This One Hidden Hormone May Be the Real Key to Menopause, PTSD & Longevity…

What if the hormone you’ve been ignoring your entire life… is the one that could save it?

In this electrifying episode of The Crackin Backs Podcast we welcome back hormone-game-changer Dr. Devaki Lindsey Berkson — a global thought-leader whose career spans nearly four decades of clinical breakthroughs in hormones, nutrition and gut-health.

Known for calling Oxytocin “the most misunderstood hormone in modern medicine” — not just the so-called “love hormone,” but a whole-body regulator — Dr. Berkson pulls back the curtain on how oxytocin might be the missing link behind loneliness, inflammation, hormone decline, disconnection, anxiety, burnout, mood disorders, trauma, menopause, male aging, intimacy and longevity.

Why have we excluded oxytocin from the women’s health conversation (menopause, pelvic floor, estrogen/progesterone interplay)? What does the science actually reveal about oxytocin’s power to rewire the brain, heal trauma, support male cardiovascular health, and rewrite the aging script? Dr. Berkson explains it all — with the kind of clinical depth and personal insight that only comes from someone who has lived the story as both doctor and patient.

If you’re ready to challenge everything you’ve been told about hormones and discover the regulatory molecule that may hold the key to emotional connection, physical resilience, and the longer, better life you deserve — you cannot skip this episode.

 Want to dig deeper? Grab Dr. Berkson’s latest book, explore her full bio and research, and watch/listen to this episode now — your future self will thank you.

Learn more about Dr. Devaki Lindsey Berkson:
Dr. Berkson’s Official Site

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We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.

Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast

Transcript

Dr. Spencer Baron: 0:03

What if the hormone you've ignored all your life is the one that could save it to unpack that we welcome back our powerhouse hormone, Doc. Dr Lindsay burkeson, welcome to the show. Dr Lindsay, so you've called oxytocin the most one of the most misunderstood hormones in modern medicine, but not the love hormone, but a whole body regulator. So what? What have we gotten wrong about oxytocin? And what does the science actually show about this true medical power?

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 0:39

Oxytocin is the hormone of humanity. It's the birth hormone. We all know that that the baby is bathed in it, because it allows the mother's uterus to contract to bring the baby into life on our planet, and then it allows the breast to contract, so the baby is drenched in oxytocin when it's first born, and it has receptors all over its body to receive signals from oxytocin to keep the tissues healthy until the first feeding, and reduce inflammation, because birth is a very pro oxidative phenomena. So oxytocin is very important to deliver signals to the baby, and then we discovered that it keeps delivering, delivering signals all throughout life. So we think of it as the birthing hormone, or we think of it as the cuddle and love hormone, because we release it when we orgasm, although women release more, which is why women bond more when they make love, versus men can have friends with benefits much easier. But it turns out, for example, that oxytocin delivers signals from your mouth north to your south to your sigmoid colon, including your pancreas and your liver, not your gallbladder, because that's a piggy bank for bile, but you receive signals all throughout your digestive tract for oxytocin. So we're now using oxytocin to help address esophageal disorders, people that have brittle diabetes or issues with blood sugar that goes up and down. We can give oxytocin to help stabilize blood sugar, your islet cells in the pancreas, your alpha cells, they're lined with receptors for oxytocin. It's extraordinary how many uses there are for oxytocin. When I wrote hormone deception and I interviewed some breast researchers in Australia, they felt that the more oxytocin signals that went to the breast, the less breast cancer. And that's why, when you make love and your breasts are massaged, and that releases oxytocin and breast tissue, that's a wonderful thing, but you can do it on your own, with massaging your own breast. But oxytocin was protective against breast cancer, so it is an anti inflammatory, anti oxidative, contractiles of people who take GLP, one weight loss meds, and they worry about gastroparesis and paralysis of the stomach squeezing, they can pre treat with oxytocin, either liquid or nasal spray, and offset a lot of that potential lack of contraction, which is gastroparesis, and diabetics have a lot of those issues. Diabetics are known to suffer a higher incidence of gastroparesis, which is where the stomach just doesn't contract after you eat. There's no treatment for it. It's a pretty miserable condition, but because oxytocin is a contractile hormone for the uterus at birth, for the breast with breast milk, it's also a contractile hormone in the gut. It is such a diverse hormone that nobody ever thinks about although there's a lot in the literature, I just wrote a new book on it, and the book is only 193 pages, but then it goes to 277 because there were 556 scientific citations. So my interior editor said, Is this accurate? Do you really have a book 193 pages, but you have 556 science citations? And I said, Yes, because oxytocin is very well written about in the science, but it hasn't been that translated into sitting across from a doctor and possibly getting a script for it, and it's sold over the counter. The government allows it comes in international units, and the government allows 15 international units to be sold over the counter, and it's often very efficacious. I was lecturing in Calgary Canada for a pharmaceutical conference on oxytocin, and there were a number of OB GYN physicians there, and they said during covid They couldn't get a hold of. Osin, which is a form of oxytocin that helps the uterus contract when the woman's own isn't or if the doctor has a really weird schedule, and he has to make sure he knows when the mom is going to give birth. And so they went ahead and ordered it from Walmart the over the counter oxytocin, and they said it worked so well, they were continuing to use it. I think Walmart just ran out of it, and the price of it has gone up with inflation, darn it. But it's a very helpful hormone, and if you know how to use it, you can get your hands on it without a script, or you can have a functional provider write you a knowledgeable script.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 5:36

You mentioned something about Pitocin, and I just want our listening and viewing audience to that are lay people that would like to know a little bit more of the difference, because Pitocin is so related to more of a heavy duty contractile hormone given during birthing, And it oftentimes is related to something a little more painful or aggressive in that that whole process. So when you're talking about oxytocin, what is, you

