The Wellness Upgrade on Elevate Springfield featuring Dr. Bryne Willey: Elevating Through the Power of Hormones Part 1

Summary

In this conversation, Robert Ferriell and Dr. Bryne Willey delve into the complexities of hormone imbalance, focusing primarily on cortisol, often referred to as the master hormone. They discuss how cortisol affects other hormones, the role of cholesterol in hormonal health, and the various stressors that impact our bodies. The conversation also highlights the importance of nutrition, particularly protein intake, and lifestyle changes that can enhance adaptability to stress. The episode concludes with practical tips for regulating cortisol levels and improving overall health.

Takeaways

• Cortisol is essential for survival but can be harmful in excess.
• Cholesterol plays a crucial role in hormone production.
• Understanding the ratio of good to bad cholesterol is vital.
• Stressors can be physical, emotional, or even positive experiences.
• A deficiency in protein can exacerbate stress effects on the body.
• The nervous system is key to processing stressors effectively.
• High-intensity workouts should be done in the morning.
• Sleep is critical for hormonal balance and recovery.
• Nutrition and lifestyle choices significantly impact hormone health.
• Regular chiropractic care can support hormonal balance.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Elevate Springfield, where we will dive into strategies and stories that help you rise to your full potential. Each episode, we'll talk about how you can take intentional steps to elevate your life and your business while making a meaningful impact on those around you. Along the way, we're gonna bring in the change makers from our community that are already elevating. We'll bring the actionable strategies, you bring the discipline and follow through, and together we can elevate Springfield. Alright, let's go, Springfield. Time to 10X, time to level up. Hey, you are listening to the Elevate Springfield Podcast coming to you from the big dog construction studio in beautiful downtown Springfield. Robert Farrell here, Certified 10X coach, speaker, and mentor, here to bring you actionable strategies. You bring the discipline and follow through, and together we're gonna Elevate Springfield. Say, if you're not elevating your health and wellness, you're not gonna be able to elevate in all other areas. This is the baseline. You know I'm passionate about it, and you know that's why I brought this segment to Elevate Springfield. We're gonna get right to our guest after the break. Looking for personalized insurance with hometown care, David Hilst, American Family Insurance Agent, is here to help you protect what matters most: your family, your home, and your dreams. Whether it's auto, home, life, business, David and his team are proud to serve the Springfield community with trusted advice and reliable coverage. Local service, real relationships, peace of mind. Call today or stop by their office. They can build your dream protection plan together. Call 217-726-6343. All right, and we are back for another edition of the Wellness Upgrade. Hey, familiar face, Dr. Brian Willie from Align Life Chiropractic. How are you doing today, man?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Good, brother. It's good to be back.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yeah. Appreciate you coming back and thanks for the ask. Joining us on the on the segments here. Before we get into the topic of the day, remind everybody what you do.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Yeah, so I am a uh chiropractor uh at Align Life at Springfield. And our clinic is a chiropractic and natural health center. So I would say chiropractic is the foremost offering that we use to help people reach their health goals. But there are so many other adjuncts and things that help to support or amplify those results. And I think we're gonna talk about some of those today.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Absolutely. Well, the topic of the day, hormone imbalance, hormones in general. We're gonna talk a lot about cortisol. I think that's one thing that people hear a lot. Hey, your cortisol. Okay, cool. But a lot of people don't know what that is and what that really means. People are talking about that sometimes. It's become a little bit of a buzzword sometimes. I don't think you can scroll on Instagram without seeing cortisol. Yeah. Right? So let's dive in a little bit when we're talking about all these hormone imbalances, cortisol. Let's let's get into it. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

So we're talking about hormones. So this overarching concept is the endocrine system. So you have the cardiovascular system, which is you know your heart. You have your digestive system, which is the stomach and your intestines. The endocrine system is the hormonal system, and it has several different glands as a part of it to tell your body when to do everything. So it's the action takers, it's the pathways that trigger certain actions in the body for you to make things, absorb things, digest things, break things down, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

So when we're hearing cortisol, yeah, what is that? The master hormone. Okay. Yeah, it is, in my opinion, it's the most important hormone in the human body. Without it, our bodies would shut down in minutes. And cortisol gets a knock, it gets a bad rap because most of us are experiencing so many stressors that our cortisol is not as efficient as it should be, but it's really good. It's really helpful in small term doses and small term stressors that show up. But the problem is we all lead such unnaturally stressful lives that our body is in constant demand to produce and secrete more cortisol to deal with those stressors. And if you're constantly bathing your body in cortisol, it throws every other interaction hormonal system in the body off.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

