Hayley Hobson: Hey, my friends, I'm Haley Hobson. And I am so glad you're here. Welcome to the 10 out of 10, podcast. Where I help ambitious women like you look and feel younger.
Hayley Hobson: So you can achieve a 10 out of 10 lifestyle and unlock financial freedom.
Hayley Hobson: So today we're going to talk about a super trendy, anti-aging topic.
Hayley Hobson: Cortisol. It is all over the Internet right now, buzzing. And for a very good reason.
Hayley Hobson: Cortisol is your body's built in alarm system. It's your body's main stress hormone, and it works with certain parts of your brain to control your mood.
Hayley Hobson: your motivation.
Hayley Hobson: and even fear.
Hayley Hobson: And when your cortisol levels are too high, your body legit goes into an elevated state and tells all your other hormones to turn off, because your body is only focused on saving you. So
you're basically in what we refer to. And you have commonly heard of the term fight or flight.
Hayley Hobson: So what happens is your metabolism can shut down your sleep, can shut down, your libido can shut down, and it has major impacts on. Obviously your rest, your weight and your productivity.
Hayley Hobson: So if you're getting older, if you're aging up and you've experienced symptoms like your face is puffy, or you're having sugar cravings, or maybe your eyes are twitching, or your muscles
are twitching, or your sleep is poor. You're not getting enough rest. Maybe you're gaining weight, or can't lose
Hayley Hobson: that. Those extra fat pounds around your midsection. Or maybe you've just been feeling exhausted all the time.
Hayley Hobson: Your cortisol levels may be chronically elevated. So
Hayley Hobson: how can you rebalance them?
Hayley Hobson: It's the $10,000 question, right? Everyone wants to know. So today I am bringing on an expert who will share. Why, cortisol levels get out of balance
Hayley Hobson: and what we can do to rebalance them, including all the juicy science.
Hayley Hobson: So I've been personally working on balancing my own cortisol levels for the last 6 months, and I'm extremely pleased with the results I've been noticing.
Hayley Hobson: First, st I couldn't believe it, but I lost about 6 pounds around my midsection in 6 weeks without changing my diet or exercise at all. I didn't even know I had weight to lose, but
apparently my cortisol belly just melted away.
Hayley Hobson: Second, I saw a huge uptick in my sleep score. So I actually started doubling the time I was spending in the Rem
Hayley Hobson: and the deep sleep cycles.
Hayley Hobson: And best, I stopped waking up at night, multiple times hot
Hayley Hobson: Af. So I want to dive into all things. Cortisol rebalancing with Dr. Todd Dorfman.
Hayley Hobson: Dr. Todd Dorfman is a board certified emergency physician
Hayley Hobson: who's also trained and certified in age, management medicine.
Hayley Hobson: He founded Sedalion health
Hayley Hobson: to spend more time and resources with his patients. He's special, his special. His specialties include customized health programs.
Hayley Hobson: supplement programs under physician's care, nutrition and fitness, guidance and
Hayley Hobson: hormone replacement therapy. I got a lot of questions for you on that, Dr. Herman.
Hayley Hobson: and he believes that by rebalancing hormones people will inevitably feel better and reach their physical and mental health goals, and he lives by the mantra. Take control
Hayley Hobson: of your physical and mental health.
Hayley Hobson: So Dr. Dorfman specializes in preventative and proactive care for his patients.
Hayley Hobson: and he's an emergency medicine physician in my hometown boulder, Colorado, affiliated with Boulder Community Health Foothills Hospital, which is where my baby was born.
Hayley Hobson: and he received his medical degree from University at Buffalo School of Medicine in 1994.
Hayley Hobson: So he's a board certified like, I said, emergency physician, trained and certified in age, management or age medicine.
Hayley Hobson: And he's been practicing in Boulder since 1999.
Hayley Hobson: So I've got lots of accolades I could continue on and share with you, but his bio will be in the show notes of this podcast. Episode. I'm just gonna dive in and jump right to it and ask
him a bunch of questions. Hello, Dr. Dorfman.
Todd Dorfman: Hello, Haley, thanks very much for having me. It's my my pleasure to try and answer some questions for you. Yeah.
Hayley Hobson: Thank you. I this is such a hot topic right now. So I.
Todd Dorfman: It is.
Hayley Hobson: So grateful that you can come in with your credentials and what you know in this space, and really educate my audience and my listeners who are here right now.
Todd Dorfman: I'd be happy to try and help, and you already excuse me, you already hit on some of the more important things. You know, cortisol and metabolism regarding your belly, fat cortisol, and sleep. So there are lots of ties in tie-ins with cortisol levels and many other what we call physiologic functions that are important for health. So yeah, it's going to be great to kind of go through this with you.