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 6:12

know, Pitocin is oxytocin? Pitocin is oxy it is because that that's a great question. And the reason is natural oxytocin is pulsed, and that's a big part of its ability to deliver its signal. It pulses almost every three minutes, and then it stops. It pulses and then it stops. Interestingly enough, Vitamin C helps our body create this pulsatile oxytocin, but when the women are given Pitocin, which is really oxytocin, they're given it is an IV with no pulsatile nature to it. And there's a lot of forward thinking gynecologists that have said, you know, we think that giving oxytocin without the pulsing nature to it is damaging the receptors in the fetus. So they've tracked babies. There's now a growing number of studies, which I mentioned in the book of babies who were born being given Pitocin versus not being given Pitocin, so it was the mother's own natural oxytocin being pulsed during pregnancy. And there's a 200 to 400% increased risk of ADHD and autism in the children, because oxytocin makes you feel all right with your world, makes you connect with others, and we have more kids that can't connect with others, and 50% of our births are now exposed to Pitocin. And all these things need to be really looked at, but they're not looked at because medicine doesn't really necessarily do things in exactly the right way we think it does, but that is powerful.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 7:55

So, so oxytocin, if I'm understanding correctly, could actually, could it actually reverse a sense of loneliness, inflammation, maybe hormone decline? Is that

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 8:08

just, well, those are three different things. Now, okay, so you said first loneliness. So there's lots of studies. Oxytocin is a hormone that makes you feel right with your world. It makes it's a cultural hormone. It makes communities feel unified, and we now live in a universe where we're polarized, we're angry, we're entitled. Kids are going in and shooting kids and teachers. We have extreme angst in the world, and it turns out that all of our hormones are vulnerable to our toxic planet with chemicals that can act like hormone disruptors. We've all known this and heard this. I wrote one of the very first books on this hormone deception. But it's not too many people or scientists realize that oxytocin is the most vulnerable hormone to endocrine disruption, so Bisphenol A, plastics, heavy metals, the let's see glyphosate, you know, the they used to spray The underside of boats with tributylen that's been banned, but it's in our fish, in our water, all of these chemicals are making oxytocin, which we should be born with hope for humanity. The baby should come out bathed in oxytocin, wanting to be a member of a unified society. This is my opinion and what I write in this book. But I think because we have less functional oxytocin, and then half of our births are using Pitocin, we have kids, and of course, it's multifactorial. This is not the only issue. There's Ultra processed foods. There's commentaries on the educational system. We could go on and on, but I do think that endocrine disruption of this humanitarian hormone is contributing to a lot of the horrific angst that we have in the world.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 10:19

That's outstanding. So, you know, it's interesting, because testosterone for women has become such a big conversation these days, and I see that, especially based on your book, that this new wave of understanding oxytocin for well men and women could be the next wave of hormone Well, replacement would that be?

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 10:44

Yeah, when you take a hormone from outside your body, that's exactly right. Dr Barron, when you take a hormone from outside your body and give it to you, that's called replacing a hormone. And often the way that you get a hormone to function better when its receptor has been damaged is by giving a bit more of it, and that helps elbow the receptor, so to speak, into adaptive reaction and but oxytocin can be used for a wide array of things, from emotional that it can help people. In fact, my very first, my very, very, very first patient, when I was working at the Wiseman family practice a number of years ago here in Austin, which is a series of multiple centers for functional medicine, but they take insurance, because many functional docs don't take insurance. So that's what Dr Wiseman wanted to try and do is have affordable, functional care. So I was working there, and I also worked one week a month in Oklahoma with a functional clinic where they were, you know, big problem as usually as we're older, is erectile functionality in men and women actually both, but and usually Viagra is one of the treatments. But less and less people were responding to Viagra. So at the Oklahoma clinic care, care first pharmacy was a group of people we worked with. They suggested we add oxytocin to Viagra, and a percentage of the patients were starting to get much better intimacy, which, of course, is glue in a family and glue in a relationship. So that my first introduction was for sexual veracity, and I then the other three weeks of the month was practicing in Austin, and my very first patient came in, beautiful woman, and she said, I birthed my son. He's now 16, and something horrific happened during that birth. It was just a very traumatic birth, and after that, I've always just had a low emotional affect. I don't want to be touched. I don't want to hug. My husband divorced me because of this, and I feel very guilty that my son didn't, doesn't bond with me, because I just don't feel comfortable honestly with emotion. And she said, I now am finally dating a new gentleman, and the same exact situation is arising. I just don't want to be touched, but I want to be involved with somebody. So I thought, well, I'm going to try giving her oxytocin nasal spray. What the heck? So I recommended that the academic dosage is often 24 international units in one nostril or in both nostrils. What the provider decides to do? So I told her to do one spray in one nostril four to five to six times a day. Give it a try. Sometimes we do loading doses for a few days where we give a lot more and then we lower it a little bit if we're getting a good response. So I was really anxious what would happen when she came back to the office a month later, and a month later, she came back with a Cheshire grin, ear to ear, and she said, I enrolled myself and my son in a yoga class, and we're doing couples yoga together, touching each other, which I wasn't touching my son, and I'm having intimacy With my new fiance, and I feel better than I've ever felt in my life. And somehow, during the traumatic birth her I'm theorizing this, but it appears this way, her oxytocin receptors got damaged, but you can revitalize receptors. I also gave her the nutrients that oxytocin needs, because hormones lean on nutrients and lean on digestion. So it's always a tapestry of events, but that was in a month. Her whole life, her relationship with her fiance, with herself, with her son, was altered in one month. And then I said, That's it. I've got to start using oxytocin for a number of things. And I have quite enough. Number of tales like that. Having a launch party for my book tonight, and I'm going to be telling some of the tales, not from the Crips, but from the sunlight.

