[00:00:00] Rita Black: If you’ve ever walked into a doctor’s office with hormonal symptoms, hot flashes, sleep issues, brain fog, or anxiety, and been told it’s just aging, or handed an antidepressant without a deeper discussion than this episode is for you. I am joined by the brilliant Dr. Marcia Harris, a board certified surgeon and passionate advocate for women’s health. [00:00:29] Rita Black: In this conversation, we unpack the biases and blind spots in our healthcare system, particularly around how women in midlife are perceived and what we can do to speak up, push back, and get the hormonal care we deserve From navigating your first conversations about perimenopause, to advocating for treatment options post menopause. [00:00:53] Rita Black: This episode is packed with insight, empowerment, and real world strategies to help you reclaim. Your place at the center of your own healthcare journey. come with me today and let’s dive in. [00:01:13] Rita Black: Did that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That’s right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I’m Rita Black. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist, weight loss expert, bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight [00:01:40] Mastery Process. [00:01:41] Rita Black: And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years. Achieve long-term weight mastery. I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict and binge eater, and after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds. With the help of hypnosis, not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years. [00:02:07] Rita Black: Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the thin thinking tools, skills, and insights to help you develop the mindset you need, not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long-term and live your best life. [00:02:28] Rita Black: Sound good? Let’s get started. Hello. And come on in. Welcome, and I’m just sending love out to all of our listeners, our thin thinking community. I hope you are having a wonderful beginning of your July. Oh my goodness. This summer is. Flying by already. And my husband and I are packing up our car and we are going north to dog sit a nice little Labrador called Bill Jean King in this place called Spol. [00:03:04] Rita Black: Have you ever heard of it? You may have, if you’ve ever visited Northern California not super northern California, but around Sonoma County and Napa County Sonoma County, and that, it’s wedged to somewhere between Sonoma [00:03:20] and Bodega Bay, which seems a really cool place. It used to be the place, if you don’t know anything about Spol which I didn’t until, a couple of weeks ago it used to be the home of the world’s largest amount of gravenstein apples and where tons and tons of applesauce was made. [00:03:39] Rita Black: I think a lot of those factories have now been turned into restaurants where you can go and taste wine and, eat a bunch of, stuff you would get up there in Sonoma County cheese bread, a chart or a chart. How do you say that? I’m not even gonna try. I’ve got a little sore on the side of my tongue and it just is impossible to say that word. [00:04:05] Rita Black: But anyway, it’s that kind of food. I’m gonna, I will come back and I will report on my road trip and let how I navigated all that fun stuff and stayed healthy and connected to myself up in that crazy Northern Calen, California world. And I’m sure I’ll be running around a lot with Billie Jean King, which I’m really looking forward to. [00:04:27] Rita Black: And I’ll tell you all about that adventure and more story behind it later. But I really wanna dive into my special guest that I wanna share with you, Marcia Harris. And she is just a dynamo. We had a great conversation, and I’m just gonna give you a little frame on who she is. She is a highly respected OB, GYN and Women’s Health Advocate based in New York City, and she brings over 35 years of experience [00:05:00] as attending physician and instructor at New York Hospital, where she trained and mentored countless medical professionals in the field of obstetrics and gynecology. [00:05:11] Rita Black: And, she was doing tons of stuff, which you are gonna actually hear in this episode even before that. But for the past decade, Dr. Harris has served as the medical director of the Wellness Restoration Center in New York City, where she takes a holistic and integrative approach to healthcare, focusing on the whole person, not just the symptoms. [00:05:31] Rita Black: And she specializes. In menopause ladies andropause often called the male menopause and sexual wellness, vaginal rejuvenation and bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. she is a trusted resource for professional women. Dr. Harris helps clients move from burnout to balance through personalized care, lifestyle changes and root cause medicine. [00:06:01] Rita Black: She’s passionate about busting myths, as you will hear and correcting harmful misinformation surrounding menopause, which it is abounds, is plentiful and believes every woman deserves to feel seen, heard, and supported on her hormonal journey. I’m excited to share this interview with you. Hello, Dr. [00:06:26] Rita Black: Marcia. I am excited about our conversation today. Thank you for coming on the thanking podcast and sharing your wisdom with us. [00:06:36] Dr. Marcia Harris: Thank you. Thank you for having [00:06:40] me. [00:06:41] Rita Black: I’m gonna tell our listeners what we went through to get connected today, because both for being women of, out there in the world doing stuff, you