Recently, I interviewed Deborah and we discuss the critical role the hypothalamus plays in regulating hormones, its impact on thyroid health, fertility, and autoimmunity, Deborah’s approach to treating hypothalamic dysfunction, the challenges of diagnosing hypothalamic issues, and more. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.
Dr. Eric Osansky:
I am super excited to chat with today’s guest, Deborah Maragopoulos. She will be talking about the hypothalamus, which we haven’t discussed on this podcast. Very excited to chat with Deborah about this.
Deborah Maragopoulos is an intuitive, integrative family nurse practitioner who has spent over 30 years blending the science of medicine with the art of healing to help thousands of people heal from a variety of symptoms and thrive by treating their hypothalamus. Specializing in neural immune endocrinology, Deborah focuses on optimizing the function of the hypothalamus, the maestro of the symphony of hormones.
She is the author of several books, including her latest, The Hypothalamus Handbook, which outlines the steps people can take to start healing the hypothalamus on their own. Known as the “Hormone Queen,” she has made it her mission to help everyone balance their hormones and live optimally no matter their age. Thank you so much for joining us, Deborah.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Thank you for having me, Eric. It’s a pleasure.
Dr. Eric:
I’m excited to have this conversation. I’m sure when you’re a guest on most podcasts, one of the main questions they ask is how did you get involved in just focusing on the hypothalamus? You’re one of the few, if maybe the only one, I have come across who really focuses on the hypothalamus. If you could give a bit more of your background?
Deborah:
That’s a really good question. When I was a very young, 23-year-old nurse out of school, I gave birth to an intersex child. I was going to go into pediatrics and decided to veer into the study of hormones, so I could help my child navigate the medical system. That led me to develop an expertise in hormones and receptor sites and how lifestyle actually affected hormonal milieu, and not just sex hormones, but adrenals, thyroid, growth hormone, the whole works.
Then I went into family practice after I got out of my graduate degree. I started doing a little bit of women’s practice. I was an OB-GYN for a while. There, I got deluged with all kinds of hormonal concerns.
Then I went into my integrative practice. I wanted to learn way more about hormones than just sex hormones. I set it out to the universe, “Let me learn about the neuroimmune-endocrine system” because it’s definitely connected. I just didn’t know where or how.
The universe sent me what we call train wrecks in medicine. These were patients who had all kinds of diagnoses. Everything is wrong. Neurological conditions, autoimmune conditions, all kinds of hormonal imbalances, adrenal, thyroid, you name it. They were tired. They couldn’t sleep. They were anxious and depressed. A multitude of medications and supplements.
I was trying to get them all on to natural stuff. That’s what they wanted. They wanted to switch from conventional to natural treatments. I was sending them out with bucketloads of supplements, bioidentical hormones, etc. But I wasn’t treating the root of the issue, and that really bothered me. I felt I was trading natural for conventional.
I really meditated about it and tried to figure out what’s going on here. I need some kind of clue. I got a magazine in my office, Scientific American. They were doing studies on fat white mice. These mice had the same symptoms as my patients. They were tired, also insomniac, overweight, depressed, anxious. They had adrenal and thyroid and sex hormone issues.
They sacrificed the mice. They found that one hormone in their hypothalamus, pro-opiomelanocortin, wasn’t functioning properly. That one master hormone out of many hormones in the hypothalamus controls your adrenals, thyroid, glucose, metabolism, day/night cycles, and also makes you feel happy.
I thought, oh my gosh, it’s the hypothalamus. That’s where I started my research. That was back in 1998. I really started researching the hypothalamus and how I could treat it and what I needed to do lifestyle-wise and supplement-wise. I developed a very successful product supplement to help the hypothalamus balance. Here we are 20-something years later, and it’s working very well. That’s how I got started.
Dr. Eric:
We’ll talk about the supplement that you created a little later. Since the hypothalamus is so important, why is it ignored by most practitioners? I’m guilty of this, too. I can’t say I talk about the hypothalamus to most of my patients.
Deborah:
We learned about it in school, our anatomy and physiology. Because we can’t measure the hormones that it produces, we can’t get direct access to it without sacrificing the lab rat. We’re not going to do that to humans. The only time we really look at it is if we suspect a tumor, we might do an MRI to check. We don’t really pay attention to it. We have no way to measure it.
