Hormones and Your Health with Dr. Richard Sinda

Good morning and welcome to Green Tea Conversations, the radio show that delves into the pages of Natural Awakenings Magazine to bring you the local experts who share progressive ideas and the latest information and insights needed so you can read your best life. I'm your host, Candi Broeffle publisher, the Twin Cities edition of Natural Awakenings Magazine. And I'm honored to bring these experts to you. Today's guest is Dr. Richard Sinda, owner of Innovative Directions in Health, leading preventative aging and natural hormone therapy clinic located right here in Edina.

 

Welcome to the show, Dr. Sinda.

 

Thank you. Thanks for inviting me.

 

Yes. So you received your doctor of Osteopathic medicine and completed your medical internship and residency and family medicine and have been practicing medicine for the past 25 years, including urgent care, which you continue to do today.

 

Yes.

 

And back in 2011, you became certified in the Age Management Medicine in age Management Medicine and joined the team at Innovative Directions in Health, where you practice preventative and natural hormone replacement. More recently, you became certified by the Institute for Functional Medicine as a certified practitioner.

 

Yes.

 

Well, we certainly have a lot to talk about today.

 

It's been a long path.

 

A lot journey journey. Enjoy learning.

 

Well, I'm a very curious person.

 

There you go.

I need more of that these days.

 

I also want our listeners to know that I've been your patient at Innovative Directions in Health since 2014, and you're not breaking any HIPAA laws since I allowed you sometimes say I get myself and Conversely, attest to the great work that you do, which we will talk about more as we go through today's interview to begin with, tell us a little bit about Innovative Directions in health.

 

Well, it was started in the early 2000 by actor Collar My mood. He was an internal Medison physician who also was a hematologist oncologist very progressive, forward-thinking physician, even for his era. For sure. He started the Cancer Center North Memorial, actually. And he was very well respected over there at North Memorial. He found, though, that he got tired of seeing people watch people crumble and die in front of him. And he felt like there must be a better way to do things where you could incorporate more prevention and possibly prevent cancer versus waiting for them to occur.

So he was always looking for ways to prevent cancers. And that's how he stumbled upon what we do now.

Which is a natural and holistic approach to hormone therapy.

 

Right. So we use natural hormones to treat imbalances. We use nutritional supplements to treat deficiencies.

 

Yeah. And actually, that's how I found out about your clinic from reading a book by Suzanne Summers called Breakthrough Eight Steps to Wellness, struggling with my own issues with perimenopause at the time and trying to get some answers for myself. So I was reading a bunch of different books and came across her book, and she actually had talked about him as being an expert in natural hormone therapy. Excuse me. And so I did some research, and I thought, I don't care where this man is at. I think I want to go see him and started doing some research and found that Lo and behold, he was right here in Minnesota and right in the Edina.

 

Yeah.

 

So I made an appointment right away with Innovative Directions in Health. And unfortunately, at the time, he was just starting to kind of phase-out of taking on new patients. But fortunately for me, I got assigned to you. I've been confused since now 2014, introduced to Innovative Directions and Health.

 

Well, it was a long journey. Probably take a half-hour to explain the whole process. But I became disillusioned with primary care in the early two-thousands, shortly after the WHI study came out.

 

And the WHI study was?

 

Well, that was a study that basically said that these horse hormone products that we were using for several decades, we had risks associated with them and that we should probably use less of them because there were millions of women who were on them for decades, all over the whole world. So then we had nothing left to help these people, these poor women who were suffering. So what was recommended to us is that we use high-powered antidepressant sleeping pills and anxiety pills. And I just knew deep down inside that that was the wrong answer.

 

And I knew that there had to be a safe we to do this. I knew there was. But at the time, it wasn't. That wasn't that wasn't a parent. And it wasn't obvious. Right. So at that time, I switched over to full-time urging care medicine because you have to get those stitches and you have to get that pneumonia traded and you have to get your broken bone.

 

Was something that you could actually.

Something I could fix. Right. So that led me to. So I read for about three solid years about the type of medicine that we practice. Now I was honestly extremely skeptical. When I first started reading, it took me about three years to become less skeptical. And then one day, a light bulb went off in my head, and I just said, hey, this is what we really needed all along to help to help solve the problem of those horse hormones being risky. These hormones are natural. They're well tolerated by the body, and your body doesn't have the same reaction.