So that's really the issue, almost the just the over-existence of cortisol, just the cons continuously creating that. Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

It's just like people think cholesterol is bad. Like your body makes cholesterol. You know, it's a fat, it's a good thing. And every building block of a hormone is a sterile. It's a fat. So your body doesn't make junk. It just you need to be making it at the right amounts at the right times. And if you're constantly punching that gas pedal of cortisol, eventually the engine is going to start to smoke out.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Right. And well, and with cholesterol, just on a on a tangent here, but I've heard like um Gary Brecken, all these guys talk about some of that where you know, cholesterol a lot of times isn't the issue. It's the inflammation within there. Cholesterol is going there to fight it, right? Fight the inflammation to help with that. It's not necessarily the culprit of some of the other things that people think it is. There's good cholesterol, there's bad cholesterol.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah. So we can talk about that too, because this affects the hormonal system. So whenever you're like looking at your labs and you're investigating your lipid panel, hopefully your doctors are running a lipid panel. So it's got a total cholesterol, it's got your HDL, the good cholesterol, it's got the LDL and the V LDL, the bad cholesterol. But what you want to look at is not just the total. And unfortunately, what I hear from a lot with patients is if they see a total cholesterol be above 200 or 220, that immediately the recommendation is you need to go on a statin drug, they drop that total down. But what I try and educate our patients is that number doesn't tell the whole story. You need to look at the ratio of good to bad or good to total because it's a it's an addition, it's an addition, you know, game from there as well. So it's this plus this equals the total. So what if your diet's on point? What if you're exercising regularly and your good cholesterols, your HDLs are elevated in a good way? Well, naturally, that's going to push the sum, the total, up higher. Right. So you can't be looking at the total. You have to dive deeper. And I would say I really uh pride ourselves in the clinic on not just taking a cursory surface level glance, but really diving deep to understand not just what one value is saying, but what one plus two plus one plus four plus six is to get the true picture. One number is a stat, two numbers are a story when you put it together.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

I love that. So, in terms of the just to stay on this a little bit longer, in terms of the percentages there, the total versus the good and the bad and all that, is there a baseline of what you're looking for there? Ideally, I want to see a total cholesterol be below 200.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

When you're looking at your HDL specifically, if you're over 50, you're doing really good. Now, the other thing, I'm we we didn't even plan on talking about this, but this is I'm very passionate about this. So when you run a lipid panel as well, there should be a triglyceride line item there as well. And what's really interesting, and I have a lot of conversations about this, is a patient can have a high total cholesterol, but their triglycerides look really good, like really, really strong. Regardless of that ratio, the recommendation oftentimes is still go on a statin dug to drop the cholesterol. Now, if your triglycerides are elevated and your cholesterol is elevated, then that's diet and lifestyle. Like there's no way to fake that. You're not eating the right things, you're eating refined sugars and carbs, you're not eating, you know, enough protein, and your total cholesterol is, you know, going through the roof from a bad reason. But what I'll tell you, Robert, is I see a lot of labs where the total cholesterol may be concerning, but then when you look onto the surface, HDLs, the good cholesterol look strong, and the triglycerides look good. Those are the people who are doing it right more often than not. And they go to the doctor and they say, I'm eating clean, I'm exercising, I'm getting enough sleep, and my doctor's saying I'm not doing those things. And there's this disconnect between what he think he or she thinks I'm doing versus what I'm doing. And that's a perfect indication where you're doing the right things, diet and lifestyle, but there are other stressors going on that are driving that cholesterol out, be it inflammation, like you'd mentioned, or hormone imbalances that cortisol is affecting.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Okay. Well, with that, let's dig a little bit back into cortisol. So go back over the function of cortisol and what it typically should be in somebody during the day.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Yeah. So every time you experience a chemical, a physical, a mental, an emotional stressor, your body secretes cortisol. And like I mentioned, it's very efficient at doing in short-term doses. But imagine like a constant IV drip where you're just continuing to drop cortisol every time you're stressed, your body can't process all of that cortisol. And what's interesting is that your body's gonna serve that cortisol demand before it has any opportunity to start taking care of the other hormones next. So one way I describe it for patients is you know, and if you want to like zoom back a bit, there is one gland that makes your you know, cortisol. It's called the adrenal gland. It's a walnut-sized gland that sits on top of your kidneys. But that uh gland is also responsible for making your sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and it's also responsible for making a hormone called aldosterone, which helps you to regulate your blood pressure through your kidneys. I've never heard of that one. So if you visualize all three of those buckets, and there's other things it does, but those are the three big ones. If you visualize those three areas being like buckets, your body's always going to serve the demand and fill the bucket of cortisol before it uses any resources it has left over to make sex hormones or to make aldosterone.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

