They Lied About Estrogen — And Your Doctor Probably Doesn't Know It | ft. Dr. Lindsey Berkson

In 2002, a press release changed everything — and it was based on no statistical evidence. The result? Hormones were pulled from medical school curricula, millions of women were scared off hormone therapy, and 25 years of patient care suffered for it. The FDA's own 28th director has since admitted: they got it wrong.

In this episode of Between the Sheets with Dr. Z, Dr. Stephanie Zwonitzer, DNP sits down with returning guest Dr. Lindsey Berkson — hormone scholar, researcher, two-time cancer survivor, and author of Oxytocin Medicine — for one of the most information-dense conversations this podcast has ever had. Dr. Berkson has been working with oxytocin in clinical practice for 18 years and has 556 scientific citations in a book that's only 193 pages. She knows her stuff, and she is not pulling punches.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• The truth about the Women's Health Initiative and how a single press release — with no statistical backing — convinced medicine that estrogen causes breast cancer
• Why hormones actually protect tumor suppressor genes — and what the science really says about estrogen, testosterone, and cancer risk
• What oxytocin actually is, why it's one of the most powerful and underused hormones in medicine, and how to get it over the counter
• How oxytocin works as an appetite adaptogen — helping people who overeat eat less, and helping anorexics have a healthier relationship with food
• Why women make more oxytocin during sex with someone they love (yes, the science backs this up)
• How oxytocin can be used for PTSD, GERD, Barrett's esophagus, inflammatory bowel disease, bone metastasis pain, and blood sugar regulation
• Why men with stage four prostate cancer are now being put on testosterone — and thriving
• Dr. Berkson's own cancer story, the radiation she refused, and the principal investigator who called her while she was on the table

This episode is for the patient who has been told "we got it all — go home and hope for the best." There are more tools. This is where you start finding them.

📖 Book: Oxytocin Medicine by Dr. Lindsey Berkson — available wherever books are sold 

📧 Reach Dr. Berkson: admin@drlindsayberkson.com 

📅 Ready to work with a hormone specialist who actually knows the nuances? Book a consult: reviveish.com

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Episode is sponsored by Boston Scientific and EDCure. For more information click here:
www.EDCure.com/BTS 

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Transcript

Stephanie Zwonitzer (00:01.117)
Hey guys, welcome back to Between the Sheets. I have Dr. Lindsay Berkson here with us again today. She is a phenomenal hormone specialist and she has recently put out a book called Oxytocin Medicine. So we're gonna talk all things oxytocin today and she also has a plethora of other things going on that I'm sure we'll touch on as well. Welcome, thanks for being here.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (00:15.95)
you

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (00:22.804)
thank you so much for having me get together and have these informative conversations because it's very difficult to know in all the noise on social media and in what's going on. What are the facts and how can we keep ourselves safe?

Stephanie Zwonitzer (00:40.699)
Yes, I completely agree. There's so many influencers out there right now trying to give their opinion and what's going on and and some are MDs and some are regular people and not all of it is great information.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (00:53.0)
isn't that true? So first of all, they stopped teaching hormones in medical school, osteopathic school, naturopathic school 25 years ago. So honestly, most doctors, have no training, no formal training at all in hormones. So they've gotten it where they've gotten it and put their own spin on it. And some of it's accurate, but a lot of people are online trying to be famous and rich. And they want to say something that makes you feel like they know things that nobody else knows. Everyone else is wrong.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (01:15.921)
Yes.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (01:22.466)
and they somewhat sell that pitch with fear. So it's really good to hear fact from fiction. And it's really sad because a lot of these people are OBGYNs and that doesn't mean that their information is accurate.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (01:29.608)
Yes.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (01:37.927)
Right.

No, and that's one of the things that I appreciate about you so much. And I've watched many of your lectures. I went through the bioidentical hormone training academy. So I've watched all of your stuff in there as well. And you are very diligent about knowing the science behind it down to the molecular level and all of the ins and outs of these different hormones and what they do for us and how best to treat them, which I think is so amazing because a lot of people are just like, well, yeah, just throw an estrogen patch on and that's going to fix that. Well, not really. And that