It really takes a bit of medical detective work to figure out that it’s really the central controller that is at the root of the hormone issues, neurological issues, or immune issues. That’s where I was led to. Learning about pro-opiomelanocortin and its effect on the lower endocrine glands and metabolism led me to the rest of the neurons and other hormones it produces.
The hypothalamus is actually in the news now. It wasn’t when I was first studying it. I couldn’t find anything on it. It’s in the news now since COVID. Long COVID symptoms are hypothalamic dysfunction. There has been quite a bit of research on the hypothalamus. It has exploded the anti-obesity drugs. Almost all of them are related to upper control mechanisms of satiety, hunger, and metabolism in the hypothalamus. That’s what they target.
There is more research. It’s been incredible. I couldn’t find anything 25 years ago. When I was writing my book, I couldn’t stop putting references in the BIB until my publisher said, “You can have an active BIB on your website. This is getting ridiculous.” There is a lot out there now.
Clinically applying that research is another factor. We don’t all do that.
Dr. Eric:
To be fair, a lot of us do mention it. We were talking before recording about the HPT and HPA axes (hypothalamic pituitary thyroid and hypothalamic pituitary adrenal). We mention it.
As you said, when testing, we can’t look at those hormones. In the case of looking at the thyroid, you can measure the TSH, Thyroid Stimulating Hormone, which is the pituitary hormone. You can’t test the hypothalamus hormones. That’s why it goes ignored. It doesn’t mean that it’s not important to pay attention to as well.
Deborah:
I think it’s the most important organ honestly. It controls the majority of our vital systems. There is not much it doesn’t control. It controls all of your endocrine glands, including the pineal gland. People say the pineal gland is beyond the hypothalamus, but it’s not. The hypothalamus actually triggers pineal production through melanocyte-stimulating hormone.
It controls your day/night cycle. It controls your thyroid, adrenals, pancreas function as well as it’s the intimate controller of your gut. It’s not the gut-brain connection; it’s the gut-hypothalamus connection. It’s the hypothalamus talking directly to your gut through hormones as well as the autonomic nervous system.
The hypothalamus talks to your fat cells through the sympathetic nervous system. The hypothalamus controls your immune system by controlling prolactin production and controlling thymus activity, which activates your T cells.
There is not much the hypothalamus doesn’t do: respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, temperature control, weight monitoring, your metabolism, including cellular metabolism and detoxification. Everything. It’s an important organ, but it’s a difficult one to get to to figure out what’s going on. I think that’s the biggest issue.
I like to think of the hypothalamus as the operating systems of our human computer. The hormones that we give patients and neurotransmitters that we influence, immune factors, those are all software programs. The hard drive is the physical body, but the operating system is your hypothalamus. That helps my patients get an idea that it’s really important. I can’t just keep uploading new software programs if my operating system isn’t functioning properly.
Dr. Eric:
Great explanation. Can you talk more about hypothalamic dysfunction, like how common is it? Since you can’t test for it on a lab, are there ways you can recognize it?
Deborah:
Absolutely. Hypothalamic dysfunction is when the hypothalamus in one or more of its functions is not functioning properly. It’s usually caused by some kind of hypothalamic microinflammation. That can be induced by a head injury. That’s a very common induction.
But it can also be induced by nutritional issues. Overnutrition definitely induces it. High fat diets and high sugar diets induce it. Undernutrition or malnutrition induces it.
Toxins like heavy metals and BPA, endocrine disruptors. Then you have your viruses and bacteria. We know EBV and COVID-19 definitely affect the hypothalamus.
The hypothalamus is affected so easily by all of these different things because it is not protected by the blood-brain barrier. It’s exposed to everything your body is exposed to, unlike your brain, which is protected.
The symptoms are fatigue, difficulty gaining weight or losing weight, even though your hunger may be the same. You’re going to have different hormonal issues, infertility, impotency, low libido, irregular menstrual cycles in a woman, premature menopause or what we call hypogonadism in a male, where they don’t make enough testosterone when younger.
You can have thyroid disorders, both hyper and hypothyroidism as well as thyroiditis, autoimmune conditions, adrenal disorders, too much cortisol, too little cortisol, circadian cortisol.
