Ep. 105: Healthy Hormones, Happy Life with Dr. Rob Jones

Robyn:

Hey everyone and Welcome back to The Vibe show. Today’s episode is really great. Dr. Rob Jones showed up, got off the bus in Switzerland at the retreat that I hold there every summer. His wife is the GreenSmoothieGirl follower. I guess she had followed me for years and dragged him along. And he ended up being rather a celebrity at our retreat because of his deep knowledge of functional medicine and specifically natural hormone replacement therapy, which is one of the things I get the most questions about in the last 12 years as GreenSmoothieGirl online.

When he and his wife got off the bus, I said to his wife, whose name is Joy Jones, I said, I feel like I know you. She was really humble and didn’t tell me who she was, but she is one of only a handful of LDS, or you may call them Mormons, but FYI, they don’t like being called that, they like to be called LDS. Uh, she’s a General Authority, which is one of the very top, she’s one of the three top leaders in the world of the LDS religion. And so I had seen her on Facebook. I knew her face and so I said to her, “I think you look like the LDS General Relief Society President.” And she said, “General Primary President”. And I was like, “Oh yeah, do people always tell you that you look like her?” And she said, “No, I am her”. So kind of funny little moment.

And I was impressed that they showed up. I got to spend lots of time with them and they’re just amazing people. They are in their sixties. Dr. Rob Jones is 67. You would never know it. He’s extremely vital and he fits right in with our Learn From Our Elders series, but instead of going deep on what he is doing to stay healthy as he gets closer to 70 and why he’s still doing a lot of good work in the world, we touch on that some. But I really wanted to dive deep with you about hormones.

Because we are launching something that’s probably the most important thing I’ve done in the past year and it’s, The Hormone Health Revolution video masterclass. You can learn more about it. We’re having a launch special and it’s 60 percent off during the launch. It’s at greensmoothiegirl.com/hormones and it’s the collective wisdom of Dr. Rob Jones, who you’re about to hear from, he does six video classes. And then we have 17 video classes by my friend Dr. Alan Christianson, one of the best researchers and clinicians in natural hormone replacement therapy that I know. And then a much younger doctor, Dr. Jolene Brighten in Portland, Oregon. She is an expert in Post-Birth Control Syndrome and issues facing premenopausal women, especially the millennials. And she gets right into it. She doesn’t mince any words in talking about these sensitive issues. And I think she did six video classes as well.

So a total of 30 video classes by these three amazing doctors. You can learn more about it at greensmoothiegirl.com/hormones. You also want to go pick up our Freebie, which is greensmoothiegirl.com/9questions. It’s the numeral nine. And that is a Freebie that, Dr. Alan Christianson and Dr. Rob Jones and I worked up. The nine most important questions to ask someone that you’re considering using as your hormone practitioner. Okay. You really want to make sure that they are dealing in natural hormone replacement. There are a lot of risks to drug hormone. It’s not the same thing that your body produces. We’re going to go deep with Dr. Rob Jones about that right now. But make sure you get the Freebie, the nine questions for your hormone practitioner at greensmoothiegirl.com/9questions.

So Welcome to The Vibe show Dr. Rob Jones.

Dr. Jones:

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Robyn:

Well, I have told my audience how amazing it was to work with you in Switzerland and how you just sort of impromptu got up in front of, I dunno, like 25 women and a few men and some of them have become your patients since then working remotely with you and we learned so much. I personally learned so much that, I came home, got off of one of the hormones that my practitioner had me on, cut the other one in half and Wow, I’m waking up at four and five in the morning and going to yoga. And like my, you called it a progesterone hangover, is gone. It’s been gone for months, so thank you for teaching me that.

Dr. Jones:

That’s great.

Robyn:

Yeah. And I sent one of my high school friends to you, whose wife has really been suffering. She’s been to 12 doctors over many years. Lots of autoimmune stuff going on. And then he wrote me an email, no, he wrote me a text, and he just said, “This is going to be a complete game changer. We learned so much from Dr. Jones. He spent a lot of time with us explaining things no other doctor has”. So thank you for serving them so well.

Dr. Jones:

Well, it’s exciting to see that they have hope now.

Robyn:

Yeah, they are amazing people. And uh, he is the only LDS four star general alive today and a former LDS General Authority, like your wife is a female General Authority. I was pretty wowed by that when I met you. But let’s get into it. You know, you and I talked about this hormone revolution and we’ve created this video masterclass with a lot of your wisdom as well as two other functional doctors, Dr. Jolene Brighten who works mostly with younger premenopausal women. And Dr. Alan Christianson who is an incredible researcher. He’s just a walking encyclopedia, and like you, a big fan of and practitioner in natural hormone replacement.

