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Welcome to the Healing on Purpose podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Miriam Rahav. The content of this show is meant for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any illness or health condition. Please discuss all information shared herein with your own personal health authority. I hope you find value in this episode. This podcast is also available on YouTube on the Healing on Purpose channel, should you want to look up any of the graphics, diagrams, or other visuals mentioned in the show. Links to the podcast and its YouTube channel will also be available on my practice website, rahavwellness.com. Please join me on my Facebook group, Healing on Purpose podcast with Dr. Miriam Rahav, to continue this conversation. Enjoy the show.
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Hello. Thank you for joining me right now. Because right now is the perfect time. The time you choose is always the perfect time to step onto and walk further on the divine path to healing on purpose. On purpose means with intention and with an awareness of what one is doing. In other words, with consciousness. You were made on purpose. You are here with me, and that is no accident. By healing on purpose, you heal so much more than your physical body. You connect to your divine purpose. Healing on purpose is right for you, right for me, and right for all life. Thank you for consciously choosing healing. Thank you for taking this time for yourself. You deserve it. The world is better when you are healing on purpose. The subject today of our conversation is women’s health. Women’s health? Well, women and men both have cells, and health starts on a cellular level. That is actually common to women and men. However, we do have different hormones, and some expressions of cellular health can also manifest in expressions of hormonal health and, as such, may be expressed differently. When we start looking at someone, we start with their story.
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We listen, us who work in the integrated healing arts of various work, hopefully by listening to someone’s story. Tell me, why are you here? What do you feel? What is not working right? Because that’s usually why someone comes and finds someone who works as an integrative health practitioner. What is working right? When did it start? How did it start? What have you tried? What has worked? What has worked somewhat well, less well? Then we look at the body. We look at the body, we look at skin, we look at the tongue, we look at the mouth, we look at the teeth, we look at the gums, we listen to the heart, we listen to the lungs. If we are body workers, we can feel. If we’re acupuncturists, we can feel points, we can feel meridians. We start putting together patterns. If we are licensed to check labs, we can check labs. What’s amazing about checking laboratory work is we can get inside and we can look at cellular health in a very granular way when we get into looking at red blood cells and white blood cells, and we think about, Well, what does it take to make a red blood cell?
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What does it take to make a white blood cell? How long do those cells normally live in the body? If they’re bigger or they’re smaller, or we would expect different proportions of certain kinds of white blood cells to other blood cells, we have fancy names for these things, lymphocytes, and neutrophils, and basophils, and monocytes, these are all different cells that represent our body’s Department of Defense, so to speak. When we look at labs, we’re looking at the state of the Union of trillions and trillions of cells in our body, and we can learn so much. It’s such a gift to have this technology and to have this insight. If we really sit and look and think and take the time and put together the lab parameters with a physical exam and with a story, it’s incredible. It’s truly incredible. Incredible what we can learn. I think one of the missing factors in examining all health, cellular health, micro health, macro health, is that tincture of time to really get to ask questions so that both the asker and the askee, the person whose health is being examined, get to stop and think and get conscious about what’s going on.
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We can start paying attention to things and have those things validated by laboratory work. When we speak about women’s health today, I’m going to start speaking about maybe some common problems that my women community, from younger women to teenage women, to young women, to women in their reproductive years, to perimenopausal, to postmenopausal women, and start discussing some of these issues and maybe some commonalities. Really all the time, what is true is that our hormones, which is really what at the end of the day might distinguish to some degree, although not to all degrees, and if we have a we can discuss that a little bit, and maybe that will open up some time for another conversation, but that we can speak about physiology and what is nature. I think there is a lot of room in discussing women’s health and men’s health to also discuss nurture, to also discuss cultural norms or societal norms that also can profoundly affect our health. In fact, one of the most wonderful bodies of work that I have tapped into and been fascinated by that really informs that nurturing aspect of men’s and women’s health is the author, John Gray.
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If that’s a subject of interest, certainly I will be eager to hear from you some shoutouts about what I have seen in terms of the work of John gray, where he says, Just as much as our biology It’s our behaviors and our interactions that may inform hormonal health. His body of work is a gift, simply a gift. I have really seen how that work also informs biology at the point of care, which, of course, is my point of view as a functional medicine physician who really is a clinician working at the point of care. That’s always my point of view, as many of you know or as some of you will come to know. That’s where we’re operating from. I’m speaking about theory and how it comes into practice and what I see in my community at the point of care. Let’s get back to our topic: women’s health. Women’s health is cellular health, and cellular health, as it may manifest outwardly, as far as female hormonal balance. Balance. For example, we start really understanding more about hormonal balance at the time that women come into some hormonal differentiation, somewhere in between years where we start with sexual development, breast development, and of course, importantly, menstrual cycle, which is really signaling our ability as women to reproduce.
