Debunking the Menstrual Cycle and Hormone Imbalance with Dr. Scott Resnick | Part 2
On this week’s episode we continue our conversation with Dr. Scott Resnick. He provides actionable steps for women to take if they’re experiencing hormone imbalance, even from the privacy of their own home. If you have any confusion surrounding progesterone, estrogen or other issues surrounding women’s reproductive health this episode is for you!
Meet Dr. Resnick:
Dr. Scott Resnick is formally trained in general surgery and obstetrics and gynecology, and has committed his professional career to the practice and teaching of functional medicine.
Some Topics We Discussed:
How can you tell if you are ovulating properly? (5:58)
What are some important tests to run to see if you’re ovulating well? (9:04)
What should you do if your progesterone is low? (12:48)
What if your cortisol levels are high? (17:18)
What happens if you are estrogen dominant? (22:09)
What supplements are recommended for women to have healthy cycles? (27:27)
Key Takeaways From This Episode:
The first thing that's absolutely critical for a woman's hormonal and menstrual health is appropriate thyroid function. The other thing that I think is absolutely critical is understanding your cortisol and your stress response. (7:46)
If your doctor sends you for labs without knowing what part of your cycle is on, you will have very different results depending on the time of your cycling and you may not get an accurate picture. (11:55)
You can't manage what you can't measure. (15:08)
We live in a society where women are estrogen dominant. (21:57)
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Get Social With Dr. Resnick:
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Brian Strickland 00:43 Hi, everyone, you're listening to the holistic navigator podcast where we believe in the body's ability to heal itself. My name is Brian Strickland and I'm the producer of the show. And you're about to hear part two of our conversation with Dr. Scott Resnick. Dr. Resnick is a functional medicine physician, formally trained in general surgery in obstetrics and gynecology. And on this episode, we're talking about some practical steps to help women alleviate hormone imbalance. Thank you so much for tuning in. And without further delay, here's the host of your show, Ed Jones.
Ed Jones 01:18 Thank you again, Brian. And here we are in the second segment of a podcast, we've actually only done this one other time. And we have so much information from my good friend, Dr. Scott Resnick, who has a great history of medical training and experience. And again, welcome to The Holistic Navigator. Dr. Resnick,
Dr. Resnick 01:39 Thank you, it is so nice to be here. As always, I enjoy our conversations.
Ed Jones 01:43 You and I could talk probably for three hours every day and do a podcast but you know, I've got to work for a living, do other things. And also, you know, you are moving away, but that doesn't, that's not going to disconnect us. We're going to be continued to do these kinds of podcasts with you. You're a partner along the path for the rest of my life, I can assure you and I hope you feel the same way. We just you know, previous podcasts again, I said which I know for a fact and 41 years of you know, hoping that I'm helping other people by educating them on the tools of health and why do we get sick and what can we do to be not only free of illness but to be optimally healthy. Optimal health is different than average health and average is walking around at 50 years old you know with aches and pains and fatigue and no stamina blank, blank, blank depression, all this stuff. Well, optimal requires you to have tools. How do you get the tools? Education. And I used to say this all the time on this podcast, I put people into two classes of, of groups these days, one of which is what I call learners and one of which is non learners. The only people who will prosper in the field of health will be the learners because conventional methods are destroying the ability to be optimally healthy. Yes, if I'm in a car wreck, I have a heart attack, a terrible UTI give me conventional, it's all wonderful. I'm not going to go into the health store and try to fix a broken leg with a bone product. I want good stuff at hospitals. But that is not what we're dealing with here we're dealing with what most people have, which is chronic illness or chronic issues. And one of which is the female population is epidemic with all of this issues of hormones, menstrual problems, excessive bleeding, that can't be stopped. And you know, immediately surgeries done and they remove all their body parts and you know, then we have foggy thinking we have weight gain, we have all the symptoms of pre and post menopause. And so Dr. Resnick with his great history of well, I'll tell you what you tell us what your history is in the medical field.
