Announcer: 0:06

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host, psychotherapist, coach, and empowerment expert, Beverley Glazer.

Beverley Glazer: 0:33

Have you ever met a doctor who treats the aging process as an awakening? Well, Dr. Prudence Hall is that doctor. Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion. I'm Beverley Glazer, a transition coach and a catalyst for women who are ready to raise the bar in their own lives. And you can find me on reInventimpossible.com. Dr. Prudence Hall is an OBGYN, an author and founder of the Hall Center, where she's helped thousands of women restore balance, vitality, and purpose in every stage of their lives. Dr. Hall blends traditional medicine with spiritual wisdom. And her book, Radiant Again and Forever, has inspired women throughout the world to find resilience, purpose, and passion for life. So keep listening and welcome, Prudence.

Dr Prudence Hall: 1:34

Thank you, Beverly. Thank you. Happy to be here.

Beverley Glazer: 1:38

Prudence, you grew up in a family of four girls. I cannot imagine. Okay. What was it like having those three other sisters? Was there a lot of rivalry?

Dr Prudence Hall: 1:52

Well, there was a little bit of competition, I would say. And that's been carried into my adult life, which I'm modulating tremendously because it's always cooperation rather than competition that creates the most magnificent product or relationships. I was raised in an intellectual family. My father was the provost of uh College Five, which was the fine arts college at UC Santa Cruz. And I went to UC Santa Cruz, and um it was a family with lots of engagement, lots of talking, uh, ideas. And uh having sisters was just uh uh they're my dear, dear friends now, and my my youngest brother also. But it was it was such a privilege to have women to really go through all of our different stages with. It was it was amazing.

Beverley Glazer: 2:43

Yeah, I always wanted a sister, never got that. Uh it's um it, you know, it what you miss would be all that camaraderie, you know, the stuff that girls share. And being in the middle there, you must have had you know a lot of compassion for each other and understanding and dating and going through all those processes is really quite something, yes. But you never intended on being a doctor. Um, you you know, most people grow up with this path. I want to be a doctor, I want to be a nurse, in my case, I want to be an actress, whatever it is, right? So you never did. And you went to Europe, and that kind of changed your trajectory. What happened there?

Dr Prudence Hall: 3:32

It did. So I was in high school in Europe with my family because my father was on a uh sort of uh long sabbatical, and then I went back to I I went to UC uh Santa Cruz for a year, and then I was just like, I have to get back to Europe. And when I in I studied uh philosophy and religion in my first year, no science classes. I had nothing to do with science, science was cruel. My science teacher killed my little baby bird I was trying to save. So I really had uh you know this kind of negative thinking about science. And I was in France, and a lot of my friends were doctors, and and I thought, they're not so smart. What are they doing being doctors? And one New Year's Eve, we were in Andorra, and Andorra is right between Spain and France, and we were drinking and dancing, and we were playing about who will we be next year and forever. And I was there saying when it was my turn, I don't know whatsoever. And uh they said, Oh my god, Prudence, you're a doctor. You're you're a doctor, you care about life, you're like us. We we we we nurture life. That's what you do. And it's like, huh? And then I looked back and it had been every place in my life. This love, this tenderness towards life, wanting life to be safe in my hands, and uh loving to see how my little frogs lost their tails and became my little tadpoles, became frogs. And it really at every juncture they were saying you love life and you want to help life to become full and and beautiful. So I went back to UC Santa Cruz and and studied some science that I actually was quite good at in life.

Beverley Glazer: 5:24

And did your parents encourage you and say, Yes, that's exactly where you belong?

Dr Prudence Hall: 5:29

No, my father said, as the provost, he said, look, no one in her no, it's so hard to get into to medical school. Just don't do it, give up that that concept. And I looked at him, I said, Daddy, you are really underestimating your daughter. I will be a doctor. And I knew it. At that moment, I knew from the thought came the emotions of all the joy it would bring other people in me. And by golly, I went in and just wowed them during the interviews because I knew I was already a doctor. And I was saying, how can I be the best doctor? That's what I want to know. What is your experience telling you? Just teach me. So when I'm a doctor, I'm gonna be really wonderful. And I knew it. Yeah, I knew it. When you know it, you know it, Beverly, about your purpose, don't you?

