Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life with Anita Chaperon

A Personal Note from Orion

Hormones are so important to our health, but we rarely give them the credit due. For us women, even something as simple as being on ‘the pill’ for several years can cause drastic repercussions as we age.

Anita Chaperon went through her own transformation to figure out why her energy levels had plummeted and she was being prescribed anti-depressants. What she found was that hormones are no joke – if out of balance, they can affect so many crucial aspects of our daily lives. In this episode, she share the natural alternative therapies that helped her overcome her imbalance and find her energy and vitality again.

About Today’s Show

‏‏Hello, and welcome to the Stellar Life podcast! Our special guest today is Anita Chaperon. Anita is a personal change catalyst. She empowers people to take action and achieve their dreams. She has a broad spectrum of knowledge from business building to productivity, mindset, and health, and fitness, which allows her to connect the dots from problem to solution. She also went through an incredible journey of optimizing her body and health through balancing her hormone levels. Anita is the co-founder of the 1% Club, a community for business owners focused on extension and growth in their business and personal life. Hi, Anita! Welcome to the show!

‏‏Hi, Orion! What an introduction! Amazing, thank you for having me!

‏‏Thank you for being here. I’m really excited to share your story with our listeners. I know that what we’re going to talk about today is something that so many people are struggling with. The thing is, they don’t even know that they are struggling with it-and that is hormone balance. However, before we start, why don’t you just share a little bit about yourself so our listeners will get to know you better?

‏‏Well, I have quite a few facets to my personality-meaning that, I’ve got quite a few interests in life but as far as hormones are concerned, my journey started approximately, I would say, ten years ago now. I was in my early 30’s-actually, I was 30 exactly-when I discovered I had a disorder. We can talk about this a little bit later but basically, that started my journey pretty much to desperation because people wanted to put me on antidepressants and I’ve never been one to roll over and take antidepressants lightly so I had to start researching. One thing led to another and, now, ten years later, I feel better than I’ve ever felt in my life and I have found my passion pretty much, which is health and fitness. It has more to do with holistic health rather than just focusing on one thing so this whole personal struggle has been really, really useful, I suppose.

‏‏Right. I just want to have a disclaimer because Anita and I are going to talk and we’re going to suggest treatments and things like that and we’re not doctors. This is just from, mostly, Anita’s personal journey so take the advice knowing that this is not a doctor’s advice so just a little disclaimer here.

‏‏Yeah!

‏‏And as far as antidepressants-I get it. I get that some people must have it. In my opinion, majority of people can find alternative solutions and get just as much progress without them. In many cases, they actually do more harm than good. People get addicted to them and nobody really knows the long-term effect of those type of drugs, right?

‏‏Yeah. I mean, exactly like you say, Orion, the antidepressants have their place and obviously, conventional medicine has its place. In anything that we discuss today, I don’t want people to think that they shouldn’t go to their doctor-that’s obviously the first port of call. I’m just going to share the journey that I’ve had to go through and just my personal journey. I’ve helped my mom, I’ve helped my dad, my brother doesn’t want to be helped but that’s another discussion altogether. Everything that we talk about today, I would really like your listeners to take in and filter through their own life situation, think for themselves, make sure that they listen to their body primarily, and then go and explore to make their own journey.

Take in and filter through your own life situation, think for yourself, make sure that you listen to your body primarily, and then go and explore to make your own journey. Share on X

‏‏Right. What really happened for you with depression? How did you figure out that there is more to it than what your doctor says?