Dr. Resnick 03:58 My history met in the medical field as having done postgraduate training after medical school in general surgery. And then I followed up with a full ob gyn residency and practice as a obstetrician gynecologist for a number of years and then realized that I was actually beginning to get my patients healthier by using more non traditional means. And that would be the inclusion of Mind Body practices, of modifying diet and then incorporating the use of nutrients and herbs into my practice as well. So in our in our first discussion, we actually briefly looked at a really important relationship, which is the relationship of estrogen and progesterone. Remember, progesterone is the progestational hormone, and in a healthy cycle, it should rise up in the second half of the cycle. So once we realize that in a normal menstruating woman in the in the reproductive years will say maybe between 17 to 35, because really, when you start talking about postmenopausal medicine, that's really a whole different topic to really get into, but in the reproductive years when we start seeing problems with weight gain with hormonal, and menstrual abnormalities, we have to remember that in a normal cycle, the estrogen peaks twice in the course of the month and the first and then in the second half of the month. And then progesterone is almost immeasurable in the first part of the month, and then it rises up in the second part of the month. And in the first podcast, we discussed that, in my clinical practice, if a woman comes in and says, Hey, Doc, I have a period every 28 days like clockwork, three days before my cycle, I start getting breast tenderness, craving pasta and feel kind of poochy in the belly. I don't do any kind of hormonal measuring on her because she's telling me right offhand that she's having normal fluctuations of not only estrogen and progesterone, which are made by the ovaries in the adrenal glands, but also of her cortisol and her thyroid, because these are important components of what we need to assess and for a woman's overall health. So what we are hoping to do in this podcast, I think, was try to give a few actionable things that that that the listeners could could do in the privacy of their own homes, to try to get a sense of how they are. And and really, for me, I think that I'm a big fan of clinical medicine, you know, if you don't need to go out and spend money, how to test I mean, if you can take your pulse, or you can measure your basal body temperature in the morning, that's going to give you a lot of information. So the first question that I would ask if any woman who has abnormal cycles is question number one, are you ovulatory? Question number two is really are you ovulatory but what we're going to do is we're going to get into some other things that we could look at that would help to give a little bit of insight into that. So are you ovulatory? Well, I would say just start by asking yourself the question, do I have predictable monthly cycles. And then you can augment that by saying do I have a temperature surge in the middle of the month. So a woman who is obvulatory, around a 12 to 14 to the month will have a surge of a hormone called Lh. And that contributes to a rise in her basal body temperature. So as you're trying to get a sense of, am I having normal ovulatory cycles if you're not having a rise of your body temperature of one degree in the mid part of your cycle, and again, I would check this by getting a decent digital thermometer, put it by your bedside along with your reading glasses. And to check your your basal body temperature in the morning. I'm sure that there are apps that you can record this and then look at the graphs to see if you're having a temperature spike. Temperature spike, what we call moliminal all symptoms, which are the breast tenderness, poochiness, moodiness, mood changes, that would imply a normal cycle. But let's just say that you're not having normal cycling. I know that, that Ed through his through this podcast does make some of this testing available. So some of these things are available for you to examine in the privacy of your own home. The first thing that's absolutely critical for a woman's hormonal and menstrual health is appropriate thyroid function. The other thing that I think is absolutely critical is understanding your cortisol and your stress response. In the first podcast, we talked about the fact that there are a number of environmental stressors that actually contribute to dysfunction in a woman's cycling. And Ed, you refer to some of the common ones that are found in our pesticides, our foods and the plastics, these are these xeno estrogens or the endocrine modulating chemicals. But I think that a similarly strong, endocrine modulating chemical that's made by our own body is cortisol. So one of the main things that I think about when when I encounter that woman who's having problems with