522 Confessions Of A Male Gynecologist, Author of The Hormone Balance Bible, Dr. Shawn Tassone

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Dr. Shawn Tassone:

Americas Holistic Gynecologist | Tassonemd.com Tassone Advanced Gynecology | Drshawntassone.com Author of The Hormone Balance Bible https://amzn.to/3VF9m7j

 

522: Confessions of a Male Gynecologist: Dr. Shawn Tassone's Hormone Balance Guide

https://learntruehealth.com/confessions-of-a-male-gynecologist-dr-shawn-tassones-hormone-balance-guide

 

Discover the power of holistic health and self-advocacy as we navigate the complexities of hormone replacement therapy with holistic gynecologist Dr. Shawn Tassone. We explore the transformative potential of taking charge of your health, emphasizing the importance of holistic approaches such as dietary changes, lifestyle adjustments, and alternative therapies like acupuncture and chiropractic care. With Dr. Tassone's personal journey as a backdrop, we uncover how personal experiences with loss can ignite a passion for integrative and functional medicine, empowering you to support your body's natural healing processes.

Highlights:

• Supporting the Body for Optimal Health 

• Thermography for Pain Relief and Healing 

• Patient Symptom Evaluation and Treatment 

• The Power of Maca in Health

• Benefits of Maca on Hormones 

• Exploring the Mystery of Plants 

• Fasting Before Chemotherapy for Cancer

• Temporary Testosterone Increase for Muscle Loss 

• GLP-1s and Changing Eating Habits

• Empowering Women Through Social Media 

Intro:

Hello True Health Seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. Today we have an interesting discussion with a doctor and PhD as we navigate the world of hormone replacement therapy and navigating our own care in this system that is not perfect and really requires us to be diligent when it comes to our own advocacy, which, if you're listening to this podcast for a while, you are well aware that we need to stand up and do our own sleuthing, do our own research, do our own detective work and educate ourselves on how to support the body's innate, god-given ability to heal itself. 

 

Your body wants to heal itself, and that's the first philosophical shift that takes place, that first belief system shift from the standard model of wait to get sick, then go to a doctor and they give you a drug and you go home and yay, you're better, which that's not how it works, as we know from experience. Yay, you're better, which that's not how it works as we know from experience, you're not better. Even the so-called cure has a list of side effects. It causes stress on the body and really was that drug ever the cure? In the first place, it was suppressing something, killing something, shifting something in the body. But is that what the body needs to heal itself? Now, yes, there's times when you break an arm, you get a cast. We definitely wanted that support, and a cast is a wonderful example of supporting the body's ability to heal itself. It takes a lot longer and it's a lot harder for a bone to heal without the support of the cast. So there's times in modern medicine where that support is wonderful and necessary. 

 

Now, if we took that same philosophy and went well, how can I support my body to have more energy, to maintain a healthy weight, to grow healthy muscle, to have healthy digestion and bowel movements, to have healthy hormone levels sex hormones, stress hormones, all the other hormones  How can I support my body's ability to maintain and achieve optimal health? We have to look outside modern medicine to gain these answers for a variety of reasons, and we talk a bit about this in today's interview, and one thing that I wanted to let  is that it's totally worth going down this one rabbit hole If you are sick of being sick and you are looking to support just like a cast supports the body to heal the bone so that it keeps it stable, allows the body to heal, and then we remove the cast, because a cast left on too long becomes a hindrance,  So if you're looking for holistic medicine, meaning how can I support the body as a whole? Because the body is constantly trying to come back into balance, it is constantly trying to achieve homeostasis and something as simple as a small change in your diet can make this huge difference or small change in lifestyle, like an increase of even by 20 ounces of water a day, going to bed an hour earlier, getting 20 minutes of walking just these little, tiny additions. In some cases it's herbs. In some cases it's seeing a holistic practitioner for other therapies, like chiropractic and acupuncture, there's all kinds of different kinds of frequency devices out there, like PEMF. These are all supportive to support the body in doing what it already is trying to do, which is come back into balance.

 

Now I've had several episodes on why is the body so out of whack in the first place? We've got crazy or over 80,000 man-made chemicals since I was born. In your lifetime there have been 80,000 man-made chemicals added to our air, water, food, added to the soil and it's really scary. Why are we so out of balance? Well, think about how your grandparents ate. They ate whole foods, not from boxes, not from factories. They ate from farms. Now the farms use so many chemicals. So just to give you a few examples, we used to walk more, we used to play more, we used to rest. When we rested, we really rested. When we played, we really played. We used to have large family support and now we're isolated alone, stagnant and filling ourselves with man-made junk and we're constantly in stress mode because of all the things we're taking in, all the media that we're taking in. 

 

So the body's in stress mode and it is depleted of sunlight, fresh air, clean water. Depleted of nutrients. I have some wonderful interviews, like with Dr. Joel Wallach. Highly recommend listening to that. When it comes to the 90 essential nutrients the body needs. The body needs 90 essential nutrients every day for optimal function and that episode, episode 435, is wonderful to listen to. Highly recommend going back and listening to episode 435, if you haven't already. 

 

Now, 18 months ago, almost two years ago, I was introduced to and I'd heard of it before, but my skepticism went up. I'll say on the show, I'm the most open-minded skeptic and I think  it's good to be that way. You probably are too. I'm willing to listen to what sounds really woo-woo, sounds really out there, out there. But I'm going to use my critical thinking, but I'm going to make sure that I don't allow my preconceived ideas or my belief system cloud the new information coming in, like allow myself to be open. So my skeptic  pops up and I go, wow, I'm rejecting something just based on my skepticism alone. Sometimes things sound too good to be true and we often just negate it. That probably is not real, it's probably fake. It's probably snake oil, and there is a lot of snake oil out there. 

 

But I started to see thousands of people getting results and there's over a hundred studies that show powerful results, and they had a money-back guarantee. So I was like, okay, I'm going to give it a try. It's a technology. It's a wearable technology. It's quite affordable. They could charge a lot more for this, which I was really surprised about. It's very affordable, it's a wearable technology and it stimulates your body, your body wanting to heal itself. It stimulates it and there's no side effects. It's safe for infants. It's safe on pets. It's safe on any, any anyone, any age, any size, and you don't absorb anything. It's not a molecular medicine, it's a frequency medicine. So, with that said, I tried it. I got huge, huge results, which I was really shocked because of how skeptical I was. But  there's a money-back guarantee, so I was going to give it a try and I couldn't believe how well it was working, not only for myself, my son, my husband, and my other family members. Then I got my friends to try it and it all worked for them.  Then I started introducing it to my clients and now I have over 200 clients using this successfully and getting great results. 

 

They're getting so healthy that their doctors are taking them off of their medications, and that is my goal. My number one goal and I've probably said it 100 times on this podcast over the last eight years that this is my number one goal is to help you get so healthy that your doctor takes you off your meds because you no longer need them. Now, whether you need them in the first place is another thing. That really is person dependent, but I think people are being over prescribed drugs and under prescribed lifestyle changes and dietary changes and the things that we're lacking. 

 

Dr. Joel Wallach, the man I had mentioned, who's one of my mentors. He will often say, like you didn't have a drug deficiency, you had a blank deficiency like a calcium magnesium,  B12, whatever the nutrient was. People will have deficiencies in those, but the symptoms show up in a way that the doctors will prescribe drugs or that there needs to be a necessary diet change. I've seen Dr. Wallach get people so healthy using natural medicine. When I say natural medicine, I mean as close to nature as possible. I've seen him get people so healthy their kidney function returned and they no longer needed dialysis. I have seen him help people save limbs, gangrene in the feet about to be amputated. He helps them and now they no longer need their feet to be amputated and now they no longer need their feet to be amputated. I have seen him reverse all forms of disease, all common, the most common diseases you can think of. If you could think of a disease, he's helped people reverse it using natural, as close to nature as possible, holistic medicine. 

 

So when I say holistic medicine, I mean supporting your body's ability to heal itself, because your body is constantly striving for homeostasis and it wants to heal you. It wants you to be as healthy as possible and we are getting in our own way by making silly choices like staying up late and eating sugar and drinking alcohol and  the regular stuff that we do that we don't know, because everyone does it, but everyone's sick. Everyone around us is sick. Everyone around us 70% of Americans are on at least one prescription medication. That should tell you something. We should not be this medicated and yet we are. 

 

So I'm on my soapbox letting you know there is a holistic, very effective, very affordable type of technology and you can listen to two interviews about it, episode 496 with Trina Hammack and episode 517 with David Schmidt, who's the creator of this technology. It's been around for 20 years, so I started using it, started using it with my clients and got just such good results. My clients have their doctors take them off. Their doctors like after the labs are showing, oh, you no longer need this thyroid medication. Okay, we're taking you off that. Unbelievable! I have a few clients who their fractures healed in half the amount of time needed and they freaked out. I've had clients text me their x-ray report saying that the doctor couldn't believe how quickly they were healing. So your body wants to heal itself and this is a technology that stimulates and helps your body get over the other side. 

 

Really, really exciting stuff decreasing inflammation in the body, decreasing pain, increasing muscle mass, increasing healthy bones, healthy joints. There's women who've reported after their DEXA scan, after using this technology for about a year, sometimes half a year, as little as half a year that their DEXA scan showed that they're no longer in osteopenia or osteoporosis. So it's really, really exciting stuff. But there's, like I said, about 100 studies and in addition to that, I've spoken with many doctors who are holistic doctors, who are using this technology with their clients and with their patients, and they're seeing these results. The people are feeling better. But it also shows up in the lab. So something that's energy medicine, frequency medicine, is now showing up in the physical realm because labs are changing, and that's really exciting. 