 

And we're going to talk about that, too, as we go through the program today. But that was something that I experienced myself when I tell people about you and the work that you do and how it's helped me. The first thing people tend to say is, oh, you shouldn't take hormone replacements because it's really dangerous.

 

We're talking about the horse hormones, right. But anyway, I I started reading about it. Then I got certified in it, and then I was looking for local people who did it. And I came across College my moods name. So I gave him a call. We had lunch, coffee a couple of times. We hit it off really? Well. He asked me to join, and then I did more and more of that. I started out part-time. I have other jobs, plural. Unfortunately. Then he asked me to join and that I've just done more and more over time. And after he left, I bought the practice and took it over.

 

Yeah. Well, that's really interesting. So I came to see you because I was really struggling with Perimenopause and was pretty much at my wit's end with share with our listeners. What is perimenopause?

Well, perimenopause means your hormones are out of balance. You don't have the balance that you had when you were saying your 20's 30's and things start to shift. There are three main hormones of woman's ovaries make. Generally, it's a little oversimplification, but generally, it's true. Estrogen progesterone and testosterone. Often in the mid-thirties, women stop making enough progesterone. Often in the early forties, they stop making enough testosterone. Those imbalances lead to irregular periods, worst PMS, anxiety, irritability sleep issues, sometimes headaches, just overall big quality of life hit.

 

Yeah. I mean, some of the things I personally experienced was like brain fog.

 

Yes, that's another one.

 

Not remember

 

hot flashes too.

 

Yes hot flashes, brain brain fog. So even just I remember being at work and getting up from my desk to go do something and walking into another room. Of course. Right. This is a big joke. We always talk. I'll lock into another room and I can't realize me remember what I want in my hair, right. Or just not feeling like I was firing on all cylinders and also a lot of sleep disturbances.

 

Yes. That's one of the biggest complaints I hear. Interestingly brain fog, sleep disturbances and anxiety. Or three of the biggest issues that I biggest symptoms that I hear in the thirties and forties.

 

And is that a cause of just the imbalance, or is it a specific imbalance? Is it of the is the progesterone?

 

Yeah. Low progesterone is the biggest culprit, usually in the from the mid-30s on until you go through a mental pace completely. But in the early forties, you get disaster and deficiency, too, which takes away other things like libido and muscle tone. And a lot of people lose motivation, motivation, and Android. In a lot of people lose motivation, too. When they lose their testosterone. Women actually need to Testosterone. They don't need a lot. They just need a little. But if they have zero, then they lose motivation, libido, and all sorts of things muscle tone.

 

And it's interesting because we think that in the 30s, you have children and you're running all the time with children and worried about your kids. And people think maybe that's why they're losing sleep.

 

Right.

 

Do you hear that quite a bit?

 

Yeah, they attributed to other things. Or it's a common time you having children. So you think, oh, I had children. So now I've changed into mom mode. Well, really, it's progestin deficiency often.

 

So how do you end up testing for that?

No matter what anybody tells anybody out there, there is no perfect way to test hormones, but blood tests do give you a lot of information, a lot of useful information. They're not perfect, but they do correlate well with symptoms and with deficiencies.

 

Okay, when we come back, we're going to talk more about this and take a look at some of the ways that you gather more information from patients as well in order to determine how you can best help them. So for people who want to find out more about what you do, they can go to IDInHealth.com. If someone wants to make an appointment the number that they can call is?

 

952-922-2345.

 

Great. When we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Dr. Sinda and learn about some of the natural treatments that are available to bring your hormones into balance and bring relief for those struggling with perimenopause and other hormonal deficiencies. To read the online version of Natural Awakenings Magazine, visit NaturalTwinCities.Com. You can find a podcast through the show on AM950Radio.Com, on Apple and Google podcast and anywhere you get your podcasts. Podcast, you're listening to Green Tea Conversations on Am950, the Progressive Voice of Minnesota. We will be right back.

