- Ava
Hello and welcome to Stop Wasting Your Life. I'm Ava Heimbach, your host and founder, and I'm here with Dr. Randy James, who's actually been in my life for a long time. Dr. Randy was friends with my father. Was it in college?
- Dr. Randy James
Actually, med school.
- Ava
Med school. Okay. Okay. After college, but still a long time.
- Dr. Randy James
Since before you.
- Ava
Before me, yes. Just a little bit. Marvin is still young. You guys are still young. It's okay. So yeah, I'm excited to have you today. But today we're going to be talking a little bit about what it means to be a young woman and navigating our health and wellness in a culture that often misrepresents both. So are you ready?
- Dr. Randy James
Yeah.
- Ava
And before we begin, just a couple of things I want to remind everyone. We are still doing the five free nights in Hawaii giveaway. So again, that's four bedrooms, three bathroom house, just three minutes from the beach. If you're interested in winning that, you can go to our website at www.stopwastingyourlifepodcast.com. Click on the giveaways tab and you will find all the ways that you can enter into the drawing there. So if you're interested, go ahead and do that. And then also before every episode, I'm going to say it over and over again, but just a little reminder. that there is no right or wrong way to live your life. And I never want to make it seem like I'm pushing a certain life on you, but I'm just here to give you ideas and knowledge and inspiration that will help you create a life that is beautiful to you. Welcome to Stop Wasting Your Life, the podcast that helps you break free from a life of self-doubt and distraction and inspires you to create a fulfilling and purposeful life. Each week, we dive into actionable advice, meaningful conversation, and insightful interviews to empower you to prioritize your well-being, pursue your passions, and become the best version of yourself. It's time to stop wasting your life and start building one that you are excited to wake up to. Once again, welcome to Stop Wasting Your Life. I'm Ava Heimbach, and I'm here with our guest, Dr. Randy James. Dr. Randy, want to just give us a little bit about yourself and what got you into this just so we can kind of get to know you a little?
- Dr. Randy James
Yeah, no, thanks for inviting me to be on the show. And I'm eager to talk about these kinds of things because, as you know, in our culture, there are lots of issues that are on the medical side, and some of those get talked about a lot and some kind of not at all. So through my lens as... a doc in America, having gone through the normal American medical sort of training system, and then going through residency as a family practice guide, spent 10 years in the military. I was also one of those young, unwell people. And in my own experience, I was already in training at the time, but had to sort of step outside of that box in order to get not well, but well-er. There's no such thing as being perfectly healthy, but to get better. And then for our young kids, we also had to aggressively step outside of that box because they had some illnesses. And so that's what led me into thinking about well-being through a different lens, whether we call it holistic or functional or there's all kinds of ways to describe it. And then over the course of time and transitioning from normal American sort of primary care emphasis, which I had to do in the military. And then... seeing what happened with my kids and then wanting to help other people that were recognizing that they weren't getting that kind of help through the regular American medical approach. It just feels like it's, well, try this medicine or try that medicine and repeat ad nauseum. Sometimes that helps people a lot and there's great value in that and sometimes it doesn't. So in my experience, a lot of people sort of fell through those cracks. And so for the last 15 years, we wanted to help those people. And that's where, you know, kind of doing a practice in functional medicine is where I've been for the last 15 years. Over that course of time, I have seen lots of young people and young women in that setting in America. There's just lots of themes, it seems like, that women are experiencing these days that I would say, gosh, it shouldn't be that way. For example, for every new patient, and let's just say outside of the pediatric realm, so, you know, 15 and over, and for women, whether they're 15 or 25 or 45 or whatever, if I ask, well, back when you started your menstrual cycle, was there an irregular cycle? Was there cramping? Was there what people call PMS or PMDD? Was there... body symptoms, acne or breast tenderness or bloating or those kind of things. What percentage of young women these days would you say answer yes to that question?
- Ava
75%?
- Dr. Randy James
Yeah, right. At least. Now, if you go older, maybe a little bit less. I would honestly say 85 to 90%.
- Ava
Really?
