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Women’s Health

Take Charge of Your Metabolic Health (And Stop Outsourcing to Your Doctor)

By Sara Gottfried MD | April 20, 2023

There are many reasons why you should care about your metabolic health. This applies to both men and women, however women are more vulnerable than men with regard to metabolic…

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What Is Precision Medicine?

By Sara Gottfried MD | April 20, 2023

Precision medicine is about taking an individual and personalizing a treatment plan that looks at genomics and a multitude of biomarkers and then putting the story together so that we…

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Hormone Imbalance: Let’s Stop Normalizing It

By Sara Gottfried MD | April 20, 2023

Hormones control how we feel. As a medical doctor specializing in hormonal health for over 25 years, I understand the immense impact hormone imbalances can have on physical, mental, and…

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Unlock the Secrets to Hormone Health for Longevity and Vitality

By Sara Gottfried MD | April 19, 2023

My favorite podcast host in the past year was Andrew Huberman, PhD. We discussed hormones, gut health, the estrobolome, fertility, vitality, and longevity. While our conversation focused on women’s health,…

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Cardiometabolic Disease: Too Many Women Are Dying Unnecessarily

By Sara Gottfried MD | July 4, 2022
Sara Gottfried Women's Health Article |Cardiometabolic disease|Cardiometabolic Disease: Too Many Women Are Dying Unnecessarily

Half of the women in developed countries will die of mostly preventable heart disease or stroke. This is one of several shocking statistics that I encountered while researching my latest…

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The Connection Between Thyroid, Weight Gain, and Metabolic Health

By Sara Gottfried MD | January 16, 2022
Sara Gottfried Women's Health Article |Thyroid and Metabolic Health|The Connection Between Thyroid, Weight Gain, and Metabolic Health

An unexplained change in weight is one of the most common signs of a thyroid disorder. Weight gain may signal low levels of thyroid hormones, a condition called hypothyroidism. In…

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Belly Fat: Why Fat Accumulates As You Age And How To Reduce It

By Sara Gottfried MD | January 4, 2022
Sara Gottfried Women's Health Article |Belly Fat|Belly Fat: Why Fat Accumulates As You Age And How To Reduce It

Belly fat or gaining weight around the middle is often considered an inevitable part of the aging process, especially for women as they move into their forties and fifties. I…

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Thyroid, Your Weight, and Metabolism

By Sara Gottfried MD | November 30, 2021
Sara Gottfried MD | Women's Health |Thyroid, Your Weight, and Metabolism

How’s your thyroid? Do you know your level of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH)? It’s estimated that about 60 million Americans, both men and women, struggle with thyroid problems. Most don’t…

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Metabolic Health: Why You Must Care and How to Measure It

By Sara Gottfried MD | November 8, 2021
Sara Gottfried MD | Women's Health |Metabolic Health: Why You Must Care and How to Measure It

Are you metabolically healthy? If not, you’re not alone. Only around 12% of Americans have achieved metabolic health.1 What does metabolic health mean and why do we all need to…

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I Weigh: Women, Hormones, Diet Culture, and Body Positivity

By Sara Gottfried MD | September 18, 2021
Sara Gottfried MD Women's Health Article | Body Positivity | I Weigh: Women, Hormones, Diet Culture, and Body Positivity

When I read an intake form for a new patient and she requests help with weight loss, I pause and I take a deep breath. The territory is full of…