Unknown: 15:11

Well, I got interjected next something besides massaging our partners breasts every day. Is this something? Is this like a daily vitamin we can take or give. Not that's a vitamin A nasal spray that we can just, you know, put in our Christmas stocking and just the gift that keeps giving.

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 15:31

A lot of people are doing it as lozenges. They're doing 100 international units of lozenges and popping them to just be, you know, I know that a lot of housewives these days are doing low grade mushroom psychedelics. You can do oxytocin lozenges, but you can also take things like three grams of Vitamin C is known in many people. There are studies on this to boost your own production of oxytocin, but oxytocin works with your thyroid and with estrogen as a threesome as the three musketeers, and it's really oxytocin that builds bone. We think of estrogen and testosterone as building bone, which they do. I mean, estrogen causes an increase a decrease in bone resorption, and progesterone causes an increase in bone production. So does testosterone, but they only work if there's oxytocin right there at the bone party, working all together with them. We because we always want to think everything is a simplistic equation. Well, estrogen does this, and progesterone does that, but it's that hormones work, really, as this symphony together. It's so true. God, I was listening to, I belong to the International Institute of bioidentical hormones, headed by Dr David rosensweet, who is a medical doctor who's really held up the gauntlet for hormones the last 30 years. But he happened to be one of my doctors when I had breast cancer 33 years ago, and then I went on hormones three years after that, even though the standard of care was not to do that. And he has grand rounds every Wednesday afternoon, if you belong to his group. And he had yesterday the world's expert, Jenna Jenner, I always have trouble with her first name, Jenny Lynn priory, and she's done more. She's an MD PhD that's done more research in women's health, and she was saying what a tapestry hormones are, and so many people are ignorant. And she showed how birth control pills block ovulation, block bone growth. Most women can't even recover if you're on them for three years, where you ever grow your bones normal again, that they block the symphony of hormones. And yet, doctors are mostly prescribing birth control pills for young women, and now they're even recommending it for hormone replacement therapy for older women when it's the number one cause of stroke. There's so much misinformation of hormones, it's probably, I guess it's rampant in all forms of medicine, but in hormones, the misinformation can make you grind your teeth to powder. I gotta go get all crowns or something. I'm grinding my teeth to powder.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 18:11

Terry before you, before you ask your next question, I want to, I want to interject that it's, I'm absolutely fascinated to realize that, do you remember the book Life extensions by Dirk Pierce?

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 18:23

Oh, yes, I was at their home. I went to visit them at their home in California. Yeah, yes. And they,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 18:30

they were just scratching the surface on toast or oxytocin and a nasal spray and all that.

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 18:38

He would walk around with a little teeny necklace, with powder in there. When you went in their house, the whole the aroma of nutraceutical powers powders was over, you could almost faint. But they were fascinating, intelligent

Dr. Spencer Baron: 18:51

couple, extremely and hippies, you know that were,

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 18:58

but I was a hippie too. I read, I remember listening to Santana the Fillmore in San Francisco. You know, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be seven. I'm gonna be 77 in in like three weeks.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 19:11

Girl, I've been bragging about you for since the first show. I tell all my patients, and I go, you gotta forget about listening. I go, you gotta watch the YouTube video. She's amazing, right? Oh, thank you.

Unknown: 19:25

Santana is badass. So the fact that we're even using the word hippie, it tells people are gonna go, what the hell's a hippie?

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 19:40

I remember walking down Haight Ashbury Avenue, you know, and really honestly giving someone a flower and go, love, man, love. Everyone thought we were into drug, sex, rock and roll. And I think we were just trying. We were saying drop out of corporate America. That was the big term. Drop out, drop in. And you know, because that was from Ram Dass and and all the people from Harvard that got kicked out of Harvard, but we were trying to figure out how to really get in touch with our essence and really live out of your essence. And that's what oxytocin, as a hormone, is designed to do. And most of us are out of touch with our own, you know, from the neck down, and then we don't feel between all of the phones and the iPads and not looking at people and working at home. We don't have connection, and it's the hormone of connection, and we need to keep the planet safe. I think we have to get back to some connection in body, mind and spirit.

Unknown: 20:47

Hey, Doc, on that, on that little saying, on that same level you mentioned hate Asbury, don't you think that the Grateful Dead were the first, first commercial for oxy? I mean, if you think about what they were trying to tell people right, love and all that. But I think the Grateful Dead were on to something. I think everybody looked at them as sex drugs. I think they were the Oxy band.

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 21:11

They still are, aren't they? Well, I mean,

Unknown: 21:14

some of them aren't still around, but the original guys, I think they're still on, yeah,

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 21:20

so in and now it's kind of the the concept of love and connection is sneered at a little bit. It's sneered at it's minimized. The elderly are minimized. I just, I don't understand what's going on, but i i My part of my theory is that oxytocin is under assault, and we do need to figure out ways to reboot our own naturally, and we can use oxytocin as a tool in our tool bag, as providers for a variety of conditions, anywhere from barest esophagus, which is a precancerous condition of the esophagus, to pain. You know they give cancer patients with intractable bone pain. For example, you can do epidurals with oxytocin and bring immediate pain relief if there's statistical studies. So it has a wide variety, because the baby is just drenched in it, so all tissues are ready to receive signals from it. So if you're a provider and you know what those signals are, you can try it. For example, one of the astonishing things of oxytocin is people with major depressive disorders that is such a tough that's a sticky wicket to heal. I had actually a close colleague commit suicide who developed a major depressive disorder, and he was a famous internist, but if you mix ketamine with oxytocin, and in this book, I give all the ways to write the scripts for compounding pharmacists, you know exactly how to write it out. You can turn around major depressive disorders. In many patients, nothing works 100% of the time, but in many patients, within 1520 minutes, oh my god. Oh my god.

