Summary:
Deborah Maragopoulos, a family nurse practitioner specializing in neuro immune endocrinology, discusses the importance of the hypothalamus in maintaining overall health. The hypothalamus, a small gland in the brain, controls the neurological system, endocrine system, immune system, circadian rhythm, and metabolism. It is also responsible for aging and metabolic disorders like cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Maragopoulos emphasizes the importance of supporting the hypothalamus through a balanced diet, regular exercise, and adequate sleep. She also discusses the role of the hypothalamus in hormonal balance, particularly during menopause and periods of high stress. Maragopoulos has developed a line of supplements, including Genesis Gold, to support hypothalamic health.
If you’re interested in ordering Genesis Gold, use code LYONS10 for a discount at this link.
Full Episode:
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Transcription:
Megan Lyons:
Thank you so much Debra Margolis for coming on Wellness Your Way. I am so excited to have you here today.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Thank you for having me, Megan.
Megan Lyons:
Of course. Well, your bio is very impressive and the audience has heard the formal side, but please, in your words, just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got here.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Well, I’m a family nurse practitioner and I specialize in neuro immune endocrinology, and I started that whole venue, that whole adventure when I gave birth to an intersex child in 1984, and I had to learn hormones. I was straight out of nursing school, had to learn about hormones to help them navigate through the process of the medical world and went against medical advice and was kind of a pioneer and so decided I really love this. I love hormones, I love receptors, I love everything about hormones. I’m going to go back, become a nurse practitioner, got my master’s degree and started a family practice. And then I went into women’s health for a little while and then I started an integrative practice. And in my integrative practice in 97, I basically told the universe I want to learn everything about the neurological, immune and endocrine systems.
And so the universe sent me the worst patients you could possibly imagine. We call ’em train wrecks in medicine. They had everything wrong with them. So I really started researching on how I could help them and I wasn’t able to do anything different for them than they were already being served up by their providers. I made it more natural supplements and diet and exercise and lifestyle, but I couldn’t get to the root cause until I rediscovered the hypothalamus. That’s what I am an expert in now is the hypothalamus. And I’ve been helping my patients focus on optimizing hypothalamic health so that it helps all of their issues.
Megan Lyons:
Well, that’s fantastic, and I think it’s, as we talked about before we started recording, I think it’s so important because you and I, especially you as the expert, know that the hypothalamus basically runs almost everything in our body, and yet it’s something that very few people have even heard of. So let’s start with the basics. What even is the hypothalamus for those who dunno?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
The hypothalamus is a small gland in your brain. So if you put your fingers right in between your eyebrows, it’d be at the third eye directly in the center of the brain. It’s right above the pituitary gland. Most people know that because that little hanging thing looks like a pea hanging on a stock, so it’s hanging from the hypothalamus. It was believed for years that the pituitary gland was the master gland, and that’s because we were able to locate it in pig’s brains and lamb’s brains and dissect it and find hormones in it. What we didn’t know is it was actually storing hormones that the hypothalamus had actually produced. And so it was years later that we really understand the hypothalamus was really the key. Honestly, we didn’t understand the hypothalamic control of the immune endocrine system until like 1969. So it really is a newer field, and the research about the hypothalamus has only been really robust in the last maybe 10 years, which I’ve been doing this for 30 something years, but 10 years now, research is proving what I’ve seen in my patients.
So that’s super exciting. So the hypothalamus controls your neurological system. It’s the gateway to your brain. So moods, memory, your learning, your concentration, it controls your endocrine system. Those are all the hormones you produce from your penial gland, pituitary thyroid, the thymus which controls your immune system, your adrenals, your pancreas, and your gonads, either ovaries or testes. It controls the immune system and the circadian rhythm, it controls your metabolism. Most of the anti-obesity drugs are targeting hypothalamic hormones. Okay. So the research that’s kind going in that direction, it controls how fast you age. Aging starts in the hypothalamus. Metabolic disorders like cardiovascular disease type two diabetes all starts in the hypothalamus. So it’s the center of all of those issues. We think of it controlling the hormones, but it’s so much more than that. And what’s special about the hypothalamus, which means we get access to it, is that it’s not protected by the blood-brain barrier.