 

So if you want to check it out, listen to those episodes, but then book a free session with me. I love chatting with you guys. You can go to my website, learntruehealth.com. In the menu, click on work with Ashley James, select the very first thing at the top. It's a free, about 20 minute, sometimes a bit more if you have more questions, I'll sit there longer on the phone, if you have more questions. About 20 minute phone call where we discuss this type of technology and I can help you order the  kind, because there's different ones the  kind you need and I'll show you how to use them so that you place them correctly on the body, on the meridians of the body, for you, for the outcomes that you're looking for. It is phenomenal. 

 

The cool thing is there's a money back guarantee. I haven't had someone yet who didn't feel a shift in themselves, that they didn't feel like it got results.  I also don't believe in silver bullets out there, like, oh, this works for everyone, I think we're so unique that I'm not going to say everything's going to work for everyone. So if it doesn't work for you, the cool part is you can get your money back and there's no risk. There's no risk, but I've seen so many people get such great results that I'm singing this from the rooftops that if there was a natural way to support your body's ability to come back into balance without side effects, with no risk and it's affordable, then you would want to know about it. That's why I'm recording this for you, letting you know  you could also share it with your friends and family, and even pets! Amazing.

 

I've seen so many things with animals. I saw one animal who, in 10 days of using two specific patches for this stimulating and healing. Their milky eyes went away. The glaucoma in their eyes went away. They got their vision back. I watched as a dog with hip dysplasia went from being in excruciating pain within minutes, you could touch the dog down by their hips and within two weeks the dog was able to jump back on the bed to help its owner, it was a service dog and this dog wasn't able to jump before because of how much pain it was in.  Everyone around this dog is saying it's a new dog, that the dog is just completely out of pain, is jumping around, it's happy, it's running. It wasn't doing that before. 

 

I had a client who had a puppy who was dying. They had no idea why they spent $7,000 on this dog, and had no idea why. I told them what patches to put on the dog and three days later they texted me back and said the dog is completely back to normal. Do not know why. The vet had no clue why this dog was sick in the first place, but they spent so much money on this dog with medications and oxygen tent, everything.  The dog was just wasting away. Went from lying there all the time just wasting away. Three days, less than three days, the dog was eating again and just up and at it. I've seen people use this on horses. We have actually a lot of studies done with horses and how quickly it gets them out of pain and decreases inflammation. 

 

Now it's really cool and anyone who wants this, sign up for a talk with me, a little chat with me, a free chat with me. Go to Work with Ashley James at learntruehealth.com and I can share. 

 

They take a special camera that 's called thermography and the camera can measure your heat in your body and inflammation. You could see it visually and there's video thermography of people who put the patches on and you watch as the inflammation leaves the body and you watch as the person, like the entire body, decreases in inflammation and the person's out of pain. It's so cool. This helps with sleep. This helps with hormone balancing at the hypothalamic, pituitary,\ adrenal access. It's really cool. So I mean, I could go on for days about how cool this stuff is, but I wanted to let you know. If you didn't know about it already, you're going to want to try it. 

 

Learntruehealth.com. Sign up for a free chat with me. Work with Ashley James in the menu bar. I'd love to help you with this and go check out those two episodes David Schmidt 517 and Trina Hammack 496.  I'd love to be your guide to helping you to purchasing these and how to apply them, because we use this in conjunction with Chinese medicine protocols, so you're going to be able to increase your vital life force energy. It's one of the first things we do after we balance the polarity of your body and we do a protocol for decreasing inflammation, and then we increase your vital life force energy and then we do a protocol that opens up all the different among three systems and balances every system in the body. It's really cool. People notice  away better sleep, more energy. They just feel like they can go, go, go. So if you're dragging, you're going to want to try it. 

 

Ashley James (0:17:23.374)

Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast.  I'm your host, Ashley James. This is episode 522. 

 

I am so excited for today's guest we have on the show, Dr. Shawn Tassone, who is an MD and they want to become holistic, they want to look at the body as a whole and help the person and the patient as a whole and see them as a whole person instead of just a broken down pieces Like I'm just going to treat your uterus. You're looking at the person as a whole and you're looking at how can we help your body come back into balance instead of well, I got my prescription pad here. What drug can I throw at you today? 

 

So I'm thrilled to dive into this world of holistic gynecology and first I'd like to know a little bit more about what guided you towards going holistic. I'm always interested. Was there an event where you went, hold on, my traditional MD training isn't enough here. Was there a specific event, or was it just like a series of events that led you to want to explore holistic medicine? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:18:43.005)

Well, thanks for having me on.  I get asked that question a lot and sometimes you get attacked online for using certain words like holistic or integrative, functional, whatever, and that's because they are slightly overutilized. If I might share that, I think that it is a marketing technique in a way, but also I think it is a moniker that gives you an idea of who the person is and what they believe in.  I would say that my journey  began when I was a second year resident, I guess. So I was a resident OBGYN living in Oklahoma and basically one day my, my mom had to have surgery because she had this ovarian mass and it ended up being cancer and so so here I was, a second year resident and I knew a lot about cancer, knew a lot about ovarian cancer. 

 

But this was my mom, and what I found was that over the five years that she survived, she eventually succumbed to it when she was 57. I realized she'd call me like the day before chemo, she would be all excited and happy because they load you up with steroids. So you feel good and you got a lot of energy and everything.  Then the next day when the chemo kicked in and she had joint pain and all the stuff that goes along with nausea, vomiting I realized really quickly that I couldn't even help my own mom. I couldn't help her live a healthy, productive, happy life, and so I watched her over the years  just succumb to this process and just not really have a great quality of life.  When she died in 2004, I went on this journey as you do. 

 

I'm an only child, so, as I went through this on my own, and as you find yourself in these spiritual crises, you often go to Sedona, which is where I went and I was living in Tucson at the time, so I was only like three hours away. Anyways, I was in Sedona and I was waiting for my significant other at the time who was getting a massage, and I was reading this book called Eight Weeks to Optimum Health by Andrew Weil. At the time, it was 2005, he was talking about all this crazy stuff like fish oil, coq10, vitamin d and oh my god, all this stuff, and I was like whoa, this stuff is mind-blowing. So at the end of the book it said hey, if you're a doctor and you want to learn more about helping people heal and blah, blah, blah, we have this fellowship.  It just so happened that the fellowship was in Tucson, which is where I was living, because it was at the University of Arizona. So I just didn't even think about it, I just applied. 

 

I didn't think I'd get in, it was  late in the process. Anyways, I got in, did the fellowship for two years. In that fellowship there was an eight-week module on spirituality and health. That was another conk on the head. It just  woke me up and then I just decided I needed to go deeper into that aspect. So I did a PhD from 2009 to 2015 and got a PhD in philosophy and in those six years visited indigenous shamans in South America and just looked at different ways to heal. I think I was trying to just figure out what else is out there, what else is there in this world, and  this all culminated into the practice that I have today. 

 

Ashley James (0:22:38.109)

My gosh, I so connect with your story. My mom passed away in 2002 of cancer. I'm an only child and that also led me down my road of being motivated to learn how to support the body's ability to heal itself, how to prevent disease, and how to come back into balance. Then my dad died six years later of a broken heart, and so I've watched both my parents die very young. My mom was 55, very, very young. My dad was in his early sixties. They could still be alive  now. If there were just a few different choices. If they had just seen a different practitioner. 

 

My mom's cancer was actually caused by and this is relevant to our conversation today was caused by a hormone that her doctor had put her on, and it was a synthetic hormone that was taken off the market in Canada, where we were in Canada at the time. The week she was in the hospital, the week before she died. So I was living in the hospital with her while she was in palliative care, listening to the radio, hearing the news that the very drug that had put her in the hospital that had ended her life was being taken off the market for causing too much cancer in women and the prescribing doctor ended up also getting cancer and she was sort of a very famous doctor in Canada, she's like Dr. Oz of Canada, always on the TV, always on the news. She ended up going on to write a book about it, about her experience. She got cancer but then she caught it quickly and survived and wrote a book about it. Whereas my mom and many of her patients died from that synthetic hormone that she had been put on that this doctor was pushing every single woman my mom knew that was going to the same doctor was being pushed. 

 

I remember the day my mom came home when she was first put on that drug. My mom exercised seven days a week, she took supplements. She ate very healthy, she really watched her health and my mom was a very strong, emotionally strong woman. She came home crying. This MD said to her she put the fear of God in her and said if you don't get on this drug, your hips will break because you don't have enough estrogen. Your hips will break and you'll fall over and you'll die. This MD put so much fear into my mom that she, like fear-forced her into getting on this drug. My mom wasn't on any drugs at the time. She was very natural-minded, and that one decision ended her life prematurely. 

 

So I think there's a lot of people out there that are scared of using hormone replacement therapy in a healthy way, because they don't know, is it healthy. I know that's one of your main things is helping women to bring their bodies back into balance, and sometimes the tool in your tool belt is bioidentical hormones, so much different from synthetic. But I'd love to dive into that concept of like, when, when hormones are out of balance, when is it necessary to bring in hormone replacement, and are there other alternatives that we can do that you see as effective, like herbs? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:26:14.921)

First of all, the concept of hormone imbalance is hotly criticized by many of my OBGYN colleagues that are quote-unquote influencers online. They will say that hormone imbalance isn't a real thing, it doesn't exist. The reality is they're getting caught up more in the semantics of the word imbalance because theoretically, yes, a woman is always cycling, hormones are always in flux, they're up, they're down, they're all around. But that being said, we know where the hormones are supposed to be at certain times in the cycle. So any self-respecting physician that is, quote-unquote, an expert in women's health would have an idea of where the levels should be at certain times in the cycle. So when you draw the blood, then that isn't where it's supposed to be. So I do think that they get caught up more in the semantics and shooting things down than they really seem to care about the actual balance. What's funny, if you look at an issue, say, like polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is an imbalance, you have high estrogen, high testosterone, low progesterone, insulin resistance, there's all kinds of things. If that isn't a hormone imbalance, then why is the number one go-to treatment for most of my colleagues' birth control pills, which are hormones which override the ovaries, shut the ovaries down and shut down the imbalance. It's contradictory to not see it that way. It's just that they get caught up more in the word. 

