Meet Dr Sharon Stills
Dr. Sharon Stills is a Naturopathic Medical Doctor providing comprehensive health care, therapeutic and diagnostic services to patients worldwide. She combines her conventional medical training, data-driven science, cutting-edge diagnostic tools and a deep knowledge of natural healing to effectively identify and treat health concerns ranging from allergies to end stage cancer, and everything in between.
Dr. Stills is a 2001 graduate of SCNM (The Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine) in Tempe, Arizona, one of the nation’s foremost accredited medical schools. She specializes in European Biological Medicine –having trained extensively with Dr. Thomas Rau formerly of the Paracelsus Clinic in Switzerland. She was chosen to lecture alongside him as part of the Paracelsus Academy. In addition, she is also extremely well-versed in pro-aging therapies and Bio-identical Hormone Replacement. She is well known for her successful involvement with patients dealing with a Cancer Diagnosis – both early and advanced stage – and has been featured in many Oncology Summits based on her experience and knowledge of the subject. Dr. Stills travels the world seeking out the best of Natural Medicine options and bringing them back to the US.
Drawing from a wide variety of traditions and healing foundations, including Naturopathic, Bio-Regulatory, Functional, Homeopathic, TCM and Ayurveda, she has been successful in providing answers and healing pathways to her patients when others have failed.
Some of Dr. Stills’ favorite healing modalities include the use of isopathic and complex homeopathic remedies, bioidentical hormone replacement, live cell therapeutics, targeted use of vitamins and herbs along with the therapeutic use of color, breathwork and sound frequencies.
Dr. Stills has a passion for her profession and that drives her to embrace opportunities to lead, participate and contribute her vast knowledge and expertise.
Listen to the episode on Spotify here or on your favorite podcast platform.
CLICK HERE to check out her new Summit that’s coming up.
Podcast transcript:
Welcome back Dr. Pedram. Shojai the urban monk talking about hormones today for our ladies. This is a female hormone deal. So guys, sorry, or listen for someone you love. So when you care about. Uh, Dr. Stills has been treating patients using bio identical and using lifestyle medicine as a natural path for years. I think she’s great.
She and I have shared a number of patients over the years and I’ve loved collaborating with her. That’s how, you know, when you are working with a doctor in collaboration to help a particular patient. Uh, there are a lot of folks that are arrogant and they’re a lot of folks that are my way or the highway.
And then there’s collaborative people who understand it takes a team, it takes a village. She’s one of those I really enjoyed interacting with her. And so I invited her onto the podcast. Enjoy.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Dr. Stills, welcome to the show. Nice to see you.
Dr Sharon Stills: Thank you. Wonderful to be here.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I am looking forward to picking your brain here because, um, a good percentage of my audience, um, has a uterus. And there are a lot of issues that come up, uh, as we cross over into our forties, fifties, and sixties. Um, with hormones, the regulation of hormones and you know, the setting the table here obviously is the, the challenges you go to your traditional doc in a box and they just throw hormone replacement at you.
Dr Pedram Shojai: It’s obviously, that’s the thing that, you know, somehow magically exists, but the natural folks don’t do any of that. And the people in between are doing bioidentical, they’re doing all sorts of stuff. So there’s this huge range of what you can do. to take care of a situation that has a lot to do with lifestyle, has a lot to do with a lot of things.
Dr Pedram Shojai: So I want to get into what it is at this juncture when people start to feel perimenopausal, premenopausal, menopausal, the whole spectrum and what The options should be for someone who’s considering doing it the right way.
Dr Sharon Stills: Hmm. Great question because it is such a confusing space in healthcare and it really doesn’t need to be and so I am a naturopathic medical doctor who practices terrain based medicine. So i’m all about natural treatments. I’m all about getting to the root cause of issues. I’m all about doing things as natural as possible.
Dr Sharon Stills: I have the ability to prescribe antibiotics and yet I treat all sorts of chronic disease and acute illnesses without antibiotics because I know how to use natural remedies. But when it comes to this conversation, when it comes to a woman who’s starting to go through perimenopause, which is this period before menopause and can actually be as early as.
Dr Sharon Stills: You know, 35. It can be in your early 30s when you’re not thinking that it is. And when often your doctors or your OBGYN is telling you, Oh, no, you’re way too early to be having hormone changes. That’s not true. And so when we’re talking about this situation, the root cause is truly is that your ovaries are winding down.