So it’s exposed to everything you eat as well as all the toxins you expose yourself to and all the viruses and the bacteria, what your electrolytes are. If you’re hydrated well or dehydrated, it knows everything that’s happening. And four out of five of your senses feed information to the hypothalamus. So it’s so important. It gets all the information from everything in your body. It is the gut brain connection. It’s not the brain, it’s the gut hypothalamus connection that controls digestion, absorption, immune function, and it’s ignored. We can’t measure the hormones from it, so we kind of ignore it.
Megan Lyons:
It has been ignored until your work hit the scenes. You’re doing so much great work to get information about the hypothalamus out there, and I wonder if part of the reason why it’s been ignored is because it doesn’t act alone. We hear about the hypothalamus in conjunction with all of these other organs or systems of the body. The HPA axis is one that some people might have heard of. We’ve talked about it on the podcast before, and this is the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis. So can you talk to people about what an axis even is? What does that mean and what does it mean that the hypothalamus is working in conjunction with, in this case, these two other organs of our body?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So the hypothalamus, pituitary, any endocrine gland access. So adrenal thyroid, goads basically is a feedback system and it’s a negative feedback system. So when your hormones are low, let’s say your adrenal cortisol levels are low, the hypothalamus is triggered to produce cortico releasing hormone to tell your pituitary gland to produce a CTH, and that then tells the adrenals to produce cortisol. So if there’s too much cortisol, less cortico releasing hormone, if there’s too little cortisol, more cortico releasing hormone. So it’s this constant feedback in the mechanism, and that is the same for the thyroid. So TSH is what we can measure from the pituitary gland, T four, T three, we can measure from the thyroid, but what we aren’t measuring is thyroid releasing hormone because you can’t get to the hypothalamus. But that access is the same F, S, H and estrogen luteinizing hormone and progesterone or testosterone, same access, always hypothalamic pituitary, lower endocrine gland access, and that’s the simple access because hypothalamus does a lot of work without having that access as well. It works through the nervous system too.
Megan Lyons:
That’s really interesting. So as I’m running lab work, of course I can run in your example TSHT three, T four, but it never even occurred to me that there was a step before that that I can’t measure. So is that because that hormone just goes straight to the pituitary? It’s not released throughout the bloodstream. That’s why we can’t measure it.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
That’s exactly it. So the majority of the hypothalamic hormones cannot be picked up in the bloodstream.
Megan Lyons:
Okay.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So for instance, the very first hypothalamic hormone that was discovered was discovered in the early 19 hundreds. Oxytocin. It was not discovered in hypothalamus. It was discovered in the uterus. It causes uterine contractions. Yes. So they thought it was a uterine hormone, but it’s actually produced in the hypothalamus.
Megan Lyons:
Interesting. Okay.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So oxytocin and vasopressin. Vasopressin is what controls your blood pressure through salt water balance is also floating around in the bloodstream because it works, it targets lower, but it’s produced in the hypothalamus. So those are the only two hormones we can really measure that are hypothalamic, and they’re very circadian and they’re very situational. You get high oxytocin levels when you’re nursing a baby or you’re going through labor or you’ve just had an orgasm. But other than that, those levels are very situational.
Megan Lyons:
Yeah, very interesting. Okay, so now people are starting to hear, wow, it has everything to do with my reproductive system, my thyroid, my stress management, my digestion, my brain, all of this. I feel like this question might be impossible to answer, but let’s give it a shot. What symptoms might someone have if their hypothalamus is out of balance?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So if you have any endocrine issues, you either have a low thyroid, high thyroid, low adrenal, high adrenal, you’re infertile, you’re missing your periods. You’re a man who has infertility issues or hypogonadism meaning you’re not making enough testosterone. A woman with PCOS, anybody going through the change, menopause, perimenopause, andropause. So all of those hormonal issues, all of those symptoms are the core is hypothalamic. The core is the hypothalamus being out of balance. If you have pain syndrome issues, particularly trigger point pain, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and the majority of autoimmune issues are rooted in the hypothalamus. If you have nervous system issues including Parkinson’s and different neurological issues like multiple sclerosis, hypothalamic depression, anxiety, any other mood disorders are based in the hypothalamus, insomnias based in the hypothalamus, as well as metabolic issues like you have very low energy, you’re fatigued or hyperactivity, learning disabilities, dementia, all based in the hypothalamus. You’re vulnerable to diseases, you get sick all the time, or you have a hypersensitive immune system, you’re allergic to everything. Or you have food sensitivities that’s based in hypothalamus and the irritable bowel issues, whether it’s constipation, diarrhea, it’s all hypothalamic driven because the hypothalamus is what talks to the gut. So there really low temperature, high temperature, hot flashes. There really isn’t much. The hypothalamus isn’t controlling.
