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Meditation

3 Simple Ways to Calm Your Mind and Find Peace

By Sara Gottfried, MD | June 12, 2017
3 Simple Tools to Calm your Mind and Find Peace | Women's Health | Sara Gottfried M.D.

Over and over patients tell me they want peace and calmness in their life, but the highway of life keeps them moving. Meditation? Slowing down? Who has time to sit…

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What Stress Does to Your Hormones, Plus 3 PROVEN Stress Management Strategies

By Sara Gottfried, MD | March 17, 2015
Woman Having Chronic Stress and Cannot Sleep

Nothing wrecks your hormones faster than unmanaged stress. However, stress in and of itself is not a bad thing. A healthy dose of stress can motivate you to high levels…

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Green Your Hormones in 8 Easy Steps

By Sara Gottfried, MD | September 11, 2014
Woman Doing Yoga to Avoid Hormone Imbalance

Download my free Hormone Survival Guide below to get a jump start on greening your hormones. Are you feeling tired, moody or stressed? Did you know this could be a…

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7 Essential Steps in Resetting Your Body’s Natural Clock

By Robin Nielsen | August 26, 2014

Are you 35 years old but sometimes feel like you’re 95? While age is just a number, we do associate certain feelings, symptoms and diseases with different ages, and I…

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Injured? Stressed Out? Try Yin Yoga

By Sara Gottfried, MD | August 7, 2014

I’m devoting this entire article to the joys of yoga. “Why?” you ask (as if you didn’t know that I’m a dedicated yoga teacher as well as a physician). There’s no…

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5 Ways to Treat Hormonal Headaches Naturally

By Sara Gottfried, MD | June 19, 2014
5 Ways to Prevent and Cure Hormonal Headaches Naturally

Whether it’s a debilitating migraine or the dull throbbing from a stressful day, headaches have the ability to zap your energy, ruin your focus and turn your otherwise centered self…

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Dr. Sara’s Genius Bar: Top Influencers in Business & Lifestyle

By Sara Gottfried, MD | May 29, 2014
Dr. Sara’s Genius Bar: Top Influential People in Business & Lifestyle

You know these people. You’ve watched them on Oprah, seen their faces on the covers of their best-selling books, and perhaps even been lucky enough to attend one of their…

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Make Exercise Your Meditation Too!

By Katherine Dreyer | May 13, 2014
Make Exercising a Form of Meditating Too!

Meditate or exercise, why choose? Movement as a vehicle for deeper self-awareness has been a long-standing practice in many traditions such as Yoga, T’ai Chi, and Chi Gong. You can take…

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How to Manage PMS: The Key to Your Feminine Power

By Sara Avant Stover | April 29, 2014
How to Handle PMS- The Key to Your Girl Power

What can you do to help relieve PMS symptoms? The swollen breasts and bellies. Tears. Raging words erupting from tight throats—the ones we wish we could take back, but can’t.…

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Too Much of a Good Thing – Why Cortisol Can Make You Crazy (And How To Turn It Around)

By Sara Gottfried, MD | March 11, 2014
Too Much of a Good Thing – Why Cortisol Can Make You Crazy (And How To Turn It Around)

Let’s be honest: It’s entirely possible to have too much of a good thing. Whether it’s dark chocolate, wine, sunshine, or shoe shopping, a little takes the edge off –…

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PRAISE

“For the first time in my adult life I feel that I have gained control over food. I feel healthier, look better and have gained an interest in making sure that what I am putting into my body is the best it can be. And I lost 10 pounds in all the right places.”

– Janice Lunde, Dr. Sara’s Detox Challenge Participant

“Dr. Sara is the height of excellence! She is incredibly knowledgeable and gives very generously of her time. I feel so blessed to have been able to work with her.”

– Yvonne Varah

“You don’t have to settle for being stressed out, binging on sugar and chocolate, and aging prematurely. Stop blaming yourself and step into sacred action. It’s your birthright. You can have the joyous, mission-driven life you want, and Dr. Sara is here to show us how.”

– Marci Shimoff, New York Times Bestselling Author of Happy for No Reason and Love for No Reason

“Dr. Gottfried offers powerful and effective tools for addressing the most difficult health issues facing women and men today. She is warm and kind and has so much experience to draw upon, it’s inspiring. Thank you Dr. S!”