Hayley Hobson: Okay? Great. So the 1st question I asked that I wanted to ask you is, is, What do you? What do you personally see? As one of the biggest concerns for women, and possibly men entering what
we call this mid life cycle. Now.
Todd Dorfman: Well, that's a very broad question, because you have to look at all of the different factors. So one of the ways that I approach like a new patient. Let's say, who's in their forties.
Fifties. Something like that. The patient you point out
Todd Dorfman: is to try and figure out what their risk. Factors are moving forward. So you know, people are some risk. Factors are very obvious. Someone has, you know, diabetes. That's a risk factor. Someone has some, you know, other known disease, but what people don't recognize is, and most doctors don't measure it. To be honest with you is certain hormone levels, including cortisol, which is a hormone.
Todd Dorfman: and you called cortisol is the stress hormone, and that's absolutely true. But it's almost like that.
Todd Dorfman: you know the children's story about the 3 bears, and it can be too much cortisol or too little cortisol, or just right kind of cortisol. And it's an important health feature moving forward in terms of disease prevention to control cortisol levels, to address those things because they lead
Todd Dorfman: too high level leads to all sorts of problems. Too low a level leads to all sorts of problems. And you want to be able to respond properly, and we'll get into that in a minute. But 70 to 75% of the people in this world die of cardiovascular disease. Okay? And cortisol levels, if they're too high, are directly tied to cardiovascular disease.
Todd Dorfman: I do a talk for other physicians about what we call lipid therapies like you've heard of statin drugs and all these different things, and I help other physicians decide how to customize those preventative strategies. Well, one of the things that people don't realize is that stress, as in too much cortisol stress hormone
Todd Dorfman: redlining your cortisol levels actually is one of the major contributors to heart disease. And it that is something that absolutely has to be addressed.
Hayley Hobson: Yeah. Well, I think that you know what I've noticed from at least my community, and just talking to people for my age who are not investing in their health at the extent that I do is that they think they're inevitable, like not inevitable, like immortal.
Todd Dorfman: Yeah. Immortal. Sure.
Hayley Hobson: No, and they don't believe that, like the heart thing is gonna happen to them. And I kind of, you know, possibly have that viewpoint as well, until last year or the year before. My husband had a major heart condition at 55, and ended up in like an emergency surgery, and it was like holy shit. You know, this is actually real. What I've noticed is that I don't want to call it more superficial. But people are always interested in how they look. They're always Interested in what they weigh, and whether they fit into their jeans, and whether their pants look good on them, and how their body looks swimsuit So you know, I I do appreciate the like. I do appreciate the science and the information on, like the the severity of. Hightened cortisol level will do. And I just want to talk about like everything Is involved in an elevated cortisol level, like I was so shocking to me that when well.
You know, I will get to this later. But you guys who are listening here, my neighbor across the street created a an insane product to support cortisol balancing issues and asked me to be the guinea pig like I went on the product 6 months ago, and decided like, sure, like I love biohacking everything about my health like let's see. And to be honest with you. I actually wasn't convinced that I was going to notice a difference.
Hayley Hobson: because I do so many other things to bring my body to a homeostasis and bring, my, you know, state of fight or flight to a normal balance, and I wear my ordering, and I'm tracking my sleep, and I'm taking my supplements and vitamins and adaptogens and all the things.
Hayley Hobson: I was shocked that I, you know, size 25 pants like I'm tiny, like I was like 123 pounds, you know, going into this process, and like Boom, 6 pounds came off my body like within a couple of weeks, I'm like.
Hayley Hobson: Oh, my gosh! This is real like we are all, no matter what level of you know. Health. We're in elevated level of health we're in. We all have cortisol symptoms.
Todd Dorfman: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I mean what you're what you're talking about. Haley is cortisol's effect on metabolism. Really. So if you have too high a cortisol level. Okay, it plays a role in regulating your metabolism and your metabolism. Metabolism is really, you know, if you have a really high metabolism, you're kind of like a hummingbird. Right? You're just burning calories, left, right and center.
Todd Dorfman: And if you have a really low metabolism, you are more like a hibernating bear essentially. And you're just storing calories. Well, high cortisol makes you like a hibernating bear. It actually increases your blood sugar levels outside of what you eat. So in different parts of your body, like your muscles, your liver. There are these things called glycogen stores, and glycogen gets converted to glucose or blood sugar by elevated cortisol levels that in in turn increases insulin resistance. So your pancreas that makes insulin is trying to get rid of the blood sugar and it has. You store that sugar as fat and especially abdominal fat. Basically. So that process you just described about taking a product to control your cortisol levels doing other things, you know, managing sleep, managing stress, etc. That's why you lost 6 pounds around your belly. It really just has to do with the physiologic effect of cortisol, and what cortisol does.
