Leg Hair, Estrogen Patches & Taco Bell

🤨 Three Topics That Should Never Be in the Same Episode (But Are)

Today we’re talking about:

• Why women mysteriously stop growing leg hair as they age

• Why your estrogen patch might feel like it “stopped working”

• And why Taco Bell Supreme has sent my client to the ER every single time she eats it

This is not a shock-value episode. This is a “your body is communicating very clearly and you should probably listen” episode.

🦵 Why You’re Not Shaving Your Legs Anymore (And Why That Matters)

At some point — usually late 30s or 40s — many women notice:

• No stubble

• No sandpaper phase

• Weeks go by… and nothing grows

It feels convenient. It also means something.

What’s actually happening:

• Leg hair growth is driven by androgens (testosterone + DHT)

• As ovarian and adrenal hormone output declines, the signal weakens

• Hair follicles are signal-dependent, not loyal

• Growth slows → hair gets finer → follicles go quiet

This process is called follicular miniaturization.

Same biology as scalp hair thinning — just a very different emotional reaction.

Why I care:

Hair growth is a non-essential function. So is muscle.

When your body stops prioritizing hair growth, it’s often signaling:

• Lower thyroid output

• Reduced circulation

• Insulin resistance

• Hormonal downshifts

Which is exactly why “I lift weights and eat protein” is not enough to build muscle in midlife. You have to create the right internal environment.

(Yes — Muscle Month teaches exactly that. More on timing below.)

🔄 Why Your Estrogen Patch “Stopped Working”

This came up within an hour of recording.

You start HRT → feel great → months later → bloodwork drops → symptoms creep back → “My patch isn’t working anymore.”

Here’s the truth:

🧠 Hormones don’t act alone — receptors matter

Hormones are keys. Receptors are locks.

If the lock stops responding, it doesn’t matter how many keys you send.

Estrogen receptors are:

• Active decision-makers

• Highly responsive to variation

• Easily bored by repetition

When you place your estrogen patch in the same spot over and over, receptors can:

• Downregulate

• Reduce absorption efficiency

• Become less responsive locally

Try this instead:

Rotate thoughtfully:

• Lower abdomen → opposite side

• Upper outer glute → opposite side

• Change regions every 2–3 months

This respects receptor biology, not just convenience — and many women see steadier bloodwork as a result.

🌮 Why Taco Bell Supreme Keeps Sending My Client to the ER

This one’s funny… until it isn’t.

My client:

• Eats Taco Bell Supreme

• Vomits violently

• Ends up in the ER

• Repeats the cycle

This is not food poisoning. It’s a perfect biochemical storm.

🚨 The likely culprits: 1. Histamine overload

• Processed meats, cheese sauces, tomatoes, seasoning blends

• Common trigger in midlife, estrogen-dominant women

• Worse with gut permeability issues

Symptoms can include:

• Nausea

• Vomiting

• Dizziness

• Rapid heart rate

• ER-level reactions

(If wine suddenly wrecks you now — same category.)

2. Seed oils & emulsifiers

• Soybean oil, canola oil, stabilizers

• Increase gut permeability

• Let things into the bloodstream that don’t belong there

Your immune system sees that and hits the panic button.

3. Gluten + FODMAP spice combo

Even without celiac:

• Gluten increases zonulin

• Zonulin loosens gut lining

• Onion/garlic powders + spices irritate an already inflamed gut

This can trigger mast cell activation and full-body reactions.

4. Gallbladder slowdown

• Estrogen slows bile release

• High-fat meals require strong bile flow

• Sluggish bile → nausea → vomiting

So no — it’s not Taco Bell. It’s the context.

🧩 What Do Leg Hair, Estrogen Patches & Taco Bell Have in Common?

They all point to the same truth:

Midlife isn’t about being fragile — but it is less forgiving.

You can’t ignore:

• Receptor biology

• Gut health

• Hormonal context

• Metabolic signals

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Hi.
I am Joanne Lee Cornish body composition coach and slightly obsessed with being an outlier in midlife and beyond.
I offer one-on-one coaching.
I have seven group coaching programs that I run throughout the year, and I also have a 10 month mentorship program.
You can find out all about those and a lot more at my website.