‏‏Well, first of all, I took a step back and I thought to myself, okay, fine, if I’m depressed, let’s figure out what I’m depressed about, right? That’s a little bit logical. I was in the time of my life where I had just moved to a new country. We were living in a multi-million dollar villa and I’ve never been unhappy in my relationship so for me, it was pretty obvious that I had nothing to be depressed about. I thought to myself, fine, there’s got to be another reason. By that time, I had been taking the contraceptive pill for over 17 years and this is something that I want to make women very, very aware of-that most contraceptive pills are synthetic hormones and most of us, unfortunately, are told to get on them quite early in life so your body never really learns to produce its own sex hormones. You’re literally on the scratch every single month of your life and it’s nice and convenient in the beginning because you get your periods regularly, you can plan your life around it, you can go on holidays, and etcetera but eventually, it catches up with you. After going through, I think, about six doctors-six conventional doctors-each one of them had told that, “No, you must keep staying on the pill. The pill is great for you. It regulates your periods, it regulates your moods, and etcetera.” With this whole situation coming to a tipping point, I decided the first thing I’m going to do for myself is to get off the pill because it just doesn’t make any sense. The second thing that happened was-and this is kind of soon, I suppose-my husband had watched an interview on a TV program that we never watched. It was an interview with Suzanne Somers. She was actually promoting her then new book, which is called Breakthrough. I don’t watch enough American TV but I know most Americans probably don’t really like her a lot because she has a lot of merchandise going out. However, that book changed my life so if you do want to know anything about to do with hormones, get that book. It’s called Breakthrough. Basically, it’s a series of interviews with doctors who are treating imbalances in a very revolutionary way. I started reading this book and one thing led to another and pretty much everything they spoke about literally touched my heart and I was in tears. I mean, so often Andre, my husband, didn’t know what to do with me because I couldn’t identify with the whole issue. Basically, that started my search journey because I could understand that I’m not going crazy. I understood that there is a solution, I just had to find a way to find a doctor who knew how to work with hormones, which, at the time, was not easy because I was in Spain and there were only two doctors that I could find that did what I needed them to do. One of them, which is the closer one, was five-and-a-half-hour’s drive away so I started. I contacted the guy and we started treatment. We can go into a few more details later on that are specifically relevant to your viewers but working with this doctor was eye-opening. I started seeing results pretty quickly. We established that I had an adrenal burnout, which was quite a surprise to me because I’ve always been the tough person who thrives on stress, I like to wake up early and have a full day and I don’t like to be bored and all that stuff so because I had an adrenal burnout, it triggered this whole depressive episode combined with the fact that my body didn’t know how to make hormones. Another very, very big surprise that I found out maybe two or three years later is that, there is a thing called the pre-menopause and unfortunately, for people or women in modern day and age, it can start anywhere from 30 years onwards and that was a shock to me to have symptoms and to start thinking about your clock. I’ve always been very energetic, I always exercise, eating healthy, and I always thought I’m going to live until 120. Now, all of a sudden, at the age of 30, I’m going to deal with pre-menopause and cure symptoms and all that stuff. Oh, there’s so much to tell! I don’t want to carry on and on but the thing that I’ve got out of this entire journey is a very holistic widespread knowledge of hard-to-tackle hormonal issues. I’m not saying that I can cure it because I’m not a doctor. I just have a really broad knowledge and overview where to start and how to go about without pulling your hair out because hormonal issues can be quite complicated.

‏‏Absolutely! And it seems like the regular doctor check-ups for hormones are not as detailed as they can be and so it’s really hard to actually detect the right symptoms or causes or even, which exact hormone is missing from one’s body. So, you’re 30 years old, you live in this multi-million dollar mansion with the love of your life, and you just move to a new beautiful country but you feel horrible, you feel down, there’s a lot of symptoms going on, and your partner looks at you and he doesn’t really know how to actually help you because everything on the surface looks good but something is missing. You had to go on that journey of finding the real solutions to your problem and I totally get it. Somebody who is so athletic and energetic and you are extremely athletic and your life, all of a sudden, just a realization that they’re not as energetic, something is missing, and it is kind of an awakening to, hey, I need to take care of my body. I’m not going to live forever. I need to make sure that everything I put in this body is correct and even more than that, there is another layer of taking care of my hormones, because even if you eat organic and your diet is good, there are still some more things that you have to do to balance your hormones. So, you got out of the pill and I get it because I read and heard a lot of negative things about the pill. I personally had an experience where after ten years of not being on the pill, I took it for a couple of months and I became like a devil-like a little devil. I went on this emotional rollercoaster the whole day long-I was really happy and super high, then really sad, then really angry. It was like living with somebody who changes personality for five times an hour. It was so hard and it caused a lot of friction between me and my fiancée almost to a point where we’re considering our relationship because I was irrational. The pill that I that I got from a doctor at Kaiser Permanente, which is a conventional pill, just really, really messed up with my mind, my behavior, and my eating habits. I was feeling low and down so I stopped it and Anita, the moment I stopped it, I was a totally different person. I was just my own self again but there was still something missing and I had to go-I still am-on my own journey of balancing my own hormones. Why don’t you tell me more about what you did to improve yourself? What were the symptoms? What were you going through and how did the treatments affected change in your body in your life?

‏‏Yes, so I wanted to put this in a format that would be more beneficial for the broader spectrum of listeners because hormonal issues are so individual and they manifest themselves in such an individual sequence that if I told you just my story, I don’t know if people would have enough to take away and deal with their own issues. If you’re okay with that?

‏‏Oh, yeah! We’re women-we go with the flow.

‏‏The whole point is that-exactly like you were saying-you could be taking care of yourself quite well through diet and exercise and even cleaning up your environment in terms of not using chemicals in the household for cleaning, using the clean deodorant or the ones without aluminum inside them, you could have removed most plastics from your household and use glass instead, these are all the environmental factors that are very real and this is what I want to stress for people because I went through quite a long period of time where I was thinking, oh, no, people are just scare-mongering! But, xenoestrogens exist in all the chemical stuff that we use in our houses, all the makeup that we put on, and the creams that we use on our faces, all of that contributes not because if it was just a single instance then that’s okay but because we use them so often in so many things so it’s really, really important that you take a look at that and try and clean that up. A very, very good book…yes, sorry?

‏‏No, keep going. I just want to ask you what is xenoestrogens?