 

Welcome back to Green Tea Conversations, where we delve into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine and talk to the professionals who share their expertise on natural health with you. I'm your host, Candi Broeffle, and today we were talking about Dr. Richard Sinda, owner of Innovative Directions in Health, which is a preventative aging and natural hormone therapy clinic located right here in Edina. Just before the break, you were telling us about perimenopause and the symptoms that people made experience, including difficulty and sleep.

 

Your ability, dry skin fluid retention is also something that's pretty common brain fog and more so when you're working as a client, there were some tests that you were talking about. Blood tests that help you to determine what are some other things that you do that help you to determine what's happening with them?

 

Well, first of all, we have a pretty extensive conversation and take a thorough history with each patient to see if it even sounds like they're really who we need to be seeing. Occasionally, people have ideas that something's hormonal. It's really not. Most of the time people have selected properly. Most people do the research these days. So we'll talk about their past medical problems and what their current symptoms are, what their family history is, what medications or supplements they're on that type of thing, and you often get a good sense of what the imbalances are going to be before the blood tests come in.

Usually, the blood tests are no surprise, but it is important to verify that how bad the imbalances are with blood tests as well. So after we do an extensive history and physical, we do. We do blood tests. I have an RN in my office who does physicals on our female patients.

 

And you go over the results with them.

 

Right.

 

I thought it was really interesting, just the amount of time that you spend with people in the office. I mean, for myself, I think the first visit I was there probably close to an hour.

 

Yes. After the initial interview, the startup visit is usually 45 minutes to an hour to talk about how your results and to talk about what program we'd like to keep going on to hopefully naturally put you back in balance, whether it be nutritionally or hormonally.

 

Yeah. And it's really important that people share with you the information. I know. It's something I used to struggle with when I would take my mom into the doctor. Is it's like she would try to hold back information from her doctor? She would say, I don't want to taint him into thinking that it's something that maybe it's not. So let's wait until the blood test come back.

 

Right. That is a problem with that generation, for sure. My father is very similar. We have to go in with them.

 

Yeah. I would say what?

You want the doctor to get the truth, right?

 

Like a card. They can't just put you on and do a diagnostic and see what's happening with it's.

 

Not a Star Trek, right. They don't have the tricorder or whatever

 

the boy would that be nice?

 

Yeah. I would.

 

So often people go to many doctors in order to try to find out what's wrong with them. Why aren't why they're not feeling well and are given a bunch of tests that come back and say that things are normal. This actually happened to me before I came to see you, my own doctor, who's very well-meaning and has taken good care of me for decades, just kept saying that all the blood tests were coming back normal and suggested that maybe I take a look at starting some antidepressants.

 

Is this something you right here? So part of this that's our training, your doctor was doing everything that they were trained to do. So the problem is, I mean, you can very rarely do your kidneys or liver act up or your electrolytes, sodium, sodium, potassium and that kind of stuff get out of line. And that's what they check for. They check your cholesterol. That tends to be pretty stable over the years if you're diet stable. So those are the types of things that are taught to chat.

 

We're taught to check blood sugar, liver and kidney function tests. Just basic tests. The problem is they're not checking where the real issue is often in that hormonal imbalance. We're not trained to do that. We're told that hormone levels are highly variable. So why even bother checking them? That is true. Premenopausal hormone level. There are wide fluctuations in hormones, so it is very difficult to make sense out of that. It doesn't mean you can't use them at all. It just means it's difficult to interpret post-menopausal.

 

There's no huge variations in hormone levels. That's nonsense. That's a nonsense. Are Minister menopause, you could make the same argument for thyroid. And we all check thyroid and low levels like thyroid levels. Filtrate, too, just as much as postmenopausal hormone levels check. So the problem that you ran into candy is that twofold. One is I can't figure out what's going on with you. So you must be depressed on some level, whether you know it or not. The other one. Is that what we are told to do after the WHI study that I talked about earlier is since we think these horse hormones are risky, then we can't use them so we can cover up your symptoms of paramount pause with antidepressants, which they do mask the symptoms.

 

They don't do anything to treat the imbalance, but they do mask the symptoms. That's a big problem with medicine in general. We have a lot of drugs now that just mask symptoms and don't get to the root of the problem at all. Don't actually treat.

Right.

 

The issue is

 

Really getting to the root of the issue is.