Megan Lyons:
That’s really interesting. Talk to me about the hyperactive immune system, like you said, in allergies or autoimmune. Is that because of the relation to the thymus or what’s the relation there? Yes.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So the thymus is an endocrine gland as well, but we don’t consider it a traditional endocrine gland. What controls the thymus is hypothalamic prolactin production. Now, we’ve always believed prolactin was produced by the pituitary, but in this case, the pituitary gland is storing prolactin and the hypothalamus produces it, and the hypothalamus only produces is at super high levels at night for about eight hours. What turns off prolactin is hypothalamic dopamine. So when you wake up in the morning because the sun is coming up and the melatonin’s dropped, you get this surge of dopamine, which then turns off the prolactin production. So if you have high levels at night of prolactin, what that does is it actually tells your thymus to program white blood cells called T lymphocytes to know the difference between you and other. If you don’t have enough prolactin at night, you’re not going to have an immune system that functions well, and that usually is because you’re not sleeping very well at night, you’re not sleeping in the dark, you’re not getting that full night’s sleep. If your prolactin is circadian and it’s high during the day and low at night, you’re going to attack yourself autoimmunity.
Megan Lyons:
Interesting. Wow. So I’m hearing sleep has a lot to do with this. Give us your take on sleep and the hypothalamus.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So the hypothalamus is very sensitive to light. It picks up information from your eyes, your vision. It also picks up information from cytochromes, from the cells in your skin that pick up light. So even if you’re in the complete dark and you’ve got an eye mask on, but if we shine a light at the back of your knee, the hypothalamus will pick that up and tell the penal gland they turn off the melatonin. We think the penal gland is controlling the day night cycles, but it’s the hypothalamus that’s controlling it because the penal gland only does that one thing. It produces that melatonin. It converts serotonin into melatonin, but the hypothalamus has to decide how much melatonin is going to be produced and then turn all of the other nocturnal hormones on and all the daytime hormones off. So we don’t want cortisol surging at night.
That needs to be low. You can have reproductive hormones in the evening time, but most of the things are low because what’s happening at night is your cleaning house and your immune system is at a high functioning level. Prolactin also anesthetizes you. It makes every, so you don’t feel the pain of destroying cells that have gone rogue and might be precancerous and all that inflammation that’s going on. That has to happen every night. So if you don’t get good sleep in the dark for enough hours for your age, which for most adults is seven to nine hours, you’re not going to have an immune system that’s functioning optimally.
Megan Lyons:
Really interesting. Okay, great. I would love to dive in more there, but I think I know what our audience is curious about because anytime we say estrogen or ovaries or anything like that, we get the ears to perk up. And you did mention several times the connection between the reproductive system and the hypothalamus. So let’s get into this a little bit. Let’s start with estrogen dominance. A hot topic these days, a hotly debated topic. How does the hypothalamus relate to this?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So estrogen dominance basically means that you’re not producing enough progesterone to counterbalance your estrogen. You’ll never produce so little progesterone unless you’re menopausal. You’ll never have all only estrogen. So right as you’re going from perimenopause into menopause, there’s a period where you have pretty much mostly estrogen and very little progesterone, but during your reproductive years, you will always make more progesterone. It needs to be 10 to 50 times more than estrogen. So if it’s less than 10 times more than estrogen, you’re estrogen dominant. Okay. So double the amount of progesterone to estrogen is estrogen dominance. So one of the issues with the hypothalamus is it’s controlling your, what’s called gonadotropin releasing hormone. And gonadotropin releasing hormone is the hormone that the hypothalamus produces to tell the pituitary gland to either produce more FSH to stimulate estrogen production or luteinizing hormone to stimulate ovulation, and then progesterone production.
So the hypothalamus is reading how much estradiol and progesterone is floating around in the female’s bloodstream. Okay. It’s also reading testosterone as well. So what’s happening is if you have fertility issues, if you have irregular periods, et cetera, that’s usually because you’re not making enough progesterone, which usually means your adrenal glands are stealing a lot of that progesterone because progesterones used to make cortisol, and normally your adrenals make about 5% of your progesterone needs, which means 95% of your progesterone during high stress levels are coming from your ovaries. So it’s being stolen from the ovaries to make cortisol to get you away from danger, which means now estrogen is dominant because the adrenals don’t deal with the estrogen at all. Estrogen becomes dominant to progesterone because all of that’s being converted over to cortisol. So that’s one issue with estrogen dominance, which has to do with the HPA access, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access that the hypothalamus is really about your survival. Its main job is called homeostasis, keeping everything balanced. So if you need to run away from a tiger, you don’t need to reproduce right now. So all of that energy is going towards actually fueling adrenal response or stress hormone response.