So why don’t you say in your own words why you feel we need a hormone revolution?

Dr. Jones:

Well, to be very blunt about it, women have been lied to over the years. And we need to start this revolution of getting women and men, frankly, but women in particular to realize what’s really going on. Case in point, yesterday I had a 52 year old woman, she goes all around the world lecturing on a certain subject, I won’t say what the subject is, but she’s a brilliant woman. She’s six years post hysterectomy and she comes in and I look at what she’s taking. Her doctor has her on Premarin. That’s the pregnant mare urine. That’s the hormone of the past that caused different types of cancer and I stared at her and I said, “What are you doing taking this?” And she says, “well, that’s what my doctors had me on for years. Ever since my hysterectomy”. I said, “Stop!” Number one, you’re taking a bad kind of estrogen. Number two, it looks like they didn’t even give her any progesterone and that has to be taken with estrogen. And I said, “Are you taking progesterone?” She says, “No. Nobody said anything to me about that.”

That’s why I’m saying we need to have a revolution, a revolution of women’s knowledge about their own bodies and how they’re being mistreated by their doctors. So many of these women come in and they’re just saying, well, I’m taking Prozac or some other antidepressant because my doctor ran all these tests on me, my blood, and it came back. Everything looks good. So ma’am, I think you’re just depressed. Let’s try you on an antidepressant. I’ll see you in a year, let’s see how you’re doing. They come and see me because they’re frustrated and we check their hormones actually. And the other doctors don’t. They’re not checking their hormones, they’re just checking their sodium, potassium, their cholesterol, everything’s fine. So I guess you’re okay. So let’s try an antidepressant and see if that helps.

So these women are so frustrated and you know, I used to get really upset about it. I’ve been doing this for 19 years now. I used to call their own doctor and say, “Why do you have her on this? She shouldn’t be on this.” And then they get a little defensive, and so that didn’t work. So we just try to educate women and their husbands about, look, there are better ways of getting you to feel better, to look better than just taking all the drugs. So that’s the revolution, Robyn, that we’re really after, is getting these women to wake up and say, “Hey, I want more for my health than just feeling crummy all the time”. Do you know what I mean?

Robyn:

Yeah. And taking synthetic drugs that are not the same as the hormones that their body naturally produces.

Dr. Jones:

Right. All we’re trying to do is mimic nature in giving them the bio-identical hormones and natural hormones. We don’t want to give them high doses of anything. We want to bring them back to an age appropriate level of hormones because aging frankly is the progressive loss of hormones as they get older. But what we see is that hormone loss, instead of going down to a pretty low level when they’re 75 years old, it’s going down at 35 and these women are asking themselves, Whoa, what’s going on here? Why do I feel like this?

And we say, “Hey, outwardly you look healthy because the blood tests that your doctor ran, show that yeah, your cholesterol is good. Your liver, your kidney looks good, but you’re not good”. And frankly, we human beings, we’ve done it to ourselves. We’ve got high stress levels going. We’ve got chemicals in the environment, in the food we eat, the pesticides, the herbicides, the xeno-estrogens, the wrong kind of hormones, the cleaning chemicals, these are all just adding up and interfering with our hormones. And so it’s no wonder all these women we see just say, “You know, I can’t even cope with life right now. I don’t know why I can’t lose weight. I have no energy at all. My periods are terrible. I’m the Wicked Witch of the West half the time. I don’t want to live like that anymore.”

Robyn:

Okay, so I want to talk about what this concept of what bio-identical is, but let’s go to basics here. Why are the endocrinologists and the general practitioners and the OBGYN’s in mainstream medicine, what are they doing wrong? Why are they only prescribing synthetic chemical medications that are different than our natural hormones and have toxic side effects and create risks for things like cancer and more autoimmune disease? Why are they doing that?

Dr. Jones:

Well, the obvious answer, that’s exactly what they’re taught in medical school to prescribe. Medical schools are run by the pharmaceutical companies. I’m just being blunt about it because I’ve trained other medical doctors on how to do the bio-identical hormone therapy. My own partner medical doctor, we’ve had to go through it with him and have them unlearn so much of what they learned in medical school because all they’re doing is what we call symptom suppression. Oh, you’ve got this disease, we’re going to give you this drug. You’ve got this, we’ll give you this one. Let’s try this. So they turn into Guinea pigs.

But frankly they’re taught in medical school to use the drug model and it just is. And so these doctors that I work with, they admit to that. They say, “yeah, that’s what we were taught”. And some of them think out of the box and say, “I’m looking for a different way of treating women. And their hormones, because you know, we only have so many tools in our bag of tricks with drugs and then we’d have to look further.”

