Inspired with Nika Lawrie

Navigating Menopause and Understanding Bioidentical Hormones with Dr. Prudence Hall

• Dr. Prudence Hall • Season 2024 • Episode 93

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In this episode, we explore the transformative power of menopause management with the renowned Dr. Prudence Hall. Dr. Hall shares her journey from traditional gynecology to integrative and regenerative medicine, revealing how bioidentical hormones can ease menopausal symptoms and improve women’s health. We discuss the importance of a personalized, holistic approach tailored to each woman’s unique needs, empowering them to make informed decisions about their hormone health.

We also dive into the world of functional medicine, examining the impact of stress, inflammation, and detoxification on overall wellness. Dr. Hall provides real-life insights into perimenopause and menopause, while highlighting the role of sleep and the challenges posed by environmental toxins. Tune in to discover how bioidentical hormone therapy and a holistic approach can help you navigate menopause with vitality and grace.

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Nika Lawrie:

Welcome to the Inspired with Nika Larie podcast. Dr Prudence Hall, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you here today.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

I'm inspired already. Thank you for having me.

Nika Lawrie:

Awesome. Well, I'm really excited. I think this is such an important topic we're going to talk about, like menopause and perimetopause, and obviously pretty much every woman goes through it. But I think there's a lot of misnomers or misconceptions and a lot's kind of changed in how we approach supporting women going through this process over the last 10, 20 years or so. So I'm excited to speak about this with you today.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Well, thank you. It's my passion. I've done this for four decades and I'm one of the beloveds of bioidentical hormones, so I'm very happy to talk to your audience and mine about this topic.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, I'm definitely going to ask you about your thoughts and hormones as we go through it. I think it's such an important thing that a lot of women don't even understand or don't even know is available to them. But before we get into that, can you just tell us, tell me, a little bit about your story? How did you go from kind of traditional medicine over to integrative or regenerative medicine?

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yes, well, I graduated from my residency program. I was a resident in gynecology and obstetrics. It really wanted the poor Los Angeles hospitals, so we had many women coming across the border with no prenatal care and you know, terrible emergencies. So I was very well trained. I mean thank you, thank you, usc, for that knowledge. I mean thank you, thank you, usc, for that knowledge. And when I went into private practice, like eight years later, I was ready for anything. I mean anything. But my menopausal patients started coming to me and saying I'm having hot sweats and I'm desperate and you know all the symptoms that we'll talk about later, and I didn't know how to handle them. Nika, I kind of did what I was taught to do in my residency. I'd been in the menopause clinic, I got the one blood level, the follicle stimulating hormone, put them on some medication and see you in a year.

Nika Lawrie:

Send them on their way, yeah.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yeah. So they came back two months later and said ProDens, this is not working, yeah, crying and desperate. And so, you know, one of the things that I learned is I don't know how I learned it in medical school, I must have learned it some other place but really to listen to the pain and to the problems that people are telling me they have. And so I started really a lifelong investigation of who are we as women. Are we this chronological age? Are we maybe something more than that which I discovered? Yes, we can talk about that later. And you know, what were other countries doing with menopause? Germany and France were way ahead of the game.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

I started bringing bioidentical hormones back from France and it just kept on unraveling. It's not just the ovary, it's the thyroid, it's the adrenals, it's the inflammation, it's the high sugars, it's you know. So it just yeah, it just is.

Nika Lawrie:

It's a beautiful integration of the body that we have these things and I feel like so much of that has been lost sort of through the school books and you know, medical training and those kinds of things. So I'm glad you said that definitely, oh, thank you.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Well, I was taught that we were in the art of medicine.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

You know, it was one of the arts and as I became more involved with it in my residency, I realized each person is unique and physiology is different and their sensitivities to things is very different. Their beliefs as to how they want their body treated is different and truly we're given this canvas that already has a lot of color and paint and then we interact with that person, who's either quite formed and evolved or many times very young and naive about who they are and what their health is about.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, definitely, I think there's. You know, one of the big things I'm really trying to do is educate women on the options that are out there for their body so they can make these informed decisions on, you know, what they do want to use and what they don't, and how it impacts their body, and so I think you know I love that you're educating people on this topic because it's so, so important and, like you know I said at the top of the show, every woman's going to go through this at some point, and so learning how the body works is really important for each person's journey.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yeah, and I think one thing oh, excuse me, no, no, go ahead. Oh, I was just in response to that. A lot of women feel that you go through menopause and then you're on this other sunny side where there's no menopause. Yeah, but I explain a lot to women that once you go into menopause and the average age is 44 to 49, then you stay in menopause for the rest of your life that could be 40, 50 years feeling most of the symptoms that you have worsening with diseases. And it's only when you correct the hormones back to more youthful levels that the body becomes youthful again. So it's really important, Mika, in terms of how we approach this.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell me how did you go from kind of this more? You touched on a little bit, but you really started out in more of a traditional path in medicine and then you've really incorporated regenerative medicine and more of a holistic approach. What did that look like? How do you start to really focus on regenerative medicine as a support system for menopause?