 

So let's say, bioidentical. You mentioned the sham organization that I call, The North American Menopause Society doesn't like the word bioidentical and it's because they didn't come up with it so they changed it in their wording. They call these hormones, body identical, which just goes to show you the hubris of the physicians that they need to change a word that has been used for 30 years because it wasn't their word. It's the same thing, it means the exact same thing. It's just that they didn't come up with it. 

 

So when you look at bioidentical, synthetic yes, those two things are different. The thing about bioidentical is there's multiple variations of dosages. Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone are all bioidentical.  Then you get the confusing piece of bioidentical versus synthetic, FDA approved or not. A lot of physicians will say bioidentical hormones are not approved by the FDA, which is totally wrong. They are. It's just that the pharmacies that compound bioidentical hormones aren't FDA approved, but the actual hormones that are utilized are FDA approved. So there's a lot of misinformation out there. Let's just put it that way. Tons. 

 

Ashley James (0:29:24.293)

So when it comes to a patient who is coming to you and you draw their blood, their labs showed that their hormones are not really like them to be. Is your first tool, bioidentical hormones or do you find that you can get really good results with diet, lifestyle, herbs first?

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:29:54.716)

It depends. So when I see a patient that's new, obviously I'm going to get a set of labs and then I'm going to sit with them and go over their issues like what symptoms are they having? A lot of docs will say you don't need to test, I just go on symptoms. I mean whatever. That's fine if that's the way they want to do it. My thing is I would like to use the labs to coordinate with the symptoms. What exactly is going on, because some symptoms overlap. I mean you could have somebody that has fatigue, could be low thyroid, could be low testosterone, could be high thyroid, could be cortisol. There's so many different things that overlap. 

 

To just say that you are psychic and you can just tell what the imbalance is based on. What the patient's telling you isn't necessarily true. Then maybe some of the things that she's telling you in the order that she's putting them in may not be the real order. Maybe she's just saying them as they come up or, maybe she's not telling you something. I think having as much information as possible would be the best. So, getting labs done. Getting a good history is always the first place to start, and then it's based on the numbers. What I always will tell people is hey, these are the things that are low. These are the symptoms that I would see associated with this. Does this resonate with you? Sometimes it's like yes, across the board, and then sometimes it's like  this, yes, I do feel fatigued, but I don't really have a decreased libido or whatever, and so they'll tell me how they're feeling and then I'll just base the therapy on them and what they're trying to achieve. 

 

Ashley James (0:31:45.970)

Every doctor I've ever been to my first visit. It's so funny that everyone they're like, aha, I know what your problem is, it's thyroid. I look at them before they do labs, everything could be a naturopath, an MD, but every doctor I've been to in my first visit they think that they're delivering  news, like, I am such a smart doctor, I know what your problem is. They always tell me, just based on what I look like and the symptoms or whatever I share, what's going on with me. They always think it's thyroid and I have to break the news. 

 

Every lab I've ever done, my thyroid is perfect. They don't believe me. It's hilarious, it's like that gaslighting, it's hilarious. They don't believe me. They're like well, we're going to run these labs just in case. I just want new labs. Every aspect of my thyroid health comes out perfectly pristine and they're like, well, oh yes, your thyroid is normal. 

 

It's just really funny. Yes, we should listen to the symptoms of the body. Yes, you want your doctor to listen to you, but at the same time they like to jump to conclusions because they're like, oh, this checks off this box. Therefore, it must be this so, yes, you've got to have labs to show what's going on. So yes, you've got to. You got to have labs to show what's going on. Do you trust all labs? Are all labs fairly accurate or are there ever times when you're like well, maybe they didn't calibrate or maybe they messed up somehow, maybe we should go with a different lab? Or do you feel like, across the board, we're getting pretty much the same result, no matter what lab we go to? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:33:26.311)

They can be wrong, sure. If I saw a lab that had a weird thing, if it was something I wasn't expecting, like DHEA or something was way high, like four times normal or something weird like that, then what I usually will do is repeat it. If I get two that are that, then I usually will believe it at that point. But if it's an anomaly, like something that I've never seen, like my God, that's crazy. 

 

Ashley James (0:34:03.205)

I just always wonder if the machines themselves, if they're not calibrated, or if we should go with a completely different company and see if we're going to get the same results? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:34:12.877)

That can always be an issue. I'm saying it now, but I usually never say never, or always there's usually something that can explain it. If not, then that's why we draw labs again or do other tests, with the example I gave, if the DHEA was still elevated, then I would probably get an ultrasound of the adrenal glands to see what was going on. Lab error is easy to figure out because you repeat it and it goes back down to normal. But, yes, there's somebody that has to make sure that the machines are running appropriately. So, yes, if they did it wrong, if they didn't zero it or whatever it is that they do, that could definitely affect things for sure. 

 

Ashley James (0:35:20.561)

So, when a patient comes to you, you get the labs, you've talked to her, you've got what she's expressing, what her symptoms are and you've confirmed looking at the labs. What are your next steps when you see something's low, something's high, she's complaining about certain symptoms, what are your next steps with her? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:35:44.374)

Well, usually when they come in, I've already done their labs. So they have the labs and then they have then we go over their symptoms. So it's a matter of me sitting down with them and finding out what's bothering them the most. I try to get the order of things, like what's really bothering you and then what are some of the minor things. Usually when they come in for that first visit, we're ready to go, like, we have everything in place, where we've got all the stuff that we need, and then I just sit down and it's not like it takes a lot of work, because most women, like I said, by the time they've come in they've seen five other people. 

 

So they're pretty easily they can tell me what they're feeling, because they've rehearsed it and they've said it a hundred times and they're used to talking about it. So it's something that usually over time it just  comes out and I'll talk them about the symptoms of each of the imbalances that I see, and usually, there's a lot of head nodding and stuff like that going on where they're like yes, that's me, or I'm not feeling that at all, but usually pretty close. Then it's just a matter of figuring out the dosage that they need, the route of delivery that they need and what's going to work for them. 

 

Ashley James (0:37:12.728)

So your next step, then, is to give them a prescription. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:37:19.334)

Yes, if they need it, I mean usually I'll make recommendations, prescription medications, supplements, whatever it is that they would benefit from, based on their symptoms, for sure. 

 

Ashley James (0:37:35.223)

What lifestyle and dietary changes have you found to be the most effective at helping women balance their hormones? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:37:47.229)

Lifestyle changes. I mean, obviously, sleep is huge, probably number one. Some things you can't really change, like age. Sometimes the hormones are off because of your age and there isn't a whole lot you can do about that, but if you're using supplements and whatnot, I go through those to make sure you're on the right ones. 

 

First of all, a lot of people are on supplements that don't do what they think they're doing and they're spending money on stuff they don't need and they're not using the ones that they do need. So we'll  go through all that and base it on that too. We sit down, get a feel. Some people don't like supplements. I had a lady the other day. She can't swallow pills. So I'm not going to give her 17 pills to swallow because it's not going to work for her. So it really varies. Then some women don't want to use a topical cream, they want to use a sublingual tablet. I think the main thing that I like to do is really give people options, options, options. That's what's important. 

 

Ashley James (0:38:55.226)

In terms of diet, have you found that there are any dietary changes that help to bring hormones back into balance? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:39:06.033)

I didn't really get into that. But yes, so like the things that I look at with hormones and some of them may not resonate, some of them do. But I have six areas that I look at. One is spiritual practice whether that's getting outside or journaling or meditation, whatever that is, depends on what the issue at hand is. Obviously hormonal modulation, so actually giving you the hormones. 

 

A third one would be what I call the woo factor, whether that's essential oils or acupuncture, some sort of outside the box treatment that might have a little nugget of research on it or something that you could try. It may not work but it's worth a try and it's not going to hurt you. Nutrition, obviously super important, limiting processed foods and really focusing on good lean proteins, fats and limiting processed carbohydrates. Exercise is always great, depending on the imbalance might be resistance training, might be high intensity interval training, it might be walking. It really just depends on what the imbalance is. Then the last step that I look at is always the potential for using supplements. 

 

Ashley James (0:40:27.239)

You had mentioned the woo factor, which then you said was outside of the box. That might be outside of the box of mainstream medicine, but that's inside the box of this podcast. Outside of the box of mainstream medicine is where I like to look and shine the light on, because we find that has, in many cases, the least amount of side effects and potentially the greatest amount of support, given that we're looking to support the body's own ability to heal itself and come in back into balance and also remove what is hindering the body from coming back into balance. 

 

Inside the box of what you call the woo factor, can you share with us what you've found to have the greatest impact? Or do you have any stories where you've seen herbs, essential oils, acupuncture, chinese medicine, where you've seen that through labs or your experience, you've seen it bring the body back into balance. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:41:38.988)

I would have to say the number one thing that I see all the time is maca, I've been affiliated with maca for probably eight or nine years now. There’s a naturopath out in Oregon named Tori Hudson and I was given a talk at one of her conferences and there was a company there called Symphony and they have this product called Feminescence that I was really just interested in some of the claims they were making. The interesting thing about maca is it's grown in Peru. There's 13 different phenotypes of maca, different colors, different types and you could take yellow maca in part of Peru and grow it and it'll do one thing. You can grow it in another part of Peru to do something completely different. So these women that are using powdered maca, like in their smoothies and stuff in the mornings I hear stories all the time about how it didn't really do much. The problem is, when you have a powdered substance like that in bulk, you don't know what's in it, and what I found was that if you use a really clean maca like Feminescence or something what I noticed was, even women that don't want to go on hormones for whatever reason, they would get some relief, like whether it was better sleep or, the hot flashes would go away and what I've seen and this is just in my practice women tend to if they repurchase a supplement, it's maca across the board. I mean, probably 75% use it and like it and keep using it because they just find that it's so amazing. So if I had to pick a substance that I like the most, I would definitely pick the maca as number one. 

