How Hormones Drive Your Cravings, Energy Crashes & Emotional Eating | TMOHP Episode 190

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Today, I have a great interview to share with you. This episode is for you if you have ever found yourself wondering, why are things so hard or so different now? Especially when it comes to food or energy, or just feeling like yourself. Today, I am joined by Dr. Beth Westie. She is a functional medicine practitioner, a chiropractor, and a bestselling author who is on a mission to rewrite the rules about women's health and hormones.

Dr. Beth specializes in helping women navigate the hormonal shifts of perimenopause and menopause and your cycle. And she's here to break down what's really happening in your body. How hormones impact things like cravings, willpower, and burnout, and what you can actually do to support yourself without adding more stress or pressure.

This is a fun and empowering conversation. I think you're going to see that we got along really well and I can't wait for you to hear it.

Dr. Beth Westie, I am so glad that you are joining us. We've got so many questions. I feel like on a coaching call, hormones come up at least once wherever you are in your stage of life. And so thank you for joining us.

 I could go in about 12 different directions, but let's, why don't we just start with some grounding. Tell me about your background and tell me about how you came to be in functional medicine, what's the journey been for you that led you to where you are today?

Dr. Beth Westie: Yeah, so, um, you know, quick, quick, overall background for me. I grew up in Minnesota. I still live in Minnesota. I grew up on a goat farm. I was a three-sport athlete in high school, played volleyball in college and then, um, went to chiropractic school.

I was a pre-med student, but chose to be more in the natural health side, so I chose chiropractic. That was a really great fit for me. And while I was finishing up my undergrad, I also got my massage therapy degree or certification. You know, it's not quite a, yeah certification started grad school and when I was in grad school, I had, you know, just some different things.

You know, it's tough to be in school. And then I actually had my first two kids while I was in school. Not an, not an easy thing, not, not an easy thing to do, not something I would recommend for most people. I, I was there with you. I had one, but yes.

Yeah, I, it was, you know, life just happens sometimes. Like, of course, me and my husband, we'd always like planned on having children and I was like, well, guess it's happening now. So, um, but it was just a, you know, a very, a lot of stress associated with it. You know, very busy schedules, sleepless nights, studying final board exams, all the things. Um, got through that.

And then I graduated and bought a clinic, bought a small clinic. And then within a month of purchasing a small clinic found out I was pregnant again. And she was more, my youngest was born, um, actually two months early. So she was, so, I had a preemie, a 2-year-old, 4-year-old, and a business that was not even a year old and was not doing well.

I'm going to be honest, I, it was really a struggle. And that was also something where I was like, I'm trying everything. I was working, you know, 60, 70-hour weeks. You know, sometimes late, late at night after the babies would go to bed. All the things.

And it was after, you know, so after she was born and everything else, and I started getting my cycle back again i, I started getting ovarian cysts. So this was really the starter point of all of this. Where I started getting frustrated and realizing, even though I was in practice, you know, working, doing all these things as healthy as I was trying to be.

Eating really clean. I cut alcohol, cut sugar, taking all these supplements, doing all this stuff, like randomly. Every month I would get an ovarian cyst and it would burst. So I would be treating patients and I would have to run out of the room because I could feel the pressure build and then it would burst and I'd be on the floor for 10 minutes trying to not vomit all over the place. It was, it was not a fun time. And that occurred for a year and a half straight. Like every month a cyst.

And I went into different appointments. I went in, you know, to my regular ob. I went into, like, at one point my husband dragged me into the er because he was like, you can't get off the floor, there's something wrong. Maybe it's an appendix. I was like, it's not my appendix, it's a cyst, you know.

And they kept trying to push birth control at me. Birth control and Vicodin birth control and Vicodin. And I was like; this is not an answer for me. Like I have side effects from the pill. There's certain birth control forms that I'm not a candidate for. So I was really limited on what I could do. But my biggest question every time was, why is this happening?

Like I, I didn't have these issues before. I didn't have cysts before. I had a child. No cysts. I had a second child. No cysts. What's going on? Why is this? And no one had any answers except for your hormones are imbalanced. Right? Thank you. Captain obvious like, and, but there was nothing.

So I remember there was one visit I had with a specific ER doctor, and it was so infuriating to deal with him because I was like, just I need to understand more about this.

Why is this happening? What's going on? And what can I actually do about it? And he was like, if you're not going to take your birth control and Vicodin, then we can't help you. Wow. And I was like, he was like, you're just refusing like I was being difficult or something. I was like, I'm asking more questions.