‏‏Oh, that’s a good question. Xenoestrogens are basically estrogens inflicted on you from the environmental toxins that are around you. The simplest way to explain it is, chemicals, parabens, the emissions from-for example, if you’re using Tupperware and you’re using a microwave, from heating the plastics, there are emissions. Using plastic utensils to cook with, every time they touch heat, they release toxic fumes that create xenoestrogens in the body. Xenoestrogens are, basically, estrogens that pretend to be your natural estrogens and therefore, they will block the receptors in your body and your body would think, okay, I don’t need anymore, but it actually can’t use them.

‏‏Yeah, and this is a fact for men and women alike.

‏‏Yes, absolutely! And the way it manifests in men most commonly is they get bigger mid-section, they get boobs, and that’s a big problem for men. It’s not at all funny. They are just, basically, poisoning themselves with the environment. Diet is one thing that I had to change but that’s basically, I think, most of your listeners would know what they need to change. The one thing that I would say that most of us are not aware of, something that’s changed my life, and another step is fat. Eating a lot more fat than I thought I should and there’s a good fat, obviously, we’re talking about avocados; we’re talking about grass-fed butter, unsalted coconut butter, and nuts that you prepare yourself; also being very careful how you use your fats in cooking and making sure that you don’t cook with the wrong fats, and don’t use the ones that are unstable in high-temperature cooking because oxidized fat is one of the most poisonous things you can put inside your body. The other thing in terms of diet that made an amazing difference but I’ve struggled and fought with for a long time is processed sugar. I don’t just mean the processed sugar that you might get in obvious places like cakes, biscuits, and sweets. I mean, go through every single thing in your cupboard and check what’s in there because you would be surprised what lurks. Also, I had to turn down my fruit intake because food is very, very high in sugar. I’m not vilifying fruit at all. It’s really good for you and it’s way better than cakes but don’t discard that. I cringe when I hear people say, “Oh, I’m juicing 10 oranges for my breakfast and I’m removing the pulp as well so the sugar can get right into my bloodstream and I wonder what’s hit me!” Different people can handle different amounts of micronutrients in their diet but diet is extremely important. I would also say that it’s very important to de-stress because chronic stress floods your body with cortisol and cortisol, unfortunately, is very, very important for our bodies through evolution. Every single cell in your body has a receptor for cortisol and when you when your body is constantly flooded with that hormone, that actual cortisol blocks the receptors to any other hormones, right? Your testosterone can’t get into the cell to make you feel confident or sexy. Your estrogen can’t get into the cells to work on your skin and normalize your mood. Your progesterone can’t get into the cells to initiate the second phase of your period. You get all these fluctuations and moods, you get tired, you are cranky, and you have horrible PMS symptoms, and etcetera. The symptoms are endless. A lot of people, when you talk to them about de-stress, take time out, or make time for yourself, there is usually one or two responses. One is, “Oh, when am I going to make time for that luxury to have time for myself?” and my response to them is, “Make time. Put it on your calendar and keep to it like an appointment basically because your life depends on it especially as you age.” The second possible response that comes out is, “Oh no, I need meditation. I’m okay. I thrive on stress!” Newsflash, nobody thrives on stress. There is a research study that’s come out that says that, basically, if you perceive something as stressful then it affect you as stress otherwise, it affects you as excitement. I don’t think there’s many of us that can control that very well so I would say, take time to either meditate or de-stress. Meditation can be just a walk in the park or anything that just consumes you because as women, usually, we have to take care of a lot of stuff-there’s the household, the kids, the animals, the husband, the job, and everything-so it’s very important to de-stress. Those are the kind of the basic things that didn’t cost me any money to change like diet and the de-stressing. What was the other thing that I mentioned?

There is a research study that’s come out that says that, basically, if you perceive something as stressful then it affect you as stress otherwise, it affects you as excitement.

‏‏The plastics.

‏‏Yup, plastics-cleaning up your environment. And then, also exercise is one of those freebies as well.

‏‏Mm-hmm.

‏‏With exercise, you’ve got to be careful as well because super intense exercise over and above what your body can handle is also perceived by the body as stress. It builds into the adrenal fatigue if you’re already adrenally exhausted so you need to be careful. The other thing that’s worth mentioning is that, diet alone can’t top up what you’re missing and I think, most people are aware of that by now so please, at least start up with basic supplements-obviously, we have to have a disclaimer again that you need to consult your doctor before you do anything drastic. However, what I would suggest is for you to investigate things like: Vitamin C, at least 1000 mg; Omega 3, at least 1000 mg or better yet, Krill Oil; some sort of a probiotic and make sure you change that and you cycle it every three months at least because otherwise, your gut flora gets saturated with similar bacteria and it’s important to cycle them; Magnesium is very important for your nerves and for your moods; Vitamin D is important for pretty much every function in your body and it’s also a hormone-I don’t know if a lot of people know this but it’s not just a vitamin; B12 and B6 are very important for your brain; and then, the other thing is to be careful with folic acid. A lot of people would tell you to supplement with folic acid, especially if you’re trying to get pregnant. Folic acid is the wrong, unusable form of folate in the body so it’s very important to look for active folate.

