Optimizing Female Health, Mindy Pelz on Fasting, Menopause, and Fertility

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We are living in a world that's telling women what
we should look like, what we should be doing. That
is making us feel unsafe, and that is destroying us for.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Monally, Doctor Mindi Pel's I'm so excited to have you here,
and I think the work that you are doing is
just so important.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
So I experimented with these five women and I said,
let's give it ninety days of this. All of them
within thirty days got pregnant.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
No way, And so should women be fasting?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
And this is going to sound like I'm contradicting myself,
but it's an absolute yes, and there are sometimes it's no.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm Radivka And on my podcast A really Good Cry,
we embrace the messy and the beautiful, providing a space
for raw, unfiltered conversations that celebrate vulnerability and allow you
to tune in to learn, connect and find comfort together. Mindy,
thank you, thank you so much for being here. I
have been a fan for a very long time. And

(00:57):
your Instagram videos, whatever podcast you go on seem to
be on my feed of going viral constantly. And it's
not just what you speak about your nature. Since the
moment you walked in the door, you have such a calm,
warm energy. So thank you so much for bringing that
into my home.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Oh, thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
No, I really I feel like I'm so excited to
have you here. And I think the work that you
are doing is just so important for women.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
So thank you for what you do. So the first
question I want to ask.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
You actually was what took you from a degree in
chiropractics to writing books on fasting, menopause and so many
more incredible topics.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
This is such a good question, and it's so funny
because there's some questions that people don't ask me. Yeah,
and I'm like, they should ask me this. Oh, and
that is.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
One amazing I was so intrigued. I actually want to know.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
So this is really interesting. What most people don't realize
is that in chiropractic school, you are literally trained that
the body heels itself.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
So every single class you learn, from biochemistry to neuroanatomy,
to cardiopulmonary physiology to muscule skeletal health is all through
that lens that the body is constantly doing the right
thing at the right time. When I got into practice,
I started to integrate all the different ways that people's

(02:14):
body gets off course and what are all the different
things that cause people's body to not heal? And we
call them interferences, and usually it's physical, emotional or chemical interferences.
And so I would sit with my patients. In my head,
I was like, is this physical emotional chemical?

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Like?

Speaker 1 (02:33):
What is it? And I realized that was about the time,
I mean I was in practice, like twenty seven years ago.
It was when I started my practice. It also happened
to be when glyphosate was introduced into our food system
and was starting to be sprayed on all kinds of
fruits and vegetables. And I started to see, like within

(02:55):
the first five years of practice, that people were going
from coming in with one symptom to people coming in
with like ten symptoms. And so I started to look
at environmentally, like what was going on that was attacking
so many people? And that's when I realized, wait, I gotta,
I gotta we gotta work on retraining people on how

(03:15):
to eat. We got to figure out how to help
people detox, We got to figure out how people can
get on supplements and then get off supplements. Like I
just started thinking deeper about what was causing blocking the
body from healing itself.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
It's so interesting because when you hit chiropractics, you think, oh,
it's a physical body exactly, you're fix the way that
I woke, well, the way that I move. But it's
incredible that it's so much deeper than So.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
It's the number one principle of chiropractic as the body
heals itself and our job is to just remove the interference.
So like when a patient would come in and be
like you healed me, I'd be like, no, no, no,
I didn't heal you at all. You healed you. All
we did together was figure out what was interfering. And

(04:01):
with fasting, that is where I got so excited. Yeah,
because I was like, wait a second, somebody can heal
themselves without any money. I can teach the world how
a tool where their body can heal themselves and they
don't need any time or money. Those were the biggest
hurdles that I saw.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Healing and then fasting was something that you started studying
and came across yep.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
I became obsessed with it. So there's a really famous study.
Doctor yosh Uriyosumi in twenty sixteen won the Nobel Prize
in Medicine and Physiology for a term called atophagy, and
it was that the cells detoxed themselves in the absence
of food. Well, at that time, I was doing so

(04:45):
much detox with my patients, and I was like, okay, well,
the goal of health is not to be on a
Brazilian supplements. What if I could get them to fast
and they could detox themselves without all these supplements. So
I literally, for about I don't know, five years, I
spent about twenty thirty hours a week on PubMed just
looking at all the studies on fasting and trying to

