How a Sick Child Became a Hormone Health Expert

So I really felt the need to educate women and help them understand that all these things are normal and natural.

And there's something you could actually do about that. Dr. Michelle Sands is a naturopathic physician hormone health expert and the founder of Glow Natural Wellness. She helps women restore hormonal balance through root cause medicine, empowering them to navigate menopause, aging, and chronic health challenges with confidence in vitality. There's about 129% increase in anti-depressant use among our youth. And anti-depressants have a direct link to the suppression of sex hormones, including testosterone.

“So I think if we stop just growing anti-depressants,”

like the children and using exercise which has been proven, be more effective than SSRIs. I think then we won't have a testosterone issue, but... Living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Insight Success podcast.

I am your host for today. My name is Jason Tyler and I am joined here with Michelle.

It's Michelle's doctor, Michelle Sands. Make sure we get all the stuff right here. But Michelle, you are about to go into recording for your legacy makers episode. So give us a little bit of background. Who is Dr. Michelle Sands? What can the people learn about you today in your episode? Yeah, so I'm really excited to share my stories.

I think it can inspire a lot of women. Looking at me now, I'm a successful doctor, I'm healthy, I'm a professional bodybuilder. I am around triathlete. And so it seems like someone looking at me while she's lucky, she has good genes. It's like all things that not everybody can do.

But I actually grew up a very sick kid. I actually believed until I was 20 years old, I had bad luck and bad genes.

And that I would never be fit.

I'd never be healthy and I'd never really go anywhere in my life. Because I was the only person in both sides of my family to graduate anything other than high school. My own tire family is chronically ill, chronically depressed, mostly addicted. I grew up very sick child overweight period problems. Went to junior high and just wanted the boys to look at me.

So I tried out for the track team. I didn't even have a running shoes. I had the $5 little no soul shoes from Walgreens. And because my family had no money and I didn't have any like running clothes. I just went with my genes and my Walgreens shoes. And I tried to run and I barely made it around the track once when the track coach looked at me.

She knew what I was trying to do. But she said Michelle, you know, your body can do anything you want it to do.

“All you need to do is feed it, dream about it and believe it.”

And I was like, wow, you know that. I was shocked to hear that because my dad said life sucks and then he died. My mom was pessimistic about everything. And so this was this track coach who was happy all the time. She was kind of like a hippie.

You know, you would think like she had a garden and hired a crunchy. And I was like, wow, I want to be more like that. I want to be someone who is actually happy and healthy. So I was like, whatever you say, I want to listen.

I'm going to do it. And so I like started like going to her. She was the art teacher. She decided going to her art class. She let me in on lunchtime.

I'd run around the track practice. I'd trade my lunches. My lunch was like a kids dream. I had two cans of Coca-Cola and a bag of like chips like ruffles or Doritos.

I had two hostess backcakes and I'm the one who sandwiched. So I trade. That's a perfectly balanced view. I don't know what. But I trade things.

It's like 1100 calories for lunch.

“I think it's 1100 calories in the two cans of the regular.”

I haven't listened. I've been terrible about that in my country. Yeah, it's everything processed. But anyway, the other kids would have like healthy things. So I trade my tips for like carrot sticks and my snapcakes for an apple.

I couldn't trade the boany sandwich though. So I give that to the dinner. But after like trying to like eat a little healthy, doing my running, I was starting to like feel a little bit more energy. I actually got pretty good at writing to the point

And that was my only chance of going to college.

And so a track scholarship, everything was great. Except I had all kinds of health issues though. Just like my mom put me on antibiotics at any time. I had a snipple because her friend was a doctor. And back then like God bless my mom.

Like she was wanted us to feel good.

“And so that's why she gave us all the treats.”

Because she wants us to be happy. And she saw us sniffling. She don't want us to suffer. So her doctor would give us antibiotics. And we didn't know at that time.

I called bad that it's for your very curvio. And how it leads to sickness later. Back for your liver, too. Yeah, bad for everything. It's really, yeah.

Antibiotics can really mess you up in a lot of ways. Especially if you're on them consistently. Don't do that. Absolutely. But don't stop your antibiotics over taking them.