Hyperprolactinemia is definitely a sign of hypothalamic dysfunction because the hypothalamus produces prolactin. Insomnia, depression, anxiety, memory issues, learning disabilities, dementia, temperature control regulation. You’re cold or hot all the time. Hot flashes is a clear sign of hypothalamic dysfunction.
There is not much it doesn’t control. It controls your blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration. Most of the metabolic conditions are centered around hypothalamic dysfunction. High cholesterol, high blood pressure, glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, that’s hypothalamic-centered.
Dr. Eric:
You mentioned a lot of things can affect the hypothalamus. Nutrition, malnutrition, infections, certain viruses, environmental toxins. Can you talk a little bit more about stress? I know you mentioned cortisol before. We don’t think about stress affecting directly the hypothalamus. I always think about that HPA axis. Thinking more of the pituitary and thyroid moreso than the hypothalamus. If you could talk a little bit about stress’s impact on the hypothalamus, that’d be wonderful.
Deborah:
When you’re under stress, and it doesn’t really matter if the stress is something that’s threatening your life, like a tiger is chasing you, or your bills are late, or people are bugging you at work, or you’re having marital issues, your body responds the same way.
You get a fight or flight response, which is induced in the hypothalamus, which tells the pituitary gland to produce ATCH, which tells the adrenal glands to produce cortisol. The hypothalamus is triggered by the sympathetic nervous system and sends the trigger back down to produce the adrenaline. There is this nervous system as well as hormonal effect in the hypothalamus that produces that stress response.
An acute stressor, like I am running away from danger, is not going to damage my hypothalamus. If I have to keep running, if I have to keep escaping the danger, if that stressor is constantly after me, like I said, it doesn’t have to be a tiger. It could be financial concerns, relationship concerns. Eventually, the HPA is affected.
We find in people with high levels of chronic stress, PTSD, chronic depression or anxiety, which stresses the HPA, their hypothalamus is anatomically different than the normal hypothalamus. It’s constantly being revved, and it affects not only the adrenal glands but that proopiomelanocortin, that big mother hormone of the hypothalamus.
That is where you get corticotropin-releasing factor. That is the hypothalamic hormone that tells the pituitary to produce adrenocorticotrophic hormone, ACTH. That POMC also controls your thyroid malanite-stimulating hormone, which controls your metabolism, day/night cycles, and glucose function. The leftover becomes beta endorphins.
If your glucose is out of balance, you have insulin resistance, you have low thyroid function, you have adrenal issues, you’re having trouble sleeping, it’s higher than just adrenals, thyroid, and pancreas. It’s way higher than that. It’s up in the hypothalamus. That is POMC out of balance. That is just one of many hormones that the hypothalamus makes.
Stress affects it greatly. We can control our response to stress, which will actually relieve some of the inflammation in the hypothalamus. We can actually change the way we respond to stress through mindfulness, deep breathing exercises, counseling, therapy. Whatever you need to calm down will help heal your hypothalamus.
Dr. Eric:
Important for blood sugar, if you’re having sleep issues. Not all sleep issues necessarily are related to the hypothalamus, but hypothalamic dysfunction can be a factor. It’s not just directly related to adrenals in many cases.
We know the relationship between thyroid and the HPT axis. If you want to go a little bit deeper into that, that’d be great. Also, in addition to that, the immune system, too. You mentioned the hypothalamus is important when it comes to the thymus gland, which is important when it comes to immunity. Feel free to go anywhere you’d like as far as not just its importance with the thyroid gland directly, but also the impact it has on thyroid autoimmunity for those with Graves’ or Hashimoto’s.
Deborah:
One of the things that I see a lot in my patients is symptoms of hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism. There’s either too much thyroid hormone or too little. It’s really not showing in the blood lab. The TSH isn’t affected, so their TSH isn’t too high in hypothyroidism or too low in hyperthyroidism yet. Their T4 levels and T3 levels look fine, too, but they’re already symptomatic.
That is usually what’s called central thyroid disorder, meaning it’s at the hypothalamic level. The hypothalamus is becoming somewhat resistant to the thyroid hormone itself, so it’s not getting that good feedback from the hypothalamus to the pituitary to the thyroid to keep your thyroid hormone in balance.
You feel the symptoms. I’ll say that a lot, especially in hypothyroid patients who are very symptomatic. They are cold all the time, constipated, gaining weight. They think it’s their thyroid, but their TSH is in normal limits. Free T4 and free T3 are within normal limits.
