I am thrilled to be doing a two-part series on progesterone with Dr. Lindsey Berkson.
Dr. Berkson is a peer-reviewed researcher, bestselling author, educator, nutritional gastroenterology and hormonal thought leader, and an inventor and formulator of nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals.
In the first part of our series today, we address common misconceptions about hormones and provide an overview of the anatomy and physiology of progesterone, including lesser-known production sites outside the ovaries and adrenal glands. We examine the limitations of current medical training, the influence of the Women’s Health Initiative, and shifts in prescribing practices. We also explore the effects of chronic stress, ultra-processed foods, and toxins, discussing practical steps to mitigate exposure. You will also learn about essential cofactors for progesterone production, including zinc, iodine, magnesium, vitamin B6, and vitamin A, along with strategies for optimizing digestion.
This enlightening series on progesterone with Dr. Lindsey Berkson has many valuable insights, and I know you will gain a lot from it.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
Why progesterone is an essential hormone
How did progesterone become misunderstood?
How progesterone has contributed to human evolution
Dr. Berkson debunks the common myths surrounding progesterone
How hormones function as signaling molecules
The importance of progesterone receptors in the brain, heart, and lungs
The role progesterone plays in protecting the lungs
How modern lifestyle factors affect hormone levels
Why you need to filter all your water, including shower water
How eating organic foods can help reduce exposure to endocrine disruptors
Bio:
Dr. Berkson has taught re-licensing CME seminars to MDs, pharmacists, NPs, NDs, chiropractors, acupuncturists, and nutritionists since the 1980s.
Dr. Berkson was a distinguished hormone scholar at an estrogen think-tank (Center for Bioenvironmental Research) at Tulane University for ten years working with the scientists who discovered the first estrogen receptors, ER Alpha and ER Beta (Elwood Jensen PhD and Jan-ake Gustafsson PhD. Dr. Berkson worked with Physicians for Social Responsibility and wrote with the WHO one of the first works on the etiology of the diabetes epidemic due to endocrine disruption (with Linda Birnbaum PhD and Lynn Goldman PhD). Dr. Berkson wrote one of the first breakthrough books on endocrine disruption (Hormone Deception, McGraw-Hill 2000, Awakened Medicine Press 2016). This book has been used by universities and environmental science programs at prestigious institutions like the University of Minn. She has published another 19 books.
Dr. Berkson has led grand rounds at the University of Minnesota, and the University of Southern Florida. Dr. Berkson's book Healthy Digestion the Natural Way (Wiley & Sons 2000) sold over a million copies and is one of the first gut, nutrition, and spiritual books.
Dr. Berkson co-invented a drug for dialysis patients with Jack Moncrief MD, the co-inventor of home dialysis and the inventor of telemedicine. Together they published original peer-reviewed research with the University of Texas and Nathan Bryan PhD on the role of nitric oxide and dialysis.
Dr. Berkson is a DES daughter who suffered multiple cancers and infertility and has spearheaded much DES Action research and education globally. Dr. Berkson has battled multiple cancers, blindness, and much more secondary to the model compound of endocrine disruption, DES in-utero exposure, and thus is passionate about passing critical information forward.
Dr. Berkson has been a peer reviewer for the journal Environmental Toxicology. She is also on the medical advisory board for the major pharmaceutical support company PCCA, based in Houston, TX. Berkson is credited with the in-depth knowledge of Estrogen Vindication and estrogen's science surrounding safety, efficacy, and outreach.
“A big reason why hormones are misunderstood is that they are the most powerful signaling molecules in the body.”
-Dr. Lindsey Berkson
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Connect with Dr. Lindsey Berkson
Transcript:
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower, and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.
[00:00:29] This is the first of a two-part series with Dr. Lindsey Berkson. She is a peer-reviewed researcher, best-selling author, educator, a leader in nutritional gastroenterology as well as hormones, a thought leader and a formulator and inventor of nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals. Today in our first discussion, we spoke at length about myths, misunderstanding around hormones including progesterone, the era of vindication, basics on progesterone anatomy and physiology, and areas where progesterone is produced outside of the ovaries and adrenal glands including the brain and coronary arteries, the current limitations to current medical training, the impact of the Women's Health Initiative and prescribing practice changes, the role of chronic stress, ultra-processed food and toxins interesting animal-based research based on toxin exposure in frogs and alligators, ways to protect and reduce exposure to ourselves including shower filters, the need for cofactors for progesterone production including zinc, iodine, magnesium B6, and vitamin A, and optimizing digestion. Again, this is the first of a two-part series on progesterone with Dr. Lindsey Berkson. I know you will love this conversation as much as I did recording it.
