How To Balance Your Hormones for Women – The 6 Step SHINE Method with Dr. Shawn Tassone

Ari: Well, you and me both. First of all, before we get into women’s health-specific stuff, I have a broader question for you, which is– We’ve had some talks about this in person. At least one I think, and then we’ve had some exchanges on Facebook related to this. There’s some conversations that have come up, for example, in the mindshare health expert group around, how should I phrase it? Issues relating to maybe people without enough expertise that are promoting themselves and teaching people about health and maybe shouldn’t be. I know that you’re very vocal on this issue. You feel very strongly about it. I wanted to just bring that up before we got into the women’s health stuff. In case you wanted to say something about it, I, for example, I very often in my private member’s Facebook group will take examples of how people cherry-pick the literature and will point out the mistakes and it’ll say, “Here’s the literature that contradicts this person’s perspective. Be wary of people who are out there with an agenda who are misrepresenting the evidence, either out of their own ignorance and lack of scientific literacy or due to some bias and agenda that they’re trying to promote.” That’s something I feel very strongly about and I think you do as well. I just wanted to ask you about it if you wanted to say anything about that issue.

Dr. Tassone: Sure. I think it’s one of those things where it’s on both sides. Kim Wover has this thing he calls the pre trans policy which is both sides can’t be right. The scientists can’t all be right, and the woo-woo spiritualists can’t all be right. Otherwise, some of these got to be wrong. It’s the same thing I think with this expertise, no expertise thing. I think what happened was you had these degrees that start popping up. Right now, you can be a doctor of medical science which is for a physician assistant and then they’re called doctors. It’s really confusing. What happened was, I think a lot of health coaches, which I think is a great thing, health coaching is awesome, started finding that they wanted to niche. When they started to niche, then all of a sudden, they were experts in mental health or experts in hormone health. That’s fine. There’s the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell that talks about expertise, and how you really need to have 10,000 hours or something to be an expert, but you can say anything on the internet anymore. Like you said, some people that will call it a study but it’s got 26 participants. There are so many open journals now that anybody can publish a study. It’s not a peer-reviewed. I get it on the other side. Pharmaceutical companies push agendas that they do the research on their own products and it’s amazing obviously. What do you believe and where do you believe it? It’s hard. It’s really difficult for me because there’s a practitioner here in my city who’s a Chinese medicine doctor. She’s wonderful, but on all of her marketing things she actually puts in there that she is an integrated OBGYN. I was really nice and I called her up and I said, “Hey, I’m a little bit offended because it took me 12 years be calling myself that. I don’t call myself a Chinese medicine doctor or pretend to do acupuncture which should be if I said I was, that would be offensive to your training.” She got upset with me and said that she was. I said, “Well, you can say women’s health, but OBGYN is an actual profession. Now, we have functional neurologists that are not actually neurologists or endocrinologists that aren’t endocrinologists. I just think it would be nice if you could just call yourself what you are. If you are a chiropractor, say you’re a chiropractor. Why do we have to have all these titles? I always make this joke. “The more letters after your name, the probably less of an expert that you actually are.”

Ari: Well, that’s interesting coming from somebody with an MD and a PhD.

Dr. Tassone: I got bored. Actually, my PhD was silly. My mom passed away 18 years ago and I was a dyed in the wool MD, and I just was reading this crazy book at the time called 8 Weeks to Optimum Health by Andrew Weil. He was talking about fish oil and CoQ10. This was 20 years ago. I was like, “Man, this is crazy stuff.” When my mom passed away, I was like, “You know what, I got to find out more about life.” Then that led to this PhD, but it was more of a personal journey for me than anything else.

Ari: Interesting. I think there are some issues for people who have gone and gotten a naturopathic doctor degree or they’ve gotten a chiropractor degree, there’s an issue that they come back in those areas where if they say, “I’m a chiropractor” or if they say, “I’m a naturopath” there’s so much of the world that either doesn’t understand what those people do, or they have some bit of knowledge “Chiropractors are quacks.” Or naturopaths, “You’re not a real doctor, you’re just a quack.” I think because of those issues some people with those degrees I think have moved away from calling themselves naturopaths or calling themselves chiropractors. I know a bunch of people I’ve interviewed on this podcast who have those degrees. When I look at their bio on their website, it doesn’t actually mention naturopath or chiropractor. They specifically do not mention it. I think mainly just because they’re trying to avoid the public’s negative stigma, the public who generally doesn’t even know what those professions are. My point is, I think there is at least some aspect of it is warranted just to help those people get around this negative public perception by people who don’t actually know what they’re talking about.

