You can navigate menopause and midlife with these health tips from Dr. Deb Muth, a Naturopathic doctor.

Elaine: Hi, everyone. Welcome. I'm really excited because today I have Dr. Deb Muth. She is a naturopathic doctor. She's a women's health nurse practitioner. She's a board-certified anti-aging specialist. I was on her podcast, which was a huge honor. She's a naturopathic doctor. She's a women's health nurse practitioner. She's board-certified anti-aging specialist. She is the host of the podcast, "Let's Talk Wellness Now." And she is the founder of Serenity Healthcare Center. Is that all? Dr. Muth: I think so. I hope so, right? Elaine: That's a lot. So, we met on your podcast, which I was originally on to talk about autoimmunity with you. And then we got off onto this whole other conversation about aging well in midlife and menopause. And so I wanted to bring you on because I think, often in our culture, there's a narrative that once you hit menopause, as a woman, it's just a downward slope. And so tell us your perspective on aging as a woman? Dr. Muth: So, I love midlife. I've worked with midlife women for 20 years, and I think it's an amazing time of life for women. A lot of women come into who they are, as women, in their 50s. Like, it's finally, like, there's a freedom, there's an excitement of, I have my life to live for me. Like, they've raised their children, their marriages have done whatever they're gonna do. And now it's like, "I can focus on me. I can do things that I wanna do." And instead of it being like the end of our life, I really see it as being an exciting time for our lives because we have this whole other half of our life to live at this point. And for many of us, it's an exciting time. You know, they get to do the things that they maybe couldn't do when they were younger, having children and raising a family. And now they get to focus on all those amazing things, whether it's gardening, or going back to school, or changing careers, or just kind of being who they are or exploring who they are as women because we do change. You know, being a midlife woman compared to being a 20-something-year-old woman is very different. Our aspirations, our desires, what we find important in life, tend to change as we get a little bit older, a little bit wiser, right? So it can be a really exciting time of life for us. It can also be a time of life where we shed a lot of things. Like many women that I meet end up going through a divorce at 50-something or 60-something. They've just decided, like, "You know what? I'm not living the second half of my life the same way I lived my first half." And maybe they didn't have a great relationship. And they're finally able to recognize that and move on. I have a lot of women though, who say, "You know what? I wanna rekindle my life. I wanna rekindle my relationship. I want to explore sexuality and sensuality because I've never been able to do that before. Or I don't know how, or I always thought it was this dirty little secret." And now we're saying, "No, it's not. It's amazing. And it could be great." And so we have women exploring that part of themselves that they've just kind of tucked away and forgotten about. So, I think for most aspects, midlife aging is amazing. And it's wonderful. If we talk about from a hormone perspective, you know, certainly, hormone shift, as we age, which can bring its own challenges, our bodies change, our structure changes. We go through different changes for sexuality. We have more vaginal dryness, more pain with intercourse, things like that. And so you have to be a little more creative to make things comfortable. But I also think using hormones is a wonderful place for us. It's gotten a really huge taboo, over the years, and it doesn't have to be that way. You can use hormones safely, you can use herbs, there's all kinds of things that we can do to regenerate ourselves and to slow down that aging process. So, it doesn't have to be this abrupt. All of a sudden, we're like our 90-year-old grandparents. And, you know, we don't like how we look, we don't like how we're aging, all of that. It doesn't really have to be that way. It can be done safely and effectively, and you can feel wonderful the whole time with it. Elaine: Right. So, I think I get a lot of questions from women who aren't quite sure what exactly is happening to their bodies. So, can you give us a very easy, understandable way, what's happening in perimenopause? What is perimenopause? And then what is menopause? What's happening to us, hormonally in that time frame? Dr. Muth: Absolutely. So, menopause is defined as the absence of our period. Average age of menopause is 52, give or take two years on either side. Perimenopause is defined as 7 to 10 years before menopause. So, starting about age 35 is when we're gonna start to see a decline in some of our hormones. And usually, progesterone is the first hormone that declines. Progesterone is very calming. It's very euphoric. It just makes us go, "Yeah, whatever, I can roll with it." So, in that 30s, early 40s, when we start having disruptive sleep, we're a little bit more irritable, we're a little bit more anxious. It typically comes from