Unknown: 23:12

You know, Doc, I want to, I want to drop a bomb or a help tip halfway through this show, just to for people listening that they can do something for themselves immediately, and so, I mean, Women's Health right now is evolving so fast. People are now talking about menopause. They're talking about sexual health. We've had guests on a show talking about pelvic floor, emotional regulations. You mentioned that oxy can be found at Walmart. What? What are some things that

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 23:43

they just, they just took it off the market there at Walmart, but there are other places online. Now, I don't know why, and I had mentioned it in my book, which came out two days ago, but they just took it off the market. I don't know what happened. Maybe they got who knows? But it's available over the counter.

Unknown: 23:57

It is over the counter. What be just to get people started. Can you take too much? Can you take not enough? Is this something you can take daily for the rest of your life? What's a little health tip for these women that are going through menopause, sexual health problems, pelvic floor, weakness, what's some stuff just to get them kind of amped up a little bit before they can seek a doctor to really do it right? Is there any any little tip?

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 24:21

Well, you know, they really need hormone replacement therapy, but estrogen boosts oxytocin. That's one of the reasons women feel better after estrogen replacement, is that just a daily dose of a moderate amount of estrogen boosts your own production of oxytocin. But I want to make one comment of what's happening in women's health before we go to that but I want to make sure I do answer that question. So I love that Marty Makari, our 27th head of our FDA came out recently with removing the black box warning on vaginal estrogen and saying in his new book. Book, which is called blind spots. Here's his new book. I love this book, and the subtitle is where medicine got it wrong, and what this means for your life. And everyone has been scared to death that estrogen causes cancer. And he was at that meeting that he was one of the co authors of the Women's Health Initiative, where we were just trying to figure out how not to topple Medicare, because women live longer than men, and we're an aging nation, so we had all these studies to figure out how to keep women healthier and not run out of money with Medicare. And at that meeting on June 28 2002 the head, the principal investigator of the Women's Health Initiative the hormone arm was Jacques Rousseau, and he told all the co authors of Macari was President, that we are going to put out a press release that estrogen causes breast cancer and heart disease, and that co authors said, we don't have statistical significance of that. We have not proven that. We can't put that out. And Rousseau said, dissonance will not be tolerated. Your careers will be over with. You cannot dissent. If you dissent, you're done. So he sent out that fateful press release, which was a lie, a total lie, and it's been bothering Makari for decades. It's been 25 years now since that meeting. So he wrote this book, and it's he just he tells a story in the second chapter of the book. A week later, the journal the American Medical Association came out with a premature they ended the Women's Health Initiative, hormone arms prematurely. So they summarized the findings, and they said we found no statistical significance, but that never everybody has stopped teaching hormones, been fearful of hormones based on a lie. How can you believe anybody any more about anything? And then you read Aaron series book on vaccines, on men, we are lied to, lied to, lied to, lied to women's and women are often and our children are the victims. Not that it isn't applicable to everybody, but women miss out on so much great care of hormones. So now they've said, If younger women in perimenopause, or 10 years out of menopause, take hormones, they have another three and a half years of health span, and they decrease. We mostly die from heart disease. They decrease dying from heart disease by 66% and they make it sound as though older women, if you're 60 or older, you've missed out. You can't go on hormones. And that's not true at all. I'm going to run a summit very soon, a free summit addressing this, because all of that data is based on synthetic hormones and oral delivery. So there's no reason a 90 year old woman can't start hormones. An 80 year old woman can't start hormones. I had breast cancer. I went on hormones. I'm putting on how to treat breast cancer patients with hormones conference in April with all the world's experts who are going against the standard of care and doing it. I hope I don't get assassinated. Oh, please God, white light, white light, white light. But so much of what we're told in we all try and sound so scientific, and so much of it is gobbledygook and money and ego. So you got to figure out, who do you listen to, and how do you really stay as safe for as long as you can? I mean, and hormones, hormone health is a big, big, big part of that. But who do you listen to? The menopause society guides a lot of our gynecologists. So McCarry says only 20% of our gynecologists have ever taken a course in hormones, only five weeks long. That's why they pass out birth control pills. They know how to write scripts for birth control pills, but most of them are trained by the menopause society used to be called the North American menopause society. They have their meeting every September in Chicago. And if you go to this meeting, the first five slides say, thank you to our partner liaisons, Pfizer, moderna Bayer, it's all meds. Meds, meds. When med synthetic hormones are not the answer, in my opinion, so I love that you have this show and that you invite me on and bear with me so that we can help get this message out, because so many doctors and women are confused.

Unknown: 29:32

100% agree with that, and you talked about all the stuff that's out there, which for a lot of women and men, it causes trauma, and we start having, you know, really negative thoughts and kind of and all this bad news and all this misinformation causes almost our brain to rewire. I have actually, actually have a patient that stopped traveling because he believes everything that he sees on the news and when he reads in the paper. Paper, and he goes, the world fall apart. I'm not going out. I'm not traveling and this, and I can't imagine living inside that head. Can what can oxy do to rewire the brain?

