As late as the 1950’s The Journal of Obstetrics Gynecology and Surgery had an editorial suggesting that all women should have a hysterectomy after their childbearing years. It seems the general consensus among doctors was that a woman's reproductive organs are good for only one thing: childbearing, and after a woman has had all the children she wants, these organs are expendable, which then led to a worldwide push to perform these surgeries at an alarming rate. The highest rates are in the United States, followed by Canada and Australia.

I realize today's show may be a trigger for some of you, but the topic of reproductive health is just too important not to discuss, so I brought back Dr. Elizabeth Plourde, a clinical laboratory scientist and North American Menopause Society Certified Menopause Practitioner, to the show. In addition to being a practitioner and scientist who worked with hormone testing, and cutting edge cancer and DNA medical research laboratories, she spent over a decade researching women's hormones, learning how women's bodies function.

From that research and those findings, she wrote Your Guide to Hysterectomy, Ovary Removal and Hormone Replacement, which explains how our ovarian hormones are critically important to maintain healthy tissues and women's bodies.

20 years after her book was published, we now have studies published in 2021 and 2022 medical journals confirming her conclusions that our ovarian hormones are important throughout our lives and well past menopause. The studies confirm her findings that women who have had their ovaries removed and do not take hormone replacement die younger with heart disease than women who take hormones.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why women who have had their ovaries removed and do not take hormone replacement die younger with heart disease than women who take hormones
• The important role ovarian hormones play in keeping our tissues healthy and eliminating debilitating osteoporosis
• Why looking at root causes of excessive bleeding, fibroids, and cancer are the keys to healing
• Questions to ask your doctor if you are considering a hysterectomy

Click on the episode link to read the full transcript along with links to Elizabeth’s website, books, and research.