Today's brand new episode welcomes Magdalena Wszelaki, who is a certified nutrition coach, herbalist, a published bestselling cookbook author, speaker and educator. Her hormone crisis included autoimmune thyroid conditions, adrenal issues, and estrogen dominance. Following specific strategies, she now lives a symptom-free life and is here to share how she got her hormones balanced and her health back.
More about Magdalena Wszelaki:
Magdalena Wszelaki is the founder of Hormones Balance, an online community dedicated to helping women to rebalance their hormones naturally. Magdalena is a certified nutrition coach, herbalist, a published bestselling cookbook author, speaker and educator. She’s got a long history of hormonal challenges. Her health crisis was the direct result from a highly stressful life in advertising – starting from Graves’ and Hashimoto’s Disease (autoimmune conditions causing thyroid failure) to adrenal issues and estrogen dominance. Today she is in full remission, lives a symptoms-free life and teaches woman how to find their sacred hormonal balance with her books, online programs and education.
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Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
Hot flashes, uterine fibroids, PMS, PCOS, okay. Any of those ring a bell? How about headaches? How about just not feeling well, cranky? You might have estrogen dominance. Look, this show is important because most estrogen dominance goes undiagnosed and it definitely goes mistreated by both sides, allopathic medicine and alternative medicine. This show is going to separate the truth from the myths and we’re going to get right down to the solutions. I think the importance of this show too is bringing out that so many of these conditions we’re just throwing hormones at them and not getting to the cause. We’re going to talk about that but very, very important show you’re going to want to share because so many people have this problem and are either being mistreated or not diagnosed. Check it out.
I want to give thanks to one of our sponsors, CytoDefend. Look, at a time like this, I think that our immune system and keeping our immune system operating now is more important than ever. I can also tell you that I pay attention to the things that keep my immune system on par and healthy. So glad that CytoDefend is one of our sponsors here on Cell TV and it’s a product that I use, my family uses, and hopefully, you’ll check it out. By the way, you can check it out with the link right here below. If you want to try a free bottle, you can actually get a free bottle. Just pay the shipping and I think you’ll reorder after that but check it out.
Ashley:
If you’re listening to this podcast and want to access the amazing CytoDefend product Dr. Pompa just mentioned, please visit freeimmunity.com. Again, that’s freeimmunity.com.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith and today we welcome, Magdalena Wszelaki, who is a certified nutrition coach, herbalist and a published bestselling cookbook author, speaker and educator. Her hormone crisis included autoimmune, thyroid conditions, adrenal issues, and estrogen dominance. Following specific strategies, she now lives a symptom-free life and is here to share how she got her hormones balanced and her health back. I cannot wait for this topic. Let’s get started and welcome Magdalena and of course, Dr. Pompa. Welcome both of you.
Magdalena:
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, gosh. I said to Ashley and you prior to this, gosh, I am excited about this because this is a topic that we’ve never done on Cell TV but it’s a topic that I’m aware of that’s mistreated by allopathic medicine and alternative medicine. Oftentimes, even underdiagnosed because so many people have symptoms like fibroids, different type of estrogen dominance cyst, obviously estrogen types of cancer, and even unexplainable hormone conditions. They don’t ever or at least told that it is estrogen dominance. I want you to get into your story because it’s made you an expert in this area to the point where you’ve written a book about it which is going to be launching here soon, so we’re ahead of that. I’m going to have you hold up the book.
I do want you to start with your story. I want to engage people right away. I mentioned a few of them that people would go, oh, that’s estrogen dominance? Let’s start there. Some of these things that many women may not realize is estrogen dominance and is why they should listen to this show and read your book. What are they?
Magdalena:
Starting off with girls who are in the menstruating years, so younger women. You’re talking about period problems or having—just talking about the most common one and that’s PMS. There are some girls who have PMS so bad it’s debilitating for a day or two before a period or first two days of your period. I certainly was one of those on the floor with painkillers next to me in a fetal position for the first two days of my period and skipping school and work later. I think it’s a big part of our society’s belief that as it is normal to have pimples which is not when you’re a teenager neither is it normal to have PMS. Just because it’s so common, it doesn’t make it normal. It’s not normal.
Dr. Pompa:
I say those words about a lot of things but 100%.
Magdalena:
Exactly. Then it goes the same way. I mean, there are women who have periods for 20 days out of the month and feeling terrible. They always feel like something is wrong with them. Women who don’t have their periods or their periods are very erratic and sporadic. Estrogen dominance can be a leading cause for that. Moving on to more serious stuff like having a fibroid, uterine polyps. Western medicine today deals with it in ways that are not very sustainable. In the best case, they’ll do a procedure that cuts out the blood supply to the fibroid, to the uterus. Guess what, six months later, it’s going to come back in some other form.