[00:01:47] I would really love to help dispel some of the myths and misunderstandings around a very important hormone, which is progesterone. And I can't think of a better expert to have on the podcast to help unpack the basics about progesterone, why it has become such a misunderstood hormone, and why it's so important to us, especially as we're navigating perimenopause into menopause. But obviously there's a lot of applications as I went down the rabbit hole preparing for this podcast, understanding how it's used even in some ICU patients with COVID that are male. It's an important hormone for younger women as well. But let's start the conversation about how this hormone has become such a misunderstood or underappreciated hormone.
Dr. Lindsey Berkson: [00:02:32] First of all, hormones have been vilified, vilified. And they've been used actually by the pharmaceutical company as profiteering. And then they were vilified. And now we're in the era of vindication. So, I love this opportunity to vindicate and explain and embrace hormones and to see how they might help each of us have a better life in a time when the planet is so dirty, is very difficult and challenging to have a better life. And a start with progesterone is fabulous because progesterone is about life and birth. It gets its name from pro to support and gest for gestation, life. So, progesterone is the main hormone that allows the evolution of humanity. So, it is enormously important, but it got absolutely relegated to the back of the room being a naughty hormone in the corner with a dunce cap on, like in the olden days when they really didn't understand why? when they first started using hormones and they used only estrogen, there was an increase in endometrial cancer or the lining of the uterus, or you could say uterine cancer.
[00:03:50] And it's because all the hormones need to be dealt with in balance. But if you give estrogen without progesterone, that is the policer or the balancer of estrogen, you can have too much growth, because progesterone helps control growth. So, when they first saw this happening in the beginning, they knew estrogen made women look younger longer. And there was a gynecologist named Wilson out of England, who wrote a book called Feminine Forever. And it was all about the promise of giving women hormones to help them stay younger longer, because we all feel better when we look better.
[00:04:31] I'm going to be 76 in a few months, and I just came back from California visiting a lot of my old and dearest friends who are in my time range, and I am aging completely differently than they are. And we'll go more into that. But I attribute it like we just had a conversation to balanced hormones and healthy living. But it's not like I've had an easy path to get there. But when Wilson came out with his book, everybody got excited that estrogen maybe could slow down the Mack Truck of aging. They gave women estrogen, and estrogen rules collagen of the skin. Skin looks better on women with estrogen. It keeps your bones more healthier, so you stand up straighter. You have estrogen receptors, so when signals go to your lungs and your esophagus and your vocal cords, you could project better. So, women on hormones can continue to command in the negotiating boardroom better and longer or lecture better and longer than women who are not on hormones.
[00:05:34] But when estrogen is given without progesterone, you can have problems in the uterus. So, they then thought if a woman didn't have a uterus, she didn't have to worry about progesterone because the only action early on from the 1950s and 1960s onward was that's all that this little hormone did. It either supported pregnancy in pregnant women or it protected the uterus from too much growth action of estrogen. They thought that's all it did. But hormones are very misunderstood. A big reason is that they are the most powerful signaling molecules in the body. And what I mean by that is the body has an internet system and we all know how important now email is. When you wake up in the morning and open up your computer and you get into your email, you're so excited because you're in touch with people for play and people for business. If your email freezes up, if your Wi-Fi freezes up, you get into a very frantic state because nothing is moving and communication is blocked.