So those doctors who are willing to look outside the box and be a little bit more progressive about things, that’s when they start learning and they start searching and saying, “There’s got to be a better way because my patients aren’t getting well”. That’s what they come to me and say.” “My patients aren’t getting any better. Do you have other alternatives?” “Well, yes, we have other alternatives, but you didn’t learn it in school.”

Robyn:

You know the story you started with of this very well-known, brilliant woman who was on Premarin, reminds me a lot of my story when I was in my thirties. I was going to different doctors and they were telling me I was fine because all they were doing is like a TSH test or whatever. And I was within this huge normal range and I remember when somebody finally got to the bottom of it, the first bio-identical practitioner I went to, she said, “okay, we really need to do a lot more testing than what’s been done before and look at a lot of different bio-markers and levels of different hormones and precursor hormones”.

And I remember when she showed me my report and she pushed it across the table and she said, “This is why you can’t lose weight. This is it right here. There’s no, it doesn’t matter what you eat.” Because all I had eaten for two weeks was greens, salad, no dressing, vegetables, lean protein, this was many years ago, and in two weeks of eating nothing but lean protein, no fat, just vegetables, um, I hadn’t lost a single ounce, let alone a pound. And I was having experiences like that over and over again. I had all these symptoms, you know, like almost two dozen symptoms and she pushed it across the table and she said, “We can fix this. Here’s what your problem is.” And I just flooded with tears. Have you had that experience, lots and lots of times?

Dr. Jones:

All the time. I mean, I’ll be going over a blood test with a woman and her husband’s sitting there and I’ll say halfway through it, she’s just crying and I say, “what’s wrong?” She says, “I’m so grateful that you’re telling me that you found something wrong because all the other doctors that I had been to just say, “oh ma’am, everything looks fine. You’re good”. So it’s very validating to these women to see that, wow, I just took this hormone lab test and I literally flunked everything on there. That’s a great reason for the validation. And they can see it’s not me telling them it’s these labs telling them, hey, you’re messed up because you’ve got some hormonal imbalances that you know you’ve been trying to lose weight. You want the energy, but you’re banging your head against the wall.

That’s why sometimes it drives me crazy that these personal trainers in gyms, they have the woman come in, she wants to lose weight, she wants to feel better and she wants to look better. And so they start having her work out three times a week, they put her on a reduced caloric intake only eating 800 calories a day and we’re going to work you out. Six weeks later. Nothing has budged. Okay, let’s put you down to 400 calories a day and we’re going to work out six times a week. Did the trainer ever think, hey, there might be something wrong with her metabolism? Maybe it’s her thyroid? But they don’t. They don’t look at that. They’re just exercise and reduce calories, which is crazy. Doesn’t work that way.

Robyn:

Exercise, reduce calories and obsess about protein and get them on a bunch of whey protein shakes, right?

Dr. Jones:

Yeah. When they neglect to tell them, hey, if you eat too much protein, that’s just like eating too much sugar in your diet. It’ll be converted to fat for long term storage. Some protein is good, but too much protein tips them over the edge and then they won’t lose weight.

Robyn:

You know, when you were giving your talk in Switzerland to all of the attendees of our liver detox retreat and you were an attendee and it was really kind of you to give a talk because you were there to rest, relax, enjoy the treatments, and it was very, very magnanimous of you to take an hour and a half and go through your knowledge. We had some very interesting people in the audience who had flown to Milan and come to the Swiss retreat with us and one of them, I bet you remember this, we had a just barely retired OBGYN in the audience. He told me a fascinating story of escaping from Romania, just a lovely guy. And he had retired after 50 years as an OBGYN, so treating women, we would think that he would be a hormone expert, and he had never heard of a bio-identical. Do you remember that?

Dr. Jones:            Yes. I do.

Robyn:

I mean, that’s why you functional medicine doctors or you know, there’s lots of different things that you’re called all over the world, but the US seems to be organizing around the term functional medicine. You’re leading the charge. That’s why there’s a revolution because we got all these very educated doctors who don’t know anything about what you do and why it’s much, much healthier for a woman. Right?

Dr. Jones:

Yes. I mean, that’s my main goal is to, when a patient comes in my office, I’m trying to educate them. That’s what it’s all about. That knowledge leads to power for them. And then they start saying, “hey, there’s hope for me. I can change my body. I’m going to get my hormones balanced”. And then it’s off to the races. Their energy goes up, they feel better and they’re more willing to be nice. I mean, I hate to put it that way, but they felt so lousy for so long. They’ve pretty much given up. And then they come in, we show them, well, look, your progesterone, you’re not making progesterone anymore, so you’re probably not sleeping at night. You’re probably waking up at 3:00 in the morning and your mind is racing and you can’t fall back to sleep. And they look at me like, how did you know?