Dr Sharon Stills: They’re like, sayonara, we’re going to Hawaii, we’re hitting the hammock, we’re not going to be working for you anymore. And there is no more hormone production. And so the root cause is not that you are deficient in black cohosh or deficient in maca. It’s that you’re deficient in these very powerful hormones that have an impact on Every system in our body, they don’t just impact our menstrual cycle or the ability to get pregnant or whether or not we’re going to have hot flashes.
Dr Sharon Stills: We’re talking about impact on your immune system, on your genitourinary tract, on your arteries, your cardiovascular system, your brain health. You know, really important things that make a huge difference in a woman’s life. And so I’ve been practicing now for 23 years and I see, have seen, Specifically, over the years, women who come in and say, you know, I’m going to do it naturally.
Dr Sharon Stills: I’m not going to take bioidentical hormones. And I have a conversation with them about how we don’t need to be afraid of bioidentical hormones, how they don’t really cause cancer. They actually protect against it. And when they go on the hormones, it’s the same situation. Every time they’re like, Oh my God, Dr.
Dr Sharon Stills: Stills. I can’t believe I wasted so many years feeling cruddy. Like, this is remarkable. Thank you so much. And so it’s really my mission and my passion to really educate women as early as possible because once you’re in menopause, and so menopause, a year without a menstrual cycle, you have that one day and then you’re post menopausal.
Dr Sharon Stills: Um, but often your hormones are starting to tank or they’re certainly doing a roller coaster ride. And often you can use that hormonal support before you get to that period where it’s one year without. And now you already have bone loss and you already have brain fog and all of these things that are occurring.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah. And it’s all the things in the periphery that is, you know, they’re obviously inconvenient if you’re not sleeping well, you’re restless. You’re having, you know, all sorts of, you know, root versus flower issues. And the flowering stuff is, is a, is a. big challenge for a lot of people who don’t have the time to pull over, right?
Dr Pedram Shojai: Like life is moving. Um, there’s still a lot going on. And so it becomes a very challenging time obviously. And so how does one look at the peripheral kind of symptoms and the array of things that, you know, are so inconvenient and challenging, uh, while trying to go about Addressing the root cause.
Dr Sharon Stills: Mhm. Yeah. And I would like to say that at least in my world, in my practice, I do not just throw hormones at women. We kind of have this handshake. Like if we’re going to replace your hormones, we’re going to pay attention to all of the periphery because we’re not putting hormones into a process. Bye. Bye.
Dr Sharon Stills: You unhealthy or unhappy terrain. So you have to commit to looking at your diet, to looking at your movement, to looking at your sleep habits, to looking at your liver health and your lymphatic health and your bile health and all of these things. It’s kind of, I talk about menopause and I put parentheses around the word pause and it’s there for, you know, the cessation of your to me, it’s like, no, it’s this opportunity to Wake up to slow down to take a breath and to pause and kind of look at what’s going on in your life.
Dr Sharon Stills: Because typically, by the time you get to this hormonally imbalanced state, you’re saying yes when you should say no, or maybe you’re saying no when you should say yes. You’re, you’re burning the candle. You’re not prioritizing yourself. sleep. You’ve lost your connection to nature. You’re not participating in your community.
Dr Sharon Stills: And so there’s a lot of other things that are going on that are really important for overall health. And so we really have to take it system by system and experience by experience. And, you know, from hydration to electrolyte balanced, I mean, you know, your microbiome, there’s, you know, we are, we are, you know, Quite complicated flowers.
Dr Sharon Stills: And so, but the bioidentical hormone piece is super important in this story. You can’t really So, Eat your way out of an estrogen deficiency when that’s what is supposed to be happening because menopause is not a disease. I always say this but it like pisses me off that I have to like ICD 10 code for menopause like it’s a disease because it’s not.
Dr Sharon Stills: It’s a natural transition that we have been so twisted around in our society and how we think about aging. that we’ve begun to fear this transition. We think it’s the beginning of the end, and it truly isn’t. To me, it’s the beginning of this beautiful next chapter in a woman’s life.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah. There’s some inconvenient truths in all of this. Obviously it’s like, you know, we’re rattling our way out of a patriarchal society that, that marches time and doesn’t really acknowledge the need to slow down and take a pause or any of these things and, you know, um, bad enough for men, I think really, really bad for women as well, right?