[00:06:44] So hormones deliver signals or you can refer to them as emails to genes to tell cells what to do to keep us healthy. The most powerful compounds we have in the body speak to genes. Whatever can speak to genes rules. The only things that can really actively speak to genes are sex steroid hormones. And then a new exciting famous player that's emerging on the block, vitamin D. We've heard a lot about vitamin D in COVID. We're hearing more and more about it. But why is it so amazing? One, it's a vitamin, which means you can't make it yourself, so you got to take it in on a regular basis. But two, vitamin D can also speak to genes. So, we think of our hormones as signaling molecules that run the internet of the body that deliver emails to yourselves. And they do it via being able to talk to genes so that your brain keeps thinking, your vocal cords keep vibrating and you could speak, as you just said, with COVID they discovered that women on hormone replacement or younger women with more hormones would get COVID more, but they would die from it less. When they did a deep dive it's because estrogen and progesterone help protect the immune system.
[00:08:03] But in particular, progesterone has ways to signal the lungs, to keep the lungs safe and to repair the lungs from injury. So, they took men in the ICU and they gave them standardized care, or they gave half the men standardized care plus 100 mg IM injection bid, which is twice a day of progesterone. And they tracked how long were they in the hospital? What were their complication rates? How did they do? Guys that got progesterone signals, that delivered emails to the cells in their lungs, got the messages to repair those lungs and not get that ground glass damage that COVID can, and some patients do. And they got out of the hospital statistically in shorter periods of time with statistically less complications and the need for less meds. So, what we know is that most hormones are made in glands and then they're squirted out into the water-soluble highways of your biological blood and then they swim around through your body looking for target tissue. What in the heck is a target tissue? It's tissues with these little satellite dishes waiting for these emails, longing for these emails, hungry for these emails.
[00:09:16] So wherever there are these receptors and each hormone has its own receptor, so progesterone will seek out progesterone receptors and signal or deliver emails to those receptors so that the local tissues stay healthy. So, we have progesterone receptors in our brain. We don't have them just in our uterus. That's the old saying was, “If you don't have a uterus, you don't need progesterone.” Thinking its only job description was protecting the uterus against too much or unopposed estrogen. If a doctor tells you that run, do not walk, you know what is that old saying on monopoly? Do not pass go or whatever that is, pay $200. I don't remember the old saying, monopoly. A doctor that says you don't need progesterone if you don't have a uterus, is so old hat. And it's been old hat for a long time. And unfortunately, it's even being still taught in schools. I know that at national, where I went to naturopathic college for a few years, they were still teaching for 20 years the same exact thing, “If you don't have a uterus, you don't need progesterone.”
[00:10:22] Let's look where these little cells, receptors that satellite dishes that want to take messages from hormones. Let's look at progesterone satellite dishes in particular. We have progesterone receptors in our brain. We've got progesterone receptors in the coronary artery of our heart that keeps our artery, if it goes into spasm can kill us, keeps our artery relaxed and keeps our heart healthy. We have, as I just said, progesterone receptors all throughout the lining of the lungs. We have progesterone receptors in the prostate. We use progesterone in men to treat benign prostatic hypertrophy. When the prostate gets too large and they stay up all night urinating and feel really exhausted and cranky all the next day, wherever there are progesterone satellite dishes, the body wants those emails for the internet system not to freeze up but there's more. When progesterone is made, for example, in the adrenal gland or when in the middle of your cycle, don't you ovulate, but you're not going to be fertilized, the burst corpus luteum makes progesterone.
[00:11:35] So we make progesterone in the ovary and we make it in the adrenal gland and then it travels in the bloodstream looking where the heck to go for these satellite dishes? That's endocrinology. That means a hormone was made in a distant gland and it's going to seek out target tissue, satellite dishes, or the other term in science is receptors. But wait, there's more. We can actually make progesterone all over our body with progesterone-producing enzymes. That's called intracrinology. In other words, we make locally. So, for example, in the brain, let's talk about progesterone in the brain. Progesterone has many progesterone-producing enzymes in the brain. There are six areas that are known so far, but hormone research is young and it's new and we're learning new things all the time. Six areas of the brain have enzymes that locally produce progesterone. They then signal the genes in local satellite receptors and then they're degraded. So, we make progesterone all over the place. We make it in our brain to help us sleep at night, to help us feel calm in the face of a crazy, chaotic world that nobody knows what tomorrow is going to bring. Of course, planet Earth has always been like this.