might not be the right choice for that person or there's so much more that goes into it and I appreciate how much you have over your career investigated this and put your time and energy into getting us the best information that we can.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (02:23.87)
thank you for saying that. You know, they've made people first scared to death of hormones when that wasn't accurate. God, our 28th head of our FDA, Marty McCary, he wrote in his book, Blindspots, in the second chapter, he said, we lied that estrogen causes breast cancer. We lied. I was one of the coauthors, he said, of the Women's Health Initiative and Jacques Rousseau.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (02:34.248)
Yeah.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (02:47.15)
June 28th, 2002 gathered all the people that ran the Women's Health Initiative, which was looking at women every which way and how to keep them alive longer without toppling Medicare. And Jacques Rousseau said, I'm gonna send out a press release that estrogen causes breast cancer. And everyone looked at each other. They went, what the heck? We don't have statistical significance on that. And he goes, dissension will not be tolerated. I'll ruin your careers if you speak out. I'll ruin your careers.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (02:58.888)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (03:16.974)
McCary, our FDA head, says, have felt guilty for 25 years. They sent out that press release with no science to validate it. A week later, the Journal of the American Medical Association came out with a paper saying, hey, the WHI stopped prematurely, and they had no statistical significance to support stopping prematurely. But what did we do? We stopped teaching hormones in med schools, osteopathic schools, and naturopaths.

went along with it, it's sad to say. And you know, just recently, because he felt like he has egg on his face and it was a travesty that hormones have taken off the table to add to our health for both men and women and larger expanding age groups, they recently had FDA experts in women. I think it was around December 10th. And then they had FDA experts in men. That was about two, three weeks ago. And in that,

Abraham Morgenthaler that I've lectured with and had on my podcast, he said, testosterone really helps men not die prematurely. It's the number one hormone to prevent metabolic syndrome and depression and keep you living longer. And he said, it's so safe that men with stage four prostate cancer can take testosterone and it won't cause more disease progression.

and it will enhance their quality of life. Why is that true for men and not true for women? And he opens up his lectures the same exact way that I did for many, many years. Why would mother nature make the very hormones that drive humanity, that drive evolution, that drive birth and reproduction? Why would mother nature make those hormones carcinogenic?

Stephanie Zwonitzer (05:05.917)
Right. Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (05:09.676)
The other thing is that we have inside our body what we call tumor suppressor genes. They're supposed to really help the body see if there's growth out of control because cancer is growth out of control in cells that don't know when to die. And they put the brake on that. There are brakes on growth out of control. And they're called the overseers, the caretakers of our human genome.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (05:14.483)
Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (05:25.416)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (05:35.47)
because you got to make sure we don't have growth out of control because that's when the boogeyman comes down into the cells. And who protects these tumor suppressor genes? Estrogen and testosterone in men and women, unless there's sustained inflammation and sustained infections. in our new everything breast cancer, that's what we do is we help providers understand how to find these infections, how to find this inflammation, how to optimize care, all based in science.

but you can't get this from a standard of care oncologist. If there was an oncologist out there doing this, offering more stuff to do after standard of care, we would have invited them, but they're not. And I've had cancer twice when I was much younger, which is why I've got this fire in my belly to share this when this is not a sexy topic like oxytocin is a sexy topic.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (06:26.451)
Yes, yes, but it's so true. I would just interviewed another woman last week that focuses on cancer and intimacy because that's another area that the oncologist kind of just like, well, I kept you alive. What do we need to talk about that for? You know, and not all, I'm sure there are some that address it, but...

that's such a great disservice to our patients for so many reasons, whether it's the cancer itself or the treatment that caused intimate side effects, we need to be addressing these. And so I'm glad that you're having this program that will help kind of cover more of the side effects and the comfort level of going through the cancer.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (07:09.102)
You know, like one, just an example. So when I was a distinguished hormone scholar at that estrogen, call it a think tank, but it was called the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane. And we would get together with the scientists who discovered how hormones first work, although hormones are a moving target. They keep growing and growing about all of our aspects. But when we were there, we were talking about how nuanced hormones are.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (07:37.277)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (07:38.252)
You can't just test a level and treat a patient and think you've got an optimal outcome. They're very nuanced and there's multiple steps that make up caretaking. So in other words, you need to go to somebody who's had extra training. Like you just said, you took the BHRT Academy training, because that gives you the bigger picture and all the nuances so that you can get effective care for your patients. And all of us want to live younger.

longer, safer, healthier. We all do, but it's harder and harder in today's dirty world where we have so many pollutants in our air, food, water, amniotic fluid, in our rain. It's in our rain. There's no such thing as a totally a hundred percent organic food anymore. But then how do you really, and all of that is kryptonite to our hormones, just kryptonite to our hormones. So we have to care, take our hormones. And we used to think hormones just,

signaled through lock and key, there was a binding pocket and the hormone was the key and they went together and then that expanded to hormone signal all cell membranes. And recently in the last two years, we've discovered now that hormones can signal without receptors, without cell membranes, they can signal mitochondria, they can signal neurons in your brain, the glial cells that clean your brain, hormones signal everything in your Wi-Fi system.

but they're under attack. So you so want to go to a doctor, whether you're healthy and you want to stay healthy, or you've been diagnosed with a hormonally driven disease from breast cancer to prostate cancer to ovarian cancer. Who can I go to, to give the best of both worlds? Standard of care, but what else after standard of care? Go home and just cross your fingers and just wish, wish, wish that you don't get it back again. That's not a sensible way to go. But for example, melatonin.