I said, and your thyroid is so low. Robyn, you just said something earlier, they’ve got these huge ranges on these hormones. So as long as the doctor sees that on your thyroid test and sees that you’re within the quote unquote normal limit, he’s not gonna do anything. And so what if these women have a thyroid that’s all the way down on the lower end of normal. The doctor will look at that and say, you’re good. It’s not your thyroid. And yet it is the thyroid. We don’t want them in the normal range. We want them in the healthy range or the optimal range where they actually feel life again. So it’s, it’s so exciting to see.

You know, I had a woman the other day, she, uh, she’s postmenopausal, couple of years and the average age of menopause, by the way, is 51 years old and that means you’ve been 12 consecutive months without having a period. So she was in that time, she had stopped having her periods and yet she was dying of hot flashes and night sweats, vaginal dryness, all the issues that hit these women at menopause. And so I said, “look, we’re going to put you on some hormones from the compounding pharmacy. They will be natural hormones”. Uh, and so she said, “well, how long does it take before I see a difference?” This was about two weeks ago that she was in. And I said, “well, the hot flashes, night sweats should be gone within the first week. And then the vaginal dryness may take a couple of weeks. You’ve got some vaginal atrophy in there. So give it a couple of weeks”.

Well, after four days she calls me, she’s actually a personal friend, and she calls me and she said, “This is like a miracle”. I said, “what do you mean?” She says, “three days on the estrogen and progesterone, I’m sleeping through the night and my hot flashes and night sweats are gone”. And then she says, “do you think it’s the hormones?” And I just laughed. I said, “well, have you changed anything else in the last four or five days?” “No.” “It’s the hormones. Yep.”. Funny. The reactions we get when they get feeling better so quickly.

Robyn:

We also had in our audience that you spoke to the week that you were there in Switzerland and if you would have been there the other two weeks that I was there, I would have begged you to do a talk for everyone there as well. But we had a woman who is a quite famous, former professional tennis player. And of course I geeked out because I play tennis competitively and she and I are the same age and we really bonded. Um, she’s a trivial pursuit question with this question, “What is the only woman who beat Martina Navratilova in 1983?” And her other probably most interesting claim to fame is that she remains, even though she’s 54 years old now, she remains the youngest ever competitor at the US Open.

And her response to me saying, you know, from all of her symptoms, we need to talk to you about bio-identical hormone replacement or natural hormone replacement therapy. She said, “Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, that scares me. That will put me at risk for cancer and other diseases”. And so talk a little about what you taught her.

Dr. Jones:

Well, it’s, it’s kind of a cute story because I think it was the last night the banquet we had, I think you had her maybe sit by me just so we could talk. And so she was very hesitant on anything. I just kind of led her through it. I said, “What are your fears?” “Well, that these hormones can cause cancer.” And so I took her on a little history trip of hormone therapy throughout the world. And I said, “You know, back in 1999 is when the big study came out that showed that the hormones that they had been giving women for the last 40 years in America were actually causing different types of cancer, heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, Alzheimer’s, all of the above”. And she says, “You see, you see, that’s exactly why I don’t want to do that.”

And I said, “Well, wait a minute, that’s not the hormones that we use”. And she says, “Well, they’re all the same, aren’t they?” And I said, “No, no, no, no, no, not at all”. A bio-identical hormone is exactly that, a biologically identical hormone to what your own ovaries are making. It’s not a chemical, it’s a carbon copy. And that’s why the FDA will not allow these companies to put a patent on a bio-identical hormone because it’s a copy of what’s in your body. And so you can’t patent something that’s natural like that if it occurs in nature, that way you can’t put a patent on it.

So, I was explaining to her, what did the drug companies do? Well, they decided, hey, if we can take that bio-identical progesterone and add a few things to it like a methyl group and an acetate group to it, now it’s not what it is in nature and now we can put a patent on it and make $4,000,000,000 a year off of it. Like they did. The problem is as soon as they alter it, it can cause problems. So that’s what we call a synthetic hormone versus bio-identical, which is a carbon copy of what a woman’s making.

So after I started explaining the difference to her, she starts just saying, “Oh really? Oh really? Oh that wasn’t my understanding”. And again, it comes back to a little bit of knowledge can help these women actually take control of their own health. And so she started asking me more questions and getting more clarification on it. And I said, “Honestly, the biggest thing that I could tell you is I have a wife and three daughters and a couple of daughters-in-law and I would never put any of them on anything that I thought was going to be deleterious to their body, harmful to their body”.