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It is an extremely fine, in-tuned, orchestral dance between the brain and the ovaries. The brain also speaks to other hormone-producing signaling organs, such as the thyroid, such as the adrenals. We have learned very, very much, certainly in the functional medicine space, but very much also in the endocrineology practice space, how The interaction between the brain and the ovaries is also affected by the interaction between the brain and the thyroid, and is also affected by the interaction between the brain and the adrenal glands. I hope to be able to get a little more granular on that level in just a little bit. But let’s just start with symptoms. What are some of the symptoms that our female hormones may be out of balance? One of the complaints that I might see in clinical practice is early onset of a menstrual cycle, early onset of pubertal development, like breast development, pubic hair development, menstrual cycle, or delayed, or irregular, or painful, crampy, heavy. These are all signals that that finetuned dance is somehow being interfered with in some way. What does that really mean? The first piece is paying attention. As girls menstrual cycle becomes more and more early, it used to be that girls would normally start menstruating from the age of 12 or 13.
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Some people are late bloomers, 14, and so on. But now girls are menstruating earlier and earlier. What does that mean? Well, this really opens up a conversation to a whole phenomenology on metabolic health and the environment and the interaction between the two. Let me see if I can get a little more granular on this. You do not have to look at a video of this, but if you are a visual learner and you do care to see some of the images I may be sharing, although not necessary, you are absolutely I’m absolutely invited to look at the video that I will make available of this conversation. But what I’m going to do now is I’m going to pull out one of my favorite charts. That’s not it. I’m getting there. For you who are only listening, it’s simply a chart that is describing. It’s a very descriptive. It’s not a visually beautiful. It’s more of just It’s not a list, but it’s listing the different pathways by which the liver will process because the liver, I digress, let me rewind a little bit, the liver is an organ that really helps us process and detoxify, or the other word for detoxification is more accurate, is biotransform.
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Change the properties of something so that the body can break it down get, rid of it, and maintain a balance. What toxicity really is is when something cannot be broken down and accumulates and accumulates to abnormal levels. Detoxification is really bio-transformation. The engine of bio-transformation is in the liver. I’m going to tie how this ties into women’s health very directly in just a moment, if you will bear with me. The liver is the engine of biotransformation. What I love about this chart, if you happen to hop over to YouTube and look at this chart with me, is that it shows the pathways by which the liver does some of its biotransforming. There’s a list here of the different pathways by which the liver bio-transforms. Those of us who work in the functional medicine space will be well familiar with these. These are called phase to detoxification or Biotransformation Pathways. These are pathways by which certain substances are transformed, metabolized, broken down, and eliminated. We have, for example, glutathione conjugation. Here’s a list of all of these things that I can barely pronounce but that are found within our environment that the glutathione conjugation pathway helps bio transform or detoxify, including things like acetaminophen, that’s Tylenol, folks, heavy metals, and styrens, acrylines, all kinds of things that we might find in our environment.
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By the way, side note, when we start looking for these things, there are some tests out there that may also be direct to consumer, by the way, I believe, where you can send off a urine sample and find out some of these things. Then what’s interesting is it’s tied on the bottom, so we have a list on the top. We have each pathway going horizontally along this chart. Then going down vertically, we have a whole big laundry list of things that might come at us from the outside from our environment. Then we have under that things that might be generated if we Internally, and here, for example, there are bacterial toxins. This is an interesting one. Let’s say you have an intestinal infection. Maybe it’s a big one, but it might be a chronic smoldering one, such as small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, which will be the subject of another conversation on our podcast, Healing on Purpose. But interestingly, that same substance, those bacterial toxins, require glutathium for their bio transformation. And glutathium also eliminates heavy metals. Well, interestingly, let me show you here, heavy metals, toxic metals eliminated by glutathium. But then let’s just hop over hoppity hop to the other side of the chart, where we also see that metals are also detoxified by another bio transformative pathway or detoxification pathway, affectionately known as Methylation.
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That will also be the subject of another podcast on MTHFR as a catalyst for that conversation. If we go further down that list, to substances of endogenous origin, we also see that this same pathway that is responsible for elimination of metals as is glutaphium, is also responsible for processing, what do you see down here on this list, hydroxyestradials. Well, that sounds like estrogens, estradiols, if you’ve ever heard that word before. Meaning, if we have on one side some bacterial overgrowth, that might bog down our glutathione pathways. If we simultaneously have metals, we might eliminate them less well, we might biotransform them less well, that might put pressure on this methylation pathway that is related because it also handles metals and also handles estrogens. If you have simultaneously occurring heavy metals and maybe some bacterial imbalance in the gut, you might then develop, I hope you’re following me, because the truth of our physiology is very tapestry-like. They’re all these threads that need to be woven together. At the point of care, that’s what we’re doing. We’re connecting one dot to another dot to another dot, to another dot, and realizing, well, outwardly, you might have an irregular menstrual cycle.