her menstrual cycling, is by asked the question, what is her thyroid status? And what is her cortisol status. And both of these can be measured. The other thing that we mentioned as well, which is critically important is knowing about your insulin levels and your degree of inflammation. So these are all measurable. What I want to do now is to just give a little bit of insight into how we can start to make some objective laboratory measurements to get a sense of where your hormones are. And there are some very good labs around the country. And you can find those through this podcast that offer at home testing. So let's just say you want to know is there objective measurable evidence of my body ovulating well? What I would do is I would start on day one of your cycle Day One is the day when a woman really begins to start having bleeding, count 18 to 20 days in your cycle, and then check what is known as a progesterone level. Progesterone is the hormone of ovulation and you're gonna want that to be over a level of five. And as that number goes up, women tend to be have better ovulatory patterns. The other hormones that are typically timed around the menstrual cycle, but typically are not checked if a woman is having problems with abnormal bleeding are done on day three of the cycle. And those hormones test FSH, which stands for follicle stimulating hormone that's kind of the the hormone that tells the follicles in the ovary to start growing. And typically, estrogen is more measured at this time as well. But these are really used more for infertility. I really think that in respect to making self measurement to get a sense of where you are, I think the day 18 to 20, progesterone would be recommended. There are some great labs where you can actually do just a little at home fingerstick tests and put a spot of blood on a card and send it into the lab. Remember, the numbers that you want to see are greater than five to 10, for progesterone on day 18 to 20 of the cycle. I also alluded to the fact that measuring thyroid and cortisol might also be important. So I think that we can wanted with that to kind of say, what are some actionable things that we could we could do today, or some recommendations that we can make to actually help women on this path of really whole body health, because I think that when a woman is really truly healthy, it's reflected in her menstruall cycling. And it makes sense that if you're a human animal, and you're starving, and you're inflamed, and you're under stress, and your tribe has been attacked now for six straight months, and you're looking at having to go with your tribe across the desert, because you can't find food anymore, that's probably not the time to have a nice ovulatory cycle and across that desert with an extra 35 pounds of weight on your body. So it makes sense that as stress and starvation and inflammation become greater that the female human responds with more dysfunctional menstrual cycling. So I think that absolutely essential to, to working with a woman who is having some struggles is to ask those questions.
Ed Jones 11:32 Well, again, you are the magician because you understand so much more than the average person. And I know that you know, you said day 18 would be the great time to test for the progesterone levels. And what wonderful information. I do feel right now I can almost sense some people listening women who say, well, I'll get my doctor to do that. It isn't working well, when that happens. Is it Dr. Resnick?
Dr. Resnick 11:55 I would say I'm absolutely shocked by the by the number of women's healthcare specialists and I mean board certified gynecologist who when a woman comes into their office and says I'm having some abnormal bleeding says we'll send you to the lab and get some lab work. If your doctor is doing that pause, because if you're on day 18 to 20 of your cycle, well, that might be just the time to get your lab work done. But if you're on any other day of your cycle, you're not going to get a an idea of the relationship between these hormones. So it's really It never ceases to amaze me how often I see people of my own boarded specialty, who aren't making these subtle distinctions in terms of recognizing just that the the female menstrual cycle has two peaks of estrogen, one of the first one and the second half of the cycle, and a second half of the cycle peak of progesterone and progesterone is really the hormone you want to measure to get a sense of how well you're ovulating
Ed Jones 12:48 Well, okay, that and again, say the person has done this. They they they're getting we're like, again, what you can go to the Holistic Navigator under products in order all this bloodwork under direct labs, or under Thorne for saliva. And let's say that they now see that their progesterone is pretty dismal. And they're a 40 plus year old woman, still having cycles, but it's slow, what would be some options for them?
