Hey lovers and warriors!
Welcome to Episode 9!
Be sure to check back every Wednesday (#humpday – how appropriate) for a new episode, and head over to iTunes to subscribe!
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
Got low sex desire or PMS? There’s a pill for that. BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S DOING TO YOU! Reed Davis revels the symptoms of hormone imbalance, what’s causing it, and how you can correct it using functional diagnostic testing. Reed shares with us what’s missing in traditional lab testing and the questions to ask your doctor to help get them on board with your whole health.
Here’s what you’ll learn from this episode:
- Common symptoms of hormone imbalance for women. You DON’T have to be having painful PMS each month
- Regarding hormone treatment, what can be potentially dangerous to women taking long term synthetic hormones
- Problems with traditional lab results you’d get from your doctor’s office
- How you can get to the ROOT of your body’s misalignment with health, instead of just treating the symptoms
THE SKINNY ON OUR SEXY EXPERT
Reed is a Nutritional Therapist and has been the Health Director and Case Manager at a wellness clinic San Diego for over 15 years, and he is the Founder of the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® Certification Course. Reed has provided functional lab testing to over 10,000 clients and is known the world over for his system of natural, holistic protocols that help people get over their health problems. Reed has trained over 2000 health practitioners in 50 countries how to identify the underlying causes of disease and use his proven protocol system. He is also a Clinical Advisor at BioHealth
Laboratories where he helps clinicians interpret lab test results and use natural protocols that restore function instead of just treating the symptoms. Reed lives in Southern California teaching the FDN Certification Course and helping course graduates to build robust private practices.
WHY YOU’LL LOVE THE SHOW
Real life stories and expert interviews to help you improve your sex life, by addressing mental blocks, nourishing your body, and balancing your hormones. This podcast will feel like you’re sitting down for coffee with your two best girlfriends to chat about the most erotic and embarrassing things you’re dying to share and get advice about. The best part? They’re the experts. Sex expert, Dr. Cat Meyer with hormone and detox expert, nutritionist Diane Kazer reveal to you what works (and what doesn’t) in the most entertaining way, encompassing all things sex and sex hormones such as self-love, sex toys, bedroom play, body shame, libido, frisky food, PMS, hormone balance and anything else sex-blocking you from the sex, life and body you deserve and desire. Each episode will give you simple steps and sexy strategies you can implement NOW to leave you feeling empowered, courageous, playful and motivated. Eat Play Sex is YOUR guide to all things sexy, healthy, and fun to rock the body of your dreams and help you get back in the playground with those you love. Because…#sexmatters
ABOUT US & HOW WE CAN HELP
LEARN MORE ABOUT DR CAT
LEARN MORE ABOUT DI
Intro: This is episode 9 of Eat. Play. Sex. Here’s a hot highlight for what’s to come.
Dr. Reed: And you go, “Oh, that sounds like a hormone problem.” You test the hormones, and the physician might pat themselves in the back, “Yup! I found your problem. It’s a hormone imbalance. We’re going to give you some of this hormone, bio-identical, and make up the difference.” So now, you’ll be in balanced.”
They’ll even re-test you to make sure the paper looks good. And you might get some relief from that. So everyone’s happy—well, for a while.
If you don’t address the underlying stressors that puts you into that state in the first place, the symptoms will come back—and sometimes, they do with a vengeance—in which case, you might just take more of that same med.
“Oh, you need a stronger dose.”
And so, you’re still ignoring the underlying causes.
Or you get new symptoms. It just manifests some other way because you haven’t addressed the stressors, hidden or otherwise, that are what put you out of balance in the first place.
Intro: This podcast is for mature audiences 18 and over and for entertainment purposes only. Please contact your healthcare provider before pursuing any of our topics discussed.
You’re listening to Eat. Play. Sex. with your Queens of Climax, Dr. Cat and Di, the place to get play, sex and nutrition talks straight to your ears.
Side effects of this podcast may include more lovemaking, hormone harmony, spontaneous sex, exceptional orgasms, less sugar cravings and more sex cravings. In rare cases, listeners experience a strong desire to try new sexual positions and lube with organic edibles.
If you experience moods happier than usual, contact your Facebook friends immediately.
Dr. Cat Meyer: Hey, lovers. This is Dr. Cat. I’m here with Diane Kazer. Welcome to Eat. Play. Sex.
Diane Kazer: Welcome everyone!
Dr. Cat: How was your weekend?
Diane: Oh, girl, I went wine-tasting yesterday. It was amazing.
Dr. Cat: Wine-tasting?
Diane: Yeah, yeah. So, I had the 4-week Warrior Cleanse that we did. We had 50 people in there, and the average warrior lost 10 lbs.
Dr. Cat: Wait! What?!
Diane: Yeah! Yeah.
Dr. Cat: Why didn’t I… oh, wait! I’ve known about this. I’ve known…
Diane: You don’t need to lose weight. You do not need me to lose any fat, girlfriend.
Dr. Cat: I’m a warrior too.
Diane: Yeah, you’re a warrior, but I don’t want you to lose your boobs or your booty.
Dr. Cat: Okay, I’ll keep them.
Diane: I mean, you could boost a little bit of energy maybe because we talk about boobs, booty, body, brains. All those stuff are going to boost.
Dr. Cat: All the B’s?
Diane: All the B’s, girl! So yeah, we celebrated yesterday. I took my girlfriend with me. She’s a nurse. And she’s frequently frustrated at work because now that she’s learned the stuff that we’re going to talk about today actually and the warrior way, she is frustrated because she’s a nurse and she’s there watching people literally die from overdosing on drugs…
Dr. Cat: Oh, my God! Oh, that’s awful.
Diane: Yeah, it’s pretty crazy.
Dr. Cat: Well, while you were wine-tasting, I was leading partner yoga classes. It was so sensual. It was all about intimacy and dropping down into our bodies and connecting and feeling into our partners. Oh, my God! It just got so heated in there. I’m not even kidding!