Hayley Hobson: Yeah, it's so crazy because I was having this conversation with somebody at my workout the other day, because, you know, women are just like I can't get them, but matter what I do, no matter what I eat, no matter how much I exercise like, I just can't seem to get this off my body, and I and my response was: It has nothing to do with what you're putting in your mouth.
Todd Dorfman: That's right.
Hayley Hobson: It has nothing to do with how many hours you spend here in the gym. You have got to regulate your hormones.
Todd Dorfman: Right? That's right.
Todd Dorfman: And you know, speaking of that, just to sort of jump jump from there. I mean cortisol. There, there are people that call cortisol kind of the master hormone, if you will, or kind of the the pilot a hormone, or you know they kind of directs traffic for for everyone else, or the quarterback hormone that directs. You know what's going on, and
Todd Dorfman: cortisol is intimately associated with other types of hormones that are important. So, for example, it can interact and disrupt balance and function of things like thyroid hormone it, which again, is important for metabolism. So too much cortisol, not enough thyroid hormone, lower metabolism. Even still, it can affect estrogen and progesterone levels. It can affect testosterone levels which many women don't know. They have produce testosterone premenopause and tend to not produce it after menopause, and having too much cortisol, adds to that effect of of low hormone levels.
Todd Dorfman: And we know again, if you take it one step further that having appropriate hormones is really important for lots of things. It's important for bone density. It's important for cardiovascular health. As I mentioned. It's important to decrease the risk of cognitive decline and dementia moving forward. It's important to help with sleep, so it's important for mood, so it has a tie into all those different features that would make someone kind of healthy and well, and feel good, and moving forward from midlife on.
Hayley Hobson: So what do you say to people when they come in? And they've got these concerns? Do you go through this process explaining to them about. Well, 1st of all, before we actually, I don't want you to answer that yet. What are the effects? So we talked about what happens when the hormone out of balance, and we talked about how to play on so many other things like.
Todd Dorfman: Right.
Hayley Hobson: You know your your you talked about thyroid. You talked about metabolism, you talked about, prostate all of these other things.
Todd Dorfman: Right.
Hayley Hobson: What are the effects that
Hayley Hobson: people I mean? I know mine was like
Hayley Hobson: I could not sleep at night because I was like body temperature was so out of balance, and it wouldn't happen. I wasn't having hot flashes all day long, but I'd go to sleep, and then I would wake up multiple times in the week in the evening, feeling like a furnace. So for me, the effects were, you know, not getting enough sleep, but the price that I pay
Hayley Hobson: from not getting enough. Sleep is I wake up, and I feel crappy, like my cognitive function is out of balance.
Todd Dorfman: Yeah, so.
Hayley Hobson: Nasty to my husband. So I'm pitching to my kids. I'm like snappy to everyone around me, because I'm not getting enough sleep, so I don't feel good, but then also long term effects of that, because I know what the implications are with. Sleep is when you're not getting enough. Rem your your emotions don't have the opportunity to process through. So you're holding a lot of stuck emotion in your body literally. That's not detoxing out of your system.
Hayley Hobson: When you don't have enough deep sleep, your your cells are not regenerating. So if your cells are not regenerating again, it's like this toxicity that's happening in your body with a stagnant energy. And so people think like, Oh, yeah, I'll just sleep tomorrow. But like sleep is the most important function our bodies can do, I think, even more so than eating. I mean, obviously, we need nutrition, and we need hydration. But, like, if I had to pick, I want to make sure I get enough sleep, because I know I'm going to always be able to eat.
Todd Dorfman: Sure. Sure. Well, yeah, I mean, you bring up a great point, and it's I sort of think of it almost as a vicious cycle. In other words, if you don't sleep well, your cortisol levels are generally significantly elevated throughout the night when they should be at their lowest. Okay.
Todd Dorfman: if you have high cortisol levels, you don't sleep well, it disrupts your sleep, wake, cycle, it disrupts your rem sleep, it disrupts your deep sleep. So the more cortisol you have, the worse you sleep, the worse you sleep, the more cortisol you make, and you get to this almost redlining of cortisol just based on that simple concept of sleep
Todd Dorfman: and the other thing that
Todd Dorfman: you mentioned a few important parts of sleep. You know things like solidifying memories, things like, you know, kind of resting your brain, so to speak, and other body parts, so that they can regenerate or reboot for the next day, so to speak, but at different stages of sleep. For example, there's different phases of rem sleep. You produce certain hormones that are very important in certain stages of deep sleep. You produce, for example, human growth, hormone. and these are hormones that don't get produced. If you don't get those, you know, adequate sleep stages. So again, it's really tied into cortisol, being kind of the master hormone, and if it messes up your sleep and your sleep's messed up, and you know that's a great place for people to start is to start regulating
Todd Dorfman: sleep and regulating what they do in terms of sleep hygiene, and making sure that you know they're relaxed and ready to go to bed, and they try and bring their cortisol levels down naturally throughout the night. Just so. Your your listeners know cortisol peaks in the morning when we wake up.