Worse still is removing of the uterus, so having a partial or full hysterectomy is the way to go. For some women post-reproductive years, it might not be that much of an issue even though as a 48-year-old woman, I would not want to lose my uterus because energetically I feel like it’s just not the right way to go. Imagine, if you have fibroids and you want to have children and your doctor tells you it’s the size of a grapefruit and there’s nothing we can do, we’re going to operate tomorrow, you just surrender to it. Without the knowledge that actually you can do a lot about it to actually shrink your fibroids.
Talking about which woman hasn’t found a lump on her breast in one point in her life. Let me just say that as a woman who has had them in the past, the moment you find it whether it’s one or two, you hit Dr. Google and you conclude that within the next two years you’re going to be dead because it most certainly looks like breast cancer. Then even if you were [00:06:24] positive, then it’s the issue of diagnosis. How do you get it diagnosed properly? People tell you different things. How you should go about it. Again, it’s a completely preventable issue with fibrocystic breast or lumpy breast.
Some women have such fibrocystic breasts, such painful breasts that even putting on a bra or doing any sports during this time of the month, and for some women it could be as long as two weeks out of the month, they can’t even touch that area. More serious stuff like talking about estrogenic cancers. Something that I still find is so underestimated and so under talked about is the fact that majority of breast cancers in women are what’s called estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer. It’s the estrogen that fuels the growth of the malignant tissue. Guess what, no one really is addressing the issue that estrogen dominance is what feeds those cancers. Also, uterine cancers, ovarian cancers, thyroid cancers, and lung cancers in non-smokers are all estrogenic cancers.
Both sides of my family have seen deaths. I’ve lost aunts on both sides. In my mom’s and my dad’s side to estrogenic cancers, breast, ovarian, and uterine. That was one of the reasons what propelled me to doing this work. Also, let me not forget, thyroid nodules, which I know you do a lot of work with thyroid. Interestingly, thyroid nodules also grow largely due to—or can grow largely due to estrogen dominance, so excess estrogen. Lastly, I will just talk about some little benign things but drives women crazy when I told our audience asking, what’s the thing that annoys you the most? What is the most annoying symptom about estrogen dominance that you experience?
Weight gain, stubborn weight gain came as number one reason. Specifically, when a woman is excessively estrogenic, we put on weight around our hips and our thighs and no matter how much you exercise, how much—you hit that gym five times a week and you go running, if you don’t address the underlying cause which is estrogen dominance, it’s very difficult to lose that weight there. It’s really interesting how different hormones store fats differently in your body. You tell me which woman do you know in your life who hasn’t had one of those.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s the problem. It’s become like this little epidemic specially in this country. Yet it goes either undiagnosed and it definitely goes untreated. Again, I said by both sides because on the alternative side, I see more and more just people taking bioidentical hormones.
Magdalena:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
You may or may not feel better from that but really, it’s not addressing the cause. That’s been my song that I’ve preached for a long time. My wife dealt with this and her mother had breast cancer, “survivor.” Only to get, 10 years later, get uterine cancer. No one really ever got to her cause. My wife, thank God, was a different story. Tell your story though because that is what makes you an expert in this. When someone has their own—from pain to purpose. You would never know what you know. Obviously, there’s doctors on both sides saying, they don’t get this. It’s like you get it because you went through it. What’s the story?
Magdalena:
Starting off with the fact that the PMS that I mentioned before, I was the one in the fetal position. I remember not going to school. I was always an A plus student, so it was never an issue of wanting to skip school but I just couldn’t show up to school. It started out that way. It grew from there I think to a point where it was this perfect combination of—and I’m sure you’ve seen this in your practice too of thyroid issues with estrogen dominance. Estrogen dominance fuels thyroid issues. Also immunity, excess estrogen is highly inflammatory. In my late 20s, I was diagnosed with Graves Disease.
Dr. Pompa:
Real fast, because I don’t want to forget to ask the question. What comes first? I’ve been asked this question. What comes first, the thyroid problem or the estrogen dominance? What’s the order?
Magdalena:
I don’t know. I think in my case, it was I think estrogen dominance first and that excess estrogen was causing the inflammatory response of my immune system. At the same time, I was also a competitive athlete. I used to work 12 hours a day and say that sleep was for the dead. I’ll sleep when I die. Drink, party. I wasn’t doing drugs but I smoked. How much? Which one was it? I can’t really say but it’s definitely all interconnected. That’s for sure.
Dr. Pompa:
I guess, in my mind, I’ve seen it both ways but I wanted to hear your take on it. You’re probably right. In your case, it was probably the estrogen dominance and then—
Magdalena:
Fueling.