In one my workshops, there were 13 couples; and then, the other one was about the same. And it was just amazing!
Diane: Wait! Can you see the word “intimate.” Break down the word “intimate.”
Dr. Cat: In-too-meet?
Diane: It’s like if you break down that word, “Intimate,” it’s like “into me.” It’s like the “you” and “to me” part combined.
Dr. Cat: Oh! Yeah, so I like to say “intimacy” is “into me, you see.”
Diane: That’s it!
Dr. Cat: Yes, I actually wrote an article on that on my blog.
Diane: Ooh, we should put it on the shownotes. Write it down.
Dr. Cat: CatMeyer.com, on my blog. On my blog, Into Me, You See.
Diane: We should probably combine a weekend like that, wine-tasting and couples yoga. What would that be like?
Dr. Cat: God! Everybody falling over?
Diane: That would be a whole new—like me, I know there’s this whole series of like people who get drunk. They say it’s like “drunk yoga” or something like that. People doing those fun back poses.
Dr. Cat: I don’t think it’s fun for those people.
Diane: It’s not.
Dr. Cat: I think they passed out over the chair. So they wake up in a lot of pain. That’s what I’m assuming.
Diane: I think it’s probably not a good idea especially considering that alcohol is one of the biggest killers of our sex drive.
Dr. Cat: I wonder how many couples actually—yeah, I’m thinking of yoga, drunk yoga, and falling over, and pushing each other. I don’t know if that actually builds intimacy. I don’t know about that.
Diane: No, no. I think it builds DUI’s and…
Dr. Cat: Hostility?
Diane: “And what happened last night? I have a migraine” and drunk texts.
Dr. Cat: “Maybe it will just […]”
Diane: Chocolate, yeah. Chocolate.
Oh, yes! And we’re recording this now. It’s going to be a different time you guys are listening to this. But we’re recording this, and it is Valentine’s week. So hopefully, you guys are listening to this later, and had a great Valentine’s day. Bu chocolate is one of the most powerful antioxidants in the world—not the milk chocolate kind, but cacao. Cat and I just put it on our faces before we got on this…
Dr. Cat: We put cacao on our faces?
Diane: Yeah, we did. We did.
Dr. Cat: Can you visualize that? Cacao on yo face!
Diane: It’s not an animal, guys. We’re not putting cows on faces, animal-tested and approved for safety.
Dr. Cat: Cacao is also an amazing heart opener. So, when you consume cacao—and I’ve consumed it down in Costa Rica where it’s fresh from the plant…
Diane: Ooh…
Dr. Cat: I know! Yeah, extreme heart opener. You want to cuddle with people. You want to engage and connect with people. It’s amazing!
Diane: Heart opener? Does it help with hard-on’s too? Hard-opener, hard-on?
Dr. Cat: I’m sure it does. And that might be where the idea that chocolate is an aphrodisiac comes from.
Diane: Absolutely! Yes, yes. I can’t wait to talk to with the person who’s on the other line that I’m going to introduce to you. He is actually a man who has pretty much taught me a large percentage of what I know as it relates to the pleasure centers of our body.
Dr. Cat: The pleasure centers…
Diane: Yeah, yeah. And you guys are probably going, “I wonder who this guy is they’re going to introduce.” But it’s somebody who taught me pretty much.
And this is so crazy. This guy has taught me more about hormones and my cycle and fertility than anyone in school, than even my mom knew, than my aunts, than my sorority sisters and girlfriends combined.
And this is actually what’s really sad about our society today. We’re not empowered with this stuff, about like what our hormones mean to us, and the way that we’re not taught today how to heal the root causes of hormone dysfunction and why we might not be playing and sexing and eating successfully.
Dr. Cat: That’s such a good point. Growing up, the only things I knew about hormones was to be afraid of them because that’s when puberty happens!
Diane: Oh, that’s awful.
Dr. Cat: I know! I always thought that they were just something that overrides your whole body and you can’t do anything about it and I was going to be in a puddle of tears once a month every month for the rest of my life. That was my understanding of hormones.
Diane: Yeah, that’s not fun at all.
Dr. Cat: No!
Diane: …to feel shameful about something that is inevitable in your body.
Well, today, I’m really, really excited to introduce to you someone who is educating people all around the world, practitioners like myself, how to heal people from the bottom up. We started from the bottom, and now we’re here. That should be the…
Dr. Cat: Don’t quit your day job.
Diane: My DJ’s? Wait, what?
So anyway, Reed, we’ve got Reed Davis on the other line. He is amazing. He’s a nutritional therapist. And he’s been the health director and case manager at a wellness clinic in my neighboring city, San Diego, for over 15 years.
He’s the founder of the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Certification Course. That’s what I am. I’m a functional diagnostic nutritionist. And he’s provided functional lab testing to over 10,000 clients—wow!—and is known around the world for his systems of natural and holistic protocols that help people get over their health problems.
Dr. Cat: I love it!
Diane: So, yeah, there’s over 2000 of me.
Dr. Cat: You?
Diane: Yeah!
Dr. Cat: We do not need that much.
Diane: I know! That’s too many unicorns.
Well, I mean Reed has trained over 2000 functional diagnostic nutritionists in 50 different countries on how to identify the underlying causes of disease. So, he’s no big deal. Reed obviously sounds pretty lazy. He’s not on a big mission to heal the worlds of the world.
Dr. Cat: Yeah, horrible. Why is he on here? I don’t even know. Is it too late to quit?
Diane: Reed!
Dr. Reed: Hello, Diane. Hello, Dr. Cat. It’s really a pleasure to be here. You guys are wonderfully playful, I see, today. And that’s an amazing thing. I’m happy to participate in the…
Dr. Cat: …in the play?
Dr. Reed: …in the play, yeah.
Dr. Cat: You want to play with us, Reed?
Dr. Reed: At least let me watch, you know?
Diane: It won’t cost you extra, Reed.
Dr. Reed: Of course, I want to participate. I’m not a standby guy.