‏‏When you say folate, you mean alpha-lipoic acid? Is that the same thing or?

‏‏Yes, I’m going to have to confirm that or we can put it into the notes because I want to be correct about this.

‏‏Okay.

‏‏Okay.

‏‏Okay, cool! Yeah, and also, sleep is really, really important for our growth hormones for our body and our mind to rest and produce all the hormones. One distinction I got from my sleep is, the type of magnesium that I take. It was recommended by my acupuncturist-it’s magnesium glycinate.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏That’s according to him is the best magnesium to help you sleep and relax. Also, what happened to me is that, I have a nail, hair, and skin supplement that I take, it’s a mix of my vitamins like B6 vitamins, and I had to move it to take it in the morning instead of night time because it was keeping me awake. I actually have experienced some weird dreams taking the B6 at night so you want to think about taking your Vitamin B early in the morning. Also, as far as stress-my yoga teacher was just talking about, I think, it’s a similar research that you were talking about when you think about stress, you’re body’s response and your body’s alert system, the veins in your heart expand and your body’s physiologically changes in response to that stress and I totally get it that it’s not always controllable because 66% of lethal diseases are created by stress. That’s 66%! God forbid, cancer, or diabetes, or heart failure-they’re all due to stress so I want to stress that it’s really important to take care of your stress.

‏‏This is exactly what I was alluding to with that kind of analogy that I was trying to put across. With every cell of your body has the cell receptors, right? Every cell has a receptive for the cortisol hormones. Cortisol is the most important hormone in your body’s survival, right? Because if you have to fight a bear or a lion or whatever…

‏‏Like you usually do!

‏‏Yeah, your body needs to make sure that you’re going to survive so it shuts off everything else and it makes sure that it activates only the muscles that you need to survive. Because of that, the stress hormone takes precedence over everything else and you can imagine that if that’s blocking up all the cell receptors, you can’t get any of the other stuff that you need for normal human repair. That means, you can’t get your melatonin so that you can sleep well, right? The thing that you’ve experienced incidentally with the vitamin B at night, it’s a very good recipe if you want to have lucid dreams at night.

‏‏Oh, wow!

‏‏And you can experiment with that, which is probably what you’ve had, so yeah, vitamin B at night is not so good. If you’re all struggling to sleep, the magnesium would help. Magnesium, incidentally, comes in many different forms-obviously, some of them are better than others but your body needs different kinds of magnesium for different things just like your body needs different kinds of collagen and different kinds of vitamins B’s so it’s actually good to take an array of magnesium and cycle them because some of them would be better for your sleep, some of them will be better for your bones, some of them will be better for hair, and etcetera. One thing that I wanted to mention because you mentioned hair and nails and obviously, as women, we like our hair, skin, and nail to be good-it’s a supplement that I was put on by one of the doctors I worked with and it’s called BioSil. Basically, it’s collagen but in a form of silicone and it has really made a difference for me immensely and I’ve tried other things. I eat pretty well so it’s not a dietary thing. I don’t smoke, I exercise regularly, and I’ve tried pretty much everything else to sort out my nails.

‏‏And all those names of the vitamins-don’t worry, they’re going to be in the show notes. Everything she’s mentioning and she’s going to mention a lot more, I’m sure. You’re like a walking encyclopedia! It’s all going to be in the show notes so after this episode, just go scroll down to the show notes on StellarLifePodcast.com and you’ll find everything.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏Let’s go! Keep going!

‏‏Keep going! Okay, so other than cleaning up your environment, the things you can do for free, and taking supplements, these are the basic building blocks, right? Start with that but if you decide that you’re going to pursue this whole journey of hormonal repair and if you’re having symptoms, you would definitely feel strongly about pursuing this, the word of warning we’ve issued already is that, it is not a simple thing. It can be a simple solution for you if you find the right doctor and that’s critical but you’ve got to be really, really careful to look for them in the right places. My usual advice to people is to first educate themselves about their issues and only then, go to the doctor and then treat your doctor like he’s your paid employee because technically speaking, that’s exactly what he is, right? It’s not disrespectful to demand him to perform according to what you’re paying him for or her. I used to spend years and years and years before this whole issues happened to me, I spent years going to the doctor and literally squirming in front of them because I had some sort of symptoms that he didn’t ask me about and I’ve volunteered to tell him and then, he would look at me and go, “Why are you worried about this?” When it comes to hormonal issues, especially blood tests, a lot of the doctors and I’m sorry just say this-it’s a generalization, of course-I’m not saying every single doctor but a lot of the general practitioners don’t have a clue how to test hormones effectively. A perfect example is your thyroid. Usually, they would test your T4. They might test your TSH if the doctor has some sort of a clue but they’ll never test all three. The T3, T4, and TSH, which is the only way you can get a full picture of what’s going on with your body so you might test for the two, your tests come up normal, the God tells you, “You’re not dying,” and you’re left wondering if you are going crazy. You’ve got all of these symptoms and you don’t feel normal but the doctors telling you you’re fine so where do you go next? Unless you do your homework and you literally read up on this and get better at this specific issue than them. You could be told anything and then you’ll be spending years and years and years chasing your tail. There’s nothing more disheartening than people telling me, “Oh no, I don’t have a thyroid problem. My hair is falling out, my skin is cracking off my body, I’m depressed all the time, and etcetera but I don’t have a thyroid problem because my doctor tested my T4 and it was fine.”