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 30:12

That is a great question. You really put that in a great light. That was fabulous. Oxytocin does make you feel better inside your body, suit, body, mind and spirit. And it acts instantaneously, because it acts you squirt. You can take it in many ways into the body. The most common way is a nasal spray. You spray it up your nose. Often the it's in water, but the first few days it can be irritating. So if you put a little olive oil, and you're put it on your finger and rub it around your nose, or a little jojoba oil, a gentle oil, for the first few days, then it helps your mucous membranes be acclimated a little bit, but within two three minutes, it's hitting your hypothalamus and making you come down A number of decibels. Not everybody, though, gets the same response, and here in lies the rub. Oxytocin is a team player. If people are insufficient in magnesium, it won't work that well. When you take it, you'll say, I did it and nothing happened. It also needs a stable thyroid, so if your thyroid signaling isn't stabilized, and you haven't gone to someone who knows how to do a full thyroid panel on you. You could try it and say, Nothing happened to me. And it also needs quality estrogen, as I said earlier. So it needs estrogen working in the body, even in men, it needs thyroid. It needs magnesium, if you're on statins that can block the activity. And I got I was just last Friday, keynote speaker for the Arizona naturopathic yearly convention and cardiology, and out of two and a half days, I was the only speaker on hormones. It was horrifying. And the whole conference was pro statin. And they said, if you get adverse reactions to statins, you can try botanicals whose mechanisms act like statins. I was like, Oh my God. And there, and many of them don't believe in hormones, but hormones aren't a religion. They're a physiology. So you can use oxytocin, but understand that you better to make sure you have plenty of magnesium. Run a red blood cell magnesium, and it should be about six most people, magnesium is very hard to hold on to, especially with stressful thoughts. In fact, there's old time studies where people that just live under airplane pathways, where you hear the noise of the airplane going by, they just rinse magnesium out of the body from that environmental stress. Magnesium is nature's Valium, but it's very hard to hold it inside the body. So magnesium is a very important mineral to take on a daily basis in this stressful world. But for oxytocin to work, it needs a lot of magnesium. So you want your red blood cell magnesium, not your serum magnesium, which is buffered and could look like it's normal, when inside the red blood cell, where it does most of its action, it's not. So you want that to be about six. That's a great test to run once a year, an RBC magnesium, and make sure that it's about six that helps your oxytocin work better, and it also needs zinc. The other thing is that oxytocin signals not only receptors, but we've learned in the last seven, eight years that hormones don't even need a receptor anymore to signal. They can signal all cell membranes. So hormones are the most global and powerful signaling molecules in the body, because they signal receptors on target tissue, like there's estrogen receptors on the breast, the breast would be a target tissue, or progesterone receptors on the lungs, that would be a target tissue. Or in the brain, the hippocampus, there's estrogen and hormone receptors. But we've learned recently that there's reset that hormones signal all cell membranes. So you don't want to eat a lot of trans fats and ultra processed foods, which make your lipids kind of hardened, and then oxytocin can't signal. So hormones don't just exist where you measure their levels and then treat and make you everybody gets the same response. They're like I said earlier, a tapestry of events that are really that makes sense. And I write about this all in the book, explaining it in detail, so that you can try and get the best response from taking oxytocin. So some people take oxytocin, they spray it up their nose, and they say, Oh my God, I feel a lot better. Oh my god, like I meditated for a half hour. Somebody else does it. And they say, I don't feel a thing. Do I waste my money? But it might be that these things aren't in place. Plus you have to keep it refrigerated. Once you open it, and it can be sent to you, not refrigerated, but once you open it, it needs to be refrigerated, and it lasts for about three to three to five months. Yes, in the refrigerator, and then it's that it's potency diminishes. I, I am very close friends with the functional gastroenterologist in Century City, Dr Sam rabar, and I had him be a reader on my book, because I have a huge section on using oxytocin in the gut from the north to the south, and he got so excited, he started using it in his patients. And he wants me to write a few pages for his website about it. And he is very excited about the application in gastroenterology of oxytocin, because you have you have receptors all throughout the lining of the gut. You have membranes everywhere. So hormones are more powerful than we even thought before, because now we know they signal tissues that are meant to get hormone signals, but they signal every single cell membrane in the body. So it's a sin that hormones are so compartmentalized to gynecologists and endocrinologists who look at them in a different light, and we miss out on them and cardiology and dermatology, and in the other you know, in gastroenterology, where they can be utilized adjunctively, even in cancer care, They're very anti oxytocin signals are anti carcinogenic, carcinogenic, anti inflammatory, anti free, radical chaos. It's just it's meant to be this way, since it's one of the first major hormones that the baby is drenched in, and supposed to be set as healthier and as part of a member of community, looking at others, not as strangers, but as part of the family of man. But that's not what's happening right at the moment.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 36:50

I just wanted to ask, because she mentioned something, just a quick moment about Barrett's but then started into the GI tract. I have several patients, it's horrifying, that are on Pepcid AC and other, you know, inhibitors of normal acids. And one in particular, I'm thinking of has been told to go on some, you know, very aggressive medication because he's showing signs of Barrett. Could you just elaborate on that, just for a moment?