Dr. Prudence Hall:

You know, very, very good question. So I think that, first of all, having curiosity and a desire to learn as a lifelong learner is very important, and I've always been fairly, even as a child, I remember my mother would try to give me, you know, tylenol or something like that, and I don't know, I don't know, you know, and I was kind of worried about a lot of poisoning and things as a child. So I must have come in with some of this knowledge that you know. Beware of traditional medicine, because really I simply didn't partake in traditional medicine at all. I would, you know, kind of take herbs or vitamins and things like that, even when I was quite young.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

But what really changed my philosophy was Jeff Bland. Jeff Bland is the father, dr Jeff Bland is the father of functional medicine and I don't even know when I did his program, but it was so many years ago that I was one of about 30 people sitting up in Giggs Harbor learning from the maestros of how to integrate different components of the body together, and I had to do his class twice. I did it once in Giggs Harbor and then once in Santa Monica, where there were at least a thousand people. I couldn't believe it. Yeah, I mean, it was like it was a growing field and I learned that, in a way, what I synthesized is there are blocks of knowledge.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

We have the immunology, which impacts everything, but that's affected by inflammation in our diet and our lifestyle. And then we have the genetics. 10% of diseases are genetic. 90% of them that arise are lifestyle. But you want to know what those genetics are so you can respect them. And Dr Bland was very big into his Big Bold Health is his website, by the way into genetics and you know what happens with stress. I learned all these things that I wasn't taught in medical school.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

I mean, stress is very, very important, as is inflammation, as is toxicity. Well, why do you need to detoxify? I mean, you know, I'm drinking regular water and well, because it causes, it's the root core cause of many diseases.

Nika Lawrie:

Many, many diseases.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yeah, so functional medicine. The tree is starting to die. The leaves are turning brown. Yeah oh, let's paint the leaves.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, that's such a good way of putting it. Western medicine yeah, make them green, that's such a good way of putting it Western medicine.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yeah, you know.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

And you know, no, you want to water and nourish and do all that to the tree. So I really learned a very different way of managing, I would say more than just health, because part of functional medicine is the spiritual aspect of people and their belief, certainly their metabolism and their detoxification process and all of that. But it was just a miracle. Thank you, dr Bland. You know I use it every day and from there I went on a spiritual path.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely, I fully relate to that. I joke with my mom that, like Dr Mark Hyman, or functional medicine is the gateway drug to like this whole holistic spiritual path of like healing yourself and healing other people and figuring out, but there's so much science behind all of it too. Like it's not. You know, it doesn't just become kind of this spiritual thing. It's like, oh, the science is actually saying we should do this and not fill our bodies full of chemicals and, you know, fake food and all of these things. Like this approach is pretty simple really.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

So yeah, yeah, it's amazing and Mark is terrific. Yeah, love you, mark. Love you, mark, I mean his grass-fed protein, I would say four days of five I'm drinking, so he's terrific.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, and I just, yeah, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. Oh, I was just. I just love that he's been able to bring it to kind of the forefront, to kind of public awareness more generalized, opposed to being in the fringes of health and wellness, right, right.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Well, health and wellness does not belong in the fringes, it belongs solidly within, I would say one foot solidly in science. And that's how Dr Bland would teach. You know everything, single thing he said was backed by four or five different references. You know solidly in science and also in the mystic aspects of our lives. Yeah, because we don't know consciousness. No one can define it, nobody actually knows how thoughts are created in our mind, but for time infinitum I mean now currently with Joe Dispenza you know our thoughts are very, very important in terms of our health.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

I mean, you think it, you'll feel it, it'll become it, yeah, so, but we don't know much about that. Yeah, and I talk with people who know a lot about the mind and how it functions, and that is very important to understand that it's not just this. You know that, it's all of this Mm-hmm Our emotional age, our biological age, our spiritual age, our chronological age, and how we address each of those components. I mean, people die from grief, oh yeah.

Nika Lawrie:

Huge yeah All the time. Yeah, yeah, I love it. It's such a great way of packaging it, definitely so I want to ask you I want to talk a little bit about perimetopause and menopause and you mentioned that, like once you don't go through menopause and get to the other side, can you describe kind of what that journey looks like, say, from maybe a 35-year-old woman forward for 10 or 20 years? However, you think needs to be packaged to explain it?

Dr. Prudence Hall:

So it's important for young women and we're all young in a way for women chronologically younger to understand that their hormones start to decline in their 30s. That doesn't mean they can't have a child. I've delivered many women in my past who were having babies at 45 and 47, things like that. But our hormones decline. So where our estrogen and that's one of the main ovarian hormones, along with testosterone and progesterone. So when our estrogen starts to decline just a little bit let's say from you know, maybe day six, at 200 picograms per ml, it goes to maybe 175 or 160.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

And we feel that in our body we feel more restless. There's a restlessness, anxiety about us. Pms becomes pronounced because we have this peak of estrogen that rises to 300 to 500 around ovulation time days 11, 12, 13, sort of like that. 14 or 12, 13, 14 when we ovulate, and then it kind of settles down to around 200. And right before the period it starts to decline. So women in their 30s tell me they have more PMS, they can't sleep as well, they've gained 10 pounds for no reason. Prudence, I'm exercising, I'm eating well, I mean, they tell me this and it's true, I absolutely believe them and they feel changes in their skin and in their muscle mass. They have less skin. They also have a little bit less sexuality which.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