should have seen us trying to get connected on Zoom. [00:06:55] Dr. Marcia Harris: I have an excuse. I’m an old lady kicking and screaming. [00:07:01] Rita Black: I can I am over the age of 60, I was not I still have an a OL email address, I’m a bit of a dinosaur. [00:07:11] Dr. Marcia Harris: Oh, there we were. The a l club. I actually went to my 50 year medical school reunion, exactly a month ago. [00:07:19] Dr. Marcia Harris: Oh my gosh. [00:07:20] Rita Black: Wow. That’s impressive. Good for you. Were there, I hope there were a lot of people there, all being doctors. I hope they all stayed well and survived. Yeah. [00:07:28] Dr. Marcia Harris: Some of them were with their canes and their hearing aids and everything else, but yeah, there were quite a few Now several people have died. [00:07:36] Dr. Marcia Harris: A lot of people have died. But there was, I was really impressed. Quite a few and a lot of people came. [00:07:43] Rita Black: Wow. You look amazing and I just have to say that and tell us about Thank your, thank you. You’re very welcome. you have seen in your 50 years then a lot of changes probably in the medical industry. [00:07:56] Rita Black: And tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to become an advocate for women’s health within the medical system. [00:08:05] Dr. Marcia Harris: Absolutely. I, as I said, fif 50 years ago when I was in medical school, there were very few of us, there were literally, there were very few women. Yeah. And my class [00:08:20] actually, I went to Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and my class was the first class with more than maybe 10 women. [00:08:31] Dr. Marcia Harris: Wow. They actually, that’s when the tide started turning, and, but even with that, by the time I finished medical school and started my residency where I did my OB, GYN residency at Cornell, the New York Hospital, I was only the eighth woman to have ever gone through the program. New York Hospital is one, is the second oldest hospital in the country. [00:09:04] Rita Black: Yeah. [00:09:04] Dr. Marcia Harris: And I was the eighth woman ever to have gone through the OB GYN residency at New York Hospital, first black one, but there were only seven white women before me. That speaks to a lot. That speaks to how far back I go. That is crazy. [00:09:27] Rita Black: It’s, but that, that, but it also speaks to you and your obviously your high ability to navigate the world of medicine and the medical world. [00:09:40] Rita Black: That must have been quite an interesting ride then as the first black woman in this program. [00:09:47] Dr. Marcia Harris: What you can imagine, we’re talking about the New York Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. [00:09:57] Rita Black: Yeah. [00:09:57] Dr. Marcia Harris: one of the richest zip [00:10:00] codes in the country. And it’s interesting because I would go in to admit the patient to the hospital and I would walk in with my white coat on, my names on it, my stethoscopes around my neck, and I would say, hi, I am Dr. [00:10:18] Dr. Marcia Harris: Harris. I’m here to admit you to the hospital. And they would look me up and down and say can I have the bed pan? what? I would give them the bed pan. I would take it away, come back and say, now can I admit you? They look me up and down again and say can you go bring me some towels? And I would go get the towels and come back. [00:10:42] Dr. Marcia Harris: When they ran out of stuff for me to do and I was still there, they’d look at me as if to say, why are you still here? And I would go, I am Dr. Harris. I need to admit you to the hospital. And they’d go, you are the doctor. Amazing. Amazing. Okay. That’s how far back I go. Matter of fact, in addition to that, there are men on staff and there, most of them are all now dead. [00:11:14] Dr. Marcia Harris: But there were attendings on staff who never scrubbed with me. They literally would, when I was a junior resident, ask for a senior, oh, I need good help with this case. I’m not doing this with a junior resident. And when I was the senior resident, they would go, ah, it’s okay. [00:11:40] I don’t need good help. I’ll take the intern through it just it’s not to scrub with me. [00:11:48] Dr. Marcia Harris: But guess what? I was the administrative chief resident. the last year they didn’t have a choice. They had to deal with me ’cause I was in charge. Okay. [00:12:02] Rita Black: I love it. I love it. That’s, that is a determination and I love how things sort themselves out. people always have to stick, stand up to themselves. [00:12:13] Rita Black: That’s cool. in these years that you have been practicing and being out in the world of medicine what started the ball rolling then for you? With advocating for women within the system? [00:12:31] Dr. Marcia Harris: That actually started it because it was obvious that, and it still, this still goes on to this day, even though it is much better, but we are, women are treated as second class citizens. [00:12:54] Dr. Marcia Harris: We’re literally treated as second class citizens. We are not involved in the research. They don’t include us. 90% of the res, the medical research is done on men. Wow. And then they treat us as if we’re little men or younger men or smaller men, or, which is not true. We are totally different, which is [00:13:20] why there are many things that don’t, that. [00:13:23] Dr. Marcia Harris: Apply to men and that are assumed that don’t apply to us. For example, the whole cardiovascular thing, none of that research was done on us, and we are totally different. The si, the symp, the signs and symptoms