Dr Pedram Shojai: Like being in this stage play, right? Where you can’t, the show must go on and there is no time to stop and reflect and introspect. And a lot of folks listening to this are just like, damn it. That sounds great, but I don’t have time. And that’s the problem, right? It’s the, also it’s the psychological stumble of saying, I.
Dr Pedram Shojai: can’t afford to slow down right now. So what can I do to make it a little better and then maybe get better later? Right. Which is, um, you know, kind of the existential crisis of our time. So let’s talk about the hinges that swing big doors, the things that we can start fixing, um, and work on kind of the underlying problems so that we can correct things in the future.
Dr Pedram Shojai: A matter of time that doesn’t make us, you know, feel like we have, we’re stopping everything to recover, right? Cause a lot of people feel like they don’t have that.
Dr Sharon Stills: Yeah, and I think, you know, if you’re thinking, I don’t have the time, I think that’s the first place you have to really look. Because when we, I often have patients, you know, you talk about having patients do food journals. I have patients do tests. time journals. I think your calendar and your schedule can be your arch enemy or it can really be your best friend.
Dr Sharon Stills: And often if we really start paying attention on how we’re spending our time, we see that, Oh, we’re, we’re, we’re wasting a lot of it. We, you know, a scrolling session on Facebook can eat up 40 minutes just like that. And you don’t even realize it or staying up that extra hour to watch another episode of Netflix because you’re hooked in.
Dr Sharon Stills: But then you’re getting rid of, you know, quality sleep and you’re not getting to bed on time. And so I think, you know, and if you work a nine to five job where you’re really, you know, you don’t have as much flexibility as like an entrepreneur would, then, you know, how are you using your breaks that you get?
Dr Sharon Stills: How are you using your lunch hour? You know, can you use that lunch hour to go outside and ground and get some sun and get some steps in? And so a lot of it just really, is about shifting that complaining mentality to like, what am I going to do so I can complain about feeling good rather than complain about feeling bad.
Dr Sharon Stills: And so to answer your question, you know, what are some of the things that swing the hinge open to help women feel better? I would say when they’re on their hormonal journey, It’s certainly looking at your hormones. And when I’m talking about hormones, I’m not just talking about estrogen, progesterone and testosterone.
Dr Sharon Stills: I’m also talking about DHEA. I’m talking about cortisol. I’m talking about thyroid hormone. I’m talking about oxytocin. and melatonin. And so there are many hormones. Your parathyroid hormone, vitamin D is actually a hormone. And so it to me, it’s like a spider web. And if we’re moving a hormone or a hormone is dropping, it’s pulling the whole web.
Dr Sharon Stills: And so we can’t affect one hormone without it having an effect. If you look at the biochemical pathways, you see that they’re, they’re like a LA highway. They’re very intricate and you can circle around on exits and some go off and some don’t. And so they really have an impact on each other. And so getting someone to properly measure your hormones, which would be done through a 24 hour urine test, So, um, you know, we’re trying to make sure that we’re not just actual urine, 24 hour collection, not dried urine, is a good way to get the data you need to get the proper replacement.
Dr Sharon Stills: Then we have to be looking at your sleep. And I know you’re, you’re a big fan of sleep, you know, but we have to prioritize sleep. I’m like, you have to make sleep your superpower because we can’t heal if we’re not sleeping. And sometimes it’s a double edged sword because sometimes we’re not sleeping because our hormones are crashing.
Dr Sharon Stills: And so Some of the big things I see are progesterone. Being very low interfering with a woman’s sleep and even a man Um, you know men go through andropause and men have a hormone drop as well. We don’t talk about that as much Um, but for those of you that are men that are listening or have male partners you want to think, you know We don’t want you to just get better.
Dr Sharon Stills: We want you to bring your partner along with you Uh, but progesterone levels dropping will certainly impact sleep because progesterone Um Um, when taken orally will cross the blood brain barrier. It will metabolize down to allopregnenolone, and it will affect the GABA receptors, which are inhibitory neurotransmitter.
Dr Sharon Stills: So that’s something looking at your cortisol levels, which I do through saliva testing. testing because your cortisol, I see this a lot where women’s cortisol is low during the day and then lo and behold at night it pops up and so then you need to work on bringing that down. Melatonin can bring down high cortisol, phosphatidylserine is a good one, L theanine, things that are, you know, relaxing, lavender, pasiflora, etc.
