Hello Hormones with Dr. Carrie Jones

Have you hit midlife and suddenly everything feels dry, itchy, or irritated in places that make no sense? Your inner ears itch. Your shins itch. Your scalp itches. Your eyes feel dry and scratchy. Your back has that one spot you cannot reach. Even your private areas may feel itchy when there is no obvious infection, rash, or clear reason why. In this episode of Hello Hormones, I'm breaking down wh...

If you are in perimenopause wondering why you suddenly cannot handle the same life, stress, schedule, or people you used to manage, this episode will give you a completely different way to look at your symptoms. We are taught to blame every hot flash, rage spiral, night sweat, brain fog moment, and 2 a.m. wake-up on hormones alone, but Chinese medicine sees those symptoms as messages about the bod...

Most women have heard about the gut microbiome, oral microbiome, and skin microbiome. But the vaginal microbiome is still treated like an awkward side conversation, even though it can affect infections, odor, irritation, dryness, painful sex, pH, arousal, and the way women feel in their own bodies. And that's where so many women get stuck. They know something feels off, but the answer they get is...

Depression and anxiety? Yeah, those get all the research and all the press. But nobody wants to talk about the simmering, seething rage that is just under the surface. The anger that comes out of nowhere. The irritation that is 10 times more than you expected. The feeling of I wish somebody would, because you are ready to pop right off. And the worst part is that most women going through it think...

Brain fog, low libido, poor sleep, and suddenly having zero patience for the things you used to tolerate are usually treated like separate problems. Or worse, women are told it is just stress, aging, or "normal." But what if a lot of those symptoms are not random? What if they are starting in your brain? In this episode of Hello Hormones, I sit down with Dr. Louann Brizendine to talk about what ac...

Histamine is all over social media right now, and for good reason. Women are taking over-the-counter antihistamines and noticing that their PMS, PMDD, sleep, allergy symptoms, and perimenopause symptoms are improving. But that also brings up the bigger question: why would something we usually associate with allergies have anything to do with hormones? In this episode of Hello Hormones, I'm talking...

Skipped periods, hot flashes, brain fog, joint pain, dry everything, and yes, even itchy ears. These are the symptoms women are told to chalk up to stress or aging, when the real story is often a drop in estrogen that nobody bothered to investigate. I dive deeper into this in the latest episode of Hello Hormones, where I walk through the 10 warning signs of low estrogen every woman should know. I...

Women in midlife are told their burnout is a willpower problem. That if they just set better boundaries, did the morning routine, booked the massage, and stopped saying yes to everything, they would feel better. But what almost no one is talking about is that your nervous system is the master control of every hormone in your body, and by the time women hit perimenopause, that system has been stuck...

The test most doctors use to check your thyroid is not even a thyroid hormone. TSH is a brain hormone, and relying on it alone is how so many women end up with "normal" labs while they feel completely awful. It is a gap that causes most women to never get the full picture of the status of their thyroid. You can be eating clean, working out, doing all the right things, and still gain weight, lose h...

Cortisol always gets a bad reputation online, but here's the thing: it's not the villain. It's actually essential for your stress response, blood sugar, sleep-wake cycle, and even keeping inflammation in check. The problem isn't cortisol itself. It's what happens when it stays chronically elevated, and your body starts sending signals you've probably been brushing off as "just stress" or "just get...

Every cell in your body has hormone receptors, which means when your hormones are off, nothing works the way it should. And yet, hormone replacement therapy remains one of the most misunderstood and under-explained topics in women's health. The confusion isn't your fault. A lot of it traces back to one study from 2002 that scared an entire generation of doctors away from prescribing hormones, and...

Did you know that the heat in your sauna might not even be the most important part? Most women hear "sauna" and think of sweating buckets, longevity bros, and biohackers. But there is actually a whole spectrum of light energy happening inside an infrared sauna that is doing the real work, and it has a lot to do with your hormones. In this episode of Hello Hormones, I sit down with Connie Zack, co-...