Beverley Glazer: 6:15

Oh yes. . And so they accepted you, I'm sure, with open arms. And and then you had this experience really, um, with this woman that gave birth to eight children, and you were still just a young doctor. Tell us about that.

Dr Prudence Hall: 6:35

Well, I was a senior in uh in my residency program, and that meant I was alone on the floor with many, many, many women giving birth. And I oversaw the residents, so there was a third-year resident, a second-year resident, then there were the interns, the little medical students that we didn't let touch, you know, too many women without the residents' hands being there. And I was awakened in the middle of the night. I usually got about 30 minutes of sleep on that OB floor. There were 30 women delivering at once. And they said, Prudence, prudence, prudence, come, come, come. And I jumped out of bed. I I was never under, I was dressed, I slipped on my UGS or my clogs, I guess I was wearing, ran to the delivery room, and we had about eight delivery rooms or more uh on that floor. And there was blood every place in the delivery room. And a woman was there in the position where she had just given birth. The baby was in the cradle. I glance, the baby was okay. And the resident said, I can't stop her bleeding. I just can't stop her bleeding. And so I called for type and cross for six units, get the anesthesiologist here. And I uh knew that I had to uh I said, Have you given her methrogen? Yes, methogen clamps everything down. What else have you done? I'm holding her uterus as soon as I let go, she's pouring out blood. So I knew I'm gonna tie off the uterine arteries and hopefully not do a hysterectomy. Um, there was one mother maternal death on our floor the whole four years I was there, and it was exactly this scenario where the woman was bleeding to death, and the doctor had to do a hysterectomy, and she died uh as complications of that. So it's just like, now this is something I would face all the time, Beverley. I mean, I was always in the alert stage. So the anesthesiologist came running. We created the table into a, you know, into a surgical table, we splashed her with betadine. I slashed open her uh abdomen, you know, the vertical, low vertical, and her uterus was like a uh, it was kind of like jello. I held it, you know, sutures, sutures. I was tying off her uterine arteries so the blood could not go to her uterus, and it slowed down a little bit, and then I'd let go of the uterus, more methrogen. Ivy and I was putting methrogen into her uterus to clamp it down. Barely nothing worked. Every single time that I would kind of let go, there was someone underneath the covers, and they'd say, blood pouring out. So I was holding her uterus for about 15 minutes, and then it's just like, guys, we're gonna have to do a hysterectomy. Or and she's how much blood have you been pouring in it? I'd throwing three units into her blood, and uh, you don't want to get behind with the blood in those situations. And I said, make sure we have another two units on top of the six. So at a certain point, I was just talking to Maria. I said, Look, Maria, because that was her name, please. You have eight other children, you have a beautiful baby here. Just help me. I need your help. No response. But suddenly I felt this light coming through my hands, and it was almost like a lightning bolt, and the lights in the room flickered, and people were saying, What's wrong? What's wrong? And it's like, I was just like speechless. Her uterus contracted, I let go of it, it stayed contracted, and we quickly uh sutured her up, sent her to the ICU, and I felt like I had asked for help. I had received help, and by golly, I mean, there are many dimensions to life as we know it, and to life as we don't know it. And that changed the way I practiced medicine. I I realized that we have a spiritual age as well as a chronological, biological, and psychological age. And that just tied perfectly with my first year of the university where I was studying world religion and and philosophy. I mean, I was primed for it. I used to listen to Alan Watts when I was 15 and 16. Oh, was it Alan Watts? Yeah, yeah. And it was, it just changed the way, Beverly, that I I see life. And that started a big venue of how does this physical form interact with consciousness? And uh there's just less and less of me now, me, less and less.

Beverley Glazer: 11:14

But you were still in the medical system. And you had to see a lot, you had to go through things that perhaps you didn't agree with. Tell us about that.

