Living A Full Life

Hormone Harmony: The Key to Energy, Weight, and Wellness

• Full Life Chiropractic • Season 3 • Episode 22

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Feeling exhausted despite adequate sleep? Struggling with stubborn weight gain? Battling brain fog or unpredictable mood swings? Your hormones might be the missing link to resolving these persistent health challenges.

Dr. Dolcecore delves into the complex world of hormone balance, revealing how these powerful chemical messengers govern everything from your energy levels and metabolism to mental clarity and longevity. With remarkable clarity, he explains why conventional medical approaches to hormone management often fall short, treating symptoms without addressing root causes.

The discussion begins with cortisol—the primary stress hormone that affects all other systems. Dr. Dolcecore emphasizes that no amount of exercise can fix elevated cortisol; only genuine stress management and lifestyle modification can restore balance. He then explores insulin regulation through low-glycemic eating and strength training, thyroid function and its relationship to metabolism, and the critical role of sex hormones in overall wellbeing.

Perhaps most alarming is his discussion of environmental toxins, particularly microplastics. Recent research shows the human brain now contains twice the amount of plastic coating compared to just fifteen years ago—a sobering reality that directly impacts hormonal function. Dr. Dolcecori provides practical strategies to minimize exposure to these endocrine disruptors and support the body's natural detoxification processes.

Throughout the episode, he offers actionable advice grounded in both scientific research and clinical experience: prioritize seven to nine hours of quality sleep, incorporate strength training, manage stress intentionally, detoxify daily through sweating, drink filtered water, and avoid hormone-disrupting chemicals in everyday products.

For those struggling with persistent health issues, this episode provides a comprehensive roadmap to hormonal health through natural approaches that address the whole person rather than isolated symptoms. Ready to reclaim your energy, mental clarity, and overall wellness? This conversation is your essential starting point.

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Speaker 1:

Hi everyone, I'm Dr Enrico Dolcecori. Welcome to this week's podcast of Living a Full Life. Have you been feeling exhausted, no matter how much sleep you get, struggling with stubborn weight, brain fog or mood swings that seem to come out of nowhere? What if I told you that your hormones could be the missing link to your health struggles and that you can fix them naturally? In today's episode of Living a Full Life, we're diving deep into hormone balance, the real key to energy, metabolism, mental clarity and even longevity. We'll break down how stress, diet, sleep and even the products you use every day could be throwing your hormones out of whack and, more importantly, how to bring them back into balance. I'll be sharing cutting-edge research, actionable strategies and the exact foods, habits and supplements that can help you optimize key hormones like cortisol, insulin, thyroid, testosterone, estrogen and more. So, if you're ready to take back control of your health, feel amazing in your body and finally get the results you've been looking for, stay tuned, because this episode is packed with everything you need to know.

Speaker 1:

Hormones can be difficult. The older we get, you start to learn about them more and more and more. As you age, they become more problematic. They become more unforgivable, and as we get older they become more unforgivable and as we get older the changes start to happen. But the changes happen not just because of age. Two different people, or even 100 different people in a room, will age differently. It's not all linear for everyone and it definitely comes down to chemical synthesis in the body. How long do we transition red blood cells? How long do our cells live? How does meiosis work? How long does our transition red blood cells? How long do our cells live? How does meiosis work? How long does our cell longevity go? Those telomeres?

Speaker 1:

There's lots of research between longevity health, but hormones are in the talk for everything about longevity, health and overall wellness, because symptoms can start to come on at any age, typically fatigue, weight gain, mood swings, brain fog, poor sleep. These things will start to creep up and they can happen in your 20s, they can happen in your 40s, they can happen in your 60s. But hormone balance is critical for overall health, no matter what. So really, what causes hormone imbalances? Stress, poor diet, endocrine disruptors, lack of sleep, overtraining, overworking, work, stress lots of things can impact our hormonal system. So let's go through the top five or six top hormones that are always talked about, and what spurred this podcast is that medical management of hormone overall is not good.

Speaker 1:

Let's just be honest. The medical cascade of solving symptoms is not the best way. People are very frustrated with getting their hormones regulated because once we get a blood work done to see where our hormones are at, no matter what's low or what's high medicine doesn't have a real quick answer to this stuff. It's all test and repeat over time. So the low hormones can be counteracted with giving people hormones either bioidentical or straight hormones or synthesized whichever ones we choose to help bring those levels up. But what if we have high hormones? What is given to people to block or bring down those hormones? Medicine doesn't have many answers for this. They counterbalance hormones with other hormones, which typically doesn't lead to people feeling overly better in the end. Low hormones can be directly resolved with medical care if that's the simple answer, like low testosterone or low estrogen or low progesterone, and just adding that to people's lives can be life-changing as far as symptoms. But most hormonal cases are not that simple.