Dr. Resnick 13:12 Now, I wouldn't be surprised if this this person that you mentioned maybe early 40s, she's putting on a little bit of weight, she sees that her libido is going down, might even be plucking a few extra hairs out of her chin. And these are some of the constellations that we see as as these things will begin to get out of whack. So in terms of treatments, I like to look at my patients in terms of short term treatments, as well as long term treatments. Now, there are a variety of different approaches that we could take in the short term. And I think one of the first things that we need to do that will be extended into the long term is looking at diet, looking at insulin, looking at inflammation and I know you've got a bunch of podcasts that are out there that are looking at all these different topics. The typical treatment is a typical woman goes into her primary care doctor or ob gyn she has arm abnormal bleeding the treatment is?
Ed Jones 14:09 Well, it's going to be either hysterectomy recommendation and or medically synthetic progesterone.
Dr. Resnick 14:15 That's correct. So typically, it's put the woman on some birth control pills. And when the birth control pills don't work, then there might be a surgical option that's required. And sometimes those can be little outpatient options like removal of the polyp or a small fibroid. Sadly, in the southeast, I see a lot of women get their uteruses and ovaries removed at young ages.
Ed Jones 14:35 Now you're saying the SE. So that's not common in other parts?
Dr. Resnick 14:38 I think it's more common in this part of the country where I did my training, which was out west. That might be another topic we discussed. So I think in terms of in terms of opportunities to to work with these patients, what I find is I find that if a woman is having menstrual abnormalities, and this is gets a little more complex, because as women get closer to the menopausal years we do start seeing more fibroids, more polyps. Oh, I mean, the first thing you have to do is if you're having abnormal bleeding, get a pap smear. I mean, let's just I mean, this is like, you know, there we can talk about natural medicines and natural treatments of cervical cancer and all this other stuff. But when it comes right down to it, I think we need to be good diagnosticians, because you can't manage what you can't measure. And that's why I'm recommending that we consider measuring thyroid, cortisol, progesterone. And I think you also need to measure the health of your cervical cells. So don't, don't pass on that. I mean, if you've been having abnormal bleeding, and you haven't had a pap smear for five years, don't come into Ed's store asking for help recommend you get in with your doctor or your nurse practitioner. But I find that in my patients, I basically wind up addressing three different aspects that can help women who are having abnormal bleeding. The first is optimizing their thyroid. And I have to say that boy, that's almost another podcast we can we can do together. I think that there are a lot of people out there that are for various reasons, in a relatively hypo thyroid state. Now, there's another great test that you can order online, you can measure your TSH, and your T3 and your T4 and in my clinical practice, if my patient's TSH is less than one, and her T3 is not in the upper, maybe third of the range. That's one of the first things that I'm going to do is is look for different interventions to try to get those those numbers up.
Ed Jones 16:24 Do you like the TSH to be under one?
Dr. Resnick 16:27 I think maybe point five to 1.5 is kind of the sweet spot for this this age group that we're talking about right now.
Ed Jones 16:32 And in conventional medicine, it would be over four before they would even start talking about this?
Dr. Resnick 16:37 Right. And when I see a TSH greater than four, I'm already starting to think about autoimmunity. So when I see a patient's TSH of 4.5, the next question I'm going to ask is does this patient have hashimotos?
Ed Jones 16:47 There you go. And I want to make it clear that it is one of the most unusual tests because TSH is an inverse relationship. So the higher the number goes means the less the thyroid is functioning. So some people look at it and think, Oh, it's great, because it's going up. No, it's not good because it's going up you want it to be like Dr. Resnick says, under a certain level and anything over two is questionable in my mind. Also, we in fact, I just did a podcast on thyroid about five podcasts ago. And we talked about this exact thing and it was an entire podcast on that. So continue on.
