FMP Essentials: Functional Medicine Practitioner Show · Dr. Yousef Elyaman

Understanding Perimenopause Through Functional Medicine with Dr. Tara Scott

·1 hr 19 min·2 clips

Dr. Yousef Elyaman introduces Dr. Tara Scott as a well-known voice in the hormone space. He sets the conversation around functional medicine and hormone testing. The discussion begins with the basic question of why these labs matter. It then moves into DHEAS. Dr. Scott explains that DHEAS is often checked on its own, but total DHEA can give another angle. She notes that supplement use can muddy the picture. If someone is taking DHEA, she says, the lab result can shift for a while. That is part of why she started ordering unconjugated DHEA. It is less exposed to the same supplementation noise. The conversation also touches stress physiology. When cortisol rises, DHEA may rise too as the body tries to balance stress. That idea leads into a practical discussion of why DHEA is sometimes used in certain clinical settings. From there, the episode turns to estrogen and progesterone. Dr. Scott says she does not lean on a simple estrogen-to-progesterone ratio. Instead, she looks at quartiles and context. She walks through how a lab range can look statistically normal without being especially useful. She also points out that those ranges change over time. That makes older habits around interpretation less reliable than they once were. The back-and-forth stays conversational, with the host repeating points and asking for plain-language explanations. The result feels more like a teaching conversation than a polished lecture. It ends with the show’s usual close and a reminder to follow along for more practitioner-focused material. A link to Dr. Scott’s book is mentioned near the end.

As heard by us

A practical, lab-heavy functional-medicine discussion that treats hormone interpretation with real care.

The episode follows Dr. Tara Scott and Dr. Yousef Elyaman through a functional-medicine discussion of hormone testing and lab interpretation. Much of the conversation turns on DHEAS, DHEA supplementation, estrogen, progesterone, and the way ranges and quartiles can change what…

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Press play if you want hormone lab talk through a functional medicine lens.

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