If I look at their TSH compared to their T4 and T3, they’re not talking together properly. If your T4 and T3 are at the low end of normal, your TSH should be at the high end of normal. It’s a seesaw. It’s a negative feedback system. Often, they’re both low. The TSH is at the low end of normal, as are T4 and T3. They’re showing hypothyroid signs.
Or hyperthyroid. Both are on the high end of normal. They are not bottomed out yet with hyperthyroidism. It’s not communicating. It’s a miscommunication.
That is the central aspect of thyroid disorders, which happens with the adrenals and gonads. We can see pretty easily with the thyroid, where we can’t see it as easily with the gonads and adrenal glands. That’s a good clue that something else is going on.
Those patients need help. Do they need thyroid hormone treatment right away? Oftentimes not. If you treat their hypothalamus, that will trigger a proper communication, and their thyroid gland can continue to produce thyroid hormone.
The problem is if their immune system is off, and they have Graves’ or Hashimoto’s, and they are attacking their own ability to produce proper amounts of thyroid hormone, then that is often underlying in the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus controls the hormones that control your immune system’s function.
Again, if I focus on the hypothalamus, I oftentimes don’t have to do aggressive treatment for Hashimoto’s and Graves’ because I am working with the root issue first. That doesn’t mean we’re not trying to treat some of those symptoms. If they have Graves’, and their heart is palpitating out of their chest, we are trying to treat that. But until their hypothalamus is treated properly, we will always be suppressing their thyroid production in Graves’, or we will always be giving them thyroid replacement therapy in hypothyroidism because we haven’t addressed the hypothalamus.
Dr. Eric:
Having a central thyroid disorder, you said that you would appear as having a normal TSH. Then the thyroid hormones, depending on whether someone is more hyper or hypo, like if it’s central hypothyroidism, would TSH be normal, and thyroid hormones maybe within range, but on the lower side?
Deborah:
What we’d expect to see is the thyroid hormone, T4 and T3 are on the low end of normal, and they are feeling hypothyroid, I’d expect the TSH to be elevated. It’s a seesaw. If that’s not happening, if I see the TSH is low, and the T4 and T3 is low, that’s a miscommunication. That’s central hypothyroidism. Same on the other end for hyperthyroidism.
You see it more with hypothyroidism. It’s not really treated at all. It’s not paid attention to. The patients will continue to complain until they finally can’t make any more thyroid hormone on their own because there is no more stimulus to the thyroid trying to get them to make more thyroid hormone. They have become more resistant to that communication. Just like you become insulin-resistant, you can become resistant to any of your hormones. Those receptor sites get overwhelmed.
Dr. Eric:
There is a condition which maybe ties into this, thyroid hormone resistance, like insulin resistance. Usually, the pattern is TSH might be normal but also might be elevated, but the thyroid hormone levels usually are on the higher side, too. Like insulin resistance, you have too much insulin not getting into the cell. There is not a lot out there on thyroid hormone resistance. It also makes me wonder if the hypothalamus might play a role in that as well.
Deborah:
You can also get that same resistance in the hypothalamus to the hormones that it’s supposed to be responding to. We see that with insulin resistance in the hypothalamus. Central insulin resistance and glucagon resistance, that’s how those GLP1 anti-obesity drugs work. That’s where obesity begins, that miscommunication in metabolism, weight, hunger, and satiety. It’s in the hypothalamus.
The same thing can happen with the thyroid. We know it happens with diabetes. We suspect it also happens with the adrenal glands. I see it all the time with my patients who are making all kinds of discircadian cortisol levels. They feel low, but their levels are normal. They look high, but their levels are normal. Their ACTH isn’t matching up to their cortisol levels. It’s probably related to the cortico releasing factor in the hypothalamus, but we can’t measure that, so we have to go up a little bit higher. It’s upstream medicine rather than downstream.
We are taught in medicine, even in natural medicine, to treat symptoms, and we have different drugs for different symptoms. We look for the core of that symptom, going all the way upstream to where this is occurring. Treating the hypothalamus, focusing on it, is more upstream medicine.
Dr. Eric:
Fertility as well. It can benefit people with thyroid conditions. The adrenals all tied into the hypothalamus as well as the pituitary. If someone is having fertility issues, they are dealing with infertility, I imagine also giving some support to the hypothalamus can also be beneficial.