And so like leaving there, I went home and I just was up literally all night. Like 2:00 AM and I'm like furiously diving into different, you know, modalities. Diving more into, and this is when I actually got additional, because I was already certified in acupuncture in Chinese medicine, but I got additional certifications then with fertility and hormonal issues for women in Chinese medicine.

And then started looking into Ayurvedic medicine and things like that. And I was like, oh, okay. Okay. Eastern Medicine views the female body very differently and leans into how our system shifts throughout the month. And I'm not doing any of that. I might have a hormonal imbalance, but I'm not doing anything to support my hormones or to correct that imbalance at all. I'm just pushing through.

So that's really. The biggest point, I mean a lot of people get started in their journeys from a point of pain, and that's absolutely where I was. Real physical pain and then absolute mental pain with the frustration of dealing with the system. So I started diving into it, started learning more about working with my hormones.

I started eating for my cycle. I did some hormone detox stuff, very basic at the time. And started noticing improvements. And kept going with it. And then I like it worked for me. I started having patients that would come in and they'd be like, oh yeah, I have those. Or, oh yeah, this or this. And literally week to week I'd like write down, okay, eat these foods this week.

I'd write it on a scrap of paper and be like, okay, do these things this week and come back next week and I'll give you a different piece of paper. And it just kind of builds built from there. And then at, you know, to a point where I had so many people coming in for this where I was like, okay, I'm going to write a book on this. I'm going to talk more about this.

And it's about 10 years ago now. I sold my clinic and jumped full-time into what I do now. So doing hormone testing, you know, virtual health. And, and learning and teaching more women and, and having them learn more about their own bodies and their hormones. So that they don't have to be stuck in that same spot forever.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: yeah. I am so struck by the parallels around the work that I do. And we've talked about this, but, but around listening to your body. Getting curious about what is going on. Not accepting a one size fits all solution if it doesn't fit you. And, and how the system and how the, the, the structures that we've been taught traditional medicine teaches us to, to ignore all and disrespect all of those things, right?

You're just supposed to follow the protocol, somebody else's protocol. Anyway, I, I'm totally struck by that. But I want to make sure we talk about the stuff that people are really curious about. Right.

So I work with so many high achieving women who are incredibly frustrated because mm-hmm. It feels like, and at different stages of life, but it feels like they had something that worked for their energy, for their eating and it stopped working. Yeah. And they've learned all these things. Their head is so full of all this information.

Their, their brain is just like frothing with stuff that they know that doesn't work. Can you talk about the role that hormones play? Whether, and I know this is a big, huge question. But whether it's during pregnancy or, uh, perimenopause or menopause or just for women, the role that hormones play. And how it can be that it is not you. Right?

Like, because we blame ourselves, right? Yeah. It stops working. I must not be trying hard enough. I don't have as much energy, right? I must, I must need to do X, Y, and Z, all the solutions always end in this longer to-do list. Yep. And I would love to hear you talk about like, what do we know, what do we need to know about hormones. And what, why do you believe having a hormone focused approach is so important?

Dr. Beth Westie: Yeah.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Yeah.

Dr. Beth Westie: There's, there can be different layers to this, but one of the basic things that I see is that someone say, you know, throughout their late twenties, early thirties, you know, career focused, very driven. Doing all the things. And your body can keep up with this really high output of achieving, doing, et cetera. Do you know what I mean?

It has an internal wear and tear. If you're not taking breaks, if you're not listening to your body and you're pushing through like so many of us who all the time, right, and at some point, there's something that just can't keep up anymore. So you keep thinking, I'm doing this thing, I have this input. Why isn't the output the same?

Because the machine has now changed, right? Like the, the, the gears are, are not turning at the same speed anymore. Instead of ignoring, you know, or instead of focusing on, okay, why aren't those gears turning correctly? I'm putting the same thing in, right? Like, I'm putting the same gas in the car. Why doesn't it drive as fast?

There's something wrong with the engine, right? Oh, well, let me look at the car. Let me take it in. And you take it in and they're like, oh, clean the windshield. Your windshield's dirty. That's going to help a ton. You know, like, are we ignoring the problem in the engine? It's not clicking correctly. It's not aligning correctly. Something's really off.