Megan Lyons:
Yes. Very interesting. So I want to rehash that to make sure that the audience gets it and make sure we’re clear on this. When you’re in a period of high stress of the vast majority of the progesterone that could have been produced and utilized is going towards the adrenal, well, let’s call ’em just adrenaline and cortisol. In this case, particularly cortisol is being manufactured in excess, and that makes progesterone so low. There’s no building blocks to make the progesterone and then progesterone’s out of balance with estrogen. So we have this state called estrogen dominance, and this is what people hear about. Oh, I’m bloated, I’m moody. It feels like I have PMS all the time. It might be because your system starting with your hypothalamus is on overdrive in a hyper stress state. Is that true?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Yes, that’s true. And a classic example is the bride getting your period on her wedding day.
Megan Lyons:
Interesting. Okay.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So she’s very stressed, she’s ovulating, she’s healthy. She wants to get pregnant this first year. Okay. Yeah, she’s great, but she’s so stressed about the wedding because she’s ovulating, she’s producing enough progesterone, but it’s all being taken by the adrenal glands. So for Aries are producing it, the adrenal glands are taking it to deal with the stress of bridesmaids and mother-in-laws and everything else going into that wedding, and she ends up having her period early or late. She planned that wedding for her perfect cycle, and then she has the period early or late because of the progesterone issue.
Megan Lyons:
Really interesting. So I was thinking of it more in terms of chronic cortisol overproduction, but what you’re saying is maybe it could happen even in one cycle.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Oh yeah, it can absolutely happen acutely. Absolutely happened acutely.
Megan Lyons:
Wow. Okay. So if someone were in this state, they’re thinking, oh yes, this is exactly what’s happening to me. I’m stressed. I feel this estrogen dominance. What would you guide them to do about it?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Well, my focus with my patients and my customers is get to the root issue and the root issue. Your hypothalamus HPA access is overstimulated. You’re not really being chased by a tiger. Your stress response is over the top. We need to calm that down. So supporting the hypothalamus nutraceutical helps to balance out that HPA access allows the ovaries to be producing more progesterone and get those periods back in balance. Your fertility back in balance helps your thyroid function better, your metabolism function better, and you feel less stress, you feel calmer. That’s because the hypothalamus is getting everything it needs to produce not only the proper hormones, but also the proper neurotransmitters to calm down your nervous system.
Megan Lyons:
Amazing. So when it comes to nourishing our hypothalamus, I know you have a line of supplements which I’d love for you to talk about, but what are some of those nutraceuticals that the hypothalamus really needs?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So research shows us that the hypothalamus is very dependent on amino acids, particularly essential amino acids and what we call conditionally essential amino acids. Conditionally essential amino acids are amino acids you could make, but when you’re under stress, you need a lot more of it and you can’t keep up. So having those amino acids at an abundant supply during times of stress or just as a maintenance can keep your hypothalamus very, very happy. It also needs PUFAs, especially Omega-3 rich polyunsaturated fatty acids. So I find that sea vegetation has the highest levels of omega fatty acids that the hypothalamus just adores. You can get it in other ways, but that gives you a really nice blend of those pofa. And then certain phytonutrients coming from. So herbs and plants, especially whole plant foods, but also herbs, all the things that you probably have been taken with over the counter, you’ve seen it was healthy for you, or some naturopaths told you to take it to support your adrenals, thyroid, all of those things are great.
But in micro doses, it’s like food for the hypothalamus. In macro doses, it’s pushing hypothalamic buttons. So you’re telling your hypothalamus, I want more cortisol or less cortisol, instead of the hypothalamus having a popery of nutrients to say, okay, right now we’re trying to make a baby, so it’s all going this direction. Or right now we’re trying to calm down our stress. Or right now we’re really fighting the aging process and the ovaries are giving up and we’re entering menopause. So I’m going to have to get all these resources to preserve brain function and heart function.