 

I would say things that really also baffle me. I don't pretend to understand them, but acupuncture is amazing. We know acupuncture has so much data on fertility. I mean it's been researched extensively. Women that do this get pregnant faster, that have issues with fertility. I think part of the thing with something like acupuncture is just that it decreases stress. I mean, I do think that anything that's going to help you I mean I know it sounds funny, but it's like if you lay on a table for 45 minutes and just relax that could be part of it. Now I don't pretend to know the meridians and I have friends that do this for a living and they explain it much more eloquently than I do, but it makes sense to me that that would make things better. I don't understand it. I don't understand all the nuances behind it and everything, but it is something that I refer women out all the time for acupuncture and then I think the herbal stuff that's out there, Chinese medicine to me is probably the best thing ever, because these medicines they're medications in China. Here, when I go to this guy here in town and he has like a whole wall of drawers and when you tell him what your things are, he starts pulling on these drawers and he uses the actual herbs, and you get them weighed out and then you're supposed to go make a tea with them, It's pretty astounding and you don't just get it done. I mean, it's like it's a process, but these medicines have such power in them that I think it's one of those things that you just have to look at and go, okay, this guy knows more than I do then you go from there. But I do think, like maca, chinese herbs, chinese medicines for which I would refer out to somebody that specializes in that acupuncture. Then  you can get into the essential oils. I think essential oils are tough because there's so much out there about them, there's so many people that are selling them and doing all these things, but it's like, do people really understand the way these things work, and I think those are extremely powerful as well. 

 

Ashley James (0:46:06.622)

I interviewed Dr. Anna Cabeca, Episode 326, and she raves about maca, and it ended up maca was one of the things that really helped her in her health personally, so she ended up creating a drink. So the mighty maca drink. She might even give my listeners a discount. My listeners know to use coupon code LTH. Whenever they try to purchase things that are promoted on my show. I seem to remember she might have offered a discount, but, I drank it once, she sent me a sample. It was delicious. I was surprised because I was expecting healthy things don't taste good, and so it actually tastes really good. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:46:50.601)

I will tell you, maca doesn't taste good, there's something else in there that would make it taste great.

 

Ashley James (0:46:57.803)

Yes, probably like a buttload of stevia or something, whatever's in there, I was impressed that it didn't taste bad. I think I was expecting maca to taste bad. As far as essential oils go, that's the sticky wicket is that you can overdo it. It's a very concentrated form of herbal medicine and I have experienced that. I've known other people who have experienced overdoing essential oils but when you use them correctly, you're using concentrated plant medicine. 

 

I've got a few interviews. I don't remember the numbers at the top of my head. But Dr. Z, he specifically does not tell us which brand he likes because he wants it to be more about the information and not about the sales. So listeners can go to learntruehealth.com and type in essential oils to find that episode. But there's so many resources out there when it comes to essential oils. Just know that less is more. Start small, start slow. It's very concentrated and just to understand, to use it with precaution so that you don't overdo it. 

 

That concept for acupuncture, if you're just lying down for 45 minutes, you'd be relaxed anyway. I would debunk that because we go to sleep every night, we lie down eight hours or more or less, or give and take eight hours a day and we're still totally stressed out. But you get acupuncture and within 20 minutes and less than 20 minutes for me I am totally zonked out, like you put drugs in me, like an anesthesiologist came by and filled me up with some, something that makes me high as a kite. I can really feel my nervous system go into that parasympathetic rest and digest state and it's wild, it's absolutely wild. 

 

You can do acupressure on yourself if you wanted to, if you want to just try it at home. But there is something to those meridian points, those acupuncture points on the body, and with my clients I've actually been able to help them with just acupressure get out of. I've had several clients get out of a panic attack with acupressure and that was phenomenal and I was on a video call watching them as they just their tension melted and you could just see them, their physiology come out of that panic attack, just really interesting how that we can use it even in our own home to bring down the nervous system back into state of rest and digest. 

 

So the hormones you've been talking about things other than sex hormones. You've been bringing up thyroid and cortisol. But as a gynecologist, are you more concerned about sex hormones or, as a gynecologist, you're looking at all hormones in the body? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:49:59.508)

I think the hormones that I look at are obviously estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid, DHEA, vitamin D and cortisol. Those would be the big ones. I will look at insulin too, obviously. 

 

Ashley James (0:50:24.314)

I love that you brought up vitamin D as a hormone, because that's not discussed well enough. What are the levels you want to see your patients like when it comes to their blood work? What levels would you say are ideal for vitamin D? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:50:39.051)

Vitamin D, probably 60 to 80, somewhere in there. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there that overdose themselves on vitamin D and you have to remember that vitamin D is fat soluble, so it will sit in your fat cells so you can’t eat too much of it. So I always want people to remember that. The point being is that 5,000 units a day usually is a good amount. Some people take more than that, but I wouldn't take more than probably 50,000 units a week. But yes, vitamin D, most people are low, but that's why some people I do see are a little bit on the higher side. 

 

Ashley James (0:51:23.792)

What do you do holistically, naturally, to prevent disease? What are your main things that you make sure you wake up and do every single day to keep your body in balance? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:51:40.266)

I'm horrible, I die. I probably don’t do that. I am probably a bit of a hypocrite, but  sometimes the doctors are probably the worst patients I do think that sleeping for me and men, don't have a menopause, but as I've aged I've really noticed that sleep is really hard for me and I can tell you that I do feel a lot better when I sleep better. So I would really focus on the sleep hygiene piece for me. Cold room, dark, if that's what you like, sound machine no, sound machine, whatever it is.  Then in the mornings, you see people doing these cold plunges all the time, and women don't necessarily need to do those every day. I think if you do them every day, you could potentially give yourself a cortisol spike, which may not be something you want to do but maybe two, three, four times a week. 

 

But if you don't have a cold plunge, when you're in the shower. What I usually say is turn the water as cold as you can, get it for up to a minute, and you can always work your way up to it. What that's going to do is one thing, it's going to  just kick start you. It's going to wake you up more than any coffee ever could, but it's also going to give you a little bit of a reset with your adrenals. The other thing and this is a fun one is you can eat one or two squares a day of good cacao chocolate, at least like 67% chocolate. 

 

I did a YouTube video a while back where I ate chocolate from milk chocolate all the way up to 100% cacao. I think I had eight or nine of them. Man, what an adventure that was. You start getting up around 80%, 85%. I know people out there that eat 100% every day. I don't know how they do it. It's like I remember one day when I was a kid. I was like I don't know, I was probably eight and I wanted my mom to make cookies and she wasn't doing it. She wasn't doing it and I was like really wanting this powder. I was like I'm going to just eat the powder and the thing was I thought it was like the stuff you make the chocolate milk out of that has the sugar in it. But this was just powdered baking chocolate. So it was like just eating fire. It just burns and I remember crying, the chocolate was all dripping out of my mouth. 

 

It was a similar experience when I did the chocolate tasting because I was like, oh my god, this is horrible, but cacao is really good for your blood vessels. It's good for a lot of things. So I say,  a cold shower in the morning, try to focus on your sleep and if you want to  do something, that's  a treat you can do, 67% or higher of cacao. 

 

Ashley James (0:54:55.179)

Well, I would challenge you to try to get the 100%, but at least 80%. This is what I like doing. Get a chocolate that has no sugar added okay, so it's that like super dark chocolate, but hear me out, it's going to taste good, then you get dates, I wouldn't do more than like five, six dates a day. Less is more. A small amount is good, a lot might not be great, but get a few dates, take the pits out and then get your dark chocolate and you cut the date in half, or in a quarter, and then you cut your chocolate and you shove the chocolate in the date and then you dip that. This is optional; you could dip it in a seed or nut butter, like almond, or cashew. There's all kinds of different ones. You could do sunflower, or if you don't have any nut butters, you don't need to. As a kid, you liked, peanut M&Ms versus regular M&Ms, and then you pop that in your mouth and you chew, and the sweetness of the date will offset the bitterness of the chocolate and then you get that wonderful high from the really antioxidant-rich dark chocolate without the processed sugar.

 

So that's my little go-to, and you're not eating a ton of it, you're just maybe eating two or three squares. Also know the timing is really important, because if you do it late at night it can affect your sleep. So it's actually better even though most chocolate cravings happen later at night, it's better done earlier in the day. 

 

I don't know how much caffeine is in chocolate, but I'm one of those people that if I even eat two squares of dark chocolate, I notice it. It affects my sleep, I don't fall asleep. So you have to watch that. Anything I can do to eat something that doesn't have anything processed in it, like processed sugar, as minimal processed as possible. 

 

How about Vitex Berry? Have you explored or worked with your clients who come to you and say, listen, I want to do everything I can to balance my hormones naturally, to support my body, to balance hormones naturally, instead of getting a hormone replacement, even though it is bioidentical. Do you ever have patients come to you and say get me on some herbs first. Have you seen that Vitex Berry can  move the needle? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:57:39.968)

Vitex can be good for women that have low progesterone. It's a claim to fame. The research, as with all supplements, is not super strong, but there are a lot of women out there who will resume ovulation or that will start having more progesterone production. The thing about Vitex is it doesn't contain any hormones. The benefits from the Vitex are actually from what it does to the pituitary gland. So it goes a little bit higher than the ovaries, obviously, and works on that  pituitary axis and what it does is the production of the hormone, luteinizing hormone. 

 

Luteinizing hormone is a pituitary gland hormone that indirectly increases the progesterone production. So with Vitex you can get an indirect response. Now I used to use a lot of Vitex until I started working with maca and once I started working with maca, I stopped with Vitex because I felt like the maca worked on much different levels. Vitex is going to work more specifically on progesterone, but the maca helps all the hormones rather than focusing on just one. 