Dr. Cat: But in all seriousness, we do have a couple of questions for you that we ask all of our guests. We’d love if you could answer one of those.
Dr. Reed: I’m very game for that. I wanted to back up just a quick second. See, Diane, thanks. Yes, we’ve trained a couple of thousand FDN practitioners. But there’s only one Diane Kazer.
Dr. Cat: Yeah.
Diane: Awww… I’m blushing, and it’s not my cacao.
Dr. Cat: Humbled.
Diane: Thanks, Reed. Yeah, thanks, Reed.
So, on that note, we would like to ask you one of the following two questions. You get to pick whichever one you’d like to answer. But we have question number one. What is behind door number one? What is your most embarrassing sex moment? Or what is behind door number two? What was your one crazy diet or nutrition thing you tried for the sake of your sex health or body?
Dr. Reed: Oh, geez. I can answer both of those. The first one is probably the longer list. There’s only so many things you can try to eat for your sex health. I mean, the Rocky Balboa diet, you’ve heard that, right?
Dr. Cat: What?
Dr. Reed: In the movie?
Diane: The raw eggs?
Dr. Reed: In the movie, Rocky, he downs like six raw eggs. He really does it. And he does it in his latest movie too. You could add oysters, grass-fed lean beef, nuts and fruits and all these different things like that. So, yeah, I’ve tried different diets.
But as far as embarrassing moments go, that’s hard. I guess having someone walking on you.
Dr. Cat: Doing what?
Dr. Reed: It’s happened.
Dr. Cat: Doing what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Dr. Reed: There was one girlfriend. And then you’re engaged in activities, and then another one walks in on you. That’s pretty embarrassing. And that’s happened.
It happens, right?
Dr. Cat: It happens.
Dr. Reed: That’s what came to mind. That and getting caught playing doctor when I was five or six. That was really embarrassing. That was like crying embarrassing.
Dr. Cat: Oh, you started early too, Reed.
Dr. Reed: I think I might actually have been eight. I was a little older.
Diane: It all starts in the monkey bars.
Dr. Reed: Yeah. So, next question…
Diane: No, I think you’ve covered both of them. We’ll get right into the show, so people can—hopefully, you guys got a little bit of a chuckle from that. You built some six pack abs and maybe even a little bit of blood flow—and definitely probably some compassion. A lot of us have been walked in on or—I don’t even remember playing doctor, but I didn’t like Barbies.
So Reed, I want to quote you, and then we’ll get started with the questions. You have a lot of amazing mic drop moment quotes, a lot of them. But the one that I quoted on my website is what you say. It pretty much encompasses what we do as practitioners, as FDN practitioners. It is really what truly I believe many people are looking for, solutions. They think they’re going to get this, but they totally don’t in modern medicine today.
And so this is your quote:
“Our job is to look upstream from the symptoms using labs that are available to identify opportunities to restore function and balance.”
And you nailed it. You helped us understand. And today, I want to talk mainly about women’s hormones. We’ll have another show another day about men’s hormones.
But specifically, I want to walk people through a timeline of what women are used to today. Let’s walk through the current norm and reality for women.
As a teenager, we’re encouraged to take the pill for skin issues and fertility prevention and hormone chaos, painful periods. The daughter is like, “Well, I don’t feel well.” The mom agrees. Take the pill. Her mom doesn’t know any better because she did that as a young child.
And so, why is this a problem today, Reed? What do you think is the main issue with just prescribing a teenager a birth control pill?
Dr. Reed: You know, it’s a good question. I would go back a little bit further and say that menses, puberty is happening earlier. And so that’s a sign. It used to be 13, 14 or 15. I remember my first wife, she didn’t have first period until she was 17 or something like that. She was a tall, skinny girl.
So, it starts before the time period we’re even talking about. Some of these girls aren’t even teenagers yet, and they’re having their periods already. That’s a problem in my view with estrogen in the environment (and maybe some other stuff, food and things like that).
So then, by the time they are a teenager and they’ve been maybe menstruating since they were nine or ten or eleven, it’s really kind of problematic. You’re going to get symptoms.
Usually, it’s the skin, a lot of acne and things like that. Or it could be something around painful periods or something like that.
So, one of the easiest things to do is to regulate the cycle. You can do that quite easily with birth control pills. They regulate the cycle.
So, if you go to a physician with complaints of irregular cycles causing pain and bad skin, well, hey, let’s make it regular. And so then at least they can get a handle on it. You’re kind of controlling it.
Now, that runs into a lot of problems because you aren’t even taking the drug for what it’s intended for. It’s just meant for if you don’t want to have a baby and you’re having sex. It’s a birth control, that’s why you’re supposed to be taking it if you’re going to take it.
And so it’s being used for something other than its original purpose. And so it’s an off-label use of a drug. That’s always a problem when you come around it.
For instance, you stay on it for 50 years, and you’re used to these regular cycles. Well, women who have been on birth control pills for a lot of years have a lot of other problems along with it. When they do want to have a baby, they can’t because their periods don’t go back to normal. They’ve been regulated so long with the drug which is really hormones or fake hormones or they get yeast infections. They become really prevalent…
Dr. Cat: No way! I didn’t realize that yeast infections were related with the pill…
Dr. Reed: Well, there are women who have been on the birth control for years, and they have a very high correlation with yeast infections. Absolutely, yeah. And that has its own problems with gut issues and on and on and on.
There’s hardly anything you could do to the body that doesn’t have a ripple effect. You mentioned “going upstream,” the symptoms are downstream—the bad skin and you’re overweight and you’re cranky on your periods or excessive blood flow or lack of blood flow, scanty menses, all these different things, or spotting during the month.
Dr. Cat: In between, yeah.
Dr. Reed: It goes on and on and on, the number of symptoms. So you can control that with a pill—at least to some extent. They have very good results. If your only intention is to treat the symptoms, well, there’s one way.
Diane: Right, right. And Reed, another thing that I loved hearing you say—I don’t love it for the fact that it’s happening. I love it for the fact that you’ve described it so well. There are articles that you’ve written. And one of my favorites is or the question to be posed is: “Why do I still feel awful, yet my labs say I’m normal?”