that decline of progesterone. We don't start losing estrogen until about age 45 or 50, somewhere in that range. We're gonna start to see that decline in estrogen. Estrogen is for women like testosterone is for men. Estrogen is our main hormone, it's our main driver. It prevents us from having hot flashes, and night sweats, and vaginal dryness, and helps keep our brain functioning well. So, when we start seeing that decline, those are typically some of the symptoms you're gonna start to see. For some people, they never have a single hot flash. And other people are like drenched in sweats, they're miserable, they're off and on with their clothes all the time because they're hot and then they're cold and then they're hot. And they go through a pattern of irritability, and moodiness, things like that as those hormones start to shift. Now, we also have male hormones in our body. We call them androgens, testosterone, DHEA. And DHEA is a mother hormone. So, it helps us make all of our hormones. It peaks at age 20 and gradually falls from there. So, it's responsible for giving us a lot of motivation, and creativity, and drive. So, when that thing starts to decline, we start to lose our excitement for things that we used to love to do. And so replacing that can really be helpful for us to maintain that energy and vitality. And testosterone is necessary for us to have the same type of things, drive, motivation, building muscle mass, having a good sex drive, burning body fat, right? So, we want to have a nice amount of testosterone around. The key to all of the hormones is having them balanced properly so you can feel the best that you can. Elaine: Right. So, even as we approach menopause and estrogen drops, progesterone drops, testosterone drops, like everything starts to drop. So, are there any natural remedies that you tell your patients that can be helpful? Things that people who are listening, just in their daily life, what are some things that they could do to help them through this? Dr. Muth: Absolutely. So, diet is always key. Our traditional American diet is probably the worst thing for menopausal women because it makes all of the symptoms that we have in menopause, worse. Sugar and alcohol, typically trigger hot flashes. If anybody's ever had a glass of wine and they start having a hot flash, they've known that. So, diet is key for one thing. And then exercise, I think is always really good, too. That helps balance those hormones. It helps make more testosterone. it helps make neurotransmitters that help our brain function better. But if we're looking at things like I'm starting to have some hot flashes, I'm starting to have some night sweats. I don't really want to see a doctor, I don't really wanna get testing done yet. I'm 45, what do I do? Well, there's a couple of things we can do. We can use things like chase tree or black cohosh. Those are really great herbs that can help balance your hormones. Evening primroses oil is another one that's really good. Black currant seed oil is really good. And then there's something called pregnenolone, which is a precursor hormone. So we actually make all of our hormones from cholesterol. So, when these doctors are driving down our cholesterol and they wanna see them, you know, below 70, that is not good for our hormonal function. We won't make hormones if we're declining those lipids too low. So, making sure that you're not doing that and you're getting good hormone production out of your cholesterol, but then using something like pregnenolone can be a really nice help because we make everything from pregnenolone. So, whatever the body feels like it needs, it can drive from that. And it can give you more energy, it can help you sleep a little bit better. When things are really getting a little deeper in, and you're really struggling with those hormones, then you wanna go into a little bit more specific hormone function. But in the beginning, a lot of times, you can use those kinds of things, and they are really helpful. Elaine: Right. Definitely. I feel like I've gotten through menopause pretty easily because of my autoimmune diet. So, I was not eating the standard American diet. And I just kind of went, "Oh, who knew that this was gonna set me up to success?" Dr. Muth: Right. Elaine: So, yeah. So, something I'm sure you see a lot, I hear a lot about, because I went through Hashimotos thyroid issues in midlife. So, thyroid seems to go hand in hand with perimenopause and menopause. So, how can we take care of our thyroid health as we get through this transition? Dr. Muth: Absolutely. I tell all women that starting at about age 38 to 40, whether you're symptomatic or not, you should start having full thyroid panels done, and track them annually so you can start to see if there's small changes that happen. Because the older we get, the more likely that thyroids not gonna function optimally. It doesn't mean it's not functioning, but it's not optimal. And make sure you work with a functional medicine or an integrative doctor that views thyroid differently than your traditional doctor. Because unless your TSH level is five or greater, and for some doctors, they won't do anything till it's 