Now I should talk to first. Yes. I mean, take recommended action that your physician or your doctor is recommending. Medical advice. And I feel like we're in the middle of like talking finance.

Like this is not financial advice. This is the same thing. But on top of that, I had period problems. So what girls happen when they went to the doctor back then.

The answer was always the birth control pills.

“It's 12. I was taught my birth control pill, Italian girl in a New York family.”

Roman Catholic on a birth control pill. I was sworn to secrecy. That was blas to me. I was supposed to say yes. Must have been like.

I was like, I felt like I was doing something horrible. And so sacrilege. Yeah, it was terrible. It's actually don't let anybody know this. This is embarrassing.

And so you know, I'm being told that my health problems are embarrassing. And so I had like zero self-confidence. And in college, I was just trying to get by. I was getting straight A. So it's great. I was on the track team, which was awesome.

But there was two practices. There was like a six a.m. practice and a three p.m. practice. So you'd go do all your classes in between. I had so much digestive issues that I would not eat between. Like like between the six and the three,

because I tried to eat once. I put my pants on around. So I was taking like step to make. We stopped going to the bathroom. Stuff to help me go to the bathroom.

Stuff to help me sleep. Stuff to help me wake up. Stuff for like digestive issues. I had like every over the counter.

“It was like there was a cocktail of stuff.”

Yeah, it was like CVS in my dorm room. Yeah. It was ridiculous. So sock morgue year. I actually passed out during track practice on the track.

And so they took me to the clinic at the college. They gave me some fluids. They sent me home. So I was dehydrated. So just rest a little bit.

But I went back to the clinic. I said no. There's something really wrong with me. Like I am taking all these medications. I can't do the bathroom normally.

I can't wake up. I can't sleep. I can't do all these things. I'm doing dirt. My hair is falling out.

There's something has to be wrong with me. This cannot be normal for a 20 year old girl.

So there first day tried to brush me off.

And then they're like, well, you know, you're probably stressed. You have to just stop me so stressed. But I got finally got one of the doctors to take my labs. Like a full lab. And they came back a week later and said that.

My hormones were levels of a 50 year old woman. And that my deliveries had completely failed. I never be allowed kids. So I never be a mom. And they didn't say it very nicely.

They just said, having kids won't be in the cards for you. And this is like, you know, I'm 20 years old. So I'm not trying to have baby right then. But all girls usually growing up. You have like the tree of getting married and being a mom.

And having the weight pick it fed some of the dog. And that was like immediately stripped from me. So I was devastated. It was like so when telling me I was no longer a woman that my body was broken. And it was a really horrible experience.

I felt so alone. I felt like all the other girls. They weren't trying so hard. They weren't running every day and trying to healthy. And do all the things I was doing.

And they could have babies like what's problem with me. And I couldn't really get any answers. The doctor said the ovaries failed. So there's no way to bring them back. There's nothing you can do.

And all we can do is treat all the symptoms. The hair loss, the joint pain, the headaches. Which then is now more medications to treat for more symptoms that create more problems. And when I complained about not wanting to take them, the answer was anti their presence.

So hey, I don't want to take this many medications. What's our alternative? Here's another medication. Exactly. So, you know, I went around to like every medical practitioner can find from like

Rekey practitioners, the chiropractors, easterms and doctors. And everyone kind of gave me their little opinion, but no one really gave me an answer. Except this one girl who had recently got our college. She was just a nutritionist.

No, I'm like it was like 19 in these six or something at the time.

And like gluten, what's that? Like nobody was talking about gluten. And not at that time, for sure.

“And I was an Italian girl from New York.”

So what do you think my diet consists of? Bread, pasta, pretty much highly gluten. Everything. There was like seven types of gluten in every meal. And it was also the 90s.

And I was a female. So it was like the low fat craze. So like anything that was like low fat was good freeze. Like bagels and bread. And all that stuff was low fat, the high carb.

But we didn't care as long as there was no fat. It was good. So I'm like, okay, she told me what to do. And so I'm okay. I'll try doing that.

Because all the doctors said there was nothing I could do.