So when you're experiencing a cortisol inefficiency or insufficiency, either you're making too much of it or not enough of it, then you're gonna start to see deficiencies and imbalance show up in downstream areas like your sex hormones, like in estrogen and progesterone and testosterone, or in aldosterone, and all of a sudden you have blood pressure spikes, but you quote unquote look and you know live healthily. Or every time you stand up, you get a little woozy and dizzy because you're not regulating your blood pressure effectively. Those are can be indications that there's a cortisol problem going on.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

So is that you think part of the reason why you know you hear a lot about now where younger guys don't have the testosterone levels of younger guys of you know previous generations.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Is that part of it? Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I've I've seen it said that we deal with a hundred times more stress than our grandparents did. So if our body's trying to just keep up with the stress demand, it doesn't have enough of resources left over, right? So I mean our body our bodies are hardware to be cheap and lazy. So if it doesn't have to make testosterone because you're taking it exogenously or injecting it in your body, I'm not saying you can your labs can't show proper testosterone levels, and I'm not saying you can't feel the benefits of that, but you're not addressing the reason why there's a hole in the bottom of that bucket of why you're not producing enough testosterone. It's either that your body's focusing on making too much cortisol or you don't have enough building block hormones left over after the cortisol demand to have enough to make testosterone or progesterone or estrogen from there.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Gotcha. Okay. That answer your question? Yeah, absolutely. So, and when you're talking about stressors, I think a lot of people might immediately think when you say stressors, you're stressed out about something, but that's not necessarily all of what you're talking about. That's not what I'm talking about. That's not really what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Literally, before we came into um the studio, I was on two different meetings, two different calls. Um, and they were awesome calls, like where we're trying to strategize and figure things out. My voice is elevated, I'm getting excited, sometimes I'm getting frustrated. Those are stressors. I mean, I'm trying to solve good problems, like it's a conversation that I'm enjoying that I want to have, but that's still a stress response on my body. People go on a first date, people plan a wedding, people you know, get a new job or go on a job interview. Those are good stressors, they're called you stressors, but the physiological response in the body is the same. It doesn't discern. Stress is stress, and I'm trying to deal with you know the stress as much as I can. So yeah, it doesn't always have to be the I'm stressed about how I had this difficult conversation with my boss, or me and my significant other got in a fight, or I'm feeling tension up in the muscles on my neck and shoulders. It could be chemical. You mentioned inflammation, it could be mental, it could be emotional. Any of those triggers, any of those stressors that you're experiencing are going to create the same physiological demand on the body.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

So you mentioned a little bit about nutrition. Are there any specific foods or any new anything like that that could cause more stress on the body than others? I would say a deficiency in protein.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

And when we talk to our patients, and just in general, I think most people are not eating enough protein. For you know, men in the practice, I recommend they'd be getting at least 100% of their body weight in grams of protein per day. Women, you know, 75%, 50 to 75% based on um, you know, bodybuild from there. But people aren't, you know, eating enough protein. So if your intake of protein is not adequate enough, then stress is going to create more of an effect on how you're able to build and maintain lean muscle mass. And you could be doing all the right things. You can eat right, you can exercise, but if you're not regulating your exposure to the stressors, and if your adaptability to those stressors isn't high enough, that's when your health's gonna suffer consequences from it.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