 

Ashley James (0:59:13.456)

Wow. Could you explain a bit more as to what maca does to the body? That helps all the hormones. Is it just because it's high in antioxidants, or is there a certain phytochemical reaction in the body? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (0:59:29.262)

The problem with maca. There's been quite a bit of research, especially by the company Symphony that does Feminescence. There isn't a definitive reason for it, like we don't know exactly, but it's obviously a natural antioxidant. It does help produce more glutathione and something called superoxide dismutase, which is a strong antioxidant, and we think that this may have something to do with it. I think one of the earlier studies that was done around 2006 showed that it can help modulate the hypothalamic pituitary axis. We don't know the exact mechanism of action, like they haven't been able to tell you. They haven't isolated why it does what it does, which is fascinating because you would think we could but that's what I'm telling you. 

 

If you take, let’s say, black maca versus gold maca, one might be good for men, the other one might be good for a woman with PCOS. You might also have one that's good for menopause. So it's really interesting. Let’s say gold maca works for PCOS, but you take the gold maca and you grow it in another part of Peru, it might do something totally different. So you really have to have an understanding of the plant. Like I said, there's 13 different phenotypes of maca and what's fascinating is, if you talk to some of the indigenous healers and the farmers that farm this stuff, they used to use it years and years ago for, like hundreds of years ago, for women that had issues with their periods, like painful periods, heavy periods. They would eat maca or they would make tea out of it and they would get better. So it is just like anything else in this world, these companies that find things based on talking to the indigenous healers who like, yes, we use that bark of that plant. The interesting thing if you look at it and this is a totally different topic but if you look at a plant like ayahuasca, which is a vine, just sitting there in the forest, how did they know that eating that vine, you didn't just eat it, but you got to boil it for eight hours. If you boil it for eight hours, it'll give you this psychoactive thing. However, if you just took ayahuasca, there's a chemical in your stomach called MAO monoamine oxidized that will break down the ayahuasca in about three seconds. So you get absolutely no effect. However, there's this other vine that grows next to the ayahuasca, that if you boil that with the ayahuasca, there's a chemical in that vine that blocks your monoamine oxidase. So you have this psychoactive experience. How did they know to do that? If you ask the shamans because what I did when I lived, I'm like how the hell did they know to do that? How did you figure this out? And they're like the plants, tell us and so I do think there's this, I don't know, this unseen, unknown language of these plants that they're there for a reason, many of them, most of them and we just haven't figured it out yet. We've been living with plants for thousands and thousands and millions of years. They're there for a reason. It's like why do we have cannabinoid receptors in our body? Why do we respond to marijuana? Marijuana is not an essential element in our diets, but yet we have all these receptors in our body. There's something there and it works for pain. I don't know, but the maca thing is fascinating and I really respect the plant. I just think it's amazing. 

 

Ashley James (1:03:47.953)

I have an interview about ayahuasca, episode 379, with Teresa Vigarino. Super interesting. For listeners who don't know a lot about ayahuasca. Really interesting to listen to Teresa's experience. She went down to Peru, had the experience. She's been back several times and now she takes a tour once a year. She found a really good center because she had some sketchy experiences which led her to find a trustworthy one. But she shares her experiences in great detail in that interview, episode 379. 

 

It is so fascinating that when we look at Indigenous medicine, the medicine that's been here for thousands of years, and, of course, if you look at the world through the lens of the modern medical system, the average MD and I'm not bashing medical doctors, but we have to just take look at the stereotypical, let's say, MD. Look through the world through their lens, and plant medicine is poo-pooed, it's looked down upon, it's primitive, and we brush it aside because it's unscientific and it's primitive. Here we are with our modern, proven, double blind placebo, chemically created, pristine, sterile medicine. Then we're going to come swoop in, prescribe you a pill and save the day, kill everything, kill all the bacteria, sterilize the body and that's the key, that's the trick, and we know now very quickly, we've learned that MD medicine isn't the best, it isn't the entire picture of medicine. It's a slice of the pie and it has its place and it has its strengths and it definitely has its weaknesses, which it doesn't want you to know about. 

 

In the last four years, people have gotten canceled, taken off of YouTube for trying to point out the weaknesses,  So they do a lot to try to protect. The AMA is not in your best interests. The FDA, all these big organizations not always out in the best interests of our health and healing. 

 

We just have to look at it a little bit cynically, but look at it through the bigger picture lens. How about we look at the world through the lens of like these shamans, for example, or indigenous healers? How about we look through the lens of a 5,000 year old form of healing, like, we go to Asia and India and we see these types of methods or we go to Peru and what we have been doing as humans for thousands of years, and now, through their lens. So they look to the earth, they listen to the plants, they support the body's ability to come back into balance and now stand on their feet for a minute and look at our world. 

 

How crazy are we to think that we're smarter than plant medicine, that we're smarter than God, that we're smarter than how we've been living for thousands of years, to come in and, within the last hundred years, create chemical, petroleum-based medicine and say that every other form of medicine is quote unquote, alternative and outside of the box. So the quote unquote alternative has actually been here a lot longer, been proven, and even in the modern day world, we can't even figure out why, for example, maca even works but we know it works. 

 

So it's worth stepping out of our own perspective and looking at it through the lens of someone else to see where we've been wrong, to see where we could learn and grow. I invite everyone to step into the shoes of someone who's in the politically opposite spectrum of you and actually genuinely try to learn. Look at your own political views through someone else's eyes. Try to learn what we are missing, what's in our blind spot. What's in the blind spot when you step into the feet of a different healer that doesn't necessarily grow up in the MD medical system, and what we see is we can learn so much from the earth and the plants. And what I love about herbal medicine, it just drives me crazy. It's so cool that when there's poison in nature, that within yards of that poison is the cure. If you believe in God, which I do, that has this amazing, world that has been built for us that the cure is close by. If you don't believe in God, but at least you believe in what you see, you believe in the earth. The earth was set up in such a way, in harmony, and we're supposed to be in harmony with it that the cure is close by to the poison. So it's so cool, it's so cool that with ayahuasca, the earth told them, or the plants told them, like, hey, take this vine, take that vine, boil it for eight hours, have a good time. I just love that it's amazing.

 

When you were traveling and studying with the indigenous people? What did you see that they do to keep their bodies in balance that we could really learn from? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:09:41.598)

You want the dark truth. 

 

Ashley James (1:09:46.534)

Yes. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:09:47.270)

They die. I mean, I know it sounds dark, but really that's the secret, what they do. The Huichol, who are a group in Guatemala, they are the original peyote shamans, and if you go, if they allow you in, harvesting the peyote buttons off of a cactus, it's just the little circles that grow on top of the cactuses and then they dry them and grind them up and you can do peyote. In order to be a part of that harvesting process, which is very spiritual, they walk through the desert and the cactuses only grow in a certain area. 

 

They will tell you that in order to do this, in order for them to let you in, you have to die, you're like okay, I'm already here. So what's this mean?  Basically what it means is you go out into the desert and you dig your own grave. It's really fascinating when you do this, because even when you're dying metaphorically, you still have the same character flaws before you even got there. So I'm like okay, I got to do this, I'm going to do this. 

 

But typical Shawn, when I'm doing stuff like that, or building Ikea or whatever, I'm cutting corners. I didn't make the biggest grave ever. Then at night you have to get in. They cover you with a piece of plywood and they cover the plywood up with dirt. They tell you you can bring in whatever you want, anything. So I'm like cool, I'm going to bring in a book, I got a flashlight, I got all this stuff  and I get in there and they put me in. 

 

The first thing I did was turn on my flashlight and I realized immediately that I didn't bring my grave big enough. I'm like, holy cow, this is tiny. So I turned off my flashlight because I was like I can't even look at this, it's too confined. But what happened was, over the night they sang. They sing all night while you're there so you can hear them.  It was interesting because I realized all the stuff that I brought into the grave didn't matter, didn't matter. I couldn't use any of it. I'm dead. 

 

What mattered was the songs, because it kept me tethered to the place. It kept me tethered to the land, to the people. What I realized was the singing, at least for me, were all the people that were still alive, that were talking about me, like I remember when dad did this, or yes, he was a great doctor or whatever good friend. That's what meant something to me, not all the stuff, it was the people. 

 

Then in the morning you're born again, you come out of the ground and you're Jesus, you're reborn. So it was quite a profound experience and I think that experience in and of itself was profound enough for me to have really just moved on and gotten whatever I needed out of it. I had a great experience with the curandera in Mexico about depression and there's all spiritist hospitals in Brazil and there's all these different things out there that you can experience, for us to think that we have this one way of doing something is a bit ridiculous and narcissistic, I think, on our part. But the medical system, we can’t bash it but it is there. If you have appendicitis,  you need your appendix out, so it's got its place. 

 

Ashley James (1:13:56.451)

It absolutely has a place within our society, but it’s like a parasite. It tries to take over and be everything and cut out and all the other things. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:14:08.116)

You're seeing that right now in psychedelic medicine. So what are they doing there? There's ketamine clinics on every corner because of all of the people that are going to Costa Rica and Brazil and all these places to do ayahuasca. They're not stupid. It's business and they see this as a business. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't start seeing ayahuasca coming out like with a capsule or something but what's going to happen is when you reduce this down to business and you take out of it the spiritual aspect, the guided part of it you can't. 

 

Like you said, this lady had a bad trip. Well, because it's shady. If you go to somebody that can actually take care of you and walk you through this process, it can be profound. If you're just some American 25-year-old that's bored and you just want to experience the high, well, that's the wrong reason to do it, unfortunately. That's why a lot of people do it because they're bored. But some people get it. I had a friend that did mushrooms and for four hours she sat in front of a mirror and her reflection told her how horrible she was. So  you need to have a guide, you need to have somebody there that can help you get through that, like I did with the people that were singing.So you don't have that  negative side effect but yes, modern medicine will co-op stuff. That's just what we do. 