– Cassandra Mick

“Dr. Sara Gottfried is a modern-day healer goddess if ever there was one, and she also happens to be a Harvard Medical School graduate and rigorous physician-scientist.”

– Christiane Northrup MD, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom

“Dr. Gottfried’s book and detox came at a time when I was ready to give in to old age. Hot flashes, low energy and libido, weight gain, increasing blood pressure and cholesterol levels were unacceptable to me. I now know that hormone levels and what I eat are a huge influence on how I feel and look. To now be able to control something that was out of control is empowering…”

Cheryl V., Dr. Sara’s Detox Challenge Participant

“My health coach told me about your book and I took the [hormone] test, and lo and behold, I found I was a mess, hormonally speaking. Now I’m getting on track and I love your videos and your book. I feel like I’m getting my life back again, when not long ago I truly thought I was losing it!”

-Tracy, Registered Nurse

“You don’t have to accept the hormonal hell of being tired, stressed, overweight, and never in the mood for sex as you grow older. In her fabulous new book, the brilliant Dr. Gottfried gives you an effective, easy-to-follow plan to balance your hormones and become lean, energetic, and loving life again. Stop settling and reclaim your sexy!”

–JJ Virgin, Author of Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy and The Virgin Diet

“I lost 10 lbs., reset my hormones and metabolism and eliminated my sugar cravings! I have also found that I respond to stress much differently, I feel it, notice it and move on from it. Stress no longer has a grip on me. Dr. Sara’s conference calls and detox information was invaluable. I am so grateful for this program. Thank you Dr. Sara!”

–Sophia, Dr. Sara’s Detox Challenge Participant

“The Hormone Cure is the playbook for your mojo, your mind, and your bootie. With every chapter I thought, ‘So THAT’s how that works.’ I wanted to call every girlfriend and give them the goods on how to glow… now and always.”

-Danielle LaPorte, Author of The Fire Starter Sessions and The Desire Map

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Sara (Gottfried) Szal M.D.