Dr Sharon Stills: So those are two of the big ones that I see. Probably that takes care of like 70 percent at least. You know, then we start looking if you’re still not sleeping, are there blood sugar regulations? Because cortisol, insulin are these foundational hormones that if you just think you’re going to take some hormones and not pay attention to your blood sugar, you’re, you’re in for a sad surprise because.
Dr Sharon Stills: I, I’ve even just recently thought about because I love wearing a CGM and it’s so informative. I’ve thought about making it like a rule. Like if you’re going to become a patient of mine, you have to commit that you’re going to wear a CGM for the first couple of months because our blood sugar has so low.
Dr Sharon Stills: So much of an impact on how we’re feeling, how we’re sleeping. If our blood glucose is dropping at night, we can wake up just from that alone because we’re, we need food, we need to fuel. And so I used to think that I was like this really fancy doctor cause I ran hemoglobin A1Cs on patients and I wasn’t just looking at glucose levels.
Dr Sharon Stills: But now I realize that even that is just a tiny snapshot and really being able to see. live. What’s going on in a continuous glucose monitor? A CGM gives so much data and so much information that can just rock your world. So like if you do nothing else and just wear a CGM and work with a practitioner to to look at your levels that can help you with your brain fog, with your energy, with your sleep, with so many things.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I was recently talking to a male patient who I’m not seeing patients anymore, but you know, just former patients now friendly. Uh, you know, I’m going on testosterone because, you know, I want to feel like a man. Um, and the doc wasn’t looking at. Any of the other nexus, this whole cast of characters that you had talked about.
Dr Pedram Shojai: And so, you know, he was an aromatizer, right? And so, you know, estrogen levels go up, things are going sideways, you know, for, for me, I go to DHT and, and, and so taking testosterone would, would make me go bald faster. And so there’s so much nuance to all this. I want to talk about one of the, if you know, if you will, you kind of cast them as all these kind of Greek dramas, right?
Dr Pedram Shojai: Pregnenolone steel. And how common that is, how often you’re seeing it in folks, um, and how you go about rectifying it, uh, for someone who’s just, you know, okay, just give me my progesterone and let me go away.
Dr Sharon Stills: Yeah, I mean if you look at the biochemical pathways, so even before pregnenolone we have cholesterol, and I think cholesterol like cholesterol, hydrochloric acid, and estrogen have all like been vilified. They’ve gotten these really bad raps about it. And they’re all so really brilliant and important. And so, first of all, you want to look at cholesterol levels because you don’t want someone who has their cholesterol driven down to nothing and they have no substrate to even make any hormones.
Dr Sharon Stills: And so, in my practice, I often freak out way more because a patient’s cholesterol is too low, not because it’s too high. Too high. And that’s a whole nother conversation. But then from cholesterol, we go to pregnenolone and then we’re going to progesterone. But if we keep pulling from progesterone, we’re going to the glucocorticoids, which are stress hormones.
Dr Sharon Stills: And so I always say that stress is 99. 99999 percent of all disease. And so, yes, if you’re low, you know, why is there such an epidemic of low progesterone? Well, you know, there’s toxins, and so we have these, you know, estrogens, and so maybe you don’t really have low progesterone, maybe it’s relative to your estrogen levels.
Dr Sharon Stills: There’s lots of different reasons, but is it also because we’re all so stressed out, and You know, the body has a decision to support stress levels, which the body views as life or death, or progesterone, which is progest, progestation, having a baby, you know, the body goes, Yeah, we’re going to reproduce another day, we’re going to stay alive today.
Dr Sharon Stills: And so we have to be looking at our stress and our stress comes in many different forms. Our stress is not just. bickering with our spouse or our colleague or a boss or a neighbor. Our stress is coming at us in our internal thoughts. It’s coming at us through EMF toxins. It’s coming at us in our food.
Dr Sharon Stills: Even if you eat the healthiest foods and you’re eating organic, there’s still glyphosate that’s showing up in there. It’s coming in the, plastics and the body care products it’s coming in. Is your spine aligned or are you having anatomical stress? It’s coming in from endogenous from metabolic byproducts.
Dr Sharon Stills: Like I mentioned HCL, which is stomach acid. If you don’t have enough stomach acid, you can’t break down your protein. And now instead of it nurturing and nourishing your body, it’s becoming a stress to your body because your body can’t break it down and it can’t handle it. Um, we have stress coming to us energetically.