10, and then you're really far gone, you want somebody to catch that early enough to make it be optimal. But some of the things you can do, if you're kind of in that realm of thyroid, it's okay, but it's not great. And you have some thyroid symptoms, you're getting some dry hair, dry skin, dry nails, constipation, some hair loss, some fatigue, some weight gain, that kind of thing, you could start to use trace minerals that helps feed the thyroid. So, things like zinc, selenium, iodine, and they make a trace mineral blend. So, you don't have to take all of those things individually. That's a really great help. Cooking with herbs and things that create a lot of iodine. So, like sea kelp, dolce, those kinds of things that have a lot of iodine in them, and they're great things you can just sprinkle on your salads. So you don't have to worry about having to eat seaweed. They may come in things that are palatable. So, that's one good thing as well. And then I think making sure that we just keep our diets as clean as we possibly can, that's helpful. There are some different herbal things depending on whether or not your thyroid is too high function or too low function, we will get very specific with certain herbs, like bladder wrack and couple of others. But you kind of have to work with somebody that really understands your thyroid. It wouldn't be a generalized thing. But trace minerals and iodine is a great place to start. Elaine: Now, what about iodine if you have Hashimoto's? Do you have to be careful or not? Dr. Muth: It's a mixed bag. So, we've got research on both sides. One says, "Yes, take it." One says, "No don't ever touch it." It really kind of depends. I would be careful adding iodine either way. Too much iodine can overstimulate the thyroid. And for some people, it can cause it not to function at all. So you wanna be careful, and you don't wanna use a lot. Like if you're gonna use iodine, and you don't know where your iodine levels are, and maybe you don't know where your thyroid levels are at, I would start with a very small amount, like just a six-milligram amount. Don't go real high in it. You just want enough to feed the body. You know, most of our soils these days are depleted of our trace minerals, including iodine. And most of us avoid iodized salt these days for a whole variety of reasons. So, if you're doing that, you're not getting enough iodine in your diet typically. So, adding that would be helpful. Himalayan sea salt is a good supplement to use for some of that, too. But, yeah. And just getting it in food sources with sea vegetables, and seafood, and things like that have a lot of good iodine in it. I live in, what's considered the Goyder belt capital of the world. We don't have seafood here, we don't have iodine in our soils. So, most of the people that I'm seeing are iodine deficient. If you live on a place where you get a lot of fresh seafood, you probably don't have an iodine deficiency if you're eating that. And then you don't have to worry quite so much about that. Elaine: Right. Right. Well, I love that you brought up the point about our soils are so depleted. And then we've all been trained into this like low sodium diet, which it's, you don't wanna be eating the like refined salt, right? Like, all the trace minerals have been removed. Dr. Muth: Exactly. They've added iodine to it, but they've taken out all the other good things from it as well. Elaine: Right, right. So, we shouldn't fear salt, right? Dr. Muth: We should not fear salt. Absolutely. Elaine: Salt is not the problem. So, another thing I've been seeing a lot and also have heard, I'm also a Pilates instructor. So, I hear from clients who are in midlife, I'm seeing a lot of women being given birth control, Depo-Provera shots, all kinds of stuff to mitigate the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. Can you talk to us about using that in midlife. I have clients into their 50s that are still on birth control. What is your thought on this and what do we need to know? Dr. Muth: So I would definitely stay away from Depo-Provera. It's probably one of the biggest problems that we've ever created in women's health. Well, one of them, not all, there's a lot of them, but it's one big one. And it creates a lot of problems for us. There's a lot of weight gain that comes with that. There's increased risks of cancer with it. It is not the best birth control option out there for people. Now, if you need birth control as an option, going through menopause, then oral contraceptives can be a possibility. IUD can be another possibility that has very little hormone in it, which I think is a better option these days. But to just give women oral contraceptives and say, "Here, we're not gonna give bioidentical hormones, or we're not gonna give hormones at all anymore, but here I'll throw this pack of pills at you and this will be fine and it'll get you through." Well, that's not really the answer either, because they haven't fixed their problem of giving hormones. And they haven't titrated the hormones for each individual person. They've just thrown something at a woman and said, "Here you go, you'll be fine." But that's typically what we've done