Todd Dorfman: and then it slowly kind of dwindles throughout the day, and it should be sort of lowest, you know. Maybe if you have a normal bedtime. It's lowest, maybe around 1, 2 Am. Something like that, and then it starts to slowly ramp up again. So it's a big cortisol surge. Upon waking up in the morning to prepare you for the day.
Hayley Hobson: So does so. If your cortisol levels are out of whack, is it? Is it spiking in the middle of the night? Which is why people are waking up.
Todd Dorfman: That's exactly right, absolutely so your cortisol. So so here's a let me give you a typical scenario that I hear in my office all the time, you know. Hey, Doc, I fall asleep pretty well. No big deal. Then 2, 3 in the morning I wake up and I start thinking of all this stuff, and I start ruminating on, you know.
Todd Dorfman: is it my kids, this or my job? That, or my spouse, this or money? This? Or I check my cell phone, for example, to see if anyone's called or emailed or text between the time I went to sleep at 3 Am.
Todd Dorfman: All of that, just.
Hayley Hobson: Urgency that you.
Todd Dorfman: Emergency, right.
Hayley Hobson: Phone at one Am.
Todd Dorfman: Like my phone's on. But yours doesn't need to be, you know. That's how it kind of works. Okay? So I think the the point is, though. You then get in this cycle and it and it absolutely just ramps up, and in a time when it's not supposed to be spiking at 3 Am.
Todd Dorfman: All this stuff's going through your head. You can't fall back asleep. Then you start saying, Oh, my God, I have to get up in 2 h, and you know the whole day. And it's that vicious cycle that everyone's been through. So yes, is the is the answer. It completely spikes during the night, and that's absolutely not what you want it to do.
Hayley Hobson: Yeah, I don't think people realize how much your body actually quote unquote does while you're sleeping.
Hayley Hobson: Like, I, I think, based on the comments that I see that people believe that you're you're just resting so you can just go ahead and repeat the next day. But there's so many
Hayley Hobson: there's so much going on in your body in terms of repairing and systems operating that can only happen when you sleep.
Todd Dorfman: That's.
Hayley Hobson: Don't get enough sleep. You're really like
Hayley Hobson: aging yourself much faster.
Todd Dorfman: Absolutely.
Hayley Hobson: Those of you are out there that, you know, are like into all the beauty and anti aging like me, like you're gonna literally like
Hayley Hobson: gain weight. Get more wrinkles. You know all of the things that you don't want. If you are not resting
Hayley Hobson: and rejuvenating and going through those cycles like I get angry. I have a I have an aura ring, and I looked at it this morning
Hayley Hobson: and
Hayley Hobson: I only got. I only slept 7 h last night, which is not terrible, but it's not amazing.
Todd Dorfman: 7 to 9 hours of sleep is kind of the sweet spot.
Hayley Hobson: Yeah, I typically if I'm if I'm going 7, 20 to 8, I'm like, I know, I'm gonna be fired up. If I'm under 7. I'm not concerned, but if I get like closer to 6, I am concerned. But the reason I was concerned is, I only got 53 min of deep sleep, and I only got
Hayley Hobson: an hour, 19 of Rem, and I'm used to getting an hour and a half minimum of both. And when I can get 90 min to an hour and 45 of both. I know I'm like a super woman.
Todd Dorfman: absolutely.
Todd Dorfman: Yeah, it's a, it's a huge sleep is you know hugely important it's only.
Todd Dorfman: you know, we're talking about
Todd Dorfman: reasons that you know, sleep gets disrupted. But you mentioned sort of hot flashes in passing, and when we were talking a second ago, I mean, you know, Menopausal type symptoms are a
tremendous cause of sleep. Disruption right hot flashes sweating through the sheets, getting up at night, you know. Blah blah blah well.
Todd Dorfman: all of that can be fixed and eliminated. I mean, no woman these days should live with hot flashes, keeping them up at night. It just shouldn't happen. And in addition to that. Men actually can have hot flashes, too. It's a much more gradual process. The male menopause process, if you will.