 

Ashley James (1:15:36.834)

Yes, so it really is up to us as individuals to advocate for ourselves, to seek out information. Well, I'm sure everyone listening is on the same page. If you're listening to us, you're actively seeking information because you realize you cannot blindly just wait to get sick. Go to the doctor, they hand you a pill and then you're all better magically. That's not how the life works, although that's how Hollywood has painted it. So when we know that Hollywood and the media, the TV, is funded by the pharmaceutical industry and the mainstream medical industry. We've been fed this one lens, this one perspective. Yes, if I have a broken arm, I am not going to my naturopath, I am not going to my acupuncturist, I am going to the ER. Right, like I'm going to a medical doctor. 

 

But for complex, chronic imbalance, MD drug-based medicine fails us. It fails us over and over and over again, and that is because the body wants to heal itself, wants to come back into balance, and it's missing. So they're missing nutrients, there's certain lifestyle choices that are negatively impacting it. So there's things that we can do to support the body to come back in balance, and that's where I am wanting us to learn more about that, like what can we do to get our body back into balance? Naturally, yes, there is. What is wonderful is that there is available to us and that you can help your patients with. That is bioidentical hormone as needed. But I'd love us to get to a point where we don't need a prescription,  where we're supporting us coming back into balance because the body really wants to. It's constantly trying. So what is holding the body back and why are so many women having hormone issues? Do you ever think about that or like to explore that? Why are we so sick? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:17:43.188)

You mean outside of menopause. 

 

Ashley James (1:17:46.864)

Yes, just why are more and more women experiencing hormone related issues? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:17:53.740)

Well, menopause. I think the reason that we still have such a problem with that is because what happened was, if you look back 300-400 years ago, the average lifespan was like 46 or 44. So we didn't really have a big menopause issue because women didn't live that long. We started living longer, extremely longer, like the 80s and 90s, so much faster, like in 100 years. The lifespan has increased so dramatically that evolution hasn't really had a chance to catch up yet. So we have menopause. Now, maybe 300 years from now, menopause will move from 50 to 60 as the body evolves, if we didn't do anything. So that's one thing. 

 

Perimenopause, women that are younger, like I see the number one hormonal issue I see across the board in every age group is low testosterone. 

 

Low testosterone in menopause is understandable because, again, the ovaries make 50% of the testosterone, so it's going to go down. But in a younger population 18 to 35, why is it low?  I can tell you why. Number one is because of birth control pills, and I don't mean to rag on birth control pills. I think they're fine for birth control, but what they do is they raise a protein in your blood called sex hormone binding globulin, which then drives down your testosterone. So younger girls, low testosterone and doctors will joke, well, that's just another reason why they work, because the young girls that are on them don't want sex because their testosterone is so low. When you get into that late 20s, mid 30s to 50, the low testosterone is more than likely from probably obesity, neuroendocrine, disrupting chemicals in the food supply and water, stress, not sleeping, just pretty much a conglomeration of living in the times that we live in now and the country that we live in. 

 

Ashley James (1:20:11.661)

That concept that we didn't really live that long. I think that's only one part of our heritage, though have you considered looking besides white northern Europeans when we look at other cultures, like the blue zones, where we see that other cultures actually live much longer, and to this day, there are certain cultures where women have far less hormone imbalance than we do in the West. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:20:39.813)

I would debate the blue zone thing. The blue zone, at least what I've read. It's an interesting concept but it's never actually been proven. If you look at people like, say in Greece, they eat better diets. I mean, they eat more olive oil, they eat more fish, but they also eat quite a bit of meat. They just don't eat the processed garbage that we eat. 

 

There might be more to the dietary aspects than maybe the age, but I think that what's interesting is, we can get caught up in blue zones or whatever, but it doesn't. I don't think it changes the fact that you could go into, say, a blue zone like Santorini or wherever one of those places, and you can eat exactly the way they do it. It doesn't mean you're going to live longer. You might have a different lifestyle. I think it's a combination of where do they live? Are they walking everywhere they go? Are they eating that food? What genetic makeup do they have? I mean, that a lot of these things are multifaceted, not just one thing, and that's part of the problem in this country. I feel like we try to adapt everybody else's stuff because we don't have our own thing. A friend of mine, she puts on quinceañeras, 15 year old women in Mexican culture have quinceañeras. 15 16-year-old Jewish people have bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. White general white people like my kids. There's no ceremony when you're 15 or 16. You can have a sweet 16, I suppose. So we're looking for something. It's like we don't have any culture. I don't know how else to explain it, but we're always looking outside of ourselves, I guess, to find these answers. The reality is, you start with your family, you can change things in your own group and live the way that you want to. Like I said, you can mimic the Mediterranean diet and you can start instituting those changes and walking more. 

 

If you go to New York City, you don't see a ton of obese people because they walk everywhere.  They literally walk everywhere. When I was there, I think my steps were like 20,000 steps and I didn't do anything different than I would normally do. But you just don't drive, you walk.  I live 14 miles from my office, so I'm not going to walk to the office, but I mean I would if I could. But yes, I just think it's a combination of things, but I really feel like most of this, for our country anyways, is probably dietary and just that we're not as active as we could be. 

 

Ashley James (1:23:34.649)

Yes, walk more, stop eating processed crap. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:23:38.255)

Well, we know people that eat less live longer. I mean that's pretty simple, not like starving yourself, but people that don't eat as much food live longer. I mean we've known that for a long time. Look at the prolonged fasting thing. Giving your gut that rest and having autophagy and the stem cell production is super helpful and I think you can get that by not starving but cutting back on things for sure. 

 

Ashley James (1:24:08.030)

I have a great fasting interview, episode 230, with Dr. Goldhammer. He talks about that, the autophagy, and just a three to five day water fast once every few months is like turning on the dishwasher at night before you go to bed, but for the body and it's pretty phenomenal. He had one person, a woman, who had cancer riddled through her whole body. Her oncologist sent her home to die. She did a 30 day water only fast at his fasting clinic, medically supervised, and when she walked out of there she was cancer-free and he ended up publishing this as a study or whatever you do when you publish these things and just really interesting that the autophagy for some people is powerful enough to the body, wipes out tumors.

 

Not for everyone, but for some people. Then there's really interesting studies around fasting  before chemotherapy. I am not in any way promoting cut, burn and poison medicine for cancer, but for those who choose the chemotherapy route, because I'm also pragmatic and I believe that whatever tool is best for you, you should go for the best tool for you but understand the pros and cons. You got to clean up the mess after chemotherapy. But what's interesting is that there are studies. This is fascinating. They did this in mice before. They did this in humans, but they studied it, they published it. It's out there. It's probably buried though, but you could find it if you looked hard enough. That fasting before, I think it was a two-day fast, it wasn't that long before every round of chemotherapy, significantly reduced all of the side effects to the point where some people didn't lose their hair, didn't get the nausea, like really interesting. Also it targeted the cancer better. Then there's this type of chemotherapy called metronomic chemotherapy, I don't want to say microdose, but it's a far smaller dose. They attach it to a sugar and then they get the cancer to be super hungry and then the cancer gobbles it up. So it's more targeted. So then they use fasting. It is so interesting how we can use fasting in conjunction with certain medicines. But I'd rather go natural. I'd rather prevent cancer in the first place. That's a big thing. Look around you in terms of what the statistics are. I like saying this on my show because it's real. It's a really quick wake up call. One in three people are obese, have diabetes or prediabetes, have heart disease, and get cancer is one third of each population are having this or about to have this problem. 

 

Then look at what the average person is doing. What are they doing? What are they eating,  What are they consuming? Do the opposite. Walk, try walking instead of driving everywhere. Eat whole foods instead of eating packaged foods. Go to bed early instead of staying up late and Netflix. Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing and see if you start feeling better, because it is the accumulation of what we eat and what we do that has led us down this road of disease. 

 

Now you brought up obesity. Can you talk about and shine a light on the GLP-1 pros and cons? There's medications out there, but I also hear that there's certain things we can eat naturally to support GLP-1. What is GLP-1? Why are people in an uproar about it, and I'd love for you to go into teaching us a bit about this. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:27:53.465)

About which aspects in particular? 

 

Ashley James (1:27:58.202)

Well, for example, for people who don't even know what GLP-1 is.But there's GLP-1 medications and then there's some natural things to raise GLP-1. There's people saying it's great. There's people saying it's horrible that we lose muscle mass. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:28:12.809)

Keep in mind the GLP-1s are naturally occurring peptides. They've been around for a long, long time, probably forever. They just were discovered.

 

The issue in GLP-1 is a glucagon-like peptide that is made usually in the small intestine and the cells of the small intestine usually in the small intestine and the cells of the small intestine, and, whether or not you believe that there's a lot of companies out there that are now capitalizing on it. So if you see a supplement that says GLP-1, like blah, blah, blah, to me that's just marketing and I find it somewhat atrocious because they're trying to sell a product. 

 

The GLP-1s, though they've been used in diabetes for decades and what they noticed was that people that were using these were basically losing weight. The only reason that it recently took off was because of Kim Kardashian. I mean, she started using them, and my guess is that the celebrities have been using these for years, and just didn't talk about it but it caught on because of the attention that it got. What's interesting is, like I said, Semaglutide and Terzepatide, Ozempic and Manjaro, they are naturally occurring compounds. You can find them in nature, you can buy them. You could buy Semaglutide on your own. You don't need a prescription for it because it's a peptide. The problem is, what happened was so when, when you hear all these controversies, like remember a while back, the diabetics can't get it. All these people are using it for their weight loss and the diabetics can't get it. How horrible. 