saragottfriedmd

Author of 4 NYT bestsellers 📚
The fastest ways to age are to gain weight, screw The fastest ways to age are to gain weight, screw up your blood sugar, economize on sleep, sit a lot staring at a computer screen, feel chronically stressed and anxious, and eat the top inflammatory foods: sugar, gluten, and dairy. What is the worst factor in causing cells to age? It’s tough to pick only one, but I’d say food. Sleep is a close second, as is the right exercise and mindset. What’s surprising is that your genes are less of an influence. You aren’t born with great genes; great genes come from turning genes on and off to your advantage. 90 percent of the signs of aging and disease are caused by lifestyle choices, not by your genes. How you age has so much to do with epigenetics, which is how our genes interact with our environment. Because of the power of gene/environment interactions, genes are being switched on and off based on lifestyle cues. This gives you an incredible opportunity to change the course of disease and aging in your body. We have the power to control our healthspan and our risk of disease. We have the power to choose how we age.
📈High cortisol levels? It’s time to make stre 📈High cortisol levels? It’s time to make stress your ally. Try these 7 things ⬇️ 🔘 Meditate or pray daily. I suggest that you meditate immediately upon awakening. This will give you the greatest chance of success because you will start retraining your mind BEFORE the stress of the day hits you. 🔥Bonus tip. When you meditate, practice breathing deeply in and out through the nose. Take full-lung-capacity breaths as a way to dial down the sympathetic nervous system and dial up the parasympathetic nervous system. Your parasympathetic system is where you “stay and play.” It’s where healing occurs. 🔘 Go to bed by 10 pm, lying on your right side to stimulate the vagus nerve. 🔘 Take omega 3, such as extra virgin cod liver oil or other fish oil, 1 to 2 grams per day. It lowers your cortisol levels, increases lean body mass, and improves vagal tone as measured via heart rate variability. 🔘 Take phosphatidylserine (PS). This has been shown to reduce cortisol levels when taken in pill form. 🔘 Add in basic supplements including the B vitamins (B1, B5, B6, B12), vitamin C and tyrosine as they can help lower cortisol. 🔘 Wean from caffeine and alcohol. Alcohol raises cortisol and the effect persists for twenty-four hours in men--probably longer for women. Caffeine directly induces the adrenocortical cells to produce more cortisol, as well as more epinephrine, norepinephrine, and insulin. 🔘 Avoid common food intolerances like gluten and dairy as I often see that they may raise cortisol in some people. Think of this as "food stress." Which one will you do today?
@hubermanlab asked me what's the best combination @hubermanlab asked me what's the best combination of exercise for the general population. Based on my synthesis of the literature I recommend: Two-thirds resistance to one-third cardio. The minimal effective dose is about 150 minutes a week. BUT I think most of us need more than that. In my case, I need a lot more than 150 minutes a week. I have a phenotype that produces a lot of insulin and depending on how I am on top of my game, my blood glucose levels can be on the higher end of the range. This means I have to exercise a lot more to dispose of that glucose. It’s time to move from medicine for the population to personalized medicine for the individual. P.S. If you want my FREE guide on how to track your blood sugar, comment GLUCOSE1 below and the link to download it will be sent to your DMs.
Prediabetes is a precursor to diabetes, and most p Prediabetes is a precursor to diabetes, and most people have no signs or symptoms yet their glucose is trending upward in an unhealthy way. Are you one of them? I was, but I’ve been able to put my prediabetes in remission with a continuous glucose monitor and lifestyle medicine. I practice Medicine 3.0 which is personalized, preventive, and participatory. In our country, Medicine 2.0 led to a metabolic crisis where 88-93% of Americans have metabolic dysfunction but don’t know it. Medicine 2.0 uses fasting glucose to diagnose you with prediabetes, but by the time you get diagnosed (IF you get diagnosed by your busy, distracted doctor), you’ve had the problem brewing for about 7-14 years. And it may be harder to reverse with lifestyle approaches. Now you can see the problem in your glucose years before a doctor bothers to check you for prediabetes. In a study from Stanford, even among people with normal fasting glucose, 15% had prediabetes. Hall H, et al. Glucotypes reveal new patterns of glucose dysregulation. PLoS Biol. 2018 Jul 24;16(7):e2005143. Not surprisingly, women show more damage to their blood vessels n prediabetes than men. Our mitochondria start to falter when estrogen declines in perimenopause around age 40-55. Alvarez S, et al. Prediabetes. 2023 Jul 17. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan–. PMID: 29083606. Test, don’t guess. Share with a friend and family. Have a conversation to see if the people you love have had their fasting glucose checked, or better yet fasting insulin, hemoglobin A1C, insulin resistance score, and 2-hour glucose challenge test with both insulin and glucose at 30-minute intervals. #prediabetes #diabetes #metabolicdysfunction #women #womenshealth #mitochondria #metabolism #perimenopause #menopause #hormones #bioidentical hormones #estrogen #progesterone #testosterone #insulin
Been to Topanga? That's the gorgeous teaching and Been to Topanga? That's the gorgeous teaching and back of my co-conspirator @schuylergrantyoga — two hours of practice twice a day made everything function again in my body 🧘‍♀️ Thank you to our soldout crew of women who joined us. Thank you to our magnificent Chef @healthysexystrong for the enlivening and anti-inflammatory nourishment! #yoga #nature #regulation #hormones #hotforhormones #women
Anxiety and anger are normal emotional responses t Anxiety and anger are normal emotional responses to the events we experienced this week. These emotions could be a very sane reaction to insane events. What’s helpful to know is how to distinguish healthy fear and anger from potentially harmful reactions. If you’re feeling fear this week and perhaps frozen or numb, that’s the stress response. If you are trying to figure out how to maintain harmony in your circle of friends and family, that’s a healthy stress response—if you don’t shift to people pleasing and lose your authenticity and voice. Ideally, we experience emotions such as anxiety and anger and then find ways to resolve them. They are part of the stress response of fight-or-flight, which helps you mobilize large muscle groups and move the stress through the system of your body. However, emotions and stress start to impact our health when the body doesn’t respond well to external factors, and we have difficulty modulating our emotional responses. Read more on how chronic stress can show up in your body in my interview for @mariashriver’s @thesundaypaper - link in bio
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