Dr Prudence Hall: 11:30

Well, it was still during the women's movement. Hopefully that's continuing. I know that that that path is still continuing, but I would be asked to massage my senior's neck to get coffee to, and I was kind of lighthearted about it. It's like, sure, I would get anyone coffee. I can give a homeless person coffee. I certainly can bring coffee to you. So I I didn't take offense at that, and I just would smile and say, Oh, he likes me. Okay. There are not many women in the program. And uh I didn't really understand how medicine should be practiced until Jeff Bland, Dr. Jeff Bland, uh, started functional medicine. And I did that 25 years ago. Uh, and that's when I really started seeing how misguided Western medicine as it's currently practiced really is. So in functional medicine, you look what are the core commonalities of disease? And then how do you stop those core, like inflammation, stress, sugar, your metabolism? How do you change those core root causes to have an outcome that is an absence of disease? And I started mixing that with a deep understanding and reverence and love of consciousness or God or whatever, whatever we want to call it, and functional medicine. And Beverly, it just looking back at my medical practice, I was taught one disease. You know, here's one disease with one cause and one solution. And we we know that heart disease and most diseases now have multifactoral, many different causes, and that we have to look at all of those causes to actually successfully get to the result that we want. Um, and so looking back, I saw well, I was given a simplistic kind of mechanistic model of how the body works. And I know much better. And we're still we're learning every day. I was at a big conference this weekend with Jeff Bland and Dale Redison. He's the premier, beautiful uh Alzheimer's disease researcher who says, you know, you don't have to get Alzheimer's disease, which is true. And David Promutter and just a lot of people in the field. And um Jeff was saying, Dr. Bland was saying, well, everything that we learned even 10 years ago isn't true with our immunology. Even five years ago, there were big, big new developments that made everything else obsolete. So being a lifelong learner that that I am, that I encourage our visitors and viewers to be, is just um, you know, it's like being in the present moment, being a lifelong learner.

Beverley Glazer: 14:27

Oh yeah, oh yeah. So tell me, what are the common misconceptions about exactly what you're doing? Hormones, hormone replacements. You know, there's all these truths, there's all these myths out there. Take it, don't take it, estrogen, too much, cancer, you name it, it's out there. What would you say?

Dr Prudence Hall: 14:51

The field is rapidly changing. When I started four decades ago, and this was around 1983, 1984. Um, I had just returned from France where I'd been living, and they had bioidentical hormones there. I hadn't been taught that in my residency. I was taught use primeren, use provera. These are both uh non-bioidentical hormones. One is from the pregnant horse's urine, and the other one turned out to be a carcinogen that, you know, was thought to be progesterone that could be uh you know used instead of the real progesterone. And um there was increased breast cancer with that. So as soon as I realized that my patients were not doing well on that, and they would, I was taught, you know, do do one blood value if they haven't had a period in a year, put them on primer and a provera. And that was about the that was about what I learned with that. Um, infertility was way ahead of this, but this was management of menopause. And it was pretty basic. And then I started hearing from my patients, it's like, what do you mean come back in a year? I feel terrible. And it's like, oh, you do? And uh as they would share, I realized, well, I'd better try these bioidenticals that that women in France were just starting to use. Um, bioidenicals are exactly the same hormones that our body makes, whereas pregnant horses' urine, primarin, has 35 different hormones in it. And I started bringing them back from France and using those with my patients, and they were just delighted. And it's like, oh boy, I'd better see them in three months, I'd better see them in four months or two months. And it just changed the whole way I started practicing medicine. And as I gathered data, it was like there is research out there showing that these are very safe, that unlike the women's, you know, the health initiative in 2001, the bioidenticals didn't have increased uh deep pain thrombosis. Uh, they helped to decrease stroke, heart attacks, they lowered the LDL cholesterol as well as the subparticles of LDL, Apo B, and uh LP little A. Um, and I I just I started speaking about this, and I became really quite a powerful mouthpiece on Oprah and Dr. Show and Dr. Phil and many, many shows. And then I was sanctioned by the medical board. And they said, you cannot individualize care. You cannot say anything except that hormones are for symptom control and for bone density. I said, but look at the data. Here's the data. And they said, we don't care. And so a little bit as as uh, you know, pioneers get get get arrows in their back, and I was daring greatly with what I was doing and really bringing all this data and new stuff to the world. And so they silenced me, Beverly, for a while. They they they I felt like I have to be very careful. I'm in a completely conservative risk, I would say, change averse uh society here. And so I went underground and with COVID, they had bigger fish to fry. You know, they they definitely were, you know, had much kind of different things to look at. And uh, but one thing I just want to say is that the icons in my field, for example, Dr. Dale Bredison, he has been hated and not recognized for who he is. And he's the greatest. He's the greatest in the field because he went to the consumers and he talked to people about Alzheimer's and how he wrote a book for lay people and that he he said that at the meeting uh a few days ago, that that made him an outcast. So this has happened. Papo Nicolas, Dr. Papo Nicolas, who was Greek, uh, they said that he was a sex abuser of women because he was doing pap smears. He put things in vaginas to do the paps news. The person who discovered D3 vitamin D, their license was taken away. So, you know, innovators uh really can suffer a bit, and I suffered a bit. And it it was, you know, it was it was part and parcel. I was daring enough to to to do that. Now, now there's a huge uh pushback against testosterone in women. So now the FDA has said that women cannot use testosterone. But Beverly, it's it it decreases uh hormone replacement decreases all the major diseases that women can face. Stroke, psycholester, heart attacks, uh diabetes, uh, hypertension, um, uh autoimmunity, all of these blossom as soon as we go into menopause. And cancers of all types are decreased because hormones are our body's software. They really say, This is what you need to do, cells, this is how you need to act. And if you take water away from a plant, it'll die. And menopause is a death process. And bringing our hormones back to youthful and vital levels is a regenerative life process where when women get their energy back and their strength back and their confidence back, oh my God, Beverly, the purposes and the things they do at that point are joyful and incredible.