and things you look for example, with heart attack is totally different between a man and a woman. [00:13:52] Dr. Marcia Harris: Totally different men have crushing chest pain, shortness of breath. They the symptoms that we recognize as the symptoms of a heart attack. Women have a little bit of pain in their jaw maybe, or they get faint, they get dizzy and maybe even if they don’t black out, they, they brown out. [00:14:20] Dr. Marcia Harris: And most of the time, most women don’t have chest pain when they have a heart attack. you have to think of it. We are totally wired differently. [00:14:34] Rita Black: Yeah. I believe that 100%. when it comes to diagnosis and treatment, then obviously if doctors are working off of data that is skewed towards men, then they’re diagnosing for men too. [00:14:52] Rita Black: they are not diagnosing for women. [00:14:54] Dr. Marcia Harris: They are missing things in women, which should be picked up, [00:15:00] but which are not because of the fact that they’re not looking for it. Got it. [00:15:07] Rita Black: Wow, that’s stunning. Other than lacking data, what is, as a practice, I think I hear women because, most of my listeners are women and most of my students are women. And I, I myself have had to navigate the medical system and, if I wasn’t a loud mouth and didn’t advocate for myself, I could have been brushed aside many times And not just by men, by women as well but I think that just the way that the frame, which through which practitioners often see women is a different frame than they see men. [00:15:50] Dr. Marcia Harris: Why is that? It is. We’re also, one of the other things we’re also thought, and it’s not really true, but we’re thought to be. Not hyper. What word do I use? It’s thought that, okay, she’s exaggerating. This hysteric couldn’t be we are dismissed a lot more than men are. We’re more emotional. [00:16:16] Dr. Marcia Harris: We’re totally dismissed a lot more than men are. And I will give you an example. The my cousin was hospitalized with and she just browned out. She didn’t have she didn’t faint. She wasn’t even really dizzy. It was, she describes it as somebody pulled a curtain. Wow. The room got dark, the [00:16:40] room got gray. [00:16:40] Dr. Marcia Harris: She didn’t even use the word dark. The room got gray and took her pulse and it was racing. No chest pain, no shortness of breath, nothing that you would’ve expected, and did an EKG and her heart was 140 and they said, oh, you’re in atrial fibrillation. Took her to the hospital. Admitted her to the hospital. [00:17:08] Dr. Marcia Harris: The EKG other than the rate was basically normal. There were no flick T waves. There were no, pr, pr. There were no signs on the electrocardiogram of an actual heart attack, but something was obviously going on and this was not there before they, they broke the rhythm. They did. She was in the hospital for four or five days. [00:17:34] Dr. Marcia Harris: They did all the testing. Echocardiogram, normal nucleus stress test, normal carotid dopplers normal. Calcium score normal, did a full cardiac workup and told her everything was normal. Sent her home now, sent her home on medication, including blood thinners because of the supposed atrial fibrillation, sent her home about six months and it took six months. [00:18:05] Dr. Marcia Harris: Six months later, had a similar episode, again, was admitted again, all the tests were normal except this time the test that showed [00:18:20] heart damage was elevated this time. First time it wasn’t. This time it was, but there was still no evidence of this heart damage. And again, they sent her home. Two and a half months later, there was a third episode. [00:18:41] Dr. Marcia Harris: Again, they did everything. This time they even did a CT angiogram. They injected the dye and took pictures of the heart and told her everything was fine. I got there to visit the Friday night and the doctor came in and said, you can go home tomorrow. We’re putting you back on your meds. I know this is the third time, but everything is still okay. [00:19:12] Dr. Marcia Harris: And I said, no, you’re not sending her outta here, because she might not make it in the fourth time. And the doctor looked at me and said then we’re gonna have to actually go into her heart and do. An actual catheterization and I said, okay. And she looked at me as if to say, do I really need that? [00:19:37] Dr. Marcia Harris: And I said, yes, you do. Guess what? Her right coronary artery was 90% blocked. [00:19:46] Rita Black: Wow. [00:19:48] Dr. Marcia Harris: 90%. And I looked at them the next day and said, you all need new tests. Yeah. [00:20:00] Or you need to interpret the tests for women differently. Yeah. [00:20:06] Rita Black: Wow. [00:20:08] Dr. Marcia Harris: 90%. [00:20:09] Rita Black: Could they have picked that up with any other test other than going in and doing an exploratory, the standard [00:20:16] Dr. Marcia Harris: and they really had gotten the entire progression right. [00:20:20] Dr. Marcia Harris: The first thing is an echo, which was fine. The second thing is a nucleus stress test again, which was fine. Her ejection fraction, which is supposed to be 70%, her ejection fraction was 67%. Okay. There are people walking around with ejection fractions of 20 and 25 and 30%. Hers was three points off the normal. [00:20:47] Dr. Marcia Harris: It appeared to be okay. Yeah, women are different than men. Yeah. And we need to make that distinction and have that distinction be carried out and played out in the testing that we do. And in how we interpret the tests. [00:21:07] Rita Black: Wow, that’s crazy. Obviously she was very grateful to you [00:21:12] Dr. Marcia Harris: for advocating for her. [00:21:15] Dr. Marcia Harris: Yeah. I’m just very glad I went that night because if not, she would’ve been sent home. And I’m serious. She might not have made it in the next time. Oh, it sounds it. Percent blocked. [00:21:27] Rita Black: Yeah. That is insane. Having said that, then, what, where do you think, I know you’ve been a gynecologist your entire career, correct. [00:21:37] Rita Black: and you’re really [00:21:40] working within that world, but I’m sure. I guess the question I was gonna ask you is, given what you are saying, and you are primarily working with women, where do you see a lot of misdiagnosis or lack of testing or interpretation within the medical system? Within gynecology? [00:22:05] Rita Black: I, I’m assuming there’s a lot of it well, there too. [00:22:09] Dr. Marcia Harris: There, there is, but at this point, for the last 10, for the last, what, 12 or 13 years, I have done very little gynecology. What I have been doing actually has been menopause hormones. Vaginal rejuvenation, sexual dysfunction. I’ve actually, I don’t operate, I haven’t operated in 13 years. [00:22:40] Dr. Marcia Harris: I haven’t delivered a baby in 20 years. I haven’t operated in 13 years, and in the last 13 years I have been doing mostly menopause. [00:22:53] Rita Black: You see a lot of misdiagnosis within menopause people. [00:22:57] Dr. Marcia Harris: Absolutely. It’s, as a matter of fact, that’s one of the reasons I actually su, super specialized in menopause was myself, because when I went through menopause, I became non-functional. [00:23:13] Dr. Marcia Harris: I literally could not function. I was [00:23:20] miserable. I had 20 hot flashes a day. I woke up in a pool of sweat every single night, two or three times I had to change the bed. My libido was gone. I had no energy. I had of the 34 usual and customary symptoms of menopause, I had 30 and 15 of the 30 were severe to the point where I was non-functional. [00:23:52] Dr. Marcia Harris: And at that point, I literally had to find something that worked for me or I would not have been able to continue doing what I do. that’s actually what sparked all of this and what got me to where I am at this time. [00:24:16] Rita Black: Wow. that it was your journey. And how did your journey progress with finding the answers? [00:24:24] Dr. Marcia Harris: First of all, we dismiss women. As I said at the beginning, we don’t listen to women. And I will tell you, I had a 44-year-old perimenopausal woman come in to see me. About six or eight months ago, she had seen five different gynecologists. Five, she had waited six months to get an appointment with the head of the menopause [00:25:00] clinic at one of the premier New York institutions and all five gynecologists, three of whom were women. [00:25:11] Dr. Marcia Harris: Dismissed her. You’re too young. You’re too young and I’m sure I’m, it’s not even perimenopause yet because you’re only 44. Her periods were regular and a lot of times gynecology, they will tell you your periods are regular, therefore you couldn’t possibly be, but menopause perimenopause starts sometimes as much as 10 years before you actually go through menopause. [00:25:40] Dr. Marcia Harris: that’s a myth that is not true. She saw this woman, and this was a woman, the head of the menopause clinic. She listened to her, did not draw one tube of blood, did not examine her, listened to her, and said exactly the same thing. All the other five doctors had said, it’s too early. You are too young. Here is, and she gave her a prescription for Prozac, a prescription for Gabapentin, and a prescription for osa. [00:26:14] Dr. Marcia Harris: she gave her an SSRI, she gave her an antidepressant. Okay. As well as something for her irritability, anxiety, and brain. And then something for the flashes and the other symptoms she was having and said, come back in a year. Her friend said to her, I’ve been telling you to go to my doctor. And that’s when she came to see [00:26:40] me over the next two months when it literally took about two months to get her controlled and straight. [00:26:48] Dr. Marcia Harris: And she came back and blessed me thank you. And that’s where we are. And that’s what I’m seeing. I. [00:26:57] Rita Black: But again, was it a matter of, is that something that, if I can interrupt if you, your intervention was, you examined her, you drew blood, and you saw imbalances that could be balanced. [00:27:11] Dr. Marcia Harris: Is that correct? That is correct. That is correct. [00:27:16] Rita Black: But these five people were just like, eh, you’re not, I’m not even gonna spend my time with you because it’s, you’re too early, too young. [00:27:26] Dr. Marcia Harris: That’s crazy. Is what they told her at 44, almost 45. You are too young. Perimenopause normally starts 39 or 40, and as I said, can take as much as 10 years. [00:27:40] Dr. Marcia Harris: The average age of menopause is 51. The average age. there are as many people to the left of that 51 as there are to the right. That’s it. You are too young. We literally, we dismiss women. We don’t listen to women. Yeah. [00:28:00] Rita Black: And it seems there’s a lot of mythology in this whole world of menopause and women’s going through this. [00:28:09] Rita Black: what are some of the other major mythologies about menopause [00:28:17] Dr. Marcia Harris: and para, about menopause specifically? Oh [00:28:20] my gosh. [00:28:20] Rita Black: Where do I begin? Because Dr. Marcia Marcia, I’m sorry. Dr. Marcia. That’s okay. A lot of our