Let me just put more gas in. Oh, I can't drive it. It won't, you know it. It's not giving me the right speed. What the heck? But keep looking at the gas Going in is not going to get you anywhere. The machine changes and I think we forget that. We expect ourselves to a lot of this is because a lot of health, and especially in this country, is just, it's, it's off of a male model, right? It's a male model. The studies are done on, men, historically, pharmaceuticals, medical industry, all this stuff.

There's a great book called Doing Harm by Maya Duns Barry that goes into this. And even research on cells and animals. They're all on male animals and male cells. So that you can do research faster and get results faster because women have a hormone fluctuation that impacts the results that you would get. So we expect,

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Wait, I want to just make sure we just absorb that, right? Yeah.

We're going to, we're not going to study women because there are these fluctuating hormones, which is the reality for women, which is what we need to understand.

Dr. Beth Westie: That's how it's one of the things, sorry. Side note, one of the things when I was reading. The first time I read Maya's book, I literally threw it across the room. No joke. because I was like, you've got to be broken me on this. Come on. They were talking about doing, it was a study for heart health and how women go through menopause and have higher rates of heart disease after going through menopause.

Not age related, not, you know, exercise or diet related, literally hormone related. So they were like, let's do a study on this. And so they did a study where they added HRT to see the impact of heart disease. Now the study, I believe, was on over 8,000 participants. All of those participants were men.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: If you're not watching this, if, if you're listening to the audio, you need to know that my jaw just literally dropped.

Dr. Beth Westie: Yeah. Yeah. This is not a joke. This is for real. They do this all the time. They study things, oh, we want to see the impact of HRT, we want to see the impact of this or that, and they do the studies on men that are 140 pounds, and they consider that equivalent to a female body.

That'd be like saying, we want to study prostate cancer. We're going to do it all on women. Right? We don't have. Sorry, I'm getting sweaty right now. Okay. Talking about it. So this is how, but, so if you're wondering like what the heck is like, I, I like to start at the beginning of this. Why are we all so frustrated? Why is this a story that we've heard over and over and over again?

It's not you. You're not crazy. This happens to just about every woman. At some point, we make up 50% of the population and have for all existence. What's the problem? This is where it starts. We are not set up for success. In this fashion. Like we really have to get to a point where it's so painful and there's such an issue and you realize like, I'm doing all these things. What the heck is wrong with me?

We all internalize that. But really, yes, you're trying to exist in a system that was not set up to make you successful for, you know, you with your health. And leaning into your health and the overall shifts and changes that you go through month to month and then through different phases of your life.

You know, having kids postpartum, beyond that, perimenopause, uh, post menopause, all these different stages. Your body is very different and you need to lean into different nutrition, different lifestyle, different exercise. And when I say different lifestyle, sleep, rest, all that stuff changes. So, and it's not bad at all.

It is just totally different. If you're not, let's, let's, let's dig

Dr. Melissa McCreery: into that. Okay. Okay. Because I feel like, I feel like what I see so many women fall into is, and we're taught this by diet culture, we're taught this, is that if it's not working, I just need more self-control. I just need to, you know, I, oh, I'm going through perimenopause, so I need to eat even less. Right?

I remember I, I knew somebody. Yeah. Um, I used to work with, and she allowed herself a half a dove chocolate a day because, because she was in perimenopause. It's like, what? I mean, so we get into this thing about self-control and willpower. Yeah. And so many women think that they are failing or that they aren't getting the results that they want, or that things are harder or they don't have as much energy because they're not sticking with enough things. Right.

They're not doing enough. Right. Can you talk, let's, let's talk about, I, I would like to talk about midlife, if we can do that, but yeah. But how, how are hormones messing with energy and with cravings and with consistency? Yeah. What are things people need to know that they are not hearing?

Dr. Beth Westie: Yes. One of the big changes that happens, and this includes hormones and gut health and the combination and how they interact with each other, is that your body actually shifts how it processes certain nutrients like carbohydrates.

So it's not that you, oh, I'm eating wrong, or I can only eat this, or I can't eat fruit, or I'm terrified to eat, you know, a piece of bread or something like that. Your body just processes those carbohydrates, simple and complex carbs differently. And you need different macro nutrient support to help your systems sustain muscle strength, you know, muscle repair, bone health, all of that stuff.

So, especially in, you know, midlife and then creeping towards that perimenopause and menopause phase. That menopausal body, it's a different body that you live in. You know, the, the meat suit that you exist in has different functions than it did 10 years ago, 15 years ago. So by doing the same thing, you're actually having a depletion.