- Dr. Randy James
Yes. We'll say yes to... Not all of those, but some of those. So the vast majority, if I go next door, so I'm right next door to the high school. I don't know if you and I talked about this in the past, but Marcy and I, you know, teach the sex ed class over there and say, I do ask the ninth graders this question. And most will say, yes, I have some of those symptoms. In our practice, that's a question we ask every. person well every woman and so the i don't know if that's technically the right thing to say but i would just say talk to your friends and like you just answered gosh 75 of people it's so common it's normal in america oh
- Ava
i i mean i can't remember a time where i wasn't talking to my friends about my awful period symptoms like i i thought that was just normal if we define normal as what happens with most people most women then it is normal
- Dr. Randy James
But should it be that way? We all know, gosh, it doesn't seem like that. If we define normal that way, then being depressed is normal. These are now more than 50% of people in America, and especially if you make the age range about 40 years of age, more than 60 to 65% of people are then diabetic or pre-diabetic. Now you're at more than 60% of people are overweight, if not obese. By that time, more than half of the people have had depression or anxiety. More than half the people have had a blood pressure issue or cholesterol. So the point there is in America, we've created a culture where we normalize pathology. And that's what I'm hoping young women can hear and say, oh, wait a minute, it ought not be that way. And I would agree. Now, does that mean that? Every woman, every month, every time is going to have a perfect menstrual cycle, whatever that means. And I would say, well, no, we're not talking it should be pie in the sky perfection. But I don't think that normal should be skipping cycles or having a cycle every two weeks. Having, you know, cramping and those kind of things that make you want to stay home, whether you do or don't. Or that you feel like you have to take a medicine. And then that next question is, who? normally is the person that gives you your first medicine for those symptoms?
- Ava
Your doctor or my parents.
- Dr. Randy James
Your mom. And her mom says, yeah, me too. And here we go. And I'm not blaming your mom. And I'm not blaming moms out there. I'm just saying they're experiencing it too. And now at your age, now these moms are. menopausal perimenopausal and it's a whole nother set of normal symptoms in the menopausal setting that equal hot flash and vaginal dryness and low libido and all of these kind of things and it's called normal and that's where again i would want to reach out to young women and say well it doesn't have to be that way i don't think i think there's plenty of scientific evidence and cultural, historical evidence that says it hasn't always been that way. So what do we do about it, right? Like what is a person to do? In fact, just today, no kidding, she's your age. The symptoms have become so severe that the consequences are so high for some of these people of, you know, staying in school or not staying in school. Now we have a whole... whole nother layer where that first medicine that you got when you were, and I don't mean you, I mean, all y'all women out there, when you're 13 was Motrin. or Tylenol, right? Motrin becomes Aleve, Aleve becomes Midol, Midol quickly becomes birth control. And now what percentage of young women by the time they're graduating from high school have had to have been on birth control, whether for contraception or skin, which is related, or these other kinds of symptoms. I actually don't know the statistics for that, but lots. And now we also have sort of a syndrome or symptoms of young women that have been on birth control for 10 or 15 years and they're still in their 20s and there's a consequence to those things because now from 25 to 35 the next layer then becomes infertility or the questions about fertility and that would be a consequence of the birth control not directly we don't say oh if you've been on birth control for xyz number of years then you're going to have a problem with fertility. I just, it's a, it's a player in the mix of the complexity of what's going on. And so then, well, why is it like that? Why is it more than 50% of young women these days are pursuing medicines for symptom control or something like that? And what do we do about it? Or is there something that you can do about it that's a little bit different? So back to that very quick ninth grade class that we do these days of sex ed in there. And today we'll be able to talk about it a little bit more deeply, but just as a single sentence, I encourage these young women to number one, don't think of those things as normal, any more than obesity is normal or these other kinds of things. No, it's common. in our, but let's not normalize it. We're not going to vilify it either and shame people or whatever, but let's not normalize it. And why is it there? What do you do about it? Are kind of the two natural big question that, that people are going to have. And in fact, I would say, well, is menstrual cramping a deficiency of motor? And of course, the answer is a chuckle. And of course not. Well, then why is it that that's what every doctor would say on the front side of any appointment? Well, yep. Okay. This is common, you know, taking anti-inflammatory or an inset or