The 4-Legged Hormone Chair

Welcome to the SYNC Your Life podcast episode #12! On this podcast, we will be diving into all things women’s hormones to help you learn how to live in alignment with your female physiology. Too many women are living with their check engine lights flashing. You know you feel “off” but no matter what you do, you can’t seem to have the energy, or lose the weight, or feel your best. This podcast exists to shed light on the important topic of healthy hormones and cycle syncing, to help you gain maximum energy in your life. 

In today’s episode, I’m providing you with a visual analogy of our female hormone system. A compounding pharmacist once taught me about this concept of “the 4-legged chair,” which is something I teach about in my SYNC digital course to help women better understand how their body functions and where imbalances might lie. In this podcast we go deep into understanding how the 4 legs interplay with each other: your cortisol, insulin, sex hormones, and thyroid. 

If you feel like something is “off” with your hormones, check out the FREE hormone imbalance quiz at sync.jennyswisher.com. 

To learn more about the SYNC Digital Course, check out jennyswisher.com. 

Let’s be friends outside of the podcast! Send me a message or schedule a call so I can get to know you better. You can reach out at https://jennyswisher.com/contact-2/.

Enjoy the show!

Episode Webpage: jennyswisher.com/podcast 

0:05
Welcome to the SYNC Your Life Podcast. I’m your host, Jenny Swisher, certified personal trainer, nutritionist, hormone health expert and girl mom, I believe all women should be able to understand how our bodies are designed to feel. And I teach you how to sync your lifestyle to your cycle to reach maximum energy. You deserve to feel your best. And this podcast is going to teach you how. Let’s dive in!

0:34
This podcast is sponsored by the SYNC Digital Course, to take the free hormone imbalance quiz to see what your symptoms could mean about your health. Visit sync.jennyswisher.com. That’s sync s y n c dot Jenny swisher.com.

0:58
Welcome friends to another episode of the SYNC Your Life Podcast, I am so grateful that you’ve taken time out of your day to listen to what we have to share today. We’re going to get right to the content here in a minute. But first and foremost, I just want to say thank you. We are already 12 episodes into the podcast, we’re rocking and rolling, we have dozens more coming your way. And I’m so excited about where this is going. I hear feedback almost every day from you guys saying, Hey, thank you, you’re teaching me so much. I wish you could put out more content so that I can consume more, I’m doing my best to give you as much information as I can in the right order. And so obviously, we’ve already kind of covered some awesome interviews on things like red light therapy, and birth control and all kinds of breathwork stuff and meditation. And we’ve really already covered a lot of these first 12 episodes, but I just wanted to say thank you. And just know that there’s more where this is coming from. It is my personal mission to make sure that you guys are educated and knowledgeable about your body, and that you know how the female body is supposed to work. So we’ve covered you know the four phases of the hormone cycle. Today, I want to dive into what I like to call the four legged hormone chair. So before I get to that, just know that I’m grateful that you’re here, I’m so glad that you have not only listened but you have subscribed you have downloaded you have shared with your friends. If you haven’t done it yet, I would love for you to rate and review the podcast, that actually helps us get to the top of the podcast list for people to listen to when they open up their device. So if you would take 30 seconds out of your day to rate and review the podcast that would mean so so much to me.

2:35
Okay, let’s dive in to this topic of the four legged hormone Chair, I just have to give you a little bit of background here and tell you that I suffered with hormone imbalance issues if you’ve listened to my story, in the very first episode that we launched, you know that I was a chronic migraine sufferer. And I also had a little bout of infertility and PCOS. And hormone imbalance is something that has sort of just plagued me, I think from my early 20s. So I wish honestly that someone would have given me this analogy or this visual 15-20 years ago, because as I’ve said before, we do not get enough sex education on how the female body works. You know, we don’t learn we learned about how babies made but we don’t necessarily learn about what our menstrual cycles doing. Or you know how we’re supposed to feel on a phase by phase basis. We don’t understand that information because honestly, it’s newer science. Up until maybe a decade ago, we literally just have not had a lot of education on this. Like there’s not been a lot of research. About 10 or 12 years ago, they finally started to dive into female health and looking at how females exercise how females train energy levels, the menstrual cycle, how it plays a role how nutrition plays a role. Before that. We were literally told that women were just too complex to study that it was easier to research men when it came to exercise and nutrition because their hormones stayed the same. They were constantly the same. They were not changing. They weren’t so complicated. And I have air quotes with my fingers at the moment. So I’m so grateful that recent scientists, people like Dr. Stacey Sims and Dr. Sara Gottfried, have taken time to research this stuff and to understand how the female body is different, because it’s because of them. It’s because of these other experts who have gone before me that I am able to share this kind of information with you.