You’ve conducted thousands and thousands of labs. And all that women are told now is, “Take this blood test. We’re going to look at this blood test. Well, everything looks fine. So, I don’t know, we’ll just give you this pill/prescription/procedure thing because we don’t know what’s going on.”
So, what common denominators have you seen that are different kinds of testing than just blood, why women shouldn’t just take this like, “Oh, I feel crappy, but this blood test said I was fine”? Why should they peruse to talk with someone else and get a second opinion based on the lab and denominators that you’ve seen?
Dr. Reed: Well, the main reason would be because you know you’re not crazy—unless you are crazy. But women often leave physicians’ offices without answers because maybe the doctor—
Doctors look for disease. They look for serious trouble. That’s their job. And they do a very good job of it. And so you could go to a physician and get a standard CBC chem panel or your typical year-end check-up type blood work, and again, look normal. Well, there’s nothing there for him to treat or her to treat. Nothing is showing up. You don’t have anything serious enough yet. So, you’re not in a disease state enough yet.
But you know you’re not crazy. You know that you’re tired and fatigued and you’re a little overweight and you’re a little bloated sometimes, or whatever it might be, headaches, skin problems, all these things. You know you’re not crazy. So, there must be something.
Well, again, the physicians are there to save your life. He’s there to make sure that you don’t have cancer or something really serious.
So, there are people—and this is where I came from—that are, “I know you’re not crazy. I trust you that you have all these. And there must be underlying reasons for it.” And so that’s where the alternative lab testing came in.
When I started back in the ‘90s, there were only two types of medicine, standard medicine and quackery.
Dr. Cat: Quackery.
Dr. Reed: [Quacking]
Or otherwise, alternative medicine. Well, it has evolved beautifully since then. It was started because more and more physicians were tired of telling people to leave their offices, “Sorry, nothing I can do for you.”
So, we went from just standard medicine and quackery to complimentary medicine, and then integrative medicine. And now, it’s turned into functional medicine.
And now and in the future, what you’re going to hear about on the cutting-edge is just called lifestyle medicine.
And so, what’s so interesting to me is lifestyle medicine is exactly what I’ve been doing for 20 years because it’s finding out what’s really wrong with you and giving you things that you’re in control of to do instead of just something to take.
People ask me, “What can I take for this?” Sometimes, I say, “Take your wife out to dinner. Take a walk” or “Take a hike.”
Dr. Cat: Take a hike!
Dr. Reed: But take something. It’s not always what you need to take; it’s what you need to do.
Dr. Cat: It’s how you live, how you live your life.
Dr. Reed: Yeah… diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, supplements or whatever it might be.
So, it’s gone from standard medicine and quackery. Now, you’re going to get complimentary, integrative, functional. And now, it’s lifestyle medicine. That is what we all want to practice on ourselves and each other.
Dr. Cat: Wow! You know, you’re talking about getting these labs from the doctors. Well, that’s exactly what I went through for years. I would go to my doctor, and bless her heart, she was amazing, always supportive of me. But I knew that something was wrong with my body. I’m very in tune with my body for being a yoga instructor and really interested in health.
And it was almost like the feedback I kept getting back was “Your body is fine. Everything is fine. You’re normal.” I was normal, but I was feeling like crap all the time.
Dr. Reed: Yeah. Right! Yes.
Well, people get the idea that crappy is normal. And that’s really wrong. It’s not normal.
As a matter of fact, this is amazing. It’s a bit anecdotal to what we’re talking about. We’ve had people do our program, the DRESS: Diet, Rest, Exercise, Stress Reduction, Supplements. We developed that program. We do get some labs. We run some saliva, urine, blood, stool, whatever. And then, we develop that protocol.
People start to get more energy and think something’s wrong. They’re so used to feeling crappy. They’re so used to being not well. They haven’t slept enough. They haven’t exercised. They’re not digesting their food. They’re not absorbing. They’re literally in a state of dysfunction and a fog. And so that when they do feel what we think is normal like high energy, good immune system, clear mind, good sex drive, then they go, “Oh, something is wrong with me.”
It’s so weird! It’s like people haven’t felt hunger and people haven’t felt a good sex drive. “Oh, something must be wrong. I want to have sex all the time.”
Dr. Cat: “I want to have sex, huh? What’s wrong with me?”
Dr. Reed: Yeah, that’s normal.
Diane: Or a nerd like myself would say when they go, “I feel really light-headed. My head’s feeling a little different.” I’m like, “That’s your hypothalamus working. Your brain is actually making hormones now and receiving information to the pituitary.” It’s like, “Yeah! Your brain is working. Well done. Awesome! That’s good. That’s electricity turning on.”
Dr. Reed: So, just getting people to recognize what’s normal and not normal is pretty critical. Symptoms are not normal.
It’s really good to have high energy, good immune system, good sex drive, clear thinking, ambition, wanting to get things done. You get up, your feet hit the ground.
When was the last time you jumped up and down on the bed?
Dr. Cat: Oh, this morning.
Dr. Reed: Okay, not you.
Dr. Cat: Like literally, this morning. I taught yoga at seven.
Dr. Reed: You’re special. You’re evolved. But a lot of people, if you ask them that, it’s when they were five years old. It’s the last time they sort of jumped up and down on the bed and felt happy. They crowed like a rooster. “Woo-hoo! What am I going to do today?” Every day is Saturday.
So, how long has it been since you—not you two—since you felt like that. Guess what? That’s normal. That’s how we’re designed to be.
Diane: Yes. Yes, yes. And that’s the difference between common and normal. I hear this. And Reed, I love what you taught me in FDN. Women, we pass this off. We say, “Well, I know having PMS is normal.” I’m like, “Hold on a second. It might be average. But do you want to feel average?”
This is the problem. They don’t know how to get to normal, advanced, better, improved, before wreck, right?