whatever that is. And they can even talk deeply about prostaglandins and the chemistry about why the cramping might be there. But it can't be that for all... women over all time that from 13 to 50 is cramping that is, you know, for some people, it takes me out of the workforce or out of the whatever like that. I just don't, I want, I can't concede that that was ever normal. We actually don't know what reality was for women a hundred or 200 years ago because the system, at least in our system, was very patriarchal. Nobody asked women about it. Women probably didn't talk about it back then. So we don't have very much data about, well, what was it like in 1850? And are we so different now than we were then? We don't have that kind of data. I think it's normal to have a menstrual cycle. It's normal to have menopause. But was it always as symptomatic as we Americans tend to think it is? I think not. And of course, there's women out there who don't have these symptoms. So we cannot say it is true of all women over all time. So why is it like that? And why are those symptoms there? The symptoms are there to tell our body something. That's what symptoms are there for. You know, again, we don't normalize it. We say, OK, why is my body telling me I have a headache or my elbow hurts or my tummy hurts or whatever? And that's where I'd say, well, probably for most women over most time in our current culture, I'd say the common things that are going to be related to this are the whole, like the context of your life as it regards. What's your sleep rhythm? What's your not your stress, but the stress response rhythm, for lack of a better word. Yes, what's nutrition going on? But. more deeply what's insulin doing, insulin and glucose. And I would say that most of the time, the abnormal menstrual cycle is a consequence. of those three kind of main roots.
- Ava
And those were your cortisol levels, your sleep, sleep cycle,
- Dr. Randy James
and your nutrition.
- Ava
Nutrition, okay.
- Dr. Randy James
And instead of cortisol, if we say, what is your stress response? Cortisol being one of those stress responses. And if cortisol is high, it will impact the sex hormone. Cortisol is a hormone. and it's a It's a great hormone, right? Like we are built to have a fight or flight response and we're built to also be able to have a calm response. And every scenario, every day, all of the time is somewhere on that spectrum. But it sure seems like we live in a culture, especially young people these days, I don't know if you know this, but you are the anxious generation, that theme So why is it like that? And you have all kinds of conjectures about, well, what about the screen time? What about social media? What about? Yes, all of those things are wrapped up into that context that your mind is in and that the mind body is in. And so the stress response don't. And so my point there is don't blame stress. If you blame stress. Well, my goodness, life is stress, right? Like if you're in school, that's stress. If you're in a relationship, that's stress. If you get out of bed, that's stress. So our way of thinking about that is in direct opposition to what the culture teaches you, especially teaches young people that stress is bad for you. I'd say, well, wait a minute. Life is stress. Life is going to be hard things. So let's not say it that way. But what is your internal stress response. And that stress response is the critical question because it turns out you do have to get out of bed. You do have to go to work. You do have to make a living. You do have to do hard things, whatever those things are, if you're going to go out there and participate in the world and that creates a stress response. And that's good. That's okay. That's... wherewithal to buckle down and get the thing done. But we live in a society that where we seem to be teaching ourselves that the XYZ job or task or relationship or whatever it is that's that we're getting out of bed for is creating a higher stress response than we want. And that's where I'd say to the individual, okay, well, let's think about that. you are actually in charge of your stress response. You're in your own head, and the task or the thing is the task or the thing. It's not for me to say if it's easy or hard or whatever, but the person perceives, and our perception these days, it seems like, well, the data is saying that we are living the kind of lives where our cortisol is going up, right? Like we are in the anxious generation. the tasks haven't changed right like we still got to feed ourselves we got to make a living we got to find relationships we got to do these kind of things they're still the same kind of things but this the stress response underneath that does
- Ava
seem to be changing so what are when you say stress response what what do you mean like what are some examples of different stress responses
- Dr. Randy James
What does your internal chemistry do when you or when somebody, if I say you, I don't mean you, but when a person has to get out of bed or a person has to go to a job they don't typically love? Like, what's the stress response? What does your cortisol do? What does your insulin do? What does your heart rate do? What does your heart rate variability do? And these days we have Oura rings and Garmin watches and, you know, we're so. We can be really aware of those kind of things, but all of that big picture is kind of what I'm encapsulating by the idea of stress response.