Deborah:
Absolutely. Since I developed my supplement, I do very little infertility work as well, where that was one of my specialties of leaving my women’s practice and going into my own integrative practice. I did a lot of infertility work with couples at that time.
That was my feeling. Their hypothalamus isn’t allowing them to get pregnant because it’s off. It’s not balanced. It’s not functioning optimally. Once we get it functioning optimally, they would naturally start menstruating and ovulating, and they were no longer resistant to their partner’s sperm. We weren’t having antibody reactions anymore. it made a huge difference.
I have customers now who just utilize- It helps to feed the hypothalamus, give it what it needs. As clean as our diets may be, and as hard as we try to get organic and plant-based and a variety of foods, we may not be getting all the nutrition that our genetics needs in order to function optimally.
Dr. Eric:
I did look at the supplement label. It has a lot of other things in there.
Deborah:
It does have a lot of things in there.
Dr. Eric:
I don’t know if you want to talk about some of these things. I saw amino acids, probiotics, herbs. It seemed like a few dozen different ingredients.
Deborah:
It’s got a lot of ingredients.
Dr. Eric:
Is it capsule or powder since it has a lot in there?
Deborah:
It’s in a powder form since it’s got a lot in there. You can mix it in drinks, so it’s like a green drink. The basis of Genesis Gold are the amino acids. I actually have them packaged separately as well for people who have any plant-based allergies. If they have allergies to the other ingredients in Genesis Gold, they can start with the sacred seven amino acids.
I say “start with” because most of the time, what looks like an allergy is actually a hypersensitivity, which gets resolved once the hypothalamus is in better functioning. Those amino acids are really the core of the hypothalamic support.
Everything else in Genesis Gold are the other nutrients. Now we have research that shows seaweeds and sea vegetation are polyunsaturated fatty acids. Amino acids and plant phenols and a variety of botanicals also help feed the hypothalamus.
I put all this into the recipe before the formula before all this research came out. It was basically what I was giving my patients in lots of jars of supplements, many capsules and pills they were taking. It was more of a synchronistic blend. Feeding them what they needed in order to give the hypothalamus a buffet of nutrient options to work with.
After the amino acids, the sea vegetation is probably the greater weight of these greens, which is why it’s flavored. Eating seaweed is not very flavorful. We also use fruit extracts to flavor it. We also have the botanicals and herbal digestives with probiotics to help with actually digesting all of this.
It’s been very successful. It’s allowed a lot of my patients who have been taking tons of different stuff to simplify their regimen and get down to the root of the issue.
Dr. Eric:
I imagine you combine it with other things, too. Even if everybody takes the supplement, I assume you also make sure they’re eating a healthy diet and still trying to block out time for stress management.
Deborah:
Yeah, it’s five pillars for hypothalamic health. I don’t have enough Genesis Gold for you to drink if you’re not going to bed and turning off your lights, and you’re sedentary and eating junk food, and you’re super stressed out, and your mindset is such that you just believe you’re always going to be sick, that you just have no faith in your own healing ability. It’s a lot of different things.
That’s because the hypothalamus is really sensitive to your sleep regimen. As soon as you start turning off the lights, getting into your jammies or taking your warm bath first, your hypothalamus starts triggering nocturnal hormones. If you don’t have good sleep hygiene, and you are constantly going to bed at different times, and you are on screens with blue light getting reflected back, so we think it’s daytime instead of nighttime, it will suppress hypothalamic function for nocturnal mode and put off all of your nocturnal hormones.
One of the big hormones we don’t pay a lot of attention to is prolactin. It’s a nocturnal hormone. We produce it during the day at very low levels. It stimulates your thymus to start training and triggering those T cells to go after other and not you. If they’re not programmed properly, then you have autoimmunity.
I often see that patients who have autoimmune conditions will have high levels of prolactin during the day. They have discircadian prolactinemia. They are not hyperprolactin, not way above normal. But they have nighttime levels during the day. Your immune system isn’t supposed to be functioning at high levels then; it’s supposed to be functioning at high levels at night to clean house and make sure you haven’t been invaded, etc.