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 37:19

So Barrett is kind of a thickening and an alteration in the esophageal you know, your whole gut only has a one cell lining to it, and it's the it's the interface between the outer world and your inner worlds. It's kind of crazy. It's one cell thick that goes from your mouth all the way to your rectum. And your esophagus is the most fragile of all your tissues, because food is coming in and it hasn't been exposed to digestive enzymes, it's still almost in the form of the outside world. So the esophagus is very, very fragile to ultra processed foods and emotions and things like that. And they were thinking for a long time that when you have a thickening of over a centimeter. It's your cells are really starting to change, that you're at risk of cancer and you should be on acid blockers permanently, but you can really reverse. Barrett said it's, it's now. Dr rabar says he doesn't believe that all patients who are diagnosed with Barrett's our true diagnosis that it's easy for a radiologist to read esophageal imaging wrong or an endoscopic imaging wrong. So I do address all of that in detail in the book, but you can get a lot of benefit by oxytocin, liquid oxytocin mixed with a mucus like substance, either a mucolox or mucous cell. There are two mucus like substances that compounding pharmacists can put together. And you take tablespoons of this several times a day and do pre and post endoscopic exam and see where you go. And I actually have one patient who was diagnosed with Barrett's who did that, and then after that, was diagnosed with normal lining of the esophagus. So you can use oxytocin for a wide variety of things, if you know what to do. And that's really exciting. But you know, long term use of acid blockers is one of the travesties of modern pharmaceutical medicine. We just had a study that, I think it came out a week or two ago. You know, if you had breast cancer, or any cancer for that matter, but if you had breast cancer, your biggest worry is, am I going to get it back again? And if I get it back again, will that recurrence kill me? So we've always been looking at, what can we take that reduces recurrence, and what can we take? What do we take that increases recurrence? And a study came out showing that breast cancer survivors. Disease free. After treatment, who are on acid blockers, proton pump inhibitors, they end up having a statistical increased risk of recurrence and fatality because you're not absorbing food. It's damaging the lining of your gut. You're supposed to have stomach acid. You're not supposed to block stomach acid ongoing? Well, that was a huge outcome of a study breast cancer survivors on long term PPIs, proton pump inhibitors, they're at worse risk of their future of getting cancer back again and surviving it. So the goal is to get people off of these things, not to just throw them at people like they're M and M's, they're not M M's. The same thing with birth control pills. We've become so comfortable with meds. We're more comfortable with medication than we are with somebody doing a deep dive into our digestive capability. But that's why your podcast is so great. People can hear these conversations and start broadening their awareness. But you can't ask your doctors this, because they won't know of these studies, because they're no one's got time to read these studies. You got to talk to somebody who who has given up their life to read these studies. I think this is why I'm still dating and I'm single. I'm still reading these studies.

Unknown: 41:20

Well, since you are still dating, let's talk about the people you date. So let's see, it seems like, it seems like men are dying earlier, right? And it seems like we're connecting less, and we're having, we're we're not doing the other thing that that

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 41:38

I'm standing out in New Mexico in the desert, saying, alien, come get me.

Unknown: 41:48

Well, let's hopefully we can get you something that is not alien. But even, even my, even my wife, will say, men don't know how to be men anymore. The other way, they're portrayed on TV and movies, and they were dying younger. Can we talk about men?

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 42:02

For Yes, this is a great question. This is so great that you brought this up.

Unknown: 42:07

I want to know how the how oxy and how you approach men, because, you know, men are we're supposed to be strong. We're not supposed to talk about Ed. We're not supposed to talk about this. And yet, we are dying younger, and we are being betrayed weaker and so can you talk about oxy and your approach to men?

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 42:26

That is such a great question. I'm so happy you brought that up. I actually wrote an entire book based on this issue. It came out in 2017 called sexy brain, because sex steroid hormones rule the brain, but I made a case that hormones are so being assaulted by our environment, that younger people don't have the hormones they were supposed to. We have more and more younger men with less and less testosterone. So it used to be men's testosterone lowered when they were in their 60s and 70s. I was lecturing a little bit ago at the integrative North Carolina medical meeting, and three doctors came up to me and said, I breastfed my son. We eat organically. Look at his labs. Look at his labs. He's 22 years old and he has no testosterone. Three MDS came up to me and put their phone with their son's labs under my face. We see this all the time, but we also see it in women, but we see it more in men. We have less and less hormones, because we have a dirtier and dirtier planet, and the chemicals will sit in the binding pocket domain where a hormone is supposed to swim on into deliver its signal, and the hormone can't get in. You can measure hormones. They can look perfect, but if they're not functional, we need functional binding pocket domains, and if you're filled with endocrine disrupting chemicals from everyday life, especially microplastics. Now we all know how much we're filled with microplastics, your hormones won't work the same. So we now need to start testing hormones in younger and younger people, and yes, younger men. They're all around the world. Papers are being generated in Israel, in Britain, in Finland, countries have researchers publishing papers saying young men in their 20s and 30s now have the testosterone levels of a 70 year old man, and they're binding proteins, which the higher your binding protein, the less you can use your hormone. That's the Uber that your hormone swims through your bloodstream in. We have more binding proteins so you can't use what you've got and less hormone, so you have less to use because you you don't have much hormone. But it's also happening in women, and that there is a question of fertility. Sean Shan, I was a distinguished hormone scholar at an environmental estrogen Think Tank. I call it a think tank, but it was really called the Center for bio Environmental Research at Tulane and Xavier. Universities in New Orleans, and it was all the top researchers that put the field of endocrine disruption together, and Shanna swan was a researcher. She's in her mid 90s, now still traveling the planet like me in my later 70s, with these messages that these chemicals are making us more infertile, and our hormones not work, right? So we have young men coming in in their mid 20s saying, can you test my hormones? I think I need testosterone. And it's not that they want a super orgasm. It's just that they really when you don't have enough hormone, you can't really fully occupy yourself for years, many people at the think tank at Tulane were saying, are we going to see gender bending coming down the road? Are we going to see people not sure of their gender? And we had a scientist named Tyrone Hayes. He was a embryo integrative embryologist from Berkeley, and he was first hired by the Atrazine manufacturer to study some mechanisms of it, and he discovered that if he exposed pregnant frogs to the amount of Atrazine that we mainly get by eating apples and vegetables in America today, that these frogs would he could change their sexes. And their sexes were changing. So we were all saying, are we going to see people confused about their sex? But he his family got threatened by these companies. His daughters were threatened, his young daughters, and so a lot of my colleagues, I think, aren't speaking up because they're frightened to speak up because there's so much money involved. But nobody's brought this up with transgenderism. How much of this is coming? Would you want your child to be changing their sex because they're exposed to so many pollutants in their air, food and water? These questions. So I brought all this out in a book called sexy brain. Really take that nature wants us to have sex and wants us to have a man and a woman, and when we come together having sex, we release oxytocin and hormones that keep our brain the way our brain should be and give us a lot of power in our own self identification. And when we have less of those hormones, we have more confusion about who we are. And I'm shocked that this hasn't been a mainstream conversation, but I think it's because of Tyrone Hayes family having been persecuted. But oxytocin is helpful to make the sex hormones work better, and the sex hormones help oxytocin better, but all that family of hormones are under attack. If you eat out at a restaurant, you know, more than two three times a week, and you're not eating organic food, and you're eating the oils that they use, you're filling your body and where hormones should go into that pocket, that evolutionarily conserved binding pocket, it's like, it's like a satellite dish that the hormone is looking for to swim into and then shimmy in space delivering appropriate signals to local tissues. But if you've been eating out a lot, you know food is expensive, not buying you live in an area of the country where you don't even have organic food available to you, and you get in a lot of the chemicals we allow, many chemicals in our country that Europe has already banned for the last 2030, years. That's what Kennedy and Makari and madachari, that's what they're trying to do, is clean up the environment. Why there's so much resistance against them is so stupid and so detrimental and dangerous. Get get wise folks. It's sad to hear them attacked and vilified like that. They're just trying to figure out how to keep us healthier. And it all comes down. A lot of it comes down to these binding pocket domains and hormones can't get in. So going to a doctor that just measures your levels isn't telling you really how your hormones work. So oxytocin is necessary to feel who you are, who you could be and should be, but all the hormones work as a family. They are a symphony, a family, but you need to detox. That's why I reached out to biotic scientific research, because I had formulated for metagenics, the first female line for physicians in 1982 and they had a line called the femme line. Susan Lark came out. Her practice was around the corner from me in Palo Alto, and Linus pauling's practice was around the corner for me too. We used to go there for brown bag lunches and shoot the breeze with Linus in the olden days, but Susan Lark made the first female one a day multi and then I thought, Well, why don't I come out with a line for women, for breast pain, for heavy periods, for etc, hot flashes. And metagenics did that line with me. And then when all this understanding of endocrine. Disruption emerged. I reached out to biotics because they're down the road for me in in Texas, and they're such a supreme scientific they have like, nine PhDs working for them. I said, Why don't we design a product that detoxes these these chemicals out of the binding pocket domains and keeps hormones safe and acting healthier? I'm not. I don't mean to be given a but that's why, you know, everything I've done in my career has been along these lines. I kind of was ruined by hormones. My mom took the first synthetic endocrine disruptor, diethylstabester all when she was pregnant with me. She had injections in her first trimester. And even though I lived well, eating organically since I was 17, I kept getting cancers, so I had to figure out what was going on, and that brought me to learn more and more of hormones, and then that got me deeper in hormones, and it got me a fire in my belly for hormones. And who knew that I'm out three years from 80, and I'm healthier than I've ever been in my life, or when I have something else hit me, I come out on the other side, still strong, which is what health is about, resilience anyway, I don't mean to be so loquacious here. Shut me up.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 51:13