When I was at Tulane, David Blask's lab was underneath where the Tulane offices were and the labs were. He's the world's expert. He had a whole research lab dedicated to melatonin. Now he's also got one at Tufts. So he's got two research labs, one at Tulane and one at Tufts. And he's been working with the National Cancer Institute to show that all breast cancer patients have an issue with melatonin protection, because melatonin isn't just a sleep hormone.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (10:07.458)
You fight cancer while you sleep at night. But if you take melatonin during any form of standard of care, if it's chemo, radiation or surgery, you have less downstream negative side effects and you have better outcome. You're on Tamoxifen, you take melatonin, you have better outcome. You're on a neuromatase inhibitor, you take melatonin, but what do they tell you? You can't take anything. They scare the bejesus out of you.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (10:33.939)
Yeah.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (10:34.604)
We want to get beyond this bias in medicine. That's what we just saw in hormones. For 26 years, they told us hormones cause cancer when it wasn't a reality. Well, not everything we're being told in cancer care is a reality. But then what do you do for your patients or for yourself? And this is information whose time has come because since the Spanish war, heart disease was the number one killer. But cancer is about ready to overcome it. And I see a lot of patients these days who

Stephanie Zwonitzer (10:38.663)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (11:03.65)
had endometrial cancer at 20. I just had a patient with ovarian cancer in her teens. This is a growing issue. And if we don't have providers trained in this, like we need providers trained in hormones.

We're going to be in a big mess and that's why it's great to have conversations like this. I so appreciate it.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (11:23.185)
Yeah, I agree. It's such a disservice to our patients to just give them the surface level care. palliative care comes into play for some side effects, right? Nausea and vomiting, they're good with helping with pain management, things like that. But a lot of people really go towards palliative medicine, towards end of life kind of care versus it can come in at any point in time. But I think even more than that, to your point is

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (11:28.94)
I like that surface level here. Yeah, that's good. It's good. Accurate.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (11:52.431)
We need to have more.

providers educated in these nuances that can work with people to give them like optimal I love that word It's not it's not that everything has to be normal or has to hit a certain mark But for each individual patient to be optimized and live for them What is their best quality is so imperative and I think a lot of times we get stuck in traditional medicine on the side of like let's fix the problem and when the problem is fixed You're no longer my patient

instead of, okay we fixed the problem but now we caused these six other things in your life and we got to work on those too.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (12:30.014)
Right. And you know, we're trying to save you, but you're ruining your brains, your bones and your heart in the interim. But like my experience, know, medicine standard of care, I think is designed to be able to sue doctors that aren't doing standard of care. That's why doctors are so scared of it. But also standard of care keeps doctors coloring within the lines.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (12:34.362)
Thanks.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (12:50.03)
and not thinking that much, it's kind of a recipe, an algorithmic medicine. And it's needed in some cases, but certainly not in all cases. If you only think within the lines, if you only color within the lines, it gets being nuts. So what happened to me was I was diagnosed with breast cancer in Santa Fe, New Mexico at St. Vincent's Hospital in Santa Fe 30 years ago. And

Stephanie Zwonitzer (13:14.611)
Mm.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (13:15.59)
I was the first woman in the United States to be diagnosed with the histologic cellular type that I had. Nobody else in the United States had ever been diagnosed with this. So they wanted to treat me like everybody else. But in the back of my mind, I was going, but they've never seen this type. How did they know? So while I was going, I had a radiologist that was a woman and an oncologist that was a man. were husband and wife team. And

While I was going to them and getting things all organized, trying to be a dutiful patient, trying to stay safe, and nobody knew much about breast cancer 30 years ago, I started sleuthing the literature if there was anything out there on this type of breast cancer. And lo and behold, in the Nordic countries, I found two papers, one on 30 women, one on 60 women, where they...