There are a lot of autoimmune issues when prolactin is high. That is not only because the hypothalamus produces prolactin, but the pituitary gland releases it. You can measure prolactin in the blood. The hypothalamus produces dopamine, which is the opposite of prolactin. It’s what turns prolactin off. When the hypothalamus becomes dysfunctional, and that prolactin production gets off, you have discircadian prolactin production.
What you will notice is a symptom in those people with high prolactin in the morning are the ones who have to have coffee. They are not able to get up. They are not morning people. It’s almost like they’re sleepwalking. Prolactin puts you into a really deep sleep, almost anesthetic sleep, so your immune system can clean up.
Dr. Eric:
Do you test prolactin on everybody then, just to see if it’s on the higher side?
Deborah:
Yeah, I do. I test between 8-9am. I make sure there is no nipple stimulus. Any nipple stimulus will raise prolactin levels for 24 hours before. Test it between 8-9am. A healthy level is under 9 by 9am in males and females. I’ll get patients in their teens, 20s, almost close to 30s in a woman. Even though that’s considered within normal limits, that’s a nocturnal level, not a daytime level.
Dr. Eric:
The higher side is what you’re usually seeing with autoimmune conditions. You’re not seeing it crazy elevated?
Deborah:
I am not suspecting a microadenoma in the pituitary, hyperprolactinemia for that. I have had patients with super high prolactin levels, and it still wasn’t a microadenoma.
I’ll give you an example of a man who came to see me. He was overweight, super fatigued, depressed. His wife wanted me to give him some testosterone, thinking that would be the issue. He had trouble waking up in the morning. I tested him, and he had low testosterone, low adrenal function, low thyroid function. What he had ridiculously high was his prolactin. His prolactin was way higher than normal.
I did an MRI. He did not have a microadenoma. What I did was gave him a dopamine agonist to lower the prolactin, but just in the morning as if he was producing dopamine. I supported his hypothalamus. Within two or three months, all those other hormone levels started to get in better balance, just by bringing his prolactin level down. I was able to wean him off the dopamine agonist.
I can give you testosterone. I can give you adrenal support. I can give you thyroid support. We can do all that. But prolactin blocks those receptor sites. You won’t hear those hormones in those cells. They won’t function.
He noticed a difference within a week or so of taking the dopamine agonist. He could feel like he was waking up. It takes about two months to reset it with the dopamine agonist for a discircadian hyperprolactinemia.
Dr. Eric:
Which dopamine agonist do you recommend?
Deborah:
I usually use bromocriptine because it’s short-acting. I don’t like the long-acting ones. I am not trying to suppress prolactin all the time. I don’t want to suppress it at night. I use bromocriptine. I use it vaginally in a female and rectally in a male because bromocriptine taken orally can actually induce hypertension, cause nausea and vomiting, and give you headaches. Taking it through the mucus membranes, it doesn’t have any of those symptoms. Those studies were done on infertile women back in the ‘70s. I have been using bromocriptine in women vaginally for three or four decades. A long time.
Dr. Eric:
Have you heard anything about chaste tree, chaste berry, Vitex affecting prolactin in positive ways? I don’t know if that could be used in a similar way.
Deborah:
Chaste berry has a pregestational effect. It does have mild inductions of lowering prolactin. For very low levels, slight discircadian, it can be helpful. The problem is you have to use high levels of chaste berry, which affects sex steroid production. I haven’t found it to be super successful in my patients. A lot of them have already been taking it, trying to get it down. The levels they have to take to bring it down messes up the gonads, production of sex steroids.
Dr. Eric:
Good to know. You might not have had this question yet. Maybe you have. There are adrenal glandulars. There are glandulars that support-
Deborah:
Thyroid, pituitary, ovaries, testes.
Dr. Eric:
There are also hypothalamic glandulars out there. I wanted to ask you about that. I imagine for adrenal glandulars, you would say maybe there is a time and place, but you want to address the cause of the problem and not just rely on adrenal glandulars. Would it be the same with glandulars to support the hypothalamus?
Deborah:
My opinion on glandulars has to do with a study that was done quite a long time ago, 20 years ago, that looked at what happened to the glandulars after a certain period of time. They actually did radio isotopes on these glandulars and had people taking them.