listeners are, maybe perimenopausal, but a lot of them are menopausal and then postmenopausal. [00:28:34] Rita Black: where are the mythologies or where would somebody like, who’s ha frustrated and going to their doctor and they’re saying, look I’m, sweating every night. Or I’m I, I’m irritable all the time, or I’m gaining weight, or I’m what what is being misdiagnosed? [00:28:50] Rita Black: What is not being seen? [00:28:52] Dr. Marcia Harris: We are ignoring, we meaning doctors are ignoring the symptoms and telling women, number one, you are too young. Number two, it’s all in your head. That’s another, it’s all in your head. And which is not true by the way. It really isn’t. And they’re not too young, as I said, because it starts as early as 35 sometimes, but definitely by 39 or 40. [00:29:28] Dr. Marcia Harris: The other things that are being told is, listen maybe you’re in perimenopause and you’re even close to menopause or even menopausal, but you just have to tough it out. The symptoms will eventually go away. Now, that would be if it wasn’t such a travesty because our hormones are responsible for more than 400 functions in [00:30:00] our bodies. [00:30:01] Dr. Marcia Harris: There are hormone receptors on every single cell, brain cell, skin cell, heart cell, bone cell. Every cell in the body has hormone receptors, not just. Estrogen and progesterone and testosterone. Yep. Women have testosterone, not just those, but the cortisol and the insulin and the andro, dione and pregnenolone and all the other hormones. [00:30:33] Dr. Marcia Harris: The thyroid is the master gland. That’s what controls our metabolism and all our body functions, women, all of those symptoms can point to thyroid disease, but you have to look for it and women are dismissed. Okay. [00:30:56] Rita Black: Do tests for thyroid. I’ve always wondered this because I’ve had a lot of women say I would, my thyroid was tested and it was fine, but the range seems to me it might be off. [00:31:11] Dr. Marcia Harris: Two things. One, the range is a problem, but the second thing, and this also has to do with the range. When somebody tells you a test is normal, which is what I do now in functional or integrative medicine, makes such a difference because if you draw a bell curve, 15 degrees to the left, when your value is less than that, [00:31:40] the doctor will tell you, you’re deficient. [00:31:42] Dr. Marcia Harris: You don’t have enough and 15 degrees to the right. When your value is above that, the doctor will tell you, you have too much. There’s a whole 150 degrees in the middle. Now you tell me vitamin D, which is critical by the way, for our immune system. Every time I talk to anybody, I make sure that they. Get tested and that they get put on Vitamin D. [00:32:12] Dr. Marcia Harris: 85% of the people who died with COVID were Vitamin D deficient. [00:32:17] Rita Black: Wow. [00:32:18] Dr. Marcia Harris: Okay. Vitamin D, they’ll tell you your normal between 33 and a hundred, you’ve got 150 degrees, that whole top of the bell curve, but there’s only 15 degrees to the left and 15 degrees to the right. Now you tell me if you are 34, can you really consider that normal? [00:32:43] Dr. Marcia Harris: No. You need to be not normal. And what we say in, in functional medicine is you don’t wanna be normal, quote unquote, you wanna be optimal. Which is the top of that bell curve. With thyroid disease, a lot of times people will come in with the symptoms. First of all, most doctors just do the test called A TSH, which is the hormone, the pituitary hormone, which actually tells the thyroid what to do via a feedback mechanism.[00:33:20] [00:33:20] Dr. Marcia Harris: if you do a TSH, you can miss up to 80% of thyroid disease. TSH is considered normal from 0.45 to 4.5 on that same schemata I just described. The top of the curve is 2.5. You need to be 2.5 or less. You don’t need to be three or 3.5 or four or 4.5. Does that make sense? Yes. Yes. You understand? That’s number one. [00:34:01] Dr. Marcia Harris: That’s if they only do a TSH, but there are a whole lot of other things that come into play there. There are antibodies which you have to test. There’s a whole panel of antibodies which you can miss. Things Hashimoto’s. You can miss other autoimmune stuff if you don’t test the antibodies. T four and T three. [00:34:28] Dr. Marcia Harris: T four is the normal hormone that the thyroid makes. That’s the one that get, gets put out into your bloodstream. It’s the ratio is 95 to five, nine and a half to 0.5. Okay. But the active thyroid hormone is T three. you can have a perfectly normal T four, which is not getting converted to T three, [00:35:00] and you are either hypo or hyperthyroid. [00:35:03] Dr. Marcia Harris: Do you understand what I’m saying? [00:35:05] Rita Black: Yeah. it, you’re saying that the testing isn’t gonna show the full picture unless you’re getting a panel of there is [00:35:12] Dr. Marcia Harris: a panel with, there are about 10 things in the panel. [00:35:18] Rita Black: The [00:35:18] Dr. Marcia Harris: pituitary and hypothalamic hormones. The actual hormones that the thyroid itself puts out. [00:35:24] Rita Black: The hormones that it converts to, which is the active stuff, then the things that block it, which are the antibodies. Then there’s one called reverse T three, which again, goes up when everything else goes down. There’s a whole panel, you can’t just do A TSH, which is what most doctors do. [00:35:52] Dr. Marcia Harris: women walk around sometimes for five and six and eight and 10 years with thyroid problems when they could have been helped. Because no one’s