Dr. Resnick 17:18 But I just want to say that I still can almost see the face of the quote thyroid expert. 25 years ago when I was in medical school who said in front of a lecture room, thyroids easy, just get a TSH, if it's between point five and five, you're done, no more thinking. And I can't think of a piece of information which is more incorrect. Now I'm 22 years into my clinical practice. The next thing that we can measure and we can modify is cortisol. Cortisol is king. Cortisol is the hormone that directs our thinking, our heartbeats, our gut function, and our testicular and ovarian function. So if somebody is in a very, very high cortisol state, that's one of the things that we're going to need to address to help to help her with her mental cycling. Of course, there's our nutritional interventions as well. And as a foundation to working with patients, I need to know that they've got an omega three index, which is normal. This is basically a measurement of the healthy anti inflammatory fish or plant based oils that we get from our diet, I need to know that their magnesium is normal, and they're vitamin D. So in terms of intervening, I find that once we've basically worked on some of these other parameters, nutritional state, optimizing thyroid working on the cortisol, at this point, we can also work with some pharmacological intervention. Now the conventional intervention is birth control pills. And I want to commend Ed on using a really being careful about your use of words here, that you refer to what's called a progestin, or a projected and these are synthetic progesterone. What I like to do is, in my practice, if a woman is has low progesterone in the second half of the cycle has any number of these different symptoms that can be reflected in this this lower progesterone, I don't like to use a synthetic molecule to replace it, it just doesn't make sense to me. So I find that women respond very, very well with oral or transdermal progesterone. And again, this I'm being very distinct in saying that progesterone is a three dimensional electrical chemical molecule that has a very distinctive shape that's recognized by ourselves. Unfortunately, so to to ourselves recognize similar shapes that are found in the environment, one of the most common is being birth control pills. So I find in my patients that for the woman who has a progesterone driven dysfunction that's contributing to abnormal bleeding, we first need to look at the nutritional foundation. We then need to at least consider her cortisol, her thyroid and her insulin as we discussed today and in an earlier podcast. And then for treatment. I like using progesterone in the second half of the cycle. Remember, in our mind's eye we have a drawing of a 28 day cycle with two humps of estrogen and the first and second half of the cycle, and then the second half of the cycle a peak in progesterone that rises and drops over that 14 day half of the cycle. What I like to do is I like to mimic that with a bio identical progesterone. And let me tell you that that talk about a low hanging fruit and a a safe and easy, inexpensive intervention that really helps a lot of women to start feeling better is to get their progesterone back on track. What happens is it kind of works like a yin and a yang with the estrogen. So estrogen is a trophic molecule, it makes things grow. It makes things lush, feminine, deposits fat under our skin. Well, progesterone kind of keeps those things in check, so they don't go unregulated.
Ed Jones 20:38 Now, for the clarity of all this, you're saying bio identical that means that a physician or a health care practitioner would certainly need to be knowledgeable in this area. This is not conventional recommendations. Normally, what is the name of the conventional progesterone so that women, if they're taking it and they're confused, would know Well, this is not bioidentical. How would they know this?
Dr. Resnick 21:02 Well, there are any number of different ways. One way to say it would be to say if it doesn't say progesterone in it, it's not progesterone. These are the some of the names that one might hear. I mean, if it's in a birth control pill is synthetic. I can guarantee you, if it is in one of the intrauterine devices that are impregnated with progesterone, it's synthetic. If it's a shot you're getting every three months. It's synthetic. Now, I think that what's interesting is this is even in the contemporary medical literature, I still see scientific articles being published where the title of the article could say, estrogen does this or that, and they're referring to a molecule known as ethanol estradiol. Again, ethanol estradiol to estrogen it is a synthetic estrogen.
Ed Jones 21:57 And without getting off in another big conversation, we are dealing with a country of women who are what we call estrogen dominant and correct, what can you give us a minute explanation?