- Ava
Okay.
- Dr. Randy James
What does your tummy do, right? Does it get all tied up in knots? Do you get constipated or do you have diarrhea? And we could also say, what does your menstrual cycle do, right? Like that, lots of women know, holy cow, if I'm super stressed out, it's finals week or something like that, then it's worse. Well. Life is these kind of stress sores and my encouragement to people is to don't blame stress. Because if stress is the problem, then the only solution is to check out of life, right? Like if stress is the problem, then suicide will go up. And indeed it is. Because people realize, well, I mean, life is stress. And again, all of that internal mechanism, which nobody, you can't turn on or turn off your heart rate or heart rate variability or this. speed at which your guts are moving the food through your body or how fast your heart beats. But you do have influence over that. So then that mindset and how one then chooses to do the task of getting out of bed and folding the laundry and then, you know, going to work and trying to be on time and do a good job and wherever the things are that we train ourselves. to have a certain kind of response. Some of that training, like there are people that you know that are born sort of type A, and there are people that are born lackadaisical, I suppose. There's a spectrum there, and we're not saying you have to be a different you or a different personality, but recognize that you have influence over that stress response, but you don't have control. And we live in a society that wants to have control right now. And I want to, you know, I want it to be better right now. And it just, you don't get to have a bigger muscle right now. You get to go to the gym and influence the way that muscle is going to be and train it to be a certain way if you want a stronger muscle. So why do we, are we seeing these kinds of things? And I'd say, well, the perception of stress, the perception of, or lack of perception of a stress response is a piece of that puzzle. Therefore, in our ancient generation, cortisol is higher, does go up. We live in an environment where there is a, it's very, it's easier to disengage, right? Like you can have 5,000 friends on social and not engage with any of them, right? Like it's, it's easier to, to be okay with entertainment. And, and, and it's a kind of. And I'm trying not to say words that vilify those things. There's time and a place for the tool of social media. I mean, we're on social media, right? Like we're making a podcast. But there's a time and a place to say, okay, turn the thing off and go outside. Sit in the sun. Be with yourself. Be in your own head. And that's where I'm seeing younger people not comfortable in their own head. And okay, so why is it like that? Well... how so now let's go to those other two areas how was your sleep and the sleep rhythm and i don't just mean did you get you know did you go to bed last night and fall asleep and get up what we mean there is what is effective restoration overnight what is rhythmic restful restorative rejuvenating recuperating sleep rhythm And we've lost it. And in America, by the time you're 30, 30% of all people will have a sleep formal diagnosis of sleep disturbance or something. And I would say a shocking amount of young people already have sleep disturbance. And they find it hard to fall asleep or hard to stay asleep. So as that sleep. cycle gets disrupted, then will that have an impact on your stress response? Of course it does. If you have a bad night of sleep, that threshold goes down. The perception of stress, stress response goes up, whether that's each individual is going to be different, but whether it's your heart rate or your brain, that sense of stress response goes up. So sleep, the tool, the gift. of sleep is something that we all take for granted and we sort of beat it up until it goes away. And those people that have struggled with sleep, they know exactly what we're talking about. And then you crave it back. But we want it back now. So we tend to reach for yet another kind of medicine. Or we tend to create a different kind of therapy. And people historically would say, oh, I need a nightcap. you know, and they use alcohol in that way, which is terrible for your sleep. Or they say, oh my gosh, I've got a veg. I just, I just got a veg. And what people tend to mean with that is. Netflix and they binge on Friends or whatever the thing is these days. It used to be Johnny Carson. Then it became Letterman. Then it became Seinfeld. And I don't know what you guys do these days. So screen time has gone up, whether it's phone or iPad or television screen. That screen time goes up. The exposure of eyeballs to sunlight, especially