative and rejuvenating hormones that naturally happen while we sleep; specifically, melatonin and growth hormones.
 
I give people a lot of natural ways that they can improve the sleep hygiene. After those three things, if you’re still not sleeping well in a couple of weeks then I would recommend that you use natural sleep aids, things that will improve the quality of your sleep without having adverse side effects that we know sleep medications do. A lot of people use sleep medications.
 
We know that they don’t get the REM-quality sleep or the deep, recuperative sleep. They may sleep more, but it’s not good, quality sleep. I list a lot of different supplements that you can use. For instance, I talked about waking up between 2:00 and 4:00 AM and that being related to high levels of cortisol.

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Here’s a recap of what we discussed:

As a naturopathic doctor who’s been passionately researching and teaching breast health for the last 20 years, Dr. Kaur is uniquely qualified to discuss strategies to balance our hormones.

The truth is, our sedentary and busy lifestyle, diet, environment, and stress all contribute to hormonal imbalance. And this can lead to estrogen dominance and all the diseases related to that. This is a danger that affects everyone! What can we do to combat estrogen dominance? It’s all about reducing estrogen, which acts on our organs as well as our breast cells.

Here’s a recap of what we discussed:

• Exercise speeds up the metabolism of estrogen, as does sweating.

• A healthy liver is necessary to efficiently break down estrogen and prevent buildup.

• Regular bowel movements are vital for eliminating estrogen through the bowels. And if we’re constipated, we’re holding onto, rather than eliminating, estrogen.

• Drinking lots of water helps to flush the estrogen.

• Regular detoxification aids in breaking down and dumping estrogen. Hormonal health affects our sleep and our ability to handle stress. Even our organs take quite a beating when we suffer from estrogen dominance, especially the liver, thyroid, and adrenals.

Dr. Kaur offered some practical ways we can modify our lifestyle, diet, and stress level to better support our organs.

You’ll love her suggestions on nutrient therapy.

Did You Know?

• 75% of the people who suffer from PMS or hormonal imbalance eat more refined sugar • Constipation increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer

• Hot flashes affect 75% of North American women, but less than 10% of women in Japan, Hong Kong, Pakistan and Mexico. Learn why this is true.

• It takes about 150 hours to eliminate 90% of a body’s lifetime burden of environmental chemicals.

Check out the interview replay and the transcript of the call to listen to the wealth of wisdom from Dr. Kaur’s practical tips and strategies for supporting and replenishing our organs and bodies as we reduce our estrogen levels and balance our hormones.

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Did you know.

Many women suffer from sore breasts when suffering from pre-menstrual syndrome! Here’s an insert about  my interview I did with Dr. Sat Dharam Kaur author of The Complete Natural Medicine Guide to Women’s Health

Sat Dharam Kaur: In Chinese medicine, they would say that’s related to liver congestion. Liver congestion is often caused by stress and the holding in of emotions. Regular relaxation is so important because relaxation helps to restore balance to the whole hormonal system.

1.That would be piece number one, to take 20 minutes a few times a day to have a nap, do some long, deep breathing, meditate, go for a walk, journal, listen to music or whatever; but to stop and sit, breathe, or tune into oneself.

That helps prevent this liver stagnation. That would be one piece. The other thing that prevents liver stagnation is regular exercise.

2.We know that exercise can inhibit breast cancer incidence by up to 60%, so if we exercise about four hours a week—at least walking or something a little bit more aerobic than walking four hours a week—it’s what we need to prevent, to some degree, breast cancer. That amount is protective.

3. Another thing is that premenstrual breast swelling can also be related to excess estrogen. Vitamin-B₆ helps the liver to break down estrogen. It’s one of the key things, so we want to make sure that we have enough B-vitamins. It also can be related to low progesterone.

Progesterone is another hormone that works in conjunction with estrogen, but helps to put a brake on estrogen’s ability to cause cells to multiply fast.

That’s what estrogen does; it causes increased cell division in breast cells. Progesterone puts a halt to that. Some people have low progesterone, again, because of this environmental estrogen dominance caused by so many things in the environment.

Vitamin-B₆ helps to increase progesterone, as well. The herb chaste tree berry can be used also to increase progesterone.

Those are some of the reasons that women might have premenstrual breast swelling. Another could be the adrenal hormones. There’s an adrenal hormone called aldosterone, which can be elevated when we’re under stress. That will cause us to retain water and might cause more breast swelling as well. Again, it’s related to stress.

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If I don’t eat dairy, how do I get enough calcium?

Dairy products actually do not provide sufficient calcium. The countries with the highest dairy consumption are also the ones with highest osteoporosis levels! Dairy is one of the most acidic foods on the pH scale and calcium is the number one mineral the body uses to buffer against excess acidity.

There is just never enough calcium in any dairy product to offset the acid-producing effect it has. So you actually end up losing calcium when you eat dairy products, not gaining it! Shocking, right? Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to drink your milk in order to get your calcium.

Here are  foods high in calcium that don’t come from a cow: Read More

• 4 cups water
• 1-2 tsp of burdock root
• 1-2 tsp of dandelion root
• 1 tsp of dried basil
• 1 tsp of fennel seed
• 1 tsp of nettle leaf

Bring the water to a boil. Add the burdock and dandelion root, cover and simmer for twenty minutes. Remove from heat and add the remaining herbs. Cover and let steep for 10 minutes. Strain. Drink 4 cups every day.