In the beginning of their treatment, usually the first 6-12 weeks, the glandular targeted the cell. If it was an adrenal glandular, you found it in the adrenals. Thyroid glandular, you found it in the thyroid. Pituitary, you found it in the pituitary. After that 6-12-week period, it started migrating into other parts of the body. A lot of it went to the liver to detox.
I see glandulars as short-term therapy. I believe you need hypothalamic support for much longer time. It takes at least 90 days to optimize hypothalamus function. If you’ve been ill, let’s say you’ve been out of balance with adrenal and thyroid disorders and autoimmunity for 10 years. You are going to add one month per year to that imbalance to that first 90 days in order to get optimal functioning. You wouldn’t be able to take glandulars that long and still affect the hypothalamus without causing toxicity.
I know there is a lot of supplement brands out there that have been using glandulars. Again, my belief is it has its place, but it’s very short-term. That’s what we used in the beginning. If you were an infertile man, you would eat the testes of the buck to try to boost your fertility. We would feed that to you, but you wouldn’t get it forever. It would usually be for a short period of time. I think that’s part of the issue: overuse, and then it becoming more of a toxin than helpful anymore.
Dr. Eric:
Deborah, before we start wrapping things up, can you summarize the five pillars to achieve optimal hypothalamic function?
Deborah:
What I preach to my patients and customers is first, getting adequate sleep in the dark. If you’re an adult, 7-9 hours of sleep. Turning off those screens before you go to bed is really important. You don’t want to have lights in your room. It needs to be nice and dark.
It’s hard though when your hypothalamus is out of balance because oftentimes you are not sleeping well to start with. But you do need that sleep hygiene because it triggers the hypothalamus’s nocturnal mode.
Then you need to be eating well. Nutrition is super important. High fat, high sugar diets cause hypothalamic inflammation. We know that. It actually induces metabolic conditions. You need to eat a plant-based diet.
The simple diet to follow is the Mediterranean diet. I am not talking pasta and pizza. I am talking mostly produce. Try to do organic. Try to get locally grown. Try to get a variety. You are getting protein, but you are usually getting most of it from eggs, a little dairy, chicken, and fish/seafood. Red meat is limited.
You’re not getting as much sugar. It doesn’t mean you don’t get any. You do get a little bit but not much. Same with alcohol. It’s way at the top of the pyramid. A little tiny bit of red wine. Same with pastas and grains. It’s mostly whole grains and legumes. It’s very plant-based. Even with a great plant-based diet, you need more help, but that’s a great place to start.
I think the biggest issue a lot of my patients have is they don’t know how to cook vegetables properly. They have never found them to be tasty enough to include them in their diet on a regular basis. Mostly what they will eat is salads. Raw vegetables are not as well digested, especially by us humans, because we don’t make cellulase. We need cooking to break down the fiber part of vegetables. Learning how to cook your vegetables is a great way to improve your nutrition and making sure you’re getting a good variety.
My favorite way is roasting in olive oil. Olive oil has the most value in terms of preserving nutrition in vegetables. Roasting at 350, no more than 400 degrees is a great way to retain nutrition. There are very few vegetables that are roasted that aren’t tasty. You can’t roast greens. Greens need to be sauteed.
We have activities. Being sedentary is the new smoking. If you’re not moving around, you’re not stimulating your hypothalamus to increase your metabolism, so you’re not burning as much energy. You’re going to get weaker. You’re going to gain adipose tissue. You will become hormonally imbalanced.
That’s one of the biggest things we’re seeing with the feminization of the younger male. A lot of them are not doing as much activity as they used to do when jobs were more physical. We’re on computers, and we’re just sitting too much, more than eight hours a day. We need to move around. We need to get up and move around.
I am a big believer in exercise. Always have been. If you are not a formal exerciser, just getting up, five minutes every 30 minutes makes a big difference in insulin resistance, improving your metabolism.
Try to get some aerobic exercise a few times a week. Stretching. Weight resistance is helpful. You have those three pillars of activity. Being as active as possible. They say exercise is probably the best anti-aging thing you can do to improve your metabolism.
We have sleep, nutrition, and activity. My fourth pillar is mindset. If you don’t have a healing, healthy mindset, you get in your own way. If you don’t believe you can heal, I have these great bioidentical hormones, supplements. You can do everything else, but if you don’t believe it, it’s not going to work.
You have to start shifting your mindset toward healing. Believing that you can heal. Look for what’s working instead of what’s not working. That makes a huge difference.