Dr Sharon Stills: I mean, ultimately, we’re energetic beans. And so we can have stress in our acupuncture meridians and our chakra centers. So there are so many different ways that we are bombarded by stress that it always has to be in the conversation. If you’re working with a doctor and they’re not talking to you about your stress, probably time to look for a different doctor who sees more globally.
Dr Pedram Shojai: It’s hard because stress is such the elephant in the room and the conversations around stress. Um, end up going back to where we started, where you’re like, let me see your calendar. What are you doing to take care of yourself? How are you slowing down? And, you know, those aren’t economically productive conversations because people are too busy trying to, you know, grind it.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Right. Um. There’s this other concept that’s out now, right? That’s been talked about for a couple of decades, but there’s some of the, some of the biohackers are all kind of getting, getting on this conversation about, you know, well, you know, look, you’re done procreating. So nature’s done with you. So then how do you challenge the biological systems that are already programmed saying, okay, you know what, your reproductive years are over, you know, let’s go push up some daisies.
Dr Pedram Shojai: You’re done. Um, biology is harsh. Right? And so here we are with life expectancy, tripling what it was several generations ago and us living beyond our quote unquote reproductive years, more so for women than men. What does that have to do psychologically, physiologically with how you address This with women who are now in their fifties and six, no, I don’t wanna have babies, but I don’t wanna feel like shit, what do I do?
Dr Pedram Shojai: Right.
Dr Sharon Stills: Yeah, because now we, we can be pregnant with creativity, with ideas, with new adventures, rather than, than children. And I think, I always say like, don’t expect to get rid of your stress. I think when we die, maybe we get rid of our stress. I, you know, I don’t know yet, but that’s what I assume. But if you’re alive, you have stress.
Dr Sharon Stills: So it’s, it’s, Part of the human condition. So it’s learning to dance with the stress. It’s learning to breathe with the stress and you know, our breath is so powerful and just three breaths just checking in, just being mindful, seeing what’s stressing you out. Often we get so stressed about breathing.
Dr Sharon Stills: Stuff that really has no impact on our life. And if we just kind of become mindful, sit with what’s bothering us, often we can move through it and we can see that, oh, we can transcend this. So I’m a big fan of, you know, Jon Kabat Zinn’s work, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. I have been sitting Zazen since my early 20s and when I was in naturopathic medical school in my late 20s, I got exposed and trained to become a teacher.
Dr Sharon Stills: And I think mindfulness and going into the feeling rather than trying to push away the feeling is going to give you a lot more benefit. And so, to answer your question about what do I tell women, I tell women, you know, by 2030, I think, The statistic is like 1. 2 billion women are going to be in menopause.
Dr Sharon Stills: It’s like mind blowingly high and crazy. And I tell women like we are a force to be reckoned with and you can feel good. You don’t have to be part of that aging means I now am fat and tired and can’t think. Um, this is a time where we can shine, where we can feel Our best where we can commit to ourselves.
Dr Sharon Stills: And hopefully, you know, if you’ve raised Children, they’re grown. And so all of a sudden, there’s more space to put yourself first, which is certainly not a selfish way to live by taking care of yourself first. And so we have to be taking uh, inventory of what’s going on. We have to understand that that hardcore high intensity movement and restricting our calories is probably not what’s going to serve us now.
Dr Sharon Stills: Most women are not eating enough to lose weight and they’re, they’re, they’re keeping the weight on because they’re restricting. And so it’s time to like totally change the way we communicate with ourselves. It’s time to. change the way we interact in our bodies. But when we do these things, like you can weigh less, I weigh less now than I did in my twenties.
Dr Sharon Stills: Um, you can have more energy, you can feel great, you can sleep great, you can do, I mean, I see this in my patients, like, Every day, all these amazing women who are having sex in their 80s and 90s and riding motorcycles and sailing boats and climbing mountains and traveling around and like changing the way we view aging.
Dr Sharon Stills: I’m really, um, Again, committed to changing the way our younger generations view aging because my generation, I’m 56. I was taught age, like, by 56. I mean, I remember thinking 40 was old. And what did I see? I saw my grandparents and my parents Showing me that, right? They were 40, they were overweight, they were on the couch, they weren’t moving, they were, you know, they were eating junk food.