for a hundred years with women. We don't want to look at them as an individual. With men, we have no problems giving them testosterone like it's candy, or Cialis, or Viagra, or any of that. But for women, it's very different. I'm not a man-hater, but I'm just saying, you know, women could use a little bit more finesse in how we treat them in healthcare. So, I'm not a huge fan of that. They're, A, it's the wrong type of hormones. It's not bio-identical. They're synthetic, they're usually in much higher doses than what we need. And I don't really like synthetic progesterone at all. I really like more of the natural progesterone versus the synthetic progesterone. And there's been studies that show the synthetic progesterone increases our risk for breast cancer compared to the bioidentical progesterone. So, I don't like to do that after 40, unless somebody really needs birth control and they don't have any other option or they don't want another option. There are different options we can do, but I'd prefer not to use them. Elaine: Right. Well, often I'm hearing women being given birth control in their 40s and 50s to control like crazy heavy periods. Like, I used to say, I have like crime scene periods, where it's like, you could barely leave the house. So, that's when you're just slapping birth control on that, you're not really expressing those issues. So, what in midlife is causing these like crazy heavy periods and bleeding through tampons and all of that? Dr. Muth: It's very simple. It's the imbalance between estrogen and progesterone. So, progesterone is our very first hormone to fall. So, at 35, 40 when we're starting to lose progesterone, but estrogen is staying at its normal. We have a big gap between that estrogen and progesterone. And that's where we're called an estrogen dominant state. We have more circulating estrogen than progesterone, we're building a thick lining of the uterus. And every month to protect ourselves, we're shedding off that lining. And the more lining that's there, the heavier the bleed it typically is. And so if we fix the progesterone problem, we fix the bleeding problem. It's that simple. Elaine: Got it. Dr. Muth: But yet women have a hysterectomy, and they go under laser treatments, and all these horrible things that had we just fixed the hormonal problem, that's all they would've needed was some progesterone to balance that out, 90% of the time. Elaine: Oh my goodness. Because I hear women getting I don't know if I'm saying it right, ablation. Dr. Muth: Yes. Endometrial ablation. Dr. Muth: Yep. So what they do is they go in and they put a laser on the lining of the uterus and they scar that out and they thin it out so that there's less bleeding. And sometimes women will never have a period again. And sometimes they'll just have light spotting with it, but they're actually scaring the lining of the uterus instead of fixing the problem. And the problem is too much estrogen, not enough progesterone. Elaine: Got it. And is that what can often lead to I think women in midlife? Dr. Muth: Yes. Elaine: Yes, we have a lot on our plate with children, aging parents, career, what have you, but is that part of, what's also leading to maybe depression or just kind of feeling down and blue, is it because of that lack of progesterone? Dr. Muth: Yeah, that's usually the first thing. So, we'll start having sleep issues. That's the first thing that we notice with low progesterone is insomnia, broken sleep, and then more sadness, more depression. You'll feel more, PMSy like irritable, and moody, and you find all the stupid people in the world and you have very little tolerance for anything or anyone simply because you don't have that progesterone there. And once you have progesterone, it's like, "Okay, I can deal with this a lot better. It's easier. The world's not so stupid. And I actually like my husband again." Elaine: Oh my goodness. I love it because my naturopath said just make sure to eat some healthy carbs, have some sweet potatoes with dinner. And I found that completely solved my waking up at 2: 00 in the morning and not being able to sleep. So, what do you think of that? Dr. Muth: So, sweet potatoes are wild yam, right? And so all of our bioethical hormones are made from wild yam, and wild yam can make more progesterone. Now, usually, you have to eat a whole bunch of that to get a lot of hormone in there. But for some people, it's just that little bit that sparks that hormonal development for them and they're fine. Elaine: Yeah. Yeah. So, I hear more and more about managing blood sugar as we age and how is so important for overall health. So, I'd love for you to speak to this, especially as midlife women, how is important for us? Dr. Muth: Absolutely. So, as we age, all men and women have more difficulty managing blood sugar. Okay. You can develop something called insulin resistance. And as the hormones decline, that insulin resistance becomes worse. And basically, insulin resistance is that we're trying to produce more insulin to keep our blood sugar in check. And so if we're eating a higher carb diet, the body's producing a lot more insulin more frequently throughout the day. And over time, the body can