And I said, um, I remember my wife, she had to go give a lecture over in Cardiff, Wales, and we got off the plane and all of a sudden she went crazy. She said, “oh no, I forgot to bring my progesterone”. Then she knew, well, I’ll have some sleepless nights here because my mind will just be going 90 miles an hour. So once that tennis player started realizing, okay, I’m probably thinking in the wrong area, I’m afraid because of what I’ve heard. So I get a lot of women that come in and say, I know I need you to check my hormones, but I’m just afraid of taking hormones because I’ve heard so many nightmare stories about it. And I just say, “Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, wait a minute. Okay, you’re comparing apples to oranges. That’s not what we do here”. So she felt okay about it and I gave her some sources to look at. And so, she’ll make progress.

Robyn:

Yeah. I really love our new hormone course. It’s found again at greensmoothiegirl.com/hormones. It’s on launch special for 60 percent off, but I really wanted you in the course after I met you in Switzerland because you’re very kind of folksy. You tell a lot of stories about patients. You’re still very actively treating patients. I believe you’re 67 and still super, super sharp and doing the best work of your life. I’m glad you haven’t retired yet.

Um, but, you’re in the course along with Dr. Alan Christianson, who was one of the best researchers I know, and he talks a lot about all of what’s been published, you know, he is deep in Pub Med learning that, and he proves to us in the video masterclass that yes, taking synthetic hormone can increase your cancer risk as well as risk of other diseases. However, having low dysfunctional hormone levels also increases your cancer risk and getting on bio-identicals, the natural hormone replacement therapy that you specialize in, that he specializes in and that Dr. Jolene Brighten also in the course specializes in, decreases your cancer risk. Do I understand that right?

Dr. Jones:

Absolutely. That’s exactly right. You know, women will say, well, I’ll ask them. I’ll say, “okay, you’ve been on progesterone for two months, you’re back in here for a checkup, tell me what the differences are”. They say, “Well, I’m sleeping so much better and my anxiety is so much better”, and I said, “okay, well what else is the progesterone doing for you”? And they look at me like, oh, those are the two big ones. And I said, “Well, how about protecting your brain from Alzheimer’s? How about protecting your breasts from cancer”? There’s all kinds of preventive reasons for using the bio-identical hormones too.

One of the others that women say, well, that’s the man’s hormone. That’s testosterone. Yes, men make a lot more testosterone than women, but it’s critical for women to have it and once I put them on it, they come back and they say, “Well thank you. My sex drive has increased. That’s a lot better”. And I say, “well, okay, what else is testosterone good for”? And they’ll say, “Oh, I don’t know. I just thought it was sex drive”. And I say, “Well that’s one big benefit, but the other is, do you go to the gym and workout and you still don’t see your muscles toning. They’re not getting firmer. That’s a big benefit from using testosterone. It’s muscle tone”.

The other big one that I say is, and I’ll have a husband and wife sitting there and I’ll say, regarding testosterone, I’ll say, “What muscle of the body needs more testosterone than any other muscle in your body”? And almost always they say, “well, the brain”. And I say, “No the brain’s not a muscle, it’s a big blob of cholesterol and fat up there”. So I say, “What muscle?” And they say, “I don’t know.” And I say, “well, okay, let me ask it a different way, what muscle of your body works harder than any other muscle and is working 24 hours a day, seven days a week”. And then they say “the heart”. I say, “You’re right on. There’s more testosterone receptors in the heart than any other muscle”. So yes, it does provide good sex drive. It does provide these other things, but it’s a heart healthy hormone. So every hormone that we give these women has other benefits and that’s important for them to know.

Robyn:

Well, and female testosterone, which too few women understand that they need it, gives you that get up and go. And if you don’t have any or you’re a flat line in testosterone, like I was at the age of 40, uh, you’re aging more rapidly, is that right?

Dr. Jones:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, there’s not only the aging factor, but it’s been about eight years ago now, that the FDA approved the use of testosterone in women for the treatment of drum roll please… Depression. Because it’s a mood elevating hormone. And these women come in and they say, I just don’t have any motivation anymore. Uh, okay. I’m sure we’re going to see that your testosterone is low. They say, I don’t have the assertiveness that I used to have when I was younger. Oh, that’s low testosterone, in men and women.

Robyn:

Here’s a question I haven’t asked you before in our many conversations and even in the six video modules that you did for our hormone health revolution masterclass. Have you ever met a 40 plus woman who comes to your clinic, have you ever met one, that you did the full blood panel, blood, urine, uh, whatever tests you felt like needed to be run, and you said, actually, you’re just, you’re perfect. You’re right in range for everything. Have you ever met one?