Dr. Pompa:
The point there too is, is that, hormones are very interrelated and people—thyroid hormone, I feel better. It’s like, wait a minute. There’s so many hormones that are involved. Okay, finish your story. Obviously, you had also said you had a major family—
Magdalena:
History. Yeah, of that. Just to your point, I mean, that’s like—and I’m sure a lot of the listeners can relate to this. It’s hardly ever that you have one hormonal problem. If you have a thyroid issue, it’s oftentimes you’re headed for perimenopause or menopause. You’ve got PCOS. A lot of times comes with estrogen dominance. Estrogen dominance comes a lot with the thyroid function. I haven’t really seen a woman who just had one. It started off with terrible PMSs but then it moved then to autoimmunity. First, Graves Disease. I was put on beta-blockers as you would and then called cured.
Then in 2008, I was in a very crazy job. I used to work in advertising as a strategic planner and jet set around the whole of Asia. I was stationed out of Shanghai, China. My friends will call me and say, I’m not going to ask you how are you, I’m just going to ask you where are you right now. I was the girl on a Sunday flying off somewhere to do a presentation, a pitch to the next client on Monday. All of that was super fabulous but the truth of the matter was that, I started feeling that after a few years of doing that. My body was beginning to shut down. I am really grateful for having that intuition, that little voice that was saying, if you don’t give this up now, you’re going to pay for it later.
We sold the agency that I was working for and I walked away from majority of the payout. I just collected the initial payment after slaving it for 10 years because I knew that whatever now that I was going to get in that big money, it was going to go towards my medical bills because I was feeling that terrible. When I say terrible, it was everything from starting to have memory loss which could be another sign of estrogen dominance. I was having terrible mood swings. I will say it has come to a point where you don’t recognize yourself. You say certain things. You do certain things to people. You know that at the core that’s not who you are as a person but you just can’t stop yourself.
It’s like being intentionally difficult or ugly or nasty to someone and then regretting it later. Sometimes it’s too late and I’ve destroyed relationships in the past of the people I loved the most. I’ve had a blowout with a client. We lost an account because I had a moment. There was that. Those lumpy breasts, I mean, that was one of the scariest moments when you get diagnosed. When you start feeling it first of all yourself. Especially when it’s one breast and you go, one breast lump is most of the time is going to be breast cancer. Then seeing both sides of my family, both my aunts—two aunts and one aunt passing away.
Doing a lot more research into this and realizing it’s not just that I have Hashimoto's and thyroid disease which I was diagnosed with in 2008, but it was really the estrogen that was my issue. I will just tell you one more thing. When I went to see my functional doctor here in Colorado where I live, I brought my whole deck of printed out reports and labs as you do. She was flipping through it and she said, have you had breast cancer? I’m like, no. Why would you say that? I’m 45. She said, “Women with your genetics at your age, I would normally have seen some kind of estrogenic cancer by now.”
I think by doing this work, I’ve dodged a bullet and I’m still planning to be dodging the bullet but certainly the genetics showed that I have those specific genes. I have double mutations and so many of them that are essential metabolizing and [00:15:33] extra estrogens. I think with that came a lot of forgiveness and a lot of kindness to myself realizing that that’s just how my body is programmed and I just need to put a little bit more work to be observant of the things that I teach today. The last thing I will say, the reason what led me to doing this work is because, to your point, like you said about practitioners, not really recognizing this or even being too educated about this condition but what about the patients.
If your practitioner isn’t well versed in it, your patients are even more so going to be that way. This is one condition I feel it’s even—this is totally anecdotal but I feel like even more women have estrogen problems, estrogen dominance problems compared to thyroid issues and yet no one is talking about it.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s why we’re doing this. I agree with you, yeah. I guess, I have to ask the obvious question. I want people to caution. My wife didn’t have the typical genes and I would assume her mother didn’t either but yet she went this direction for multiple reasons we’ll talk about. What is the best way? What’s the earliest detection? Because some people, it’s not just as simple as a blood test oftentimes. What do you do?
Magdalena:
That’s a really great question. One of the early signs that you tend to be highly estrogenic and you don’t metabolize estrogen very effectively is when women take birth control pills and feels terrible and gets all the symptoms that we talked about like lumpy breasts and getting fibrocystic breasts. Your moods are just off the charts. That’s just really, really early sign but other one is just difficulty with periods. I mean, we all start off with periods as women.
Dr. Pompa:
You’re saying, look, if it walks like a duck, quacks like one, it may be a duck. You’re looking at those early symptoms is what you’re saying is the first thing to look at.
Magdalena:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Then you continue with that. Then I’m asking, what’s the next best test to do?
Magdalena:
Oh, I see. You’re talking about testing, testing. Got you. My favorite way of testing is to do urine test for hormones. I don’t recommend doing blood testing for steroid hormones.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we like a 24-hour urine collection from DUTCH or Genova or one of those. It shows you the estrogen metabolites which I’ll let you explain in a little bit because that was my wife’s issue. They were through the roof. All the wrong ones, right?
Magdalena:
Right.
Dr. Pompa:
Obviously, showed a problem. Again, I caution. My wife’s blood levels of estrogen always looked very normal. It looked very normal. Go ahead.