Dr. Resnick 22:09 So that's going to guide people back to that little mental image we have of the second half of the cycle. So basically, there are two peaks of estrogen and progesterone. And when a woman's progesterone rises appropriately, they these peaks of estrogen and progesterone rise together. If the progesterone doesn't rise, then what happens is there is a basically a dominance of estrogen relative to progesterone. So remember, we mentioned it's kind of like a yin yang. Just imagine drawing and drawing Yin Yang, we're one half of the yin yang takes up 80% of the drawing, and the other half takes up 20% of the drawing. That's, that's out of balance. So that's what we see exactly that's contributing to the state of estrogen dominance. So when a woman gets into a state of estrogen dominance just a minute ago, I mentioned that some of them, the effects of estrogen are to make things grow. So what do we see growing? We see the lining of the uterus grow in an unregulated way, and then it can shed oftentimes, more heavily might be a really heavy period, we see the fat cells under the skin beginning to grow, we see a woman's breast size or cup size beginning to increase as well. Because if we think go back to age, eight to 12, when a woman is first starts to go into puberty. What happens?Her hips grow, her breasts begin to grow, her uterus begin to grow. So So estrogen is a trophic hormone, it basically causes growth that causes water retention. And these are some of the symptoms we see in the state of estrogen dominance, then we start to get into some of the other effects of estrogen dominance that affect mood, that effect thinking I can tell you that one of the common symptoms, I see it a woman who is really estrogen dominance is irritability. Hmm.
Ed Jones 23:44 Okay, and weight gain and weight gain. And it's kind of the bloated weight gain sometimes, and it's almost like impossible for them to shed this weight, even if they're making some decent habits like going to the gym and such. Because I hear this every day I'm doing I'm trying to do everything right, I'm not losing, I only lost three pounds, you know, in three months, but you can't really lose a lot of weight if you have to me if you have two things going on your estrogen dominant and your insulin successive because insulin's job is to store food for later, you can look at a pack of crackers and gain weight. Again, you know, and I think you would agree with this. It's kind of like a tree with you know, all these leaves on it. And also the tree has all these roots. Well, you can't really help the tree if it was struggling with health by looking and treating the leaves. You have to go the route and you kept saying the same thing that I know for a fact which is we also have to look at thyroid and cortisol continuously. And again, I know people listening are saying I don't want to do all this. I want someone who can help me and me not really think about it. Well, there were your group of people are growing Dr. Resnick, as you know, functional medicine practitioners, they are the people who you have to access. You can't do this through normally your conventional medical people. And I will always try to be kind as far as sometimes I can get on a rant about the sick care system. But the thing is, the people in our health care sick care system are good people, they're in a broken system, and they have to play the game the way it's designed, or they get kicked out. So it's not the individual doctor or nurse or practitioners always their fault. There's some of that responsibility has to fall on them. Because like you, you saw some light and you were brave enough to step out and learn, learn learn on your own, because you're not being taught this in normal medical school. Obviously, correct.
Dr. Resnick 25:32 I've spent 1000s and 1000s of hours sitting on my backside, opening up my biochemistry book, getting on the internet to see what the the current literature is showing. And speaking to the internet, let me just put, put it in a little plug right now I, I built up a website over the last year, that is scottresnickmd.com. The reason I'm mentioning it is because I published what I'm really proud of, it's an E book that is really focusing on stress. But what it does is it gets into some of these relationships. And if you go to the chapter word that looks at insulin and thyroid and cortisol, it really helps to bring to light how all of these systems work together. Because I really believe that when our thyroid, our cortisol, our insulin, our inflammation, and our nutritional states are out of kilter. It doesn't surprise me when a woman comes in with abnormal bleeding, or on the flip side when a man comes in with low testosterone. So I just want to say that this website is totally non commercial. There's nothing for sale, there are no affiliate links. It is just purely informational. Great ebook. Check it out. But it'll help people to really understand how thyroid cortisol and insulin work together, because Ed you alluded to the fact that really, at the end of the day, our body is geared to hold on to energy. There was probably a time before the 24 hour McDonald's and 24 hour Publix and stores open all the time, when we were we were subjected to periods of feast and famine. So the human physiology is really built to when we get an extra calorie, we get a little extra food, we want to put it on, we want to store it, and that's insulin's job. But what happens was our body wasn't developed to have a lifetime filled with environmental stressors, emotional stressors, the wrong types of food, and excessive calories. This is when the machine starts to break down.