Todd Dorfman: But the big picture is, you know as men's testosterone drop. They can have hot flashes, too. I remember my dad saying, you know he's waving his shirt. I'm having a hot flash. I'm like.
Todd Dorfman: I don't think men get off, you know, that was trained at that point, obviously. But yeah, so there are all these kind of things that get compounded when we talk about poor sleep, and then poor sleep makes the whole thing worse.
Hayley Hobson: Yeah. And there's there's, I mean, cortisol can be negatively impacting your body without you having hot flashes.
Todd Dorfman: Oh, yeah, hot flashes doesn't have any. I was sort of using that Haley, as an example of what other things disrupt sleep and can raise cortisol.
Hayley Hobson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the reason I'm bringing that up is because I've had so much feedback coming into my own like Instagram feed, saying, I don't know if I have a cortisol issue. I'm not
really having hot flashes. I don't really feel any of the menopause effects, and my response.
Hayley Hobson: bold as it may be, is
Hayley Hobson: you have a cortisol issue because you cannot live in our world today with the amount of stimulation that's going on through our phones through our ipads when you walk out the door with traffic like you literally can't. 5G. You cannot be living in this world today without a cortisol imbalance, and some people are like, well, I need to check with my doctor. I'm like.
Hayley Hobson: if that makes you comfortable. Go ahead, and I promise you
Hayley Hobson: you have a cortisol issue.
Todd Dorfman: Yeah, I think that's a very accurate statement. I think most people do, especially if they have other problems that you can associate it with it. You know, one of the things that I do with patients is, I just actually measure their levels cortisol levels. There's different ways to do it. You can do it through blood work. You can do it through saliva testing.
Todd Dorfman: Sometimes saliva testing is one of the better ways because you can measure it several times throughout the day 4 times 6 times, and then it helps me kind of create a cortisol curve for you as an individual, and I can help you tweak what's going on? If you have a you know normal cortisol spike in the morning, and it's going down nicely, and before you go to bed. It's great. And then again at 3 in the morning, as my example was, you have a big spike.
Todd Dorfman: Okay? Now I know how I can help, you know, direct your efforts in order to decrease overall cortisol. Because, remember, if you add up all the cortisol you produce in a day, that's kind of what's going on. And it's not just the total quantity. It's how you know your ability to spike cortisol when you need to spike it
Todd Dorfman: like in the morning, or, like, you know, in our neck of the woods, if we are hiking, and a bear is in front of us. Our cortisol is probably going up a little, and that's normal, and that's what's supposed to do. But then it needs to come back down. It can't red line the whole time, and that's the key. It has to have appropriate spikes, not inappropriate redlining of cortisol.
Hayley Hobson: Yeah, got it. Okay? I I'm always skeptical. I mean no offense, because I know that you're in the medical profession. By the way. My dad is also a physician, retired, and I grew up in a home where, like we were just in the Western medicine. And this is like, you know, in the seventies and eighties a lot has changed in Western medicine over the last, you know. Decade or.
Todd Dorfman: Oh, yeah.
Hayley Hobson: And there's still a lot of people that are, you know, administering tests that aren't really checking what needs to be checked or getting to the root of the problem. So I'm always skeptical when people say things like, well, let me have my cortisol level checks. And I'm like, Okay, go ahead, and what's considered normal in our society is not normal.
Todd Dorfman: Well, no, you raise an excellent point, because if someone, if you were to ask me a different question, and that question would be, what is one of the hardest things to measure in people? It's cortisol level, right? Because there's so many variables we've just been talking about like you could have a perfectly normal cortisol curve one day when you get proper sleep.
Todd Dorfman: and you're not stressed out. And your kids are being nice to you. And you're, you know, whatever it is, or you can have poor sleep job stress. Someone calls you whatever it is, and and your cortisol levels will be completely wacky the next day. So yes, you're totally correct. It's difficult, but it does help
Todd Dorfman: to gauge certain aspects of the cortisol level. So again, instead of looking at the absolute numbers, looking at the curve throughout the day, is also very, very helpful, and can help sort of direct people. But you're right like
Todd Dorfman: the old adage that I was taught by a wise professor is, Treat the patient, not the labs. Right? So it it is part of the puzzle, but it is not the whole deal the patient's symptoms, and how the patient looks, and the patient's other health features, and the patient's hormone levels, and the patient's thyroid hormone levels. And all these things go into the go into the mix.
Hayley Hobson: Okay, great. That's so informative. Thank you. Let's I want to talk for a second like, just kind of move the topic to hormone replacement therapy, because this is a place that, like I read when I was reading your bio that you are actively participating. And there's a lot of women who are going that direction, and to.