I always address with women. So it's just like, yeah, you know, I love my husband or my partner, and now it could be because they've just had children and it takes probably two years to recover our sexuality after having a child. But these are very big tip-offs. Get your hormones checked, See where you are, and I use a lot of herbs with women. At this stage I use progesterone. I used to think that PMS was caused by a progesterone deficiency and now I'm sure I mean, having measured hundreds and hundreds of thousands of women's levels that it's really estrogen deficiency and maybe a little bit of progesterone deficiency. When the periods start to become irregular, that's also a sign of perimenopause, like, oh yeah, my cycles used to be 30 days apart and now they're 26 or 25.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Okay that woman needs some progesterone to stretch out her cycle a little bit. So be aware of that. Don't chalk it up to stress necessarily from work or from being driven crazy by kids. A lot of women do that. Oh, it's just outside of me, it's my parents need me, this needs me. I mean, look inside, because there's both an outside process which I honor and we can talk a lot about that, you know, as patients and doctors you know or there's the inside process.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

So menopause and perimenopause is an inside job. Stress does affect it. You know we want ovarian preservation as much as we can and we can talk about how to do that a little bit later. But by 40, most women are really in perimenopause and those symptoms can become more challenging to them. You know a patient this morning, for example, I saw a new patient and she told me she said look, I have two weeks of PMS. She was 42,. Two weeks of PMS. Maybe I have one good week during the entire cycle. I'm going crazy. I just I don't want my husband to touch me and she was quite deep in menopause. You know, some of her levels were like I would say, within a year of menopause at 42. I see this all the time. And then menopause is when there is no estrogen, and testosterone also can become quite low, as well as progesterone. We don't ovulate in menopause, so 44 to 48 or 49. 20 years ago, when I was actually quite a mature doctor, by that time I really started to recognize that menopause was happening younger.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Have you seen it shift to younger ages over the last 20, 30?

Dr. Prudence Hall:

years, I would say it's shifted to at least five to 10 years younger and I think that's due to toxicity in our environment. Stress, you know, women are no longer just workers or mothers. I mean, we tend to the flock.

Nika Lawrie:

Everything, yeah.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Everything. And now, when you add the phones to it and the computers, and the light flickering and all of that, it really does stress the body and our hormones are very sensitive to that yeah, one of the things I noticed for myself, starting to kind of transition over the years, was this constant feeling of just overstimulation just over.

Nika Lawrie:

It was, you know, social media and the news and just lifestyle and and traffic outside and everything. It was just these micro hits constantly of information or stuff that I had to process and it genuinely felt like my body could not process things fast enough for everything that was coming at me and it just felt continuously overstimulated. And I think there's a big part of just stress and hormones that are linked to that. But it was also just the environment that we live in doesn't give us a break ever. There is no downtime, there is no disconnect time, and that can be so damaging to our mental and physical health, our emotional health too.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

That is so true. Yeah, and we're not sleeping enough. My patients tell me they sleep six hours when they're lucky, so we really need eight to nine. Yeah, there's variations, you know. There are a couple of variations, with people who have specific genes and they can sleep two hours, but most of us are kind of, you know, eight to nine hours.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

And sleep is when the body detoxifies itself. So in this toxic environment we really need enough sleep, not digesting our food. So you eat three to four hours before dinner, four hours before sleep. Four hours is better if you can. So then the body is just free to detoxify all the stuff that we have ingested and breathed in. Yeah, and you know one thing about menopause is a lot of women when I see them on their first visit, all the stuff that we have ingested and breathed in. Yeah, and you know one thing about menopause is a lot of women when I see them on their first visit.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

I mean, this was last week that I actually saw two patients who were clearly in menopause their follicle-stimulating hormone. One of them was 78 and one of them was 60, around 60. And anything above 20 really does indicate menopause. That's the brain hormone that calls down to the ovary and says I need more estrogen. So the higher that number is, you know, the deeper in menopause you are. And they both had periods. One of them had very regular periods. It's like, can I talk to you about menopause Because you're pretty deep in menopause, and she said, oh, I can't possibly be. I have regular periods. So that is not a good, reliable way to know if you're in menopause or not.

Nika Lawrie:

It's the symptoms, that's what I was going to ask. What are some reliable factors or signs that we can look at to start to understand where we might be kind of in the journey?

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yeah, yeah Well, first of all I want to say that I didn't recognize my own perimenopause and so it's harder for us to see ourselves. Sometimes people can reflect back to us what they're seeing if they do it kindly. But the symptoms are gaining weight. Women will gain any place between 10 and 40 pounds, 30 pounds being average. But I see women who gain 60 or 70 pounds during this time, from, you know, their mid-30s to their mid-40s, for example, feeling anxious and overwhelmed, just like you described, nika. You know, feeling anxious and feeling there's increased worry. Some women tell me I used to drive the freeways and now I can't. Or I used to present so easily to my team and now I'm nervous. So this anxiety, also less joy, or frank depression. A lot of women tell me they just I don't know. I don't know what's happened, I'm just depressed. It's not coming from the outside, it's like what's happening in your life. Yeah, I don't know, there's just no joy left.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Hot flashes are common. A lot of women do not experience them because basically you need your adrenal glands to generate a hot flash. Adrenal glands sit on top of the kidneys and they're your stress glands and when those become deficient, burnout that you aren't going to really generate a hot flash. So a lot of women will miss menopause or perimenopause because they simply don't have hot flashes. I consider that a rather ominous sign. Hot flashes generally mean that your adrenals are pretty functional, and then things like brain fog, gi distress this was one of the things that I learned.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

A little later, women would come to me and say I have GERD and bloating and I can't digest my food. That is a menopausal symptom, for sure, and one of my menopausal symptoms, perimenopausal symptoms was OCD. I remember I'm thinking back and a little bit embarrassed that I used to think that my charts were dangerous. I have always had this kind of paranoia. So I'd be holding a chart like this and say, oh, it's dirty, I put on gloves and I'd walk around the frigging clinic wearing my gloves and it's like wait, prudence, you're acting nuts, what's on? And so you know all those kind of strange mood things where you're a little more paranoid, more frightened, more um and let's see what else.