Beverley Glazer: 20:36

So, would you say you should take bioedicals for life?

Dr Prudence Hall: 20:42

So the medical board says take them for five years. And a lot of this data was uh came out of Primurn in Prevera. And by the way, there was a big study on primern alone in 2021, and the incidence of breast cancer was decreased just with primern alone. Now that's a crummy, that's a crummy hormone, and so it's it's better with the with the bioidentical hormones. Um I have been on hormones for about 24 years now, and I will not stop it because the data for to maintain your brain, neuror regeneration is so powerful that I wouldn't want my brain to go without it. And I wouldn't want my cholesterol to go up and and all the inflammation markers to go up. If it's 90% of cancers are based in inflammation, then you add stress to that, and you know, cancers. We really start to age in menopause. And I need this body, I need it for another another bit of time here to continue this work. So I I always tell women, you know, you can come off of it if you want. Uh the it really does prevent uh a lot of chronic diseases, most chronic diseases, or it impacts most chronic diseases. I actually have only four women out of thousands, I think it's about 40,000, thousands of women who have had a heart attack. And one of them maybe didn't have a heart attack. None of them died. They're all alive, they're all running around. And of course, they're seeing cardiologists, and you know, that that's when Western medicine is amazing in terms of, you know, interventions for acute illness. It's just amazing for that. Um, and you know, I should have many, many hundreds of deaths because I take care of an elderly population or an older chronologically aged population, uh, as well as young people, but a lot of, you know, 70-year-olds, 60-year-olds, 75-year-olds. It's a menopausal, perimenopausal uh population. I should have so many more. And I I the incidence of breast cancer in my practice is about one in 50, not one in seven. But the data is out there. Where we really don't understand exactly is is it safe to take estrogen if you have had breast cancer? And data is coming in quite rapidly for that.