Dr Sharon Stills: And so I grew up thinking that, and I had to really reprogram my subconscious and my mind. And now I, I look at my granddaughters and, you know, they don’t think of me as old. They’re like, Bubby, jump up here. Get on the floor. I’m, you know, they, they don’t. And so I’m changing the way they’re going to think about what aging is and what older people are like.
Dr Sharon Stills: And that’s what we need to do because when we live healthy, then we are programmed to live. You know, I plan on being productive and active. Till at least 100 and then maybe I’ll go sit on my hammock on my porch. But we we have lots of time to be productive, be contributing and giving back to the community.
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Dr Pedram Shojai: You touched on a few things that all kind of roll up into one thing I want to ask you about. Blood sugar management, uh, the ability to move around, have mobility, have the, the posture and the kind of the agency to move freely in your body. Um, and one of the areas of longevity. You want to live to well over a hundred because at a hundred you’ll start slowing down.
Dr Pedram Shojai: One of the areas that has some of the most interesting data research that I’ve looked at is just the sheer amount of muscle mass that is on the body. The, the, the dense mitochondrially dense tissue that then allows for the party to keep going. How important is muscle mass? For you and the women that you are treating in this equation of menopause meets blood sugar imbalance meets all of this orchestra of pregnenolone and DHEA.
Dr Sharon Stills: Yeah, you need must. I mean, I think it was Dr Gabriel Lyons, right? It says muscles, the organ of longevity. And I would agree with that. You have to be. It’s like what I was alluding to before, like, you know, again, my, my age range, we grew up, you know, going to Lucille Roberts and jamming out high intensity step classes and things like that.
Dr Sharon Stills: And that is not what’s necessarily going to serve you. You must be in the gym. You must be live dancing. things. You must also be, it like balance and agili know, I’m not a trainer. of expertise, but I get m who understand this, who to do diagonals, how to b you know, and then how to lift heavy things. So you have it all.
Dr Sharon Stills: It’s not just about having muscle. It’s about knowing how to utilize it and being, you know, because what’s a huge problem is falls in the elderly. That’s the downfall of a lot of people. And so you want to make sure you have good balance, you have good posture. I’ve been really conscious of like the whole neck thing, right?
Dr Sharon Stills: Cause we all like, we’re, you know, we’re, I think we’re changing the way we’re going to evolve and babies are going to be born looking down because we’re always looking at our, our phone or this. I’ve been really conscious, you know, just about looking up and working on my neck. And so all these things are super important.
Dr Sharon Stills: And again, it comes down to practicality, right? You want to be able to lift up your grand babies. You want to be able to take yourself to the grocery market and put away your own food. food and be able to lift the bags. And so it gives you that ability to be in your own life and not dependent. And that also changes the neurons and how you think about yourself and how you think about aging.
Dr Sharon Stills: So super, super important.
Dr Pedram Shojai: One of the areas that I want to circle back on, you had mentioned hydrochloric acid, really metabolically expensive for the body to produce, really, really expensive to not have it functioning. And so one of the areas I have noticed. In folks going into their forties, fifties and beyond is just a real lack of protein as a macronutrient in the intake of protein and a lot of these folks are less likely to eat the protein because it doesn’t sit well with them.
Dr Pedram Shojai: They’re not digesting it well. So that hydrochloric acid protein to make muscle equation I’ve found to be a real log jam in this longevity play. That needs to get unstuck so folks can start taking on protein, putting muscle on their bodies and feeling better. So I just want to see in how you address the hormones, where that falls into this, this orchestra.
Dr Sharon Stills: Yeah. I mean, hydrochloric acid is such a simple, but. way overlooked, right? And so when we’re talking about getting enough protein, either right, a woman or a man is just not eating enough protein or they’re not absorbing it. And so I see that so often women are like, no, no, no, I’m getting my 30 grams at every meal.
Dr Sharon Stills: I’m crushing 100 grams a day. And then I look at their BUN, which is that like a three? And that’s a kidney marker. We don’t want it to go high, but when it’s really low, it’s a sign of not enough protein in the body or not a non absorption. I look at their globulin levels and they’re bottomed out. That’s another liver protein that’s indicative of hydrochloric acid or their phosphorus levels low.
Dr Sharon Stills: Or I’m looking in a stool test and we see residue of meat and we see the bile acids are off. You know, we see all these things. And so it’s It’s a key part of replenishment because hormones we have this astrobelome in the microbiome where estrogen is metabolized, where estrogen is interacting at the gut lining, we have an overgrowth of leaky gut in our population these days.