Todd Dorfman: Yes.
Hayley Hobson: You know I don't. I've never done it before. I don't know a lot about. I haven't researched a lot.
Hayley Hobson: I always prefer prefer a more natural route. But can you talk a little about why people are doing that, what the effects are? And if there is something that you would recommend. That is more natural, so they don't have to go that direction.
Todd Dorfman: Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So. I think hormone replacement therapy to bring the story back a decade or so. Hormone replacement therapy got a really bad reputation, because there was this big study called the Women's Health Initiative.
Todd Dorfman: that gave women something called Premarin and and provera, which is a progesterone, a synthetic progesterone, and a an estrogen which is made of 20, some different estrogens.
Todd Dorfman: Most of those are from horses actually, and a couple of them were human estrogens. And this was a synthetic product. And basically, women had an increased risk of breast cancer and an increased risk of problems. So the concept of treating menopause
Todd Dorfman: really went by the wayside, and a lot of docs, even up till recently, wouldn't touch treating it, because you're increasing risk of cancer and heart disease. And all these terrible things.
Todd Dorfman: the more recent studies, using what we call micronized progesterone. So not a synthetic progesterone. This is actually a bioidentical progesterone which is usually made from yams or peanuts, or some plant-based product.
Todd Dorfman: and combining that with either just Estradiol, or the combination of Estradiol and Estriol, you have 3 types of estrogens that a woman, a human woman, produces right, not a mare.
Todd Dorfman: And basically, the studies are overwhelmingly in favor of using hormone replacement therapy.
Todd Dorfman: 1st of all again. You treat the patient, not the lab. So the patient has to have demonstrable symptoms.
Todd Dorfman: hot flashes, for example, irritability, mood swings, night sweats, poor sleep, brain fog depression. You know, I can go on and on.
Todd Dorfman: but the studies are all very clear that there are even some studies more recently now that by using the micronized progesterone. And then I actually use a transdermal and estrogen cream, which again, is bioidentical and made from plant products.
Todd Dorfman: that the studies are very clear now that there are even studies that say that using Progesterone may even decrease the risk of breast cancer slightly. But if you don't want to go that far. You could say it's probably not a significant increase statistically and the same with estrogen. But what does that stuff do for you?
Todd Dorfman: That stuff? It helps you with lots of different things. It stops the menopausal hot flashes. Those are called the vasomotor symptoms. It stops you from having night sweats. It improves your bone density. There's even studies that show that women who go through menopause
Todd Dorfman: have a higher risk of cognitive decline or dementia. If they're not on hormone replacement therapy. It's also been shown to benefit women regarding heart cardiovascular disease. So
Todd Dorfman: I use it very sort of scientifically. If that's a good word. So I put you on a hormone replacement therapy. I use the lowest dose, and I use blood levels, and I tie the blood levels to when you start feeling really good, and we use that as our target moving forward. So we use the lowest effective dose. That's a good strategy to use which keeps any side effects down
Todd Dorfman: again. Women who've had a prior history of breast cancer. There are other things we can do wouldn't necessarily give them hormones. But other than that the majority of women going through menopause treated with hormone replacement therapy for around 5 to 8 years or so around the time of menopause. The overall effect is shown to be absolutely beneficial as opposed to detrimental.
Hayley Hobson: Okay? So the hormone replacement therapy is more that you're you're saying. It is more beneficial than detrimental.
Todd Dorfman: Yes, more beneficial than detrimental again, if there's a sweet spot. So I'm not necessarily talking about an 80 year old who I put on hormone replacement therapy. There's reasons for that. Maybe I'm talking about around 5 to 7 or so 8 years around the time of menopause.
Todd Dorfman: The benefits outweigh the risks of hormone replacement therapy, especially if you're symptomatic.
Hayley Hobson: So why are people wanting to get off of it as quickly as possible?
Todd Dorfman: Because there are. Some of the older studies still show an increased risk of breast cancer. And I'm not
Todd Dorfman: saying that people shouldn't try to get through it. In other words, it's like any medicine you're using it to treat a clinical syndrome. A clinical syndrome, let's say, is hot flashes. Okay, if you're 5 years out for menopause or something, we might try and slowly taper that down and see if you still have hot flashes, and if you don't. You don't need to be on the medicine anymore. We've treated you during the sweet spot of around 5 years of menopause.
Todd Dorfman: We've prevented diseases moving forward. We've helped you feel better. We've helped you sleep better. We've helped you not gain weight. We've helped with any menopausal, depressive symptoms. We've helped with sexual function, lubrication, libido orgasms. All of those things are tied into hormones, and ultimately people are just infinitely happier and feel better and are healthier when we use hormone replacement therapy.