Dr. Tassone: I think those type of degrees to me are a little bit different too. They are graduate degrees. Those are people that actually have gone to extra school and have put in the effort. For the most part, a naturopathic school their four years is very similar to medical school. To me, that’s a different degree than some of these other ones that are popping up, that are maybe one year or more. They’re bachelors but it’s this doctorate of some made-up thing that– That’s where I struggle. Yes, those other ones I think because, personally I couldn’t survive without referring patients to naturopaths. I’d pregnant patients I’d refer to chiropractic all the time. I think it’s one of those things where it’s difficult, but it’s confusing and then you’ve got some people even in my own profession that charge cash versus insurance. The whole thing it’s just a mess. I don’t know, I hope it doesn’t come down to it, but I have a feeling at some point that the medical boards are going to start really just dropping down on people because it’s getting a little bit out of hand, I think.

Ari: It’s interesting. To get a little personal, I’ll say I don’t even really know. I tell people this all the time, I don’t even really know what to call myself. I’ve been studying natural health for 20 plus years, and I’ve done a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology. I’ve done a bunch of certifications in corrective exercise and Performance Enhancement and Fitness and Nutrition. I went through PhD program in clinical psychology. I have all kinds of expertise and I’ve been studying a science around lots of topics that don’t even fit within those for many years. For example, my last book was on light therapy. My next book is going to be on light. I talk a lot about circadian rhythm. I have a lot of expertise there. I feel like to call myself a nutrition expert is not the right fit. To call myself a health coach is not the right fit. I basically don’t even know what to call myself because I have such a broad area of interest and area of expertise.

Dr. Tassone: Part of in this field, in this arena, is branding. You want people to find you. You want to give your message out. Google right now is in the middle of smash and everything. People that search, say, Josh Axe, he’s Dr. Josh Axe, but like you said, probably nobody knows he’s a chiropractic physician. I want women to find me, so I try to brand myself as expert in hormones. It’s like, you have to have something to call yourself, which is difficult. That’s, I think, where people are drawing these fuzzy, gray areas. It’s like guru, maven. There’s all these words that people are using to connotate this expertise, or they’ll just come right out and say expert. Then, the question is, what is an expert? I don’t know. It’s so blurry. I don’t know.

Ari: It’s interesting. I think that the big take away here, at least the one I try to teach people is, there is a lot of people out there who are either not as knowledgeable as they are promoting themselves as, or who have an agenda, who are cherry-picking, who are misrepresenting literature. Basically, just be wary of who you trust as a good source of information.

Dr. Tassone: Good, yes.

Ari: One of the other things you alluded to there is you refer people out to naturopaths and chiropractors often. That in itself is very interesting for an MD because for a lot of MDs within, who are very hardcore, conventional medicine, there is this kind of meme that if it’s not conventional medicine then it doesn’t have science to support it. If it had science to support it, it would be within conventional medicine. That’s the distinction. If it’s not already accepted in common practice within conventional medicine, therefore it must be quackery and pseudoscience. Obviously, you don’t believe that. How did you end up in this place where you’ve become more holistic, more integrative?

Dr. Tassone: I struggle with that on occasion, too, because I have one foot in each side. I can get offended on both sides of [unintelligible]. As you’ve seen in the [unintelligible] group that we’re in, there is a lot of anti-doctor kind of talk. I don’t think that people realize that there is a lot of doctors in that group who aren’t of that mold. It’s like Republicans and Democrats almost. It can be that heated sometimes. I think that how I got to where I am is, I graduated residency with the moniker that we heal with steel. We were surgeons. We literally would say that. It’s true, to a certain extent, that some people do have to have surgery. It’s great when you need it. Dr. Wile used to say, “If I’m in a car accident, take me to the emergency room. If I have a cold, take me to my naturopath.” There is definitely a place for everybody at the table. The problem is, I think, people are stepping into– My colleagues will call themselves integrative, but they have actually no integrative training. They want to get in on the deal, so they’ll call themselves that. Then, people will go see them.

They’ll think integrative medicine is a scam because this doctor just prescribed me a bunch of birth control bills and all this other stuff. Then on the other side, you have it the other way. What happened, I alluded to it earlier was that when my mom passed away, I think I just had that moment, I was 34. I had that moment where I started having these spiritual moments where I would smell my mom’s perfume, or I’d have these dreams. It was like, there is this tribe in the Amazon that when their boys are 15, they make them drink Iboga, which is like Ayahuasca. Then, they crack them on the head with a rock. The rock opens their heads to all the teachings of the ancestors. I viewed my mom’s death as that rock hitting me on the head. I just felt way more open to there’s got to be more,” kind of thing. Really, my mom had cancer. It was ovarian cancer, which was in my specialty. The problem was I knew what to do for the cancer part, but where she really struggled was the five years that she survived. The chemo was horrible. She would call me crying because her joints hurt so bad, and her hair was falling out and she didn’t feel good. I didn’t know what to do. I had absolutely nothing– I had all this training and I couldn’t give her quality of life, my own mother. I was like, “I cannot do this and not be able to help people.” I didn’t have it in my quiver. I didn’t have that ability. I could prescribe Phenergan if you’re nauseous, but I didn’t know about herbs and things like that. For me, the integrative training was a way for me to figure out a way because I don’t want to know it all. I can’t know it all. What I do is I assemble a team around me that I can refer to, whether it’s physical therapy or acupuncture, psychology, whatever it is. I have people that I have either gone to myself or recommended to friends. I think it’s good to just have a team. They refer back to me so it’s working. I have a psychologist here in town who called me. She wanted to refer patients to me. She had to interview me first because she wanted to make sure I wasn’t going be a crazy person and tell her patients that she was crazy. Now, she refers me all these women who are depressed, but actually might have hormone imbalances. It really works out great if you can have that relationship because so many of those providers are minimized by the medical institution, and all they really want to do is help. Rather than me prescribing somebody Prozac because they have post-partum depression, how much better would it be if there is a psychiatrist here in town who’s holistic and that’s what she does for a living is post-partum depression. I can just send people to her. It’s that kind of work that’s great.