(00:28):
Joanne lee.com.
Okay, let's get on with this podcast.
Hello.
Hello, and welcome back to Midlife.
Maam, today we are covering three topics that absolutely should not be belong in the same sentence.
But here we are anyway.

(00:49):
Today we're gonna talk about why women mysteriously lose leg hair as they get older.
We're gonna talk about why your estrogen patch might have stopped working and why Taco Bell Supreme has sent my client to the emergency room every single time she eats it.
So, you know, the, the podcast, I have so many topics that I want to cover.

(01:13):
Uh, the list is always there, and yet my clients and my friends bring up the best topics.
Uh.
On a frequent, very, very frequently.
So these three topics actually came up just this week, and I thought it would make a, uh, very fun, impromptu podcast because this is not the topic or they're not the topics I was gonna talk about now, before I start, one quick, quick, quick, quick thing.

(01:37):
Here's my Muscle Month program.
I have had to postpone it.
I was meant to start it next week, and the thing about Muscle Month, it's the only program that I coach that I actually have to be at home for the whole month.
I have a full commercial gym at home and I film a lot in the, in the gym, so I have to be at home the whole month for Muscle Month, and a few things have come up, all of which are good.

(02:02):
But, uh, I cannot be here.
I cannot stay home for the whole month.
And I was getting a little bit stressed about how I was gonna do it.
And I was trying to figure out how I was gonna, I, you know, I don't even like running my programs when I'm not at home because I haven't got my notes in my, my big computer and, but Muscle Month, I just can't.
So I've had to postpone it and it's going to be back.

(02:24):
Which really throws everything off for the air, honestly.
But maybe I was being a bit too optimistic with running my programs back to back.
But anyway, so we'll be back at the end of March date to be, uh, advised.
But I'm thinking the Sunday, March the 29th, I, I'll change the dates on the website anyway, back to the topics in hand.

(02:46):
So.
This is not your shock value episode.
This is, you know, this is these three, these things are your, your body communicating very clearly and that we should probably listen episode.
That's where we're going with this.
So let's start with the leg hair, because if you're a woman over, I don't know, 38, 40, you might have noticed a strange thing.

(03:13):
At some point you forget to shave your legs.
Then you forget again, and then you realize, well, it's been three weeks and I still haven't shaved my legs.
And you're thinking, you know, is it my eyesight? Can I just not see this? Do I look like a, a fuzzy, fuzzy animal if my eyesight was better? But you feel, you are like, there's no stubble, there's no sandpaper feeling, there's no like porcupine phase.

(03:34):
You've just got these smooth legs and you kinda like it, but it's kinda weird as well.
So.
Hair growth especially, especially body hair, like leg hair, is driven largely by androgens, meaning testosterone and DHT, the most powerful conversion of testosterone.

(04:01):
I know that.
So this doesn't mean, you know, suddenly women's top having testosterone, but it does mean that the signal of testosterone gets weaker as women age.
Ovarian hormone production declines.
And you know, that is where, you know, some of the test testosterone was made in adrenal androgen production, even declines.

(04:23):
And the hair follicles just receive less stimulation to grow.
So the hair follicles not particularly loyal.
They are very, uh, signal dependent.
So when the signal stops.
Or, or is less, then the hair grows more slowly, the hair becomes finer, the hair becomes lighter, and eventually the follicles go quiet.

(04:50):
So this is called, uh, follicular, um, miniaturization.
And it's kind of interesting.
So this is that, the exact same process that's happening elsewhere in the body, you know, but on your, on your scalp, we, we panic, uh, on your legs.
We kind of celebrate it.
So it's the same biology, the def different emotional reaction.

(05:11):
So when you're talking about, um, it's not just hormones.
We have thyroid matters.
Thyroid function matters.
Insulin sensitivity, or should I say insulin resistant matters.
So what's up with the thyroid? So hypothyroidism, which is incredibly common in midlife, and you've heard me talk about my thyroid medication, which I'm thrilled that I only have to take half the dose now.