I asked the question earlier. Women goes and they get their blood work done. The doctor is like, “Everything is fine” just like Cat was saying—and me in my early twenties. I’m like, “But there’s something wrong. I know there’s something wrong.” I kept persisting until I found FDN after a lot of health issues because I didn’t have any other place to turn.
So, the first question I want to ask is this, Reed. Where do they get these averages, these ranges? How do they determine the ranges on these blood tests for hormones to begin with?
Dr. Reed: Well, they’re statistical. Everyone they test, they have all the data. They have the highest and the lowest; everyone else is in between. And then, they pick a median which is a place where half the results are above and half the results are below.
So, it’s not an average. An average would be if you added up all the numbers and divide it by how many test results you have. So, a median is different. It’s half the numbers above, and half the number below. That’s a median. And then they decide.
And this is done by the data and government agencies that regulate labs that come in and decide what normal is.
And here’s the funny thing. Normals used to be narrower. So, I think people were healthier, and we’re just looking at a certain amount of data. They would toss up the ones above and the ones below a certain acceptable deviation from that median.
So, you could take median, again, as somewhere in the middle. And you’d go, “Well, this much above or this much below is going to be called normal.”
And that’s where the ranges come from. It’s statistical. It’s figuring out what the median is. And then, people who are regulating labs, the government agencies—there’s federal and state that come in and inspect labs and look at the data—they’re who dictate what you’re allowed to say is the normal range. It’s called a “reference range.”
And obviously, they’re looking at a ton of data. So, if you were outside of that range, you’re considered either high or low.
Now, what’s really, really interesting to me is over the years I’ve been in it, the ranges are changing a little bit as to what’s acceptable or normal. So, if you’re looking at thousands and thousands of labs, and it turns out that there are a lot of people over the line, what the industry says is, “Well, these people, you can’t have this many abnormals.”
So, what they do is change the line to make them normal too.
Dr. Cat: What?!
Dr. Reed: Like you take cholesterol for instance. There was a narrower range. And then, so many people end up being above or below the line (mostly above) that they just said, “Well, there can’t be that many abnormal people. They must be normal too. So, let’s move the line to make them normal too.” And that’s exactly what has happened.
And so, that’s why in your standard CBC chem panels, we don’t look at things the same way. Just because you’re within a normal reference range, what the industry is calling “normal” doesn’t mean that you’re healthy.
And by the way, we don’t even run those labs a lot. We run other labs that even though we’ve been running them for 20 years, they’re still considered experimental or they call it, in the industry, “for research purposes.”
So, insurance won’t pay for them. Usually, you’ll pay them out of pocket and on and on and on. I can talk a lot about lab work if you want, but I’m not sure I’m serving the listeners doing that.
Diane: Yeah! Actually, I would love to talk about testing toward the end, Reed, when we’re talking about the solutions.
Dr. Reed: Yeah, sure.
Diane: For sure… because just what you said, to summarize, basically, as our lifestyles are getting more stressed and more sick and more sleep-, sex-deprived, oxytocin-reducing, they’re just moving the bar to define what is normal. They’re not saying like, “Oh, 20 years ago, this was normal.” They’re actually just saying like—
It’s kind of like what I would look at with agreeing that body image is really important, but also accepting that obesity is okay. There’s this space where we would also want to encourage people that healthy back then is different than healthy now. But if you look at the state of our health, it is majorly lacking.
So, that’s why if you go get your results back from your doctor, “Oh, we don’t know what’s wrong with you, but take this pill anyway,” you’re not going in to say, “Hey, doctor, I want to feel optimal,” you’re saying, “I have a problem and I want this to go away.” But then it’s welcoming another issue with another drug.
Dr. Reed: Yeah, exactly. Or you could sum it up this way. The health of our population is getting worse, and so therefore, it’s more normal. Well, that’s just the way things are today. You could actually call it “normal.” Everybody is 40 lbs. overweight, right? And so it’s normal—and has bad sex drive and bad skin, all these problems. So, from that perspective, it’s normal.
Or the other big lie is: “Well, you’re getting older,” which you guys aren’t hearing that yet, but at my age, I don’t want to accept that. Certain parts of it, you accept gracefully; but other parts, you go, “Screw that! I’m not going to accept that.
Women being told that hysterectomies are normal at forty, “Oh, that’s perfectly normal. Oh, all that excessive bleeding, that happens. That’s just normal. Here, take these pills. If they don’t work, we’re just going to do a hysterectomy,” you’re 40, “and that’s perfectly normal.”
I’ve had lot of patients, clients that say the oddest things like that, being told by some physician that it’s normal to have these things.
Dr. Cat: …which can be so hitting on our sense of womanhood, having these hysterectomies. I’ve also had a client in the past, a long time ago, her doctor was telling her to have her vaginal canals sewed up to prevent the prolapsed of her…
Diane: Ugh!
Dr. Cat: Yeah, yeah… to keep it in. She was in tears scared about how she was going to be able to have sex. Of course, there are other ways to be able to create erogenous zones throughout the body, but even just to have that brought to you… like wow! Here, this is what makes you a woman and that’s going to be removed from us. You can be so vulnerable.
Dr. Reed: You hear things like that, and you just wonder, don’t you? I mean, we get it a lot.
And maybe not so relevant to today’s program and topic, but people have their anuses sewed up all the time because they’ve had taken their colon completely out, and they have a permanent colostomy bag on their hip. You’re like, “That’s where you poop from now on.” We just take the parts out.
I’ve seen that disease progression. It starts at childhood with food sensitivities and progress into irritable bowel and then Crohn’s and then colon cancer. You end up just having parts removed.
Well, let me tell you something… you don’t have extra parts.
Dr. Cat: No, this is it. This is my body. This is my vessel. I better take care of it.
In fact, that’s exactly what I did years ago. I met Diane. We worked together as yoga instructors. And I was experiencing all these symptoms. I was foggy-headed. I was over-stressed. I really did not want sex at that time. I was just like, “Nah…” But I talked to her and I was having such bad stomach cramps all the time every day every time I ate.