Nutrient depletion, micronutrients, macronutrients, things like that. You need more protein to do the same job that protein used to do. So that leads to and feeds into cortisol reactions. And women are way more sensitive to cortisol. Way more sensitive to cortisol. And that disrupts our microbiome sooner and faster and hard, and it's harder to come back from than a male body.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Are you saying? Are you saying women in general are more sensitive to cortisol or as you go through these

Dr. Beth Westie: hormonal and, and then the hormonal shift in change is an additional layer of cortisol response that you have to deal with. Okay. All of it. So we're, yeah, we're not set up for success with any of this.

And to say in midlife, if you're doing the same things that you did 10 years ago, you're actually doing your body a disservice because your new body that you're living in needs different things. Without those different things, you're actually going to have more fatigue. It's going to be harder to get restful sleep.

It's going to be harder to feel like you're repairing well from activities or workouts or things like that, which can also then lead to more brain fog and all, like all of these things. Oh, my hair's kind of falling out and, well, you're just getting older. Yes. It doesn't have to do with, yes. Oh my gosh.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: You're just getting older. It also leads to more sugar cravings, right? Yeah, yeah. You get the fatigue and then you're not sleeping well and you're not, and it's physiological. Okay? Yes,

Dr. Beth Westie: yes, yes. Your brain runs off of sugars, your brain runs off of carbohydrates, and when you are more stressed, don't sleep well.

All that stuff, it really impacts that. I have women that do, they do the thing where they're like, okay, I need to be active and I'm going to get on my regular routine and I'm, I'm going to stick with it. I'm going to wake up at 5:00 AM and get to the gym and do my workouts and dah, dah da da. Even if they woke up in the middle of the night and were up for an hour before they could get back to sleep, they still get up at five and work out.

Whereas actually that has a more negative stress response in your body than if you let yourself sleep in another hour. But we are told that nope, you didn't do your workout. That's what, that's what the problem is. You're not working hard enough. You have, yes. You need to work out more Now that I'm older.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Yeah.

Dr. Beth Westie: No, no. Your system needs more sleep. And if you get great sleep, then you can get up and do a big workout in the morning. Great. But if for some reason you didn't sleep well, you're actually doing, I'll call it more harm than good. By getting up and working out and forcing yourself to work out. because your muscle repair is not the same.

Your microbiome doesn't support, support the absorption of the nutrients it needs then.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: It's the same thing with emotional eating and overeating. I mean, I always tell people, if your sleep isn't good, that is the first thing we have to fix because everything else is an uphill battle. Yeah. And it's going to be harder and you're not going to be as effective.

Like sleep is magic. It really is. And it's free. Yeah, it's free. It's free. You don't have to pay a pharmaceutical company for it. Okay. I have a question about this. because the, okay, so we need more protein. Mm-hmm. I don't, okay. I, I want to know, are there other things as our body ages that we need to do or think about?

Sleep, protein.

Dr. Beth Westie: And stress. Stress. Okay. Stress, our cortisol response and everything else is very different. And part of this, I believe, is because women have been putting up with excess stress for so many decades already. Oh, we habituated to it.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Yes. We don't

Dr. Beth Westie: even know it. Yeah, right. It's the, um, what's the analogy?

The frog in the pot of water. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like water's almost boiling. It's not boiling. It's not bubbling yet. It's fine. No, no. It's still too hot. No,

Dr. Melissa McCreery: I, I am, and I work with Overfunctioners and what happens is you get so used to operating at 120 or 135%, you don't even know what a hundred percent is.

It feels like slacking. Yes. Right? Yes. So, okay. And I think this intersects with this question I have that I don't know. I don’t know if it's okay to ask, but my, I, I can click on one thing and then instantly my social media feed is filled with women obsessing around getting enough grams of protein. Mm-hmm.

Okay. And I get it. Like I notice a difference in my day to day if I don't get, and I'm not a big, yeah. I'm not a big meat. I just don't like it. It, I don't love it. Yeah. Um, and I notice a difference. I notice a difference that I didn't notice 10 years ago. Right. Um, however, I feel like you, when we get into this over-functioning, high achieving, and like, oh, I need to measure this and I need so many grams.

And it can, I mean, people talk, it takes up your life. Yeah. Do we have to do that? No. The pendulum sw think you were going to say that. I led you

Dr. Beth Westie: to

Dr. Melissa McCreery: that.