Beverley Glazer: 23:09

Everything are we going to be changing? And if it works for you, and if you believe in, I would say in your doctor, okay, because you know, and I'm looking at this personally, really prudence, because I wanted to take bioidentals. I could not get them. I was doing research at the time where there was very little on the internet. The internet was relatively new, and I did that discovery as well. And what I was saying to my doctor, who was male, I said, uh, here I am. I am a small white-skinned woman, small boned, and I don't want to get osteoporosis, and I want a quality of life, and these hormones that you're giving me are killing me. And literally, it was horrible. And when I found this, and I asked him for a prescription, and he says, Okay, I can give it to you, but it's gonna do nothing. And I came back because it was one uh pharmacy here that did create them. I uh came back with energy, I came back feeling so good, and I know from what you're saying that there is a change, but I had to know in my own heart, I had to be proactive, and I had to also talk to my doctor and find a way. Today it's very easily prescribed, you know. Um they know, so uh at least here they know, but you cannot just look at the medical profession and say you know everything. As a human being, you know your own body, you know, and so it takes the doctor, it takes knowledge, it takes all kinds of professions for you to be able to trust in where your world and your body is going to be going in your life. And uh yeah, there's so many things that doctors are, you know, that's their model. That is what they do. They're supposed to do that. But your responsibility really is to yourself, and everybody has an instinct, and so on. And really, you know, what you're doing is so powerful, and your book and getting out there and your clinic, and you also had to reclaim your vitality. You also had many life tests. How do you keep that strength and vitality when the world is knocking you? Like you lost your house, everything is but was falling apart. What do you do? Goodness.

Dr Prudence Hall: 25:53

Well, I lost my house when the Palisades fire, just to clarify things, along with uh several thousand other people. So as life arises, I accept it. It's arising, it's happening. And I don't argue with what is happening. Uh I just don't. That relationship didn't work out with whatever. Okay, that's what happened. I I work very hard on relationships and keeping them uh healthy and everything. But if something in that situation doesn't work out, I accept it. And it's like, so um going forward, what might I best do to bring joy and vitality to myself now that this relationship has failed? What might I best do? So I ask myself questions that are empowering questions, not like, oh dear, you know, gosh, why did that happen? What how would I how was I deficient? You know, what could I have done to save my house? Why did I not take anything out of the house when I was fleeing the house? You know, I mean the why questions are so cruel. And I am really loving to myself and I treat myself in a way like I did my children, which is that they're precious. I've done a lot of work with trauma, a lot of medical school trauma, what I saw too. So it's it's um it's it's tending to the body. I exercise, I'm eating beautifully, uh, I am thinking thoughts that are empowering and positive. I'm I'm on a mission that I love. Um I I bring joy. At the end of this conference, they went around and asked the panelist, what would you like to say is the most important thing that that you have that you want to tell the audience? And Dr. Dale Bredison said, uh, to love. No, no, that that was another person who said to love. He said to bring joy into your life. And it's just like, yes. How do we, and it's music, it's friends, it's my partner, it's it's uh it's being in service. All of this is very uh joyful. And uh, and you're you're right, Beverly. Hormones have tipped about five years ago. People started saying, oh my gosh, they do help to prevent disease, they do change the physiology. Menopause is a death process. Let's stay youthful. So this field of aging has grown, and uh hormones are now very accepted. And my patients are saying, Well, Prudence, you kind of knew that about 20 years ahead of us, and it's like, well, look, it happens when it happens, and it takes about 20, 25 years to bring data into the practice, into actual practice of medicine. So it's you know, we'll be joyful together. And I I hope you got your hormones. I'm glad you were Oh, I did.

Beverley Glazer: 28:48

I get them all the time. No problem now.

Dr Prudence Hall: 28:51

Yeah.

Beverley Glazer: 28:51

So what can you tell women who are over 50 and really do feel that their best lives are over?

