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Fast to Faith: Weight Loss & Hormone Support for Women Over 35
Christian women looking to lose weight, sleep better, and regain energy! Discover proven strategies with Dr. Tabatha (a triple board-certified physician).
Dr. Tabatha illuminates the gaps in conventional gynecology while empowering you to navigate your health issues with confidence and faith. Grounded in a Christian perspective, she delves into the latest insights from the worlds of wellness and functional medicine, exploring topics such as the microbiome, environmental toxicology, nutrition, and epigenetics, all through the lens of honoring the body as God's temple. She firmly believes that gut health is the foundation of gynecological well-being and spiritual vitality.
Discover how factors like diet, lifestyle choices, and environment impact hormones and contribute to various health conditions. From hormone imbalance to stress management, weight gain to emotional eating, Dr. Tabatha covers it all. With her expertise and interviews with leading health experts, you'll gain cutting-edge knowledge and practical remedies to enhance your health journey while strengthening your faith.
Use your superpowers of fasting and faithing to become the superwoman God created you to be! God has fully equipped you with the strength, wisdom, and resilience to overcome any challenge, but many of us have given that power away. You'll learn how to use scripture as the living, nourishing Word to guide you each day and reconnect you to Jesus in a whole new way! This is a necessary part of physical health.
Dr. Tabatha's own journey, from overcoming personal challenges to becoming a respected OB/GYN physician, fuels her passion for educating and empowering women. Her faith in God and belief in the healing power of His creation are at the heart of her message. Join Dr. Tabatha Barber, a triple board-certified physician, as she guides you back to wholeness and explains what's happening in our bodies as women. She debunks all the myths and lies we've been told as women. If you feel dismissed, unheard, confused, frustrated, or disconnected, then you are in the right place.
You CAN lose weight, have abundant energy, feel great in your own skin, and feel mentally strong enough to conquer anything that comes your way. You just need to reconnect your body, mind, and spirit the way God created you to thrive! Her podcast aims to reach a wider audience, offering insights into what's normal, natural, and when to seek help, all while encouraging you to find strength in your faith and trust in God's plan for your health.
If you've been searching for a faith-filled functional physician, look no further! Follow Dr. Tabatha on Facebook @DrTabatha, Instagram @gutsydrtabatha, on YouTube @fasttofaith, and visit www.drtabatha.com for more information. Join the conversation and reclaim your health today!
Fast to Faith: Weight Loss & Hormone Support for Women Over 35
#227: Is Hormone Replacement Therapy Bandaid Medicine?
Does BHRT (bioidentical hormone replacement therapy) always work? Does it really reverse your hormonal symptoms? Or is there something else causing your midsection weight gain, hot flashes and mood swings?
This is an episode that every woman over 40 needs to listen to.
BHRT is only one piece of the puzzle. There is something else most women need to do to reverse their frustrating menopausal symptoms and you’re about to find out in this episode!
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- Why BHRT is often not enough to reverse your frustrating health issues
- The hidden link between menopause and your gut (this is huge)
- Why eating a healthy, balanced diet is also not good enough
- The unexpected thing that is killing your healthy gut bacteria
- Why more women have gut and hormonal problems than the generation before us
- How to reverse your menopausal symptoms and achieve your highest health
- And more!
If you are on BHRT and you still have some health issues, you need to listen to this episode. You don’t need to struggle! Connect with Dr. Tabatha and the Team at Her Higher Health: Schedule Free a Zoom Call
Thank you for tuning in! Want to dive deeper? Accelerate your fasting journey with the Fasting Accelerator Collection—your ultimate guide to maximizing your fasting results. If you’re ready to take your health coaching to the next level, check out our Coach Certification Program designed for passionate individuals looking to help others thrive. Don’t forget to download the Fast to Faith app for exclusive recipes and to connect with a supportive sisterhood dedicated to health, wellness, and faith.
Find everything you need at FasttoFaith.com.
Dr. Tabatha's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrTabatha
Dr. Tabatha's IG: https://www.instagram.com/gutsydrtabatha/
Dr. Tabatha's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fasttofaith
Welcome back. I have missed you. I hope you had an amazing week. And thank you again for joining me on my rebranded podcast, fast to faith. You know, God really called me to rebrand this podcast and get the point out there to women that everything you need to be healthy and thrive is potentially within you already. You just might need a guide to show you the way. You might need testing to figure out where the imbalances are and what you need to actively heal. That goes back to root cause medicine.