‏‏Wow. And you mentioned before when you were mentioning the xenoestrogens, you were talking about a really good book that you want to recommend?

‏‏Oh, I have a lot of books. I’ve tried to prioritize them so I don’t overwhelm people because, obviously, I didn’t get to where I am now with my knowledge overnight so don’t get overwhelmed by what I’m talking about. Take it one step at a time and start with your most pressing issues so the one book that I would suggest if you’re only going to buy one book on hormones-and I’ve got quite a few in my arsenal-but the one I would suggest is The Hormone Solution by Thierry Hertoghe.

‏‏Mm-hmm.

‏‏Basically, that has an amazing questionnaire right in the beginning. It’s a $13.99 book so it’s not costly by any means. It’s got a really, really good comprehensive questionnaire right in the front so you can take that assessment and at least, know what your most pressing issue and where should you start. He also has a really good overview for all the hormonal issues but he’s actually done them based on your symptoms rather than talking about hormones because a lot of the hormonal books would go like, “What’s wrong with your estrogen? What’s wrong with your progesterone? Let’s fix it!” But if you don’t know that your progesterone is bothering your life, where do you start? This book is really good because it starts with the symptoms and then it goes down the chain of command and tells you what the treatment should be so start with that one. If you know you have a specific thyroid issue, I would recommend a book called Stop the Thyroid Madness by Janie Bowthorpe. That is an eye-opener and based on a really good start. Obviously, the Suzanne Somer’s book called Breakthrough, which is essentially, a series of conversations with the leading doctors in the world on hormonal issues. That would be helpful for finding a doctor, which is kind of my next step, where to go and find a doctor? I would say, the best place to start with is a recommendation. Find somebody who has had a similar issue-there’s plenty of forums online and then ask them to recommend a doctor they’re working with. Be super vigilant that he’s treating you as an individual and that he is listening to the symptoms. He should take at least an hour or two to go through all of your medical history and symptoms with you in there. Ideally, you want about two hours. Also, have high standards, basically. When you walk into the room, have a look at what they look like. If their hair is falling out and they look 90 but they are only 60-seriously, just use your common sense and don’t stay in the room with that doctor because clearly there’s something going wrong.

Have high standards, basically. When you walk into the room, have a look at what they look like. Share on X

‏‏Trust your intuition. That’s the most important thing.

‏‏Absolutely! Trust your intuition and go with that. I’m trying to look at my notes so I don’t forget stuff. Some of the most common issues-I’m not going to go through symptoms because there’s plenty of information online, you can just search for them-but the most common issues are: chronically-elevated cortisol due to stress so adrenal fatigue, progesterone or estrogen imbalance, especially for age 30 and onwards as you approach menopause-actually, two more books in terms of that, sorry. In terms of menopause, if you’re going through that phase of life, the book is called What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause, and then the other book is called What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Premenopause. One deals from 30 to 40-something and the other one is from 50 until, well, basically, until you get rid of the menopause.

‏‏Yeah, you can get rid of it.

‏‏Yes, it does end eventually and what’s even more beautiful is that, you don’t actually have to go through it. I would say, I know my mom wouldn’t mind me mentioning this but since I got to working with my doctor over here in Spain, I think she does two creams a day as a supplement. It’s very important to mention that you must only take natural hormones. I know it sounds obvious but do not go for that synthetic hormone. It’s a totally different ball game and you’re playing with dangerous stuff. It’s been proven that it’s no longer a scare-mongering thing.

‏‏Synthetic hormones are effective at the moment but the long-term effects are horrible. You can look at bodybuilders who stop taking their synthetic hormones and just look at their bodies and where they are-it’s not a good thing. You definitely want to take bio-identical hormones that will work naturally with your body and help your body create its own hormones instead of just putting-it’s the same as putting chemicals in your body. It might help at the moment but you don’t know the long-term effect and what it can do to your body so definitely go with bio-identical hormones.

‏‏Yes, absolutely. I mean, there are plenty of studies. I’m not one to quote studies usually because there are plenty of other people who do that but there are plenty of studies that show that synthetic hormones are now actually harming people. I mean, nobody is going to come out and say it directly because it costs a lot of money but be careful. It makes sense that you put in your body what your body makes naturally and exactly, Orion, you mentioned something very important-your priority should be to help your body to start producing its own stuff. Not everyone’s going to be able to do that-it depends on the age and for how long the issue’s been around. For example, my thyroid-I had been supplementing thyroid for probably about seven years and I thought I was going to have to be on it for life and two years ago, I started eating a high-fat diet from very much like the Bulletproof Exec recommends. I started having my Bulletproof coffee every single morning and I’m now off thyroid medication. I don’t need it and I feel like a million bucks.