investigated this type of cancer and they had some things to say about it. So I put in calls to what we call the principal investigator, like Jacques Rousseau was when I was just chatting about the Women's Health Initiative. And I didn't hear back because of the time change and this and that, I kept calling and leaving messages at their laboratories. And because usually on a paper, they'll give you their email in the abstract so you can reach out, which is what I did. So I'm

Stephanie Zwonitzer (14:24.09)
Hmm.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (14:28.488)
In the radiology department, I just had fluoroscopy to set up my grid to get radiation. I'm on the table. I swear to God, I believe in angels now. And the radiologist got called out of the room for some reason and my phone rings in my purse. It was an old fashioned phone because in those days, you know, it was a large phone and I pull it out and lo and behold, it was one of the principal investigators. And I go, well, I'm

Stephanie Zwonitzer (14:47.132)
Yes.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (14:53.612)
getting the grid line, I'm about ready to start radiation. And he goes, don't do radiation. He goes in Iceland and in Finland, radiation for this type of cancer is completely told. We tell doctors never, ever, ever, ever do it. Why? This type of cancer doesn't ever show up on mammogram. I had had a mammogram saying I was clear and a month later in the shower, I felt something. I went to my doctor. She said, you just had a mammogram, you'll be okay. But my intuition turned out that it was cancer.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (15:05.82)
Yeah.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (15:22.698)
And he said, that's why this, didn't find it on mammogram, because it doesn't show up on mammogram. And if you get radiation, you get lumpy, bumpy fibrous tissue, and you can't feel it if it does come back. So in two countries, they're speaking to the principal investigator. He said, it is standard of care in our country to say, never get radiation for these patients. So she walks into the room unbeknownst that I've just had this conversation across the globe.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (15:50.055)
Yeah.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (15:50.102)
And I'm hopping off the table starting to put my clothes on. And she said to me, wait, wait, where are you going? And I'm going, I'm exiting stage right. I said, I just spoke and I shared the entire conversation. And she looked at me and I, as God is my witness, she said, F him. She used the whole word, F him. I don't know who this guy is over there, F him. If you don't do radiation and she stuck her finger right in my nose, you are going to F-ing die.

Three times she said this to me, you are going to effing die. I couldn't believe it, but once she did that, it was like an explosion went off in my brain. Medicine is so color within the lines that she's willing to treat me the way they've always treated patients with no background in what I had and not listening to the man who was a principal investigator and published peer review paper.

That's when I started digging deep and for three decades now I started digging deep in why I went on hormone replacement two and a half years after I was diagnosed.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (16:54.353)
Yeah, yeah, it's incredible. I'm so proud of you for doing that for yourself. It's a lot of our patients don't advocate enough for themselves. I love that you were able to do that.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (17:04.11)
It's scary, it's really scary. And now that's why we're having this symposium. This is why I write these books to try and take all this, why is medicine so ruled by fear? What is that about? We wanna give you a sense that you got a bigger and bigger tool bag. There's no guarantees, no one can give you a guarantee. If they do, you gotta run for the hills. But there's so many things that are based in science that you can do like lymphedema. I mean, I had lymphedema and I...

Stephanie Zwonitzer (17:17.116)
Yeah.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (17:22.354)
Right.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (17:32.63)
talked with a researcher in Australia and translated it into a protocol that many of the times works. It takes about a year, but you know, usually lymphedema is something they don't have any answer for, lymphatic massage. But there are answers. There are answers that are in peer review science. for example, the use of oxytocin. I have used oxytocin in practice now for 18 years. And this new book that I wrote, it's 193 pages.

but I have 156, 556 citations. So there's like 35 pages of citations. And the interior editor called me up and said, this right? This, what's going on? This is a small book with like a ton of scientific citations. That's cause there's so many citations. For example, your pancreas that oversees blood sugar, the cells that do that, the beta islet cells and

Stephanie Zwonitzer (18:18.579)
Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (18:22.247)
Right.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (18:32.074)
and the alpha islet cells, they're completely covered by oxytocin receptors. So you can use oxytocin nasal spray to help get better blood sugar control. It doesn't mean that you're gonna get rid of diabetes or prediabetes, but it's gonna be very helpful. So there's so many things known in science, but they're not selling a drug. And if they're not selling a drug, then the patient can miss out, because it all comes down to money and power.

and shareholders, putting profits over people. And I'm so sick and tired of it. I'm a crusty old fart. I just turned 77 and I can't have a filter on my mouth anymore.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (19:07.825)
No, I'm right there.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (19:11.933)
you

agree though, you know, I've been watching some of the Congress debates and how, you know, CVS owns all these different components of health care and that's why health care is that, you know, those costs and CVS isn't the only one, it's all of the insurance companies that own multiple things and different levels of health care and that's why our premiums are crazy and they don't cover things because