That adaptability part.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Yeah. How can how can we train our bodies to be a little more adaptable to those types of things? There are action steps, right? It's just not, I hope to have it or I want to have it. It starts with the nervous system, first and foremost. This is uh Dr. Paul Hardy's work. Um, he developed this quadrangle where anytime you have a stressor that goes into your body, into your system, there are four systems that get typically engaged. There's the nervous system, there's the immune system, there's the detoxification system, and then there's the digestive system. He put, this is a medical doctor, he put the nervous system at the top for a reason. It's the master system. It controls every cell, every tissue, every organ, every function in the body. And then that nervous system has to process these stressors as they're coming into the body and then integrate that information and figure out who else do I pull into the conversation to adapt, you know, to those stressors better. You had Kylie on, and she talked about gut health, you know, a few weeks back. And she nailed it. She was spot on about the microbiome, about how diet affects it, about how you can deplete nutrients, how many of your hormones get reabsorbed in the gut. Like every I was listening to the podcast, I was like, yes, lady, yes, lady. She was nailing it. 10 out of 10. Yeah, Kylie's great. So the digestive system plays a part in that. The detoxification pathways, how your body's processing toxins plays a part in that. Um, your immune system, and you know, how your, and she even mentioned in the podcast about how you have immune cells in the gut. You know, 80% of immune cells are located in the gut. So if your immune system can't fight off those invaders or those stressors or those inflammatory markers, that's going to manifest. But it always starts at the top with the nervous system because it's discerning information in, processing, and then integrating what you know to do with that information. So that's why we talk about this in the clinic. A lot of people say, like, why is a chiropractor talking about hormones? One, because there's not a lot of doctors in our area doing that right now, and there's a dramatic need for it. But that helps to support, amplify, and accelerate the results of our patients' you know, goals in the practice. And chiropractic is an amazing pillar that it stands upon, but there are other things that you can identify and utilize to do one of those three things support the adjustment, accelerate the adjustments of it, or amplify it.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

So now we're talking about how you can't scroll Instagram or Facebook without seeing cortisol, something or other on there. A lot of times it's attached to maybe a supplement or something else. So are there any supplements out there that you would that would be better than trying to do some of these things that you're talking about? Or is it a combination or what is there? Short answer, yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

So I never like to guess, I like to test. So we test these hormones in the clinic. Specifically, when we test these, we test four different cortisols throughout the day. So a differentiation point in terms of how we're different than if you went to your medical doctor and had your cortisol tested is that they'll do a blood draw. So they're taking an exact snapshot of what your cortisol is right at that moment. But your cortisol varies wildly throughout the day. So when you wake up first thing in the morning, your cortisol levels should be at their absolute highest. Your body's saying, All right, systems, all systems go, like it's time to power up and ramp up for the day. But then as the day goes on, those cortisol levels should slowly and precipitously start to drop down so that there's next to nothing in the evening today. So last time I was here, we talked about fight or flight and the different parts of the nervous system. Visualize when your cortisol is high, you're in a fight or flight state. You don't want to be at high cortisol, high fight or flight when you're trying to ramp down and go to bed, right? So there are natural real progressions to that. So when we run these tests, we do a four-point draw on cortisol, first thing in the morning, around the noon hour, in the afternoon, and then right before bed. Because it's not enough to know if you're too high or too low. We need to know when you're too high and when you're too low, so that you can target whatever implementative you know changes or whatever treatment to address that. And it could be supplementation, or it could be diet, or it could be lifestyle, or it could be exercise, or it could be sleep enhancements that are making those dramatic shifts from there.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

At the be at the beginning of the day, it's supposed to be high. At the end of the day, it's supposed to be low. Yeah. Are there some things that a lot of people are doing lifestyle-wise, to one blunt the effects in the morning to where it's not high anymore, or in the evening bringing it back up high when it shouldn't be. So are there some lifestyle things that people are doing to kind of flip those? 100%.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

So let's play a game here, because I know you I know you love wellness and that kind of stuff. If your cortisol is supposed to be the highest first thing in the morning, lowest in the evening time, if I said, Robert, when should you exercise a high-intensity workout? When should you do it? In the morning or the evening time? In the morning. Why?