Nika Lawrie:

Brain fog I mentioned that yeah, it's funny, I think, you know I hear so many women so I'm 39 and I have friends that are in this circle and I hear so many things that you're saying I've heard friends say or I've experienced myself, and I'm like ding, ding, ding. I'm like, oh, we're probably all starting to like move into it and we know time-wise it is. But it's funny hearing the things you're saying and I'm like, yes, all these women are starting to feel or experience these things.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

So, yeah, yeah, we do, and sleeplessness, of course, is a big one. I used to be a good sleeper and now I'm awake at three and I'm vacuuming the house or I'm reading, or I'm listening to podcasts, yeah, or yeah, it's just light, I'm just tired. Fatigue, of course, is a huge symptom of menopause. I'm tired. I'm tired in the morning, I'm tired in the afternoon. Those mean different things, but fatigue is very common.

Nika Lawrie:

So how do we start addressing that? Sorry if you could go ahead and share, oh no, no, no, no. So how do we start addressing that? Before we get into hormone replacement, are there things that we can start doing just for ourselves at home, like more natural approaches, simpler things that we can do to really support the journey.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

So it does start with our diet and and with a functional medicine. Up at the clinic in Giggs Harbor they would do the standard I call. Have been many different diets before, but really understanding that food is medicine and that it starts with the diet. So the diet is anti-inflammatory, so where does inflammation come from? Dairy? Some people react to dairy Gluten, which is wheat and all the. I mean there's so many products that have gluten in them. You can look it up, but fake crab was one of the ones that I wasn't aware of.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Actually it was pure gluten and couscous, that's pure wheat. And then eliminating things such as corn, which is fairly intolerant and allergic to people, and nightshades. For some people that would be tomatoes, mushrooms uh, eggplant, things like that. Also, um, things like, uh well, they're lectins that that are being spoken about quite a bit. Um, so, decreasing lectins in our diet. Well, they're lectins that are being spoken about quite a bit. So, decreasing lectins in our diet.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

So you go on a pure diet where all of that is just lifted off the body for a couple of weeks. Good, fresh water, good sleep. Like I mentioned, gentle exercise I never start women exercising. I also take care of men in midlife, but I never start women exercising when they're exhausted, because exercise can be an additional stress. And then teaching just very simple relaxation and stress techniques, such as a big breath in through the nose, hold it for four seconds, releasing through the mouth Now I've participated in studies where that is being measured and three breaths out eight, to the count of eight, into four and out eight. You can do it in different ways Does incredible things to relax the stress. And and so more sleep, pure food, better stress. Now there's certain supplements that are really good and I don't know if we want to get into to supplements, but fish oil omega-3 fish oil is very good.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, that was actually one I would definitely have recommended too, yeah. Yeah, I mean what are some others that you tend to recommend?

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Magnesium Absolutely. Magnesium is a lifesaver. And magnesium glycinate at night, two to 500 milligrams is wonderful for the brain and also for inducing sleep and relaxation. Magnesium is used in a thousand different I would say reactions in our body. So it's important and there are many different types of magnesium, some that bring you a little bit more awake in the morning, but magnesium glycinate at night is great.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

There's one set of supplements that has proven longevity and that's glucosamine, chondroitin, and so I take that every day. I take about 1,500 milligrams a day and it has a strong anti-inflammatory and anti-pain effect. So when I'm really working out and feel it afterwards, when I'm taking glucosamine and chondroitin very routinely, I feel much less pain and much less inflammation. Then there's also NAC Much less inflammation. Then there's also NAC, n-acetylcysteine. So NAC I take about 1,800 milligrams a day, 900 in the morning, 900 at night and that breaks down into glutathione, and glutathione is one of the body's natural antioxidants and is really a very, very good way to stop our body from oxidizing. Now, oxidation is like a nail being left outside in the rain and at rust. You know we have iron in our body in a very wet environment.

Nika Lawrie:

Inside, I'm told One of my favorite analogies similar to that is it's like a piece of toast in a toaster and it's getting golden and then browner and darker and turns to black and it burns right. And that's the. That's our aging process on the inside, oh god that's great, nika.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yeah, that is, and and that dark stuff is toxic yeah, it's a carcinogen. Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah yeah, and resveratrol is great. I take about a yeah, exactly, and to maintain our endocrine glands.

