Ep. 170: Estrogen’s major impact on physical strength and long term health, with Laura Ducote

We tend to think of women's health as it relates to getting pregnant, not physical health or even health later on in life, but Caitlin and Laura sit down to discuss how estrogen impacts everything from bone health to cognitive function, and why it's vital for both reproductive and overall well-being. We talk about natural ways to improve estrogen levels (like weight-bearing exercises) and how maintaining healthy estrogen levels can protect us well into our later years. Whether you're in your 20s or approaching menopause, this episode offers valuable information on how to support your health through every stage of life.  

NOTE: This episode is appropriate for all audiences. 

Our guest, Laura Ducote, is a Family Nurse Practitioner with training in NaProTechnology and is currently a FertilityCare Practitioner at Woven Natural Fertility Care. 

Ways to connect and work with Laura:

• Work with Laura as a Fertility Care Practitioner
• Work with Laura as a Nurse Practitioner

Other episodes you might enjoy:

Ep. 164: Insulin Resistance impacts more than your fertility and it's affecting younger women--what can you do? 

Ep. 156: Using DHEA to naturally increase hormones and fertility, with Laura Ducote 

Ep. 31: The Napro Difference, with Laura Ducote, F-NP, FCP

Ep. 3: BASICS--Reproductive Hormones

Ep. 135: Can I trust Natural Birth Control?

Transcript

Caitlin (00:01)
Welcome back to the Woven Well podcast. Several weeks ago, I had an episode with nurse practitioner Laura Decote, who is also a part of Woven Natural Fertility Care in providing education to those who are pregnant or postpartum. And we got into a conversation about low hormones overall. The whole goal of some of these episodes with those who work here at Woven is to give you a little insight into what we talk about, you know, in the halls, so to speak, or at the water cooler, like what we just start talking about and find really interesting. And so we finished that episode and then we just started chatting and talking about low progesterone and we said, you know what, let's press record and keep this episode going. So we are transitioning just a little bit. Our previous episode was talking about low hormones overall and how they can be supported by DHEA but we're gonna continue this conversation by talking about low estrogen and things that we can do to support it. So Laura, welcome back.

Laura Ducote (01:10)
Thanks, Caitlin. Good to be back.

Caitlin (01:13)
Okay,

we started chatting about how we've both heard so much about... The term I've heard is bone bashing, but it's like really putting pressure against your bones, which helps your overall health, it helps your bone health, it helps hormones as well. So I've been learning about this just via Instagram from an account. I think her name is Dr. Vonda Wright, she's an orthopedic surgeon and she just talks about these little things that we can do to increase our bone health, but specifically as we approach menopause. And I find it so interesting because even for those of us who are not approaching menopause, it's still beneficial for our reproductive health and our hormones. Fascinating.

Laura Ducote (02:10)
Yes.

Yeah. So the what they call weight bearing exercise, especially if we're in that perimenopausal time period, but really just in general, the reason why they talk about weight bearing or you had even mentioned to me like jumping, you know, and and the amount of like weight that we're putting on our bones really does make a difference, especially in the world that we live in of, you know, remote, like that everybody is working from home and like just sitting all the time.

Caitlin (02:26)
Yes.

Laura Ducote (02:39)
that our bones, I know, me too, but our bones need like literal impact on the ground in order to basically reinforce from the inside. Like there's actually a mechanism where when it feels like the jolt, and not that we wanna be like too hard on our bodies and like, you'll be hitting the concrete necessarily like it, you know.

Caitlin (02:40)
Guilty.

Laura Ducote (03:06)
we need to be safe on our knees and all those things too. But the reason why they talk about weight-bearing exercise in that way is because when it feels that jolt, it literally sends a signal to reinforce from the inside of the bones, especially in your legs, so that you're making them stronger from the inside out. So it really is a very beneficial type of exercise from a bone health perspective.

And when we were talking about the perimenopause time, your androgens, your estrogen, all of those things are naturally declining and they are good for bone mineralization. And so as those things are starting to decline, that's why it becomes even more important for the woman to really be

you know, conscious of her bone health during that phase of life, because it doesn't have as much of the hormonal support that it's had in her younger years. But truly, I think I've talked about this possibly before, but up until we're about 30, we have basically that amount of time for the estrogen in our body to help solidify our bone health for the longer term. Like there's another component of bone health.

that happens in those younger years with the amount of estrogen that we have. So if we have a woman that say, you know, not having periods because she's, you know, a cross country runner or she's been a ballerina or, you know, maybe there's just been big stressors in her life in college where she lost her period for a couple of years. We have to be extra careful for those women. And we sometimes will even order bone density testing because they can have, unfortunately sometimes be an osteopenia.

Caitlin (04:41)
Hmm.

Laura Ducote (04:54)
or even osteoporosis earlier in life because they've lost that many years of estrogen, you know, really helping to reinforce their bones for when they're getting older.