Progesterone is one of those hormones that gets mentioned everywhere but explained almost nowhere, and that gap is costing women a lot. What most women don't know is that progesterone isn't just a fertility hormone.  You have progesterone receptors from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, which means when levels start to drop, the effects show up everywhere. We're talking worse PMS, h...

Did you know that the muscle you are losing right now is doing a lot more than changing how you look in the mirror? It is quietly running your metabolism, regulating your blood sugar, protecting your bones, and most women have absolutely no idea. You can be eating well, doing cardio five days a week, and still feel squishier, weaker, and completely frustrated that nothing seems to be working. And...

When it comes to menopause symptoms, the first thing that comes to mind is hot flashes. But did you know it didn't make it to the top 10 most common symptoms of menopause based on Andrea Donsky's research and surveys? In fact, 9 out of the top 10 are brain and mental health related, think fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, and memory lapses, and most women have been brushing them off as "just life." In...

Did you know your gut and your hormones are not two separate conversations? They are the same conversation, and most women in perimenopause are only being handed half the story. You can be doing all the right things, the protein, the workouts, the supplements, even hormone replacement therapy, and still feel bloated, foggy, exhausted, itchy in weird places, and like your body is suddenly working a...

Testosterone is one of the most abundant hormones in a woman's body. Yet it is one of the least talked about, least tested, and most misunderstood. Women make testosterone in three different places, use it for everything from bone density to brain health, and can lose it at any age. Not just in menopause. And most doctors are still not checking for it. In this episode of Hello Hormones, I break do...

Did you know that most of the symptoms women are told to just "manage" during perimenopause and menopause, the brain fog, the anxiety, the weight that won't move, the sleep that won't come, were actually mapped out and explained by Ayurvedic medicine over 5,000 years ago? And it's not just explained but addressed with specific tools, specific foods, specific rituals, and a personalized framework b...

Did you know that perimenopause can manifest beyond the common symptoms we know like hot flashes? To pique my curiosity about what you are experiencing when you detect you're in perimenopause, I ran a poll and the answers are nothing short of surprising.  When estrogen and progesterone start shifting in perimenopause, the effects don't stay neatly in one place. They show up in other parts of your...

Did you know that women who wore foundation consistently throughout their lives may have accidentally been protecting their skin from brown spots and hyperpigmentation all along? That fun fact is only one of the things Dr. Mamina would like to share with every woman going through the drastic changes during perimenopause and menopause. Because most of what women experience during this transition, t...

Hair loss rarely starts at the scalp. Most of the time, the signal started months earlier somewhere else in the body. One day your hair looks normal, and the next you notice more strands in the shower, thinning at the temples, or shedding all over your clothes and bathroom floor. Suddenly your hairbrush looks a little more dramatic than usual. In this Hello Hormones episode, we break down the hidd...

You get diagnosed with gynecologic cancer and the focus turns to surgery and chemo, while no one mentions your hormones just fell off a cliff. Your ovaries are removed or radiated, you are thrown into instant menopause, and survivorship starts the day you hear the word cancer. In this episode of Hello Hormones with Rachel Frankenthal, we unpack what no one explains at diagnosis: who can safely use...

Estrogen doesn't just float around your body forever. If it doesn't exit on time, though, things can get messy. Heavy periods, PMS, bloating, bad sleep after one glass of wine, or feeling worse on a "hormone balancing" supplement can all trace back to how efficiently you're clearing it. In this Hello Hormones episode, we break down how estrogen is cleared from the body, why constipation can clog u...

If you've ever been told estrogen causes breast cancer, or that it's "too late" to start hormones, you've likely been walking around with fear instead of facts. In this Hello Hormones episode, I'm joined by Dr. Lindsey Berkson to get into oxytocin as a whole-body hormone, why environmental toxins block your hormone receptors, and what the latest data actually says about estrogen and breast cancer...

If perimenopause feels endless and confusing, you are not imagining it. One of the biggest misconceptions is that menopause itself lasts for years, when in reality the long, messy part happens before and after it. In the latest Hello Hormones, we get into early versus late perimenopause, why symptoms shift as hormones change, how periods actually factor into diagnosis, and what labs like FSH can t...