become kind of resistant to that. And so it's no longer producing the insulin that it should, or it's producing an overabundance of insulin to try to keep that blood sugar in check. By doing that, the blood sugar typically stays higher. We'll have more weight gain. And the more weight gain we have, the worse this process becomes. So, the cleaner we can keep our diet, where we're not doing a lot of processed foods, processed carbs, sugars, things like that, the less strain there is on the pancreas, and the less strain there is on producing all this insulin. So, diet and exercise are huge during this time to keep our weight down and keep our blood sugars more stable. Elaine: Right. Because I think that's so many women tell me, it's like, "Oh my God, I woke up one morning," myself included. "And all of a sudden, you're like, wait, where'd this like tire come from. I didn't order this." Dr. Muth: Exactly. Exactly. And part of that comes from that imbalance between estrogen and progesterone, too. So, when we're more estrogen dominant, we're gonna have more of that midsection weight gain. And it's that stubborn weight that just doesn't go away. And then you start to see more cellulite buildup, more body fat buildup because you're losing your muscle mass. And if you don't have enough of your male hormones to balance that out, you're gonna become more like the Pillsbury Doughboy, you're gonna be fluffy and soft instead of having more muscle. And no matter how much you work out, you're still gonna have more of that soft fluffiness instead of that strong masculine muscle building. And if we have more muscle, we burn more fat and our blood sugar stay down more. So, it's an entire process that works really well when it's working well. But when it's not, it's a problem all the way around the board. Elaine: Yeah. Right. Right. It is. It's very circular, right? It's like eat well, you need to sleep well, you need to move your body, you need to move your muscle. Dr. Muth: Yes. Exactly. Elaine: I always say in midlife, you need to have money in the bank, you also need to have muscle in the bank. Dr. Muth: Yes. You do. It is so true. Elaine: Muscle is the fountain of youth. Dr. Muth: Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and think about it, our brain's a muscle, our heart's a muscle. Everything we have is muscle. So if we wanna prevent age-related diseases, which for most of us, the biggest concerns are breast cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's disease, right? Those are our three big things. We don't wanna get any of those. So you have to keep your body really healthy and strong to avoid those things. You need to have good muscle building. Whether we're working our brain as a muscle, we're working our heart as a muscle, or we're actually building muscle and having less body fat, all of that is important for us to stay healthy in midlife. Elaine: Absolutely. Well, I think it's the foundation to being able to stay active to, you know, a career going, start a new career, go back to school, all of that. Yeah. I think you just can't kick that can down the road anymore like you did in your 20s. Dr. Muth: No, you can't. It's not as forgiving as it used to be. Elaine: So, how can we prevent the common diseases of aging, as you said, Alzheimer's, dementia, heart disease, cancer, arthritis? What are some, just some really actionable tips that people can take? Dr. Muth: Your listeners are gonna hate me because it all really stems your own diet. That is number one. It is the way it is. The healthier, the cleaner we eat, the better we're gonna feel, the less disease we're gonna have. That's first and foremost. Secondary is activity. You've gotta move, right? If you have a desk job all the time, you gotta get up and walk around, like every half hour. Even if you're just walking around your building for a minute or two, and then coming back to your office, you know, get up and throw something away, get up and go visit somebody, get up and do something. You have to do that all day, or get a standup desk where you can walk and work at the same time. Exercise and moving is huge. Those are the two biggest components of all of that. Next is making sure you're getting all the healthy nutrients that you need. And there are various tests you can do to see exactly what nutrients you're deficient in. And so you're not just loading up on every nutrient that every guru tells you that you need. There's the whole Dr. Oz effect, right? Everybody who's seen Dr. Oz is like, "I have a whole cabinet full of things he recommended, but I don't know if I should take them all or not." And he doesn't recommend all of them for everything, but that was his show. And so you wanna know that what you're taking is doing something for you and not just doing something period or giving you really expensive urine, which happens. So, you know, supplements, eating exercise, and then optimizing your hormones is huge. We are gonna live 50 years of our lives in menopause. So, potentially without hormones, we're gonna live as many years without hormones as we lived with hormones as women. Men, not the case. Men are gonna have hormones until the day they die. And