And so, working with Diane, she brought me through your program—your program exactly. And going through my doctor, I kept getting the same stuff. “You’re normal. There’s nothing we can do for you.”
So, I worked with Diane. And the results came back. And it was like a slap in my face. “Look at what’s happening internally.”
This is the body I’m carrying around every single day, and I don’t even know the inner world that’s happening inside that’s causing how I’m moving about in this outside world.
Dr. Reed: Yeah!
Diane: Yeah. We did a lot of work, Reed, with her digestion. And it was crazy! Dr. Cat just runs with something. She’s one of those people that you don’t have to stalk her, “Hey, are you still doing things?” You don’t have to hold her accountable.
Dr. Cat: Yeah, please don’t stalk me.
Diane: I mean, sometimes, I stalk her on Facebook to see what she’s doing.
Dr. Reed: Well, I have to interrupt you. I have to say. My new girlfriend accused me of stalking her the other day which really offended me except she doesn’t know she’s my new girlfriend yet.
Diane: Consent? Wait! I don’t know about that.
Dr. Reed: […]
Diane: Yeah, of course you did.
But what I was saying is that I gave her some digestive protocols to follow. Again, with her, one of her labs came up inconclusive. It wasn’t obvious to me that there was something going on. But you teach us to help clients and patients. We’ve got to treat the person and the symptoms that they’re experiencing, not the lab results.
And so hers wasn’t super straightforward to me. I just said, “You know what? I’ve got some intuition here. I’m going to walk you through this.” I gave her things to do. We had a follow-up appointment.
And then, two months later, I saw her at the yoga studio, she walked by me and I was like, “What happened to you? You look so amazing!”
She’s like, “I just did what you told me” like all matter of fact.
I went, “This is the power right here.”
And since then, I have not really seen her suffering too much. So we collectively wanted to thank you from the bottom of our hearts and our ovaries for helping empower us to learn how to truly heal so that we can connect to ourselves in a deeper way, not just getting rid of the chemical interference, but also being able to drop down into our bodies and our intuition to really understand what it is that our bodies are communicating to us. That is very empowering. So, thank you.
Dr. Reed: Thank you so much. Well, it’s good to hear. It’s the whole purpose. it’s why we get up every day with the intention to help people, to hear that it works, that it helps people’s lives.
I started off all those years ago with women’s health. It was the first demographic (I guess you could call it). I bought a bone density testing machine. And I went out to test women. On my days off at the clinic, I would go out and just do these. I had a portable bone density testing machine. I would have 10, 15, 20 women a day having me do their bone density.
That’s how I got into the hormones because that’s one of the biggest things that would affect bone density. And that’s why I tested thousands and thousands of people—not just for their bones, but I ran the saliva test for hormones on them. That was where I started, women’s health.
Diane: Yeah, exactly. And we have the power to heal the world starting with ourselves.
I wanted to ask you this, Reed, and then we can get into the top three resolutions and some conventional lab tests that you believe is much more helpful and beneficial to get to the underlying root causes of hormone imbalances.
But I wanted to ask because I know one of the things we haven’t touched on yet. There are the pills, procedures, and the prescriptions. Those are the things that you’re going to get as a recommendation or prescription from your doctor. And that’s all you can expect.
Not very many of them are talking about lifestyle intervention or understanding what kind of lifestyle intervention is even needed at the time because they’re not running the right kinds of testing. So, what a lot of women are leaving with is, like you said, removal of parts.
And then, I also wanted to talk about the long-term use of even bio-identicals. I know there’s bio-identicals, there’s synthetic hormones like Synthroid for the thyroid, then there’s the birth control pill. I mean, there’s all different kinds of hormones that women are being prescribed.
But what I see happening is that they’re taking them for years and years—not just the pill, but like two, three, four years of taking even bio-identicals which are mother nature’s version of something that look similar to our bodies versus something synthetic, so it’s more healthy. And there’s many doctors out there that specialize in bio-identicals, but then they just keep them on for years and years and years.
What danger is there in that, the bio-identicals? And then, we can talk about the procedures too.
Dr. Reed: Well, certainly, bio-identicals are better than pure synthetics. So, I would say that’s a step in the right direction in terms of putting things in your body with the understanding that bio-identical means that it has been constructed with the exact, same chemical formula as your real hormone. But it’s still not a real hormone.
Bio-identical means that. It’s made in a factory, but it is made with the same chemistry, the exact, same chemical structure as what’s—and you can just look at the chemical structure on paper, “Oh, it’s the same.” But it’s not from your body. It’s not your hormone. And it’s not even human hormone. Again, it’s made in a factory to the same specifications.
So, that’s an interesting thing people don’t get.
The other thing of course is, again, it relieves symptoms. Now, any time you’re relieving symptoms, and that’s all you’re doing, you’re usually leaving what’s really wrong on the table. You’re not addressing what’s really wrong.
For instance, sex hormone imbalances, whether it be progesterone-estrogen or estrogen to testosterone or even cortisol to EDTA, these very important hormone relationships, you can first of all look at the symptoms and go, “Oh, that sounds like a hormone problem.” You test the hormones and the physician might pat themselves in the back, “Yup, I found your problem. It’s a hormone imbalance. We’re going to give you some of this hormone—it’s bio-identical—and make up the difference.” So now you’ll be “in balance.”
They’ll even re-test you to make sure the paper looks good. And you might get some relief from that. So everyone’s happy—well, for a while. Your symptoms are gone.
The issue that I have with that—and it comes from a long history of noticing people doing that who then ended up with other problems—if you don’t address the underlying stressors that puts you into that state in the first place, the symptoms will come back—and sometimes, they do with a vengeance—in which case, you might just take more of that same med. “Oh, you need a stronger dose.” And so, you’re still ignoring the underlying cause.
Or you get new symptoms. It just manifests some other way because you haven’t addressed the stressors, hidden or otherwise, that are what put you out of balance in the first place.