(05:40):
That was great.
Um, but yeah, so hypothyroidism is, uh, very, very common in midlife women, and that slows everything down, including hair growth.
If we have reduced circulation, that means reduced nutrient delivery to the hair follicles and insulin resistance, which is avoidable, but it's, it's very, very common.

(06:05):
That also alters androgen conversion and signaling.
So when a woman says, you know, I don't really don't get leg hair anymore, and she's loving that.
They're actually, what it actually means is my body is no longer prioritizing non-essential growth functions, but they, but that's kind of important because, you know, muscle is also considered a non-essential, you know, growth function.

(06:34):
And, you know, I hop on and on about muscle, but I, I think.
People think, oh, if I'm, I'm lifting some weights.
I eat some protein, I'm gonna get muscle.
It's, it's not, not like that.
I mean, it's a non-essential.
The body D doesn't go, doesn't build muscle unless the, the environment is really, really spot on.
Which is why you should do Muscle Month and you've got another month to think about it.

(06:57):
But yeah, so, um, hair is definitely a non-essential growth function and, and so indeed is, is muscle.
You have to convince your body otherwise.
So the hair reduction on the legs, um, definitely applies to me.
Um, kind of like it, but it also kind of bothers me a little bit.

(07:18):
Yeah.
Uh, the hair follicle shrinking, so that is partly estrogen.
Estrogen will reduce the size of the hair follicle, and that is why the hair on your legs is getting finer.
But that's also why our hair generally can get finer because if the follicle is smaller, the hair that grows out the follicle is thinner.

(07:40):
So, you know, if you're getting this again and you haven't had your hormone check hormones checked, please go check your hormones.
You wanna know what your estrogen is.
You wanna know what your testosterone is.
Uh, you wanna check, check your adrenal functions, you wanna check your thyroid because they're all, they're all important when it comes to hair growth.
And even though you might like, like not having the leg hair growth, it can be going on on your scalp as well.

(08:09):
That's kind of a nice little segue into the next part of the podcast and this, this literally came up within the last hour and a half when I was speaking to a girlfriend of mine and.
Rotating your estrogen patch.
So if you are taking a he estrogen, HRT, maybe you're taking a cream and maybe you're using a patch.

(08:30):
I even see some women are actually injecting it.
Now, I don't know what this fascination with needles is.
If we, I mean, I, I am not opposed, needles not scared at all of them, but you know, if I don't have to, I'm certainly not, you know, waving my hand around volunteering for it.
Um.
So I feel like most women, when they say start HRT, they use a cream.

(08:52):
And then as they get a little bit older, myself included, we moved over to a patch.
Super convenient.
But what I also hear is, oh, my estrogen, I'm doing the estrogen patch, but my estrogen's actually decreasing.
You know, it, it's not up anymore.
My, my patch isn't work.
My patch isn't working anymore.
At first it worked really great and now it's not.

(09:14):
And you know.
Usually estrogen is, is not the issue.
It's the receptors that are the issue.
It's, so let's just back up and talk about a re, what a receptor is.
So a hormone produced from a gland floats around around in your blood and it attaches to a receptor on the cell.

(09:37):
Imagine that it's like a, a key floating around in your blood and it finds the lock and the key goes in the lock turns the lock.
And that tells the cell the message of the hormone.
So a key can only fit into its own lock, can't fit into an ano any lock.
It can only fit into its own lock, and a hormone can only fit to its own receptor.

(09:59):
So estrogen can only fit to an estrogen receptor.
Esto.
Estrogen can't fit to a, uh, cortisol receptor or testosterone receptor.
It can only fit so you get it.
And so the receptors are excuse upon key.
The receptors are, and the hormone is only as good as the receptor because the hormone has to come along, attached to the receptor, and then the receptor gives the message of the hormone to the cell.

(10:26):
So when there's an estrogen, uh, an issue with the estrogen patches, it's usually not the estrogen, but it's more likely the receptors because the receptors aren't like, you know.
Passive key locks.
They're not like passive mailboxes or something.
The receptors are actually active decision makers.
And if your estrogen receptor has a, had a personality, you know, your estrogen receptor would be a little bit dramatic.