So the idea around functional medicine is that there is a root cause driving dysfunction, usually in other parts of the body, because all of our systems are taking input from the environment, from the other systems, they're communicating and they're responding appropriately. You might feel like it's not appropriate because of the response that you're getting, aka symptoms that you find annoying or painful or frustrating. But your body's trying to tell you something. So if you want to understand why you're having the symptoms you're having, you have to start questioning what is the root cause that is driving this dysfunction? And I'm here to tell you that BHRT might be another band aid medicine. You know, I myself am on bhrt. It saved a lot of my life just because I was struggling with those symptoms. But I will tell you, there was a root cause for why I needed BHRT at such a young age. When I say such a young age, I think I was 46 or 47 when I went on progesterone, probably 46 when I went on progesterone, and I shouldn't have needed it, quote unquote, that young.
But because I was having such bad adrenal dysfunction, that was driving early perimenopause. And that's what I see all the time in my practice. So I'm also seeing women coming to me all over the country. They've been put on BHRT, but they don't really feel better. They might have fewer hot flashes, might feel a little less irritable, but they're still having trouble sleeping, or they still have no energy. I just feel tired or my. My weight is all over the place. I can't get control of my weight.
That is because BHRT is not the final end all, be all answer. You have to figure out the root cause. And sometimes, here's the kicker. Natural menopause, the transition into not making enough hormones, can be the root cause of new problems. So menopause causes gut disruption and gut dysbiosis. It causes a lot of stress on the adrenals so you think stress, you know, externally in your environment, is hard on your adrenals, but also menopause is hard on your adrenal glands, because your adrenals are your backup ovaries. So when your ovaries stop making your hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, your body looks to your adrenal glands to start getting estrogen and testosterone enough to protect your bones and your brain and your cardiovascular system. And so they're talking.
Your body's talking to the adrenals. Hey, it's your time to take over. You're up at bat. Let's go. But that's really hard on the adrenals. If your adrenals are already working overtime because they're stressed out from gut infections that weren't taken care of, or viruses that you have, or heavy metal accumulation in your body, or mold toxicity, I've seen a ton of that lately. Or just definitely too much stress. We women want to have it all, do it all, be it all, and all of that stress just tanks our adrenals.
I also see a lot in my practice, women trying to train for marathons and triathlons and a lot of heavy stress. Cardio. Cardio in excess is not beneficial. It does not help you lose weight. It makes you gain weight because you're now producing excess cortisol to get through that cardio intense workout. And cortisol, the stress hormone, causes weight gain, especially around the midline, for sure. I personally just started running again because I have a goal, and within the first week, I gained about three pounds around my waist, and I was like, oh, yes, there's that cortisol yet again. So just know that because everything is interconnected.
And so if you've gotten on hormone replacement therapy and you're not completely feeling better and feeling amazing, you gotta get to the root cause of what is going on. And unfortunately, conventional doctors don't know how to run those kinds of tests. They don't know how to find the root cause of issues. They are trained to manage disease, quote unquote, which means that they run labs that you would typically get if you were hospitalized, if you were really sick, if your blood was out of balance. So blood is a transport mechanism. Blood is taking hormones and insulin and glucose and all of these things from different parts of the body to other parts of the body. It's a transporter. So the blood should always be in balance.
It has a very tiny, close ph that it stays in all of the electrolytes in your blood, like your sodium potassium, magnesium, zinc, they are all very tightly normalized levels. They do not fluctuate in huge amounts because blood can't do that. All of those changes happen within the cells where the blood takes those things to and transports them from. So all the action is happening inside the cells. You guys, you have trillions of cells. And that is where the answers lie. That in your microbiome, the entire ecosystem, the trillions of bacteria, yeast, parasites, all of that, that's living in your body and running the show. So I'll tell you, if you are on BHRT and you are still struggling, you need to figure out why.