Dr. Beth Westie: Yeah. The pendulum swung too far in the other direction. Right? There is this, so here's the other thing too. When we look at this, do we need more protein overall?

Yes. You know, protein, pacing, all that stuff that can get you there. One simple thing that I recommend for people to get more protein, just to start, if you're like, okay, I know I'm eating a good breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I'm getting healthy nutrients and all that stuff. So I said, great. Add in a protein shake or a protein bar with your breakfast and your dinner.

Just, just start there. Like, just get a little bit more. Without counting, without at, without obsessing over it because the obsession over it is actually adding more of a negative stress to your system and everything else. And then keep in mind that this is overall a cumulative impact. So if you're doing more protein.

And you're like, shoot, I only got 80 grams today and I needed to get a hundred. Ah, I only got 120 and I wanted to get 130. That's okay. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't have to be exact. It's more of the cumulative buildup overall. And if you're like, well, I've been doing 80%, like 80% is good enough to get you a great result. And if you've been doing 80% for three months, you'll notice a huge change.

So be being perfect with it is not, not as helpful. Um, and there's different formulas that people use for how much protein Exactly. And all of that stuff. And I'm also a firm believer in it does shift and change. It can change. Your protein needs can change throughout the month and they can change throughout different phases of your life.

And then also, like if I don't sleep well and I had a really stressful day, I will focus more on proteins and fats. And get another serving of that in the next day just to offset things and support my system differently.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: So I think it's, I think it's so important to pay attention again, I'm just going to keep repeating myself.

Pay attention to my own body. Yeah. I'm the only one who's lived in it my whole life. Mm-hmm. Right. And be curious. It's, it's all an experiment and what, what used to work 10 years ago, and by work I don't mean. Like work. But what used to, what used to help me feel energized is different. Yeah. Yeah. And if I can just be interested and playful about it, I can notice, oh, you know what, I didn't have, I didn't have good protein at lunch, and I, I had this whole big slump in the afternoon.

That's, yeah. Helpful to know. Right. Yes,

Dr. Beth Westie: yes. And there's a lot of people now, I feel like they, they track with those CGMs or their blood sugar regulation throughout the day and all that stuff. And they'll obsess over, okay, I ate this for breakfast and my blood sugar did this. And then I had this for lunch and my blood sugar did this.

And yes, that can impact it, but again, overall it's your sleep and your stress levels that also impact your blood sugar regulations. So the more consistent you can be with that, the easier it is to just make sure you're getting, I want to say the basics. On some of that. So yeah, it's, it's a hard thing to have a good middle ground on.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Well, yes, and as, so there's, I love how you broke it down. So simple. Okay. Right. Stress, sleep. Notice what protein, how it works in your body, right? Yeah. And um, and isn't it interesting because I feel like most of us, all of us who've grown up in this culture have been indoctrinated by diet culture, excuse me.

And. To, in my mind, the main message of diet culture, it, it always brings us back to the food, right? Yeah. It's always about the food and so it's interesting. Yeah, there are these three big levers that you just talked about. But the message, I don't know about you, you probably get a more holistic one and your, but the message I get from the media, and I really try not to get hooked into that, is, is the food, it's the protein.

It's all about the protein. And the stress and the sleep kind of like live off in the background and they're huge.

Dr. Beth Westie: Yeah, huge, huge. Here's the thing is like sleep is so important and. And starting with your stress levels and things like that, it's so important that you can't out-supplement, not sleeping.

You can't eat clean enough to wipe out the fact that you go into a super stressful job every day. Like you're walking into the lion's den every day. That's okay. I'll just eat more protein that. Nope. Like,

Dr. Melissa McCreery: nope. Okay. We could just edit this down to that, what you just said there. That's the whole episode.

Dr. Beth Westie: No, but that's, that's really it. Oh, good. Yeah. So that Yeah, that's what, that's what it is. But we're told that, because of course you can't sell sleep, right?

Dr. Melissa McCreery: No, but supplements, man. Okay. So. What are some of, let's, let's go through what you see in your practice. What are some of the common possibly or probably hormone related symptoms or changes or shifts that you see?

In women that they are fault. How do, this is, I'm asking this in a really bad way. What are some, what are some common things that women are blaming themselves for typically? Yeah. That actually are probably related to hormone shifts or changes.

Dr. Beth Westie: Yeah. Um, so, uh, if we can talk about relationships with people, um, yes, please.