Those companies at the end of the day are for-profit companies. And so they are trying to make money off of us. And it just, the whole system needs to get blown up. But that's another conversation for another day.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (19:41.987)
Yeah.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (19:54.326)
And so we wanna talk about what we, the little person, can do. And there's lots that we can do. Honestly, my mother took a drug when she was pregnant with me. It made me not be able to have children and have two cancers and all kinds of health challenges. And here I am, not to say I never have health challenges, but here I am three years from 80 and I'm kayaking and going to the gym every day. I'm...

Stephanie Zwonitzer (19:58.077)
That's right.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (20:19.224)
going to be in four different countries this year lecturing, and I'm living a really great life, and I'm having a lot of intimacy, the most intimacy that I've ever had. And so why fall apart when you're just kind of figuring life out and maybe have a few rupees in the bank? Why not really have more tools? So this oxytocin medicine book is about tools because oxytocin is so safe.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (20:36.338)
Yep.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (20:47.54)
It is sold over the counter up to 15 international units. comes in international units. So you can get over the counter oxytocin and try it for a variety of issues. And when I was a keynote speaker in Calgary, Canada a few years ago for a PCCA conference, there were OBGYNs there that said we couldn't get ahold of pitocin, is a form of, pharmaceutical form of oxytocin that they use

to help women contract and bring the pregnancy on. They couldn't get ahold of it during COVID, so they use this over-the-counter oxytocin and it worked really well. So well, they were still gonna keep using it. So you really can do a lot of things for yourself, but you gotta get educated. Like what are your options to do?

Stephanie Zwonitzer (21:35.515)
Yeah, so tell the listeners a little bit about, you know, basic what is oxytocin and then kind of what you have found in your research, some areas that we can use it for.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (21:46.4)
Oxytocin is a hormone, a tiny, tiny little itty bitty hormone. It's made up of nine peptides called a nanopeptide. And it is one of the most powerful hormones we have. So size doesn't always matter.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (21:49.971)
you

Stephanie Zwonitzer (22:01.937)
Love that.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (22:03.224)
Big deal is the mother's body is filled with oxytocin at birth because it makes the uterus contract to cause birth and the baby to come out of the mom's body. And it also causes the breast to contract to let down milk. So one of its jobs, it has many, many, many jobs, is it's a contractile hormone. in fact, its contracts helps the whole gut have

move food and fecal material through you and people that are on the GLP-1 weight loss for other reasons you take it, that usually causes a paralysis of contractions. You can pre-treat with oxytocin and take during the first month and kind of calm some of those symptoms down because it'll help have a little bit more contraction and less loss of contraction. But the mom's body is, her bloodstream is awash in oxytocin.

So the baby's body is awash in oxytocin. It's that safe that a brand new baby is awash in oxytocin. And it signals to the baby if oxytocin signals are working optimally, the word you just said, it signals welcome to planet earth. It's a good place to be and people are gonna love you. And you should be really happy to be a member of the human race.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (23:05.628)
Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (23:19.187)
you

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (23:30.208)
And it also caretakes the entire gut so that it doesn't get damaged before the first breastfeeding, because birth is a pro-oxidative phenomena. So oxytocin is an antioxidant set of molecules on roids. And it protects the gut. We know that it protects the baby's gut right when it's born. And you have oxytocin receptors all over your brain. People talk about trying to stay calm in a chaotic world. So calm.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (23:38.3)
Yeah.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (23:44.23)
Okay.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (23:59.104)
is a parasympathetic aspect of our nervous system. Oxytocin rules the calm of our nervous system. Nature wants us to make love, not just to make love for reproduction, or we wouldn't get so many benefits from making love.

We get lots of benefits and one of them is a release of oxytocin and other hormones that drench our bodies. Nature meant for hormones to be protective, nature meant for us to be intimate, to share more of that protection, but women make more oxytocin when they orgasm than men do. It's also a bonding hormone. So women have a little bit of a hard time with doing friends with benefits, because the more and more women make love, the more and more bonded we get, but our brains make us do it.

no matter how much we say, I'm going to be into ethical non-monogamy. I'm from Austin, Texas, and this is the epicenter of the universe in polyamory and ethical non-monogamy. I didn't even know these words a few years ago. oxytocin is an extraordinary hormone that has incredible science behind it to use it for a lot of medical and symptomatic interventions. For example, it's a food adaptogenic