[00:13:03] We make progesterone in areas that are really rare. We make progesterone from swan cells that make the insulation around almost all nerves, the myelin sheath that protects nerves. Progesterone helps your nerves stay healthy. So, MS patients that have demyelinating disease, we give them lots and lots of progesterone so that we can help them make more insulation and we can actually start shrinking some of those white brain lesions that are identifiable on MRIs. So, progesterone has many, many hats. The old thinking was it only protected the uterus. So, if you didn't have a uterus, what the heck, you didn't need it. And actually, there's still a lot of arrogant docs, not all that still think that way today. Run, don't walk, this doctor is caught in old thinking, hasn't done any research on their own and you really don't want to go to them for consultation about your health because they're not up on what they should be. And it's human to be down on what you're not up on. So, you often get negative answers from people who aren't informed.
[00:14:16] So, it's very important to realize that because there's very few docs that have been trained at the moment in hormones. So, I was lecturing in December at A4M, which is anti-aging program that certifies nurse practitioners and medical doctors over a five-year period. If they pass the boards, they get a certification in functional medicine. I was at their once-a-year classic anti-aging conference in Vegas and there were 5500 young physicians, mostly physicians. There are probably many other practitioners too, sitting in the audience and there were 30 speakers that got to speak to this huge body of practitioners. And half the speaker’s said, “Hormones are the best thing since sliced bread. They slow down aging. They protect your heart and your brain. Most of us die from adverse heart issues. They lower the incidence of these adverse heart issues. Don't age without balanced hormones.” The other half of the speaker said, “Hormones drive aging, hormones drive cancer, hormones accelerate disease, stay away from hormones.” I always say to people, look at the speakers that are saying these things because partially [Cynthia laughs] you should be an example of what you're talking about.
[00:15:35] But I came home and decided that they don't teach hormones, the physiology, the efficacy, the safety and the utilization in any schools right now at this moment, not in osteopathic schools, naturopathic schools, chiropractic schools, medical schools. It's been ever since 2002, they have pretty much stopped teaching hormones. And remember, humans are usually down on what they're not up on. So, if they don't know anything and you ask them if you're a candidate, they're going to poo-poo it and say, “I probably wouldn't do it. Or they're going to say it drives cancer like the other half of the speakers did at that conference.” So, I reached out to one of my favorite hormone savvy docs and big brother friend, Dr. David Brownstein. And I said, “David is our swan song. You're 61 and I'm 75 and who knows what our expiration date is up, right?” Nobody knows. It's like we don't know when we're going on to the next incarnation or deal or whatever it's going to be. I said, “Why don't we put together our own hormone course?” So, we proceeded to put an online course on called Everything Hormones. And it was 16 hours of CME for MDs and nurse practitioners and other practitioners, if boards will agree to these CMEs. And we also had 11 hours of non-CMEs with lots of materials like here's how you order it, here's how you do it. Here's the 26 studies run before 2002 where they gave estrogen receptor positive breast cancer patients estrogen, and they tracked them with comparison cohorts.
[00:17:14] And in all cases, women with breast cancer on hormones on estrogen did better, even if it was ER positive. We gave all that in there and it's now up there evergreen and we had one of our most contributory hours was the hour on progesterone, and it was eye opening, and I hope to share a lot of that in our discussion today so that women can understand it, because it's very misunderstood. It is a calming hormone and we need that in our world of chaos. It particularly protects our brain and insulates our nerves, which we all need more insulation of our nerves in this nerve-wracking world, let alone people with demyelinating diseases. And so, it's an honor to be able to be on here and chit chat about my favorite topic, because my life was saved by hormones, ruined and saved by hormones so to speak. I really would not be who I am today without balanced hormones, and part of that includes progesterone. So, I'm excited to help dispel some of misinformation about it.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:18:20] Yeah. I think that your voice is so vital and so important. And I was telling my husband, I will sometimes talk about some of the podcasts I'm preparing for. And I was even talking about you to my functional integrative medicine physician yesterday because I think that I was a baby nurse practitioner when the Women's Health Initiative was published. I worked in clinical cardiology, so I was a little bit insulated from what was transpiring. But it was my mother's generation that was initiated on hormone replacement therapy and it was taken away from them. And so, I have permission from my family members to talk about these things. But it has really fueled my desire to help women understand and advocate for themselves that if your healthcare practitioner is still talking about, “If you don't have a uterus, you don't need progesterone or HRT is going to cause cancer.” If you're listening to someone that is utilizing those kinds of arguments, it is time to find a new practitioner. And I cannot say this strongly enough, because every day across social media in groups, in emails, women are communicating, they're still getting those messages, so there's still a lot of work to do.