4:27
So little backstory, I met with a compounding pharmacist is what they’re known as. He’s also the owner of a local apothecary here in Indianapolis. He was referred to he actually was referred to me by my functional medicine doctor, she said this is the guy that’s just total guru, kind of a hidden gem people don’t know about him and I want you to sit down and meet with him for a couple hours. So my husband and I both went and met with him. We paid the hourly fee to meet with him. This was about five years ago. And I learned more in that three hour session that we had, yes, it was three hours long than I have ever learned before about hormones, he had such a great way of showing visual examples and using analogies and stories to make me understand my endocrine system to help me understand how my hormones work and Interplay together. So that’s what my goal is for you today to walk away from this kind of understanding better what your hormones actually are, and what they’re doing and how they serve you. So the first thing that I want to mention is if you have not taken time to take my free hormone imbalance quiz, that’s actually going to guide you in the direction of what leg of your chair could be the weakest. And like I said, we’re going to talk about all that here in a second. But if you haven’t taken the time to do that, it will literally be less than five minutes of your day, you’ll get your results right away sent to your inbox, and it will help you kind of, you know, understand, okay, this might be the area of focus that I need. So that’s the area that I’m going to request for my functional medicine doctor that we do some testing. So again, take some time to take that quiz. I think it will help give you some direction when it comes to understanding what might be going on for you.

6:06
Okay, so let’s talk about this four legged chair, obviously, you know, if you could just kind of, if you’re if you’re driving, obviously, don’t close your eyes. But otherwise, I want you to close your eyes, I want you to visualize a really sturdy, four legged chair straight back. I’m actually looking at one right now in my office, right? All four legs of the chair are touching the floor nice and steady. It’s a great seat, you can sit in it understanding that you are stable, and that it’s going to support you. That would be an ideal hormone system, right? Everything’s in balance, everything’s in flow, everything’s in harmony, right? Well, here’s the deal. Each leg of that chair represents a different endocrine system. In your body, we have your blood sugar, which we’ll talk about more in depth in a minute, also known as your insulin, your thyroid, your sex hormones, which are your estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, and your adrenals, which is your cortisol producers. Okay, so those are the four legs of your hormone chair. And by the way, feel free to take notes on this, listen to it again, it helps the more you hear something that you know, the better it sinks in. So those are the four legs of your hormone chair, your thyroid, your insulin, your sex hormones, and your cortisol. So what happens though, if I take one of those legs of the chair and I saw it off, even just by two or three inches, the chair starts to wobble right, it starts to become really unstable. So what that indicates for us using this visual example is that when you have one leg of the chair that’s a little bit out of balance. For me, it’s my sex hormones, right when my sex hormones and my progesterone are low. Everything else starts to wobble, I start to see symptoms pop up, dealing with my blood sugar, I start to see, you know, my thyroid starts to compensate, all of the other legs of the chair also become wobbly. So that’s why it’s so critical to start to do the right testing to work with a functional medicine doctor and to really understand which one of those legs of your chair is the weakest, which one is causing that chair to be out of balance.

8:06
Here’s another analogy for you just to give you an idea of how these endocrine systems kind of relate to each other and how they all interplay. Okay, this is again an example but my friend Jeff over at the apothecary compounding pharmacists, right brilliant guy. By the way, if you live near a big city, and there are apothecaries near you highly recommend trying to get to know the pharmacist behind the counter because they are very, very knowledgeable just like a pharmacist would be knowledgeable at CVS or Walgreens about pharmaceuticals and medicines. They are super knowledgeable about bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, natural supplements, vitamins, all that kind of stuff. So that could be a hidden gem near you that you are not currently accessing. And I would, I would honestly give them a phone call and ask about it. So Jeff gave me this, this other analogy as well. And I want to share it. So let’s say that I asked you to put your hand on the table we’re sitting across from each other. And I asked you to put your hand on the table. So you reach out and you put your hand on the center of the table. And then I pick up this large hammer and I smash your hand with a hammer, right? You probably just jumped a little bit. What would happen to your hormones. When I do that? Do you know? I sure didn’t know. So this is really helpful information. So the first thing that happens is your cortisol just explodes, right? It jumps up. Cortisol is your stress response hormone. It is produced in your adrenal glands. Your adrenal glands are these teeny tiny little glands that sit on top of your kidneys, right and your stress hormone is what really responds to fight or flight. So if you are in danger for survival, your cortisol goes up so of course your hand gets smashed, your cortisol jumps up, right? A lot of times your adrenaline jumps up simultaneously, your blood sugar skyrockets as well, because again, your body is going into survival mode. Oh my gosh, this person just hit my hand. Fear goes up, cortisol goes up. Blood sugar goes up to help you save yourself. Okay, when the body’s in stress blood sugar starts to become effective. Now you might be telling me Well, I’m not in stress, right? Maybe you’re a stay at home mom, you don’t feel like you have a lot of stress, maybe you don’t have professional stress or emotional stress or family stress. I’m here to tell you that perhaps your sleep could be causing your body to be in stress, especially those of you new moms, right. Like if you’re not getting a lot of really good quality sleep, your body isn’t stressed whether you believe it or not. Same thing goes for perimenopausal and menopausal women, right your body is under a certain sort of stress when that happens. And we’ll dig into that a little bit later. But when you start to go through perimenopause, you’re just adrenals start to compensate for sex hormone production. So in other words, your adrenals become a little bit more taxed, become a little bit more strained. Same thing goes for let’s see lack of sleep, maybe even overtraining. So women who are exercising regularly and they think they’re doing their body a good service by exercising could actually be putting their body in a state of stress exercise is a form of stress, by the way, right? Like you realize that you are breaking down muscle to build new muscle. So when the body’s in stress, your cortisol goes up, and your blood sugar goes up, that’s two legs of the chair right there automatically, that are affected.