Speaker 1:

So things like cortisol. It's a stress hormone. It replies to stress immediately. Its function is to regulate stress responses, inflammation, blood sugar and metabolism. This is what leads us to gaining weight and is usually the underlying reason why people can't let go of weight. Or if they do stress themselves out through exercise and fad diets and do lose the weight, they gain it back it's because of cortisol. Chronic stress leads to persistently high cortisol, which contributes to weight gain, anxiety and adrenal dysfunction. This is from Dr Solomsky, who wrote you know why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers in 2004. And he talks about cortisol directly in that.

Speaker 1:

So what we need to do is balance cortisol with the factors that we can control, which are always going to be diet, lifestyle and supplements. That should be the name of the podcast today is diet, lifestyle and supplements. And how do we counteract these things? Avoid excessive caffeine and sugar and consume magnesium rich foods is got to be the focus for most people listening to this podcast, because you all have elevated cortisol. Most of you do so. We need to be careful when we already have a high stress hormone in the body, because it's adapting to a constant sympathetic life of constant stress. We default to certain things which make us grab quick foods or do quick things, and caffeine and sugar are at the top of the list. We'll grab our coffee and we'll eat a sugary cookie to just kind of get through really quickly, but these things actually do not help cortisol. And eating magnesium-rich foods can actually help balance cortisol. So that's through our diet. Two very simple tips there. Foods can actually help balance cortisol. So that's through our diet. Two simple, very, very simple tips there.

Speaker 1:

Lifestyle for cortisol is to prioritize stress management. There is no exercise for this. There is no yoga stretch. There is no burpee challenge for cortisol. What you need to do for cortisol is prioritize stress management. You're going to have to take a step back for the things that are stressing you out. There's no other way around this. I know work is work, marriage is marriage, kids or kids, mortgages or mortgages. But you're going to have to take a step back or else nothing will change. We have to change the stress that is happening inside. You can't avoid it, you can't deter it, but you do have to take a step back and take a breath and let bygones be bygones or let things drop a little bit as far as the importancy or the anxiety that they create. I have no other tips for you. If we don't change the mental and emotional stress component of this, we'll never get to the bottom of this, and this is why Americans and North Americans don't succeed with stress management and weight management is because the constant cortisol bombs are happening on a daily basis. So we have to cycle this.

Speaker 1:

Cortisol starts to elevate before we wake up and as we wake up to get us started for the day, and should naturally just start to decline as the day goes on. That's probably the time to have some caffeine, a cup of coffee, do those things. It's first thing in the morning. It doesn't mean getting rid of this stuff, but eliminating sugar is probably a great idea for 30, 60 days to help you balance your cortisol. Then supplements that can really help you that you can add in right away. Always take my advice with a grain of salt.

Speaker 1:

Please check with your doctor if you take any medications and pharmaceuticals, because some supplements can interfere with some things. Everyone's in a different boat, right, we're all in the same ocean but in a different boat. Some of us are fighting with thyroiditis. Some of us are fighting ulcers. Some of us are pre or post cancer or actively in cancer. Be careful with the supplements, always check. If you're in one of those boats, please check.

Speaker 1:

But for the rest of us that are getting through life on a wellness base, these are perfectly fine to start taking Ashwagandha, rhodiola rosea and phospholidylserine. These things can be added independently or in a combination to help cortisol. You'll find this online with cortisol revive or cortisol supplements. They'll help you with cortisol, but ashwagandha and some other herbs can really help with cortisol. You can add these to your diet. This is number one on the list for a reason for me because in today's topic, if we don't address cortisol, the rest of these won't get better at all either. It won't help you with your symptoms. So please focus on stress. It's the stress hormone. It's what throws everything else off your metabolism, and then your metabolism throws off your sleep, and then your sleep throws off your energy. It's just a negative cascade that happens.