It's actually extremely informative and a host of more information.

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 51:18

Didn't want to be obnoxious. Okay,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 51:22

no, but I will say, Keep on point with timing for you and us and all that, I want to go into our rapid fire questions we have

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 51:31

good for you, like speed dating. Love it. I'm watching Love on the spectrum, and they're all these speed I just love that show. Oh my god, they're all eating junk food. Oh, my God.

Unknown: 51:43

I just want to know if rubbing breast is it works just as good on men as it does on women.

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 51:50

You know, that is a really great question, and I don't think I have the scientific answer, but I think it would make sense that it would, but I don't, haven't read a study where they've actually measured a baseline level, because you can measure oxytocin. Meridian Valley laboratory is the only laboratory I know. I ordered it on patients. You can order the amount of oxytocin in your blood by Meridian Valley, they have a great test for it. So I don't know if anyone has done a baseline test and then done a male massage and then rerun it on a number of people to see that, but they haven't women, but I would imagine it would be the same.

Unknown: 52:26

I mean, like a brick house. He's like that, Terry Cruz, I'm sure you can walk around and just wink them all and and, yeah, no wonder he's always so calm and happy.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 52:38

My breasts all day. Haha. Quite Yes. All right. Well, back to the rapid fire questions, although I liked that Terry's fixated on breast tissue. Okay, so anyway, moving right along, I almost feel bad for Michelle. After you get up, we get off the air.

Unknown: 53:03

Or I make her really happy, or make her happy.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 53:08

Oh my gosh. Dr Bergson, look at the chaos you're causing here. Okay, question number one, what is the single most surprising insight you want every clinician and every patient to know

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 53:22

it's never too late to initiate hormone therapy. Ever. You just have to be with a doctor that's well trained. And David Brownstein and I put together a 16 CME hour course for MDS and nurse practitioners and nature pass called everything hormones, and it's still available online to get CMEs from you need to know the veracity of hormones because they are life changing. They can all of us, the majority of us, exit this incarnation by heart disease and hormone therapy reduces the incidence in women by 66% if they get on hormones in the perimenopause, or within 10 years, you still get other benefits when you're older, but not as great heart benefits. And men get heart benefits too healthy. Hearts aren't just about statins, so please don't be frightened of hormones. Learn how to find practitioners that will help you utilize hormones to be younger, longer and more resilient. Good.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 54:29

Rapid fire. Question number two, can you share just quickly now one story a patient, research or even personal, that captures the power of oxytocin medicine