Stephanie Zwonitzer (24:49.734)
Yeah.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (25:12.942)
hormone. And there's multiple replicated studies where you can take it throughout the day three, four times, 20 minutes before you eat. And it's usually given in a nasal spray, although you can take it into your body by many delivery routes. That's what's termed how you get it into your body. And it reduces in people that are overweight your caloric intake and your desire to snack. But on the other end of the continuum,

Stephanie Zwonitzer (25:14.003)
Okay.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (25:41.358)
It has multiple replicated studies in anorexics that are really having a hard day of stress, PTSD over eating, and it will reduce stress relationship with food and allow anorexics to have a better relationship with food and to eat more. So it helps people who want to lose weight eat less, and it helps people who are fearful of gaining weight to be okay with eating more. So we call it, I call it.

a hormone appetite adaptogen. Adaptogen means it helps you normalize on either end of the spectrum. That's pretty incredible.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (26:20.751)
Yeah, that's amazing. I did not know that about oxytocin. That is awesome!

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (26:26.368)
And there's studies on it showing that it works for PTSD. One of my dear friends, Jim Insir, is a pharmacist and we have lectured together a lot. He owns Las Calinas Pharmacy right outside of Dallas. And he is one of the kings of having protocols for PTSD for soldiers. And one of the things that he uses in that protocol is oxytocin. Also, oxytocin is so healing to the entire digestive tract.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (26:46.087)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (26:55.414)
I've created a medicine that can be ordered through compounding pharmacies for any esophageal disorders, any way from having difficulty swallowing to having issues like severe GERD or even to have what we call intestinal hyper, metaplegia, hyperplasia, or Barrett's esophagus, which are all bad, bad icky stuff happening to your esophagus that you want to make it better and not live on acid blockers your whole life.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (27:21.947)
Yeah, because they have a ton of side effects that are not good.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (27:23.79)
my goodness, you know, they just came out with a study showing that breast cancer survivors that go on and stay on acid blockers have a higher incidence of recurrence. You cannot say we share a lot of incredible information at now there's I tried to get the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Angela De Michael to speak for us. They just published a phase two trial where they were.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (27:35.898)
wow.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (27:50.68)
You know, what really gets cancer patients, all cancer patients, is these lurking nasty cancer stem cells. They can also be called circulating dormant tumor cells. There's a tiny bit of difference between the two, but they're kind of cancer remnant cells that chemo and radiation doesn't get. Not all cancer patients have them. We don't know why some do and some don't, but the ones that do have a much higher risk of recurrence. So we discussed how you might measure this in the serum.

and what you might do for it. And at the University of Pennsylvania, they want to figure out how to shut these cells up so that you can have a safer lifetime. So they ran a small, it's a small little pilot trial phase two, but women who took hydroxychloroquine and rapamycin together in this small group that were followed for, that had these cells and followed for three and a half years had no 100 % disease free survival compared to women who were on

each one alone versus women who just go home and cross your fingers and we got it all. You cannot think that the way you lived before is the way you should go back to and cross your fingers and just wish to God, please God, don't let me happen. Have this again. It's the same way to think, but it's not a sane way to live. You got to have more tools. And oxytocin turns out to be an anti-cancer tool. In fact,

Stephanie Zwonitzer (29:05.672)
Right.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (29:17.042)
love making and someone touching your breasts, which you can also do on your own, but you get more oxytocin when you're with someone you really respect and love. It's interesting in my book, Sexy Brain, the literature is really clear. Women make more oxytocin if they're making love with someone they love. And if they're making love with a friend with benefits, they make a little bit less. That nature rewards you for a dynamic heartfelt relationship. Wow, that's like a zinger.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (29:36.339)
Hmm.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (29:43.345)
Yeah. we might have to pause. I gotta go get my fiance to rub my boobs a little bit here. what?

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (29:48.366)
Maybe he could come over here and we can share. No, no, see, I'm in Austin and it's ethical non-polyamory. I just, you these words are crazy. I did, I did. Yeah, the median age here, because of UT University of Texas is about 25. And most of the young people feel our parents all got divorced. So let's try something different. And you gotta admire them. They're really calling for transparency.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (29:52.167)
Yeah.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (29:58.003)
You did say you're in the headquarters for it.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (30:17.905)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (30:18.552)
They're saying, hey, let's not cheat. Let's do it openly. But it's a different way of exploring different ways, right? And every generation has their own set of explorative behaviors. But nonetheless, oxytocin, we're meant to have our breasts touched. We're meant to make love. We're meant to release oxytocin because it turns out to be breast protective.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (30:25.713)
Yeah, absolutely.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (30:43.578)
And it's not contra in oxytocin nasal spray is not contraindicated when you have breast cancer. So all breast cancer patients get totally stressed out with the diagnosis and treatment. Lots of studies on that. You can use oxytocin since it calms the nervous system down as a nasal spray to just start dealing with that anxiety because anxiety is so uncomfortable and debilitating.