Nika Lawrie:

I think it's so important to note, too, that you know, a lot of the supplements that you recommended are things that we likely would have gotten from food. You know, a long time ago, when we were eating more naturally and things weren't processed as much, but that our diet's gotten so pitiful here in this country that it's really there are many, many nutrients or vitamins or minerals that we're just not getting from the food we're eating, and so we do need to supplement in certain places, and each person's going to be different and each person's needs are going to be different. So that's really important to know, but that you can't just get it. From eating even a super clean, super healthy diet, you won't always get everything that you need.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Even a super clean, super healthy diet, you won't always get everything that you need. Oh, that's so important. It's so important and you know, farm to table organic pasture raised. You don't necessarily have to be a vegetarian. When I was a vegetarian, actually for 20 years my sugar I revived my, the A1C, the hemoglobin A1C measures. Four months of sugar damage. How much damage do I have in our body due to sugar over the last four months? And you don't want sugar glomming and covering your cells because that's toxicity. And my hemoglobin A1C was 5.8, as a vegetarian, I know. So I immediately started, you know, changing. This was a long time ago. Yeah, I was 30, you know 25, 30. But it's you know. You want to make sure that you don't have too many carbohydrates like that Plant-based. Plant-based. The greens, the oranges, the reds the best things to eat in terms of sugar things are berries, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries have a little bit more sugar level, but still very good. Maybe an apple now and then.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yeah, I love them. Yeah, go ahead. No, no, no, we're both excited.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, well, I was going to say I think you know, one of the things I see a lot with women who go vegetarian or vegan is that they don't get enough protein, and then that protein will just the lack of protein really impacts their ability to gain and maintain strong muscles, and then that'll impact the hormones and it becomes this whole unhealthy cycle for them. And so I think it's really important that, if people are going the vegan or vegetarian routes, to really understand how to bring in all that protein as well, right, Well, I was eating rice with vegetables, pasta with vegetables, potatoes, all the good starches.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yes, I'm cooking with a vegetarian chef and it's like like, oh my god, my kids did grow, though. Yeah is six, six, nine, oh my goodness, six, five. So you know, I think. I think it's important to know that water is important. You know the quality of the water, so you want to make sure that it's pure, that you don't drink it out of plastic, because the plastic gets inside of you. We actually have little particles of plastic in our brains and in our arteries. This is something that's a very new exposure for humans to experience.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, it's huge. I think you know I'm so excited to see the education that's starting to happen around the environmental toxin world and you know plastics and phthalates and parabens and all these pieces that are impacting us BPA. You know everything that's flooded our personal care or makeup, our food supplies and how they're really, really impacting women's health. I mean it's having an impact on males as well. Especially we're starting to see that decline in male fertility. But the impact on women's overall health not just fertility health is massive.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Massive, yeah, so it would be nice if we could create a kind of safe zone around ourselves. I remember one study that came out in Cancer Magazine where they were saying that one sprain of the house or yard increased childhood leukemia by 30%. Wow, I'm not sure where that data has gone at this point. It just you know, one out of two people in our lifetime gets cancer. And so having a safety bubble around us clean water, clean air, good supplements you know you really can impact your health with that.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Iodine is very important too. You know. Iodine helps the thyroid to stay healthy and to function well. Yeah, the amount of iodine that we should ingest is you know that varies a lot. It goes any place from 12.5 milligrams, which is a lot, all the way down to one or two or maybe three milligrams a day, because in order to make a thyroid molecule we need four iodines. And we can get it through our diet, as you said, nika, seaweed, salads and seafood, but our diet is not very high in iodine.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Let's transition to hormone replacement therapy. I know I've really seen it change a lot over the last 20 years or so. I think it's becoming far more accepted and women are becoming aware of it.

Nika Lawrie:

The experience I've had with it is I remember being much younger and my mom starting to go through menopause and getting hormone therapy and this was gosh, probably 30, 35 years ago, and she had to fight her doctors for it. She had to pay out of pocket for it. She had to. You know, most of her friends thought she was crazy because she was going to get cancer from having, you know, adding estrogen to her body. Like I remember it just being this really big deal and her telling me make sure you figure out how to do this when you get older, because it'll change your transition, it'll make the symptoms easier to handle and it'll make your life better. Going through a menopause and the conversation with my mom just always stuck in my head. And so now I see you know the therapies being much more common and accessible, what is your take on it?

Dr. Prudence Hall:

And how have you seen that transition? Well, this is my professional life for the rest of it, so I see it with great love, carrie. A lot of the burden been attacked, you know, and now vindicated. But I would say that, just to put it in historical perspective, in the 1940s, first of all, in the 1920s, nobody had any idea about hormones. There wasn't even that name in our vocabulary. We were still talking about ethers and things like that.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

And then penicillin was developed in 1920, 1924, around there 2024. And then we started to be aware that women were not doing well at a certain age it was usually in their 50s, and so a lot of investigation started. And in the 40s, primarin was created. In the 40s, primarin was created. Now Primarin stands for pregnant, prim mayor horse and is urine. So they had tried a lot of different things to help women with hot flashes and to feel better, and Primarin seemed like it was the godsend. And then they started realizing whoa, we're giving women this Primarin and they have a lot more endometrial cancer. So they came up with a progesterone. They still weren't knowing that much about hormones, progesterone and they created medroxyprogesterone or Provera.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Fast forward to 2001,. They did a big study looking at women who are not on hormones, women who are on primarin alone because they'd had a hysterectomy and they felt like they didn't need that protection of Provera. And then primarin and Provera, and what they found is that the women who were on primarin and Provera had considerably higher breast cancer and they you know these women also had more dementia, more heart disease. It was not helping in those areas. Sometimes it was the same, sometimes it was more, and they ended up identifying Provera as the cause of the increased breast cancer. Actually, with Primarin, which they did, another study in 2020 that was published. So it was about it was 20 years later maybe it was 2021 that it was published showing that women on Primarin just alone not the Prevera and women compared to women who took no estrogen had significantly less breast cancer. So that was like, okay, I mean now they proved it. We knew it for 20 years before, but now they proved it.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

