new friend, Dr Sara Gottfried. Welcome, Sara! Sara: Hey Kris! Hi everybody!

Kris: It is so great to have you here. And I'm such a big fan of yours. I have to say

that your book, The Hormone Cure, has become ... there it is! Your book! And there's a

paperback now - I still have the hardcover. It has become one of my new recommendations

and bibles and I have brought it into my Functional Medicine practitioners. And I will say that

I busted one of my own myths, thanks to you. I thought that I was high in cortisol but

it turns out I'm low in cortisol. So thank you for that, Dr Sara!

Sara: You know, I'm always happy to be of service. So thank you for that, Kris. I'm

a huge fan, let me just get that out of the way. I've been a huge fan for years.

Kris: Mwah, mwah! So for you guys out there who might not know about Dr Sara, I think

that's probably hard at this point because you're such a superstar, but sometimes I'm

certainly last to the party. Let me just tell y'all a little bit about her before we dive

into this interview. She is a Harvard-educated physician, a board-certified gynaecologist,

a speaker, a yoga teacher ... isn't that nice when it all comes together? I say those really

big educational words and then I say she's a yoga teacher! What? She's a mom of two daughters

and the author of this unbelievable book, The Hormone Cure, as I said. So, Sara, I want

to talk about something that I know is going on for a lot of women in my life right now.

That is an increased amount of stress. Sara: Mmm.

Kris: I know you are just the master at solving these problems for folks. So tell me what

you mean by 'runaway stress' and what happens to our bodies when we have runaway stress.

Sara: This is such a great question. I think that most of us don't realize that we have

runaway stress. You know, there's sort of tricky ways that it shows up. One way is that

you just feel ungrounded, or you feel anxious, or depressed - 50% of people who have depression

actually have high cortisol. It's a suicide marker.

Kris: Wow. Sara: Cortisol is the main stress hormone

and the problem with runaway stress is that it changes the entire hormonal makeup of your

body. So this is really important. It can age you prematurely ... why don't we get the vain

things out of the way first, Kris, does that sound good?

Kris: That sounds awesome! Sara: And then we can talk about the inner

ecosystem. So, you know, on the surface I really think that your skin is a mirror of

your life and if you have runaway stress, if you have bad stress and cortisol is either

too high or too low or, you know, maybe both within the same day, it causes you to wrinkle

prematurely, it shrinks - on the inside - it shrinks your telemeters, those are the cute

little caps on your chromosomes that are a marker of your biological, as opposed to your

chronological, age. And it robs you of the mood and metabolism that you most deserve.

So, if you don't want to be fat and cranky, you've got to make sure that you don't have

runaway stress! Kris: [Laughs] I like that. Nobody wants to

be fat and cranky. But, you know, we just don't, but I think that it's great in theory

but how do we in our daily lives really practise that? Because, when we get that email, when

we feel up against the ropes with a deadline, or when something's going on with our kids,

you know, from your perspective, how do we walk out of that stress cyclone?

Sara: Yeah, the stress cyclone! You know, the key thing with the cyclone ... actually I

don't know cyclones very well but I know hurricanes!

Kris: Hurricanes, OK! Sara: The stress hurricane, you want to find

the eye. Like, we all have the stress hurricane happening all the time and it's not the amount

of stress that you have, it's actually your reaction to it. It's your perception of the

stress, especially if you think it's harmful for you. So I think the key part, when you're

up against the wall and you have stress coming from multiple different places, is to really

understand your response to it. And there's a lot of ways to do that but I think it really

starts with measuring - and you can measure it with questionnaires, you can look at symptoms,

blood tests, you can measure those cute little telemeters, it's not expensive to do that.

So there's lots of different ways to measure it, but I think that's where it first starts.

And, once you have that measurement, and you have the awareness, then you can step into

the grace of developing your solutions - the solutions that are really tailor-made for

you, because not everybody ... Kris, sometimes I have folks come to me in my practise and

they'll say "Dr Sara, I know you're a yoga teacher and I just want to tell you right

now I'm not going to yoga." Kris: [Laughs]

Sara: "So can we talk about something else? Because that's not going to work for me and

I'm not going to sit on a cushion and meditate either." So we've got to come up with the

solutions that really work for folks. Kris: Yeah, I love that. And I think that,

once we find those solutions, we actually have to practise them, because sometimes it's

very easy to stay stuck in our habits - including the habits that support stress - when we know

right around the corner there's something better waiting for us. I know, for me, dancing,

hiking in the woods, really unstructured time and really awesome, fun movies are my go-to

stress reducers. And, if I'm choosing not to do them, or I'm saying that I'm not making

time to do those, then I'm actually choosing more stress in my life than more joy. And

it's taken me a long time to actually own up to that!