Speaker 1:

Number two, and this is in importance cortisol, then insulin. Insulin is a hormone. We don't think about it as a hormone, but it is. So people that need to take insulin are taking insulin as a hormone, either through injection or whichever way to balance their blood sugars, because their body isn't producing enough of it. It literally controls blood sugar and its job is to store fat. We do not want our pancreas excreting insulin all the time, because it will store fat, and that's the problem here is, our cortisol is high and our diets promote the constant release of insulin into the bloodstream. Hence we're storing more fat than we are building muscle or burning fat. That's the issue here. High insulin levels promote fat storage and inflammation. They increase diabetes risks, and this is from JAMA from 2018. It's been repeated a million times in the literature.

Speaker 1:

So diet, lifestyle supplements, low glycemic foods, high fiber and protein rich meals is the key here, even adding intermittent fasting. If you know that your blood sugar levels elevate, or your A1C elevates, depending on what you eat, this could be a pre-diabetic term that you're going through and an intermittent fasting, high protein, low glycemic index diet is the magic bullet to mitigating high blood sugar and restoring metabolism over long periods of time. The weight loss the only weight loss program I've ever done with my patients in my career has been that low glycemic skip breakfast to make it intermittent fasting, high protein vegetables and a little bit of fruit during the day to help with digestion. That is the diet that is comes from many different books the whole 30 book, the paleo book, the Mediterranean diet, the South beach diet. Everything that you look at comes back from the root of high protein, low glycemic. That's the longevity. That's the blue zones. That's how all these people eat around the world that live to 100 plus years of age. It's no rocket science anymore that that's what you have to default to to get success.

Speaker 1:

Lifestyle here. This is where basic training, some strength training really does play a role in insulin. It's been shown over and over in exercise physiology that strength training decreases insulin sensitivity, meaning that the pancreas will release the right amount, a low amount of insulin when needed when carbohydrates are ingested. That is great. And then supplements. You can do berberine, alpha lipoic acid, ala, chromium. You can add these to your supplement list or have a multi that has that in there. Usually alpha lipoic acid you'll get separately, but berberine you can get separate. Chromium's, usually in a multi, are all great supplements to help sustain insulin productivity in a healthy way. So we got cortisol, we got insulin. Number three it's going to hit home for a lot of you thyroid hormones. T3, t4, tsh. These cascade of hormones play a major role in regulating our metabolism, regulating our energy and regulating our body temperature regulating our metabolism, regulating our energy and regulating our body temperature.

Speaker 1:

So scientific research shows that iodine, selenium and zinc deficiencies can contribute to thyroid dysfunction. And this is from the National Institute of Health in 2020. So, balanced through. We balance our thyroids through diet, lifestyle and supplements. Yes, once we get into hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's or hyperthyroidism, we now have a dysfunction in the thyroid which needs medical help, medical intervention through some type of regular dosage of thyroid to make sure our blood levels stay normal. But even there, some doctors don't look at all four thyroid lab markers. They look at the two, t3, t4, or T4 and TSH, and they base it off of those. But really what we need to do is look at the entire thyroid panel. So in our diet we want iodine-rich foods, seaweed, eggs, protein, red meats, selenium really good in Brazil nuts the selenium is high in Brazil nuts Zinc get it from the supplement here we have zinc again. Or you can eat pumpkin seeds or these types of things as well. But those are the three that help with thyroid regulation.

Speaker 1:

Again, when it comes to the thyroid, the best, the number one thing we can do in our lifestyle is reduce stress and avoid overeating. That's it. Those are the two things in the literature that show to either improve or influence our thyroid health is with reducing stress. Number one by overwhelmingly and not overeating. Overeating creates an excessive metabolism response when we overeat and we eat too much or too many snacks during the day, or if we're snackers, we're constantly eating. It causes the metabolism to never go through an intermittent fasting phase and no fasting phase, and that stresses the thyroid system. We can add iodine, we can add selenium, we can add L-tyrosine for an amino acid, we can add these things and make sure that they're on our list.

Speaker 1:

As we talk about thyroid, we move into a fourth one the estrogen and progesterone, or sex hormones. In the female focus, the function of these is to regulate the menstrual cycle, mood, bone health and metabolism. Scientific research shows that exoestrogens from plastics, pesticides and cosmetics disrupt hormone function. This is from the endocrine reviews in 2019. And what that shows is that, from diet, lifestyle and supplement, is that we can add coniferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower? Is that we can add coniferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and leafy vegetables, flaxseed and omega-3s to our diet, which help promote regulation of estrogen.