Dr. Jones:

Yes, I have. And I say, I’ll see you in five years. Come back and let’s retest you. So some women come in just because they want a baseline level of their hormones tested. They come in and yeah, everything looks great. Now you might add a little iron, a plant based iron. You’re borderline anemic. But all your hormones look very good. Congratulations.

Robyn:

And what percentage of the women you see don’t need any hormone intervention who are over the age of 40?

Dr. Jones:

That’s a loaded question because I don’t get very many healthy women coming into our clinic. So I’d say probably 95 percent of them that come in, have low hormone levels. Why? Because they’ve got all the signs and symptoms of having low hormone levels, low thyroid, low progesterone, low testosterone, low DHEA. So yeah, that’s kind of a loaded question because they aren’t coming to me because they feel great. You know what I mean?

Robyn:

Yes, I do. You’re not going out and getting a random sample. So it’s not like the data of your patients are necessarily a cross section. I certainly though don’t have any friends who are 40 plus whether they’re being treated by a functional medicine practitioner or they’re just assuming their hormones are fine. Even if they’re, you know, my girlfriends are thin, they are marathon runners, they are in the peak of their careers. They’re doing great things. They look healthy, they act healthy. But I don’t know a one of them who doesn’t have significant symptoms that concern them that I think that you could help them with. Why are hormones so below a clinically optimal level? Why are hormones so low for women at younger and younger ages? You kind of flew through a few examples, but maybe just give a few more detailed examples.

Dr. Jones:

Well, one of the examples that I gave that I like is I was at an international hormone symposium a couple years ago down in Los Angeles. And one of the experts was up there and the subject was endocrine disruption. Endocrine meaning hormones and disruption is what’s disrupting women’s hormones. And he put a slide up on the screen and there was about 18 chemical names on there and none of us, there’s probably 250 doctors in the room, we didn’t know what they were, nor could we even pronounce it. They were long chemical names. So he said, “these are 18 very potent hormone disruptors. What are they?” And it was like crickets. Nobody raised their hand. And he says, “these are potent hormone disruptors, these are 18 chemicals, most commonly found chemicals in women’s makeup”. And we all just went, you got to be kidding me?

Yeah, and he said, “And which ones are the worst”? He said, “the studies have shown that lipstick and lip gloss are some of the worst”. You know, you’ve got the foundation and mascara and the eyeliner, but the lip gloss and lipstick was probably the worst because where does that go? It goes right through their digestive track, goes from their lips into their mouth. They lick their lips, it goes into the mouth, and then it just disrupts their hormones. And then the poor woman is saying, I don’t know why I have such bad PMS all the time. Well, those things can harm them.

Another example, uh, there’s a chemical out there called Triclosan. Triclosan is the main ingredient in most of the, uh, hand sanitizers. And it reeks terror on women’s hormones. And they even want to put that in toothpaste now. The FDA finally stepped in and said, no, you don’t want it in toothpaste. They’re even thinking of banning it, uh, from the hand sanitizer.s So just a word to these women that are listening in. If you use hand sanitizers, look for Tricolsan, don’t use that, just use an alcohol based hand sanitizer if you have to use one.

And yeah, see all these teenage girls every five minutes, they’re putting on more lip gloss to keep those lips shiny. No! Another one that can destroy your hormones, unfortunately we’re just ending summer now, but it’s the sunscreen, sunblocks have things in them that cannot only affect hormones, but also there’s studies now that show that there’s carcinogens in them. And what do we see? Well, here’s little Susie, a three year old, going to the beach with mom and dad. And so mommy’s lathering her up with a sunscreen that can affect your hormones and you just want to scream.

And the answer to that is go to the Internet and start looking for sunscreens that have no chemical byproducts in them, that are really healthy. And there are those out there. And even dermatologists are now saying, yeah, you know, they were the ones that for years, said, “Use sunscreens, use sunscreens, don’t get in the sun, it’ll give you skin cancer”. Which is sometimes true, but now they’re saying you need to be careful what kind of sunscreen you’re using because there’s bad chemicals in those that can affect your hormones and affect your overall health.

So the thing is, Robyn, we’ve as mankind, as we’ve progressed to this modern age, we’ve done it to ourselves. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot regarding our hormones and our health because we’re surrounded by a sea of chemicals. If you’re not eating organic foods, you’re getting pesticides and herbicides on them whether you know it or not. And can those affect your hormones and your health? Absolutely.