11:14
Here’s another little story for you another little analogy using the same hand on the table visual. So same thing happens, right? I asked you to put your hand on the table. And I say to you, I’m going to smash your hand with this hammer, and I lift my hammer up and I say I’m gonna smash it. But I don’t actually smash it. What happens to your hormones? If you just answered me with the same thing, you are exactly right. So even just the threat of smashing your hand without hammer, spikes, your spikes, your cortisol spikes your blood sugar, and puts you into that survival mode, fight or flight. So I want to give you a little example of something that’s actually happened for me in my body. And maybe if you are someone who is a training female, this might resonate with you as well. So I love fitness, I love exercising, I could do it every day, I honestly have to force myself to take a day or two off every week, just to let my body rest and recover. But even when you love fitness, right, you could be putting your body under stress, which could be automatically elevating your cortisol without even realizing it. I’m going to give I’m going to say something here that might make some of you go, Oh, no, I’ve been doing that. But I want to make sure that I touched on it in case this is you. If you are working out especially in the morning, in a fasted state, as a female, you are putting your body into that fight or flight you are putting your body into stress mode, a male might be able to do it a lot easier. But a female is a totally different ballgame. When you don’t operate and function in your workout with at least a little bit of fuel in your system, you are putting your body in a state of stress. If you think about it, it makes sense, right? Like your body is going to value survival over reproduction. So its goal, its primary goal is to keep you alive. So that’s exactly what it’s going to do. Right? It’s going to do whatever it takes with your cortisol, it’s going to spike that cortisol as much as it can aka also the blood sugar to help you survive. And what’s going to be affected. We already said your blood sugar, your cortisol, and it could even be your sex hormones, right? Because your body’s gonna say nope, we need to survive, we don’t need to reproduce. So there’s something that happens called the progesterone cortisol steal. It can also be known as pregnenolone, cortisol steal, depending on what it’s stealing from. But this happens for me as well. And I noticed it when I’m exercising, and I’m training really intensely. So because I’m prone to low progesterone, I actually think that my adrenals are at play as well. Because when I start to train, obviously I’m putting those adrenals in stress. And when they run out of cortisol, by the way that can happen to you can actually deplete your cortisol. When you deplete your cortisol over time from something like overtraining, your body knows that it needs more energy from somewhere. So it can actually steal your progesterone or you’re pregnenolone and convert it to cortisol. So again, what happens when that happens, our cycles become wonky, our entire menstrual cycle, maybe your periods become wonky, everything becomes irregular, right? Because now even though you weren’t really there, what you didn’t think there was related to your sex hormones. All of a sudden your sex hormones are at play a third leg of your chair is now wobbly. All started with one, right but now three of the legs of your chair are wobbly. So bottom line is your four legged chair can start to break, cortisol can steal from your sex hormones like progesterone and pregnenolone. It’s going to value survival over reproduction. And all of this can cause this sort of imbalance in your system.