Caitlin (05:05)
And this

goes back to, it just gets me all fired up, women who are told that, it doesn't matter if you have a cycle, doesn't matter if you have a period. ⁓ well, unless you're trying to get pregnant, it's not very important. Just come back to me when you're ready. No, we are designed as women to have healthy, fluctuating reproductive hormones. And obviously, they affect our overall health.

Laura Ducote (05:10)
you

Yeah.

Caitlin (05:34)
not just whether or not we have a period. So your period really is that extra vital sign that tells you something about your overall health and what could be going on. And I do think it's funny that the example was if you're a cross country runner, because when I think about running, think about putting the pressure on, but it is different. mean, I think you really need both. You need those hormones

Laura Ducote (05:55)
I I know.

Right. It's a both and.

Caitlin (06:04)
Exactly. need those hormones to be present, and you can do those weight-bearing activities to help on both sides of it. And this goes back to our conversation that we had originally about low hormones too, because I'm thinking about the women who maybe are having cycles, but maybe they have really light periods. Okay, that can be an indicator of low estrogen or, you know, what we talked about previously, the quality of mucus.

Laura Ducote (06:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Caitlin (06:34)
is lower than they would expect to see. And they're only going to know that when they're working with a fertility care practitioner like you or I, where they can actually get some insight into what's normal and what's not. Please don't just search the internet for that information. You will not get accurate information because we want to have detailed information about it. So you start seeing these signs of low estrogen.

Laura Ducote (06:35)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Caitlin (06:58)
Well that's critical and it's critical right then, but also for your long-term health when you're in your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s.

Laura Ducote (07:06)
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, the other component that we don't hear about, feel like that much is just the cardio protective benefits of estrogen and the cognition. Like for our memory, there's actually like a component of you may remember this if you've done anatomy and physiology at some point, but the myelin sheath is like this this covering of our neurons in our brain. And it's, it's especially important to our memory.

And without estrogen, it doesn't thrive. Like it doesn't have all of the components that it needs to really support those neurons. And so you can start to see sometimes like in a perimenopause time, especially you hear about sometimes memory and cognition, things are starting to go down. But again, for the long-term benefit, if we've not had the proper estrogen for a long time, like you can see those things start to show up sooner.

or you can start to see that there may be some signs like later on in life where that is was not properly taken care of in the younger years. So there's just a lot that estrogen really does. I think when we hear about kind of estrogen or low estrogen being a thing connected to stress possibly, it's like we also have to remember that like

Caitlin (08:30)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Ducote (08:33)
that mechanism is in there for like emergency, know, emergency mode only. Like it's only meant to be like survival mode for short periods of time. And unfortunately, like the world that we live in is just really stressful and also like not pro our bodies working the way that they're supposed to work. Like we, we really do live in a push through

Caitlin (08:46)
Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Laura Ducote (09:02)
and who cares what happens to your body in the process, you know, and your mental health, you know, which is a component of sometimes the emotional stress piece. And so, you know, we really have to be very intentional if we're wanting to possibly climb ourselves out of a state where maybe that's happened. We have to be extremely intentional. It's not like it

Caitlin (09:08)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Ducote (09:27)
of maybe was when I think the Lord designed it of it just being this short little blip in time where some of those hormones get turned off and say like a hunter-gatherer, you know, kind of mindset where it's like, there's a little bit of a famine right now. We're not going to let these ladies have babies while there's a famine, you know, or something like that. It's supposed to be like a blip and then we're back to being able to function properly, you know?

Caitlin (09:41)
you

Yes.

Laura Ducote (09:55)
And our world is just not set up to let us do that very well.

Caitlin (09:59)
Yeah, we almost treat our bodies like accessories, you know, like we can do with them what we want to and expect them to toe the line and do what we want them to do when we want them to do it and the way we want it to do it. It's like, no, our body is the physical expression of who we are.

Laura Ducote (10:06)
Mm-hmm.

Caitlin (10:21)
we cannot be without our bodies. Something is wrong if we are disconnected from our bodies, but we've just gotten to that point over time. It's culturally and through all sorts of influences, and that's a whole other episode, all sorts of things that have led us to the point where we have this deep disconnection with ourselves as humans and our physical bodies. And so even changing the mentality

Laura Ducote (10:25)
Yeah.

Caitlin (10:49)
This episode may be about working out to increase estrogen, but really it comes down to understanding how we're made, honoring that design, and seeing all the good that is there, both the protective mechanisms and the ways that our health in our 20s and 30s are designed to protect us in our 70s and 80s, when we may not be able to do all the physical activity that we can do now. Like the Lord

built that into our design. That's a beautiful, amazing thing. And opening our eyes to it and really celebrating it is a great thing. Something we need to be intentional about, I think.