Magdalena:
We are two peas in a pod on this one absolutely. You’re absolutely right. When I was in private practice, I used to have women coming in and saying, my doc says everything is okay. My estrogen and progesterone look okay. Not even once did the doctor ask, are you in your luteal phase? Did you test during ovulation or was it your follicular phase? Anyway, blood is completely useless when it comes to steroid hormones, so your estrogen, progesterone, cortisol. Unless it’s maybe cortisol morning. It depends how you look at it. DHEA, testosterone. Blood really is not going to be revealing. Urine test definitely. For progesterone, I do like saliva testing. I find that it’s a lot more accurate just to see your progesterone levels.
Not everybody has the budget to do them, to do testing. Some women do, some women don’t, so a lot of the time we go by symptoms. If you’re really showing a lot of these symptoms we talked about, the interventions—when I say interventions, it can be as gentle and kind to yourself as you can. Through some really good nutrition and hopefully we can talk a little bit about a few of those. A few herbs and a few supplements can really tip you over to the other side and start resolving your symptoms. I think testing is great. I will say especially for someone who’s had a history of estrogenic cancers in the family, who has had cancer herself. I think having those tests done I highly recommend it. Find the budget to do that. Even if you need to do a fund raiser campaign, do it.
Dr. Pompa:
I think you can find a DUTCH test online now. At least $300, $400, in that range. I think Genova’s more like around 600 or so, 700, somewhere around there. You’re right. It’s not cheap but I think worth it. On the urine test, if you have the symptoms then maybe you do get the urine test. We’re going to talk about solutions. If you can’t afford to get the urine test because most insurance doesn’t pay for it if you ask. We’ll talk about some of the solutions because you might want to just do the solutions if you have the symptoms, to your point.
On the urine test, we collect the urine for 24 hours. It’s able to look at estrogen levels but more importantly, estrogen metabolites. Explain the difference because the metabolites meaning breaking down toxic urine and that’s really key. Again, that was my wife’s problem and yours. Explain that and what you would look at and see, oh my gosh, yeah, I’m at risk here.
Magdalena:
I’m so glad we’re talking about that. I’m glad that estrogen dominance has a name at least as a phenomenon. The name however doesn’t do it justice because it creates a fear of estrogen which is false. As women, we shouldn’t be fearing estrogen. I would not be able to be standing here talking to you if I didn’t have sufficient levels of estrogen. Women who have low estrogen will—I mean, hello menopause. Your brain is not working anymore. Your bones are breaking. Your vagina is dry. Your moods are from hell. Your cardiovascular health sucks. We need estrogen to function properly. However, what you were saying is how we break them down.
I want to just give you a simple analogy especially for people who are maybe not medically trained. Imagine you’re standing on the side of a river and you see this river flowing through. In the middle of the river, there is a riverbank with these beautiful plants and trees and roots. As the river flows through the bank, the bank separates the water into clean water and dirty water. That’s exactly what happens in the body except think of the bank as your liver. As your liver separates those dirty from clean estrogens. It’s really important to remember that first of all, we have the good metabolites like the 2-hydroxyestrone is the beneficial estrogen metabolite that we need that is protective. It’s the other, the 4 and the 16 that can be problematic.
It’s the part of your liver—a little bit of your gut as well, but let’s talk about the liver first where you—really, this is where the breakdown happens. One of the funny things I want to tell you is we have a quiz on our website. The result sometimes women get is they get—they lower on estrogen but it still tells them that they are estrogen dominant. We give this email saying, you people don’t know what you’re talking about. Your quiz sucks. They’re like, I can’t be estrogen dominant and be in menopause. The answer is, yes, you can. The answer is, to your point about those metabolites is that you can be low on estrogen and still be breaking down that estrogen unfavorably to too many of those dirty estrogens, is what I call for simplicity. It’s the function of your liver. This is where all the magic or lack of magic happens.
Dr. Pompa:
No, exactly and we see that. You run the test and oftentimes, it’s like their estrogen is very low but they have these high toxic metabolites like 4-hydroxyestrone, very linked to breast cancer in the literature. When you look at the total estrogen, it gets very confusing because there’s protective estrogens like estriol is an example. There’s even more protective estrogen metabolites again in the breakdown of estrogen that are protective. Not what you think. The bottom line is, okay, you can run that test. That’s the one that we both think is more valuable that looks at these metabolites but if you have these set of symptoms that we discussed, hey look, if it looks like a duck, waddles like one, quacks like one, it might be one. You might have this. What are some of the solutions? What are some of the solutions that people can do even now?
Magdalena:
Yeah. The answer is support your liver and it’s not surprising that as you age, your liver has also—it’s like a sieve that’s just accumulated a lot of junk. I know in the United States—as you can hear, I’m not American. One of the phenomena that I’ve observed when I moved to the US was—well, many things. I did feel like I was landing on a different planet but one of it was that, everybody’s doing this really crazy detoxes twice a year. I think it’s great especially if it’s done carefully and under supervision with a proven method like the way you do your detoxes. It’s a different story when someone is eating junk all year long and then they do these two detoxes a year and they’re expecting miracles.