Speaker 1:

What we have to do is avoid plastics and use non-toxic skincare. This has been an endemic in our culture for the last 70 years, with the cosmetic industry putting a lot of things on our skin that are leading to direct plastic absorption From 2000 and, I think, 10 to now, 2025, they are finding the equivalent of one tablespoon of plastic in deceased human brains. That is up from half a tablespoon 15 years ago. So they've been monitoring this, measuring the amount of plastic that's coated on the human brain the exoplastics from our environment, from manufacturing, from the waters, from waste, from the plastics that we use, from the plastic bottles we drink water from, from the cosmetics that are put in plastic bottles and then we rub them all over our body, shampoo our hair, whatever it is. We've now doubled the amount of plastic that's coated just in the brain. This is just from the brain. I just read it the other day. So a full tablespoon of microplastics is found coated on the human brain. So we have to avoid these. You have to avoid these. Use non-toxic skincare, use metal containers, use glass porcelain. Just eliminate the plastics from your home and your foods as much as possible.

Speaker 1:

Supplements here, as far as estrogen and progesterone, there isn't anything directly through supplements, chastberry, the Vitex and Chastberry and magnesium have shown to play a role in helping regulate estrogen and progesterone. And didomethylene Um, I don't know the research. You know those are the ones that pop up. The research isn't really there to show any effect on estrogen levels in the body or bring them down. So what ends up happening with these is we need to do a proper detox to help move some microplastic out of the body, help regulate our overall hormone system and help the thyroid regulate as well. That usually has a down route in helping with the sex hormones.

Speaker 1:

As we talk about sex hormones, we move into testosterone, which is both for men and women. It's important in both. It regulates muscle mass, which is the most important thing of testosterone's role. Libido, mood and even fat metabolism plays a role here, just like the thyroid Testosterone in itself. Declining testosterone is linked to insulin resistance and obesity. So as we go down this list, I hope I'm painting a picture that's starting to develop some color here. Stress will have this cascade down and affect the top 10 hormones in the body one by one, knocking them off like a line of soldiers in a war. It's just going to wreak havoc on the whole system. A line of soldiers in a war. It's just going to wreck havoc on the whole system.

Speaker 1:

So what we need to do as far as diet, lifestyle and supplements for testosterone is use healthy fats in the diet. Avocados, grass-fed beef, zinc-rich foods. These things will help sustain and produce testosterone in the body through our diet. This is why eating no fat diet long-term is horrible. I think we need to have a trial and put Atkins is dead. But put these people that wrote these books on trial and put them in jail for telling people that fats are bad, that eating no fat is smart. It's the dumbest thing we've told in any human generation that the entire cellular membrane of every cell, the trillions of cells in our bodies, are made from a fatty chain. It makes no sense to not have this in your diet. So that's why meat is good. Meat has protein and fats built into it, which is great. Lean meats less so, and then fatty meats more so, which are great. So eating a little bit of that helps in the long run. But from lifestyle, what we want to do is strength training. Again, strength training has come up twice in this podcast and we have to optimize sleep, and that goes for regulating all hormones, but strength training has come up twice.

Speaker 1:

It's really important to keep our muscles active with resistance, a little bit of pushing, a little bit of pulling, a little bit of bands, a little bit of lifting, a little bit of weights, lots of weights, heavy weights, whatever you want, whatever you want to do, I like to go to the gym and I just push as heavy as I can. That's what I like to do. But I'm 41. So I feel like I can still do it. So I do it and I feel like that's the best way to maintain lean muscle mass.

Speaker 1:

Supplements boron, d-aspartic acid, togcat, ali have been shown in the literature to help with testosterone a little bit. There are like multiplex for men with ashwagandha, l-arginine, some other things there that say the amount that you would need in these supplements to make a change is minimal. Actually it's a lot, but you have a minimal change in it. It's really going to come from lifestyle. Doing the exercise and eating the healthy fats in the diet is what's going to help with testosterone. And then melatonin. We just did a podcast about this maybe two months ago.

Speaker 1:

Sleep and recovery it's the recovery hormone and its function is to regulate our sleep, wakes cycles and cellular repair during the night. So melatonin plays a role at night as cortisol starts to go through at its bottom, as cortisol starts to tank for the day. At the end of the day that's what makes us tired Melatonin starts to be produced because, assuming that we're going to go to sleep, we go to sleep and in that time melatonin regulates our sleep-wake cycles through our REM cycles. So sometimes we wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes we fall into deep sleep, sometimes we don't, and then it's doing all the cellular or triggering the body to cellular repair, all the cells in the body. So this is from Harvard Medical School in 2016.