[00:19:32] Now, what is it about our modern-day lifestyles that is contributing to progesterone deficiencies? I think this is relevant and timely because there are lifestyle decisions that we sometimes make unknowingly that can drive down progesterone, that can contribute to our progesterone not being optimized. Before we even get to the point in our lives where we need to be utilizing hormone replacement therapy, I'm talking about younger men, younger women, modern day lifestyle, contributory factors that can contribute to this overwhelming deficiency, not to mention some of the endocrine issues like PCOS that can also contribute.
Dr. Lindsey Berkson: [00:20:12] That is a really great question. By the way, you have a wonderful voice in talking with you. So, this is really a lovely experience on body, mind, spirit level. That's a great question. So, first of all, we used to think that hormone replacement was mainly for older people, women in perimenopause, but definitely in menopause and men in andropause. And it was mainly for older people. But this is no longer the case. And that is because our lifestyle and our dirty planet have created a condition where younger and younger people are more and more insufficient in basic hormones. And remember, these hormones run the internet system of your body, so that when they stop working, what are we seeing in young people? We're seeing body dysphoria, gender bending, depression, mushy men, men that look like women, feminized men, masculinized women, and conditions that are emerging that we really haven't seen before, like polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is really like menopause in a younger woman. It's the number one driving issue of infertility in younger women. And we're all kind of a mess because our hormones are a mess.
[00:21:23] So, what's going on in our lifestyle that might be rinsing out our hormones at a younger stage when we should have more robust hormones? Well, the first thing is that we make our stress hormones out of progesterone. So, if we are very stressed, and it is a stressful world--, when I first--, so I've been in practice one way or another for 53 years, [laughs] oh my God. You know I feel younger and healthier than I've ever felt in my whole life most of the time, not 100% of the time, but most of the time. And I really had a lot of illness when I was younger, but when I was first in practice. I don't remember four or five, six-year-old kids coming in and saying they were stressed out. And now everybody says that they are stressed out. And there's huge articles written about the increase, the rapid emergent existence of severe depression and anxiety and many other issues, even bone loss and bone integrity. And they've even done functional MRIs. So, areas of the brain that have to do with behavior control and verbality, which are run by hormones, they're shrinking. They're not as large as they used to be, although all of this is fixable because of these conditions that I'm going to address in a few minutes.
[00:22:43] And one of them is stress. But stress isn't just from feeling like you're stuck in a situation and you have no control. Stress can be a hidden infection, a hidden allergy. Stress could come from many different consequences. But when the physiology is in stress, when you use up your own anti-stress hormone cortisol, you use up your progesterone to make more cortisol. So, as we're under more stress and we don't fix it, take the stressor away or--we now give several hundred milligrams of progesterone to young kids with ADHD with Asperger's syndrome, with lots of issues because progesterone helps and is needed in many of their young bodies because they're using it up so quickly to make anti-stress hormones. So, number one, the stressful world rinses progesterone out of the body because it's used as a building block to make anti-stress hormone like cortisol. The other major reason that's so underappreciated is the role of chemicals in our air, food, and water. It's not just estrogen endocrine disruptors that are an issue, but there are anti-progestogenic endocrine disruptors. The air and water and food is ubiquitous with them. So, I wrote one of the very first books on understanding endocrine disruption, it came out in 2000. It was called Hormone Deception and based on that book, I was invited to be a distinguished hormone scholar at an estrogen think tank called the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane-Xavier Universities.
[00:24:24] And I worked with the scientists who developed this emergent field that hormones are the only signaling molecules that can speak to genes. They run everything from our brain and thinking to our nerve repair and insulation and even the coronary artery health and our lung health and repair after COVID. But at the same time, they're all under attack by chemicals that are sprayed on our air, food, and water. And many of these chemicals are anti-progestins. They are contributing to infertility. Shanna Swan is a famous PhD scientist who worked with us at Tulane. She's still lecturing in the Netherlands and all over the world about this insidious increase in infertility that's occurring. And a lot of it is because progesterone, as we began this talk, progest, it supports gestation, but this hormone is under attack by progestin endocrine disruptors. So, eating organic is a huge deal. It can seem overwhelming, and with inflationary costs, it can seem a bit daunting and expensive. But only four or five days of eating organically starts to rinse a huge amount of these chemicals out of your body. When they do urine tests and blood tests in families that they get to really eat organically like this. We see nature is very generous and changes that you make often act fast.