unfiltered sunlight, has gone down. Does that have an impact on the neurobiology of sleep? And of course it does. So sleep is under attack, so to speak. But most young people are young enough that they can recuperate, right? Like you're getting by on six to seven hours of sleep a night. Things are okay. It feels normal. You do what you do. But is that a part of an irregular menstrual cycle or cramp? And the answer is yes. It is a piece of that puzzle. And yet most people just don't have an awareness of that. So they just take their Motrin and drive on. And then nutrition. So down the nutritional pathway, do we grow? Are we living in a society where people are growing up in mostly nutritionally well households? Not at all. Not at all. I was not one of them. And so average in America. Right? Like, okay, it's not like people are, we're not talking starving to death, but what we are talking about is we tend to be overfed, but undernourished. It's not about getting food in. We've got plenty of that. So we tend to be overfed, but then when we look at nutrients themselves, we tend to be under-nutriented. We tend to be over-carbed, under-vegetabled. And that, and we can say it in, you know, however many different ways. And the answer isn't, oh, you just need to eat right. Oh, you just need to exercise. Like it's so confusing in the American psyche. We have thousands of diet books and now we have Google and now we have, well, now we got Dr. Chat or Dr. Claude or Otter or whoever you want to use that. can wax eloquent and give you a brilliant synopsis of, well, here's what to do. And it's not wrong, but is it right? And what does it even mean to eat right? So in our experience, as a father of three teenagers, and as a doc working with young people, is that in the teenage world, that that kind of gets not necessarily extreme. Well, heck, I would call it extreme compared to what humans have eaten over the last eons of time, which is not very much of a picture of the normal average American teenage and 20s cuisine in America. So I do think that the way that people tend to eat today is an aberration of what normal ought to be or has been being for the last thousands of years. But people hear that in our current cultural context as, oh my gosh, your gluten is a fad, or everything in moderation, or just be in balance. And okay, but if we would look out there and see that it's working or being successful, then great, but it's not. Right. Like we have whatever age group along the way, if you go to elderly or middle aged or young women in America, there is lots of pathology and the nutritional debacle is a part of this. So what do we do? Right. Like if there's no such thing as, oh, just be low carb or keto or paleo or these one liners, just be a vegetarian or just go carnivore. like every it's what I call the diet wars and the vegetarians fight with carnivores and try to make a case over who's right and wrong, there is no answer, right? Like that's just the wrong way to approach the question. And so to the most of us, or the average young woman in America that's having headaches and menstrual cycle issues, and you know, I would say, well, the likelihood is most of us are over Simple carbohydrate.
- Ava
So a side question, what do you eat for breakfast, Dr. Randy?
- Dr. Randy James
So my, so where we landed in a, you know, busy family and my kids now are 19, 17, 14. So.
- Ava
We went through the crackdown early years when they had illnesses. And what changes is, and they're all boys, so I have not had the girl talks in my home. But when they were sports, right, when you start traveling with a team. And so, you know, 13, 14, 15. And it's like, look, I'm not going to police you anymore. You know enough. And so then it's, you know, fun food for them. So at the time also, I said, look, breakfast, I'm either making it for you guys. I'll do that. It's either eggs or a variation of other meats with like a veggie omelet kind of a thing. I'm going to put those things in there and or on these other days that still cut oats. But they're awesome oats. Like I put coconut oil in there and cinnamon and a little bit of honey and seeds and nuts and cacao nibs and all this. And they're like, or nothing. And so they chose nothing. And I'm like, all right, fine. world. We'll skip breakfast, but you can't walk out the door at the bar. That's not what that's for. Well, what messed us up, or this is my excuse, is along about that time. So my oldest, so COVID year was his eighth going into ninth. And ever since then, food is free at the school.
- Dr. Randy James
Well,
- Ava
yeah, well, in our town. And so what organization is the largest purveyor of fast food in America? Public schools.
- Dr. Randy James
Oh, really?