But someplace, I would say, around the early 1980s, is when bioidentical hormones started to really become more popular Now in Europe. I mean, I remember in my residency which was, you know, 1978, 80, 81, 82 in gynecology, that we were using injections of estradiol, of estrogen, but it was clumsy and you'd get these high levels and then women would start to need it again and so definitely that technology had come in earlier. It had started coming in in the early 70s, but having them available to women started to become very popular and, as I said, the French and the Germans were quite a bit ahead of us and I was going back and forth to France a lot during that time. So I'd bring them back and try them because my patients who were on Primarin, which I'd been trained with, were not doing well. The symptoms weren't relieved and I noticed that they were starting to get heart disease and they had no increased sexuality and that was a real problem for some women, and they also were experiencing brain fog that wasn't clearing, experiencing brain fog that wasn't clearing. But with the bioidentical hormones those symptoms and the diseases that arise from the symptoms of menopause were not being experienced. So you know, bioidentical means exactly the same hormones that you're making and that I'm making. Thank God women have the same hormones I learned making and that I'm making. Thank God women have the same hormones.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

I learned pretty quickly that the delivery method mattered, that some women could absorb transdermal hormones. I just have a bunch of them here, you know, because I make them and tell patients about them every day. But you know, some women couldn't really absorb the cream very well and I started working with little trokes that you would put under your tongue, and then drops and then vaginal inserts. You know, the birth control pill actually created the vaginal ring and also we have that for menopause. So I was experimenting with lots of different things as they would become available. So when I was there, these things were not available. We had Primarin, we had Provera. Finally, prometrium came in. I remember that was a very big day. Prometrium is a bioidentical progesterone made by pharmaceutical companies, because we were all creating it as doctors and as compounding pharmacies. They were really starting to spring up in the early 80s. Yeah, and I saw amazing things Nika, yeah that I've had four women in my practice have a heart attack Only four. That's the number one cause of death in women. Yeah, and they're all alive. Yeah, they're all great. That's awesome, yeah. So I started learning a lot about the protection and how the brain was protected by estradiol and the hormones and the bones. Gold standard for bone loss and bone loss prevention is bioidentical estrogen. And so I just kept adding you know different types of hormones.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Testosterone for women is extremely important. Now, a man I hold in great esteem, abe Morgenthaler, that I know and he's a professional friend, I really love him went before the FDA and Congress not long ago. He was telling me, presenting with all the data, that testosterone was critical for women just like it was for men. He's the father of testosterone therapy, yeah, and he went with his Harvard team and I know some of that Harvard team. I mean they have more data than a camel has water in the desert, but really they snowed them with data and still testosterone was not approved for use in women. Now I use it for women. Almost every woman who's in menopause has a lower testosterone and she tells me that she's less confident and her muscle mass is not building and she's losing her bones and she doesn't have a sex drive and she can't have orgasms like she used to and that she just feels that her brain is kind of more circular, less directional, and so testosterone, that's a very important hormone. It's exactly the same hormone that we make.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

And then you know there are the other thyroid, t3, t4. Rather than just using Synthroid or Levothyroxine, which is T4, use both of them and I use a product that comes from New Zealand. I'm so lucky to have it, new Zealand. It's a porcine glandular and it has T3, t7, t5, t4, you know. So it's very, very much like our own thyroid. Very much like our own thyroid. Yeah, so you use these different hormones D3, that's not a supplement, that's a hormone.

Nika Lawrie:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

You know, when there's a huge epidemic of low D3 in the United States and around the world. I take care of people from all over the world and I used to think well, some societies are going to do much better than us. You know, with menopause they're going to be much later and I've really seen that to be true. Nika and D3 levels vitamin D is the same. I see it being very low in most societies.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, I think it's just us being endorsed so much anymore and being covered in clothing, and we just don't have that same exposure anymore.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yeah, and melanoma is certainly on the rise. I know many patients who have had melanomas and luckily they're surviving now with interesting immunotherapy and things like that. So pharmaceutical companies definitely have their place. You know, with some of these groundbreaking kinds of medications they're coming up with, I don't think that that should be first line whatsoever in our way of treating the body. You know, I mean we're not Prozac deficient, you know when we're depressed, oh yes, deficient.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

You know when we're depressed, oh yes your pulse act deficient, it's you know we're probably we're serotonin deficient or dopamine deficient. So we can supplement with 5-HTP and various other things to help bring the brain back to a more youthful level and a healthier level.

Nika Lawrie:

What are your thoughts between the creams and the pellets? Do you have any preference between them, or is it just?

Dr. Prudence Hall:

person. Oh yes, so I use five different methods for delivering estrogen and it's not in the birth control pill. I wish we could talk about that. I don't know if we'll have time, but please don't use the birth control pill.

Nika Lawrie:

Thank you. I was like we could do a whole other episode on birth control if you would like to, because I would love to do that.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

I've never seen hormones as decimated from anything else is from the birth control pill. So when I measure women on the birth control pill, which I've done hundreds and hundreds, their estradiol levels will be 10, 15, and they have the symptoms that menopausal women frequently have they're tired, they're gaining weight, their brains don't work, they're on Adderall because they have ADHD. So, anyway, we need estrogen for our brain. Dale Bredesen let me just get this book. I show it to women all the time. Dale Bredesen, one of the foremost researchers in brain health, has told me thank goodness for prescribing estrogen. It is so important for the brain. But the birth control pill suppresses our own natural estrogen.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Now what was your question?