[00:25:56] But that's one of the deals, is this cooning of our planet with chemicals, much of it coming from the United States, but then it bioaccumulates goes up into the atmosphere, causes many whirlwinds of all kinds of anti-hormone chemicals that circle the planet, and many whirlwinds so that our garbage ends up 10 years down the road in another country's backyard and their garbage ends up in our backyard. So, we're all spiritually and phenomenally really quite united. But the big deal, what we’ve talked about at Tulane was this gender bending coming down the pike. And I wrote a second book on the role of endocrine disruptors and how it is demasculinizing men and masculinizing women, and we can't even really communicate with each other, or we're losing our desire to communicate with each other. And that book was called Sexy Brain because sex steroid hormones rule the brain. But a lot of this was based on the work of another scientist that came to Tulane a lot and his name was Tyrone Hayes out of Berkeley. He's an integrative biologist who really created quite a stir because he took atrazine, which is sprayed ubiquitously on weeds and apples. Apple a day keeps the doctor away is no longer true if it's not an organic apple, because atrazine is a nasty chemical which has been banned for years in the European Union.
[00:27:32] But we're capitalism. You can come to the United States if you work hard, you could make money. But the other side of it is greed without control. And that's what's happened with Big Pharma and Big Agro. So, he took atrazine and he took amounts that were even less than a typical American gets with eating a non-organic diet. And he would expose pregnant frogs to atrazine in that amount that you're going to get if you go buy this gorgeous-looking apple that's all shiny and waxy at your regular grocery store. And he could make male frogs want to mate with other male frogs. He could create homosexuality. He could create infertility. He would create male frogs that had female eggs, but that didn't lay those eggs and then female frogs no longer could give birth. They started developing male genitalia and not developing eggs. Well, he was absolutely attacked. He's an incredible guy. He's 5’5 with an amazing presence. He used to come to his lectures. I love Halloween and vampire, everything Anne Rice and vampire. If I ever get married again, I'm going to have the guy come in a black cape and kiss me in a casket. I love it, love it, love it.
[laughter]
[00:28:49] He wears these black cloaks like he's coming out of New Orleans and Anne Rice land and he's very brilliant. He gives some of the best lectures I've ever thought. And he was trying to dive into one of the reasons we're seeing infertility or more PCOS and more other-- and sperm that's not functional and modal like it used to be. And he was starting to say, “Hey, what we spray on our foods is affecting our ability for evolution and future health.” And his family was attacked, his daughter was verbally threatened. It was incredible how the atrazine chemical industry came after him and attacked him. And soon we had right around when the pandemic was happening, this emergency of people who are gender confused and want to have the right of trans operations. Now, apparently the government wants to get in on admitting this for kids to do this without their parents’ consent and medical records not showing it.
[00:29:51] One medical record for the parents, then another medical record for the kid that decides to do it. And nobody's talking about, why? He basically made gender bending occur in animals. And the whole understanding of endocrine disruption really began with one of my iconic heroes besides Tyrone Hayes. And there's a number of unsung heroes in this field, but one of the other ones is Louis Guillette and his wife, Elizabeth Guillette. And Louis Guillette was also an integrative biologist. But at the University of Florida and Lake Apopka was extremely polluted. It's a beautiful lake in Southern Florida. And the male alligators, he caught them, he's like a He-Man. He looked like he stepped out of a-- in the olden days, there was something called an Irish Spring commercial and the men looked so handsome and he looks so handsome. And he was He-Man and he went with surfboards and caught these alligators and tied them up with bungee string and did, in the wild, procedures on them. And was able to prove that the male alligators, just like the atrazine and Tyrone Hayes’ experience, the male alligators were developing eggs, they were developing really itty bitty, if almost no male genitalia. While the female alligators were developing male genitalia, penises, and they weren't developing eggs.