(10:55):
It would be, uh, deeply uninterested in repetition, and it would be easily bored.
That's if your receptor had a personality.
So when you place an estrogen patch in the same exact spot over and over again, then what happens is that the Es the the local estrogen receptors.
So say you're doing it on your abdomen, even if you switch inside.

(11:18):
But if you're placing that patch in the same spot all the time, then that local estrogen receptor can D, can downregulate the absorption efficiency will decrease, and also the skin can get a little bit irritated and a little bit less responsive as well.
So I know a, a lot of people will switch from side to side on their, on their abdomen, but even that might not be enough.

(11:45):
Uh, and what can happen over time is, you know, the hormones arriving, the receptors just aren't answering the door anymore.
Um, so what, what, how does this work best for receptors? The, the receptors respond really, really well to variation.
Um, that's, you know, that's how your body just naturally works.

(12:06):
Um, hormones fluctuate that they're, it's not like some drip feed one square inch of the skin forever, so the rotation really does matter.
So the rotation, like I say, a lot of people rotate side to side, but what also.
Might be wise is rotating between the lower abdomen, which most ad do, and then go to the upper outer glute, and then the other upper outer glute.

(12:29):
So kind of work in a, a circle.
So maybe you're working on your, you know, your, your, your left abdomen, then your right abdomen, then your right, uh, upper glute, and then your left upper glute.
And maybe you do, you know, two months on each, each spot or maybe three months on each spot and you just rotate round.
Um.

(12:50):
This is just going to really respect, um, receptor biology.
And you might find that, um, your estrogen work, your blood work, when you do it, actually stays more elevated.
You might have seen a decline, and this could be why.
The third topic, this came up last night.

(13:13):
With, uh, my lovely, lovely, uh, lady, and I know she listens to the podcast, so this is for you.
Love not gonna name you.
This is for you.
Let's talk about Taco Bell.
My husband teases me because I've never ate fast food.
Uh, ever.

(13:34):
I've never had a McDonald's.
I've never had an inn out.
I've never, never ate at Taco Bell.
I've never had a, you, you name it, burger King.
You never had it.
I have had the milkshakes out of, uh, McDonald's when I was, um, I remember drinking 'em in Australia, so I was 20 between 25 and, uh, 25 and 27 there.

(13:56):
But that's gonna be that.
And now I'm sure I've ate some french fries out of McDonald's 'cause I'm sure I've like pinched them off a friend's plate or something like that.
But I've never ordered it.
I have ordered a, a milkshake that vanilla milkshake when you, it's like a, a workout, it's so thick you can't get through the straw.
But again, it's been decades since I did that.
So I don't know much about fast food.

(14:17):
And that's not because I'm so, you know, virtuous or anything like that.
It's just because I started competing when I was very young.
So I started in the bodybuilding world.
My first competition was, you know, as a teenager, so you know, I was doing competition diets when other people were doing fast food, and that was also around the era in England.

(14:40):
It, it wasn't on every corner by then.
I do remember having Kentucky Fried Chicken once.
I will say that, but other than that, no.
Never.
And again, I'm going back to when I was 18 years old because I remember the gravy from, from, um, is it still good? It used to be really good.
Anyway, so one of my clients last, like, she's talking about Taco Bell.

(15:01):
And in this, this story, I'm saying it in a bit of humor, but it's not really funny until you understand what's happening.
So my client loves to eat Taco Bell Soup Supreme.
And she has to drive past it all the time, and she will often do it.
And she ends up in hospital like every time she vomits violently and she ends up in hospital every single time.

(15:27):
Now the joke there is like, and you keep doing it.
And we had that little conversation last night, but then you might think, oh, it's food poisoning.
It's bad luck.
Um, but no, no, no, not, not necessarily what, what can be going on here, especially with it happening every single time, and it's not necessarily one ingredient.

(15:49):
It's more of a perfect storm.
So the first thing I would talk about is histamine.
So the histamine is really high in processed meats.
Uh, cheese sauces, really high tomatoes.
Some of the seasoning blends are incredibly high in histamine, or they're either very high in histamine or they trigger a histamine release And a histamine release, or, sorry, sorry.