‏‏I just met Dave a two weeks ago.

‏‏Awesome!

‏‏I’ve been to his book launch party at his house. He’s got some great knowledge about bio-hacking our bodies and our brains. It’s so good!

‏‏Absolutely! He’s changing lives.

‏‏His wife also has a book called The Better Baby Book, which is also good for women who want to get pregnant. Also, I want to ask you-so, you go and read these books and man, each book just have so many supplements. Okay, if you read like, five books, you’re already up to a hundred supplements a day so how do you know what to pick and choose and what works with your body?

‏‏Most importantly, listen to your body and what it’s telling you. When I travel in the US, it’s usually for about seven to ten days or sometimes two weeks and what I would do is that, I actually leave all my vitamins behind and see if I notice any changes and then, I’ll start them up again. It’s not a purely scientific way of noticing stuff but what I’m trying to say is that, you use the methodology of stopping and starting and usually, you should only do one vitamin at a time but I’ve been taking vitamins for quite a while now so I kind of know what works and what doesn’t but you’re absolutely right. People will tell you what to take. I would say, start with the basics that we’ve mentioned if you, at the moment, take nothing. The other thing is, people would tell you to take a multivitamin like it’s a catch-all. I would say, stop multivitamins-it’s a waste of time. Most of them-again, it’s a blanket statement-but a lot of them are a waste of time. You’re better off taking single vitamins, first of all, because you can get the right doses and this brings me on to a very important thing-if you’re going to bother to take supplements and spend your money on it, make sure you do the research and do what you are suggesting as well and take them at the right time so do the research and take them at the right time. Also, take the right doses because otherwise, you’re just flushing money down the toilet quite literally. A very quick example is vitamin C. It’s pretty much a wonder drug. It is so cheap so nobody is interested in promoting it to make money out of it and that’s why people don’t notice it. Also, the other mistake is that you usually take 250 milligrams a day, for example. The odd person would take a thousand milligrams a day and they’ll feel like, okay, I’m taking so much, it must be doing its job. Well, it depends on how much stress you’re going through or if you’re going through the flu or a cold or some other disease that you need to battle with. Your body can use up stupid amounts of vitamin C. Doctors are using it like in the 200 grams a day. I’m not saying, go and take 200 grams of vitamin C, please-what I’m saying is that, vitamin C is one of the easiest and quickest way to actually make yourself feel better and it’s very cheap as well and usually, you can’t overdose. It will take a lot of grams of vitamin C because it’s water-soluble so your body would flush it out and usually, if you start getting a bit of an upset stomach, you know you’ve reached up the limit for that moment.

Vitamin C is one of the easiest and quickest way to actually make yourself feel better and it’s very cheap as well.

‏‏Right. It’s also good for your skin.

‏‏Pretty much every cell in your body can use vitamin C. It will keep using it until it needs it so again, this isn’t about telling you to go and buy tons of vitamin C. All I’m saying is that, if you’re going to bother to take vitamins, make sure that they are in the right dose otherwise, you’ve got yourself to blame if you’re not getting the right results.

‏‏And the right quality.

‏‏Absolutely!

‏‏Good quality because if you’re already invested in vitamins, you might not want to take the simple and cheaper kinds because you really want to make sure that you’re getting high-quality vitamins that are bio-identical and will work well you’re your body and maybe are from health and organic sources and were checked for quality.

‏‏Yes, absolutely! I want to go back to selecting a doctor. Basically, start with a recommendation. If you can’t find a recommendation, we’ll include a link in the show notes below but if you go to Life Extension, you will find a list of innovative doctors and this is incidentally how I found the first doctor whom I’ve worked with here in Spain. They’ve got quite a few of them in the States so that’s great if you’re in the US but they also have quite a few in Europe, Australia, and around the world so we’ll include the link as the link is a little bit long-I’ve got it written down here. The other way to do this is and this is something I wanted to mention because it’s something I’ve recently started being very interested in, if you’re going to find a doctor, try and find somebody that also understands genetics because nutrigenomics is coming up quite big into medicine now and obviously, most people would have heard of 23andMe for genetic testing. It’s quite an inexpensive test but there’s new technology coming up now and I genuinely don’t see effective medicine going in any other direction than that so if you can find a doctor who understands them, you‘ll be ahead of the curve and you’ll probably save yourself a lot of money and also a lot of trouble trying to figure out stuff. Just a quick example, simply how your body assimilates or makes or can’t make homocysteine, for example, can affect pretty much your risk for cardiovascular disease, your risk for Alzheimer’s, and etcetera. Knowing that your body can’t methylate certain supplements properly will give you clues as to what you need to do to circumnavigate those obstacles, right? It will also save you things like stopping coffee, for example, because some doctor told you that you to stop coffee because it’s bad for you when actually, you can handle it quite well and things like that. The simple pleasures in life! A very good company that I could suggest-we haven’t used them yet but I’ve had a few conversations with them and they sound very knowledgeable and their webinars are very knowledgeable is myDNAhealth so if you want to go and look at them, I know they do consultations as well and also do integrative medicine.