 

Absolutely.

 

Because it did happen to me where I did start taking some antidepressants. I felt a little better, but intuitively. I knew I wasn't, but there was something wrong. I know that my body was not in the best shape that it could be and that I was really I was still really struggling with things, and I didn't want to just mask it. And that's why I started reading so many of the books and then ended up finding my way to you. So most doctors don't test hormone levels.

 

We're taught not to. We are taught not to.

 

Okay.

 

Generally.

 

How about one of the things that you test for and is variable is thyroid levels. A lot of my friends have thyroid issues and they get tested. Some have the same exact symptoms as others, and one is taken thyroid medication and the others are told everything is fine. Why does that happen?

 

Well, there was a big shift in our treatment of hormone or thyroid deficiency in the early. I actually remember this very vividly. I was an intern in Detroit internship here in Detroit in 1991, and there was this, like, kind of like the slick used car salesman type guy working for this laboratory that was making a new third-generation TSH test. And this one of the tests, one of the three tests that we always use to use to check thyroid function on patients. This guy, he got a room full of us in turns and residents, and he said hey, guys, they have great news for you.

 

You don't have to check all three blood tests anymore. You can just check the TSH because our test is so accurate, it's so much more accurate that you don't need to check those other levels anymore. Now, if any of us were using our thinking caps that day, we would we would have asked, hey, can you have a normal TSH and have the other two test me out of Whack? And the answer is yes. So there is an army of patients who.

 

When we come back will continue to talk about this and continue to talk about the other two tea levels that people need to have checked as well or with thyroids. So to read Natural Awakenings magazine online, visit NaturalTwin Cities.Com. You're listening to Green Tea Conversations on AM950. The Progressive Voice of Minnesota will be back in just a bit.

 

Welcome back to Green Tea Conversations, where we meet the professional straights and the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine who share their expertise on natural health with you. I'm your host, Candi Broeffle, and today we're talking about Dr. Richard Sinda, owner of Innovative Directions and Health, a preventative aging and natural hormone therapy clinic, located Edina. So prior to us going into break, you were starting to tell us about the different types of Hormone for testing for thyroid. And so we were talking about the TSH testing. And you said,

 

Well. 30, 35 years ago, we always checked three hormone levels for thyroid. We checked TSH, T, three, and four. And if you didn't check all of those 30 years ago, you did not do an adequate job. You did not thoroughly check if thyroid when this new TSH test amount in the early and was sold to us, you only have to do one test. What happened was there was a massive movement to under. There is a massive the tendency to undertreat thyroid. So there are many people walking around with low thyroid who are just suffering, and they're told they're in the normal range.

The problem is, these normal ranges aren't set in stone anywhere, and they're also highly variable, even amongst different hospital systems, even within the Twin Cities.

 

That's kind of incredible if you think about it.

 

Especially when they're using those as the basis to treat you or not, whether to treat you or not.

 

So it's not across the board. Like if it's between five and ten, you're okay or whatever.

 

Then there is no national standard for hormone level. So each different system makes their own normal. So if you don't like the way you're treated at one hospital system, go to the next one. What kind of way is that to do things that's wacky honestly?

 

Well, and that helps help us to understand how one person can be put on a replacement, and they're having the same symptoms as the other person who isn't right?

 

Well, that's another key point that's being missed these days is everybody's focusing on numbers? And really, the numbers are part of the story. But what the patient is telling you, their symptoms should always Trump the numbers. If I have a patient whose numbers look great and they still feel bad, it's time to keep looking. It's not time to say they just need another. We just need to put them on stronger antidepressants. They need to keep looking.

 

So what are the other things that you look at to help to help identify that? Are there specific symptoms that you're looking at?

 

Right. So with thyroid, you're going to see fatigue, trouble losing weight, dry skin, outer eyebrows, thinning, constipation. Sometimes

 

Hair loss

 

Hair loss, fatigue, even depression, brain fog. The thyroid symptoms. Take a look. Sometimes it's like three pages along. It affects almost every system of your body because it affects metabolism.

Yes. I think that was one of the biggest changes that I saw besides sleep and getting better sleep after I started getting traded from you, how much less hair there was in my sink in the morning. Yeah, it's doing my hair.