Ed Jones 27:27 Absolutely. And, you know, I've seen it for 41 years, when the machine is breaking down, and you only treat the symptoms you are going to perhaps hide and you're going to relieve the way that your negative feelings are but it's going into hiding is not fixing, and it will rear its ugly head at a certain point. And if you can, and you know you mentioned it, there's a core program that we know almost every single woman nutritionally should have, once we've addressed the healthy elimination of big chunk of processed foods, and we think about the sleep issues. What would be the core supplements that you would recommend for most patients,
Dr. Resnick 28:07 I would say that I've always been a big proponent of my core four, and they almost perfectly overlap with your so my core four because I measure these and I see that people across the boards are deficient. People are deficient in magnesium. So if you're going to check your magnesium, be sure to check what's called a red blood cell magnesium and not a serum magnesium. This reflects basically our tissue stores. The other thing that I recommend that everyone should have checked is an omega three index. And again, this is another test that is available online. It's the fingerstick tests, and it measures the percentage of your healthy anti inflammatory fat in your cell membranes. The third thing that I think everyone needs as part of my core four is vitamin D. And we see deficiencies in vitamin D across the board. Again, this can be measured in the privacy of your own home. And I recommend trying to get your vitamin D level between 50 and 70. Now my departure from Ed in terms of my my final component of the core four is I recommend that people use psyllium husk on a regular basis. Now this is a non digestible fiber. It's commercial use as a thickener, and you can go to any supermarket and just get some psyllium. I recommend against using Metamucil. I don't think you need to be using something which is flavored and colored. I use this the psyllium that comes in kind of looks like the old fashioned Quaker Oats container, this little cardboard container. And what it is, is it's fiber. Fiber is critically important, important for any number of different things from detoxification pathways, to maintaining the health of our microbiome, and to maintaining the health of our immune system. And this is something that I think we could almost do a whole podcast on actually but so my big four once again, our omega threes, magnesium, vitamin D and fiber.
Ed Jones 29:51 I love that and the only thing I would add to that is I know with high cortisol. A huge fan of the ashwagandha used twice a day has been shown to cortisol levels. Now, I did do a podcast about three weeks ago on my personal protocol supplement plan. And it's kind of crazy. When I discuss it in there, I'm certainly not saying everyone at no one needs to take all the things I'm doing. I'm a self appointed guinea pig. And I love the fact that I am. I've kind of appropriated myself to that. But you do have to do a certain amount I want to make one comment. And, and most people don't know this Dr. Resnick, I don't expect anybody else to because I spent 35 years on knowing this. But psyllium is in the same class as cotton, they can spray psyllium with every chemical known to man, far greater than any food because it's not falling into the same. So please get organic, we actually did not carry or offer organic until about three years ago, because I had no clue was so heavily sprayed.
Dr. Resnick 30:53 I have to agree with you on that one. I do when I send my patients out, I tell them to go to some of the more well known food stores that we have in this country without promoting anyone by name, you can find organic psyllium, it's going to cost you all of $1.50 more than the container of nonorganic psyllium. My preference for using psyllium is I put about a couple ounces of pulp free pineapple juice into a glass, I put in about another six ounces, eight ounces of water, I put in my psyllium. I'm up to about a tablespoon and a half a day, I recommend that people start and maybe a half of a teaspoon or a teaspoon a day. And this has been part of my protocol for the last 10 years of my life. And you will have all the benefits of the psyllium. And I will guarantee you that your bowel function will regulate over time.