Nika Lawrie:

What's your preference between pellets or creams or injections all those different options.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yeah. So testosterone pellets for men work very well, although there are so many other ways to get it now that I don't think it's necessary really. But for women, when you use a pellet it's gone within three months. Testosterone is frequently gone within two. So you have to make a nick in the skin, you have to insert the pellet Stereo, strip it down.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

And it's not my favorite method because I see the levels, because I've followed the levels In some women. I have followed them every week and I remember in the beginning of this work, when I was doing it, there were patients that I would follow their hormone levels every three days because I was really trying to learn why isn't this person responding to what everybody else is? And I found fascinating things from that. But you know it declines. And then you know I mean my palate patients would come back and I'd say, well, let's add a little cream on the second month. And so I like creams, vaginal use, I like sublingual use with drops or trokes.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

You know the patch. I use the pharmaceutical patch, I would say, for a third of my patients because it's covered by insurance, which is good. I mean this little thing will cost $50 and you can get two months out of it, sometimes more. This little testosterone is $50,. You'll get four months out of it usually, but still it's nice to have it covered by insurance. And you know people have dogs and little pets, that you know where it can be absorbed into the dog skin and that's not good.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yeah, children, nursing mothers postpartum depression is due to low estrogen and so I put a very low dose patch on those women and you can't have that near the baby, but sometimes it just works better than the creams. Yeah. So pellets? I would say I haven't put a pellet in probably in five years, oh wow, except into men. Yeah, yeah, see, a lot of times we'll fluctuate the hormones. For example, we'll bring in progesterone for two weeks out of the month. Sometimes we'll stop estrogen for three days at the end of the month or decrease that dose three days at the end of the month. It kind of depends on the person. With pellets you don't have any of that flexibility.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, that was. That was the question I was going to ask. Is needing that flexibility, depending on how you know where the woman is in her cycle, or you know how the hormones are changing throughout the month, or I mean, gosh, even day to day it can completely change.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

So yeah, yeah, yeah, well, jonathan Wright, who is, who is one of the great people in our field he's a naturopathic physician and is definitely one of the great people in our field. He's a naturopathic physician and is definitely one of the pioneers in bioidentical hormones also and he said that using pellets was a crime. He basically said it was immoral, something like that. I don't want to misquote him, but he was definitely against it because there wasn't the kind of flexibility where you could, you know, I mean, once the pellet is in, it's in, it's in, yeah, yeah, and you can't have any flexibility in terms of cycling or withdrawing hormones for a few days or anything like that.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah, definitely.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

But some people love them. You know Some doctors use them successfully. I who's using bioidentical hormones. Oh, thank God.

Nika Lawrie:

Thank you, you're my colleague Help what the side effects could be, what the positive effects can be, so that the patient, the person who's actually dealing with it, gets a very clear picture of what to expect and how to plan around, whatever the effects could be. So yeah, so you wrote a book Radiant Again and Forever. Can you talk a little bit? Just what's in the book? Why should people check it out, and are there a couple takeaways that maybe we'd get from the book? Thank, you.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

I remember writing that book. I wrote it between the hours of probably wrecking my health, between 10 and 2 am.

Nika Lawrie:

Those hours you're supposed to be sleeping?

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yes, I'm writing another book. That's very exciting. It's about remembering living in the desert and, as a young doctor, going and doing internships. Oh, it's very exciting Cool.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, I can't wait to check that one out this book, radiant.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Suzanne Summers asked me to write the book. She said oh nice, I've interviewed you enough. Can you write your own frigging book? And I did. I did. Yeah, the first book I wrote was the wrong book. I gave it to her and she said Prudence, that's not the book I told you to write. She said each chapter must be a different hormone analysis with a different patient. And so I went back and wrote that one and she wrote the forward Takeaways are when you read the book. It's free. It's on my website, thehallcentercom.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, yeah, I'll put a link in the show notes.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yeah, so it's free and I wrote it not to make money from it, but to educate people from it. And the takeaways are you can diagnose yourself in each chapter. For example, here's a patient with low thyroid, here's a patient with sexual difficulties, here's a patient with terrible PMS, with menopause, with perimenopause and these are the solutions at the back of each chapter how I dealt with that patient.

Nika Lawrie:

So you hear her story.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

You hear a lot of pain. You really come into my consult room and you hear the discussion of how I approach. You know each patient. Yeah, and it's a little bit. You know, women come to me frequently for menopause, but frequently they'll just say look, I'm depressed. Yeah, that's my main symptom. And so what causes depression? Well, low estrogen, low testosterone, low DHEA, low pregnenolone. Those are the adrenals, a borderline low thyroid. That's a very subtle thing, the thyroid. And so you know. But you really start to see who you are with these chapters. And then the last three chapters are about possibility and purpose for our lives, and I talk about some of the inspiring women that I've taken care of. I mean, they're back to themselves, they're on fire, they're passionate, they start orphanages and climb big mountains and write and become painters and, oh my God, this is why I'm still doing this.

Nika Lawrie:

That's. I mean, that is my driving factor. Is that when you help women heal and feel their best, my driving factors that when you help women heal and feel their best, the things that they can do to make the world a better place is just, it's inspiring, it's unbelievable and it's just it's such a magical thing to see happen. So I commend you for the book and for the work you're doing. I think it's so, so important and just life-changing for so many women. So, thank you.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Thank you, and thank you for giving me the opportunity here to meet your, your families.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Yeah, to reach more people.