It's a really common cause of that, for sure.

 

All right. So risks of lower hormone levels. So we were talking before about that. There are risks people consider there are risks with actually taking hormone replacement. But there's also risks, as you say, without having too low of hormone levels. What are some of the risks?

 

Well, that's the thing. So a lot of people, a lot of people will say something like, well, hormone scare me. So I'm going to avoid that risk all risk and do nothing. Well, doing nothing is a very risky thing to do. Having very low or zero hormone levels leads can leads to increased risk, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, your skin, then your muscles get weaker, you get frail, get unsteady, it contributes to falls.

 

It also affects your relationship.

 

Absolutely. Absolutely. Sexual health to fade significantly or interest goes to zero. That is not conducive. Always to happy relationships, either.

 

And that's just one part of the relationships. I mean, for me, I was still on edge and just feeling like I was going to take somebody's head on.

 

It irritability and anxiety. Yeah.

 

I'm sure I wasn't fun to be around.

 

Well, there are people who are their whole lives. They say I've been stable as a rock my whole life. And once I hit Paramounts or menopause, I became depressed. Anxious can't sleep irritable. And now we're having relationship problems because of that. Yeah.

 

Exactly. So you prescribe. So some of the things that you do is you prescribe what we commonly hear as bioidentical hormones or kind of a more modern term might be bioequivalent hormones. So what is bioidentical hormones or bioequivalent hormones?

Well, what that means is that they're the same hormone that you had your whole life before your body stops making enough of it. So the difference is when you use a horse homeowner in a human body or a synthetic or more in human body. That is not what your body used to. So you say, well, who cares? Well, your body cares. One of your largest immune system organs is your liver. As these go through your liver, the synthetic and horse hormones. Your body says this is not this is not self.

 

So just in the same way that Oregon donors or organ transplant recipients, their bodies reject organs. Your body rejects that hormone, whether it be synthetic or force product. And what happens is it activates the clotting system in your body, which leads to increased risk of blood clots and strokes. Or increase it. Activates the inflammation cascade within your blood and increases your risk of inflammation, causing increased heart disease risk and increase breast cancer risk.

 

So if you use the natural products, there's no immune system activation. There's no increased information. There's no increase clouding. And that science, the science that's out there backs that up, that there is no increasing clouding or information risk.

 

So what is it made from?

 

Interestingly enough, there was a chemist from New Jersey, Russell Marker, back in the 1930s. He found that Mexican yams had a product, had a hormone within them that was almost identical to human progesterone. So he extracted that out, and it was the identical molecule that we have in our body. So now, but today, there their drive still from yams or soybeans. He originally came from Yams. But I don't know why he was looking there is I don't know why they were looking at horse urine to make permanent for very either.

 

I don't know why. I don't know what I thought. What was a mental jump there? I don't get it.

 

So other recommendations. That's so funny, because I always think of that, like whoever sought to look there to rising. But there are some other supplements or other other recommendations that you make as well. So some of the bioidenticals are progesterone and progesterone is how would somebody take that?

 

Usually, that's going to be an oral form. Cream is an option as well. But for many women, it's not adequate. It's not strong enough. You can use it or you can take it in capsules or lozenges mounted inside of your cheek or sublingual tablets that mouth underneath your tongue.

 

And these are from compounding pharmacies.

 

Yes and no. There is a pharmaceutical bioidentical progesterone that you can get at any pharmacy now.

 

Okay, so what is it?

 

What is a compounding compounding is funny. You hear some people use that in a way that acts like there's something shady going on. Well, compounding just means they're taking two known entity known medications, medications or vehicles, and they're mixing them together. You know who does compounding every single hospital in this country and every single pharmacy in this country. When they say a compounding pharmacy, though, what they're usually saying is they compound hormones. That's the only difference. They compound hormones. Every pharmacy everywhere and every hospital does compounding.

 

So there's nothing shady about it has been going on since the beginning of pharmacy so.

 

It's good that you're clearing that. But there  also so for the testosterone is another of the bioidentical or bioequivalent that you recommend. And that is usually in a cream.