Dr Sharon Stills: It’s very rare that I see someone who doesn’t have a leaky gut. And so hydrochloric acid could be like this really inexpensive, easy thing that when you replenish, it like just kind of goes down the line and can fix a lot of issues that were out of alignment. And most of the time when people have heartburn, right?
Dr Sharon Stills: It’s not because they don’t have, they have too much hydrochloric acid. It’s because they don’t have enough. And it used to be like 30, 40, I’d start seeing these levels decline, including like DHEA and pregnenolone. But now I see like kids. I see five year olds who have declining levels. And so again, that goes back to the stresses were under because we don’t really let kids be kids anymore.
Dr Sharon Stills: When I went to kindergarten, you know, we played with blocks and now kids go to kindergarten and they’re having like standardized testing and they better know math. And there’s a lot of pressure on a brain that’s not fully formed yet. And so we You know, we’re seeing, and then we have the toxic load that’s just expanding and expanding.
Dr Sharon Stills: And so, you know, as humans, we’re up against more, which means we need to pay more attention and be more on top of these things so we can do what we can to help our bodies, you know, be balanced.
Dr Pedram Shojai: You mentioned something that, uh, I want to make sure we come back to real quick just because the traditional old school way of thinking has Larry the Cable Guy selling you Prilosec so you could eat your hot dogs, right? Um, the idea that you’re, uh, Acid reflux or your heartburn is coming from too little acid versus not an you know Too much acid is really kind of revolutionary for some people I know a lot of my listeners are pretty well up on all this stuff But for the folks who are like wait, what the hell did she say? Can you just explain that a little bit so people understand the mechanism of why that is the case?
Dr Sharon Stills: Sure. So if you’re eating protein and you don’t have enough hydrochloric acid, you’re not breaking the protein down. And so we, we talk a lot about being alkaline, but there are certain areas in our body where we actually need to be acidic. Our stomach, our vaginal canal, where we want acidity. And it’s actually that acidity in the stomach.
Dr Sharon Stills: stomach that then will allow for the alkaline production of cholecystokinin of pancreatic enzymes when it gets when the spolus of food gets into the small intestine. But so if we don’t have enough stomach acid, we eat a big steak, then Our body can’t digest it. It can’t break it down. It can’t break it down into the little mini amino acids.
Dr Sharon Stills: And so it starts to like putrefy. It can’t get digested. And so it’s that metabolic waste product from the food that’s undigested. That is washing up and causing that discomfort. And so the solution is the exact opposite because you think, Oh, you have too much acid. Let’s take an antacid. But the solution is typically you need more acid.
Dr Sharon Stills: And if you take hydrochloric acid. So we usually do like a baiting challenge test, which is something easy to do at home. And you feel burning initially. That doesn’t also mean that you have too much acid. It might mean that your mucosal membranes there are just irritated. And then you need to take some demulsion, some sodium.
Dr Sharon Stills: Soothing herbs could be like slippery elm is one and you just heal the tissue there and then you can try the hydrochloric acid test again in like a month. Um, but this is a, this is a rampant thing, just like. you know, cortisol levels are rampantly off, just like we, um, you know, hormones are dropping when you’re in, you know, these are rampant things that are just across the board.
Dr Sharon Stills: It’s, it’s gotten to the point where Now, if I see someone who has good hydrochloric acid, I’m kind of like, oh, you’re a unicorn because I just see it so much. The hormones are deficient, the vitamin D levels are deficient, the inflammation markers are up, that it’s just, you know, becomes weird when, you know,
Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah, that’s the world we live in um, but it is what it is we have to fix it and so this brings me to my last bit here, which is You It’s complicated, right? There are so many things that lead to these nexus of problems that, you know, one could say, Oh, it’s my hormones was a lot of things, right? It’s my microbiome.
Dr Pedram Shojai: It’s my hydrochloric acid. It’s my stress. It’s my all of it. Right? And so you, I was just a guest in a summit that you hosted. Um, and the reason why this is a summit worthy topic is because it’s so damn big, right? There are so many things that are part of this story and there is no one size fits all.
Dr Pedram Shojai: There is no, Oh, this is my, you know, this is why I feel this way, right? It’s, it’s complicated. And so this is why I really appreciate this form of medium for learning education and wellness. In general, right? Is you don’t go to a doctor flop on a table and say, fix me when it’s your lifestyle that is part and parcel to all of it.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Right? So tell us about the summit, what people can expect and what, you know, when it is, if there’s a replay, all that stuff. Right?