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Outwardly, you might have really painfully tender breasts for half of your cycle, the first leading into your menstrual cycle. You are really in pain, and you might even notice lumpy, bumpy breasts. Fibrocystic is another word we use to call breasts lumpy and bumpy and painful and tender so that you can’t even touch it, ow, ow, ow. Well, that might be a symptom of estrogen being high. Why might they be too high? Because your processes that biotransform estrogen may be impaired, inhibited, or otherwise busy trying to handle things like mercury or lead or bacterial overgrowth. Do you get the picture? I hope you do. There is an interaction between almost everything: our gut health, our environmental health, our nutritional health, and our hormonal health. One of the big, big pathways where all of this converges is, you may have guessed it, the liver. When someone comes and says to me, I have tender breasts. I have heavy periods. I don’t get my period regularly. I can’t get my period too frequently. I can’t get pregnant. I got my period late. I got my period early. I am moody, especially around my period. I get headaches around my period.
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These are just common complaints that I’m listing off the top of my head. I have acne, and I have acne worse cyclically. You would be amazed at how profoundly women’s health is affected by liver health, and that when we start working on the liver and opening up liver function, by supporting what? Well, by supporting all of these pathways, which, just for giggles and excitement, I can list for you. That’s methylation, acetylation, glucuronidation, taurine and glycine peptide conjugation, sulfation, and glutacin conjugation. Now, famously, estrogen, specifically, we can look at the bottom of this list and we can see that estrogens are affected more specifically, the nail on the head, via the specific pathways of methylation, via the specific pathways here, if you’ll notice the estrogens and all of the steroid hormones of glucuronidation. That’s a fascinating subject. Also, if you look here, sulfation. Sulfation is all those sulfur-containing substances. What? Well, think of the substances that have a strong smell, like a sulfur smell, like garlic, like onion. Those are a family of things called allium, including leeks and cruciferous veggies that have that strong smell. What? Like radish, like kohlrabi, like broccoli, like cauliflower. When you have more of those substances or concentrates of those substances, one of the best ones, please, if you can go out, get broccoli sprouts, or even better, grow them, you are getting some of the most powerful hormone support and liver transformative supports that exists in the natural world.
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It’s incredible. And that is working, at least in part, along this sulfation pathway. But as I also described, there is a direct link to glutathione and hormonal health. Little tidbit, one of the precursors to glutathione is, in fact glycine. And so glycine is also intrinsically tied to glutathione, and glutathione is therefore also tied to methylation. Methylation is also tied to the biotransformation of estrogen. Meaning, we have and we need the whole liver and all of the pathways. Let me also, let’s see if I can get a visual on this for you, but I can also narrate this for our listeners. Phase one, phase two, liver detox. Not our liver is working so hard, and the complexity of the work of the liver and what it manages to do cannot be overstated. In fact, as I say, our body is a universe, and as complex as the universe itself, and every cell within this universe of our body is a planet. I’m just zooming in a little bit here into the liver itself, I could say, as a universe, and imagine what might be happening on the level of a liver cell. Well, here we’re just getting a little bit of a glimpse.
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What I just spoke about for several minutes was the second part of liver detoxification or bio transformation. But there is a first part, and the first part has to do With all the nutrients that are needed, it’s a very nutrient dense and energy dense process that’s required to fuel bio transformation. One of the things that we notice here is every single B vitamin is required. Now, this is important because B vitamins are also required to build blood. If we look at a simple CBC, which stands for Complete Blood Count, which also requires these B vitamins. If we have a degree of anemia, we can also extrapolate from that that if we are anemic, we do not have the fuel for biotransformation. In fact, the one planet of the one red blood cell can tell us a story about the universe. Isn’t that just incredible? That the story of one planet, the story of one cell, can tell us about the entire universe. So too, the story of one hormonal imbalance, such as acne, such as PMS, which is that discomfort, that pain, that cramping that we might get before a period, certainly lumpy, bumpy breasts, certainly heavy menses, and so on and so forth.