You need to take a functional medicine approach and do stool testing, food sensitivity testing, dutch hormone and adrenal. That is my signature comprehensive program. It's called healthy her. And this is what we do at Doctor Tabitha, at her higher health. We do all the functional testing, and we heal your gut, and we get control of your adrenal glands, and we evaluate your thyroid in a way that conventional doctors don't even know how to do, they're not even trained to do. And we evaluate your fasting insulin and your average blood sugar over three months. And these deeper root cause issues of why you may not be sleeping, why you may not have any energy. Sometimes we even have to do testing for mycotoxins from mold and different things, because there is a deeper reason why you're struggling through this transition.
Honestly, I had somebody comment on YouTube, why would you give hormones? God created our bodies to go through menopause naturally. That is a great question. I struggled with that myself for a long time when I first really dived into hormones. And the truth of it is, we live in a day and age that is unlike none in history. Our great grandmothers, all of the women before us, have not dealt with life the way that we have. This environment, this current world, this society is so toxic. Our bodies are struggling on a daily basis to detoxify, detoxify the plastics, detoxify the chemicals, detoxify all of the mental information that is coming in on social media. Like it's overwhelming.
It's a bombarding. It breaks my heart to think of what our children have to deal with. But then again, God made our bodies crazy, resilient. And our children actually don't know any other way of life. So their bodies have adapted to this overwhelming volume of information that comes in at them. You know, if you've ever scrolled through TikTok or Instagram, you know that you are taking in new images, new reading, new information every like, 0.3 to 0.5 seconds, you're just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Your brain has to process all that and file it like, oh, we don't need to remember that. Oh, let's remember that for later.
Oh, that's really important. Let me. Let me stew on that. And so our bodies don't advance as quickly as our society does. Our brains do an amazing job of keeping up, but our brain, our bodies are still trying to get there, right? So our bodies are still trying to handle all of the changes that have happened over the past century when we went from, you know, having more of a low key life as a woman. You raised your children, you took care of your husband, you ran the household, and that was it. Now we do all of that, plus we have full time jobs or two jobs or run companies or, you know, have 20 girlfriends that we hang out with and keep on relationships with. We run PTa's.
We, like, do all of these amazing things, but our physiology is like, wow, that's a lot. That is a lot. And our body was actually created to slow down during the menopausal transition, yet our brains are saying, no, I don't want to slow down. I'm in my prime. I'm just getting going. Let's go. I'm feeling the same way, you guys. I'm like, totally with you.
I honestly got a download from God last week because I'm almost 50, and he's like, the first 50 years, that was all prep work. I was just preparing you for the mission I have for you here. I'm thinking, I'm living out my purpose. Like, this is it. I'm. I'm good. I'm satisfied. I've done what you asked me to do.
God, you asked me to give women a voice and a choice and take care of them, and he said, no, that was all prep work. We are just getting going. So buckle up, get ready, because the next 50 years, you're really going to make an impact. You're really going to help women. You're really going to reach the masses and give women a voice and a choice. So you need to feel good. You need to function. Your body needs to, like, go on this journey with us.
Let's go. And for me, personally, that requires taking BHRT. That requires having hormones that I had when I was 45. I'm not trying to get pregnant and have a baby. I'm not all of that. There's different levels of hormones. But I will tell you, getting on BHRT was only one piece of the puzzle I still had to address, the fact that my adrenal dysfunction was driving this early menopause and that my gut was a hot mess. I will tell you, I've healed my gut many times.
I've had gut issues since I was a child. And gut and adrenals go hand in hand because stress kills your good bacteria. Stress causes leaky gut. And so it's kind of like the chicken and the egg. Is it the stress, or is it the gut issues that stress out the adrenals? It's both ways, I promise you. So you have to address both. And anytime that I take on new projects, I overextend myself. I don't do my daily self care regimen.
I don't sleep enough, things get out of balance, and my gut becomes a mess. So I recently just redid a stool test and a food sensitivity test. I'm eliminating those foods while I heal my gut. And my adrenals, I can tell, are responding nicely because I no longer feel stressed and overwhelmed. I can manage stuff, and women are like, really? That comes from gut issues? Yes, I promise you. Like, our gut has an entire nervous system of its own called the enteric nervous system, and it takes all kinds of input in, and it's connected to our vagus nerve, which is our amazing nerve that runs up to our brain and just masterfully controls everything. And if you have vagus dysfunction, vagal nerve dysfunction, you're going to be stuck in fight and flight. You're going to be stuck in this sympathetic overdrive all the time.