Sara: Yeah, that's such a good point and I think, once you have your a la carte menu - I like

your menu, you've got the dancing, the hiking ... what was the third thing?

Kris: I love movies and I love unstructured time.

Sara: Yeah! Kris: Yeah.

Sara: Unstructured time and movies! So, you know, all of those, I think, suspend time

Kris: Mmm. Sara: And I think, for all of us, we need to get out of that hamster wheel of time. You know,

running from one task to the next and the To Do list that is at the front of our consciousness

instead of the mission that we want to rock while we're here. When you are able to hit

the pause button it really makes such a difference in your physiology. And it's ... you know,

I want to make sure that people understand that ... I'm not saying what I was told when

I was in my mid-30s, when I was crazy stresspants and I went to my doctor and I was, like, "Waaaaah!

I'm a working mother and I can't do this and I'm fat and I'm cranky and irritable and I

don't want to have sex with my husband." And my doctor was like, "OK, you need to reduce

stress." Kris: Right.

Sara: That's not my message at all. My message is let's hike with it a bit differently, let's

dance with it differently, let's take it out for a walk in nature. Because stress hates

going for a walk in nature. That just doesn't work at all. So we've gotta find these ways

to have a different relationship with stress. Kris: I love that you say that because none of us ...

I mean, very few of us live in the luxurious life where we can protect ourselves 100% and

live in a bubble from stress. I think it's very easy to kind of paint this either/or

reality and then the vast majority of folks out there, especially the vast majority are

women, feel like their problem isn't really being solved and they're still left scratching

their head. So, for you personally, how do you, as you say, dance with stress, meet stress

half-way? Sara: Yeah, oh this is such a good one. I'm

a yoga teacher so, you know, I had to become a yoga teacher because Iwas so stress-crazed

in my 30s. So I like to disrupt it with yoga. And sometimes it's as simple as sacral release.

You know, like one yoga pose that I'll do in the morning and the days where I could

go to those lovely 90-minute classes, like those days are pretty much over! So I don't do that anymore.

I also use my iPhone, I'll be at the grocery store and I'll pop on Inner Balance by Heart Math and

I'll do some coherance training, where you take the sympathetic nervous system, that half

of your nervous system that's in charge of fight or flight, and I'll get it into sync

with my parasympathetic nervous system, that half of your nervous system that does rest

and digest. When you connect the two ... ah, it's like biological yumminess. It's so good

for you. Orgasm does it too! So those are, you know, some of the things that work really

well for me. Kris: Let's go to my favorite subject: the

link between cortisol and all the bad crap that could go on in your life!

Sara: [Laughs] Oh yes! Well, this list is long. I'll give you a few headlines and you

can tell me where you want to dive deeper. Kris: You got it.

Sara: I mentioned, you know, that, when cortisol's like a runaway train, you can get fat and

cranky. So why don't we start first with fat? Kris: [Laughs]

Sara: So, when you're stressed out, and I get ... I used to get stressed out over the

most minor things. But, what I found when I was in that place of being thin-skinned

and highly sensitive, was that I would get fat so easily. I would go into survival mode

and, when you're in survival mode and cortisol is either really high or you're at more the

burnout phase, where it's low, then what happens is you're storing fat. So your body is kind

of like, if you imagine an Irish potato farmer who has a famine upon them, they don't know

where their next meal is going to come from. So you store fat like crazy and especially

where you can pick it up fast - which is right here at your belly. And that's not such a good thing. It's fat that is not just at

your waistline, it's also around your liver and in your liver. It's around your organs

and it's a special kind of bad fat that is metabolically active and working against you.

Kris: Right. Sara: Including shrinking the telemeters.

Kris: That's not good. Sara: None of us want to be fat. We want to

be lean. In fact, we know that longevity, Imentioned that telemeters can track your

longevity, when it comes to longevity you want to be either maintaining your lean body

mass or making it better as you get older. That happens to be one of my goals. I want

to look totally hot when I'm in my late 90s! What do you think Kris?