 

Yeah. Oral testosterone is not recommended for men or women. That's just it's just not. They found that to not be your bodies don't accept it, right. It's just so it's through the skin. It has to be through the skin. And then you have patches, gels, or creams. And women, we usually just use a cream. And women don't need much testosterone. You just need a little bit. Usually, a little bit goes a long way.

 

Can you get too much?

 

Yes. And that's another thing we monitor closely, usually by symptoms. But also we use blood tests to verify that it's not too much.

What would a symptom of having too much testosterone act usually acne?

 

Yeah.

 

Okay.

 

And maybe a little, you know, progressive. It's just not very common for that to happen, though.

 

Okay.

 

Mostly acne, but it's mild acne. It's usually not severe.

 

And then what about on how does that estrogen?

 

Usually, it takes away hot flashes and night west. If you get too much of it, it would be like breast tenderness or possibly headaches. And again, it's easy to back off on these if that happens.

 

And that one is delivered.

 

How estrogen is again, many people who do what I do feel it's best through the skin. But as time goes by, it looks like oral estrogen is very safe as well.

 

It's going to be an option

As long as you use the right estrogen. As long as you're not using horse, horse estrogen or synthetic.

 

Well, excellent. So there's also a couple of other supplements that are actually that you said are actually a hormone,.

 

Right. Like vitamin D. Vitamin D tell vitamin. But it's actually a hormone. But in vitamin D deficiency in Minnesota, I mean, if you look at the studies, it's 80 plus percent.

 

We should all be taking vitamin D. Most of us should.

 

And I still hear doctors saying, oh, I'm afraid of you taking too much vitamin D, and it's like, oh, my God, I beat your head against all that's worried about. You have a state where 80% to 90% of us don't get enough and you're worried about overtreating them.

 

Well, when we come back, we're going to continue talking about hormone replacement and some of the other things that you do, including hormone, health, and men. So for people who want to find out more about the services that Dr. Sinda provides, you can visit IDinHealth.Com. Ideas in Innovative Directions in Health.Com or you can make an appointment by calling 952-922-2345 to read the online edition of Natural Awakenings Magazine, visit NaturalTwinCities.com. You can find a podcast of the show on AM950Radio.com on Apple and Google Podcast. You're listening to Green Tea Conversations on AM950, the Progressive Voice of Minnesota. We will be right back.

 

Welcome back to Green Tea Conversations, where we delve into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine and talk to the professionals who share their expertise on natural health with you. I'm your host, Candi Broeffle. And today we're talking to Dr. Richard Sinda, owner of Innovative Directions and Health, a preventative aging and natural hormone therapy clinic located in Edina. So just before the break, you were sharing some of the natural practices and products that you recommend for your clients.

 

I also wanted to go into something that we're hearing more of. I guess maybe I'm hearing more of it because my age. But what does it mean for women who are said, be estrogen dominant?

 

Well, two things there. One is when women aren't making enough progesterone. Your body likes a good proportion of estrogen protester, and your body likes them in certain proportions with each other. If you don't have enough progesterone, then even if you have just normal estrogen levels, it can be estrogen dominant. They're kind of like the Yin and the Yang of each other. The other one is if your body is making just a ton of estrogen and you have normal progesterone, but it's not enough to buffer against the high estrogen.

 

So now estrogen is pro-inflammatory and irritating as much as it is good for your bones and your skin and everything. It does tend to have an irritating effect, especially if there's no progesterone around to help even it out. Progesterone has progesterone. It has an anti-inflammatory calming effect. So progesterone tends to temper the high the high estrogen levels. Things like having fibroids your body will make a lot more estrogen. Or some women just have, like, like, ovaries that just make just tons of estrogen, and they're going to be more prone to that.

 

But when you get in the perimenopause phase when you're not, most women are making enough are not making enough progesterone. That's when they really need help with that because that's when they tend to get estrogen dominant, that's where estrogen is a brand irrigator. It's called the irritability. So when the irritation brand, it doesn't let you get into the deeper layers of sleep, whereas progesterone has all of the opposite effects. So your body needs to really have them in the right balance for you to feel comfortable and have a good quality of life.

 

I really felt like before I came to see you, things are really kind of going off the rails here a little bit. I mean, this is not how I typically am, and I am flying off the handle. That just kind of the smallest items that are coming at me. It really is if you're feeling like you're having some symptoms that are not typical for you or things that are happening in your body really go and find out what it is about.