Dr. Cat: So, what would you say some of those stressors are because we’re talking about lifestyle? So, for those of us who are just living this day-to-day life, what kind of stressors do you see that are occurring around us causing this?
Dr. Reed: Well, because I’m in business and I’m an organizer—that’s what I do—I classify them in the mental-emotional category (you’re in a bad relationship, you have financial issues, you don’t like your job, you drive through traffic, you can’t figure out what to wear. I don’t know, but you’ve got mental-emotional stressors)…
Diane: Big decisions, Reed.
Dr. Reed: Different things bother different people.
Now, there’s another form of stress though. It’s accumulated pressure on nerves and organs. So, it’s when you’ve had trauma like if you’ve been in car accidents. Me, I’ve been in at least a dozen motorcycle accidents. And it always takes me years to fix them; some, it’s taken me a long time to fix. You get a twisted neck or pressure on nerves or things like that.
Now, the same idea, physical trauma and/or micro-trauma can come from bad posture and weakness, you’re not working out, you’re not keeping yourself symmetrical and in alignment and things.
So, there’s that mental-emotional, which you know most of that;
There’s the trauma which you probably forgot about. Even if you fell off a bicycle when you’re 12 or 8 or whatever, that could have left some residual pressure on nerves or interference somewhere. You’re out of pain, but you really are sort of walking with a gimp. Your hips could be off. Your shoulders could be off. Your neck could be—and you don’t even notice these things.
That’s why we get everyone checked out for physical stressors like that built-up accumulated trauma and micro-trauma.
And then, also—and this is where we tend to specialize with the lab work—the chemical and biochemical stressors. Diane didn’t miss this, but I came from the environment law field. So, before I was in this back in the ‘90s, I was saving the planet. I was in the environmental area. So, the water, the air, everything in our food, it’s amazing how many chemicals. They’re ubiquitous. They’re everywhere. They’re in your clothing. They’re in your carpeting, your furniture, everywhere!
Diane: And our sex products and our lubes.
Dr. Reed: There’s things. I mean, one of the first things that we help people do is show them what’s in their food and in their drinks and their personal care products and their household care products. It’s ridiculous what’s allowed to be put into the environment.
We’re not ready for that. We haven’t evolved. It just causes, again, this idea of chemical stress and then biochemical stress which is really either produced by your own body (we produce toxins) and we ingest things like bacteria, viruses, parasites, and yeasts and all these different things that produce their own toxins and things.
Dr. Cat: That’s really empowering to understand, so we can create the environment for ourselves. “This is what I want to live in. This is what I want to influence me, impact my health and my mental-emotional.”
Dr. Reed: Yup, that’s right. And they all kind of mix together too. I have this expression I use. It’s called “metabolic chaos.” There’s just activity going on. There’s thousands and thousand of metabolic activities going on, metabolic processes going on in your body, many we don’t know about (or much about). And the cascade—
Again, whatever the type of stress is—mental-emotional, trauma and physical stress, and then of course the chemical and biochemical stressors—they cause problems.
And they can be very subtle at first. And because of the way they cascade from one system to another inside one metabolic process—
And this is really critical. You guys will get this. Because of individual weak links in metabolism, biochemical individuality, what bothers one person horribly doesn’t bother the next person. We all have our inborn areas of metabolism and acquired weak links. And so, again, you’re an individual and you’ve got to look at yourself. You can’t look at a cohort. You’re not one of a million people; you’re one in a million people.
Diane: Well said.
Dr. Reed: You’re one.
Diane: You’re one, yeah.
Dr. Reed: So, that’s a big given scenario with thinking you’re not a cohort, you’re not a study group. You’re one person. You need to study yourself.
Diane: Absolutely!
So Reed, we want to get down to—we really want to get down to at the last five minutes here. So let’s talk about, if we can, as an alternative (instead of just going to the doctor and running the same treadmill, the same rat race, and getting the same result every time which is, “We don’t know what’s wrong. Here, take this pill,” which makes things work and creates other issues), what things can they do instead?
What things can women do instead to explore their hormones, the markers? What could potentially be wrong that’s creating hormonal imbalance as it pertains to the program that you’ve created that I’m doing, that I offer obviously.
So, let’s talk about testing. And then, let’s talk about the top three solutions that you would recommend women do today.
Dr. Reed: Well, hormones are important. The immune system is important. Digestion is important. And I’ll throw in detoxification for good luck. So, the top three things, plus just detoxifying. But hormone, immune, digestion and then detoxification.
And with just a couple of simple labs, some saliva and some urine (which are easy to do at home), you can look into those things, how they’re really working. Those tests take us back to what you said when we started, that’s how you look upstream.
You don’t worry about the symptoms so much. Those will go away. And if you have to take something, take something—hopefully, it’s natural—so there’s relief care. We don’t really worry about that too much. Yeah, get some relief or whatever. “If you have hot flushes, here’s something for that.” That would get your head on straight.
So now, let’s deal with what’s upstream—the hormone, immune, digestion and detoxification pathways.
The idea is that you can take control, start looking at some numbers, get some education on the imbalances, and then the insights into what’s causing them, the types of stressors, so we sort out that metabolic chaos.
Diane: Reed…?
Dr. Reed: Again, I’ve learned over the years to categorize it, to systematize it. And that way, it’s a step-by-step process.
Diane: And I wanted to make sure that I distinguish something very, very important, which is the question that I get asked often. I knew that you’d be the man to ask. And that is:
Women who are doing blood testing, their doctors may test cortisol, they may test DHEA, they may look at four different points of the day for cortisol which is the stress hormone that’s made by the adrenal glands.
Now, my question is this: Why is it different to test blood for these things, these sex, stress and sleep hormones versus saliva?
Dr. Reed: Yeah. Well, the saliva, first of all, is the bioavailable level. It’s been through all the processes. It’s not bound by anything. Pretty much, that’s the free market availability. So you’re dealing with what’s really your body is using.