 

Well, the reason that the companies ran out wasn't because they ran out of semaglutide, they ran out of the pen. So when you patent something, you cannot patent a naturally occurring compound. So you can't patent estradiol , it's not patentable. But you can patent the way that it's delivered. You could use gel or a mist or whatever, but the actual medicine that's in there isn't what's patented. So semaglutide isn't a patentable medicine. What was patented was they come with a pen that has a button. You push the button and it gives you the device. Well, because of COVID, they ran out of the plastic and they ran out of the devices, but the product was still there, and so there's plenty of this product around. 

 

What's the other one? The rates of thyroid and pancreatic cancer. Well one, pancreatic cancer was never an issue. But number two, the thyroid cancer that was shown in the study, was in rats. It's never been reproduced in humans, so that was another fear thing. 

 

Then, lastly, the muscle loss. Anybody that loses 50 pounds, let's say they did Atkins low fat whatever they did, and they lost 40 pounds. On average, about 12 pounds of that would have been muscle wasting, 14 pounds maybe with Ozempic. So it's the same. It's because of weight loss, because most people when they lose weight they're in a caloric deficit. There's no way to really lose that much weight and not have some of it be from muscle density. There's just no way. I mean, you could inject yourself with testosterone and do some heavy lifting and do lots of protein, but in order for you to go into enough of a caloric deficit to lose and we're not talking about people that are losing 10 pounds, we're talking about people that are losing more weight. 

 

The problem is that this got pushed to the forefront. This is again my theory, but you have a lot of people out there that make a lot of money on weight loss programs, coaches, nurses, doctors, whatever and if they weren't on board with prescribing those meds, or they couldn't prescribe those meds, they were losing a lot of business. So to come out and start trashing this medication that I believe has really helped a lot of people, and I think, if used correctly, obesity might be a thing of the past. I think chastising folks saying it's a crutch, the way I look at it is it's a tool, it's another tool. There's lots of tools out there which may work for somebody, may not work for somebody else. 

 

But I don't think we should be judging people, like Oprah, she used Ozempic but she didn't talk about it for like a year and a half. Why, why? I don't understand why. Why is it so bad? The fact that you people should just be happy you lost weight, you're healthier, you're down 40 pounds, it should be a happy thing, not critical saying oh you cheater,  why did you do that? That part I don't understand. 

 

Ashley James (1:33:23.028)

Yes, it scares me though, the amount of muscle loss, I guess with any weight loss. You're saying that the muscle loss with other diets is similar to Ozempic? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:33:35.858)

If it was just somebody doing something at home, if you're just like I'm going to do Atkins, you're going to lose muscle mass. It's going to happen, and it's going to be about 30%, or probably 20 to 30%. The thing is, if you hired like a trainer, health coach, somebody that could help you with your food and then with your weight, and you were on testosterone yes, you wouldn't lose maybe half of that, but if it was just like a run-of-the-mill person that just did a diet, you're going to lose muscle density. It happens with all weight loss programs. 

 

Ashley James (1:34:17.339)

With women who are wanting to lose weight and build muscle. Would you ever prescribe testosterone for them during that period even if their testosterone is normal, would you help them by increasing their testosterone temporarily while they're working out, so that they could prevent muscle loss, or would that be too detrimental? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:34:41.270)

It depends on how high. Most women that I test are low. A free testosterone, the range might be 0.2 to 6.4. That's a 32 fold range. So let's say you come back at 0.4 and then you get put on testosterone and you're up to two and a half. You're still in the lower half of normal. I could almost triple your testosterone and it would still be normal. 

 

So there's a lot of play there with testosterone and as long as the levels aren't too high for too long, you won't usually get the negative side effects. If it's too high or  too high for too long, you could have voice changes, hair growth, you can actually have the clitoris enlarged. Some of those things are permanent, they don't go away. So it really varies. I wouldn't want to make somebody super physiologic for an extended period of time, but helping them with muscle loss is fine, but most women that I treat don't go and get a DEXA scan before and after to know how much. They're just looking at how their clothes fit. 

 

Ashley James (1:35:57.407)

Right, but the older we get our muscle, the amount of muscle we have really plays a role in our long-term health and in our longevity. I was told this many years ago by a functional MD. She was actually in the Olympics twice. Amazing woman. She's in her 80s now and still regularly runs marathons in the desert. This woman is super healthy and she says you must protect your muscles and she told this to me in my 30s. She goes, build your muscle now, protect it, because when you're in your 80s it could be, for example, just one bout of pneumonia. The amount of muscle you have in your body is the difference between whether you live or die, and your strength is so important when you get into your 80s if you're to prevent a fall. It's a difference between whether you're going to be cycling and walking or whether you're going to be in a walker or worse, bedridden, and so that's just the idea that we would lose so much muscle with a drug but, like you said, it could also be with other extreme diets where there's a great calorie deficit and of course, we want to help people gain balance and lose weight healthfully. 

 

That's interesting though you're saying that in certain circumstances like taking the GLP-1 protocol, getting to a healthier weight and while also doing everything you can to protect your muscle doesn't have long-term negative side effects, because we've seen people have been using it for years. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:37:37.140)

Well, I mean, we have data on diabetics. The problem is, diabetics have other health concerns. So are we going to know because of the millions and millions of people that are now using this stuff? I saw another podcast where this person's a micro dosing now there and people just make stuff up and so I don't know if people are getting the doses or if they're getting legitimate product, because there's generics out there now and there's compounding pharmacies, and so it's one of those things, where it's hard to tell, because, people are using all kinds of stuff now. Should they be on it for years and years? Probably not. My goal is to just get their weight down and then wean them off the medication, but you also have to look at it like what if they were pre-diabetic? Or what if they had high cholesterol, high blood pressure? You now have a system where they've lost 35 pounds and their cholesterol is better, they're off all their blood pressure meds. I mean, yes, they lost a little bit of muscle density, but maybe they're going to live longer because their heart is healthier. 

 

Ashley James (1:39:01.076)

Yes, there's other metrics that you're looking at. Have you seen anything natural? I know, of course, we're going to question everything and be suspicious of natural products in the market that make health claims, but I've seen interesting information around allulose that it increases GLP-1. Have you seen anything natural or something healthy for the gut that increases GLP-1 in the body that you would say is worth looking into? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:39:32.752)

I have not. No, but like I said, this area is so new. Allulose has some activation constructs in the neurons in your brain and those neurons respond to GLP-1s. So what it's thought is that allulose can potentiate the ability of GLP-1 to activate neurons in the brain. But that would be the only thing I could think of there that it wouldn't help you lose weight, but it might help brain function, and that's the other thing too. With more weight comes more inflammation, more inflammation, Alzheimer's, all kinds of stuff. So I think there's a lot of potential issues with GLP-1s. I mean, we may find that certain probiotics can help GLP-1 production. I just think we're so early on in the process. I do feel like what they're finding with these GLP-1s too, is there's people that are quitting gambling, drinking. There's a lot of weirdness around addictive behaviors because that's what I've noticed with GLP-1s, it curbs your appetite a little bit, but it also gives you the ability to think differently about food. You're not feeling the need to like to eat everything in sight. But you also can say okay, I'm standing at the fridge, it's 10 o'clock at night, I want ice cream. Are you hungry? No, I just want it. Okay sorry about that. Can you do two tablespoons, or do you need to eat the whole container? I think I can do two tablespoons. Before I even had that discussion, now it gives me the ability to think it through, and then by the time I've done that, I don't want it anymore, anyway, I kind of talk myself out of it.

 

I can't tell you how many women that I see, who during COVID and whatnot, would have two, three glasses of wine a night, and basically, that's probably 600 calories. Not to mention the alcohol is not good for you, but they stopped drinking because they just weren't even thinking about it anymore, and so it's one of those things where, I think it's going to make a lot of big differences in different ways if we could just get past the negativity on it.

 

Ashle James (1:42:27.564)

And if and if we can also create a system that protects the muscle loss as much as possible. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:42:37.216)

There’s going to be other peptides out there and they are not regulated so we can't know for sure if you're getting a good product and then the government comes in and shuts them down. Don't think for a minute, though. There isn't a company that's already looking at that. I guarantee you somebody's going to come out with something that can spare the muscle density, or they'll combine it with testosterone or something like that. If the women that I have on GOPs I usually also have on testosterone.

 

Ashley James (1:43:14.345)

Like you said, some nutritionist, health coach, guiding them with a healthy diet and going to the gym doing weights, because the only way to build muscle is to stress the muscle. So you got to get the weights in. Even if you start with bands, do it in a way that you're not going to injure yourself. The most common thing is people injure themselves within a month of joining a gym because they're using the weights too much, too long, too hard. Whatever they're doing, they're not doing it correctly. That's why it really is worth it to start slow build up. I just talked to a doctor yesterday about this. He says it takes six months before your tendons and ligaments get strong enough, because every time you go to the gym, you're there, you're strengthening them as well, and it just takes longer for the body, especially the older we get to adapt to our new fitness level. So it's best to get some fitness in every day, even if it's 20 minutes, just some fitness in every day, because we atrophy, and that is the scary thing is, our culture is conducive to atrophy. We just video gaming, netflix, binging, driving, everywhere, we atrophy. If you're not using it, you're losing it. So get in the gym or go for a walk, just do gentle daily and and progressively, slowly build the difficulty up. 

 

I am one of those people that goes in guns blazing, doing the hardest exercise and then injures myself then I'm out for six weeks. I could have just been doing simple little stuff for the six weeks I was out because I was recovering from the injury. So don't go in guns blazing, it's that marathon idea, not the sprint. Every day, get some  movement, slowly increase the weights and then, after you're used to it, do the stronger stuff. You're building muscle. Strength is using the muscle. So we got to use it. 

 

You have a book, and this book looks fascinating, The Hormone Balance Bible. Tell us about it. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:45:30.448)

Basically, it's a culmination of all of the things that I was talking about with my mom and all that stuff and the culmination at the time also I was reading a lot of Caroline Mace and Carl Jung and Sally Hogshead and they use a lot of archetypes. So to tell stories.