 

Yeah. It's a good idea. Especially if you've had seven or eight her twelve pages worth of labs and they say they're all normal. You must need an antidepressant.

And you know that they're it's not normal.

 

Right.

 

So do you work just with women?

No. We have about of our patients. All men, as men have, tend to lose testosterone in the early often.

 

And so what happens to a man when his hormone levels are

 

are off? Well, loss of strength, loss of libido, loss, motivation. Actually, men can get half-lies, too. Strangely enough, sometimes men female hormone goes up as well. Or estrogen level goes on. Yeah. Man have estrogen, and that level raises too and that offsets the hormones as well. And they'll convert testosterone in estrogen as well. And you get the changes in men's bodies increase belly fat, that kind of thing. They tend to lose libido, lose strength, lose motivation. And all that that's really common.

Are their moods as affected?

 

Yes. And that's one of the big myths out there is that if you take a man's testosterone from low to normal, that you're going to turn them into a Royd monster, she's going to have Royster's going to have race. And that is wrong. Men, when their testosterone are low, they're actually irritable. If you get it to the normal ranges, they're actually calmer. Now, if you like some of these wacky athletes out there who are doing ten or 100 times the Mont testosterone that your body really needs them, that's a different story you can go into have roid rage.

 

But if you take men from low testosterone to normal, they actually feel calmer. So that's a big myth out there that you're going to turn my husband into a road rage guy.

But overage, right. What about as far as, like, memory and are they affected in the same way? Do they get brain fog?

 

You do hear about that? Yeah. You hear about that, too? Where they get brain fog. Do you know, just apathy to women? When women have low testosterone, they just kind of lose motivation. They kind of feel apathetic. It affects their mood. They see more depression, too, for sure.

 

So do you tend to see men who come into the clinic? Are they brought in by their wives often?

Yes. Or they see how much better their wife is feeling and they want the same for themselves. That's common.

 

Yeah. So they're kind of going into it watching what's happening. But you said there are times where the men come in first and then they end up bringing it.

 

It goes both ways for sure.

 

Or their partner for sure.

 

How many patients do you see a year do you think we have estimate probably about 2000 inter-activation interactions per year. We have some people who live far away, too. So sometimes we'll do, you know, they'll have their blood drawn, and then I'll follow up with them by phone because they live in the decoders. They'll swing into this one so you can get their blood drawn.

 

And that's what I did for years before I purchase the magazine. And I'm down here all the time anyway. But prior would just come down and get the blood test, do that work up and then have the conversation with you on the phone.

 

Right.

 

And how long do your patience pretty much stay with you? Is it something that they come in and?

 

Well, we've had people who have been with us since we open, so back in two or four, I guess it depends how you want to measure it, but definitely, we have had people for 15 years as far as how long you can take hormones. So after the WHI study, the thinking was when we need to hurry people on and off of these hormones, just get them through the worst of their menopause symptoms and hurry up and get them off. Well, that wasn't the way we used to think about it.

 

We used to have women on hormones for decades. So the thinking there is these horse hormones are have risk associated with them, so we should hurry them off of them. Well, if you have hormones that don't have all that risk associated with it, then why are you hurrying them off? Especially when the quality of life is so much better.

 

So there's a group called the North American Hunter, a society that it's a group of options and research scientists who don't have any dog in the fight. And they recommend that hormone treatment up age 65 is appropriate. And they say at age 65, it's not a hard stop. You don't have to stop it.

 

But if you continue to feel good, then you continue to do it.

 

If you don't have any issues, you don't have any issues, there's no reason to stop.

 

Excellent. Well, Doctor Sinda, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. This has honestly been a topic that I've wanted to get out to our readers and our listeners since I began publishing Natural Awakenings magazine. And I'm really grateful for you to be here with us today. So to learn more about how you can work with Doctor Sinda and his team, visit IDinhealth.Com or call 952-922-2345 to make an appointment. Thank you for joining our our conversation today. As we awaken Natural Health, you've been listening to Green Tea Conversations on AM950, and I'm wishing for you a lovely day!