And so I do for like three weeks. And like my journey got a little bit better. My energy got a little better. My digestion got a little better. And like, oh, like how like all these doctors.

I've been going to it for like three years. Said nothing I can do. This tile, like this girl, it just graduated. Just barely older than me. Said just fix one thing in my diet.

And it made a big difference. So that just you'll have me. And like there's gotta be more. There's gotta be more. I can do.

They are all after you're wrong. And remember I dad said life sucks. And then you die. But he also said if you want something done right. Do it yourself.

But I remember that. So I changed my major decided you go from medicine. Started doing my pre-med. And when I was learning was the same thing the doctors were doing. I was learning how to match up symptoms with medications.

And like this is blast in me. Like this cannot be health. This cannot be how we heal people. And I was talking to some friends. And they said, hey, there's a guy I know in Arizona.

And he actually helps you heal. And I'm like, what is he like out? Is he a real doctor? Again, I think it's a real doctor. And he was a natural pathic position.

So I went to go see him. And he's told me there's a whole bit like profession where you're actually licensed doctor. But you learn about all the pharmaceuticals. Because you need to know how they act. But then you learn about the systems of the body.

Not the symptoms with the systems. And how they function. And when there's something on the symptom it means that there's something wrong in the system.

“So you have to actually figure out what's not functioning.”

So you can fix that dysfunction. And then the symptom goes away instead of just covering everything. You're tracing things back to root cause as opposed to. And I think this is a unanimous thing that we don't do in society now, which is we have a really weird relationship between cause and effect.

Everybody wants to be upset about the effect. But nobody wants to trace it back to its root cause. And cure at the root cause as opposed to my pain point was here. Let me address this. And then maybe somewhere down the line, I'll be better.

I want to take a second here because you're on a roll.

So I really don't want to interrupt. But what we're going to end up doing is we're going to get so much of your story here. There's nothing to look forward to in your episode. So I want to fast forward a little bit into your current practice. Where was sort of the moment of impetus where you said you know what?

I have to start my own thing. I need to do again, like your dad was saying, if you want something right, you got to do it yourself. Yeah. So let's fast forward to that.

Yeah. So when I was diagnosed with a variant failure, I was having all the symptoms of a menopausal woman. Mm-hmm. And so I got 20s.

You might 20s. So I got this unique experience to see first hand how poorly prepared the medical system is to deal with issues of hormone decline. They are pretty good at dealing with pregnancy and postpartum. They're okay with dealing with period problems, mostly it's a birth and 12th. But hormone decline, like natural hormone decline happens to every single woman.

No one knows what to do. It's like a big mystery. Mm-hmm. And so I really felt the need to educate women and help them understand that what they're going through the hot flashes and night sweats to pressure on the difficulty sleeping and weight gain, the joint pain.

All these things are normal and natural. And there's something you could actually do about that because your hormones are deficient.

“They're no longer, you're no longer making them and you need to replace them.”

And so it was a big stigma for a lot of women to talk about hormone replacement. Mm-hmm. Because of there was a study in 2002 called the Women's Health Initiative Study. And before 2002, about 40% of women over the age of menopause were put on hormones. It was pretty normal for them to go to their doctor, talk about hot flashes, depression night sweats, difficulty sleeping, and get a prescription for hormone replacement.

In 2002, they did a study on hormones to prove that they're actually healthy for women and they reversed heart disease.

And they took a combination of Progestogen and an estrogen made from conjugated equine estrogen.

And so it's made from horse urine.

“But that was what was the popular medication at the time.”

So yeah, so they were both oral. So it was called Prem Pro. So it was a combination of the Progestogen and the Permanent. And then the other group were women who had a hysterectomy. So it was believed they didn't need Progestor and so they just took the Permanent.

After a few months of study, they found out that the group that was taking the Permanent Pro had a higher incidence of breast cancer.

So they stopped the study.

Before they were published, they either results. Headlines all over the place said, "Permanent replacement therapy causes cancer." And so doctors everywhere pulled women off their hormones. There was a big stigma over hormones. There's a freight of hormones. But the other arm of the state kept going on.

And those women who were on the estrogen only actually have lower risk of breast cancer, lower risk of all the diseases. And then when we looked at the actual study, they were trying to show that hormones prevented heart disease.