So we do the best we can at avoiding all those things. But in the meantime, it may still have affected our hormones as we grew up, as we went into adolescence, as we went into twenties and thirties. And by the time we hit forties, it’s affected our hormones to where we just don’t feel good anymore. So what do you do? Well, you take out as many of those toxins as you can out of your life. You eat a plant based diet, some good proteins, but a plant based diet. Stay off chemicals as much as you can, but you may need some extra help to make up the difference between the low hormone levels and where you should be.

Robyn:

Okay. And you know, I could have interviewed you for our series going on right now, we’re celebrating our 100th episode and we’re calling it The Learn From Our Elders series and I’m interviewing people who are really still playing at the top of their game who are 65 plus. And I wanted to talk to you about hormones because my audience really needs that information and I felt like we would serve them best mostly asking you questions about how you treat hormones differently than standard of care doctors like the OBGYN and endocrinologists and GPs mostly are the ones who treat people for hormone disorders and just, you know, throw some cytomel or synthroid at them and call it good. Or like you said, put them on an antidepressant and hope that they’re okay.

But I want to ask you a more personal question because you are 67. My jaw was on the floor when your wife leaned over and told me that as you were giving that lecture. I don’t generally go around asking people’s age. I hope it’s okay that I just said what if I recall correctly is yours. But the question that we’re asking people who are really contributing massively to the world over the age of 65 kinda like curated Blue Zones of America, in our series, Learn From Our Elders is, why are you still vibrant at 67 and working full time and traveling around the world with your wife, and I think you cycle a lot? You’re super active. You look amazing. What are some of the things that you do that will inspire others to be nearing 70 and as amazing as you are?

Dr. Jones:

Oh boy. That’s a loaded question. I would have to say, well, there’s some genetics in there. Um, but I’ve always eaten a healthy lifestyle. I was back when I was a vegetarian for 12 years, strict vegetarian. I am not now. I don’t eat a lot of meat, but I think that has helped. And I do not advise my patients necessarily to be vegetarian. As a matter of fact, some vegans are some of the unhealthiest patients that I’ve ever seen because they’re not doing it correctly. They’re living on a lot of carbs. And that’s one thing that my wife and I, with our five kids and our 20 grandchildren say, “Hey, you know, carbs, the bad carbs, the fast carbs, are the thing that are going to get you”. So we’ve always gone by that.

Um, yes, I am a cyclist, I mountain bike and I’ve had my crashes over the years, going over the handlebars many times. But you know, I jump up from the crash and I look around and I ask, “Did anybody get that on their video? You know, I’d like to see that over again in slow motion”. So a lot of it, Robyn, frankly, is attitude, I do use bio-dentical hormones on myself. I eat healthy. I exercise, I have a belief in God. All those things help me just to stay healthy.

And you know, when I get elderly patients in my office, and I should be careful how I use elderly, but somebody over 55 years old and I’ll ask them. So tell me about the activity level in your life. Well, I’m, I’m thinking about retiring and you know, I’m not a big exerciser. I say “so you’ve got a sedentary lifestyle, right? Is that what you’re saying?” “Well, yeah.” “And do you go to the gym, do you do anything?” “Well, I try to.” No. Trying is not sufficient. And I warn them, I say you’re over 55 now. You retire and you do nothing. You’re going to die an early death because you’ve got to remain mentally and physically active. It’s just what God wants for us. Stay alive, stay moving. So it’s a lot of factors, not just hormones.

Robyn:

Very good advice.

Um, you know, one of my employees who has been working with the whole team on this video masterclass, the Hormone Health Revolution that you’re featured in, watched all the videos and she called your office yesterday to get an appointment because she’s like, when this video masterclass comes out, uh, Dr. Christianson isn’t taking new patients. He doesn’t see patients anymore. He’s more of a researcher and an online influencer. And he has an Arizona clinic and he has trained naturopathic doctors under him, and so they take patients but he personally is not available.

Dr. Jolene Brighten is not taking patients. And you’re the only one who is. Will you, because I know people are going to ask us if we don’t answer this question here. Are you taking new patients? The professional tennis player is going to be coming to you from New Jersey for her first visit and then working with you by skype. Will you take new patients and if so, what do they need to do?

Dr. Jones:

Yeah, we take new patients. I’ve got other doctors and PA’s that do it too. I still actively see patients and a lot of people always call and say, well, I live in New Mexico or whatever. By law they have to come and have a face to face with us one time, by Utah Law. After that, I mean we do a lot of phone consulting and skyping and whatnot. So yeah, we do. And if they come from somewhere else, we have them get their hormones tested locally where they live and we send the paperwork for them. They get that done there, bill it to their insurance company, and then they’ll make an appointment and everything’s done the same day when they see us.