Hayley Hobson: Got it. Okay? Well, thank you so much. I have been getting a lot of questions about what I've been using. And we can talk about that in a second, and some of the women have been coming to me and saying, Can I get off the hormone replacement therapy? If I do use the natural supplement that I've been using. So I've been using this new supplement from that rebalances your hormone that has a lot of adaptogens in it.
Hayley Hobson: and I'd love for you to talk. Since you're familiar with it, I'd love for you to talk about the benefits of being on something like that, and I'll give you guys a link. Don't worry in a minute. Benefits of using what I've been using and also sharing like if somebody did use this. Is there an opportunity for them to get off of the hormone replacement therapy sooner.
Todd Dorfman: Yeah. So that's a great question. So I specifically asked in the prior, or answered in the prior question about hormone replacement therapy. But if you want to ask me my overall strategy in treating women with menopausal type symptoms, I actually start with the rebalance health product with the adaptogens, with the cortisol lowering capacity. Because that's it's almost a freebie like in the sense that I'm not entertaining any risk.
Todd Dorfman: even the slight increased risk of breast cancer. If you believe that's an issue, and it may very well be even the slight increased risk of uterine cancer with hormone replacement therapy. So we always weigh the benefits and the risks. So before I would start someone on hormone replacement therapy.
Todd Dorfman: I actually start with the therapy you're talking about, right? Which is using really a natural supplement or combination of supplements or nutraceuticals, which decrease cortisol spikes. Help your body with from an adaptogen standpoint, giving you what you need in terms of other hormones.
Todd Dorfman: As soon as you bring down cortisol, you naturally raise up estrogen and progesterone, and the rebalance product actually has a study of a hundred and a little over a hundred women who were Menopausal and they were given the rebalance product. And for 3 months and a hundred percent of those women had about an 80% reduction in symptoms. So the product really works. But
Todd Dorfman: there's a room sometimes that to use some hormone replacement therapy. In other words, if the product works 80%, and a woman is still like, look.
Todd Dorfman: I'm still having one or 2 hot flashes at night. I used to have 10 or 20. Now I have one or 2. I don't want one or 2. I'm like, Okay.
Todd Dorfman: you know, we either go up on the rebalance dose, which is usually the 1st thing I do. And then the next thing is, I might start to add, in a little bit of hormone replacement therapy that allows me what your question was, can you get off it and different things? What allows me to use less hormone replacement therapy because I'm getting benefit from this other natural product. Then
Todd Dorfman: if someone comes to me and they're on a bunch of hormone replacement therapy, and I'm not sure if they need it, I usually start from scratch, I gradually go down on the hormone replacement therapy and see if we can add in the rebalance product, because it just gives me such a great safety profile, and then I adjust the hormone, you know, kind of balance the hormone based on their symptoms. So yes, I use combinations of both. And there are women who can get completely off of hormone replacement therapy while using the product that you're using absolutely.
Hayley Hobson: Amazing. That's amazing. Alright, so you guys, just real quick. If you want the product that we're that we're referring to that's called the the rebalance product we're referring to. You can just go to Haley hobson.com HAY
Hayley Hobson: LEY.
Hayley Hobson: Hobson, HOBS on.com forward, slash, rebalance, all one word, Haley hobson.com forward, slash, rebalance. We've made it super easy for you.
Hayley Hobson: We also are popping in here a code like, well, you don't need a code. But you're going to be able to get your 1st month and half off for listening to the podcast so you'll notice that the price is half of what it normally is. So enjoy. If you're also tuning in right now, and you're also scrolling through Instagram, or Facebook or Tiktok. If you ever reply to any of my posts
Hayley Hobson: with the word rebalance or cortisol.
Hayley Hobson: you'll get a DM. Immediately that pops you into a conversation with me, and I will be there manually with you, and I'll help you get this. Get this link. So
Hayley Hobson: you know, jump in there and share today's conversation, or this episode or that link with anybody that you know that is, that is suffering from any hormonal or midlife crisis is like I like to call it. So let's just quickly before we go, and I want to respect your time. But I want to talk about what's in the supplement? That's like making this magic potion, because what I have heard and
Hayley Hobson: from other people like other physicians and other people in the biohacking space is that they have never seen a formulation like this
Hayley Hobson: that is so clean, so natural, so pure, and is actually doing what it's saying that it can do. Can you talk about what you've seen with what's in this supplement.
Todd Dorfman: Yeah, absolutely.
Todd Dorfman: So the 1st thing I think, you know, before we even talk about the ingredients of the supplement, I think it's really important to take note of the fact that the supplement is a lozege. And you, you basically suck on it like a lifesaver or something like that.