Megan Lyons:
Does that make sense?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So the Thomas needs all of these different nutrients, which most of us don’t get enough in our diets. Even when we eat pristinely. It’s just hard to get all of those different nutrients
Megan Lyons:
In the right combinations too, because I know people are thinking, oh, amino acids, well, I eat protein, I’m fine. And that’s true, right? Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. However, giving specific doses of the essential and conditionally essential in that example and this other blend of nutraceuticals, I think is really important. So is that, is the product in your line, is there a certain name of this product or is there a certain product people would take if they’re in this stage of estrogen dominance?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So Genesis Gold is my foundational product that helps the hypothalamus get back in balance, and it also has all the phytonutrients in it that allows for your receptor sites to actually function normally. So estrogen dominance is not just about too much estrogen. It’s also about an overstimulation of estrogen receptors, those little doorways into the cells that allow the estrogen in. So getting those receptors to function optimally as well as the hypothalamus to function optimally is key to controlling those hormone levels. It’s the same with insulin resistance. Part of what Genesis Gold does with insulin resistance is it actually helps hypothalamic insulin resistance. The hypothalamus becomes insulin resistant too. It improves the autonomic nervous system, which is triggering the pancreas to produce so much insulin, but it’s also improving receptor site activity at the cellular level.
Megan Lyons:
Amazing.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So we’re working at all of those different levels to try to get things balanced.
Megan Lyons:
That’s really great. Okay, so we’ve tackled estrogen dominance. Let’s talk about perimenopause, menopause. Anything you want related to this as it relates to the hypothalamus?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So the most interesting thing about the hypothalamus is that during the change, so when you go from high reproductive hormone levels to they start to deplete, that depletion really triggers hypothalamic dysfunction. And hypothalamic dysfunction is, I believe, at the core of most of our disease processes. Now, if you catch strep throat and you get strep pharyngitis, that’s an actual bacteria that’s not hypothalamic. But if you have an autoimmune condition, your hypothyroid, you have adrenal fatigue, you’re infertile. Those are all, the core of those issues are based in the hypothalamus. But menopause, perimenopause and menopause are really hypothalamic dysfunction. The temperature dysregulation, the hot flashes, the night sweats, the cold chills, that’s all hypothalamic dysfunction. The insomnia that you have, the aging that you’re seeing in your skin, your vagina, et cetera, are all part of that hypothalamic process as well. And you’re going to see issues with fatigue. You just don’t have the energy you used to. And that’s part of the hypothalamus process as well, because it’s controlling how much energy your mitochondria is putting out. And then the other thing that’s really, really concerning and new in research is that the gonadotropin releasing hormone that controls follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone, which then controls estrogen and progesterone production from the ovaries, it not only controls reproduction, it actually controls neurogenesis, and neurogenesis is making new nerves. So your brain starts to deteriorate when you no longer make gonadotropin releasing hormone.
Megan Lyons:
Wow.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So it’s really important the hypothalmus gets as much support as possible. If you could start in menopause those 10 years before you start losing all of those of them, the earlier you start the better. If you don’t start till post menopause, you’re still going to support the hypothalamus, so you’re less likely to develop chronic illnesses.
Megan Lyons:
Wow, really interesting. And would that be the same Genesis gold that’s through all stages of this?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Yes. So I use the Genesis Gold. That’s the foundation, but I have, so the amino acids that are in Genesis Gold, I call the Sacred seven amino Acids. They actually came to me in dreams. I had the same dream for three months, but the first seven nights were seven sets of amino acids that I put together and made the sacred of seven amino acids. Wow. Well, that’s in Genesis Gold, but I also packaged it separately for people who have any kind of sensitivities to plant-based foods that are in Genesis Gold. No one’s going to be sensitive to the amino acids unless you have PKU. There is al in there. So the likelihood of being sensitive to this free plant-derived amino acids is highly unlikely. So it’s kind of the allergen-free version of hypothalamic support. So when you have severe menopausal symptoms, you are having severe rage, severe mood disorders, insomnia is horrible, and your night sweats and hot flashes are horrible. I’ll have my patients and customers take extra sacred seven on top of the Genesis Gold for a few months just to give the hypothalamus even more support.