Women who have issues in their marriage. I see this very often. Women who, they're like, I, I don't feel right. I think something's off, or My hormones are messed up in some way. I can tell. But also, I am such a rage monster. I, me, me and my husband are, you know, trying to work on things or we're in therapy now, or we might get, get separated or something.

Like, it's impacting it so much where they're like. I don't know if it's my marriage, if it's him or if it's me. It's not clear. Something's really off. Right? And not that it's never him, right? I'm just going to say that sometimes it's him, you know. But it lets you really clearly see the forest from the trees when your hormones are not jumping all over the place. And your body doesn't feel like it's crazy.

Most of your hormones are processed by your liver. Through the liver gut pathway. Liver and especially in eastern medicine, um, is really impacted by anything that makes you angry, bitter, having too much stress, overwhelm, things like that. So if those are things that you're like, okay, this thing really made me upset at work, or whatever, wherever this thing made you upset and you didn't get a good outlet for that emotionally, that organ will internalize that emotion and then we'll start to not process your hormones well.

That means it comes out somewhere so certain times of the month. Or even getting into perimenopause or menopause where you're like, I feel like, again, I say rage monster. That's something someone else said to me. She's like, I, this thing happened and somebody dropped something and I screamed at them. I don't, I don't act like, I don't feel like that. I don't know why I did that. You know? I can't, like, oh my gosh, what's wrong with me?

It's not, it's your, your liver and your gut are not processing things well. By lifting the pressure off of that, by helping your liver process things well, by working with your gut process. You know, and, and you know, a lot of neurotransmitters, like serotonin is made in the gut, so we can improve that as well.

It changes so much. I've had husbands send me emails to say, thank you for giving me my wife back. You know, and it's like, oh, she just feels better. That's it. But that's one of the biggest things that I will see women get stuck, they get frustrated and they don't know what, where to go because there's so many things out there, there's so much information, it's completely overwhelming. And they're like, I, is it a marriage issue? Is it this issue?

And I always say, start with yourself. Make sure that you are feeling as best as you think you can. Feel like you wake up in the morning, you have good energy. Your digestive system works well. You can move throughout the day. Have good stress responses, good emotional responses. Get to sleep at night. Have great sleep and wake up again and do it again.

And then you know that anything else that you're handling, you know, it's, it's not going to be you, you are not the variable in that equation then.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: I, yeah, it's, and it's so important. Because it's not about, like you said, it isn't about saying, oh women, you're the cause of these relationship problems. Yeah. It's, it's again, going back to being curious and listening to yourself and when something doesn't feel, when you don't feel like yourself. Yeah. And stuff is coming out of your mouth and you're like, where is this coming from?

Or, this is not who I am, or I don't understand why I'm so upset about that. Having permission to be curious about it instead of, because what I think happens is the, instead of we feel guilty. Yeah, we blame ourselves or we just, you know, we try to make ourselves smaller because it doesn't come out right when we're trying or, but, and that exacerbates the whole cycle of stress and not being centered and not getting what we really need.

And it just. It becomes another vicious

Dr. Beth Westie: cycle.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Beth Westie: Yeah. There's, along with this, and kind of circling back to the sleep thing we were talking about. One of the things that I recommend for a lot of women that they're like, oh my gosh, no, I can't do that. That's not right. That's, I, I, that would be lazy if I did that.

I tell them to take naps in the afternoon. If I see a certain cortisol pattern on their hormone report. I'll be like, you know what? If you can schedule it, you know, if you come home from work and you're done at five o'clock or something. Or like even at work or whatever, wherever you can get it, close your eyes for 30 minutes, even if you don't fully fall asleep.

Let your brain reset. Let your body reset and start doing that. And it will change the rest of your evening because you're at work. You're doing so much all day, and then at the end of the day, you've already given everything. You are a burnt-out version of yourself coming home, and you don't have anything left to give to the loved ones in your life like.

That's what we're doing all this for. Right. You know what I mean? So if you can recharge yourself a little bit, it changes so much. So to be like, oh yeah, honey, I'm going to come home from work and I'm going to go lay down before I help with dinner, or do anything else. Yes, do that. That will change so much for you.

Right. And sometimes it's like, oh, that doesn't sound right. I know it sounds weird, but it really does make a huge positive impact overall, you know? Little things like that.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Little things, we are so indoctrinated to believe it has to be effortful. Right. Which again, for everything you're talking about, more effort, it doesn't sound like more effort is going to serve us.