done the right test. [00:36:04] Rita Black: They’re looking in the wrong places because they’ve been told they’re normal. Yes. if somebody’s diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, because I hear this all the time, I’ve got a lot of Hashimoto listeners sometimes. [00:36:19] Rita Black: Do you see them not getting the right treatment as well? [00:36:24] Dr. Marcia Harris: Absolutely. Absolutely. Hyperthyroid, Hashimoto’s, autoimmune the other autoimmune syndromes which come in there literally a lot of times women. And the other thing is, for [00:36:40] example, Hashimoto’s and all the other autoimmune diseases, which by the way, women get much more than men. [00:36:49] Dr. Marcia Harris: Those are the ones that are usually missed. And those, a lot of times women are being told, it’s in your head. It’s in your head now. what I tell them? Yes, it’s in my head. My hypothalamus and my pituitary are in my head. You are right. It’s in your head. Oh my God. Okay. It’s not in your head. [00:37:17] Dr. Marcia Harris: You’re not going crazy. It’s in your head. That’s where your hypothalamus, that’s what you guys, [00:37:23] Rita Black: how would you coach somebody on or what would be your best practices for somebody going in and getting, if she’s feeling dismissed by her doctor, her doctor’s yeah, you’re fine. Yeah. [00:37:36] Rita Black: It’s in your head. He needs [00:37:37] Dr. Marcia Harris: to find a new doctor. Unfortunately, a lot of us have not been taught, even when it comes to menopause, alright? Not to switch sides or topics or systems, but a lot of us, us meaning physicians have not been taught. Let me use menopause as the example here at the turn of the century. [00:38:04] Dr. Marcia Harris: Back in the seventies when I started doing this, we put everybody on hormones. Literally, everybody was on hormones, alright? And everybody was happy, okay? [00:38:20] And then in the late eighties, early nineties, I forget her name, the woman who was in charge at the CDC said, we are doing this and we’ve been doing this now for a while, and we really don’t have any studies to prove it because we used to say it. [00:38:38] Dr. Marcia Harris: Hormones help your heart. We now know that for a fact, we have the studies we used to say, hormones, build and maintain your bones. We now know that for a fact we have the studies and we used to say all these things, hormones protect your brain. We now know that for a fact we have the studies, but at that time we did not. [00:38:58] Dr. Marcia Harris: It was just something we did and we assumed. she and I’m not faulting her, rightfully said we need to do some prospective studies going forward studies that we can prove that what we’re saying and what we’re teaching is correct. that’s how the Women’s Health Initiative study came into being and that was a national study. [00:39:27] Dr. Marcia Harris: Involving centers all over the country. Matter of fact, it was 166,000 women when it started in 19 97, 19 98. The problem, there were multiple problems with the study. However, first being, excuse me. First being, the women that were in the study were actually older than 65. The [00:40:00] average age of the women in the study was 65. [00:40:04] Dr. Marcia Harris: 65. Now, based on what I said in terms of perimenopause, lasting as much as 10 years and then going into menopause directly, if our cells have not been getting what they need for 10 years. They’re gonna be damaged. these women already had plaque on their coronary arteries. These women already had osteopenia and osteoporosis. [00:40:39] Dr. Marcia Harris: These women already had all these things. That was number one. Number two body with that was actually symptomatic, was accepted for the study. if you were me who was flashing and sweating and all of the above, I would not have been eligible to be in the study. Now how are you gonna do a study on menopause and you’re not including the symptoms? [00:41:11] Dr. Marcia Harris: That’s number two. Number three, the type of medication that was used. The hormones that was being used was the horse’s, urine stuff. They didn’t even try to hide it. And there are still women out there today where gynecologists are still prescribing prema, pregnant mares urine. I’m [00:41:40] sure 99% of these women don’t know that there’s horse urine. [00:41:43] Dr. Marcia Harris: They’re popping every night before they go to bed. Okay. Rin pregnant mares urine. Now, in all honesty, the, it’s called CEE, the Con conjugated. Equine estrogen, which is the Premarin. This part of the study that was done where the women were given just the estrogen, those women did. Okay. Because even though the horses urine was not the same as what our bodies make, okay, the key didn’t fit the lock, but it was close enough that it actually helped what the part of the study where everything went totally and completely all was the part where they added in a synthetic progesterone. [00:42:34] Dr. Marcia Harris: Now, progesterone is very important in terms of our female hormones because estrogen promotes growth. Progesterone promotes development. If you have growth without development, you’re in trouble, right? the though, the people who had the worst prognosis and the people who really got in trouble were the people who got the estrogen with the synthetic. [00:43:06] Dr. Marcia Harris: Progestin. Now the [00:43:12] Dr. Marcia Harris: lost my train of thought edited [00:43:14] Rita Black: you were saying about the study that, that I am assuming [00:43:20] that the study was off because they were testing. [00:43:25] Dr. Marcia Harris: Yes. the estrogen