Medical Doctor Answers Hormone Questions From Twitter

I'm Dr. Amy Shah, MD and specialist in women's health.

Today, I'll be answering your questions from Twitter.

This is Hormone Support.

Convojo asks, what actually are hormones

and how can I remove all of them?

You wouldn't wanna remove your hormones

because then you would literally die.

Hormones are chemical messengers

that regulate our mood, our attention, our growth,

our sexual activity, our disease risk.

Our hormones make us who we are.

Hormones are part of the endocrine system.

People get confused between the nervous system

and the endocrine system

but the endocrine system uses liquid chemicals

versus electrical impulses.

@elapye asks, can't sleep.

Is it just hormone or question mark?

#midnighttweet, #insomnia.

I think a lot of us could have written this tweet

because there are a multitude of hormones

that are involved in sleep

but the main one you might have heard of

is called melatonin.

The pineal gland in the brain produces melatonin

and that melatonin actually binds

to many different places in the body including the brain

to tell it to get ready for bed.

Melatonin secretion is very influenced by blue light,

by stress and by the things that you eat or drink

like caffeine.

Melatonin also can be taken by supplement form

but remember, most people are taking way too much melatonin.

10 milligrams of melatonin, 20 milligrams of melatonin,

that is way too much.

You don't wanna suppress your natural release of melatonin.

You wanna stick to like .5 milligrams

to three milligrams max.

@Isabella_Gomez's asks, how come we don't really talk about

how hormones from birth control are the actual devil?

Jesus [beep] Christ,

it feels like an alien has invaded my body

and the alien hates me for no reason.

All right, this is a lot to unpack here.

Estrogen and progesterone

not only work in our reproductive system

but they also have a lot to do with our emotions.

When you take oral contraceptive pills,

you are giving your body a steady state of estrogen

and progesterone every day

because it's the rise and fall of the hormones

that stimulates the release of the egg from the ovary.

What happens though

is that instead of having a cyclical pattern

of estrogen and progesterone,

you get a constant pattern of estrogen and progesterone

and for some women, that creates emotional changes.

@human5555555 asks,

what does low testosterone even feel like or look like?

Testosterone is the hormone in our body

that's made in the gonads both in women and men by the way.

It gives you motivation and drive.

It also helps you grow your muscles.

It helps your mood, it helps your bones

and often when people are aging,

they'll feel some of the signs of low testosterone.

You'll feel tired.

You can feel depressed.

People will feel

like they're getting more fat around the belly.

These can be signs of low testosterone

or it can be signs of other things

because as you know, these are very common complaints.

Men have a lot more testosterone than women

and men often are haunted by these sites that say,

oh, you need to take these testosterone pellets

because they will replace your testosterone.

What ends up happening

is they get dangerously high levels of testosterone.

If you think you have low testosterone,

you can get it tested with a simple blood test

and make sure that they're not trying to sell you

testosterone supplements when you may not need it.

@alhernandez262 asks, medical question,

what hormone causes my body to crave pizza

at 11:08 every night?

Well, Al, I think it's probably your cortisol late at night

telling you to go out and get some pizza.

This is way too late for your digestion.

I don't think most people realize

that hormones and digestion are intimately linked.

There are hormones like insulin, GLP-1,

insulin-like growth factor, leptin and ghrelin.

These hormones literally interact with the digestive system

to tell us when we're full, when we're hungry,

when we should eat and what we should do with the food.

If you're struggling with cravings late in the evening,

it often has to do with high stress levels.

So you wanna fix your sleep schedule.

@ECOTERRORIST asks,

can hormones really change your bone structure?

How you gonna get wider hips?

I know, it's crazy.

Hormones are so powerful.

For example, there's hormones released during pregnancy

that actually relax the ligaments in your body

so you may look like you have wider hips

or you have looser joints.

In the case of puberty,

when estrogen and progesterone are released

for example in a girl, you start to develop breast tissue

and you start to develop wider hips

but it's more because of the fat redistribution

than changing of the bone structure.

@JoJoGlimpsed asks, why does adrenaline affect the memory?

Well, adrenaline actually makes your memory stronger

for that moment.