(16:18):
Histamine intolerance is extremely common in middle-aged women, estrogen dominant states.
Where, and that's middle-aged women and people with gut permeability issues.
Now, this lady hits all three.
Midlife lady, estrogen dominant, and she's had a lot of gut issues, I mean, to the level of multiple surgeries.

(16:46):
So yes, histamine intolerance is really going to hit her hard.
I mean, I know my histamine intolerance is definitely higher, and I know that because I can't drink wine.
I mean, I can.
But I'm gonna have a horrible reaction if I do, and that's the histamines in wine.
So I hear that a lot as well.
Oh, I used to be able to drink wine.
I can't drink it anymore.
And that's the category I'm under is the histamine.

(17:11):
Um, and very, very, very much, uh, linked to, um, to fluctuating estrogen.
Alright.
What if you do get either a very high histamine food or a food that is triggering the histamine release, what in extreme cases will this cause? Nausea, vomiting, dizziness, a rapid heart rate, um, emergency room level, reactions in sensitive people.

(17:39):
And again, estrogen amplifies this, uh, histamine response.
Now with histamine, like, same with my wine.
I, I didn't end up in hospital, but rapid heart rate, like there's no way I was gonna sleep after a glass of wine.
And for me, incredible flushing.
And, and, and that's your skin irritation.
That's what I would get.

(18:00):
So definitely with this lady, uh, she ticks all the boxes for a histamine intolerance, especially with the gut permeability issues that she's had.
Um, next up the emulsifiers, the, the seed oils.
So we've got the soybean oil, we've got the canola oil, we've got stabilized, there's emulsifiers, and all of these are gonna do a number to our gut lining.

(18:23):
So they are going to increase the intestinal permeability.
And I can't believe I even have to describe this again because is this like the millionth and two time that I've talked about gut permeability, leaky gut? I'm not, I'm, if you follow me, you, you've heard this before.
Okay.
Do I have to say it again? Oh my God.
Okay, so increased in intestinal permeability.

(18:45):
So basically your intestines.
Um, the lining of should be like cheesecloth.
So you know, if you pour liquid through cheesecloth.
Uh, you know, it drains through, but you know, it keeps any solids on one side.
Well, you imagine you change that cheese cloth into fishnet stockings and now you've got big old holes in the cheese cloth and anything can get through.

(19:05):
That's what I'm talking about when I talk about intestinal permeability, leaky gut.
So these oils, these, uh, stabilizes, these disrupt the glut lining.
These can increase.
The holes in your gut.
Let's put it like that.
So that means that substances, like I said, that should stay in your gut, suddenly enter the bloodstream when they enter your bloodstream and they're meant to stay in your gut.

(19:32):
Then the immune system is like, what on earth is this? What is this in the blood? I don't recognize this.
And the immune system does what the immune system is meant to do.
It goes to fight for you.
It goes to fight anything it doesn't recognize.
So now your immune system is attacking, you know, the foods that have got through your gut and it enters in into your blood when they shouldn't be there in that form.

(19:58):
So your immune system notices your nervous system is going to react, and your body just hits like the eject button.
So yeah, we've got the histamine intolerance, we've got the, uh, leaky gut that is caused and made worse.
Then you've also got this, um, gluten FODMAP spice combo.

(20:20):
So even if you don't have celiac disease, gluten increases gut permeability.
I, I know I've done a podcast on this.
It, you're gonna have to go way, way back, but this is alright.
Lemme just take a sidebar here and, and explain this.
'cause this is, this is important.

(20:42):
People think that a gluten intolerance, some people think it's real, some people think it's fake things.
Some people think, oh, it's just marketing nonsense and everyone just wants to sell you a gluten-free, blah, blah, blah.
That's not true.
Now, some people are more sensitive than others, but what gluten does period to everybody, it increases a thing called zonulin.

(21:04):
And an increase in zolin increases pop gut, gut permeability.
It increases the looseness of the gut lining.
It, it, it creates those holes.
It doesn't create the holes, but imagine the cheesecloth and then you loosen the thread, and now the thread's all loose with holes in it.
That's what zonulin does.
Gluten increases zonulin.