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What about exercise in postmenopausal women? I al What about exercise in postmenopausal women? I always get asked about walking and bone density in postmenopausal women, so here are more details: Walking improves one small part of the hip, but not other parts of your skeleton (Martyn–St. James, 2008). 👉So it’s a good idea to mix strength training with brisk walking for optimal bone density. One meta-analysis found that women who practiced combined resistance training (high impact aerobics together with resistance exercise) showed the greatest improvement in bone density at the hip and spine (Zhao, 2015). Women, who are more prone to osteoporosis than men, can help protect themselves with regular weight-bearing exercise (two to three times per week with handheld weights, body resistance, or weight machines) or yoga. Yes, yoga counts as strength building (although the data are mixed in postmenopausal women regarding bone density, yoga slows down bone resorption and has other health benefits (Patel, 2012; Phoosuwan, 2009). Regular strength training increases your bone density, helping counter both hormonal and metabolic changes that can cause osteoporosis. One study recruited a group of people seventy and older to perform resistance training twice per week for six months. These poor folks submitted to a muscle biopsy at the beginning and again after six months of strength training, so please take their important results to heart so that their service was not in vain. Ever had a muscle biopsy? Looking at the results of the second muscle biopsy, researchers found that 596 genes had reverted to a much younger state, giving a portrait of youthful vigor similar to healthy, active controls in their twenties who’d undergone the same muscle biopsies (Melov, 2007). Don’t forget that Increased muscle mass from strength training also keeps the metabolism revved up, which improves the body’s ability to burn fat. That’s why strength training is crucial as you age. If you are postmenopausal, are you adding in strength training to your weekly exercise routine?
Need a motive to move? We all know that exercise Need a motive to move? We all know that exercise burns away tension, builds muscles, conditions the heart and lungs, and cranks up the happy-brain chemicals known as endorphins, but here are more benefits of exercise that you may not know about. 1️⃣Helps convert white fat, concentrated in your belly and subcutaneous tissue, into something close to the brown fat that burns calories and generates heat and is located mostly in your neck and shoulders. White fat puts you at greater risk for diabetes and heart disease. 2️⃣Alters the expression of thousands of genes. Genes such as ADRB2 regulate your weight changes in response to exercise. When you exercise more than three hours a week, you’ll turn on APOA1, the gene involved in HDL, or good cholesterol, production. Exercise turns off the FTO gene helping to normalize leptin, the satiety hormone. 3️⃣Raises insulin sensitivity and good cholesterol. We have the option to turn off the diabetes genes with exercise. Researchers have learned that active women with the same variant of LIPC may improve HDL levels and have fewer heart attacks than inactive women with this gene variant. 4️⃣Improves methylation. Methylation improves with even a single session of exercise. Greater intensity in exercise begets greater changes in methylation and other epigenetic patterns and helps your muscles soak up blood sugar better and get stronger. 5️⃣Lowers blood pressure. High blood pressure runs in my family, but I inherited the solution: exercise. The gene EDN1 codes for endothelin-1, a potent constrictor of blood vessels. My variant of gene EDN1 puts me at a greater risk of high blood pressure if I’m inactive. As long as I keep exercising, I have normal blood pressure. 6️⃣Raises irisin, a hormone secreted from muscles in response to exercise. Irisin tricks white fat into behaving like brown fat, builds muscle, activates weight loss, and blocks diabetes. The combination of intermittent fasting followed by high-intensity exercise will also boost growth hormone as well as irisin. (Read WOMEN, FOOD, AND HORMONES for why women should focus more on increasing growth hormone as they age.) What's your motivation to move?⬇️⬇️
Physical activity is associated with reduced risk Physical activity is associated with reduced risk of early death: 30% risk reduction in men and up to 48% in women (Samitz, 2011; Hu, 2005; Schnohr, 2013). Both moderate and high-intensity exercise have their merits, with moderate exercise being sufficient for long-term benefits. Age is not a barrier to reaping the rewards of physical activity, as studies indicate improved mortality rates even if you start being active after 65. The idea is that fitness conditioning allows your heart to get more blood to your muscles more efficiently and at a lower heart rate. Cardiac slowing at rest may be one of the ways that exercise extends your life. Currently, physical activity guidelines suggest that you get: ▪150 mins/week of moderate physical activity ▪75 mins/week strenuous activity or an