[00:31:09] And then they started to clean up Lake Apopka. It's now completely remediated. But he unfortunately developed lymphoma and died. It's very loss to our community. But everyone was saying it was because he was hanging out in these polluted waters. So, I've not been able to find out what has happened to the alligators since they remediated the waters. Like, if this is happening to our kids, if we clean things up, will they revert back to feeling comfy with the way that they're born, etc. But endocrine disruption is an emergent field. And it is the understanding of the outside world getting in on our inside world, especially our most powerful signaling molecules that run the internet system that we don't want to freeze up or get all backward like it's doing. Do you want your child to go through this if it's actually induced by pesticides, where companies are making profit on this, rather than it being a true calling? If it's a true calling, it's one thing, but how do you figure that out? How do you tease that out? And no one is discussing this issue publicly. No one. I've actually reached out to my colleagues, but most of them now are retired. Almost everybody I know my age is retired. And I feel like I've got miles to go before I sleep because this is such important stuff to hear about.
[00:32:37] So there's anti-progestins, which are ubiquitous in our air, food, and water. So, you got to filter your water, especially your shower filter, because you get excessive exposed to incredible stuff. Because water treatment plants don't clean this stuff out. And they certainly don't remove birth control pill metabolites and hormone replacement metabolites out of water. So, you don't want to be taking a shower with your pores opening up and getting lots of endocrine disruptors. So, 50-buck water filter changed every six months. If you can't do a whole house filter, starts reducing extraordinarily your exposure to these kind of things. Like there's in my book, Hormone Deception, the last third of the book is all about without making you nuts, steps you can take to reduce exposure, because those really upset your hormones. And then the other things, our hormones don't work just by themselves. They're a tapestry. So, for hormones to deliver this email to your genes, first the receptor has to be available.
[00:33:39] And that means it can't be clogged with pesticides, heavy metals, volatile organic pollutants, the chemicals that I'm talking about they will sit in these receptors and your own hormones even if they measure perfectly in your blood, urine or saliva, they can't get in. But the biggest deal is hormones need a healthy measure of nutrients in your body. And the average American is nutrient insufficient in zinc, magnesium, vitamin A, all of these. So, the binding domain is where the hormone nestles on into that satellite dish. It looks like a pocket and it's evolutionarily conserved. It's always been like this. It's a big deal. This pocket's got to be available for the hormone to sit in and zinc pulls it into the pocket. And iodine and magnesium and B6 and vitamin A and a number of other nutrients make this whole shimming in space. Shimmy, shimmy, shimmy, shimmy and then when it's shimming, that's when the message goes to your gene to say, “Make my brain work and think, make my vocal cords resonate.”
[00:34:45] So when I get my feet done with my pedicurist and she now knows my age, she says, “You’re not like other old women.” I can hear you because she's sitting at the end of my feet and my head's up here on the chair I can project because my hormones are working but hormones need great nutrient status to work, and that means you have to have good food choices, not anti-food choices. And you also need to be able to digest the food that you eat. So, you have to have a good digestive system so that you not only are what you eat, but you're what you digest. And digestion and nutrients work hand in hand and hormones in very few people, very few physicians, very few nurse practitioners realize that. Just because you get a perfect level of a hormone in blood, doesn't mean the email is getting to the genes.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:35:38] You do such a beautiful job explaining things and I think kind of the high-level perspective about understanding this complex interrelationship between our environment, our personal care products, our food, and our hormones is one that is important because, unfortunately, because we cannot see these toxins-,
Dr. Lindsey Berkson: [00:35:57] Right.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:35:58] -people assume it's not a problem. I was talking to a colleague of mine who's a urologist, and he was saying for his male patients, because of the issues related to low testosterone, insulin resistance, this exposure to toxins, he's seeing record low testosterone levels and having to speak to his very-- in many instances, very masculine. He works with leaders of the industry and he says to me, “They don't have time to work on the little things. They have to think about the big stuff.” And trying to explain that most water filters don't filter out the synthetic hormones. And having to have conversations just because you cannot see it doesn't mean it's not a problem. And so, kind of high-level explanation about building awareness around these things is certainly really important.
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