Megan Lyons:
Got it.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Okay. Yes. So yes. What does that look like? When I was going through my own hormonal challenges in my, well all through my life, but at the end of my thirties, I was on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. My body fat was really low. I had bulimia during college, but then exercise became my obsession, and my body fat was so low. I wasn’t having any menstrual cycles at all. So I put myself on my bioidentical hormones. When I started to create the product, the first thing I could create was the sacred seven amino acids. I get those pretty easily. The rest of all those botanicals were, it took me three more years to be able to manufacture that. So I immediately started myself on that, took myself off and I took myself off all of my other supplements, and I had about 54 patients from 16 to 80 something actually do this research with me.
So we all did this together. What I found is within about a month and a half, I gained five pounds, which is the same five pounds I gained to conceive both of my children. I was underweight for both of them. Drift. I was going to get pregnant, ended up gaining five pounds and getting pregnant for each of them. Wow. It brought back down to my base crazy way too low weight. So obviously that extra five pounds was my hypothalamic ideal. This is what I need. If you want hormones, I need this extra little weight gain is too low. Okay. Yes. So I gained that weight, and then in the second month of taking this, I had my first period induced by hormones since I started my periods at the age of 14. Wow. I’m 39 years old. I had my first period, I had regular periods until I was in my early fifties and didn’t go through absolute menopause until 56.
Megan Lyons:
Amazing.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
I was taking Genesis school this whole time, and my sisters who are younger than I went through the menopause in their mid forties. My mother was mid fifties, so I kind of followed what we should have all gone through and we ate the same, we’re Italian Mediterranean diets all our life. Maybe we didn’t deal with stress in the same way. All of us are super active. All of us have very similar body types, et cetera. They had a little more body fat, so they had normal periods. I didn’t. But other than that, we were pretty similar except I was supporting my hypothalamus all of those years.
Megan Lyons:
Really
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Interesting. I think it pushed off the, I had all those eggs saved up. I just wasn’t using ’em. It pushed off my menopause for 10 years after what I would’ve went through if I would’ve followed their pattern.
Megan Lyons:
And so in this ideal state where our hypothalamus is, well-nourished and has the nutrients it needs, what should menopause feel like? Obviously it’s the cessation of menstrual periods, but what symptoms are, what you would call acceptable? Yes or normal versus, no, that’s not, we should do something about this.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So it’s normal to feel a little moodier because estrogen helps to control serotonin production, which is your happy, more joyful hormone. And progesterone controls GABA production, which is the calm. So the little irritability and the moodiness is pretty normal. It’s going to be blunted though. If you’re supporting your hypothalamus, you’re pretty good and you can catch yourself and know what you need to do. A little dark chocolate can boost that serotonin. Little deep breathing can boost that GABA so that you start to learn things you can do. Your temperature will still be dysregulated, but the hot flashes won’t be horrible. I never really got severe hot flashes the entire time and occasional night sweat and usually is induced by drinking alcohol after dinner. I can pretty much guarantee I’m going to wake up a little sweaty in the middle of the night if I didn’t have the alcohol. No problem. Okay. So you’ll find things that work wasn’t terrible, but just enough. It’s like, well, I’m going to choose to wake up in the middle of the night if I’m going to have this glass of wine.
Megan Lyons:
At least though, it’s your
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Decision. You know your body and it’s a gentle, gentle. One of the other things is because you’re still producing enough, you’re getting enough adrenal support because the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis is well supported. You’re still producing enough DHEA that’s converting into testosterone. So you have a pretty good sex drive and estrogen, estradiol. So you’re still pretty moist. Your vagina is moist. And I got to say, another thing is I still don’t need to wear reading glasses at the age of 63.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
What that tells me is the cells in my eyes have not changed much, and your eyes are like one big cell. So the health of your eyes, which we can look in, I can look into someone’s eyes with magnification at the back of their macula and see their blood vessels and all kinds of things. It gives us so much information about other cellular health. So that juiciness of those cells is part of having enough hormones on board to keep the cells healthy so they can get toxins out, nutrition in. But as you get older and you don’t have all the hormones, you need to keep ’em healthy. They become like raisins that you get dry lips and dry eyes and dry vagina, but that’s happening to your cells too, your brain everywhere. So that’s another sign that things are healthier.