But your doctors tell you you can't do anything when you're in cancer care, but oxytocin is not contraindicated through any cancer care. we're, know, knowledge is power to figure out what's really going on, not just what the pharmaceutical companies are telling your providers that they then in a recipe tell you, not to say they're not helping to save your life, but maybe they're doing one thing, but then they're missing out on a lot of other things that don't need to be missed out on.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (31:36.071)
Right, well sure because.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (31:36.248)
There's thousands of articles in peer review that never get paid attention to.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (31:40.655)
Yeah, and you know, we constantly have in the clinic world, reps bringing in lunches, reps coming in talking to us, but they're all from drug manufacturers, imaging manufacturers, different things like that. We don't have somebody coming in and being like, hey guys, let's talk about over the counter oxytocin that no one's going to make money off of. Like, they just don't. And so you're not exposed, unless you as a provider go searching for information to make your patient's lives better.

You're not handed this information because nobody's making money off of it. And that's such an unfortunate thing, but that's the reality. If there is a new prostate cancer drug on the market, they're coming into the urology office at least once a month to talk to us about it and remind us about it. But nobody's coming in saying, hey, have you thought about putting your guys on testosterone? Testosterone's really cheap. In fact, we take testosterone away from them.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (32:38.284)
It's crazy. So McCarrie held, if you go to YouTube, it's all free and you put in FDA experts, testosterone or FDA experts in estrogen, these incredible group of brilliant people that we have in these fields to speak. And Abraham Morgenthaler says, he gave a case report. He said, I have this guy that's had stage four prostate cancer for 10 years.

And the last three years, I gave him testosterone replacement and he had a higher quality of life, no disease worsening. All men with prostate cancer, they can be on testosterone. That makes your life so much better. It makes your life feel like you, you're human again, versus you're just a painful skeleton enduring the day when you've been on a lot of these treatments without any hormones. Hormones send...

Stephanie Zwonitzer (33:22.984)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (33:37.28)
make your wifi system work. And most of our ex cancer patients are with frozen wifi systems and that's they feel miserable and they're crossing their fingers and praying cancer doesn't come back. So there's so much information, but how do you know who to really listen to? And I think one of the things that's made me have such a fire in my belly is I've been a patient so often.

as well as a provider kind of seeing things from both sides. I think when we go through med school, we should be in the last year, a patient with some disease that we have to do the theatrics of and pretend that we have this disease and go through the whole mock treatment for it so that you really know what it's like to be on both sides of the desk.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (34:30.611)
Yeah, I think that's a great idea. really, because nothing gives you a good perspective of like, of the patient's side without going through it yourself, or with a family member even to watch them go through something and you're like, oh my God, they don't tell you anything or they don't talk to you about how did no one tell you this or whatever it is. It's so different when you see it through the patient's perspective.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (34:53.144)
So one of the things I deal with a lot, but lately I've been being a non-primary consultant with breast cancer patients. That's been most of my focus, but much of my focus has been on the gut over my career. And I wrote a book, Healthy Digestion in the Natural Way that Wiley published. And back in the days, this is when they didn't even track how many sales there were. It sold like a million copies. And I've been working on a new book called Gut Medicine. That's a textbook, but I was

dealing with a lot of inflammatory bowel disease, young female patients. And many of them are told they need to get segments of their colon removed or their complete colon removed. So because there's oxytocin receptors all over the gut, I would often give them oxytocin and hormones because estriol and progesterone help regulate open and closing of the gut wall.