It’s a little bit like cleaning your house. Imagine, if you just say, two times a year, I’m just going to clean my house. I’m going to get my whole family. I’m going to do a major clean-up of the house but the rest of the year you never clean your house. I mean, imagine living like that. With the liver, I’m a big proponent of doing little things every day, incorporate that into your diet that really help your liver detoxify because even little things can help. One of my big first things is I’ll say, get rid of the goddamned lettuce in your salads, bring in some nice bitters like arugula or baby kale or bitter greens. Anything that’s bitter stimulates the liver. The bile stops flowing.
By the way, one symptom we didn’t talk about—I forgot to mention is gall bladder. This really interesting relationship of estrogen dominance can cause the stagnation of the bile and creation of gall stones but it’s also the other way around when you have a poor diet especially women who have a problem with eating dairy, develop gall stones and then bile doesn’t flow properly and that can lead to estrogen dominance. It’s really quite a phenomenal relationship between those two. Anything that lets the bile flow, we call it [00:26:30] in herbalism. Anything that’s got bitter. One of my other favorite little things to do is bring on those turnips and radishes into your diet. It’s really fascinating. Every time I go to Whole Foods and I check out, and they go—they look at the radish and they go, what’s this? What’s the code?
I realized it’s because a lot of people don’t buy it because they don’t know what to do with it. Simple ways of incorporating radishes which are pungent and bitter but they also contained—they’re the cruciferous, the cabbage family that’s got incredible ability to detoxify you of estrogens. Not because of the bitter qualities but also because they contain a lot of other substances including DIM, which stands for diindolylmethane. Also super supportive towards the liver. You get this really nice package in one little radish or turnip. One of my favorite ways of cooking them is to chop them up and put them in an oven for half an hour or 40 minutes with some salt and good olive oil and just by roasting them you’re releasing a lot of the sugars, the polysaccharide sweeten them but it still remained bitter but not as pungent.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That’s brilliant. My wife does this fennel salad the very exact same way. It’s simply, salt, pepper, olive oil. It’s so simple but good. We do that with any of the bitters that you just mentioned actually.
Magdalena:
Yeah. One other thing I would just mention which is so simple to do is—and especially these days, you walk into a lot of health food stores and you find teas that are liver supporting. You can make it yourself. You can just buy herbs in bulk or you can buy it in teabags. Anything that contains burdock root and dandelion root are—I mean, those are big, big bile movers and liver movers, these two herbs. I have had our women in our community saying that they crave that tea now after meals. It’s just a wonderful way of your body saying I want one of those. This feels good. Have this after a meal. Having it after a meal is a bit like—I’m a big digestive bitters person. I know it’s not for everyone but just having a bitter tea after a meal, what a wonderful treat you can—
Dr. Pompa:
A lot of countries, they have these in their practice. In Mediterranean countries, they eat fennel before or after meals. In Italy, [00:29:00] is literally an alcohol that they always drink after meals. It’s bitter is why they’re doing it.
Magdalena:
I mean, Campari, right? It’s the same thing when they have a Campari. You have it before meal.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. A lot of those digestifs, they’re bitter. That’s what they are. They’re herbal bitters. In Northern Italy, they always—after every course, they would bring out stuff and they were bitters. They were different types of bitters. You have them. Eat it between courses. Anyway, yeah. Because it helps, it helps your digestion. It helps move the bile out which helps break down food. It helps stimulate digestive enzymes and to your point, it goes even beyond that. It helps your liver. It helps your liver convert these toxic estrogens into more safer forms, gets rid of them. Awesome.
When we look at this, is there—people at risk. Obviously, there’s some genetics the tie people into this. Okay, genetic testing is expensive. I mean, we can look at our family. We can look at our mother, our grandmother. Do you talk about that in your book? By the way, hold up your book for people because all this information’s in there.
Magdalena:
It’s called, Overcoming Estrogen Dominance. No surprise in the title there. Three-quarters of the book is basically of protocols and explaining what’s going on and then the rest of it is all basically recipes. Really, simple recipes that incorporate the—
Dr. Pompa:
That’s awesome. Obviously, I mean, you’re a strong believer in food is a cause and I was leading into that as my next thing. I want to stay on my first question. Who’s at risk? Part of that answer is certain diets put people at risk. Genes are one thing but absolutely people—am I at risk? I mean, that’s what people are going to ask the question.