arm of the study, those people did. Okay. The estrogen and progestin arm of the study did not. That was number three. [00:43:39] Dr. Marcia Harris: Number four, the study was not treated most studies were. Most studies you have the you finish the study, they analyze the data, they put it together, they present it to the committee. They come up with their. Conclusions, and then it’s presented to the medical community and subsequently to the world. [00:44:07] Dr. Marcia Harris: What happened was a pharmacist, not even a physician, a pharmacist looked at it and said, oh my god, these women, this data shows that breast cancer went up. And without any consensus, without anybody else looking at it, whatever. He said this to someone, and the next morning it was front page, New York Times and Front Page wa, wall Street Journal. [00:44:41] Dr. Marcia Harris: Wow. Literally hormones cause breast cancer or whatever the headline actually said. My phone rang 200 times that day. [00:44:55] Rita Black: I [00:44:55] Dr. Marcia Harris: can tell you where I was when John F. Kennedy was shot. [00:45:00] I can tell you where I was on nine 11. I can also tell you where I was. The day the Women’s Health Initiative study was broadcast to the world prematurely. [00:45:13] Dr. Marcia Harris: Now, was he Correct? Yes. 2.34% of women in the age in that age group get are likely to get breast cancer, and it went from 2.34 to 2.90, [00:45:43] Dr. Marcia Harris: 2.34 to 2.90. If you multiply that out, it went from four women in a thousand. 4.8 women call it five in a thousand. Okay. Now tell me, is that statistically significant? [00:46:02] Rita Black: No, [00:46:02] Dr. Marcia Harris: it is not. [00:46:04] Rita Black: Yeah, [00:46:05] Dr. Marcia Harris: it is not For the benefits, for the potential benefits of hormone replacement therapy. Going from four cancers in a thousand to five cancers in a thousand is not statistically significant. [00:46:23] Dr. Marcia Harris: And the sad thing is all of these things were debunked within a year or two of the study being stopped because that’s what they did. They actually stopped the study in 2002 when this happened, [00:46:40] and everything was debunked within less than two years. But whereas when it was announced it was front page. [00:46:51] Dr. Marcia Harris: And headline New York Times. What happened when it was debunked? It was two paragraphs on page 50 of the same newspaper. The other thing is they stopped teaching about hormones in the late sixties, early seventies. When I was in school. They taught us about hormones. We knew their benefits, we knew their risks. [00:47:18] Dr. Marcia Harris: We knew what we thought they did and why they were important. They literally stopped teaching about hormones. the crop of doctors who are out there now don’t have a clue because they were never taught. when the women go to them now and say, I feel lousy, please help me. They go, oh, you’re getting old. [00:47:45] Dr. Marcia Harris: It’ll go away, bear with it, stick with it, tough it out. Which is totally unnecessary because the premise, the baseline premise is not true. [00:48:02] Rita Black: Wow. Can I ask you, women go through menopause and then they’re in post menopause because I want, because a lot of my listeners are in post menopause. [00:48:14] Rita Black: What is, what are things that women are probably going to their doctor and [00:48:20] complaining about that might just be some symptoms of menopause or post menopause, but they’re, they’re just saying it to their doctor and their doctor is dismissing it. [00:48:32] Dr. Marcia Harris: There are 34 primary symptoms. There are another 20. [00:48:43] Dr. Marcia Harris: Secondary and there’s about 15 or 20 tertiary symptoms. there are a lot of things that can be and are associated with which women can complain of. Now I’m gonna go over this go through the symptoms. However, even if some and 10% of, let me back up, 10% of women are totally asymptomatic. And 10% are as I was very severe. The 80% in the middle are from one end of the spectrum to the other. [00:49:25] Rita Black: That’s [00:49:26] Dr. Marcia Harris: number one. Number two, these symptoms usually burn themselves out, meaning they don’t always, and there are 10% of people. Stay symptomatic forever, but the only 10% of the people in the middle, it might last. [00:49:46] Dr. Marcia Harris: Some people it lasts two years. Some people it lasts five. Some people it lasts 10. Some people it never goes away. everybody’s different in terms of how long your symptoms last. [00:50:00] However, it doesn’t matter if the symptoms go away or not because of the fact that every cell in the body is affected, even if the actual symptoms burn out and go away, your tissue is still not getting the benefit that it had for the first 50 years of your life. [00:50:25] Dr. Marcia Harris: Yes. it’s deteriorating as the hormone levels decline as go to nothing and are not replaced. Your tissue is getting, for example, estrogen maintains our bones. Testosterone builds our bone. As a matter of fact, in replacing hormones, we give women not just estrogen and progesterone, but testosterone as well. [00:50:55] Dr. Marcia Harris: And a lot of times women are like, you’re giving me testosterone. Isn’t that a male hormone? It’s not. Women have testosterone. Not only do women have testosterone, they have more testosterone than they have estrogen or progesterone. Wow, interesting. We have 10 times less testosterone than men, but we have 10 times more testosterone than we have estrogen. [00:51:21] Dr. Marcia Harris: And they’re responsible for the same thing. Muscle toning, building muscle mass, building your bone, energy, libido. They’re responsible for exactly the same things. Okay, when you are not getting them replaced, the [00:51:40] decline in the hormones is actually affecting the cells in your body. The hormones are the difference between little old ladies pushing a stroller and women living functional lives into their eighties and nineties. [00:52:02] Dr. Marcia Harris: The average age of death for a woman right now is up to 86 years old. Average age of death for a man is 79 to 80. And the difference is our hormones. [00:52:15] Rita Black: Now let me [00:52:15] Dr. Marcia Harris: say here, the men start losing their testosterone way before we do because theirs is incremental. Their starts as early as 20. 