‏‏You helped your parents as well, right?

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏Can you share a little bit about that?

‏‏Yes. With my dad and this is a perfect example in terms of taking the basic vitamins but taking them at the right dose: My dad had two strokes approximately 12 years ago now and they are quite shocking, obviously, for us. He used to smoke and drink-the usual vices-I think, it also added stress to that and that was the cause of it. It took me quite some time to convince him to start taking vitamins because he’s set in his ways and he doesn’t believe in that mumbo-jumbo, right?

‏‏He reminds me of my mom.

‏‏So, it took him having a burst also bleeding in his abdomen, and him being, basically, on his deathbed. I actually made the trip to pretty much say goodbye to him. I flew over and I thought, it’s kind of like, I suppose, a woman’s intuition or something but on my way out of the house, I actually came back and I thought to myself, you know what, I’ve got some vitamins left over. I’m going to take the basics. If he says no, he says no. It doesn’t matter, because by that time, I’ve been telling you about the vitamins for a long time and he’s always saying “no” so I took the vitamins and it was literally just five-it was Omega 3, vitamin C-it was a multivitamin and I know I said you shouldn’t do multi-vitamins but he wasn’t taking anything so I thought it was okay. I took the vitamins on his deathbed and I thought, okay, fine, I’m just going to play the daughter card and tell him that he has to promise me that he will take these, and I stayed for a week because I had made arrangements to stay for a week and I made sure that he was taking the vitamins for a week. I know this sounds really ridiculous to people who haven’t experienced it but it was from not being able to recognize me because he was in such a bad way but by the end of the week, he was asking if we can take him out so he can go get shaved and get a haircut and stuff like that. I’m saying this because it’s nice to be able to have done this and for it to have happened like that. I know there are different nuances with everybody’s situations so not everyone would have reacted the same way but the point is, if you are suffering, you should at least try to get a kind of an answer for your suffering. With my mom: Basically, through all of my research because my mom has always been so loving and she has been kind of my sounding board so as I was going through my journey of discovery of what was wrong with me, I shared all my information with her and started talking to her and asking, please, could she read this because it sounds a lot like something she might have. She was like, on one of the highest doses of asthma pumps and hers was basically, stress-generated and also, she had a thyroid problem, which was also inflicted by stress for years and years and years and eventually, what we did is we managed to, first of all, found a tumor on her thyroid, which she had to discover herself through educating herself and actually, go and tell her doctor, “Hey, doctor! My voice is cracking when I talk, could there be a tumor on my thyroid?” so the doctor laughed at her initially but then she insisted on the tests and they found that she had a tumor. They operated it. She’s fine now-knock on wood and stuff-so it’s basically, illustrating that you’ve got to be selfish about your body and you’ve got to care enough to just go and find out and help your doctor. I’m not saying hate your doctor, I’m saying go and help them because they can’t possibly know what’s going on in your body and they can’t possibly know everything there is out there as a treatment and then to go and test it.

‏‏How is she doing now?

‏‏She’s fine! She’s perfectly fine. She’s still partying, going out, seeing people, and traveling. She’s only now on the smallest asthma pump-small strength-and she only uses that when her breath exercises are not working to combat the stress. If she feels herself going into it, which is another thing that she bothered to educate herself about.

‏‏I love it! And how’s your dad doing?

‏‏Dad is fine. I speak to him twice a week. I have to keep pushing him for the vitamins because he still tells me, “There’s so many!” There’s a whole five vitamins that he’s taking so he’s just not going to eat breakfast because they’re so many so I tell him, “Dad, I’d rather you not eat breakfast then!”

‏‏So, you basically saved their lives?

‏‏Oh no, I wouldn’t say that! I think it’s a very good point to say this: Only when you are ready to take action is when you will take action. It doesn’t matter if I say something or it doesn’t matter who says it-unless you’re ready to accept that information, take the action, and go on the journey to help yourself feel better, nobody else can help you. I might have been the catalyst and that’s why I want to call myself a “personal change catalyst” because yes, I served up the information they needed at the time but I’m not fooling myself for one moment because it’s them who actually took the action and if they didn’t, things will be very different. I’ll say to my mom every time we speak-okay, maybe not every time but often-that I’m so grateful that she was bothered to listen to me and actually gone to take the trouble to do whatever she did.

‏‏And with this positive reinforcement, she’s actually going to do a little more. I know it from my own story with my own mom. It took a bad fall and a knee surgery for her to start exercising. It’s still a struggle because sometimes, people can get really set in their ways and she’s like, “All those vitamins are bad for you!” Mumbo-jumbo, like you called it, but she started now. She’s doing Chi Gong in the park twice or three times a week and she’s really happy about it. It completely changed her. She went out, she met more people, and she’s in nature so it’s really good for her.