Ed Jones 31:38 And the thing is, when they look at tribes across the world, they're consuming somewhere between 50 and 80 grams of fiber a day. They literally have no no diverticulitis, they have so much less colon cancer, their lipid levels are healthier, all of this is based on this fiber that they're getting from their natural environment, we don't have the access quite as much as we would be if we lived in a jungle. So we have to sell them with fiber. Now I do it with chia and flax. And but any of these are going to feed the microbiome. In fact, one of the best podcasts I ever did was with Brenda Watson who was on PBS for years talking about exactly what you said Dr. Resnick about psyllium and the fiber and how it feeds this good bacteria. And that is a key door health. We both understand that, you know, health begins and ends in the colon. Hippocrates said that again, hundreds of years ago. And you know, you can take all the probiotics you want. And I'm a huge fan of that. But the thing is, if you don't have the right fiber, they're gonna die quickly because fiber is like the food for them. And it's a prebiotic, and I think if we're, you know, not been exposed to antibiotics for a long time, we almost could get by with just doing the fiber if you're doing some kind of cultured foods like sauerkraut and other things. So I you know, we've covered so much I know that the ladies who are listening who have issues or have family members with issues are going to probably replay this a second time because you what you've done is you've first off in the first podcast, you gave a great explanation that so few people know even many women don't understand the real physiology of what we're talking about it with their own bodies. And secondly, on this podcast, you've given a game plan you did the core products that we really know has to be addressed. And then secondly, understanding the fact that we are a complex being. We're not your computer where somebody can pull and put one little new software program in or another little piece and it's fixed. We are the tree with the roots and exposed to everything. And it's a complex puzzle, but it is an impossible, and we have the ability to do so much today on our own. So if a person will clean up their diet, take the supplements, start thinking about their stress levels, order some blood tests, or get a functional medicine person to do that, the future is bright and hopeful. And the thing is, we all have windows of opportunity for healing. Don't let it go too long, because there is a point of no return. But the body is so resilient. But we need wisdom, we need information, we need so you know this kind of toolbox in order to get to the right place. In fact, you know, and I'm not cutting down conventional medicine, but I love the quote by Upton Sinclair, who was part of the era of the despicable meat industry back when it was throughout the jungle, your eyes, right. And you know, this kind of applies to a lot of industries, but a lot of it is medical it is and he said this so long ago, you know, it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it. And it is so true of conventional medicine because you know, you can create a great income by playing the game. But there are there are some people who are like super brave heroes to me, you're one of them because you stepped out of the box but you're not crazy out of the box. You can you help both areas of knowledge and wisdom together and you express it unbelievably, I want you to give your website one more time before we end this Dr. Resnick.
Dr. Resnick 35:14 it is ScottResnickMD.com. And I just want to say before I think a nice post script to this was we started this discussion a couple podcasts ago, really saying what is the purpose of the menstrual cycle, it's really to reproduce. That's the purpose of that. And as you were telling about your metaphor of the tree of thinking about the roots and the healthy trunk and the beautiful weaves, I thought about one more step, which is the healthy tree bears bears fruit. So I think that's sort of a nice metaphor to wrap up with these discussions that we've had. So these are steps if your body's working well your tree is well supported, you are fertilized and watered and have plenty of sun and your earth and everything is going well. You'll bear fruit in a female population that is reflected in her menstrual cycling.
Ed Jones 36:00 That is beautiful and bearing fruit also has to do with that I'm just thinking of living a joyous contented life that so many of us seem to be struggling for and to help create this balance will will be what will produce the fruit of healthy children and healthy lives. So thank you Dr. Resnick. So much for coming in. This as you know, will not be the last time that you and I will interact on some level. And remember, like I always say if a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm. A pocket please long ago. Thank you, Ed Jones, The Holistic Navigator. Please subscribe, rate and review. That is how we continue to grow and we are growing. Thank you everyone.
Brian Strickland 36:44 The information on this podcast and the topics discussed have not been evaluated by the FDA or anyone of the medical profession and is not aimed to replace any advice you may receive from your medical practitioner. The holistic navigator assumes no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any purchaser or reader of these materials. The holistic navigator is not a doctor nor does he claim to be please consult your physician before beginning any health regimen.