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That whole laundry list of different complaints can point to a whole universe that requires examination, study, and loving, attention-paying, purposeful, testing, listening, tuning in. That is, I hope you’re getting this, the entire point, the entire point to walking on the pathway of healing on purpose. When we do labs, we can look at, of course, a complete blood count. We can look at liver function. But laboratory science has evolved and is so amazing. We can look at B12. We can look at B2, we can look at B3, we can look at B6, we can look at folic acid, we can look at glutathione, we can look at zinc, we can look at selenium, we can look at copper, We can look at coenzyme Q10. We can look at the hormone levels themselves. We can get a sense of where someone is, and then we can work on things like opening up the diet, handling, let’s say, gut infection, doing studies, maybe urine assays on some of those potential endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Look for heavy metals. What might be there that does not serve you, we can then become aware of, conscious of, and addressed consciously, removing the things that don’t serve us and bolstering with the things that do.
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It is incredible when we love and support the liver, how acne can melt away. Sometimes, we need tools that are a little more powerful to heal the liver. One of the most incredible tools for offloading the liver is the coffee enema and it is entirely worth an hour, hours, or more of conversation just about that magical healing tool alone, which is, by the way, practically free. I’ll I’ll just mention it here. Give it a little plug, a little nudge, a little wink, maybe pique your interest. If you’ve never heard of the coffee enema, maybe type those words into your internet browser and look ahead to what might be very soon the subject of another conversation. But what I will tell you here under the umbrella of women’s health is that coffee enemas clear up acne. Coffee enemas clear up acne. Why? Well, let’s think about some of the treatments for acne, which is a familiar hormonal complaint that exists within the allopathic, that means the Western medicine world as we know it currently, which largely uses pharmaceuticals as a modality for treatment, which is wonderful and well and good. But let’s think about what common treatments for women’s hormonal imbalance are.
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One of them is a medication called spironolactone. Spironolactone blocks and testosterone receptors. Spirinolactone blocks testosterone receptors. But what else might help our body process testosterone, healthily. Let me toggle back to my other favorite chart here, which I will speak to, so you don’t have to see this, but you are welcome to join me at a visual learning opportunity on YouTube. I’m going to go back to all of those specific liver pathways, and we are going to look at the pathways that inform testosterone metabolism. We will see glucuronidation, handles are steroid hormones under which testosterone exists, and also selfation. When we treat the liver, we help the liver metabolize testosterone. When we help the liver metabolize testosterone, Testosterone. Testosterone can be broken down and be lowered, and skin can get better. Instead of just blocking testosterone’s effect on the cell, we can more deeply help the body handle it. And in so doing, we are likely also handling the body’s ability to break down what? Well, whatever it might be exposed to, including the seemingly endless list of endocrine disrupting chemicals and including also the other hormones such as estrogen. How many of you know someone who might be dealing with an estrogen-driven malignancy, such as breast cancer, where they start testing the cells and they learn that those cells have receptors for estrogen on them?
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Well, estrogen is a growth factor. If we cannot break down estrogen, then estrogen is hanging around or bio-accumulating. Remember, the liver is the seat of bio-transformation. If we’re not bio-transforming, we’re just not. Those estrogens are hanging around, like those testosterone-driving acne, and they’re stimulating what? Well, estrogen is a growth factor. In the right amount, it’s beautiful and necessary. Thank God. It’s what drives that beautiful, cushy growing of the uterine lining that makes it nice and soft and thriving for what? For egg implantation in the right time and place when we’re on purpose. But until then, if we just have lots of estrogen lying around, we might get crampy, we might bleed a lot, we can get lumpy, grumpy breasts, we can have all kinds of signals telling us that all might not be perfectly in balance. It’s an opportunity, my friend, It’s an opportunity not to be missed, my brothers and sisters, to pay attention and take the time and listen. Don’t just block receptors. Listen. What does this mean? Be aware. Get conscious. Take the opportunity to listen, to ask questions, to be heard, to look at the liver, to look at hormone levels, to look at potential endocrine disrupting chemicals.
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Yes, acne is enough of a reason. By addressing and listening to acne when we’re a teenager, by at the root cause, be it problematic biotransformation of our hormones as teens, we might, by the way, discover endocrine disrupting chemicals. In so doing, who knows what we might change moving forward into the future that we are rewriting in the now, which is why I say, now is always the perfect time. And yes, I can get granular and speak to each of these subjects, but here in broad strokes, I wanted you to hold the consciousness of the opportunity presented in any hormonal imbalance to listen, to look, and to learn specifically for you about the universe of you as reflected in a single planet or cell of you. And in so doing, open up a gateway to walking on the glorious divine pathway of healing on purpose. Thank you so much. I’m so overjoyed you have joined me in this divine timing for this conversation. God bless you.
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Thanks for listening to the Healing on Purpose podcast today. I hope you found this information helpful, and I encourage you to share this episode with others who may also benefit from the information shared. Please consider rating and reviewing my podcast on Apple Podcasts so more people can find this information. I also invite you to join the Healing on Purpose podcast Facebook group to continue this conversation. I’ll see you there.