Okay.

Dr. Beth Westie: Yeah. I mean, if you're making, if you're focusing on something specific, yes. But otherwise we think that we can outwork whatever the dysfunction is. Yeah, and that doesn't lead us anywhere. You know, it's like you're trying to ride a bike with flat tires. Let me just work harder. Mm-hmm. Tires are flat.

You're not getting anywhere.

Stop, rest. Pump up the tires.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: I love these metaphors. So eating for your cycle. What is, what is that?

Dr. Beth Westie: Yeah, so I talk about eating, and this goes along with, um, again, this is an eastern medicine thing, so this sounds very different than a lot of times what people think. You know, do we talk about clean eating or getting enough protein or all that stuff? Making sure you're not getting, you know, like garbage food, right? Everybody knows that already, right? This is, this is different.

So with someone who has an active cycle, like you still have a menstrual cycle. Day one is the first day of your period all the way through day 14 when you ovulate. That is right, the follicular phase. And then there's ovulation and then you have your luteal phase, um, where different hormones are dominant.

So in the first, you know, day one through day 14, this is a phase where estrogen is lower and then it starts to rise and it sort of peaks before, right before ovulation. Estrogen the main purpose of it in your system does very different things than progesterone.

Um, and at that time as well, your basal body temperature is actually low. So if you've ever tracked your temp body temperature for, usually people only track it for fertility reasons, right? But it's also really helpful to understand more about your own system. So basal body temperature is lower than right after ovulation, your basal body temperature should spike and then stay higher the rest of the month until you have your period and it starts over again.

So we lean into those temperature differences with foods. Again, this is where it sounds different, but it's the tone of the food. So this is an eastern medicine piece of it. So like lower body temperature, you're going to do more cooling foods, chicken, Turkey, fish, more raw fruits and vegetables, seasonings and spices.

You know, that like rosemary, thyme, dill, cilantro, mint. You know, like if you're going to drink, uh, cucumber, mint water, that would be a cooling water, right? Then switch over when progesterone is high, higher in the luteal phase, uh, that's warming. So like red meat, beef is very warming. Bacon, warming, right?

Cooking your fruits and veggies more. Um, spices, right? Spicy food, hot sauce. Peppers, you're looking at adding in cinnamon, um, ginger, right? So like drinking ginger tea, um, beverages that are like room temperature or warmer. Overall, that's more of the warming concept of it, to really lean into those differences that can help your system regulate, produce, and maintain the right amount of hormonal balance overall.

Now that's, and that's focused more on the estrogen and progesterone. Mm-hmm. When you get into menopause, a lot of times, because those hormone levels drop more. You can still have a little bit of a fluctuation. It's just not going to be as intense as it used to be. Um, but the big shift overall that shifts, uh, that changes there is again, the focus on, okay, we're going to do a little bit more warming because that's going to help with digestion and make sure you get enough proteins and things like that. Yeah.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Okay, so if we had, if we were thinking about your study on the men. Because I'm thinking, okay, we're talking about so many different phases and so many different situations, right?

And like there is no one way to ask a question that is going to serve everybody who's listening. because guess what? We're all inside a body that is doing different things. And if you still have a cycle, you're at a specific part of your cycle. You're not even at the same part as somebody else who has a cycle.

And it's just, it's complex. Right? It's complex. Yeah. Okay. That's

Dr. Beth Westie: what, yeah. Yes, it is. Yeah.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Mm-hmm. So if, if somebody is listening wherever they are in the cycle mm-hmm. Or not having a cycle or what, um. But they're okay. You know? I do. I do think my hormones are part of what I am experiencing here. What is a practical thing to experiment with or play with or pay attention to?

Might be food, it might be self-care, it might be habits. Like where do you recommend, and I know this is a very vague question, right. Because we're talking about any woman. Um, yeah. What's helpful as a starting point to, you know what? I would like to just focus a little bit on what my hormones are doing.

Dr. Beth Westie: Yeah. Yeah. So to learn more about your own system, it would be tracking basal body temperature. Okay. Tracking your own you know, shifts and changes and keeping a, a journal on, okay, day five I slept really well. Oh, and then you notice like, okay, around day fives, I'm doing really good sleep. Day 25, my sleep has always been kind of terrible. You know what I mean?

So you start to see these trends in yourself overall, that's the more data you can gather on yourself, the better. The better, right? Because sometimes it's easy to forget or it's easy to rationalize something else. Right? You, you can forget, you know, like, how did you feel six months ago?

