#138 Tyna Moore, ND, DC – Balancing Female Hormones with Weight Training

Watch the Interview

Listen to the Interview

Click here to listen on your mobile device in iTunes

About Tyna Moore, ND, DC

Dr. Tyna Moore is recognized as an authority in the application of natural pain solutions and regenerative injection therapies to treat all varieties of musculoskeletal conditions. As both a board certified Naturopathic and Chiropractic physician, she brings a unique perspective and expertise to the diagnosis and treatment of orthopedic conditions.

Connect with Dr. Moore

www.corewellnesspdx.com

Books Mentioned in this Podcast

Free+Style: Maximize Sport and Life Performance with Four Basic Movements

Becoming a Supple Leopard 2nd Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance

Related Vlog

Show Notes

01:32 The Role of Strength Training and Muscle: Dr. Moore was always fit, but got into strength training a few years ago to improve the shape of on her butt . As a chiropractor and naturopath, most of her patients come to her for pain. It turns out that having strong glutes takes care of most people’s pain, even if it is something like shoulder pain. The glutes and the core are the central hub of the spine. Dr. Moore dove into the science behind glutes and then muscle science.

03:47 The Benefits of Strength Training: Dr. Moore found profound benefits. Her weight became better distributed. She found that if she wasn’t eating enough food, she wasn’t healing or gaining muscle or strength. It was then that she discovered that she was an under eater. When she began to increase her intake, she gained muscle. She also became more resilient and was thriving.

08:32 The Glute Journey: Dr. Moore saw a lot of patients with lumbar-pelvic pain in women. With her research into glutes, she realized that every one of them had atrophied glutes. When a patient lays on the table on their stomach, their sacrum should be in the middle and their glutes should rise like two mounds. The glutes of elderly people do not rise, and Dr. Moore was seeing this in many of her younger patients. Dr. Moore’s own lower back pain became lessened with glute work. She started with glute bridges and body weight squats. She tells everyone to hire a good trainer.

10:31 Hormones and Weights: A study of men with a body weight squat with a free weight barbell, compared to a leg press machine showed that over the release of testosterone and human growth hormone was more than 80% higher with the barbell. You can tweak your hormones by how you exercise. The compound movements, like the full squat puts a neural load on the whole system. Dr. Moore thinks of it as hormesis, where you stress an organism and it responds to that stress favorably. When you put your body under controlled stress and rest it adequately, it grows.

12:39 The Mindset of Weight Training: Cardio makes you better at cardio and you only receive the benefits while you are doing it. When you lift weights, you get after burn. This is where you metabolically rev your system. For 3 to 4 to 8 hours or more, you receive the metabolic benefit of burning fat as well as the hormonal benefits. You want to come out of exercise feeling refreshed and invigorated, not trashed.

14:25 Hormones and Cardio: Dr. Moore sees gnarly changes in labs with runners. They tend to burn out their adrenals and then the rest of their hormones. She sees a number of runners and cyclists with diabetes. It comes down to skinny fat. You look thin, but metabolically you show up as pre-diabetic skinny fat. Being a thin diabetic is more dangerous than being a heavy diabetic. About 20% of our population is normal weight and metabolically obese. A study showed that type 2 diabetes starts with insulin resistant skeletal muscle in the leg tissue. Eighty percent of insulin latches to muscle tissue. The fastest way to get out of insulin resistance is to build muscle. The first thing your body does with the buildup of muscle is burn up the fat in your liver.

17:17 More Benefits of Strength Training: Dr. Moore began to see her thyroid antibody levels go down. Her testosterone and estrogen levels come up. Her blood sugar regulated better. It takes about 90 days of strength training for metabolic changes on labs and weight redistribution to come about. If we improve our diets at the same time, it happens more quickly.

19:01 Cardio vs Strength Training: The bodies of those who concentrate on strength training (and for a much shorter amount of time than those of us who focus on cardio), have a more pleasing physique and are more metabolically ideal. Many of Dr. Moore’s runner patients have abdominal obesity because of the chronically high cortisol; they are in a pro-inflammatory state. Studies have shown that you need to do chronic cardio for 50 minutes a day 7 days a week and you may see 2 to 3 pounds of weight loss a month. Even that benefit drops off after a short time as your body adjusts to the exertion. A study showed that weight training is superior for reducing the prevalence of heart disease and diabetes.

21:41 Protecting Our Energy: We need to guard our energy, our thyroid, our adrenals and our hormones. Every food we eat and activity we do should be in support of these. Across the board, giving ourselves micro doses of the hormetic effect makes us stronger and harder to kill.

25:04 Abs vs Glutes: Dr. Moore asked her male friends which they preferred on a woman and they didn’t care about a 6 pack and a flat rear end. She sees many of her female patients who achieve the 6 pack abs, end up with trashed their hormones. Our abs are where we keep our estrogen. Her patients who have had a tummy tuck come in a few months later with trashed hormones. Our fat is an endocrine organ. It can have benefits or detriments.

26:29 Your Glutes: Your spine comes down into your sacrum. Your ilium are your hip bones. All of the forces crisscross and go up through the sacrum. No muscles cross the sacroiliac joint on the back side where your ilium meets your sacrum. The only thing holding you together are your gluteal muscles. When our muscles atrophy, they start to contract, constrict and pull away from the bone. It is very painful. This happens because you have no gluteal muscle. If you focus on your gluteal strength, much of your body is worked in the process. You get the most benefit from posterior chain exercises, compound body movements, like deadlifts and squats.