Whereas in the blood, much of the hormone can be bound up by—if it’s a sex hormone, the sex hormone binding globulin, you have thyroid binding globulins. You have a lot of binding and things like that. You start getting into where’s the binding globulin’s made, the liver…
It just gets really convoluted and it’s hard to interpret.
Plus, everyone sort of is in the normal reference range anyway.
Diane: Yeah, like we were saying.
Dr. Reed: So, it could be not worth the it’s written on frankly.
So, that’s why physicians—and they’re very good at this. God bless them! Look, I’ve said there’s nothing wrong with relief care. So, a doctor can look at a blood test and say, “Well, you’re not dying. You don’t have cancer. There’s nothing really wrong with you that’s showing up here yet. So, here’s something for your symptoms.” They palliate. In other words, “Here’s for your hot flushes. Here’s for your periods. Here’s for the acne. Here’s for the whatever.” So, there’s pill for everything.
And that’s not even a horrible thing to get you through the day. But our way of looking into the body is just more looking at the healing opportunities. What needs to be fixed, so you’re not relying just on relief care?
Diane: Absolutely!
Dr. Cat: Yeah. And we don’t want to just live our lives getting through the day. We want to live our lives excited—like you said, jumping up like, “Yes, I have another day and I’m going to feel amazing.”
Diane: You know what I hate when I hear people saying? I’m like, “Hey, how are you doing?” they’re like, “Hanging in there.” I’m like, “What?!”
Dr. Cat: What are you hanging in there?
Diane: Where are you hanging? What’s hanging? Is it from the ceiling? What color are you wearing? Like you’re just, “Well, you know… I’m okay.” I’m like, “No!”
Dr. Cat: “I just need to get through Saturday. I just need to get through this day. I just need to…”
We’re totally not present to our day.
Diane: Is it Friday yet?
Dr. Cat: Yeah, we’re moving into the future.
Dr. Reed: You get it! That relief care, it’s not acceptable to just do that. We want corrective care to actually fix.
And that’s where people need to be committed to. That’s the other tip of the day. You better take it seriously and get committed to it.
Diane: Yes!
Dr. Reed: So, if it means changing your diet and going to bed on time even if you don’t want to, getting a good night’s sleep, forcing yourself to do that, learning to make that a habit and joining a gym or going to your yoga or pilates—which is one of my favorites. I also Jiu Jitsu. So, I also do very rigorous exercise, a very robust program. I get hurt a lot, but you deal with it.
So, it’s empowering to know what you have to do. And the labs give us insights as to what’s really wrong, so that you can work through that and stay committed to that corrective process, which for some people who come to us that’s—pardon the expression—trainwrecks, you’re talking about six, twelve, eighteen months.
Diane: Yes, yes.
Dr. Reed: Look, it took me 12 or 18 years to get here. What’s wrong with 18 months of getting yourself back in shape and losing a pound a month or 2 lbs. a month? That’s 36 lbs. in 18 months. Or if you lose 3 lbs. a month—
That’s the problem we have. People, they’re only losing a pound every month. I say, “Well look, after a while, that adds up. That’s good. Lose it slow.”
Diane: And it stays away.
Dr. Reed: And I’ll finish with this. That’s where we need health coaches. We need 50,000 to 75,000 health coaches to perform this lifestyle medicine. Doctors are going to be saying they do lifestyle medicine, but they’re still, I’ll say, just a doctor. They’re bound by their licensure to do certain standards of care.
But what they’re going to do is make sure nothing is really wrong with a client and patient. It’s the health coach that’s going to walk the person and keep that person moving through the corrective process, so that we’re not just doing relief care. That’s the story.
Diane: Yeah, I know. it’s very, very true, Reed. It’s going to take a whole community. It’s going to take a big society of people who are teaching things consistently instead of like, “Oh, just juice cleanse for three days, and your whole life is going to change. All the metals that you’ve accumulated over the years are all going to be gone.”
And I’ll end up by saying this too. If you’re not listening and if you’re doing something else right now, I encourage you to stop just for one moment to hear me out with this last, final thing that I would like to express. Reed just mentioned it. And that is that:
The majority of people who finally stopped to listen are a trainwreck. Their left broken down on the side of the road. They’ve been drinking caffeine. They’ve been doing all kinds of relief care that is unhealthy for them, that’s driving them even farther off the side of the road.
And women, this is a lot of us, we try to do too much. We’re trying to impress people that we don’t even care about with things that cost a lot of money. We’re following procedures blindly based on the fact that we feel like we’re broken even though we can’t find solutions.
We’re just trying to get through the day. And that’s not a way to live.
Your body, for a long time, has been trying to communicate to you that something is wrong. So, if you wait until you’ve got six, seven or eight symptoms, and you’re on the side of the road, you have waited way too long.
So, at the earliest sign of a symptom, this is where your body is talking, so we encourage you to start listening before you get to this point where you are completely broken and you can’t go to work and you can’t have sex, you’re super depressed and you feel like your entire life is crumbling underneath you.
This is also not a way to teach our future generations. Your kids are seeing this. Your family, your friends, your partners, they’re seeing that this is okay, that you’re accepting this as okay.
So, Reed has something that he’s including as a free gift that we’re going to include for you. And also, if you’ve ever thought about becoming a health coach, obviously, like Reed said, we need you. We need people to step up like Dr. Cat and I are doing in this world to empower you to realize that there is something bigger and better inside of you that just wants to be turned on, so you can also be turned on in the bedroom.
So, we’ll leave you with that. Reed, thank you so much for being here today. Any final closing thoughts, Dr. Cat?
Dr. Cat: No… meow!
Dr. Reed: We all want to see some good done in the world, but we’re seeing to it that some good is done in the world. So, keep up the good work.
Diane: Thank you, Reed. Thank you for everything. Big, huge virtual hug.
And all of our lovers out there, never forget that sex matters.
Dr. Reed: Amen to that!
Diane: Cool!
Closing: Thanks for tuning in, lovers. Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel. You can find out more about our guests and topics from our show by checking out CatMeyer.com or DianeKazer.com.
Until next time! Don’t forget to nourish your sex life.
