
As many of you know, for the past 4 years I’ve been writing a new book. It's called Hormone Intelligence and I wanted to take a minute to tell you why I wrote this book, at this moment in time. I also want to share with you an interview about my book, with talk show host, actor and filmmaker, Ricki Lake, and documentary producer, Abby Epstein, who created The Business of Being Born, and the forthcoming Business of Birth Control.
I’ve been watching the volume of increasing root cause issues in women’s health rise for decades. Not only have I watched this climb in the national numbers of endometriosis, PCOS, fertility problems, premature puberty, etc., but the number of women who reach out to me, afraid, in pain, overwhelmed, and desperate for answers and relief, have shot up at an alarming rate.
Women’s hormonal problems are real and have sky-rocketed in the past three decades. At present 80% of women will struggle with some form of hormonal problem in their lifetime, from PMS, PCOS, endometriosis, infertility, low sex-drive, menopausal discomforts, to thyroid problems and more. You may be one of these women, and if not, my guess is that someone close to you is – and you have watched them – maybe held their hand as they go from doctor to doctor without answers, without solutions, and without relief.
What happens when most women go to their doctor with the above symptoms and concerns? A few of them are heard. Most are not. My patients have had other doctors tell them that if they just “controlled their fork going to their mouth” they'd lose weight, that they just had faulty genes, or poor willpower. Or that they needed an antidepressant.
This is unacceptable, especially when we consider that women are much more severely impacted by medication side effects than men, and that gender bias in medicine has prevented adequate research on how pharmaceuticals impact us. We don't have to look too far back in history to find frightening examples of this, and even now, the risks of birth control and hormone replacement therapy are still just being uncovered.
Body Literacy and Hormone Intelligence
Being the expert on YOU is one of the first steps to awakening your inner hormone intelligence. I'm on a mission help women become fluent in the language of their hormones – to have body literacy, and a deep new respect for all that your hormones do and influence – so we can heal, thrive, and truly reclaim our power, while having a strong ability to self-advocate when medical advice or care is needed.
This book is meant to be a comprehensive guide and profound resource on all things hormonal health for all women throughout all life cycles; from first period to last. Not only do I walk you through how to recognize hormonal and gynecologic problems as vital signs, but I provide an accessible, achievable six-week nutrition, lifestyle, and natural medicine plan for optimizing hormone health, and science-backed protocols for addressing both everyday concerns and hard-to-treat conditions in a balanced way. These are step-by-step, day-by-day protocols I have used in my practice with my patients for decades. In other words, these are answers, these are solutions, there is relief. And the profound knowing that you are not alone, and that you are not broken.
I’m at a time in my life where i wanted to give everyone the culmination of my experience in women’s health for the past 37+ years. I know that it’s logistically impossible for me to work individually with the number of woman that need this type of care. Hormone Intelligence is my way of reaching everyone who I couldn’t see in my office. It’s for every woman who’s asked if they can be my patient. It's for every woman who has felt unheard in the doctor's office or has been searching for answers, reassurance, someone they trust, and for solutions that go beyond just pills and surgeries. It is for every woman who has written me an email or commented on social media asking for help, or who has said “I wish I'd known that before before I had that surgery,” “I'd known that before I'd lived with that for 15 years,” “I'd known that before when I was younger.” Now you can know. Because Hormone Intelligence is all about that knowing.
I'm so excited to share the next evolution of my work with you, which combines food as medicine, lifestyle and self-care, herbs and supplements, and what you might want to know about conventional approaches, in the most sophisticated and yet easily accessible ways.
I invite you to join me. Enjoy the interview! With love always and appreciation in helping me make this more than a book – but a revolution for women's health.
And if you've not purchased your copy of Hormone Intelligence yet, please do. And considering grabbing a copy for your mom, your sister, your daughter, or your best friend.
Our hormones influence every aspect our of lives, our moods, even many of our choices. At some point while I was writing the book I realized, this isn't just a book, it's a movement. We all deserve to live our best, most empowered lives, and it starts with Hormone Intelligence.