For example, if you're in a very scary stressful situation,

you probably remember that really well.

Adrenaline and other stress hormones like cortisol

and norepinephrine, these are brain and adrenals.

This system is meant to keep us safe in danger.

So imagine running away from a tiger.

It's alerting your brain and the rest of your body

that it's time to focus on the task at hand

and so you're not gonna be able to make complex decisions

like your taxes or whether you should buy that house

during that time.

@dyketowatch4 asks, from an evolution standpoint,

why do I get sick when I'm stressed?

That is so stupid.

I know, it's a little known fact

but when you're chronically stressed,

your immune system can be suppressed

but we think it's because when you are in a stressed state,

your resources are all sent to the immediate processes

that are gonna help you escape from the danger,

your muscles, your eyes,

your forebrain that's going to help you escape the situation

gets all the attention

and things like the immune system are neglected.

@HarlotPrincessX asks,

so like why does progesterone make peeps horny?

Does anyone have the scientific explanation?

I'm genuinely curious.

Actually, when women are struggling with sex drive,

it's estrogen that gets replaced to help that.

This is especially true around perimenopause and menopause

where the replacement of estrogen will help with sex drive.

@SputnikV1234 asks, does coffee actually lower

some hormone related to mood also?

Coffee has been shown in a large study of 450,000 people

to actually improve cardiovascular health and extend life.

We know that coffee raises your cortisol levels

but cortisol levels are not always bad.

In fact, cortisol is what wakes you up in the morning

and that's why drinking coffee kind of makes you more alert.

Just don't go overboard.

@Nouvellvet asks, how do we become insulin resistant?

So let's talk about what insulin even is.

Insulin is an essential hormone.

This is the pancreas right here

where all the insulin of our body is created.

These beta cells in the pancreas are producing the insulin

that will let the glucose into the cell.

Glucose is the primary fuel for the brain and the body.

You need glucose to function.

Say I decided right now to drink a big glass of apple juice.

You need to take that blood sugar

and put it into your cells so they can use it

for fuel or energy.

When they want to get into the cells,

they need someone to open the door for them

and that's insulin

and if you have a lot of glucose running around,

the insulin just can't catch up

and over time, it almost becomes a little deaf.

So if you think about it,

it's like children screaming all the time

and the parents kind of just get used to it

and become more deaf to it.

That's kinda how insulin is

when it's seeing a ton of glucose all the time.

@SteveMKemp asks,

how does cortisol affect body fat levels?

This is huge.

The relationship between stress and body fat

is something we all need to know about.

So when cortisol is high, it releases glucose from the cells

and when glucose is hanging around in the bloodstream,

you get insulin because insulin lets glucose into the cells.

You're basically signaling to your body

to create more fat cells by letting that glucose in.

So cortisol releases the glucose, insulin goes up.

That's a signal to the brain to start storing fat.

@GlenAllen2010 asks, what is hormone replacement therapy?

Hormone replacement therapy

is using both synthetic and biological hormones

to replace low levels of hormones in the body.

Every single woman goes through menopause

which is a drop in the hormone levels.

So every woman will go through a phase of life

where they will have very low levels

of estrogen and progesterone

whereas men, it's more of a gradual decline.

Women can get hormone replacement therapy,

men can get hormone replacement therapy

and transgendered individuals can get masculizing

or feminizing hormone replacement therapy.

So if you're a trans woman,

you can take things like estrogen and anti-androgen therapy

so that your hormones can better match your gender identity.

With any kind of medical intervention,

you should check with your doctor

to check if it's right for you.

@ayo_irl asks, why can hormones make you so irritable?

So rude?

Hormone imbalances can feel really frustrating.

The week before your period called the late luteal phase

or in the media is often called PMS, premenstrual syndrome,

it's a time where estrogen and progesterone has dropped.

That is the time where you'll often feel more irritable,

where you'll feel more depressed.

There are other hormones such as testosterone

and hyperthyroidism so high thyroid hormone.

These can also make you feel irritable or angry.

@dwtshart asks, how do hormones and emotions

and stuff work?

Like how do our bodies just respond to things?

