In this episode, Dr. Malaika Woods discusses her journey from traditional obstetrics to functional medicine. She is now focused on the importance of understanding hormones for optimal health. She shares insights on personal weight loss journey, the mental aspects of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and the common hormonal issues women face, particularly during menopause.

Dr. Woods also explains the significance of hormone replacement therapy, different methods of administration, and the importance of testosterone for both women and men.

You can find Dr. Woods at her website, https://drwoodswellness.com/

Takeaways

• Weight loss is easier than maintenance; mental aspects are crucial.


• Nutrition, stress management, and inflammation are key pillars of health.


• Women often experience hormonal changes in their 40s and 50s.


• Hormone replacement therapy can reduce risks of various diseases.


• Bioidentical hormones are preferred for their safety and efficacy.


• Testosterone is vital for women’s health and often overlooked.


• Men also experience low testosterone, impacting their health significantly

Watch on YouTube

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Episode Transcript

Cheryl McColgan (00:01 .111)
Hi everyone, welcome to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. Today I have Dr. Malekah Woods and she is a specialist in women’s health. She talks a lot about hormones and she also sees men patients. So if you’re a man, don’t click away. Plus you need to know this stuff about women’s health as well. So all that being said.

Dr. Malaika Woods (00:17 .592)
Bye.

Cheryl McColgan (00:19 .428)
Welcome Dr. Woods. I would love if you could share with people a little bit about your background. How did you come to this line of work and any personal health and wellness thing that speaks to why you’re so passionate about this now.

Dr. Malaika Woods (00:32 .175)
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Cheryl. So just to give you kind of a brief synopsis of my background, I actually wanted to deliver babies back in eighth grade. So that’s how it all started. ended up being fast forward to 2011. I was a full -time OB -GYN and a very busy practice. I was a year out from having my second kid and seeing 30, 40 people a day. It was supposed to be the ideal job, but I was stressed out. I was a mother with, you know, a five -year -old and a one -year -old.

And I was overweight. I was about 240 pounds and I knew I needed to do something different with my own health. And so that was my first step into looking at something other than traditional obstetrics and gynecology, which is what I’m board certified in. So my first journey was weight loss and I actually got board certified in obesity medicine. And over the course of 2011 to 2013, I lost 60 pounds. I tried a lot of different things and we may get into some of that down the road.

And then I learned about bioidentical hormones. And I thought, wow, I’m an OB -GYN, but I don’t really know anything about bioidentical hormones. And so I got certified in BHRT, bioidentical hormones for short. And then I learned about functional medicine. And all of this happened in a short span of time, probably around 2011 to 2014. And when I learned that functional medicine was about root cause approaches and natural solutions, I was like, okay, wow, this is what I’ve been missing all along.

And so functional medicine is now what I do. It is the umbrella under which I offer those other services, whether it’s hormone optimization, weight loss, thyroid support, a lot of different things, but that’s kind of what brought me to where I am today.

Cheryl McColgan (02:11 .612)
my gosh, I get so excited when I talk to health professionals like yourself that are really going away from sort of the traditional paradigm of just, you know, fix it with a pill or something and where it’s really like a whole systems approach and, you know, getting to the root cause with functional medicine. Do you think that, you know, you mentioned that you had a weight loss journey, which I think is a really amazing background for you to have as an obesity medicine specialist now.

Can you maybe share a little bit with people, you know, what were your frustrations with that process? What did you learn along the way? Just speaking from not as a doctor, but just as a person who had success losing a great amount of weight. I’m sure everybody would love to hear how you did that. What were your struggles? What were your triumphs and you know, any tips and tricks you may have.

Dr. Malaika Woods (03:00 .463)
Yeah, absolutely. I would say one thing for sure that everyone really needs to tap into is the mental aspect of weight loss. And so one of the things that I say to people all the time, and I found it to be true with myself, in a lot of cases is easy to lose weight, but it’s harder to keep it off. So it’s kind of that idea that you can jump on a bandwagon for a short period of time, but it’s hard to sustain something. And something that was a game changer for me, and I actually have, think the workbook behind me, kind of that pink book.

It’s called, train your brain to think like a thin person. And it’s actually using the concepts of cognitive behavioral therapy to help you with weight loss. And it is written by Dr. Beck, who is the daughter of the original Dr. Beck who came up with CBT to begin with. But I found that what I was doing as a heavy person is that I was looking for excuses, honestly. And I was thinking like,

life is unfair, like it’s unfair that this other person is so thin. I’ll take, for example, I had a medical assistant in my office who was very fit. And when I really analyze it, it’s not like, it’s not fair that she’s so thin. She brought her workout clothes to work every day. And she went to work out after work. And when the drug reps, before I went all functional medicine, when they would bring us lunch, she would have a salad and I would have a sandwich and a cookie. So you start to really say, hmm, what am I doing?

Cheryl McColgan (04:25 .049)
You

Dr. Malaika Woods (04:28 .612)
So one of the things that I learned is that I have to take responsibility. The other thing I learned is that, you know, it’s important to have a community and to have support. So one of my phases of weight loss is that I got into P90X back when that was popular and I did it with my husband and he was a great support. And we did all those, you know, crazy videos together. I’ll say crazy because, you know, there were stories that people were hurting themselves and kind of doing a little too much.

Cheryl McColgan (04:43 .642)
Yes.

Dr. Malaika Woods (04:54 .95)
but we did that together. And so I think the