Megan Lyons:
Really interesting. I know that people are on board with the hypothalamus now because you have laid out so many compelling cases. So let’s talk about two sides first. What are some things that we do we as a society do that damage our hypothalamus? Or maybe not damage, but put it out of balance that keep our hypothalamus from operating optimally?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Well, the first thing we do that we have some control of, but not a hundred percent, is our toxic exposure. Heavy metals, pesticides, certain drugs definitely elicit chemicals. Recreational drugs affect the hypothalamus in a negative way. Viruses, bacterium can also affect the hypothalamus. But the main thing, and a lot of that we can’t control. I mean, you don’t want to expose yourself to radiation. You don’t want to be eating too much toxic elements, cooking in lit with lead and all of that. So try to control it with hypothalamic support. You detox a little bit better. Okay. So that’s one piece. The other piece is most of us over nourish ourselves. Overnutrition is very damaging to the hypothalamus. It’s actually one of the big research projects now from mice to humans. You eat too much fat and you eat too much sugar. It causes micro inflammation in the hypothalamus. Hypothalamic inflammation is the root of dysfunction of hypothalamic dysfunction and causes all kinds of issues with insulin resistance and diabetes and chronic illnesses. So overnutrition is huge, and especially here in the United States, we eat too much. Inactivity also affects the hypothalamus and not getting enough sleep affects the hypothalamus. Yeah,
Megan Lyons:
Very interesting. Okay, so everyone, I like to think we all have a little flashing indicator inside our body. For some when you say sleep or for someone you say overnutrition or some inactivity, they’re like, oh yeah, there’s a little room for improvement there. So listen to that indicator then on the flip side, what are some things that we can do to support it in addition to nourishing it with Genesis Gold? What are some other things we can do to support our hypothalamus?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Well, I’m a huge fan of the Mediterranean diet because it does provide enough of the base nutrition for the hypothalamus. It’s lower in saturated fats. It’s more monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, whole grains. You get enough protein for your lean body mass. I’m not a huge fan of vegan diets. I think we do need some protein for our lean body mass. And especially going into the change. You do not want to lose muscle and bone, and it provides enough fat, but it’s healthy fats and it’s fairly easy. And I’m not talking about pizza and pasta all the time. Our plates that we make, my husband’s Greek, that’s the Margolis. I’m Italian from a Dito side of the family. So we eat a lot of vegetables. There’s a lot. And there are all different colors of vegetables, and we always usually have a protein, but maybe not. Legumes can be protein as well. And our biggest meal is lunch, and we eat lighter in the evening. So I’m not a fan of intermittent fasting. I’m a fan of circadian fasting.
Megan Lyons:
Tell us more.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Slow down that caloric intake after dusk and wake up hungry, which is a good healthy hypothalamic response and means that you’re probably not insulin resistant. If you wake up hungry, remember being a little kid and getting out of bed and you’re starving and your mom threw cereal at you to just, that’s healthy glucose metabolism to wake up starving. So wake up and break the fast and then eat your biggest meal in the middle of the day, and then very light in the evening.
Megan Lyons:
Great.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So that’s my perfect nutrition plan. And then you need to be active. And daytime activity is great. Nighttime activity, not so much. So it raises cortisol levels. So you want to get your exercise in during the day. And if we were back 150 years ago and you had a farm and did hard construction work and you didn’t exercise, you didn’t need to. But we’re not doing that now. We sit on our butts a lot. We need to move. So you need to have some formal exercise in your life. Okay. Yes. And it doesn’t matter what you do to get your heart rate up, it doesn’t matter. You just need to get it up at least a few times a week. And you need to do, I love the LSDs long, slow distances. We called them in. I was a track in track and field, and that is when you’re burning fat, that is when your metabolism is really set. Those are the long hikes, the long bike rides, the long swims, the things you’re doing at a slower heart rate, but for at least 45 minutes, so you’ve gone through your G glycogen stores and your muscle and liver, and now, now you’re going into your fat stores. It trains your body to start looking at your fat for energy whenever it’s needed. Okay. If you never do long, slow distances, you don’t go into fat stores.
Megan Lyons:
Yeah. Amazing.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
And at least once a week. And then of course, stretching. And then weight resistance is important because it stimulates the mitochondrial activity in your muscles where your muscles have the most mitochondria. And the more mitochondrial activity you have, the more the hypothalamus reads you as young. And if it reads you as youthful, it’s going to support you with more thyroid hormone and adrenal hormone and sex hormones. If you’re still able to make them, everything’s going to be healthier.