I deal a lot with menopausal women. I’m in that age group. This is not a curse. This is actually a blessing. Embracing the aspects of what’s happening at this point in our life makes it not just a pleasant journey but a healthier journey.
The last piece is hypothalamic nutrition. That’s why I created Genesis Gold, to provide all those plant phenols and amino acids necessary to help the hypothalamus do its job better, so it can function better, and you can optimize its functioning. You’re able to diminish a lot of the medications, hormones you’re taking. You don’t need those anymore if the hypothalamus is doing its job better.
Dr. Eric:
Thank you for sharing those five pillars. You covered so much. Is there anything else I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you? Any last things you want to talk about?
Deborah:
I think the biggest thing is you need to give it time. The hypothalamus is not going to be fed overnight. It’s not like taking a sleeping pill and going to sleep. If you are going to reset your circadian rhythm, it’s going to take time. If we are going to rest your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal or hypothalamic pituitary thyroid axis, it will take time. That 90-day window is crucial. That is the biggest issue I have with people who don’t know about the hypothalamus. They want a quick result.
When you start changing your lifestyle and supporting it nutraceutically, you will feel more energy. You will sleep better. Your moods will be better, fairly quickly. It won’t fix all your hormones and everything else rapidly. My infertile patients, it’s 3-6 months from taking Genesis Gold to conception. It takes a while to balance out that hypothalamic pituitary ovarian axis. It takes some time.
You need to be patient. You didn’t get here in this place of illness and out of balance overnight. It took time to get to this place. Yes, you need to change probably a lot of lifestyle factors, but you need to give the nutraceutical time and what you’re doing in your life time to see the effects. Turning off your lights two or three nights in a row isn’t going to reset your sleep pattern. Then pull an all-nighter on night four. That won’t help.
You need to commit to that shift. Two weeks minimum to set a habit, 40 days would be even better. Your hypothalamus needs time to heal.
Dr. Eric:
One more question I have related to the Genesis Gold. When someone is healing, do they typically take more of that? On a wellness basis, take less? How does that work, the dosing?
Deborah:
It’s dosed by body weight. It’s 4g per 50lb of body weight. It has in it a scoop for the average 150-pound person. It’s really dosed by body weight.
They will take at least their body weight if not a little bit more when they’re really out of balance. Sometimes, that will induce a detox reaction. If you’re pretty toxic, you can actually detox pretty quickly when the hypothalamus starts getting what it needs. That’s uncomfortable. You have headaches, tummy aches, diarrhea, gas. You may even break out because toxins are coming out through your skin.
Is this a side effect? No, you were toxic, and we needed to detox you, so you might need to slow down that process. You might need dietary detox and better hydration. You might need some other things to help slow down. Maybe take a little bit less in the beginning so it’s not so drastic. It does take some time.
Once they get on maintenance though, I take less than my body weight. I have been on it for a long time. If I get stressed, it’s the first thing I up. I just recently had to deal with the death of my dad and that hospice process. It was stressful. I took extra and got up to my body weight. I even added a little extra Sacred Seven on top of Genesis Gold; that way, I didn’t have to mick around with my hormones or anything else.
It’s pretty much all I take. I could stay in balance and be there for that process and for my family. Life happens. It can get stressful. At that time, your body needs a little bit more. Those conditional amino acids, those conditional fatty acids, those things that we would make if we could, but we can’t always make enough when we’re under stress.
Dr. Eric:
Where can people find out more about Genesis Gold? Where can they purchase it? Also, if you could let them know where they could find your book. I’m thinking Amazon.
Deborah:
My website is GenesisGold.com. You can find everything about me, my book, all the books I’ve written. You can purchase Genesis Gold. Of course, my book is also on Amazon, The Hypothalamus Handbook. Everything you need, including hundreds of blog posts and a YouTube channel, can be found there if you prefer to get educated via YouTube.
I have quite a few programs, like my Hormone Reboot Training, which is a free program to educate you. It’s a video course, very short. It helps you learn more about your hypothalamus and things you can do to help yourself.
Dr. Eric:
Thank you so much, Deborah. This was an amazing conversation. The first one I had in this much depth as far as the hypothalamus. I’m sure the listeners learned a lot. I did as well.
Deborah:
Thank you so much, Eric.
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