‏‏Awesome! That’s amazing. It’s amazing what simple changes do. This is another point-just small, tiny little changes are all you need. You don’t need to eat the entire elephant in one bite, you just need to get yourself a small one-just like in business. You take one little step, it makes you feel better, you get to feel that you are in charge, and that you can tackle this thing, and it’s not going to eat you alive. That’s pretty much all the kind of important stuff-non-overwhelming stuff that I wanted to mention.

‏‏Yeah, I want to go back to dealing with stress.

‏‏Yes!

‏‏What do you do yourself to deal with stress?

‏‏The biggest de-stressor for me is, exercising. I know I’m probably a freak of nature in that respect but I absolutely love my exercise and it’s taken me a while to cement it in my brain like that and what I usually do, there’s no technique and a trick that I teach people with. The ones who are so clever usually say, “Any habit that you want to reinforce and you want to keep, take a second or two, take a moment after you finish it,” let’s say, with exercise-every time I finish my exercise, I would take a moment or two just to notice how my body’s buzzing with energy and how amazing this feels so that the next time you are faced with exercise and you’re feeling, “Oh, I don’t really feel like it! I don’t have the energy!” but you know you should work? All you have to do is, say to yourself, “All I need to do is walk out the door and I know I’m going to feel amazing after that and I want to thank myself for going forward!” Buckle up that good feeling after every habit that you want to keep. I de-stress with exercise but also, I meditate every morning and also, I do ten salutations in the morning because I can’t exercise in the morning-I’ve tried my hardest and it’s just crazy!

Buckle up that good feeling after every habit that you want to keep. Share on X

‏‏I’m the opposite! I can’t exercise at night. I’m like, I can’t! I’m too tired!

‏‏I do my exercise at three o’clock so again, listening to your natural rhythms and figuring it out and don’t exercise in the morning or in the evening just because somebody says so.

‏‏I love what you said about developing that body awareness of where you feel the buzz and you’re kind of anchoring it in your mind and there is this NLP or neuro-linguistic programming technique where you can actually anchor it in your body so when you’re at a peak state or in a state of excitement or happiness and confidence, you want to anchor that state so what you can do is, when you feel that buzz after exercising, you can create a physical anchor by clenching your fist so every time you feel good, just clench your fist and then, it will help you. The next time you want to go exercise but you don’t really feel like it, you do what Anita said and you walk out the door and another thing that can help you is to just clench your fist because the anchor will fire and it will release the serotonin and the good feeling that you felt after the exercise so you will be more excited to go and do it.

‏‏Yes! This whole thing about your brain is, it is connected to your body for a reason so what you feel and what you do with your body is one and the same thing so use it to get leverage on yourself because-let’s face it, not everybody feels like exercising every single day of their life so you would need to get a bit of leverage. Tony Robbins is one of the people who comes to mind with the fist-clenching. He’s got the “Yeah! Just say yes!” Lisa Nichols as well. She goes, “Yes, yes! Do I hear yes-yes?” So yeah, feel good in your body and in your mind. One more thing, it’s actually just come to me because it’s kind of connected-when you go to your doctor to do any treatment, make sure that you help him focus on treating the symptom as well as the underlying cause because I’ve spent about three years of my treatment just treating symptoms and it’s very logical that if you keep putting water on the fire but the fire at the bottom is being lit up by gas, you’re never going to put out that fire and you’re actually creating even more problems.

‏‏Don’t put a Band-Aid on it!

‏‏Yup! So, don’t put a Band-Aid or you put a Band-Aid and…

‏‏…and water and fire!

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏I totally understand! It’s funny! Coaches really love talking in metaphors.

‏‏Well, it really, really helps you visualize. Some of the most powerful things I’ve learned in life are metaphors because you can’t shake them.

‏‏I know. I do it all the time. I get it! Before we end, I want you to share a little bit about The 1% Club and a little bit about how people can reach you and know more about you.

‏‏My best work is done in the 1% Club. Basically, we do very much what we’ve done with you as I listen to people’s situations and what they want to optimize. I ask them, “What is the end-result you desire because it’s always good to start with that in mind?” and then, I help them find the next step and that’s all you need sometimes-just the next step and then you keep going. Other than that, my personal blog is AnitaChaperon.com. There’s not that much on there at the moment because of I’ve just begun again with blogging. I keep falling off the wagon so that’s pretty much it-the 1% Club and AnitaChaperon.com. If you got any questions about hormones then obviously, comment underneath-I presume you have a comment box underneath.

‏‏Yeah, everything going to be in the shownotes.

‏‏Cool! Perfect!

‏‏Thank you! Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You’re extraordinary. I love you! Thank you so much, listeners. This was awesome, I thought. I hope you learned a lot and I know that some of you can use this knowledge to change your lives. You can actually go on StellarLife.com and get all the resources and please, do yourselves a favor-if something’s off and you don’t know what it is, go and explore a little more because you deserve to have the life that you want to have…

‏‏Absolutely!

‏‏Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so thank you so much for listening in and talk to you next time, bye!

‏‏Thank you, bye!

‏‏Thank you!