if their hormones decline, they're gonna walk into the dock and they're gonna get testosterone right away, and they're gonna be good to go. And they're gonna be looking for those younger women because they wanna go. And if we're older and we're not staying up on all of these things, then we're trying to get pushed to the side. And you wanna stay young and healthy. And in order to do that, you really need to keep your hormones up at an optimal level. That's gonna help you gracefully age, and slow that aging process down so you don't have so many of those diseases occur. Elaine: Right. So, we had a couple questions come in. One was around arthritis, and arthritis in the hands. Any suggestions? First of all, just give us a really quick, what is arthritis and what causes it, and is there anything we can do to prevent it? Or once we have it, is there anything we can do? Dr. Muth: Absolutely. So, arthritis is what we consider an age-related disease. Overuse and overworked typically can cause arthritis, but some people have a genetic component to developing arthritis as well. And it can be extremely painful. And you see a lot of swelling, and redness, and things like that in the hands. One of my favorite products is a CBD ointment or a salve, it's made by a company called Serene CBD. It's amazing. You rub it on it, it doesn't smell it. It's not gonna bother your eyes or anything like that. You do have to use it several times. Like, when you're starting it, use it a couple times a day and really work it into those joints. And after about three or four days, that joint pain is gonna go away. And then you can just use it as needed to keep it at bay. But it works beautifully. Sometimes arthritis will stem from something genetic or an infection. A lot of times Lyme disease will cause arthritis to happen. It's a damage in the joints. So, if you have severe, things like that, you wanna make sure you get that checked out as well. There's autoimmune diseases that can cause arthritis, too. So, you wanna make sure you're not dealing with something along that line. Number one thing with arthritis, though, is to avoid nightshades. So, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, those kinds of things, they make arthritis worse. So, if you can avoid the nightshade family, oftentimes, the arthritis gets down to like 20% pain and that's it. And it's gone. Yeah. Elaine: Wow. Okay. Good to know. We had another question come in from a woman who was, she emailed me and said her TSH is off the chart. And I said, is that all they tested? Dr. Muth: Probably. Elaine: So, tell us why is it important? Because I know a lot of doctors, they just love to test the TSH, and then they throw a lot of levothyroxine at you and they just raise it, raise it. So, tell us why is it important for full panel? Dr. Muth: So I like to see a full panel. So, when we talk about a full panel, it's TSH-free T3, free T4, reverse T3, and then thyroid antibodies. Those are big ones that I wanna see when I'm looking at a thyroid. When we're only looking at the TSH, the only thing it's telling us is how the brain is communicating with the thyroid. That's all it's doing, is the brain telling my thyroid I need more or I need less? And a lot of doctors they're taught that that's the only thing that matters. And then if the TSH is abnormal, they'll kick it out to do a T4. But then from there they never look at a T4 again, they just keep giving Synthroid or levothyroxine, and they measure the TSH, and that's it. Your active form of thyroid is T3. And so if you are not able to convert T4 to T3, you have a problem. Now, if you think of T4 as the thyroid that circulates in the bloodstream and T3 is what's available for your cells to use, that's where we have a problem. And a lot of people will have a problem where they can't convert T4 to T3 for a variety of reasons. They might have chemical toxicity or heavy metal toxicity, or they're lacking minerals, things like that. But once you identify that problem, if you can convert that T4 to T3 better, you're gonna feel much better with that hormone. Because if all we do is give you Synthroid, which is a T4 only supplement, and your body can't make that T3, we're kind of making that problem worse and not necessarily making it better. You'll feel better, but you won't feel like you did before you had the problem. Elaine: Absolutely. Yeah. I emailed this woman back and I said, "I'm not a doctor, but I know from my own situation, my T4 wasn't converting to T3. I work on my liver, just supplements and foods and things like that. Did got things working better? Dr. Muth: Exactly. Elaine: Lo and behold, I didn't need the medication anymore. Let's talk about liver too, because I feel like we talk a lot about gut health, right? That's become topic, probiotics. I think people are really aware of gut health now. I think the liver doesn't get as much love and attention. Talk to us about liver health and why is liver so important? Dr. Muth: Yeah, we need to have liver appreciation day. You know, our liver's an amazing organ. Without it, we can't live. Most people know that. But it's what helps us detoxify, literally everything that we put in our mouth