Kris: I think that's a good idea. I like that plan.

Sara: Yeah, green juice, keep the cortisol in check.

Kris: Exactly. Sara: Right? So, yeah, what else. #1 you're

going to get fat. #2 it robs you of those happy brain chemicals. I was making the joke

about dopamine, which is responsible for pleasure and satisfaction, and addict brains tend to

be really focused on dopamine and I happen to be one of those addict brains. If something

is worth doing it's worth overdoing! And also serotonin. So serotonin is ... I like to call

it Dr Serotonin, that's what my assistant calls it.

Kris: [Laughs] Sara: Serotonin's in charge of your mood and

your sleep and your appetite and it's not like all these brain chemicals are created

equal. Like serotonin is the gatekeeper. You really want to love up your serotonin, it's

very important when you have runaway stress, when you have high cortisol or low cortisol,

it effects the levels of these happy brain chemicals. So that affects your mood, anxiety,

depression, ADD, memory issues, those are some of the things that happen. In fact, we

know, for people who have high cortisol, it can shrink your hippocampus.

Kris: Oh. Sara: I just wanted to say hippocampus for

you, Kris. Kris: It's a sexy word, hippocampus! It's

such a sexy word. It's really for after-hours but, since you went there, here we are!

Sara: [Laughs] It's cocktail hour somewhere, I thought I could bring in hippocampus! So

your hippocampus is in charge of your emotional regulation and memory consolidation and, if

you are shrinking that puppy in your brain with high cortisol, you are going to walk

into a room and just be like, why did I come in here again? I can't remember. And you're

not going to be able to emotionally regulate. And, oh my gosh, aren't relationships the

most important thing on the planet? Kris: Yeah.

Sara: We need our hippocampus to have strong, supportive relationships. So those are a few

of the things. I could go on and on about what happens with the ...

Kris: Cortisol, yes. Sara: When cortisol goes bad.

Kris: So let me ask you a question, because I bet a lot of people out there listening

to this will probably wonder how do I know if mine is high or low or where I stand? What

would you suggest? Sara: Well, I ... I want to give a range of

options here, ranging from absolutely free to ...

Kris: Very expensive! Sara: Very expensive! Some of the tests that you can

do ... free would be that you do a symptom questionnaire. And I have a free one on my

website. I'm happy to give the URL for that. You can also, if you get my book, on page

24 through 31 you can take my questionnaire that I've been using in my practice for 20

years to identify problems with high cortisol, low cortisol, and anything in between. So

those are some of the suggestions in terms of measuring. You can also do a blood test.

And I'm a big fan. I practise functional medicine, as you know Kris, and I like to do blood work

first, because it's the universal language of mainstream medicine. Now, that's a separate

conversation, how I want to completely change mainstream medicine and bring them our way!

But I like to start with blood tests, because most mainstream doctors don't really buy the

whole cortisol issue and adrenal disregulation, even though there's thousands and thousands

of studies showing that there's a link to cancer and to diabetes and metabolic syndrome

and all these other issues. Kris: Now what about saliva or urine or anything

like that? Sara: Yeah, so I say by any means necessary.

I like to start with the blood test, because I think it's a good screening test and it's

got this universality with other doctors that I like and then, if you haven't detected a

problem or if you want to go further, I'm a big fan of saliva testing. And the most

common is to do what's called a four-point test. The fancy word is 'diurnal'.

Kris: Yes, yes. Sara: Diurnal. And that's where you check, when you

first get up in the morning, your saliva for cortisol, before lunch, before dinner, and

before you go to bed. You know, what happens with cortisol is you want to be high in the

morning, not too high, not too low, you want to be at a certain level and you have this

lovely downhill ski-slope that you run over the course of the day. And, if you don't have

that slope, if you're flat, for instance, which is one of the things we see in folks

who suffer with cancer. If you don't have that slope, it can be worse than smoking for

your health. Kris: Wow.

Sara: So you really want to pay attention to this. Another thing you can do is you can

measure cortisol in your hair. How about that? Kris: Hmm.

Sara: It's a bit of an average, so it's harder to kind of see the slope.

Kris: Yes. Sara: And then you can also measure it in

your urine. Kris: The reason why I brought that up is

because I think that the ... I was calling them quizzes but I think that the forms in

your book that you can go through to really figure out what's going on with you as so,