- Ava
Yeah, that. Public schools. Like we are teaching kids that this is the way to eat. And so we would get the calendar and the school menu and those kinds of things. And it's American food. It's the hot pockets and, you know, pizza rolls or whatever. Well, again, I can't go to the school and change the system. My kids are in the public school system. Where do I want to draw the lines and fight the battles and those kinds of things? Well, We did it the way we did it in my, your audience. This is so to my older son who just finished his freshman year, so he's 19. And I was proud that he did say he's aware of his lack of vegetables. Now that's still coming up short from eating those vegetables. But in this last semester, he said, yep, I'm really trying hard to get these in there. I'm like, okay, that's progress. I'll take that.
- Dr. Randy James
At least he recognizes it.
- Ava
He recognizes it. And as a 19-year-old young man trying to become 20, and the mindset of that is way different than the 14-year-old who doesn't care. And so where young people are these days, where the culture... So we went to the school and Parents' Day and all that kind of stuff. The options there were great. I was very impressed with the cafeteria system that was there. enjoyed the meals that I had, and that was, I would say, pretty darn good, but he's going to choose whatever he's going to choose. And most of us, if people recognize and say, okay, I'm probably over simple carb, which means you are over insulin on the inside, that your body's response to that means that insulin will be triggered more often than it should be. Insulin and cortisol are related. They are hormones. You're the endocrine system of the body. As your body is deciding when and where and why and how to make estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, LH, FSH, all about the cycle, they will defer as they must to cortisol. In this order, cortisol, the fight or flight, insulin, and thyroid. And again, most of those three things in America and in American young women especially are, I'm not saying pathologically wrong, but not really well. And yet everything gets thought about through the menstrual cycle lens or acne lens or weight lens or these other kinds of things. I'd say, well, yeah, those are the things that you're perceiving. But why are they like that? is going to be related to these big three things. Your ongoing learned, or shall we say trained, stress response. The ongoing rhythm of sleep, sense of restedness, or lack thereof. And then the ongoing interface between the body and the nutritional pathway, especially down the simple carbohydrate pathway. And I'll just finish there. We are under-proteined. We are certainly under-vegetables. Now that's very simplistic. I didn't say go eat a special kind of a diet or whatever. But for most Americans, I think if they leaned less simple carb, if they leaned higher veg, higher what we call happy meats, proteins from happy animals doing what they want to do, which is never to be in a cage or a system as much as possible. Then I think from a general perspective, if people could just do those things. Do it consistently. And I think in a menstrual cycle setting, and this is where a lot of people will say, oh, I tried that and I didn't notice any difference. I would say, look, three months would be fast, like really fast. If you made those changes in those areas and noticed three months later that your cycles were better, I'd say, wow, that's really fast. So six months, I'd say, okay, now we're approaching average of the amount of time that you would need to make a lifestyle change to see a consistent difference in the menstrual cycle system. So now six months. And if somebody is saying, well, I've done it six or nine months, I'm not really seeing any things. I'd say, okay, let's look at other things. Of course, if somebody's in the clinic, then we're measuring labs and doing those kinds of things as well. But for the general audience, general women thinking down that kind of a pathway. I would lean aggressively there, even if we are doing, if somebody's symptoms are so bad, we're still, we're doing medicines or supplements or whatever else. Those three things are still going to be a part of the therapy. So as a young woman, what thoughts or questions or concerns does that make you think of?
- Dr. Randy James
Do you feel like the education, like we're not receiving the right information? to understand what is happening?
- Ava
I deeply believe that. And I stepped outside of the normal American medical system 15 years ago. So I'm still always kind of amazed that patients will find their way to us and just say, well, this is what I was told or taught. And I think there's many reasons for that. We live in a system where... Young women from 15 to 25, nobody wants to go to the doctor. You know you're going to get a pill. I mean, like what else? And so nobody wants to typically take more pills. You want to feel better. Right. Like and so and then by the time you get into the system, it's very fast. You get 10 or 15 minutes, maybe 20 with a doc. The question answers are not very deep. And so. You know, the thing it just kind of says, OK, yeah, you know, let's start off with an NSAID and maybe you get some higher, you know, meloxicam or higher dose NSAID and then we go to Midol and we go to birth control. And these days we skip all that. Say I have acne, go right to birth control. And that's happening younger and younger. So all the time. And again, over in high school, in the class, and we'll ask those questions. And it's shocking how many young women don't know why they're on birth control. And I would say it's a rare 10 or 15 percent of the young women that we're talking to actually understand the menstrual cycle. So I just it's not a part of normal dinnertime conversation. It's it's treated as again, I just keep coming back to we wrongly call it normal. We are subjecting young women to think that being a woman is pathology. which is terrible, right? Like it is wrong. And if there is a symptom there, don't blame womanhood, right? Like that's essentially the message that they're getting is, oh, this is part of being a woman.