Magdalena:
To your point, absolutely. First of all, how do you know you are more sensitive? Let’s just start off with genes in case you are genetically predispositioned because you’re much more sensitive. Let me give you an example. Whenever I go to—before COVID was happening and raging the world, at least once a year, I would go to Europe for a month, a month and a half and it would be either Italy or Spain or Portugal. I just love Mediterranean Europe. I’ll just go a little silly. I have espresso and I’ll eat gluten a lot more than—I never eat gluten here.
Dr. Pompa:
The gluten there is different to be fair.
Magdalena:
I know, but I have to tell you, I still pay the price for it. Then dairy and all of that stuff. I come back and it’s like, my breasts are lumpy all over again. My period is just from hell. I know I’m going to pay the price but then, you just pause and you go back to your good lifestyle. Being sensitive. I used to get really angry with myself thinking, these Italian women live like this every night. They have these two glasses of wine and why am I so sensitive about all of this. It was creating a lot of anger in me and I realized that later once I got the genes done, I’m just a lot more sensitive. Any woman who is a lot more sensitive than anyone else, that’s an indicator.
Family history is obviously a big indicator of the symptoms we talked about. Another one is also your own lifestyle. I’m sure people who are now listening to you don’t do a lot of these things but it could be that they have been doing that. They have been doing that in their past lives. Things like for example, using mainstream skin care products. Lather yourself with all the big brands that you see advertised on television or magazines. Oh, there’s a nice fragrance. What do you call those—when you walk into a room, it smells really nice. Those air fresheners. People have it in their cars and inhale it for hours at a time at home. I mean, that’s the fastest way—you want a fast hit, you inhale it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, they’re endocrine disruptors. You’re bringing them right into your bloodstream and then you’re rubbing endocrine disruptors all over your skin. Oh, then you wash your clothes and you use fabric softeners which has at least six endocrine disruptors and neurotoxins in it.
Magdalena:
Then you go and have your coffee in a Styrofoam cup with plastic on top. When you create a walkthrough maybe of your past life—and a lot of us, we did that because no one was really talking about it. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. It’s nobody’s fault. We just didn’t know. I’m sure a lot of your folks are not doing that any more but I’m just painting a picture. Sometimes you just have to consider the fact that you might need to detox a little bit from that. That could be a big contributor.
Food is another one. Obviously, the more processed food you have a history of eating. I especially found it problematic with meat. I don’t even know why we call is conventionally grown food or animals because there’s nothing conventional about it. Why don’t we just call it what it is, toxic way of growing food and just meat that has got growth hormones in it and antibiotics. All of that disrupt your endocrine system in a big way. Dairy, another one. A lot of women having a lot of issues go away the minute they stop eating dairy.
Dr. Pompa:
Commercial dairy, it’s so endocrine disrupting. I’m a believer in grass-fed, real dairy, God’s way. I mean, I’ve been to many different healthy places, cultures where they consume dairy but they’re not consuming what we’re consuming. Dairy is one of the most toxic things.
Magdalena:
Then combine it with birth control pills. Women who have been on it for years and years. You’re talking about synthetic estrogen and synthetic progesterone. Even if it’s just progesterone only pill, it’s still progestin. It’s not progesterone that can itself can create issues. Not to mention the fact that birth control pills basically rob you of so many nutrients that your endocrine system needs. Your liver needs to detoxify. Anyway, this is like the perfect storm that happened to I’m sure a lot of women. It happened to me. Wrap it all up with stress, what a perfect combination. When you’re stressed out and that stress can be physical, emotional. Over exercising, for example. Frequent travel. The way I used to be on the road. Every week, I was in a different country.
All of that can contribute towards stress and stress robs you of progesterone. It robs you of magnesium. You burn through a lot more—speaking of progesterone, low progesterone is also another indicator of estrogen dominance not a form of estrogen dominance. We talked about estrogen dominance being due to the metabolites that you brought up at first. Another form of estrogen dominance that can happen is when you have too much of estrogen and too little progesterone. Even though both of your estrogen and progesterone could be low like the way women going into perimenopause and menopause are low on both but they are super low on progesterone. That could be another reason why you have estrogen dominance symptoms even when you are in menopause.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. What about some herbs? You threw a few out there. We talked about food but what about some herbal—herbs are a more potent food, if you will and a faster reactor to basically getting the body to get rid of something like estrogen. What are some of the recommendations?
Magdalena:
I mentioned two already which is the burdock and dandelion root. Having a tea with that, just absolutely wonderful. There is one herb that just has come up. For the past year, I’ve just been really embracing it. It’s Andrographis. Andrographis is called the queen of bitters in Ayurvedic medicine. It’s more of an Indian plant but very popular—becoming, getting a lot of traction. Andrographis, in fact, right now, is used in Thailand to prevent and cure and treat COVID, so just that little FYI. The reason why I love Andrographis is because, as the name implies, it’s the queen of bitters.