And I talk about this in my book fast to faith. It's right behind me, if you really want to understand all this. But we should probably do some deeper episodes on all of this stuff. But the main key is just being on estrogen and progesterone was not enough for me to fully function, for my brain to have clarity, and to be able to do all the things that I'm trying to do. I actually needed to address my adrenals and my gut. So I did healthy her on myself. I'm actually currently doing it, going through the process. It's probably my third time in a decade, so every few years or so, and a lot of it is self induced.
I'm going to be honest. I just. Sometimes we make bad choices, and that's okay. You just begin again. That's all you do. But honestly, I want you to consider doing the healthy her program, especially if you've gotten on hormone replacement therapy and you're still struggling. It might not be that. You just need to tweak your doses.
You might need to treat the root causes. Okay. Or if you're like, I don't want to go on hormone replacement therapy, great. Then you really need to balance your other systems. You really need to address these root cause issues that are driving this dysfunction. And I'll tell you, you know, gut is pretty much the root cause of all health and all disease. It all stems from the gut. The gut drives autoimmune conditions.
So if you've ever been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, you have to take care of your gut. And that doesn't just mean eating a healthy, balanced diet. Unfortunately, I have seen many, many women come to me. They're health coaches, they're nutritionists, and they're like, I'm doing all the right things. I'm eating perfectly. I don't touch sugar, I don't drink alcohol, and their stool test is still a mess. I I'm telling you that we can get parasites. They're in our water all the time.
They're in our food supply, and our stomach acid sometimes isn't being produced enough to kill them off, or our immune system is struggling so bad that we have no protection in our gut lining. So there's a lot of things that I keep seeing patterns of, especially since the pandemic. So don't hesitate to dive all in and do the healthy her program. If you're like, I am still struggling. This is not okay. You shouldn't struggle. Okay? So my team and I want to help you. And one last thing, because I'm seeing this a lot.
I'm getting a lot of new patients coming into the practice. They just want to see my team for one visit to get some kind of an idea if they're on the right hormone therapy or not. And honestly, what I keep seeing is it's not the hormone dosages. There are root cause issues not being addressed. You need to do healthy her. I want that transformation for you because it's so powerful, it's so incredible. Like, when we take you through this three month process, sometimes it takes four months or longer. But this process of really seeing what your.
What's happening in your gut, what's happening with your adrenals, what's happening with your blood sugar and your insulin and your thyroid, and we're taking care of all of that. Like, that's where the transformation comes in, I promise. So, sit with this. And I always say, talk to God about this. Figure out from him, get back in tune with your intuition. Start listening to your body. If you talk to God, talk to your body, you'll hear the answers. One of my favorite scriptures is James one five.
If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. That means if you just sit in silence and say, God, I want my body to function and thrive and feel amazing, should I do healthy her? What should I do? Should I do this? Should I do that and sit with that and wait for some response, wait for some answers? And I always recommend writing it down because that creates so much clarity. And you might not get the answer right away. Um, or you might. And trust that God knows what's best for you and trust your body and what it's trying to tell you and just say, what body? What are you trying to tell me? Are these hormones not enough? What do you want me to do? Do you want me to heal my gut? Do you want me to do these tests, like, what's going on? And that's going to be really beneficial to you because God wants to talk to you. He wants to be in communication and have an active relationship with you. This is not about religion, y'all. This is not about religion.
This is about your one on one personal relationship with God and taking care of the one body he gave you, what does he want you to do with your body? I want you to really ponder that today. So I hope this was helpful. I just kept seeing it so much in the practice, I was like, oh, my gosh, I need to tell these women, what's up? What's the truth? Okay, so let me know if that resonates with you. Let me know what else you want to hear about. And I would be super honored, seriously, if you would just take 60 seconds, leave me a five star review. Because women look at that before they start listening to a podcast. And that is you using your voice to say, yes, this is an awesome podcast. It's going to help you.
Let me just guide you in the right direction so you can do that for another woman today. Like, all you have to do is leave a review. It's so powerful. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for your time, your attention. I'm here for you. Let me know what else you have questions about. You know, what, you want me to help break down all of that? I'm here for you.