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 54:42

so I had a movie producer who was had a very hectic life, and she just didn't enjoy sex anymore, but she loved her husband, and she talked really, really fast, because everything in Hollywood is really, really fast, and her whole life was really, really fast. So I recommend. Did oxytocin vaginal cream, and because, out of the Karolinska Institute and the Netherlands, they've done quite a bit of research on oxytocin as a vaginal cream, it can thicken the lining of non tumor genic cell lines. So you know, you can't, even though it causes more growth, it doesn't cause more dangerous growth or promoting of cancer, but it makes your vaginal vault. It's an anti ager for your vaginal vault, but you have to have all these other things in place, right? The magnesium, and if you're on statins, you might not get the same blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So she went on that and she sent me a huge bouquet of flowers and told me that her life was changed, and now she would happily be looking to the next location for the next movie.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 55:44

Yay. That is great. That's awesome. Vaginal vault. I've never heard it called that,

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 55:49

but that's, that's the name of the that's what you call it. I love it's called the vaginal vault,

Unknown: 55:57

all right. So

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 55:59

treasures in there. Treasure, oh, boy, your next generation comes from, okay,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 56:09

dr, Terry's fixated on breast. I got vaginal vault. If, number three, if, if someone, if someone can only change one thing today to improve their oxytocin levels. What? What would that be? What would move that needle just ever so slightly?

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 56:24

Well, we know by research from Saudi Arabia, who I have like now, about five patients from Saudi Arabia, and I'm pretty upset how they treat women. Oh, my God. One of them is a really young woman, and I wanted to run a vaginal ultrasound on her, and they won't run a vaginal ultrasound on a woman who is not married, end of story in Saudi Arabia. Oh, my God. But anyway, in Saudi Arabia, we have learned they eat a lot of dates. And dates are the one food that increased the production in your body of oxytocin, and that's why women in Saudi Arabia had a decrease the women who ate more dates. Not everyone in Saudi Arabia is munching on dates, but they found a population of women who were consuming at least three to six dates a day, and for so many weeks prior to birth, and they had a statistic, a statistical reduced significance of postpartum hemorrhage because they had so much more oxytocin, they had much healthier, shorter, easier births. So oxytocin is the birthing hormone, and if you pre treat post pregnancy, you can, although there's other things to also do, you can often enjoy a healthier pregnancy. So that's pretty amazing, and that's pretty amazing to learn about dates. So I have all this Thanksgiving recipes for making pumpkin puddings and pies with dates. I think dates are a very healthy food,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 57:50

not to be confused with dating someone. But dates the thing you eat the noun, not the verge. I thought you go on a speed date and you just consume that person. All right, what is your favorite holiday tradition of all? Or, or, did you just mention?

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 58:06

Well, it used to be Halloween because I love the concept of vampires. I've adore vampires, and I've often thought if and when I get married again, I want to be in a coffin and have my husband with a cape and come and bite me on the neck. I don't know why that's so it's a terrible thing, and vampires are really awful, but I love the fantasy, the fantasy of being I just re watched for the maybe 100th time dark shadows, which is all about vampires. I just love, love, love Halloween and vampires. I I know I'm sick. I'm very sick, but that's why I work so hard to be healthy, but there you have.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 58:41

It. Hilarious. Last question. Last question. I have a funny feeling this is going to be a winner. What is your favorite tradition you like to start a new year with

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 58:51

detox, detox. Detox. Last year, I had everybody take my receptor detox for twice a day on Saturdays and Sundays, because it helps move all these chemicals and gunk from your binding pocket domains and make your hormones work better for the year. So detoxing and doing it together with a group and I had everybody take their picture at the beginning of the detox month, and then take their picture again under similar circumstance at the end of it, because when you detox, you look better, you look younger, you look brighter, because your hormones are working better, and so that the beginning of the year is a good time to start detoxing, because we live in a dirty planet, and this dirt is making you less than you can be, and working against your exercise and food and all the things you're trying to do to be better so you have to detox must move mainstream. I hope at some point I write about this in all my books, that we get insurance reimbursed detox centers for women to detox before they conceive or get pregnant or their egg and sperm meet and mingle, because the healthier you are for. The healthier your baby will be. And a mother downloads 80% of the chemicals she's been exposed to in her lifetime in her breast milk to her infant. If you're you're have detoxed, you download many less chemicals to your baby. So detoxing should move mainstream. I love it to start the year. I love it, pre conception or pre pregnancy, ideally, because you can't really do a heavy detox once you become pregnant. You have to be you can do gentle but not intentional. So one of the things I've done all my life, because I was a yoga teacher for many years, when the Beatles came back from the Maharishi, we were all like, oh my god, yoga. Yoga. What is this thing? And part of yoga is detox. The Indians have been talking about it forever. So I think one of the reasons I'm also healthier in my older age is I've been intensely, periodically detoxing all my life.

Unknown: 1:00:55

So Hey, Doc, I want to get you out, because I knew you have a you have, yeah, I gotta go. But I want to, I want to give a good shout for all those listening to want to know more about oxy one. Here's my book, yep, oxytocin medicine, which it just hit number one, and it just came out two days ago. It's already number one.

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 1:01:14

And here's my products, receptor detox and hormone balance and protect. So just perfect.

Unknown: 1:01:19

There you go. We're gonna put links to all this on your description.

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 1:01:23

All of these things are years of work. You know, you hold it up, but it's,

Unknown: 1:01:27

we love you to death, and we're so happy you're part of our family, and we want everybody to be healthy. And so it's gonna be on the description links to get all your stuff, especially read the book, and God bless.

Dr. Lindsey Burkson: 1:01:40

You can leave me a review. If you can everything, even my irrigation guy wants a review these days. So this is three years of work. Would you consider even you can get it on Kindle too. Please leave a review. Much love. Will you guys leave me a review? So it's a win, win. Thank you so much for having me on your show. You guys are like superb, absolutely superb. Your show is fantastic. Thanks so much. Happy holidays. Take care. Bye, bye.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:02:11

Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Kraken backs podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at Kraken backs podcast, catch new episodes every Monday. See you next time you.