It’s not particularly an herb that you’re going to be cherishing and sipping on. It’s something you would rather shoot and be done with it. One is the bitter quality really is an amazing [00:37:46]. Just moves your bowel like crazy. The other thing that I really love about it is that it works on—we talked about those metabolites, the 2, the 4, and the 16. Andrographis [00:37:58] enzymes on a DNA level that helps to skew the balance towards the two, the protective estrogen and moving away from the dirty estrogen. What a wonderful herb. I’m working a lot with it right now. Doing our own [00:38:14] with it because of the—
Dr. Pompa:
Where do you buy Andrographis?
Magdalena:
What’s that?
Dr. Pompa:
Where do you buy Andrographis?
Magdalena:
You buy it in the form of tinctures. Herb Pharm has got one really wonderful one, very well extracted. I would say tinctures is one. That’s my favorite delivery. You can also find it in pills but it extracts best in alcohol and so this is the best delivery method. One other thing I want to mention that I think is just something that’s very pleasurable and can be made as part of every woman’s daily routine is red clover. Red clover is estrogenic in its activity, so a lot of women are terrified by red clover. Again, to our conversation earlier, just because you’re taking something that’s estrogenic, it doesn’t mean it’s bad for you.
Women who have hot flashes for example will drink red clover and feel like the hot flashes alleviating very quickly because they’re raising their estrogen levels. On the other hand, what red clover does is like an endocrine adaptogen. It adapts depending to what you need. If you’re estrogen dominance, it’s going to support your body in again in that balance of estrogen we talked about. Basically, it’s whether you have hot flashes or a woman’s got PMS, red clover is going to rebalance the body. That’s one of the beautiful things about herbs is that two separate conditions can take it and that might do completely different work depending on what your body needs.
Pomegranates are like that as well. Pomegranates for example—that’s my other favorite food. Something a lot of people don’t like to eat because they don’t know how to take the seeds out. There’s simple ways. You can just cut it across, put it upside down, and bang it on top and all the seeds will basically fall out through your hands. It’s like a two-minute method to get all the seeds out on both sides. The incredible thing is pomegranates, for instance is that—to my point is that, whether you’re a woman who can’t get pregnant or as a fertility fruit is given in India for example, but it’s also used extensively for women in menopause who have hot flashes and memory loss in Iran.
Furthermore, it contains something called S-E-R-M, SERM, selective estrogen receptor modulator. What SERM does is depending on what you need. If you need more estrogen, pomegranates will help to bring it up. If you need to block off those receptors from those dirty estrogens coming through, it will do that for you too. I mean, isn’t that magical?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s neat because if you look around the world, there’s these types of plants that do this differently. Pomegranates are here. Red clover is over here. What about soy? Let’s hypothetically say you find organic non-GMO soy. People run from soy because it’s estrogen and then I would even say what about flax. People are like, I’m estrogen dominant, I can’t do flax. What are your takes on those?
Magdalena:
On soy or flax because they will be a little different?
Dr. Pompa:
Soy first.
Magdalena:
I stay away from soy only because of the researches on both sides and it freaks women out. The sad thing is, what I have found when I read the research is that, a lot of times they don’t tell you exactly what form of soy they were using. Was it a non-GMO soy? Was it organic soy? Then I will contact the research party and I’m like, can you tell me more about what you use and they don’t respond. Because research shows both sides. I mean, there is so much research also that shows the positives of soy. If you have a non-GMO, unprocessed soy, the flavonoids in it can certainly help with raising estrogen and helps tremendously women with menopausal symptoms. I don’t rule it out. The soy that I don’t like is all the processed types. The soy milk and all of that.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s why I asked the question because there’s people on both sides. What about fermented soy? Some people believe it makes it better.
Magdalena:
Yeah, absolutely and so do I. Yeah, tempeh for example.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly.
Magdalena:
It’s a staple food in Indonesia, so absolutely.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s talk about flax because I can’t do flax.
Magdalena:
You cannot?
Dr. Pompa:
No, no. I get that question. I can’t do flax. Flax is in here. Oh, why can’t you do flax? Do you react to it? No, I have estrogen dominance.
Magdalena:
Right. Yeah, so similar story. Flaxseed is estrogenic. It contains phytoestrogen. It’s going to raise your estrogen levels. It can be super beneficial for women who are low. The interesting thing is that flax also does exactly what we talked about pomegranates where it helps to skew the balance towards the protective estrogens from the bad ones, so the dirty estrogens. That is something that’s very well documented and there are studies specifically on breast cancer patients that have been using that, so yes. The thing that I have found, and let me just finish about flaxseed. I also like two other things about flaxseed. The fact that it’s highly anti-inflammatory because of the oil, the ALL that’s in it. Anything that helps lower the inflammation is going to be supportive towards the endocrine system including estrogen dominance.