Six months ago, from right now? Were you feeling good about stuff or were you not? You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So, ga, gathering that data can be really, really helpful. And then the other thing that I created just to like, if you're like, yeah, I kind of want to eat for my hormones in my cycle, how do I do that?

How do I get started? I have a free, you know, cookbook that you can download on, on my website. Like just, you know, recipes for your Cycle cookbook. And it lays it all out as long as you know where you're at. And if you're like, I'm not sure, I mean, you can start anywhere and just kind of go back and forth, you know, shift and change that.

The other thing it does is that also I'll say, forces you out of your comfort zone a little bit with foods. Sometimes we get in, everybody does this. We get in trends of eating the same things, you know, over and over again. So kind of focusing on different foods throughout the month can help you get a different variety in and everything else, which is also really helpful for your system.

The better, the bigger variety, the better over. So I

Dr. Melissa McCreery: love that. Okay, so we'll put the link to the cookbook in the show notes. Here's my problem. As a podcast host. Let's get honest here. I am somebody who always wants to ask about eight questions at the same time, especially when I'm talking to somebody who is so interesting and we could go in all these different directions.

Let me ask you this, because we're going to have to wrap up this episode. Is there anything we didn't talk about? That we should talk about? Anything that you want to make sure we touch on?

Dr. Beth Westie: Um, I think the only other thing is, you know, again, if people want to get started, just that recipes for your cycle cookbook is a great first step.

If you're like, yeah, I've done a lot of the basic things, I need to know more about me personally, that's where hormone testing comes in. And so we do Dutch testing, which is a dried urine test for comprehensive hormone. So it's a test that gets sent to your house. It's urine tests. So you take the test it, all the instructions are there, send it into the lab, and then it's a six-page report of your hormones.

It's really intensive, um, to go over. So for those that are like, I, this is a problem. I don't want to mess around anymore. I don't have time to deal with this. You know, whatever's happening in my body, I need to know what it is and I need to target it. That is a great place to start. because sometimes people are like, yeah, I don't want to mess around with just a cookbook.

Gimme the answers on what my body is doing. You can get the entire hormone roadmap for you. And that's a Dutch test.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: I love that. Okay. And how can people get more of you if they want to learn more or follow you, or where should they be looking?

Dr. Beth Westie: Yeah,

Dr. Melissa McCreery: I,

Dr. Beth Westie: I'm on the interwebs, so website, Dr. Beth Westie, um, Instagram, Dr. Beth Westie, Facebook, Dr. Beth Westie, YouTube, you know, Dr. Beth Westie. Um, and even I even have a TikTok. You have a podcast and I do have a podcast, the Female Health Solution podcast. Yeah. Um, yes. That's the only one that's a different name than everything else.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Okay. The Female Health Solution Podcast.

I'm going to put all those links in the show notes. This has been fantastic because it's a complicated topic. Yeah. With a lot of complicated scenarios and I feel like you made it very approachable and like I, I feel like you guys sleep, stress, protein.

Dr. Beth Westie: Like, those are the first things. Like if you're like, my hormones are out of whack, hey, start getting good. You know, start with those things and then you're like, okay, what's the next step or next level? Then you can start to integrate some of the like, recipes for your cycle stuff, you know?

Mm-hmm. And the thing is, is that this is the long process too. if I can, the last thing the nugget, which I would love for women to understand more. Is that our bodies take longer to get a result. We're always told, oh, do this, and you should see this in 30 days, and dah, dah, dah da.

No, no. Our ovarian cycle is 12 weeks long. So if you want to improve your hormones, what you start doing today, you're going to see in 12 weeks. That's three months. The whole like, oh, 30 days, dah, dah, dah, dah da. Lose five pounds in 30 days, 10 pounds in 30 days. Please don't, that's not healthy. Do you know what I mean?

I do. Yeah. It takes longer for your body and that's not a bad thing. That means that you're working with it more than anything.

Dr. Melissa McCreery: Oh my gosh. That was the nugget. Thank you. This was the best. And I have a feeling that we could do another episode about a whole bunch of other stuff. You all who are listening, I would love to hear if there is something that we didn't talk about or if there is a question that is a follow on from this, I would love to hear from you because, we could talk a lot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you so much Beth.

Dr. Beth Westie: Yeah. Thank you for having me. This is wonderful. Absolutely.