- Dr. Randy James
What kinds of tools or knowledge do you think we should be giving young women?
- Ava
Well, we're right in the midst of all this, right? Like, again, I haven't raised a young woman, but we teach our boys like, you know, you got to know this, too. Like if you're ever going to know women and most people do. So the I think this ought to be normal dinnertime conversation is where I would start to not let it become awkward. like and it should be part of the boys learning and part of the 10-year-old hearing the 16-year-old talk to the mom about this in the normal kind of a setting, but as far as I can tell, that just doesn't happen. And so here we are, and the vast majority of these young people by the time they're 12 have a phone, and so that's where they go. And they ask the questions there and they get whatever that education is. And I think it just kind of becomes this osmosis of this is normal. I just feel so uncomfortable saying, oh, this is a part of education at the schools. I mean, I'm a part of that system because I think that it can be done that way. So I think that it ought to like the. Like for your hearers, they are now already there. They're going to become moms and to remember this and in their own journey to then, you know, be able to start this with their children on the younger side. Or if they are still young in that setting and then I don't know. That's what I think you should do. Can there be public social media? pathways down this that are going to help young women i hope so because otherwise the vast majority of people are just getting it from a once a year or less convert you know seven minute conversation uncomfortable conversation with an old doc that is you know just just doing the thing and so i i do think we are part of the blame that's i left the system and so hopefully you know What should that education be? I think it ought to start with the family. So if you have any complaints about that, it's squarely Marvin's fault.
- Dr. Randy James
I'm going to call Marvin right now. Tell him that, Marvin, this is your fault. Dr. Randy told me.
- Ava
That's right. That's what young people want to hear too. It's not your fault at all.
- Dr. Randy James
Oh, it's your parent.
- Ava
That's right.
- Dr. Randy James
Is there anything else that you would like? you think is important to cover?
- Ava
Down this pathway, I think one thing leads to the next, leads to the next. We wind up talking about everything, which then people leave with nothing. And so if we wrap up to say young women, especially, and young men that know young women, please just give yourself a little bit of a second thought when you're thinking through. menstrual symptoms, cramping, irregular cycle, heavy cycle, the PMS, which would be mind or mood changes, or body symptoms, acne, breast tenderness, bloating, constipation would be the common ones. They're very, very common, but don't call it normal. And if your body is giving you those kinds of signals, I'd say, okay, what's it crying out for? Maybe you need to use Motrin in the meantime or whatever, but that's not what it wants. And what it wants is those three things. There needs to be a change in the nutrition, probably in your stress response, probably. And in that sleep availability, probably if you're an average American young person. And and then I would lean into those with specifics and give yourself three months. It won't hurt you. There's likely a chance of help if if three to six months doesn't lean over into help. Then that's where I'd say, okay, we need to dig into there and measure like what's going on with those hormones. What's going on with the supporting structure of those hormones, your nutrient markers. What's the inflammatory markers? What's your cortisol doing? All of those things have a bearing on that. And it can get quite complicated. And, you know, none of this is easy. But for the average listener on the, you know, who isn't quite ready to say, okay, we're going to go and seek out a different kind of medicine or seek out a different kind of doctor, I'd say lean in hard to those three things, reassess, give it three months, reassess.
- Dr. Randy James
So what is one piece of advice in relation to what we talked about that you would give young women to help them not waste their life? Something that they can just go. go on with their day with?