Also the fact that it contains a lot of soluble and insoluble fiber. A lot of women—well, guess what, who have hormone problems they’re also constipated. When you’re constipated, you’re recycling all of the estrogens back again. Having a really good bowel movement, feeling empty is really, really important when you’re dealing with hormones. I love flaxseed for that. It’s like a broom that sweeps through your colon. For that reason I love it. I will say there are occasionally women who do take flaxseed as per our recommendation. I typically recommend two tablespoons a day, freshly ground, just adding that to smoothies or just a glass of water. Just don’t cook it.
There are women who have been reporting to us that they actually have been feeling worse. Their breast have become a lot more tender. Their periods became worse. I was fascinated by that and dove into an incredible amount of research. There is one research paper I found that said that it’s the microbiome, a unique specific type of bacteria to be able to break down the lignans. That’s where all the phytoestrogens are in order to get the benefit. I wish that the paper told you what is the subset of bacteria and it doesn’t have that, so I can’t tell you. I wrote to them. They didn’t write back. That just goes to say it’s very tightly correlated with the other piece of research I have found, and that is women with breast cancer have also been found to have very limited diversity of bacteria in their gut.
I think there is a common—I have a whole chapter just on gut restoration and specific bacteria. There’s something called the estrobolome. The estrobolome is a subset of bacteria that [00:45:41] enzymes that help you breakdown estrogen. That’s another reason to have a healthy gut. Just to point on flaxseed, circling back on this is that, there is just—you just don’t have the healthiest microflora. I suspect that’s the reason why some women do react unfavorably to it and we just ask them to stop and move to other tools. There’s so many other things you can do. Flaxseed is not—
Dr. Pompa:
I think you’re 100% right on that. Okay, last question. How long would it take someone to turn this around? Changing their diet, taking some of the herbs, doing what you’re saying? How long? When do I feel better? That’s the question.
Magdalena:
Don’t you just love those questions when you get them? Oh, dear. I mean, some women start to feel better in two weeks. We’ve had people started drinking the herbal teas I talked about and they go, wow, my hot flashes are gone. What’s going on here? There’s others who might need two, three months to really start seeing the difference. I will say I had an assistant several years ago, she was a good example of someone I would never hire again for my team. These days my team is—they all do that stuff because we all believe in this. I think it’s really important to run the business, to run company, a practice and to really get your team to believe in it.
She was like one of those skeptics. One day, she comes and she says, I was diagnosed with uterine polyps. What do I do? I’m like, just do—you know what I teach. You post my blog articles. You proved them. She selectively picked a few things to do. She didn’t even do the full elimination diet. She just picked and chose—I think she gave up dairy. She slowed down on alcohol, did a little bit more flaxseed. Just here and there a few things. She went back to her OB-GYN two months later and she had—out of the two uterine polyps, one disappeared and the other one was so small she told her to come back next year. That’s just been two months, not even a full [00:47:54]. I mean, your body will respond.
Dr. Pompa:
The body heals. I’ve noticed that too with this. Granted there might be some other major upstream issues that it takes someone much longer. For the average person, the dietary related estrogen dominance, the body can move it pretty quickly. Hold up your book again. There you go. Maybe it’s out here any week. By the time people view this, they’ll actually be able to get it but Overcoming Estrogen Dominance. A lot of time and effort and research and pain and purpose in that book. If I was going to listen to someone about estrogen dominance, I’d make sure that they actually had it and lived to tell about it, and telling the story like you are worldwide. You are the expert for a good reason. You went through a lot. Thank you for the book. Thank you for being here. Get the book. Magdalena, thank you. Thank you very much.
Magdalena:
I certainly appreciate.
Dr. Pompa:
Magdalena, right? There you go.
Magdalena:
Yes. Thank you so much for having me and spreading the word. This is really my work’s mission.
Dr. Pompa:
No, it is. I can see that and again, you brought so much great information to the show and people need to hear this. Share the show because this is a topic that people are misdiagnosed and mistreated. We have to spread the word. Thank you again.
Magdalena:
Thank you.
Dr. Pompa:
Hey, I want to tell you about one of our sponsors, CytoDetox. Look, podcasts cost money. There’s a lot of production going around this but we are grateful to have CytoDetox as one of the sponsors. It’s so easy for me to talk about the product because myself and my family use it constantly as we practice what I preach. For over 15 years, I have talked about and taught doctors and the public about cellular detox and I’ll tell you, Cyto was a breakthrough. Cyto was a breakthrough for us and its changed so many lives so we’re grateful that they sponsor Cellular Healing TV. It makes sense, doesn’t it? They should.
Ashley:
If you’re listening to this podcast and want to access the amazing CytoDetox product Dr. Pompa just mentioned, please visit, detoxoffer.com. Again, that’s detoxoffer.com.
That’s it for this week. The materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only and they’re not to be considered as substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you would like to purchase some of the supplements mentioned on the show, please visit the site, asseenonchtv.com and use the code, CHTV15 for 15% off. Again, that’s asseenonchtv.com. Use the code, CHTV15 for 15% off. As always, thanks for listening.