Dr Prudence Hall: 28:59

Okay, so first of all, your life is not over. You have another 40 years, another 50 years, maybe another 30 years, but you have almost half of your life left. And how you manage your hormones as well as your lifestyle will determine the the next half of your life. So be an advocate for yourself. Learn about this. There's some wonderful podcasts out there. And get my book. My book is free, guys. It's online. Just get it. Suzanne Summers wrote the forward, and she really pushed me to write this book. And I wrote it. So it's all about menopause and each perimenopause, menopause, low thyroid, low adrenals, and we have to correct all of those to really have you know a healthy, vital body. And to heal your trauma, you know, get help with that. And life, life in this plane is very dense and traumatic, and there's reactivity with that. I mean, recently, with all the work I've done, I was talking with my partner and we were talking about the conference, and he said something. I said, Oh, no, no, it's obesogens that we were talking about. He said, No, it's not. And I said, Are you sure? It's obesogens. And he said, No, we were talking about weight loss. This was a brand new concept of how you lose weight and these obesogens that are involved in that. I said, I bet you $5,000 that I'm right. And he said, I don't want to bring competition into our relationship. Please. And I broke down into tears, just beverly, I just lost it. And once again, I realized, okay, this is past trauma. And even though I've worked on that, it's past, it's past trauma that causes that kind of reactivity and it causes that, you know, humans to be separate from each other. And he just held me and said, I'm here for you, which was beautiful. He wasn't trying to fix it, I'm here for you. And and but when we heal our trauma, there are much less instances like what happened with me. I mean, I was in the fight, you know, and it was just like, God, what can I do to make our relationship the best it can possibly be? And he was right, it's not competition. Yeah. So that is, you know, we're never done healing. We're never done healing.

Beverley Glazer: 31:24

No, no.

Dr Prudence Hall: 31:25

We're the triggers.

Beverley Glazer: 31:27

Yes, and finding the joy, finding the joy, that hug meant everything. Dr. Prudence Hall is an OBGYN, an author, and founder of the Hall Center, where she helps thousands of women restore balance, vitality, and purpose in every stage of their lives. Dr. Hall blends traditional medicine with spiritual wisdom, and her book, Radiant Again and Forever, has inspired women throughout the world to find resilience, purpose, and passion for the rest of their lives. Here are a few takeaways from this episode. Healing starts when you find the cause, not only treat the symptoms, your mind, body, and spirit are connected. You need to take care of all three. And aging with purpose can be your most powerful chapter yet. If you've been relating to this episode, here are a few things you can do for yourself right now. First, schedule a health check that includes hormone testing too. Add one mind-body ritual. Breath work, journaling, or gratitude. This will reset your energy and don't make excuses. Do what you need to take care of yourself. For similar episodes on reclaiming your health, check out episode 110 of Aging with Purpose and Passion. And you may also enjoy Wellness Wednesdays, hosted by gerontologist Sally Duplantier. These free webinars feature topics on healthy aging.com to learn more. And that link will also be in the show notes too. And so, Prudence, where can people learn more about you and find your book? It's out on the internet. Where can they find you?

Dr Prudence Hall: 33:24

So the book is for free on my website, thehallcenter.com. I also have um uh Dr. Prudence Hall as a website, and I I but that's under a little bit of uh uh redoing right now. And you just put your email in, and the book downloads to your email. All the copies of my book burned in the fire. I had them all at home. Um, but that's okay. I someone gave me a book that I'd given to them, so I have one copy, but it's it's it goes right to your email for free. Um and I I I like YouTube as really a better venue for the knowledge that I have to share. You know, there's some Instagram, there's my Facebook, uh uh, but probably on Instagram, I'm probably on YouTube, that's one of the better places to see me. But come to come come to my website and and uh there's a lot of data on there and uh videos and things like that too.

Beverley Glazer: 34:23

Terrific. Everything that Dr. Hall has said is going to be in the show notes. So you're gonna get all those links. You can find all her information, and it'll also be on my site too. That's reInventimpossible.com. And so, my friends, what's next for you? Are you just going through the motions or are you living a life that you truly love? Get my free guide to go from stuck to unstoppable, and that will be in the show notes too. You can connect with me, Beverley Glazer, on all social media platforms and in my positive group of women on Facebook. That's Women Over 50 Rock. And thank you for listening. Have you enjoyed this conversation? Please subscribe and help us spread the word by dropping a review and sending it to a friend. And remember, you only have one life, so live it. Purpose and cash.

Announcer: 35:23

Thank you for joining us. You can connect with Bev on her website, reinventimpossible.com. And while you're there, join our newsletter. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep aging with purpose and passion. And celebrate life.