29:15 Having a Little Fat is Protective: Dr. Moore experienced and often sees when people become very lean, their hormones tank. We feel better emotionally when we have a healthy bulk from lifting weights. She encourages her female patients to shift their paradigm from being lean to gaining strength. The fat comes off, but there are wonderful gains that come with it.

32:15 Fat is Burned in Mitochondria in Skeletal Muscles: The more muscle you have, the more fat you burn. Cytokines are inflammatory molecules that our bodies naturally produce when we are trying to heal injuries, have pro-inflammatory diets or lead a pro-inflammatory life. Your muscles secrete their own cytokines called myokines. It is the same molecule. When your muscles secrete Interleukin 6, it is anti-inflammatory. Myokines are anti-inflammatory. As we build muscle tissue, we create more mitochondria, the engines of our cells. The secret to longevity is healthy mitochondria, healthy oxidation, and healthy oxygenation. Dr. Moore believes that most chronic degenerative disease is due to mitochondrial death or impairment. With muscle creation, we create more insulin receptors. This metabolizes excess insulin. Skeletal muscle on well trained muscle secretes its own testosterone and estrogen. Muscle secretes human growth hormone levels all day and night from strength training.

37:32 Detoxification and Muscle: Well-trained skeletal muscle mass acts as an organ of detoxification, like the liver and kidneys. Human growth hormone produced in the muscle is used to heal the endothelium of your leaky gut. Yoga and running are good, but Dr. Moore looks at them as activities that people enjoy. She looks at strength training like drinking water and breathing air. It is a fundamental activity for optimal wellness.

40:55 Dr. Moore’s Workout: Dr. Moore makes sure that she gets lots of sleep, a minimum of 8 hours. She usually works out no more than 45 minutes, including her 15 minute warmup. She does 5 sets of 5 deadlifts first and builds up. Going for a personal record should be a once a month thing. You have to respect your body. Then she does 2 supersets of primal movements like pushing, pulling, and squatting. At the end, she will fry her glutes with a hip thrust or farmer carries. Studies show that picking up heavy things and carrying them as far as you can is beneficial.

45:16 BDNF/Brain-Derived Neurotropic Factor: A very recent study on rats reported that cardio, more than strength training, provided a higher boost to BDNF. Dr. Moore wonders how they got rats to strength train and also how this could be extrapolated to include humans with our upright stature, hinging, great lung capacity, and natural capacity for carrying things. Dr. Moore likes high intensity interval training over sustained cardio. Getting blood to the brain is beneficial.

47:35 Regenerative Therapies: Dr. Moore says that it all starts with prolotherapy. Where tendons and ligaments meet bone is very painful for many people. When it becomes injured, it begins to degenerate. It loses oxygen and nutrients. It starts to pull away from bone. In prolotherapy, the region is peppered with the needle. Shooting PRP inside a joint is not the same thing. It is traditionally done with dextrose, a sugar water solution which causes the body to mount a modulated immune response and awaken the area. It has been shown to increase tendon strength by up to 40%. Dextrose also sits on the capsaicin receptor and is responsible for much neurogenic pain. Dextrose also works as a local anesthetic.

49:29 Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP): The patient’s blood is removed and the platelets are spun out. Platelets are known to have over 20 growth factors. Dr. Moore uses a 4 to 6 time concentration and uses the prolotherapy technique with PRP in the syringe. Ligaments are meant to be stabilizers. Muscles are meant to be movers. When you have chronic muscle tension, you probably have an underlying joint laxity issue. PRP is used for large areas like the lower back, the Achilles, or bad rotator cuff tears. It is only as good as your blood.

51:10 Stem Cell Therapy: Dr. Moore uses stem cells for people who request it. She harvests the stem cells from the fat of the patient’s belly. There are more stem cells in your belly fat than anywhere else. She concentrates them and mixes it with the PRP. When she harvests the fat from someone with metabolic syndrome, the fat is inflamed and when injected into the joint, it brings inflammation. Dr. Moore has these patients lose weight before doing the procedure.

53:40 She Can Tell When You’ve Been Bad: Dr. Moore can tell how much sugar her patients eat and how much they drink just by the feel of their tissues. When she lays her ultrasound probe on someone’s joints and see that they have a sugar addiction because their bones will swirl bone spurs. The look of cartilage under ultrasound tells her how their diet has been throughout their life. People, who were well fed, will have a thick smooth cartilage layer. Joint health begins in our early years. A study of moose showed that those who suffered from malnourishment, suffered from degenerative arthritis in their hips and knees similar to humans. Moose that were well fed did not have that experience.

55:33 Dr. Moore’s Favorite Nutrient: Fish oil is her favorite (though magnesium is a close second). High doses of fish oil, both EPA and DHA are beneficial for the brain as it dampens inflammation and microglial cell activation. It also has tremendous downstream benefits on our pain overall.

56:50 Dr. Moore’s Morning Routine: She takes 2 hours before she leaves the house. She relaxes with her dogs. She drinks a Bulletproof-type coffee. Meditation takes about 10 minutes, setting her intention for the day. She works out in the evening. She uses magnesium gel at bedtime, especially over the areas she just worked.

01:00:45 One Health Tip for America: Get rid of artificial sweeteners. Dr. Moore believes that they are neurotoxins, destroying people’s brains and bodies. She would also tell them to do body weight squats every single day. It turns on your brain and gets your blood flowing. It will change your life if you squat every day for 30 days.