and identify their food sensitivities, give them low dose naltrexone, which reduces inflammation, and just really treat them individually. And I had six cases from Austin Regional Gastroenterology where the women were told they needed to have their colon removed or they need to be on medications all their lives. And within six to seven months with this kind of intervention, just based on physiology, they had totally disease-free

follow-up colonoscopies. So I asked my gastroenterologist, Dr. Zeebert, if I could give a talk with the other gastroenterologists. So we got a little group together. It was all men. There were no female gastroenterologists. And they all said, my God, all the scientific journals you're citing, they're all from our journals. These are like renowned journals. We don't know any of this, but we would never do any of this. If we were going to do hormones, we'd send them to an endocrinologist. Or, you know, who doesn't do this because

medicine so compartmentalized, the gastroenterologists don't want to take use, use the fact that hormones receptors line the entire gut. And you can use that fact to help heal patients faster, quicker, better, fully, rather than making them sense of learned helplessness being maintained on medication forever. And in fact, we have at our conference, we have two inspiring interview lunchtime series.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (36:44.135)
Right.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (37:12.054)
So on Friday of our up and coming everything breast cancer conference, we have the amazing Dr. Jill Carnahan. And she got aggressive breast cancer in med school. And then because of the treatment, because treatment is harsh, she got here of inflammatory bowel disease. So she was told she'd never totally be well with aggressive breast cancer. And she was going to have to be on drugs and prednisone intermittently and et cetera, et cetera, with inflammatory bowel disease.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (37:26.035)
you

Okay.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (37:41.718)
And she went on to really help heal herself and then specialize in these patients. And she shares how part of that healing was she took testosterone when she was early after her aggressive breast cancer. And now she's older, she's on hormone replacement, not avoiding it like all breast cancer patients are told. And she's not had inflammatory bowel disease since decades ago. And so there's so much we're not told because we're ongoing customers for Big Pharma.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (38:10.695)
Right, absolutely, absolutely. I love this conversation. I love oxytocin and all the good things that it does. Remind people the name of the book, where they can find it, and your other stuff that you have going on.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (38:23.99)
Okay, so I've been working with patients for about 17, 18 years with oxytocin, and this book makes it a gentle, delicious little read. And each chapter gives you a different body system that you might consider using oxytocin for with the scientific citations. And the last chapter, chapter 12, is exactly for your provider how to write scripts for about 30 different conditions to send it into your compounding pharmacist. So it's a very user-friendly book.

It's called oxytocin medicine with this really great oxytocin molecule here. And in fact, this one picture, where do I have this one picture? I love this woman, this neuroscientist. I couldn't find her email, so we had to cover up her face. She's finishing her PhD in neuroscience and she had oxytocin tattooed on her torso. And she came up to me after lecturing on it.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (39:09.233)
Yeah.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (39:20.782)
And I just thought that was amazing. It is an amazing molecule that you can use for many, many reasons. And your doctor's not trained in it, but you can give this book to them and show them how to write the scripts for it. Or you can start playing around with it over the counter. It's that safe. It's not dangerous. You just have to keep it in a refrigerator. it, um, it, it will, uh, it's shelf life is about three to four months.

And usually if you spray it, usually comes in a nasal spray. Most of the academic studies were done with it as a nasal spray. You put a little olive oil or jojoba oil in your nasal mucosa, because the first few days, the lining of your nostrils can get a little irritated, and then that usually goes away. I'm a pretty sturdy gal, so I don't seem to get much of these side effects that some people can get, but it's always good to be a little safe. But it's so safe, it's sold over the counter.

And it's so safe that actually one of the studies there was, if you get cancer metastasis to bones, it hurts like hell. And this one patient had pain that was making them want to die. So they gave an epidural with oxytocin and were able to incredibly get rid of that pain for that patient. So it's also an analgesic and it can be mixed with ketamine for major depressive disorders.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (40:41.99)
Okay.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (40:46.518)
and get response and mood regulation within hours. It's quite extraordinary, but your doctor won't know. Gift your doctor this book and ask for a script or play around with it yourself. Or you can always reach me at admin at drlindseyburkson.com.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (40:50.739)
you

Stephanie Zwonitzer (41:03.641)
Excellent and I'm going to be running out and getting my copy because I need it for my patients. I love this so much. Thank you Dr. Berkson so much for being here. You're a delight always and so full of amazing information. Thank you.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (41:16.31)
I just love the way we have a conversation. Honestly, I feel right back at you, Gal. I really do. And it makes me feel good because you get so exasperated. Like this world is so chaotic that when you meet someone like you and we get to hang in this sacred space of heart to heart and belly to belly and brain to brain, it means a lot and it reverberates out. So honestly, back at you and thank you too.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (41:21.288)
Yeah.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (41:29.874)
I agree.

Stephanie Zwonitzer (41:41.127)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, absolutely. Everybody don't forget to check out reviveish.com where you can find me to work with as your hormone specialist and we will see you next week. As always, have some fun between the sheets.

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (41:54.434)
Bye!

Dr Devaki Lindsey Berkson (41:59.192)
love it.