Speaker 1:

Blue light exposure reduces melatonin production, affecting sleep quality. Blue light Blue light comes from every screen that we have. That's why people put their screens on dark mode now. Think that they're being all cool. It's still blue light. So if you stare at a screen before you go to bed, you've been exposed to a lot of blue light through your eyes, which throws off your whole system. So, no screens one hour before bedtime. Turn them off. Turn them off. Turn off a lot of the lights in the house to make it a little bit more dim. Start, turn them off. Turn off a lot of the lights in the house to make it a little bit more dim. Start getting ready for sleep.

Speaker 1:

Diet tart, cherries, magnesium, rich foods. This has been repeated since the 60s, but once we get into melatonin dysregulation, it becomes difficult and sleep difficulty and insomnia and having trouble staying asleep can be life changing for a lot of people and not in a good way. And getting these new systems in place is going to come from diet. From diet, chiropractic care helps as well. Regulating the nervous system. Regulating the nervous system is a direct and quick way to stimulate a decrease in stress in the body. This is why chiropractic is so valuable and what we do is that the chiropractic adjustment towards the spinal column into the central nervous system immediately sends a relaxing factor into the body. This can last 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours. That effect from that adjustment can last days and that is what immediately gives a direct decrease in stress response. If you jump out of that and jump right back into the car and back to work, the stress will go right back up.

Speaker 1:

So adding it into your lifestyle at opportune times plays a big role as well. As far as lifestyle, we have to reduce that screen time right before bed and then black out curtains, blackout your room. No digital lights, no digital clocks, no blinking lights from the Apple Watch underneath your wrist, no electronics in the room that has any light. That's dark as you can and teach your kids to do this as young as possible. And then the supplements are melatonin and magnesium. You can use magnesium glycinate whatever you want, but magnesium plays a huge role in this as well. Okay, that's a huge bomb of a podcast.

Speaker 1:

But to wrap it all up, our lifestyle is where I wanted to highlight this whole podcast in. In making ourselves better is it comes from our lifestyle. We talk about diet and food. I don't know how many times I can do this podcast. It seems like four out of five are all about diet and lifestyle, and it all comes to this.

Speaker 1:

We are designed. We're human beings. We're humans like it or not. We're animals. We're programmed. We're designed perfectly by the way the DNA all the way out to move and to eat what's on this earth. That's it. It's not what craft makes in a warehouse. It's truly how we're designed. And if you try and play around with that, well, enjoy your diseases and your medications.

Speaker 1:

I have no other thing to tell you about this. We need to prioritize sleep. Seven to nine hours here we go. Here's your four tips from the whole podcast Seven to nine hours. Avoid screens before bed. Strength training and movement boosts your insulin sensitivity and your testosterone. You have to manage stress. Go out there and find whoever it is that can help you manage stress and listen to what they say and follow up with them and do whatever it is, because they will be the most valuable person in your life.

Speaker 1:

Detoxify daily not detoxes that you buy for 14 days over Amazon. You got to detox daily. Sweat. You got to sweat either through exercise or get an infrared sauna from home. Do one of the or get have access to a sauna somewhere where you sweat. That's how you get these toxins out of the body. Drink filtered water. The biggest thing you can do is it has to be filtered reverse osmosis, filtered, double filtered, not from plastic bottles and avoid endocrine disruptors, the pseudoplastics that we were talking about, and I think you're building yourself up for a great endocrine system and a healthy endocrine system. Moving out of that.

Speaker 1:

If you need help with any of this, functional medicine is probably the cream of the crop when it comes to hormone balance. You look at the person as a whole. You look at all three things of lifestyle, stress and diet, and then you look at in-depth blood work of how things work all the way from the pituitary gland, then downward from cortisol, melatonin. By the time we get to the thyroid it's way down the list. We're looking at the things up chain that are doing this and then you couple it with proper exercise, yoga, chiropractic care, whatever it is, and you create this recipe to success of overall hormone balance. And being in hormone balance is a pretty good place to be overall. A lot of people have minimal effects and side effects living that way. So wishing you all the best in that. Hopefully that was a few gems there. Focus on that in your life and if you have any information or if you have any questions, hopefully we have the answers for you. Info at fulllifetampacom. We love to answer any questions you may have. Have a great and healthy week.

People on this episode

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Dr. Enrico Dolcecore

Host
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Dr. Christine Hafer

Co-host
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Dr. Crystal Corona

Co-host