So the women, the study were actually much older than the average age of women that start hormone replacement.

They were about 65 years old on average. Most of them were ex-smokers. Most of them had previous cardiac disease, diabetes, and about 70% of them were considered obese. So to say that that population of women had a 1 in 1,000 increase risk of breast cancer is not really that far. Fash, whether it was taking any hormone replacement or not. In addition, we don't even use those hormones anymore.

Now we use bio-identical hormones. We use trans-dermal estrogen. We use actual progesterone. So there's no need to be afraid of hormone. Yeah. It's like when you get a headline without the information, everyone doesn't understand. I would love to get your take before we wrap up here. I'd love to get your take.

And this is just something that I've seen being, you know, I'm in the gym pretty regularly. And I see a huge uptick, at least in men of guys that are doing the same thing. Hormol replacement therapy or TRT. They're replacing, they're getting testosterone treatment treated from ages of like 22, 23. And obviously you see this uptick in testosterone. It spikes. They're in the gym. They're performances increasing.

They're getting all of that added benefits, muscularly. But then as soon as they come off it, hey, guess what? Now your body doesn't know how to make testosterone anymore. What's your take on that? Yeah. So testosterone specifically is one that it has a feedback loop. So if you're putting it in your body exogynously, it's going to tell you why it doesn't need to make it.

So yeah, when you're taking testosterone, when you come off it, there's a period of time when you're not going to make any.

“And I think that a lot of times the reason why you're seeing it younger and younger is because of all the process foods,”

all the, the our society, we don't move as much for city kind of screens, the E of Fs. And a lot of the, the lifestyle things that we're doing now is not like we used to do. Like boys are getting out and like lifting heavy weights, playing sports as much another playing more video games. We're, we're giving them process foods, not natural foods and not gay is what's sunlight. If I don't indeed, it's very much connected to your ability to make testosterone.

So I think there's a lot of reasons why society now, the, the children of today as they're growing up. They're not making much, but the biggest reason I will tell you is there is a good 129% increase in anti-depressant use among our youth and anti-depressants have a direct link. To suppression of sex hormones, including testosterone. So I think if we start treating stop just growing anti-depressants. The children and using exercise which has been proven to be more effective than SSRIs when it comes to improving depression or anxiety.

“I think that then we won't have the testosterone issue, but to, in the sense of men who are aging.”

They are having a lot of hard time getting testosterone as much as women are getting HRT now because we keep lowering what we're considering normal testosterone. Like 20 years ago, it was normal to have a 700 testosterone level. Now there's saying 300 is normal and that is very, very different. And I've even seen places where they're saying, like, you know, 150 like free flowing test is like pretty normal. That's where you are in the country, and it's really, really sad.

That it's sad when men can't get their hormones to where they need them to be as well.

See, that's, and we can have a whole conversation on this because that goes back to the cause and effects thing that we were talking about. And then if we really want to talk about like, there's people who are highly invested in different kinds of therapy.

“And that's why, you know, we don't use natural remedies for things and, you know, we could go, I could go down a rabbit hole here, but we don't have seven hours to sit on the podcast.”

But for the people that are watching, you are wealth of information.

Where can people find you online, where can they, you know, get more information from you, and hopefully work with you as a client. Absolutely. Our website is GlowNatural Wellness.com.

We do health coaching fitness programs for men and women.

Karma replacement therapy for men and women, peptides, all the things. And I'm huge into peptides.

“That's what we're going to get you out below. We'll talk about that off camera.”

And then if you want to just reach out to me, I answer every single message on Instagram. So it's at Dr. Michelle Salms on Instagram. Dr. Michelle Sands, everybody. That is another episode for us here on the inside success podcast.

“I hope you guys got plenty of information.”

I mean, I got a ton of information. And now we need to talk about peptides, but you guys don't get to hear that conversation. But until the next episode, I'm your host Jason Tyler. I was joined today by Dr. Michelle Sands. Make sure you guys check out her episode of Legacy Makers,

which will probably be coming out shortly after this podcast drops. Hopefully. But until the next episode, guys, I'll see you later.