It's insane.

Neurotransmitters and hormones are two separate systems

but they're really one and there's a lot of overlap.

So for example, dopamine and serotonin

are considered neurochemicals.

However, they can create hormonal effects.

When you exercise for example,

there are feel good neurochemicals

and there are certain hormones

like estrogen and progesterone and testosterone

that can go to the presynaptic area of the neuron

and actually send neurochemical messages.

So they're very intertwined in many aspects.

@Dr_JAndre asks, why does the thyroid

have beef with everybody?

Like when it's in the mood,

it can just screw up all the other systems.

So petty.

So true, right?

The thyroid is this tiny little gland.

It has effects all over the body.

It affects your metabolism, your body temperature,

hair, your nails, your skin.

You might be feeling symptoms of low thyroid

which is dry skin, slow heart rate, fatigue and weight gain.

Hyperthyroid symptoms would be sweating,

weight loss, palpitations.

There is no tea or supplement

that will fix your thyroid problems.

If you suspect that you have a thyroid problem,

please go to your doctor and get the simple blood test.

@Shifuni asks,

when do hormones go back to normal after pregnancy?

Asking for a friend.

You may see some initial normalization within weeks

but really it takes about six months

to get back to the normal levels of hormones

after a pregnancy.

@magidolche asks, why am I so tired

and why won't my brain produce the awake hormone?

This is a great question.

I actually wrote a book about it called I'm So Effing Tired.

When we are feeling tired all the time,

it's usually a sign that there's something off

inside of our bodies that's creating inflammation.

You're tired because your energy trifecta is damaged.

What is the energy trifecta?

It's a combination of gut health,

immune health and hormone health.

The trifecta tells you to be tired

because it's protecting you while you're healing yourself.

@atq662 asks, can taking hormones help you lose weight?

Oh, gosh, taking hormones for weight loss

is something that's very popular.

However, it's not recommended.

Hormones do hundreds of things in the body.

For example, people will take thyroid hormone

even though they're not low on thyroid and what happens

is they end up getting negative side effects

like heart palpitations, restlessness, panic attacks.

Hormones are not a one shot deal.

You don't want to take hormones for weight loss.

@boobstagramm asks,

what is hormone therapy for breast cancer?

There are breast cancer tumors

that have estrogen receptors on them.

You can take a medication like Tamoxifen

to block the estrogen from binding to that receptor

therefore starving that tumor to death.

And there's also hormone therapy that you can use

for prostate cancer.

Those are the two main types of cancers

that you can use hormone therapy for.

@BlkHistStudies asks, did you know that Percy Julian

was a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs

such as cortisone, steroids and birth control pills?

I did know that.

He is known to be the father of birth control pills

and also for cortisone.

For example, here's some synthetic steroid

which he created in a lab

that could match the steroids in the body

and so you can inject this into a human

and it will have effects like steroids in the body.

It's pretty amazing.

@notvishnuu asks, how do I stimulate my pituitary gland

to give me at least two more inches?

This is such a popular question.

In the pituitary gland in the brain,

there is a hormone called human growth hormone

which in children helps them grow.

In adults, it also has other effects like muscle repair

but it doesn't really help you grow anymore

because your growth plates are fused.

Unfortunately, if you're an adult

even if you add human growth hormone,

you're not gonna get taller.

@ZinzileSibs asks, I find it wild.

we have a period every month until menopause,

the period stops but apparently the hormones get worse?

Hot flashes, mood swings, weight gain, et cetera.

Why?

Perimenopause and menopause is an issue that is underdressed

and undertreated in most of the population.

Perimenopause happens almost 10 years before menopause

so people will start to get symptoms as early as 35, 36

and then it'll go all the way up to 50

and last for a few years during the menopausal transition.

That's a lot of years of hot flashes,

weight gain, mood changes, et cetera.

So I suggest a combination of food, lifestyle,

sleep, stress control and talking to your doctor

about whether hormone replacement therapy

might be right for you.

So these are all the questions for today.

Thank you so much for writing in

and starting the conversation about hormones

that needs to be had.

Thanks for watching Hormone Support.