 

Basically when you write a book, you have to show the problem and then you have to fix the problem. Well, I found that if I talk to women about low testosterone, they would get it to a certain degree. But then if I started telling stories because I'd sat with 40,000 women and I listen and I love stories, and so what I noticed was similar threads, and so what I did was I came up with these 12 most common hormone imbalances and I put them into archetypes. So low testosterone would be the nun, high estrogen would be the queen, low thyroid is the underdog, and the book talks about these imbalances in a way that makes it easier to understand. 

 

So, like I would notice that a lot of women, when I would tell them these stories, would just start nodding yes, that's me or crying because oh my god, you're the first person that's ever put it into words me and it was funny because it wasn't me, it was just all these other women I had listened to. Then I came up with the shines protocol, which I  briefly described earlier, which is a spiritual practice, hormones, infoceuticals, which is  the woo factor, nutrition, exercise and supplements. So each of those 12 imbalances has its own shines protocol and put it into a book talked about, obviously, lab testing as well, what each hormone does and why, and it ended up being I don't know 500 pages, but it's a lot of information, it's a reference and, yes, it's a culmination of all these years where I was learning all this new stuff. 

 

Ashley James (1:47:41.964)

That is so cool. I love that you gave each persona life so that we could identify and go wow, like I get it, that makes sense. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:47:53.970)

Well, I think that's how I connected people to it. They just got it. It was like light bulbs. 

 

Ashley James (1:48:00.506)

 Where can we go to buy your book, The Hormone Balance Bible? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:48:04.582)

It's on Amazon right now. It came out a couple of years ago with HarperCollins. It's on Amazon. I think it's $15 or $16 right now. You can also find me on Instagram. I post there sometimes twice a day, usually a topic of the day. I also have a great YouTube channel where I do YouTube live every day, talk about different hormones and balances. 

 

What I found fascinating was I had no idea, but the demographic of women. The majority that are on TikTok are over 65. Fascinating for me, for my group, I did a post two months ago about a study that had come out that showed women that are over the age of 65 that were on estradiol had lower rates of lung, colon and breast cancer, they had less dementia and they had less morbidity by 19%. This was a study of 10 million women. I mean it went like I've never had something go viral in my life and that one had like almost 300,000 views and it’s just crazy, and it just showed me the power of the internet. There's so many people out there looking, and women especially, because they're getting gaslighted all the time. Oh, you're too young, oh, you're too old. Testing is stupid. So many things that you're told and all women want is help and an answer. They just want to get back to their lives. 

 

Ashley James (1:49:37.360)

So do you teach through your instagram lives ? Do you teach women how to stop getting gaslit by their gynecologists, by their medical doctors? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:49:50.502)

I'm starting to get a little bit more into that aspect of it, because I have this thing that I hate called lazy medicine, which is where doctors will just say stuff to get you out of their office, oh, I don't do lab testing, hormones fluctuate all the time. Well, that's a fancy way of saying just I don't want to deal with it and get out because they just don't want to look at the labs and whatnot, and that's fine, that's their choice. Usually right now it's just being persistent, and I've had women ask me all the time how do I get a doctor to do this? You don't. You don't get a doctor to do anything. 

 

If they're not going to do it, then you have to find someone else, and that's not your job. Your job is not to change their mind. Your job is to get what you want, and there are people out there like me that order stuff all the time and that do hormones and that are educated. It's just a matter of finding that person, which can be difficult. But the beautiful thing now is, since covid, we can get licensed in multiple states so that we can do telemedicine. So I'm licensed in like 27 states so I can see women across the country. 

 

Ashley James (1:51:07.123)

Interesting. You have two websites. One of them is for people to book appointments and then the other is for just some great, more great information. You want to tell us about your websites. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:51:19.929)

So my website, Dr. Shawn Tassone, D-r-S-h-a-w-n-T-a-s-s-o-n-e is basically if you want to make an appointment, it just gives generalized information. tassonemd.com is my  fun website that's got the book, it's got the quiz on there. If you don't want to get your labs tested and it's midnight and you're bored, tassonemd.com/quiz. Obviously I'm going to ask for your email, but you'll get an answer. You'll get one of those 12 archetypes and at least it gives you an idea of where to start. Nothing is obviously as good as labs, but I can't tell you how many times I've had women tell me how accurate they felt the test was. So I'm proud of it. I think it's a great quiz and something that can certainly open your eyes to certain things for sure. 

 

Ashley James (1:52:20.747)

Is there ever a chance they get the, “You're perfect, there's nothing wrong with you” as an answer. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:52:27.755)

Not unless you answered every question, that you didn't have a problem. But I guess then you wouldn't be taking the quiz in the first place. 

 

Ashley James (1:52:34.161)

Right, yes, “You're great! Go home!” You have a podcast, Confessions of a Male Gynecologist. I just love the title. How did you come up with that? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:52:45.909)

I don't know. I guess  you always try to think of things that are a little bit off or edgy. I also am acutely aware, because I'm reminded daily of the fact that I'm a man in a woman's world and 75% of OBGYNs now, I think, are females, so we're a dying breed and, you get people all the time no uterus, no choice, no opinion, blah, blah, blah. I get it, I know where it comes from and I understand it. But to negate all the 50,000 women that I've sat with, because I have learned from that and not to mention the training and all that. But I think I was looking for something to  be a little cheeky and allude to the fact that I am a guy and maybe I know some things you don't. 

 

Ashley James (1:53:46.091)

To be a good male gynecologist, you have to actually work harder because you don't have a uterus. You don't have a female cycle, you haven't experienced it. So you do have to in some ways to be a good one. You have to work harder as a man to be a good gynecologist. Also, I think you do have an interesting perspective because you haven't lived in it, so that you really have to listen and be present, I mean, to be a good one, which  sounds like you're a good one. So I wouldn't throw away all the male gynecologists. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:54:26.709)

No, I'll tell you what. There's a lot of something I don't do that I couldn't do that I've seen women do. I've seen women say stuff like oh, she says she has a bad period. I have a bad period. She thinks she has a bad period. You tell me your period hurts. I'm like, okay, I get it. I can't compare it and I wouldn't because I can't, but I think it can go both ways too. If the female thinks you're a complainer, I don't think that because I don't have anything to compare it to. Also, the flip side of that is that proverbial end of one just because you know your uterus…

 

Ashley James (1:55:06.731)

it doesn't mean you know other ones. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:55:08.462)

Yes, so it's the same argument. Well, you're not her, so you don't have a choice, and it's  an interesting concept, for the most part I don't have to be a woman to understand that perimenopause and menopause sucks and that you're having issues with sleep. Sure, I can do it, but yes, I get it, I understand it. 

 

Ashley James (1:55:29.956)

Well, I'm intrigued and I know my listeners will be as well to check out your podcast Confessions of a Male Gynecologist. It does sound intriguing and you're edgy, so that's fun. You could be like the male gynecologist Joe Rogan, Yes, I think you could do it. You sit there with a cigar.

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:55:55.319)

I would actually do that. I would do that.

 

Ashley James (1:56:01.055)

You should get on this show. You've got the edge. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:56:03.892)

Well, we're in Austin, but I don't think I'm on Joe's radar. 

 

Ashley James (1:56:07.768)

Not yet. With a podcast like that Confessions of a Male Gynecologist I think you could do it. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:56:16.710)

We shall see, I'll do it. 

 

Ashley James (1:56:19.516)

Yes, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Is there anything left unsaid? Is there anything you wanted to make sure that you said to wrap up today's interview? 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:56:29.328)

The main thing is don't give up. I say it all the time. It's frustrating. I get it. Sometimes you got to see four or five doctors. 

 

There was an article that just came out in the UK a couple weeks ago that said women in the UK have to have 10 visits at a physician's office before they get diagnosed with menopause. Totally ridiculous. But it is what it is, if you give up, then you're not helping to pave the way for the women that come behind you. The more that you speak up, the more that you say no, the more that you make demands. 

 

You're doing that not just for you, but that doctor is going to learn eventually, because if they've got five women in there in a day or 10 in a week that are coming in demanding these things, they're going to start looking into it and why? So you can. It's an educational thing on your part too, and think of it also as being there for the women that come behind you. 

 

Ashley James (1:57:30.740)

Be willing to fire your doctor and go find one that will treat you the way you want to be treated and also look into the things you want them to look into. So don't don't try to force the doctor to do something they're not willing to do because they wouldn't even be good at it anyway. 

 

What are they going to do with labs if they're not even willing to run them? They're going to take one, look at them and be like, okay, what are they going to do there? That's not their wheelhouse, go find it. I love saying you don't take your car to the plumber, you don't take your car to the electrician, we do this all the time, we go to the wrong specialist or to the wrong doctor. So it's okay, go to different doctors, get different opinions, get a second opinion, get a third opinion. Find the right team that's willing to listen to you and work with you and, yes, advocate for yourself. If they're not receptive, walk out of that office there. Don't put them on a pedestal. You're employing them, not the other way around. So you're allowed to fire the doctor and go find one that listens to you  and you can say that Dr. Shawn Tassone said so. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:58:44.297)

I don't want to be as dramatic as firing them, but just go somewhere else. How's that? 

 

Ashley James (1:58:50.773)

Okay, then they won't learn if you don't fire them, they'll never learn. They need to know that they've been fired by a handful of women until they start waking up. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:59:00.309)

Yes, that's true, it works. 

 

Ashley James (1:59:02.785)

Thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been such a pleasure and all the links to everything that Dr. Shawn Tassone does, is going to be in the show notes of today's podcast at learntruehealth.com. Truly a pleasure to dive into this topic with you and if anything groundbreaking comes about, I'd love to have you back on the show to continue teaching us. 

 

Dr. Shawn Tassone (1:59:23.992)

Sure. Sounds great. 

 

Outro:

 

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