20 Feb 2025 Women’s Health Q&A

27 Feb 20 Feb 2025 Women’s Health Q&A

Summary

Today’s session focused on hormonal balance, stress, weight gain, and the effects of lifestyle choices. Dr. Welch shared insights on excess bṛṃhaṇa (building, heavy qualities in the body), estrogen dominance, castor oil packs, and the impact of stress on hormonal function. The discussion also touched on the liver’s role in hormone processing and its connection to the thyroid, brain, and gut. There are two audio files below on thyroid health that answer the submitted thyroid questions better than we could today. They assume the listener has a background in Ayurveda.

The latter part of the session included a rich discussion on personal experiences with aging, menopause, slowing down, and embracing changes in life’s pace. The conversation underscored the importance of self-care and how our individual health mirrors larger patterns in nature and society.

Key Takeaways

• Excess Bṛṃhaṇa and Stagnation: Can result from diet, lifestyle, or hormonal imbalances. Too much estrogen or too little progesterone can lead to congestion in the body’s channels.
• Stress and Hormonal Balance: Chronic stress can lower progesterone, making estrogen relatively dominant, which may contribute to issues like clotty periods, endometriosis, and weight gain.
• Teenage Hormone Imbalances: Even young girls can experience estrogen dominance due to stress, diet, or environmental factors.
• Castor Oil Packs: Useful for breaking up stagnation, reducing pain, and improving circulation. Can be reused for months, but should be replaced periodically and good to talk with your health care provider to be sure you don’t have contraindications.
• Stress and Weight Gain: Long-term stress can impact the insulin-producing portion of the pancreas, leading to weight gain—especially around the belly—due to shifts in cortisol and insulin function.
• Menopause and Belly Fat: Some weight gain around the midsection in menopause may actually be protective, supporting bone health and overall resilience.
• Balancing Diet and Lifestyle: The key to weight management varies by individual. Some require Vata-pacifying lifestyles with Kapha-reducing diets, when both bṛṃhaṇa andlaṅghana excess are present.
• Liver Health and Hormones: The liver plays a key role in processing hormones. If sluggish, it can lead to poor estrogen metabolism and overall stagnation.
• The Role of Prāṇa and Liver Stagnation: When the liver constricts due to stress, it restricts the flow of prāṇa, affecting energy levels and overall health.
• Embracing Change: Many attendees shared stories of slowing down, reassessing priorities, and finding joy in a more sustainable pace of life.

5 Powerful Quotes from the Session

1. “It’s impossible to have hormonal balance when there’s excess stress.” – Claudia Welch
2. “If there’s pain, there’s stagnation.” – Claudia Welch on castor oil packs
3. “Where am I driving so fast to get to?” – Vagdevi Meunier on slowing down in midlife
4. “Sometimes, the best medicine isn’t rest—it’s gently challenging ourselves.” – Anne Vandewalle on finding balance between rest and movement
5. “Menopause is about more than menopause.” Claudia Welch

References & Resources

• Castor Oil Packs – Queen of Thrones

  • Queen of Thrones Castor Oil packs: While it is cheaper to get castor oil pack flannel elsewhere and piece together a castor oil pack yourself, as I share in the appendix of   Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life: Achieving Optimal Health and Wellness through Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine and Western Science, it does get a bit messy. This pack is pretty amazing. I’ve used it overnight and moved around and it didn’t get on my sheets. I actually only recommend using them for about 90 minutes, but still…this pack is so easy to use. put the castor oil on the flannel side and tie the pack on, castor side down. Put a hot water bottle over it. That’s it. So…I recommend it. I think I do get a small commission if you purchase them here and you also get a discount if you use the code: CLAUDIAWELCH when you check out at Queen of Thrones Castor Oil packs.
• Book Reference: Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life
  • • Castor oil pack instructions and heavy bleeding guidance in the appendix and discussion around it in the heavy bleeding part of the book.

• Lectures on Thyroid and Liver Health

  • Two in-depth audio lectures from part of a 2014 Mentorship Dr. Welch offered, on the relationship between stress, the liver, and thyroid function, posted below:

8. Lectures on the thyroid:

From March 06, 2014: When our thyroids are hit they can go from a continuum from hyper to hpyo: Hyper/Graves (which looks mostly high laṅghana) to Hashimoto’s which has mixed laṅghana and bṛṃhaṇa symptoms to total burnout at Hypo, which can be a result of Hashimoto’s. We looked at what we would expect to see with adrenal burnout (the concept of the kidneys, adrenals, ovaries and testicles all being part of the “Kidney” system in TCM and the root of duality/bṛṃhaṇa and laṅghana in the body), what we would see with the insulin-producing portion of the pancreas being hit and what we would see w/ the various thyroid issues. We talked about the difference between single organs and double organs (like kidneys, brain, lungs) and the double ones relating to duality and the lungs “governing the entering and exiting of ojas”. We looked at the idea of when to treat an organ or problem directly and when to treat it locally and how we would apply this to the thyroid. Local treatment being things like herb mixes (sample mix: Ashwagandha 5, bala 3, kombu 3, hai zao 3, shatavari 3, guduchi 3, licorice 2) and “dissolving obstructions” track aimed at the throat, castor packs on the thyroid (without added heat, for 1⁄2 hr maybe 3x/week). We observed at the end that Graves and Hashimoto’s are considered autoimmune problems, where the body attacks itself and how maybe our bodies learn to do this from our behavior—from us attacking ourselves.

March 26, 2014 On our final call we explored the western view of the thyroid a bit more, looked at how we need to look holistically at the thyroid, instead of just at that one gland, when we are addressing treatment. The 10 vessels and heart (in western medicine the 5 senses and heart) provide feedback to the hypothalamus about the state of the organism. The hypothalamus sends messages to the anterior portion of the pituitary (through TRH-thyrotropin releasing hormone), which then uses TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) to prod the thyroid to dial dhātu agni up or down. The thyroid dials up or down through T4 and T3. T4 is more plentiful than T3, which is more concentrated and powerful. T3 is made from T4 in not only the thyroid, but also the brain, gut, skeletal muscles, kidneys and, especially liver are all responsible, as well as the thyroid, for turning T4 into T3 and so we need to look at all of these organs and tissues, and not only the thyroid, to discover where the problem is coming from. We also looked specifically at the kidney and liver, to understand their roles more. We looked at Dr. Carrie’s case study (unfortunately she couldn’t be here with us for this) and went through the case, looking at the thought process we might apply. We came back to the idea that most women’s health issues are due to either the bucket syndrome or stagnation and, in Dr. Carrie’s case study, probably both. We looked finally at how intelligent prāṇa is, whether in directing blood cells, to maturing an ovum and how we could address recalibrating that intelligence through the basics: lifestyle, diet, nāḍi śodhana, abhyaṅga, and meditation.