Laura Ducote (11:33)
Mm hmm. Yeah, I think I think it also just gives, you know, an idea of the importance of moderation, you know, that too much of a good thing can still be too much. You know, like, as you were mentioning with me saying the cross country runner was an example of low estrogen, but then we're saying to do weight bearing exercise. So I think that that's a good a good reminder to that, like, you know, we just are kind of meeting in in the middle, you know.

Caitlin (12:01)
Yes, yes. And encouragement for those listening who think that, okay, well, maybe it's too late for me. Maybe I wasn't cycling in my 20s and I have low estrogen in my 30s and so, man, I'm going to be unhealthy later in life or this is why I'm struggling now. Continuing with that theme of how amazing the human body is, we can heal in many ways.

Laura Ducote (12:18)
Yeah.

Caitlin (12:30)
we can preserve our health, can restore our health, not totally, there is illness, there are accidents, there are all sorts of things, but the body really is incredible in how it can heal if we know how to honor it. So that previous episode, if you haven't heard it, go back and listen to it, but you know, you, Laura talked about the foundations that we need to establish for overall health, and then we can add in these extra things like

weight-bearing activities like jumping. was saying before we hit record, jump 20 times a day. This is all coming from Dr. Vonda Wright, so you can look her up if you want to, but 20 times a day is shown to have a significant impact on your bone health later on in life. Well, if you are able to jump, then beginning to do that 20 times a day is something that you can pretty much incorporate fairly quickly.

And that's accessible for a lot of people. And so I think it's encouraging too. There's always something we can be doing now to invest in our health as we feel it currently, but also decades from now too.

Laura Ducote (13:43)
Agreed. Yeah.

Caitlin (13:44)
Yeah, estrogen,

it's important. It affects our mental health, our physical health. It just is important for our fertility and reproductive health, obviously. all of the things. Well, thanks for chatting with me, Laura, teaching me about weight-bearing activities and how it can benefit others and specifically help to increase estrogen.

Laura Ducote (13:48)
It is.

honestly, I think there needs to be more awareness of how much our reproductive hormones affect our entire body. I think for so long, the reproductive health, you know, the reproductive system has been the system that can just be shut down and bypassed. And that is just not true. Our bodies are not designed to work that way, especially for long periods of time.

Caitlin (14:25)
Yes.

Laura Ducote (14:32)
And so I just think that it's important for this information to get out there that it's not just about Whenever you're ready to have a baby. It's about like your health for life You know if you're if you're wanting to to play sports or to do something very physical with your body We have to keep it to a level where you're making estrogen so we don't also put you at risk for injury You know, I think that's that's a component because I've certainly seen that in my you know, like I mentioned the cross-custody

country runners that they are, I've seen my own patients have injuries while we've been in the process because they didn't listen to our advice of not running. And so it just, you know, it really does impact women's bodies, regardless of what, you know, in various different goals that they may have for their life. And so I think it's important to remember that our hormones like

Caitlin (15:13)
Hmm.

Laura Ducote (15:30)
I have a reason to be there other than just having babies.

Caitlin (15:34)
Yes. And you know, for those of you listening who are thinking, well, I believe you, this all sounds great, but I'm on birth control maybe, and that is lowering my estrogen, but I'm doing it because I'm not ready to have a baby yet, or I'm doing it because I have super painful periods and I can't live like that. Those are so valid and so important. And I've got even

more good news for you, there are other ways that you can achieve both of those ends. You can successfully avoid pregnancy without hormonal contraception. You can successfully treat, actually treat, painful periods so that it's not just that the symptoms are masked and you don't experience them anymore, but that they are gone and you are healed and feeling so much better, your quality of life improved.

it's not dependent on hormonal contraception of whatever form, but really getting to the root cause and addressing that. And that's the whole design and goal of restorative reproductive medicines. That's why you are trained in it as a nurse practitioner. That's why I refer every single one of my clients to a restorative reproductive physician or medical professional, because women deserve this kind of care.

we deserve to be able to be at our optimal health, whatever that looks like for each individual person because it will be different, but we shouldn't be denied that just because we're not ready to have a baby. It really is about honoring the dignity of each woman, I think. So, well, thank you for being on. Thank you for talking about it, for doing the work that you do. We'll make sure to have a link in the show notes to your...

medical practice page if anyone wants to work with you. Maybe they have low estrogen and they want to look at ways to increase that. Hey, we've got an option for them. So thanks for being on the show.

Laura Ducote (17:26)
you

Yeah, thanks for having me, Caitlin.

Caitlin (17:36)
Listeners, I hope this has been encouraging. You have other options available and we will make sure in the show notes to include some previous episodes talking about ways that you can naturally prevent pregnancy or even addressing issues like painful periods for you so you can have those options available. Also make sure to go back and listen to our previous episodes with Laura. Hopefully she'll be around for several more episodes as she continues her work here working with women who are pregnant.

or postpartum and getting them that good education. So

As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.