equivalent combination of both. More isn’t necessarily better. Moderate may be best because there’s a point of diminishing returns. The relationship curve seems to be U-shaped, meaning sedentary folks and strenuous exercisers fare the worst, and moderate exercisers fare the best, at least for joggers. Two additional studies suggest that when it comes to jogging and running, doing about 1-2 hours per week, ideally broken into a few 20-30 minute sessions of 2-3 miles seems best. Higher doses of extreme exercise such as marathons, ultramarathons, and full distance triathlons may cause cardiotoxicity (Lavie, 2015; Day, 2010; Kim, 2012; Hart, 2013). Telomere studies show that moderate levels of activity seem to protect telomere length best (Du, 2012). Both moderate- and high-intensity exercise at a dose of 2-4 hours/week was found to benefit women’s telomere length. There was no additional benefit to telomere length for more exercise, so moderate levels of activity are sufficient and that’s what I advise. While telomeres are at best limited at reflecting healthspan, see what’s true for you. To sum up: 👉Mortality studies suggest 1-2 hours per week of moderate activity 👉Telomere studies show a benefit at 2-4 hours per week So exercise dose should be between 2-4 hours/week for the average person, but adjust based on how it makes you feel and function. #theyoungerbook
It’s ridiculously easy to gain weight as you age It’s ridiculously easy to gain weight as you age. There's no need to binge or try at all— it just happens. Here’s why it is so easy to accumulate fat after 35. It starts with a silent war waged between fat and muscle. After 35, your body fat rises 1 percent per year unless you take specifc action to build more muscle and fight the war. Afer 40, you lose muscle mass gradually. By age fifty, you’ve lost, on average, 15 percent of your lean body mass. By seventy, it’s 30 percent loss per decade! There's a name for age-related loss of muscle: sarcopenia. Some of the decline is due to the loss of testosterone, the hormone that builds muscle and stimulates growth and repair. Some of the muscle loss is due to another hormone that belongs to the family of growth factors, myostatin, which is a powerful negative regulator of the size of your skeletal muscles, so you want to keep it low. It turns out that myostatin may control loss of muscle mass in aging women, although the full story is still unfolding. You lose fast-twitch muscle fibers first, the ones that put a spring in your step and allow you to jump and sprint. The fast-twitch fibers wane before you start to lose your aerobic capacity. Old fat ages badly. Think of butter or lard sitting out on your kitchen counter for a few months. In other words, body fat is not inert. Aging makes you fat, and then your fat makes you age— it’s a vicious cycle that’s hard to break. Not all fat is bad; brown fat in your neck and back keeps your body warm and your metabolism high. But white fat, particularly in your belly, where it’s called visceral fat, invades your inner organs, injecting them with inflammatory messengers like interleukin-6 and TNF-alpha. These cause the low-grade burn that makes you wrinkled and stiff. While aging is inevitable, fat gain is not. I am going to share strategies and solutions that will help you break out of the cycle. #womenfoodhormones #theyoungerbook
Any problems in this department? Do your clinician Any problems in this department? Do your clinicians ask you about yours? They need to! Thank you @dutchtest for raising awareness through your educational content and check out their testing to measure your hormones with a collaborative and knowledgeable clinician.
Aging begins in your muscles. The decline may not Aging begins in your muscles. The decline may not be noticeable at first, but on average, you lose five pounds of muscle every decade, so you definitely start to observe the change over the course of middle age. (Middle age is defined as age forty to sixty- five.) More fat accumulates while precious muscle mass takes a hit. On the cellular level, your mitochondria become tired, a process known as mitochondrial dysfunction, which may make you feel more fatigued during and afer exercise or cause muscle pain. Your mitochondria are the tiny powerhouses inside your cells that turn food and oxygen into energy. You have a thousand or two mitochondria inside most of your cells, and if they’re gunked up with debris and damage, you will feel tired and achy. What causes mitochondrial dysfunction? Causes range from eating empty calories such as sugar, flour, and overly processed foods to exposures to toxins. If left alone or ignored, your muscles usually get more doughy as you age as they’re replaced with fat, and you’re no longer as strong as you used to be. As we age beyond forty, we need to shift our focus to preserving and building muscle mass. What are you doing to keep your muscles toned and strong?⬇ Read my article - Why Fat Accumulates As You Age And How To Reduce It - which looks at fat partitioning and distribution in men and women particularly as we age - 🔗link in bio to read #theyoungerbook
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