14:55
Now the one thing that I haven’t touched on and I’ve waited on it, for a good reason is Because I want to make sure that we enunciate this analogy as best we can. So let’s think again about that four legged chair. Let’s say that that chair is sitting on solid ground. Right now I’m looking at the chair in my office, and it’s four legs are neatly placed on my hardwood floor in my office, right? Everything is nice and sturdy. But what happens if I take that chair and I place it on a sandy beach, or some rocky gravelly soil? If you answered Oh, the chair is going to become really extra wobbly. You’re right, that foundation beneath your chair is your gut health. And this is where nutrition and understanding your microbiome and your gut individually, is going to come in crucially important. So one of the things that I teach women in my SYNC Digital Course is not only how to go about proper hormone testing, but also how to go about proper gut health testing, because we want to make sure that we test your microbiome to see if there’s any form of dysbiosis, Candida, yeast, H. Pylori, previous parasites, you name it, there could be so many different things happening in your gut, let alone just inflammation from foods that might be inflammatory to you foods that are sensitive to you. So if your gut is off, you are not giving your hormone system, a sturdy foundation on which to sit. Does that make sense? So not only do we need to make sure that we’re keeping everything in balance, we also can’t band aid the chair leg, right, because if the chair is sitting on that rocky soil, even just a small Fix with glue on the one leg is not going to hold it sturdy. So that’s why your gut health is equally as important if not most important when it comes to your overall hormone system. So I want to talk briefly about the fact that we’re starting to see this curve change. Women used to see perimenopause experiences, you know, starting to feel a little bit of weight gain and just feeling off and low energy and their progesterone decreasing. They used to feel it more so in their 40s and menopause in the early 50s. Now we’re starting to see based on new research, that perimenopause is happening for a lot more women in their 30s with menopausal symptoms now happening in their 40s. In other words, this curve has sort of shifted to be about 10 years earlier than it’s ever been before. So I think that this is just really important to know, because I think there’s probably someone listening that says, Oh, I’m only 27, or oh, I’m only 34, this probably isn’t at play for me. And I’m here to tell you, girl, I started with low progesterone issues at 22. And then I had to re address it again at age 37. So it could definitely be happening for you, especially if you’re somebody who is I mean, it could be a hereditary thing, especially with maybe like your, your birth mother has been somebody who has experienced menopause earlier. Or it could even be just due to environmental factors, right? Maybe it maybe you’ve been on the birth control pill, maybe there has been some suppression happening when it comes to your hormones that’s causing this kind of thing to happen. So I know for me, I wish somebody would have shared this analogy with me a long time ago, because I didn’t understand like, I thought that I really needed to go see an endocrinologist and I was just going to leave it up to them to understand my hormone systems. And I’m sure and I’m positive that, you know, endocrinologists have an expertise just as functional medicine doctors do when it comes to a more detailed version of what I’m explaining to you. But for the average woman, to just be able to visualize the four legs of a chair. And what that chair is sitting on should help you I hope it helps you get a better idea of how your hormones and everything should be functioning. So if you’re someone like me, who is dealing with, let’s say, low sex hormone production, and I’m supplementing that, right, but let’s say I could also be seeing symptoms. And this has been true for me, I could also be seeing symptoms of low blood sugar issues or blood sugar fluctuations. I could see my thyroid start to get involved regardless of what the thyroid tests might tell me. So all of this matters, because if we understand that everything is kind of all wrapped in one, instead of just being segmented, that’s my biggest hiccup when it comes to a lot of things in the modern modern medicine world is they want to segment it right like if my head hurts, they want to just do a brain MRI. Well, what about what about my endocrine system? What about my hormones? Like what about everything, everything works together in the body, your body is all connected.

19:31
So I hope that this visual, this analogy of the four legged chair is something that you can carry with you. I hope that it helps you better understand. I hope that now you can get a feel for how you should be feeling and how you could possibly do more testing and get into this functional medicine world. That is so so helpful. I mean functional medicine has completely changed my life. I think I’ve advocated that now on almost every podcast but in case you needed to hear it again. It is worth the journey. It’s worth finding the right person, it’s worth getting the right testing. Again, I teach all of this in my SYNC Digital Course we have it all linked up in the show notes if you want more information on that, but finding people in your corner people like Jeff, this apothecary pharmacist who taught me about the four legged chair, who looked at my my blood work and my urine work and said, Hey, these are the things we need to change to help you be healthier overall. That’s what you need. You need somebody like that in your corner. I’m in your corner. I’m here for you. I’m happy to chat anytime. Thank you so much again for listening, or subscribing for rating and reviewing the podcast. I can’t wait to talk to you next time.

20:49
Thanks for listening to this episode of the SYNC Your Life Podcast. I hope you found value from today’s episode. If you did, please share it out to your friends or leave a review. Remember your cycles are your superpower and by aligning with them, you can live your life with all the energy you need to be a mom, Wife, Daughter and friend to those you love. Until next time!