Ari: In terms of your own personal knowledge, what did you take away from your holistic, your integrative, your forays into natural health that you feel was really important to your current knowledge, that you did not get from your medical doctor program?

Dr. Tassone: Like I said, it’s a daily struggle. It’s like you go to church or something, or whatever you do. Then, you drive home and you’re swearing in your car because somebody cut you off. It’s a constant battle. For me, it was the eight weeks in my integrative medicine program at the University of Arizona that we did on spirituality. I grew up Catholic. I don’t know how spiritual that is, but I grew up Catholic. What I found out was that there was this connection between mind and body. Through my PhD training, I went to South America. I was buried overnight in a Peyote ceremony. I have discovered–

Ari: You were buried overnight?

Dr. Tassone: Yes. I had to dig my grave during the day. The Peyote shamans, the Wegels, they made me dig my grave all day. Then, at night, I had to get in it. He covered me with dirt and I stayed there all night. The thought process was, in order to be a healer, to be a shaman or a healer, you have to have a death, you have to die. Obviously, they meant more egoic death probably. What was interesting was, my American brain was like, “I’m going to show him. I’m going to take in all these books. I’m going to have a flashlight.” I was going to thumb my nose at him and get in the grave. I turned on my flashlight. I didn’t dig very much because I was tired, so it was really narrow and it freaked me out. I turned the flashlight off so I ended up being in the dark. What I found was, this is cliché, but it doesn’t matter. There was a fire and he was sitting out there singing. The singing [foreign language] were there to tie me to the place, so I could hear him. What I realized was it doesn’t matter what I brought in because I can’t see it, I can’t touch it. I don’t want to look at it because it’s irrelevant but it was him singing out there that was the most important thing. That was the people talking about me or the ways that I talk to people and connected with people. It was just that kind of stuff. I think, for me, when I interact with patients now, I don’t do this all the time, like I said, it’s a struggle. Sometimes you’re tired. Sometimes you’re mad, you’ve got to pay your bills, whatever. I realized that when I go into a room with somebody, I’m in their energetic field. That may sound wo-wo. I have about 20% wo is what I call myself. That wo factor is, if you can just be there and not realize even something simple like the air that they’re exhaling is air you’re inhaling. When somebody smokes a cigarette and you can smell the smoke, it’s been in their lungs and they’re blowing it out and you’re smelling it. We’re doing that all day long. That energetic exchange is pretty powerful, and me telling a patient, you’re never going to get better that no CBOE effect is pretty damn powerful. I could hurt people by saying stuff like that, versus me saying, “You know what, we’re going to help, I’m going to help, we’re going to fix this.” Being more positive, and it makes a huge difference.

Ari: Absolutely. Is there anything specifically with spirituality that you work with your patients on? Is it integrated? I’m asking, is it integrated, just in you in very subtle ways and how you interact with the patient? Or is it that you’re actually setting into motion here’s the specific practices that are designed to help you better integrate or optimize the spiritual dimension of your life?

Dr. Tassone: Shameless Plug next year, I have a book coming out with Harper that talks about the 12 hormone imbalances in women. What I did with those was, I turned them into energetic archetypes like the nun, the queen, the mother, the overachiever, there’s 12 of them. In those 12 archetypes are each of those has six steps to correct the imbalance. One of those six steps is a spiritual practice. Say like, for a queen, which is estrogen dominance as a hormone imbalance in order to be a benevolent, so there’s two types of queens. There’s off with your head type of queen, and there’s a benevolent queen. How do queens survive? How do they survive the Game of Thrones, if you will? They surround themselves with good advisors, they have family, they tap into that maternal archetype. I will recommend for them as a spiritual practice to spend time with their mothers, spend time with their sisters, connect with women’s groups in the area that you can just build that rapport. Or it might be something like journaling. I have a lot of people that have low normal cortisol who they have low cortisol because they’re fried, they’re burned out. I had a lady the other day, a pharmaceutical rep drives 300 miles a day, has three kids under the age of seven, she’s fried, and yet she’s going to the gym. Her spiritual practice would be, I literally told her to go out and walk and not work out, just walk, and while you’re walking, maybe repeat a mantra, like I love you over and over and over again, stuff like that.