Dr Sharon Stills: So it is Mastering the Menopause Transition Summit, but it’s for any woman because, you know, the earlier you learn, the less problems you’re going to have down the road. Um, if you can start focusing on bone loss when it’s happening and not after it’s happened, you’re always going to be in a better place.
Dr Sharon Stills: So speaking of hydrochloric acid is really important for women. Bone health too for calcium absorption and B12 absorption and all the minerals and stuff. So it is all interrelated. And so I host this summit every year because there’s so much misinformation out there. There’s so much confusion out there.
Dr Sharon Stills: You know, we didn’t even get into the whole, is it safe to take hormones or things of that, but we’re going to talk about that in depth. We’re going to discuss. spell the myths. I’m gonna, you know, settle what’s true, what’s not true. So you really have a good understanding of what you need to know. So you understand how hormones should be monitored, how they should be dosed, how, et cetera, et cetera.
Dr Sharon Stills: But in addition to that, I use this like. As I said, to pause, I use it as this time to also educate you about all the other things that go with this time, that go with being healthy. So whether we’re talking about how to move your body, how to eat properly, how to detox, how to handle your energy, how to stay How to smooth out your biofield, how to use color, how to use nature, how to use meditation, all of these things because to me, you know, medicine is like a big giant gluten and dairy free pizza pie, right?
Dr Sharon Stills: And so hormones are a slice of the pie and they’re an important slice. And I, I watch, you know, when I give hormones properly and safely to a woman, you know, She only has good things to say and often it’s like within 24 hours we’re getting calls at the office, oh my god I’m out of pain, oh my god I slept, oh my god this that, you know, and that’s fantastic.
Dr Sharon Stills: But again, it’s what about the other slices of pie, and what about the really important Pieces of being a human being and being alive and having the human condition. And so I want you to feel good in your physical body so you can really get down to the important stuff of your emotions and your spirit and your gifts and your passion.
Dr Sharon Stills: And so we talk about I have. There’s 50 interviews. Um, and so there’s a lot to choose from. Um, you know, you can pick and choose as you like or listen to them all. Um, but it’s just really my gift back to help educate so that women can feel good because it breaks my heart when I see women suffering when they don’t need to be suffering.
Dr Sharon Stills: And, um, I’m telling you that you don’t have to suffer. Menopause can be this amazing time where you can enhance your health. You don’t have to have hot flashes. You don’t have to have mood swings. You don’t have to lose your hair. You don’t have to gain weight. You don’t have to lose your libido and on and on and on.
Dr Sharon Stills: You can have all of these things working for you.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I love it. I’ll put a link to the event, uh, in the show notes so that y’all can find it. Dr. Chills.
Dr Sharon Stills: didn’t tell you the date, so, so you can sign up starting September 17th. Um, it airs October 1st through October 7th, and I’m not supposed to tell you, but I’ll tell you because everyone knows. There’s always a replay weekend, so there will be a replay weekend as well. Um, so, and during the time it airs, it’s totally free, so you can just Plug in and connect and listen and learn.
Dr Sharon Stills: And, um, you know, hopefully, you know, even one little nugget has like the ability to transform your life. So get as many nuggets as you can.
Dr Pedram Shojai: And as oftentimes the case, if you’re hearing this after those dates, uh, we’ll have, we’ll make sure that the links there then point to a place where you could still go get the event and catch up on all of it. Dr. Stills, always a pleasure. Really great to see you. Thank you for being
Dr Sharon Stills: You too. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Okay there, you have it. Hope you learned something hope you are inspired to do something about what you learned. Uh, check out her summit. If you see this in time. , also I’ve done a lot on this. , I have done a 10 part series that I produced, , called hormones, health and harmony. You can see it on my website. I’ve also produced a masterclass on this topic with Dr. Kiran Dunstan and really got into all of the areas of hormone replacement of lifestyle, of sleep, of stress. All of it. Uh, the moral story is you can do something about this.
The moral of the story is you don’t need to suffer. So look at the resources I’ve brought for you. Look at the resources that Dr. Stills has brought for you and get up and do something about it. Because feeling better will then get you to have more energy, more vitality, better mood, all the things that make life better.
I hope you enjoyed this. Wherever you are, please make sure you subscribe to the podcast. And I will see you next time.