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Because my body is primed to do that at the end.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Amen, brother. If you have a really important meeting, a really important phone call, or a really important task that requires a lot of cognitive function on your part, would you do it in the morning or the evening time? In the morning. Why? Because again, my body's primed and ready to go. Absolutely. We didn't rehearse this. Like this is all this is organic. But you're thinking along the right lines. Like your body is primed to do more of those high physical and cognitive tasks first thing in the morning and lower cognitive tasks in the evening. So if you're going to the gym at eight o'clock at night, you're spiking your cortisol. If you're scrolling your emails at 9:30 at night and worrying about, you know, what you have to do for the next day or you're trying to wrap up a project at 10 o'clock at night, you're spiking your cortisol. If you're doom scrolling and looking at these bright lights on the screens, you're doing things that are directly against what your body's designed to help you adapt. You ask the question, how do we optimize our adaptability? You have to put the high physical cognitive things earlier in your day, low cognitive tasks at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Love it. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. When I when I was younger, I remember like in my late teens, early 20s, I was the late, later in the evening workout guy. Same. Yeah. Yeah. But now I'm first thing in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Or stay up and you know we're studying classes and we stay up till do the all-nighter and you stay up till 2 a.m. What a waste of time. I wish I could just like shake myself right now when I was doing that, you know, drinking Mountain Dews and coffee and trying to stay up. Like you had no idea what you were doing to your body. You were doing the exact opposite.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Right. And you know, and occasionally today, I don't do the you know, Mountain Dew up in the in the morning or anything like that. But I might be editing a podcast or something later in the evening, and I could tell the difference when I'm, you know, trying to get to sleep that I know that I'm I'm ramped up too much right now. I did too, I did too much too late, and now I can't get to sleep.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

And people are like, well, what am I supposed to do? That's when I'm the most productive because I know we both have kids. Like my kids go to bed, it's quiet, it's finally like the hour where I have where nobody's interrupting me at work or at home. And the challenge I always throw back is, well, it's not time specific. If you have that time, you should go to sleep. Go to bed earlier, wake up earlier, and then your body's equipped to be more productive, more focused, more efficient in the morning than the evening time.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

I love it. Well, great stuff today, sir. This was good. Yeah. I'll tell you what, give me, give me a quick recap for everybody, some of your top tips for helping folks out there regulate that cortisol, lifestyle changes, whatever they need to do.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Yeah, you want to increase your adaptability to stress. Make sure you're exercising a blend of cardiovascular and exercise both three times a week, 30 minutes minimum. Make sure you're eating a high protein diet. 75% of your body weight in grams for women, 100% are body weight in grams for men. Make sure you're avoiding simple carb sugar, soft drinks, sugary things. And then make sure you're sleeping. Just make sure that you're getting at least seven to eight hours a night. Preferably you're getting your most reparative sleep between 10 P and 2A, and that you're loading your day, your morning with the higher cognitive tasks and then the lower cognitive tasks in the evening time. You do those things. That doesn't even speak to you, making sure you get your nervous system checked at least once a week. Just not even those things. It'll make a huge, huge difference.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

And if they want to come get some true data on all that, they can come visit you, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Get the data. Yeah. So uh we're over on the west side of town on Montvale Drive, but I mean we're everywhere on every social websites, YouTube, everywhere. If you look up a lion life springfield, you'll find us.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

There we go. Next week, we're gonna talk some more about hormones with Dr. Willie. Part two. Part two. Part two. There we go. I love it. All right. Appreciate you coming by again. We're gonna let Dr. Brian Willie get back to elevating Springfield, but for the rest of y'all, we'll be right back. Hey, Springfield, when it comes to reliable, high-quality roofing, you don't want to leave things to chance. That's why you should reach out to Acosta Angeli Ruffing, your local roughing expert serving Springfield and surrounding communities, from quick, dependable repairs to full replacement, from residential to commercial. They are your trusted pros. Call them today at 217-993-2748 or visit their website to book your free quote and inspection. Don't wait. A little leak now could lead to major damage later. Trust the local experts, protect your home, and get peace of mind with Acosta Angeli Roofing. Well, thank you for joining us today, everybody. Appreciate you making us a part of your day. Hope you're enjoying these quick hits of actionable strategies here on the wellness upgrade on Elevate Springfield. A take what you learn today. You bring the discipline and follow through it together. That's right, y'all. We're going to Elevate Springfield. Be great. Looking for expert tree care with hometown integrity, look no further than Sangamon Tree Service. They're your trusted local pros, delivering quality workmanship, exceptional customer service, and fair, honest pricing. Every time. Whether it's trimming, removal, or storm cleanup, their team brings professionalism and care to every job, big or small. Call the name your neighbors trust, Sangman Tree Service, or visit them today at SangmentTreeService.com. Sangman Tree Service, rooted in quality, built on trust.