The first thing is they’ll meet with one of the other doctors. He’ll take their history and everything and then we send them off for blood work to check their hormones and it usually takes five to six days to get all the lab results back. Once we get that back, we call them, say, Hey, we’ve got your results. We’d like you to come in.

A lot of times if it’s a woman, we like them to bring their spouse, because I’ll tell you what happens a lot, is here you’ve got a woman who’s tired, she’s overweight, she’s just not feeling good, and her husband is so frustrated. So I say “bring him, bring him so he can see if we find any results on you”. And then at the end of the whole thing, the husband’s sitting there looking at his wife saying, “wow, I didn’t realize that you had those kinds of problems. This is very enlightening”. And it builds in some compassion. And I turn to the husband, and I say, “She’s not lazy, she’s not overweight because she’s doing things wrong. She’s got a metabolism problem”. So, uh, you know, when possible we like to have the spouse come just for that visit so they can see what’s going on.

And then they say, Oh man, let’s, let’s fix this situation right away. And I might add what’s the hormone they’re most interested in in their wife, testosterone. Okay, that’s just the guy’s thing. And I say, well, she’s not making any testosterone, John. It’s no wonder she doesn’t have a sex drive plus her thyroid is in the tank, so she’s tired all the time. So we can fix those things in the meantime, go take a cold shower somewhere, you know.

So um, yeah, we do take new patients. If they want more information they can go to www.utahwellnessinstitute.com. That’s how they can find out. They can even go online and take a hormone test online to see, wow, it looks like I’ve got a problem with progesterone or my thyroid or all of the above. They’re little tests that they can take online to, to check those out.

Robyn:

Okay. So we will put the link in the show notes to Dr. Jones Clinic, but you just heard it there. It’s utahwellnessinstitute.com You’ve learned exactly how he likes to work with patients. I also like the husband to go because sometimes the husband has testosterone issues. There’s more and more men. We didn’t get into that, we didn’t get into talking about the guys and we probably should have.

Dr. Jones:

How do I get to see male patients at my office? It’s usually because we’ve seen the wife, we got her feeling better and he sees the difference and he says, well, I think I want to get my blood tested. You’re feeling so much better. I want some of that. So that’s how they usually end up patients.

Robyn:

Yeah. There are more and more women in this is, you know, something that I observed as a therapist, but then just anecdotally I’m seeing it a lot more people coming to us at GreenSmoothieGirl and telling us this, it must be increasing, a lot of men with low sex drive too. That’s hormonal.

So the links are, if you want the nine questions to ask your hormone practitioner, that’s a free gift that we created for you. I collaborated with Dr. Jones here as well as Dr. Alan Christianson. Nine questions to ask your hormone practitioner so that you don’t go into a meeting with a new practitioner or someone you’re considering working with, they’re going to be your long term partner, you’re going to need to be tested at least annually to see if your hormones have changed, if you’re still on track. And so you want to pick a good one and you want someone who’s going to work with you on these lifestyle issues and you don’t want someone who’s just going to throw a chemical drug at you and say, see you in a year.

And so the nine questions for your hormone practitioner can be found at greensmoothiegirlcom/9questions. Don’t spell out nine. It’s the numeral greensmoothiegirl.com/9questions. And our video master class featuring six videos, by Dr. Jones, who you’ve just heard from. And a total of 30 videos by our three functional doctors who are all hormone experts is at greensmoothiegirl.com/hormones. Right now in our launch special, the course is 60 percent off, which makes the price of it less than $100.

We really want you to show your, uh, especially sexually active young adult daughters. Some of the videos by Dr. Jolene Brighten. They will really drop your jaw about things that young women need to know. We cover everything from the perils of using chemical birth control to what they need to know about STI’s and getting tested for STD’s does not mean you don’t have an STD. There are STD’s you actually cannot test for. Um, so lots of great wisdom for your young adult daughters.

We know that most of our followers, are in the 35 to 65 year old range. So, uh, I would say the vast majority of the content is for the premenopausal and postmenopausal women in that age category. But we do talk some about men and we do talk about our younger daughter’s. Lots and lots of PCOS or polycystic ovarian syndrome, lots of birth control syndrome, post-birth control syndrome, that these doctors are having to deal with. And Dr. Jolene Brighten is an expert on that with a book coming out about it. We just interviewed her here on the podcast.

So I just want to thank you so much for being so very willing to share your experience and for just the great work that you’re doing in the world. And thanks for being on the show. Dr. Rob Jones,

Dr. Jones:

You’re very welcome, Robyn.