- Ava
Yeah, a lot of lost days in bed. How many times going out have not been fully enjoyed with friends or on a date or whatever, because your mood is off, or you're experiencing some of these menstrual related issues. If you think about how many women are out there suffering and wasting part of their life by chasing these symptoms, I'd say again, it's more than half that are losing health span, not lifespan, they're not going to die, but the amount of high quality lived life is lower. because they're suffering under what is taught to them as normal. And so as you are out there making a bid to help people to stop wasting their life, I would say this is one of those areas. Practical action item kind of takeaway. And to be honest with you, the common hearer of these words does not hear. I mean, they listen. The words go in, but they don't have ears to hear, so to speak. It doesn't land or click. And that would be you are the captain of your own metabolic shift. Your metabolism, your abnormal menstrual cycle is the way you've trained it to be. Some of that might be genetic. Some of that might be a direct consequence of some things. But most of it is related to the way that you have captained your. life to be becoming who you've become. So to restate all that, I would say I invite, I encourage young people these days to choose to take agency, captaincy over their relationship with food, their relationship with sleep, their relationship with themselves, that subconscious trained internal stress response. And if you hear those words and then do something about them, even little things consistently over time, then you are changing. You're influencing the way that your body will be responding in the future. And so as you build your 2026 self, it's not going to be perfect and there's still going to be issues. And it's not pie in the sky and easy and oh, whatever. But at the same time, where you are in 2025 is as a consequence of your captaincy of your own metabolism in 2024. And we live in a society that wants to absolve people. No, no. We live in a society that wants to rob people of the gift of agency and make it be somebody else's fault. And I would say if you let that happen, you're giving away your best medicine. So that would be kind of that final word is to, it's hard to take responsibility. It's, it's, but if, if you don't take responsibility, you're giving it to somebody else and they'll tell you what to do. And what they'll tell you to do is to take Motrin and then to take Midol and then to take birth control pills. And then maybe you have endometriosis and infertility and all of those things are significantly increasing in our society. And if you don't want those things or right now you want to be improvement, then you get the gift of responsibility. But we live in a society that doesn't want to buy the book of personal responsibility. It's a much more common thing to sell the title of it's their fault. That mindset, when it comes to your own metabolism, it just if you're giving your responsibility to somebody else in the insurance company. or the pharma company or the whoever company will tell you what they think normal is and of course normal in america is being overweight and fatigued and anxious and all these things and okay well then we're all normal and here come the medicines that are going to you know band-aid these kind of things up but it it robs you of the gift of personal responsibility and influence that you do have over where your hormones are. Now, you could take that in the wrong way and perceive woe is me and I'm so silly and why did I do it this way and have a wrong take on that into self-recrimination and blame and shame and all of that. And I'd say, well, don't do that. Choose to captain your own ship and make a better choice by tomorrow and then reassess. Otherwise, you're just waiting for somebody else to come along and try to help. So that is the one big change mindset that. I would also take away.
- Dr. Randy James
Okay, well, I actually did just get a notification from my aura ring that my bedtime is coming up. So that means we're probably gonna have to end right now or else my aura ring is gonna be mad at me because I won't get the best sleep ever. But thank you again for coming on. It was wonderful to talk to you and I always learn so much from you. And yeah, I would love to have you back sometime. We can continue our conversation.
- Ava
Well, Ava, thank you. It's been a pleasure. And yeah, best of luck to you guys as you're on this new endeavor.
- Dr. Randy James
Thank you very much. And that concludes the end of our episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed it and you learned something. And whatever we talked about can help you go on to live a more purposeful and intentional life. But just a little reminder, the Hawaii House giveaway is going on. So you can go to www.stopwastingyourlifepodcast.com, click on the giveaways tab, follow the link to find all the ways that you can enter. And one of the ways you can enter is by putting in a little code that will be found in our episodes. And the code for today's episode is 1975. So if you go... to the website and type that in as one of the codes that will get you quite a few entries. So go enter that code and we will see you next time. Thanks for listening to today's episode of Stop Wasting Your Life. We hope that you are feeling motivated to take charge of your future and start living with purpose, intention, and authenticity. If you enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to leave us a good review. give us a follow and subscribe to our newsletter. For more information, go to www.stopwastingyourlifepodcast.com and we will see you next week.