Todd Dorfman: The benefit to a lozenge versus something you're swallow, because your stomach acid is incredibly powerful like you can probably dissolve a little piece of carpet if you swallow it honestly. So a lot of things get to your stomach. As a natural part of digestion. They hit the acid and boom. They are absolutely, you know, destroyed. Okay. but when you use a lozenge system, you don't have that acid effect of breaking down the product, and the product gets absorbed much better into your system. And we've shown that there's some studies that show that. And it's called the direct line delivery system. So the 1st thing the 1st reason if someone asks me, why is the product work so well is, I think it has to do with how it gets into your system. So that's a sort of novel approach compared to most supplements and things that you swallow.
Todd Dorfman: Then it's a combination of adaptogens, things like Ashwagandha, which is primarily for reducing cortisol levels and a number of other ayurvedic herbs and traditional Chinese medicines. All of them are tested. They're all pure, you know. Make sure it's all pure sourcing.
Todd Dorfman: And the the key to that combination. It was put. The combination was put together by a number of naturopaths, physicians, hormone experts, people who
Todd Dorfman: are all work with patients like I work with, and we kind of came up with what we thought was the best possible combination of products to lower cortisol and help to boost testosterone, boost estrogen and progesterone naturally. And then we did the study that showed that it works basically works exceedingly well.
Todd Dorfman: I was able to present this the study. Actually the North American Menopause Society. So it was a peer reviewed, in other words, a bunch of other scientific experts thought it was a great study, they accepted it for presentation and review. So this is a product that that really works. So you know, again
Todd Dorfman: trying, it is a freebie in the sense of side effects like we have no bad side effects known. It certainly doesn't increase any risk of any disease that we know about, so as opposed to hormone replacement therapy. It's a great 1st place to start, and it's accessible without a physician. It's accessible without blood tests. You should just start on it.
Todd Dorfman: and do other things to control your cortisol. Think about better sleep, think about meditation, think about proper exercise, think about proper nutrition, all the things that you do, Haley, and all the things that everyone should be doing to sort of be healthy, moving forward.
Hayley Hobson: Yeah. And the thing about this product is, is it actually helps your sleep. So you're like, yeah, not just balancing your cortisol levels. But you know you can get. There's i i noticed the one I've been using has the option of having melatonin or not. Some people don't do well on Melatonin. But either way, like my sleep cycles didn't. Did stabilize and actually get better.
Todd Dorfman: Yes.
Hayley Hobson: That's been taking the product.
Todd Dorfman: I absolutely.
Hayley Hobson: I'm glad that. Yeah, I'm so glad that we were able to catch up, and you were able to clarify this for me. I'd love to get that here result that you're talking about. And if you guys can send it over, we could even attach it to the podcast. Episode, that would be amazing.
Todd Dorfman: Absolutely.
Hayley Hobson: Yeah, it's so crazy. How much of an impact cortisol can have on your health?
Hayley Hobson: Yeah, so just grateful. Thank you so much for sharing all of this knowledge.
Todd Dorfman: Yeah, you're very welcome. We hardly scratched the surface. I could talk about this for hours, so.
Hayley Hobson: Oh, I could talk about it for hours.
Todd Dorfman: Yeah. Well, if if you'd like to talk again, I'm happy to.
Hayley Hobson: Yeah, maybe we can bring you back for a part 2. That would be really fun. But I know people.
Todd Dorfman: Perfect.
Hayley Hobson: Span is like 30 to 40 min, but.
Todd Dorfman: Yeah, I know mine is, too. But yeah, there's just so much stuff. I think you know, that it's hard for people who don't really have a great flavor to understand all the implications of cortisol across all areas of your health.
Hayley Hobson: Well, I would love to invite you back from a for a part 2. We'll get in touch with you, and in the meantime I love how you've broken down honestly complicated science in such an easy to way, understand?
Hayley Hobson: So before we wrap up, I want to just drop the link for you guys. One more time the link to the cortisol regulating natural adaptogenic supplement or lozenger that we talked about today
Hayley Hobson: is@haleyhobson.com forward slash rebalance again, if you're tuning in right now, and you're scrolling through Ig or Facebook, you can go to at Haley Hobson on either account. Comment the word rebalance or cortisol on any post. I'll see it. I'll DM you immediately.
Hayley Hobson: And if you love today's conversation, please share this episode with somebody that you love, because this gift of health and midlife regulation is meant to be shared and big. Thanks to you, Doc, and until next time, my friends, I will see you online.
Todd Dorfman: Thanks for having me nice to see you.
Hayley Hobson: You too.