25 or 29 and 30, but it’s one to 2% a year. [00:52:36] Dr. Marcia Harris: It’s a steady decline. even at eight year 90, they still can have, quite a bit. Whereas we are fine. Our ovaries work, they work, and then we fall off a cliff and we crash and burn. That difference is why we function better, live longer, have less diseases, and get them later. For example, I’m sure a man who’s had a stroke or a heart attack at 40 or 45 or 50 years old and it’s, you are hard pressed to find a woman who [00:53:20] has a heart attack or a stroke before 60 or 65. [00:53:26] Dr. Marcia Harris: Because that’s when the decline is significant enough, the hormonal decline that the tissue has now actually reacted to it. [00:53:38] Rita Black: Interesting. Wow. That’s fascinating. Now I know we could go on for hours, Dr. Marc but I would love for you to tell our listeners, ’cause I know you have a couple of things that go and get into more intricate details about menopause and how to take care of yourself. [00:53:59] Rita Black: And maybe these are also something that they could advocate for themselves with their doctor, with, the information that you’re going to give them. Could you share that with our listeners as we wrap up here? Absolutely. [00:54:14] Dr. Marcia Harris: This [00:54:14] Rita Black: has been really. [00:54:18] Dr. Marcia Harris: We actually we’ve cracked the code. We have cracked the code. We’re rewriting the narrative. We’re rewriting the narrative. We’re flipping the script. I love it. We, as women have to advocate for ourselves. Don’t let anybody tell you it’s in your head. Don’t let anybody tell you’re crazy. Don’t let anybody tell you, you are making it up. [00:54:53] Dr. Marcia Harris: how you feel. what you’re feeling. If this, if your doctor [00:55:00] won’t listen to you, find somebody who will find somebody who will. We know what’s normal for us. We know when that’s changed. Or starts changing, find someone who will listen to you. My website is dr marcia harris. com. That’s D-R-M-A-R-C-I-A-H-A-R-R-I s. com. [00:55:33] Dr. Marcia Harris: If you go in and fill out it, it’s a short form, I think email and cell number, and put in the memo Send menopause ebook or just well, there’s several eBooks, send menopause ebook or send the ultimate Menopause Survival Toolkit. How’s that? Put [00:55:59] Rita Black: this in the show notes too, just that our listeners will know that they’ll the two resources that you’re giving them for free are going to be listed in the show notes that they don’t have to memorize this right now. [00:56:12] Rita Black: And we’ll also, there you go. Put your link to do that. they just need to go in and put their name and their email address and you’ll send them some resources on menopause hormones and understanding what’s going on a bit better they can advocate for themselves more. [00:56:30] Dr. Marcia Harris: Absolutely. We really, as women have to because they will dismiss us. [00:56:39] Rita Black: Yes. [00:56:40] I think every woman has a story. Dr. Marcia, I think every woman I’ve spoken to I know has had a. Gone to the doctor and not been heard story. I know my, even my doctor who my, my doctor, my, my 23-year-old daughter has had those happen to her. And, she’s a young woman. She’s not an older lady, it’s still happening. And it and I couldn’t agree with you more. I’m grateful for our conversation today. I’d love to have you back and we can talk more about this. But I love the fact that you’re arming us with your powerful guides. And please, if you’re listening check out Dr. [00:57:18] Rita Black: Marcia. She’s very knowledgeable. She’s been around. This woman knows what she’s talking about. a long time. I love it. Thank you for your time and your knowledge and wisdom, Dr. Marcia. It’s been wonderful to speak with you. [00:57:35] Dr. Marcia Harris: Thank you much. Thank you for having me. [00:57:38] Rita Black: Oh, thank you Dr. [00:57:40] Rita Black: Harris. And please go visit the show notes where you will find those resources that Dr. Harris was speaking about. And please also have an amazing and safe independence Day weekend if you are here in the United States and listening to it this week. And if not have an amazing weekend or upcoming week. [00:58:01] Rita Black: And remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the wait struggle is inside you. keep listening and find it. I will be with you here next week. Bye. Thanks for listening to The Thin Thinking Podcast. Did that episode go by way too [00:58:20] fast for you? If so, and you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release, head on over to www shift weight mastery. com. [00:58:32] Rita Black: That’s www shift weight mastery. com, where you’ll find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release tips, strategies, and more. And be sure to check the show notes.