Nika Lawrie:

I have one. I have one last question, for I guess it's technically two questions. But before I get to the very last question, where can the listeners find you? How can they connect with you?

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Well, they can go to my website, you know, thehallcentercom. Or they can go to Dr Prudence Hall MD. That's the second website I have. I'm on a lot of the social media, so they can go on YouTube, where we're going to be soon.

Nika Lawrie:

Perfect, yes.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

And TikTok is not really where I excel. No worries On Instagram. I'm not a great social media person, frankly.

Nika Lawrie:

I don't think most of us are. I think it's a required piece of the business, not necessarily something that we all love to do, but I think, as long as there's some good education out there, that it's important to do.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

The world has become so unified in a way I mean as we're splitting apart like atoms. In many parts of the world there is a unity of thought and consciousness that I've noticed in more and more people, so it's like we're starting to bloom and social media is as bad as it can be for young kids and you know where we're being kind of trained like Pavlov's dogs to want likes and to want things.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

It really does spread information in a great way. You know, medicine's 25 years behind science and behind studies and that's something that Dr Bland and everyone was talking about in functional medicine that, with all of these people speaking, big experts.

Nika Lawrie:

I just had that conversation with a dear friend of mine the other day. She has this really cool. She basically wrote a book about this whole idea. It's relating to physics and manifestation and stuff like that. But there's real science behind it and I was telling her.

Nika Lawrie:

I said, you know, in the medical world it takes, you know, on average, 17, you know I hear different 17, 20 years, 25 years for the latest research to trickle down to your general practitioner. Like it's. It's going to take, you know, two decades for your general practitioner to learn about the latest technique or latest information. But then you go on an influencer's podcast and they've read the research and they share it out with millions and millions of people know within five days of that research coming out right. Like it's. This completely different world and the power that social media gives us to disseminate that information is incredible. Hopefully it's used more for good than bad, but you know that's still to be decided, but I think using it as a tool for good is such a great thing be decided, but I think using it as a tool for good is such a great thing.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

It's wonderful it's wonderful and yeah, we're lucky. We're lucky to be born into this.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

We are To this time, Definitely yeah, this time of change and change is incredible. I've been watching a lot of Michael Singer kind of reconnecting with Michael Singer. He did the Untethered Soul, oh yeah, Okay yeah, and I read his book probably three times years ago, right, and then I just reconnected with him. He was talking about how small we are on this planet, floating in billions of miles, and so why should we really expect everything to show up and please us? Yeah, so you know this kind of understanding people speaking this kind of language, whether it be in scientific terms, psychological terms, emotional or spiritual terms, it gets transmitted, like you said, like rockets around the world. Yeah, yeah, and it's really sweet to see how we're all evolving. I mean just following Mike a little bit and seeing what he's now on to. Or you know Mark Hyman or Jeff Bland, or Huberman. You know all these people. It's great. William Lee, he's a good one to follow, yeah, yeah definitely Well.

Nika Lawrie:

Dr Hall, my last question for you today what is something that you would like to share to inspire the listeners? It can be an experience you've had something you've learned, something someone shared with you, just something you'd like to leave behind to inspire others.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Wow. We are each of us. The full range of possibility Within each of us is God. We are connected, we are the waves as part of the ocean. You know, we are the bliss that is just waiting to be lit and ignited. And knowing ourselves, the path of self-knowledge, the path of for my path, my path is is one of devotion as well as the intellect, but really getting to know who you are and and knowing that being is actually more important than doing. And one story that has inspired me so much is John O'Donohue. Have you heard of John O'Donohue?

Nika Lawrie:

No, I haven't.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Wonderful poet, irish poet, friends with David White, who's another wonderful poet, and he started out as a not as a monk, what do they call him as a Catholic priest. And he lived in a small town and this is the very beginning of his career and he would go to the houses and give the last rites and he would say I'm here to perform the last rites. No, no, it can't be. Oh well, it is, but I had so much more to do and I wish I'd done that. And why didn't I do this? And I was so timid and so afraid. And then they would die and he, you know, tells he's now deceased, but he would tell this story about how person after person would be dying with regret of the things that they should have done, and why didn't they do it and why were they afraid? And why did they, et cetera.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

And then the scoundrel of the town he drank and he danced and he loved. He was a Zorba type of a guy, you know Zorba, the Greek type of a guy. And he got divorced, you know that was, he didn't go to church and the, you know, john O'Donohue, went to his house and said my son, it's time to give you the last rites. It is time for you to leave. He said, ah, I get to meet my maker. He has been talking to me for all me life and now I get to meet him.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

He said, well, do you have regrets? Do you have sorrows? He said, no, no, I danced and loved and prayed my way through life, but, son, you never came to church. God and I have always been together. And now he will greet me with love. And he just smiled and died. And John O'Donohue says look brave in your life, do the impossible, don't be afraid. Don't need the church or the intermediaries, or your parents or the society to tell you what to do. Be your own brave and strong individual in love, with a true heart.

Nika Lawrie:

Oh yeah, so beautiful. It's going to make me tear up. It's such a good story and something I very much believe in too. So thank you for sharing that, dr Holly. I appreciate it. Thank you, yeah, thank you for coming on the show and sharing all your expertise with us too. I really really appreciate you, so thank you. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing all your expertise with us too. I really really appreciate you, so thank you.

Dr. Prudence Hall:

Thank you, such a joy.

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