(21:26):
I don't care who you are.
So when people say, oh, glutenin says, that's nonsense, that's not real.
Absolutely not true.
Look up zonulin.
Now it's a dose dependent thing, right? So if you read a bit of gluten now and again, but of zonulin body can work with that.
But if you're eating gluten every meal, then that's a problem that that zonulin is going to cause.

(21:49):
Uh, gut permeability issues.
I, I, I hear that a lot.
So I had to a little segue.
People that think, because there's a lot of gluten-free products, they just think it's marketing nonsense.
Um, this, I cover a lot in my tight 28 program.
I don't even know when I'm gonna do that.
No, no.
Good gracious.
So yeah, so now you've got this, the Taco Bell.

(22:11):
So you've got the gluten.
So even without celiac disease, that gluten increases gut per permeability.
Um.
Now if you add that to somebody that's eaten a lot of other gluten, that situation is worth.
Then you've got the onion and the garlic powders that are high in fodmap.
You've got the spices that irritate and are not already inflamed gut, and this combination alone can trigger the mast cells of your immune system to react.

(22:38):
So what have we got so far? We've got the histamines, we've got the oils and the emulsifiers, and we've got the, the gluten and the spice combo.
What else? One more.
One more.
The gallbladder.

(22:59):
What about estrogen slows the gallbladder emptying.
High fat meal.
So what does the gallbladder do? The gallbladder stalls bile, bile, emulsifies fat.
So when we have fat in our meal, we need to emulsify the fat to digest it, and we need the bile that is made in the liver, but stored in the gallbladder To do that, estrogen slows.

(23:26):
Gallbladder emptying high fat meal require store bile rollies.
If bile flow is sluggish that sits in the stomach, nausea, escalate, vomiting can follow.
So this is why some women can eat a burger no problem, but a Taco Bell, Supreme sends 'em to the er, not the food.

(23:54):
It's the context.
If the body is already inflamed, if it's already sensitive, it's already compromised, and then you're basically handed a biochemical grenade, you know, bad things can happen.
I'm sure this isn't isolated to just Taco Bell, although my lady says she can eat anything else, and she listed off a whole lot of places.

(24:17):
She said it was only Taco Bell.
So again, histamine response because the processed meats, the cheeses, the tomatoes, the seasoning blends high, high histamine or a trigger for histamine release, which is made worse.
If you're a midlife woman.
Um, if you're a midlife woman and you're estrogen dominant and you have gut issues, it's a lot worse.

(24:38):
You're gonna feel sick, you're gonna feel dizzy, you're gonna get a rapid heart rate.
And in this case, this lady ends up in the er.
Now's a kinda interesting podcast, huh? So leg hair, estrogen pouches, and Taco Bell.
What do they have in common? That's a jeopardy question, but they all point to the same truth.

(25:02):
Midlife is not about being fragile, but it is a lot less the giving.
There's a lot of things that you could ignore, ignore when you were younger, but you can't anymore.
You can't ignore receptor biology, you cannot ignore gut health.
Um, you know, we just can't eat like a 22-year-old with a bulletproof liver and, you know, with zero consequences anymore.

(25:28):
Okay.
I think that's it for Midlife Mayhan, this episode.
I hope you love it.
I hope you subscribe.
I hope you've checked out my new [e-mail].
Ah, what else do I want you to know? So my, the supplements I sell, they're over on the website now and yes, muscle Month.
Ah, man, I was stressing myself out.

(25:50):
I was giving myself anxiety, trying to figure out how to do it, and, um.
You know, I'm coaching the Victory Vault program right now and it was actually my own coaching in that program that was like, John, what are you doing? Just postpone it.
It's okay.
I love coaching and I love it to be a really great experience and that was gonna stress me out.

(26:11):
So, uh, that's gonna be shifted, um, till the end of March.
'cause I've got a few trips I have to do.
But anyway, muscle month.com.
All right, so go shave your legs.
I do hope you enjoyed this podcast.

(26:33):
You can find me all over social.
Just search my name, Joanne Lee Cornish, and of course my website, joanne lee.com.
Be sure to check out what program I have got right now, I'm sure to be running something.
And remember, you can always contact me, [e-mail].
Until next time.