Megan Lyons:
Amazing.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Some kind of stress reduction. Your mindset affects your hypothalamus. Absolutely. Okay. So some kind of stress reduction, whether you need counseling, you need to learn deep breathing, you need to change your attitude. I mean, you can’t take enough genesis gold. I can’t dip you in enough bioidentical hormones, the perfect diet, the perfect exercise program if you don’t believe that you ever will heal. Okay. So it really, it’s a mindset shift into healing that actually will help your hypothalamus do the job that it needs to do to help you survive and thrive.
Megan Lyons:
Yes. That’s so powerful, and people really need to hear that. So thank you for that. And maybe with all those tips that you just said, you can pick out a few of your favorite or give us different ones. But I’d love to hear in your personal routine, what are a couple things you do that really make you feel your best?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Well, I try to get up with the sun. That really helps. I try to get to bed fairly early between nine and 10, and try not to be on a screen after dusk, read a real book because that light from the screen affects melatonin production. I have a bedtime routine to tell my hypothalamus to start going into nocturnal mode, get those jammies on, have a hot cup of tea, pick a warm bath, don’t watch any, or read any kind of crazy news, like nothing stimulating, just calm down, bring it down so that it can sleep through the night. I tend to journal in the morning and try to capture my dreams, which I have very vivid dreams and remember them, but that’s actually a good sign. You’re making enough dopamine. So a little dream journal, even if you can catch the emotions, it’ll help you to actually process what was going on during the day as well.
Mostly they’re symbolic, but it really helps to connect the dots in terms of your nerves and how your brain functions. So that’s when my sleep and activity is, and I try to get exercise in the morning. I almost never exercise late in the day ever. Never after dusk. I usually exercise between eight and 11 in the morning and vigorously. And just lately, I started doing more conditioning type classes for time purposes. And also because my 63-year-old niece don’t want to run anymore. I put thousands of miles on them. And I’m just noticing a huge difference in, and this isn’t heavy weights, this is like dance space conditioning and body core conditioning. But I’ve noticed a big difference in lean body mass. And so after menopause in my sixties, shifting and gaining lean body mass, that is just huge. And it’s helped with aches and pains and flexibility, and so conditioning is really, really key.
Megan Lyons:
That’s amazing. And so many people here, it’s not possible to gain muscle or shift body composition after menopause. It is possible. Oh,
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I’ve had women come to me with severe osteoporosis, usually from eating disorders or malnutrition coming into menopause. And it was always believed that once you reached a certain bone density, we were never going to gain it. We’re just going to stop any more loss. We’ve reversed it now. It was work.
Megan Lyons:
It was work. It’s not easy. Lot of support.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Yes, they did get hormones because I’m trying to build that bone and activity, the right type of activity and enough protein and fat nutrition. But we’ve actually reversed it to the point where radiologists are like, okay, is this the same patient? I’m like, yeah, we’ve been working on this for five years.
Megan Lyons:
Amazing.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So how committed are you to getting your body back
Megan Lyons:
Getting too
Deborah Maragopoulos:
Long? And if you’re young, if you’re a young woman, young man, I think most of your listeners are women, it’s never too late to start, but start early. The earlier you can start, the better that.
Megan Lyons:
That’s right. Oh, this has been so fantastic. I am 100% sure people want to learn more about what you have to offer. So tell us where they would find you, where they would learn more about you.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
So if you go to my website, which is genesis gold.com, you’ll find all kinds of information about the products. But you’ll also, I have a huge blog, a YouTube channel that has all kinds of information. You just search in whatever your issue is, search, and I have probably did a video, a blog post on it. I also have a free hormone reboot training, which you can join. So there’ll be a popup on the site, which will allow you to join that. It’s based on my first book, hormones and Harmony, not on My Hypothalamus Handbook. And it’s a little easier. The beginning steps to understanding the immune endocrine system, lots of graphics and pictures, lots of storytelling of different patient patients. I’ve had names have been changed so that you can see yourself and see, oh, okay, here’s my connection. And it just allows you to go through that whole process. It’s a video-based book course.
Megan Lyons:
That’s great. What was the name of that first book?
Deborah Maragopoulos:
It’s called Hormones and Harmony, and the group is called The Hormone Reboot Training.
Megan Lyons:
That’s great. I will put as many links as I possibly can fit in the show notes. So everyone scroll down and find some information, learn more from Deborah with all of the wonderful tidbits that she’s put out there into the world. So one more time. Thank you so much, Debra, for coming on Wellness Your Way. I very much appreciate you being here.
Deborah Maragopoulos:
You’re very welcome. Thank you.
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