and sometimes things that we put on our skin. So the liver has two phases to its detoxification pathways. And so you wanna make sure that that liver is working properly to detoxify everything you're being exposed to. So, whether it's something you're breathing in, you're consuming by mouth, you're putting on your skin. It doesn't really matter, your liver has to detoxify that. And if it can't, you're gonna build up toxins and you're gonna become quite sick and quite ill. Now, most people will say, "Well, if my liver's functioning, because I'm not dead, I'm not yellow," right? However, it may not be working optimally. And so you still may be circulating toxins and you're reabsorbing them and you're getting them out of your body, which then just makes you more toxic. And it just kind of becomes this vicious cycle. So, using things to detoxify the liver, is great. Things like lemon water and cucumber water. And some people will do liver packs, cod liver oil packs, and do a lot of different things to just get that liver to function properly. Cell reduce is a great thing to do to cleanse the liver, and the gallbladder and all of those things to just move those symptoms out of you on a regular basis. Dr. Muth: Yeah. Beets are great. Elaine: Yeah, I do beets, dandelion greens or bitter green, right, are good. Yeah, those help. So, while we talk about the liver, alcohol. You and I touched on this, I think a bit podcast. We live in such a culture that, you know, drinking is just, especially with women, there's a real culture of alcohol consumption. Can you speak to that, what do we need to know, especially for women with alcohol? Dr. Muth: So, alcohol is definitely processed through the liver. And the more we drink, the more sluggish the liver becomes. Typically as we age, we don't tolerate alcohol as well. And there is a genetic predisposition for some people that they don't tolerate alcohol. They can't process it. They can't clear it. And you'll know because you're kind of the one drink drunk, you have one glass of wine and you're out, like, I'm, "Oh my gosh, I'm so woozy. I don't feel good. I gotta go to bed, or I get a migraine." Or, you know, you have two glasses of wine, and the next day you're horribly hungover. That's usually a good sign that there's a genetic mutation where you can't process that properly. So, making sure that you are always cleansing the liver is important because, A, that makes that better. But B, the more alcohol we drink, the harder it is on our liver. Alcohol, Tylenol, things like that are really hard on the liver. And if we're doing that on a regular basis or a daily basis, that liver is really getting stressed and then it can't process out the other toxins that we're breathing in or taking into our diet every single day. So, one trick that you can use, right? If you're gonna drink alcohol, you can take something called N-acetyl cysteine, we call it NAC for short, N-A-C. And that helps process the alcohol faster. And it helps clear the liver better for you. So, you don't have quite so many problems with when you're drinking alcohol. Yeah. Elaine: Right, right. Awesome. I can sit here all day and ask you questions. You have a way of just distilling it down where it's just so easy to understand Dr. Muth: Oh, thank you. Elaine: I wanted to share you with my audience because you just have a wealth of information, and I'm so grateful for that. So, if people want to work with you or connect with you, how can they reach you, how can they find you? Dr. Muth: Absolutely. So, you can reach me at serenityhealthcarecenter.com. That's my clinic. We do do virtual medicine, we do in-person medicine as well. So you can reach out either by email or you can call us, and we're happy to walk you through whatever you've got going on and tell you if it's something we can help with or not. And if we can't help with it, we'll connect you with somebody that can help you with what's going on for you. Elaine: Awesome. Well, Debra Muth, thank you so, so much. Dr. Muth: Thank you. Elaine: This has been such a great conversation. I thank you. And I know a lot of people will gain a lot of value from this conversation. So, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. Dr. Muth: Thank you for having me, this was a blast. Elaine: Yeah. We'll do it again. If you wanna come back, I always love to talk about health and especially from a more natural approach because I really believe people just need the information of how to heal and also how to live their best life. Dr. Muth: You bet. Absolutely. Elaine: Right. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. And I look forward to see you. Dr. Muth: Thank you. You too. Enjoy. Thanks for having me on. Okay. All right. Bye-bye. Elaine: All right. Take care. Disclaimer: The conversation between Dr. Deb Muth and Elaine Morrison is for educational purposes only. This is not medical advice. Always seek the guidance of your doctor or other qualified health professional with any questions you may have regarding your health or a medical condition. Never disregard the advice of a medical professional, or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website or watched in the video.