Toxins, Stress, and What They’re Doing to Your Hormones with a Top Reproductive Endocrinologist

In this episode of unPAUSED, Dr. Mary Claire Haver continues her conversation with Dr. Natalie Crawford, double board certified obstetrician, gynecologist, and reproductive endocrinologist, and author of The Fertility Formula. In part two of this conversation, Dr. Crawford gets specific about the forces working against our hormones every day, chronic stress, disrupted sleep, inflammatory food, and the endocrine disrupting chemicals most women have never been warned about.

She explains how cortisol triggers insulin resistance, how insulin resistance drives inflammation and ovarian dysfunction, and why resistance training and building skeletal muscle is one of the most direct interventions a woman can make at any age, including perimenopause. On sleep, she makes the case that it is the single most under addressed factor she sees clinically, explaining how FSH and LH are released in the early morning hours and why disrupted sleep directly interferes with ovulation, estrogen, and progesterone production.

The conversation also covers anti-inflammatory nutrition and gut health, the difference between unscented and fragrance-free, why forever chemicals and phthalates are disrupting the hormone system from inside most women's homes, birth control timing and uterine lining recovery, and what egg freezing actually is and is not, and who it is most likely to benefit.

Guest links

Natalie Crawford, MD

Natalie Crawford, MD (Instagram)

Natalie Crawford, MD (TikTok)

Natalie Crawford, MD (Facebook)

Natalie Crawford, MD (YouTube)

Natalie Crawford, MD (LinkedIn)

Books

“The New Perimenopause,” by Dr. Mary Claire Haver

“The New Menopause,” by Dr. Mary Claire Haver

“The Fertility Formula,” by Dr. Natalie Crawford