(05:07):
match them up and figure it out. And then my
YouTube channel was like a baby at that time, and
so I was like, well, let me just teach this
to my patients, let me teach it to the world.
And on YouTube, I kept asking people like, give me
your feedback, give me your feedback, tell me what you're noticing,
and people give me their feedback. And I just started
to see what was working and what wasn't working.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
And that is actually the best way to see if
something's working or not. Right, like the fact that you
the proof is in the pudding, Like you know it's
working because you are seeing it with your own eyes.
You're experiencing with your own patients, and so there is
no better evidence than firsthand experience that you are having. Yeah,
you write about women fasting, specifically, you have a book
called Fast Like a Girl. You also have a book

(05:48):
called Eat Like a Girl, don't you? Yes, Eat like
a girl or Eat like a woman?

Speaker 1 (05:51):
No, no, Eat like a girl.

Speaker 4 (05:53):
I like, a friend of mine said to me the
other day, when do I get to be a woman?

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yeah, no, I like it.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
No, you don't get to be a woman. Explain why.
I'm like you would be a woman, but not when
you're reading my books.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. Fast like
a Girl, Eat Like a Guy.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
And I think your most recent book is a book
based on menopause.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Right then Reset the menopause.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Reset actually came, but was the first one that first,
It was the very first one because as I was
discovering fasting and I was playing with some Keto principles
and I was detoxing. My practice was built off what
I call the Mama bears, where all these women came
in and they're like, can you just write down what
you're teaching?

Speaker 4 (06:27):
Is?

Speaker 1 (06:28):
So I put that into the menopause research.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Amazing, so so many different topics covered, but I went
to start with fasting. Yeah, of course, and I guess
my first question is should women be fasting? So many
things that you can absorb online, but I would love
to hear from you what your experience with the has been.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
This is going to sound like I'm contradicting myself, but
it's an absolute yes, and there are sometimes it's no yes.
So that's confusing because we like absolutes, I know, especially
when it comes to like a real yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
No one likes duality.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
No one likes no.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
One likes it, I know, but maybe right exactly, but
please expand. I would love to hear if women are
supposed to fast, when should we be fasting?

Speaker 5 (07:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (07:08):
And what are the benefits of it?

Speaker 1 (07:10):
So let's look at the primary sex hormones of that
run a woman, and they really are estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.
So the challenge that we have with every any lifestyle
tool is that estrogen and progesterone want dramatically different things.
So I always say that they're like twin sisters. They
have build the same name, we give them the same

(07:32):
category of family name sex hormones, but they have vastly
different personalities. So estrogen loves when you keep glucose and
insulin down. If you can keep glucose and insulin down,
estrogen thrives. Okay, she also doesn't really mind if cortisol
goes up. She's like, if you're stressed, She's like, no worries,

(07:53):
I can be. I can still make my appearance. I
can still be, you know, show up for you. O.
Progesterones completely the different, different animal. What she wants is
glucose to be higher, and she wants you not to
raise cortisol. Oh and intuitively we know this because what
do we do the week before our period?

Speaker 3 (08:13):
Eat chocolate?

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah? Do you know why we eat chocolate Because it
has magnesium in it and it's higher in sugar. And
so progesterones like, bring glucose up, give me some magnesium.
And then we start craving carbs, chocolate and sugar, and
then we This is the thing that drives me crazy
is because then we shame ourselves. We're like, I can't

(08:34):
stick to my diet. Something must be wrong.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Ago, yeah, perfect.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
But all progesterone is saying is like I need a
little more. I need a little more glucose. I need
the it's like making think of it like baking a cake,
like you need flour. So if you're gonna make progesterone,
you need glucose. Okay, so not good to be fasting
when progesterone is showing up, But estrogen totally great. She
loves it. You can fast all you want when she

(09:02):
shows up and.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Out of interest the workouts that you do. Does that
then make a difference because I imagine that if it's craving
a lot of glucose, If you're craving a lot of
glucose at the same time, would high intensity workouts and
those type of intense things that you're putting your body through,
would they also contradict.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, So I love that your brain went there, And
this is what I always think with fast like a girl.
I feel like we cracked open a conversation that got
a lot of women going. But okay, well what about
this and what about that? So here's the thing about
estrogen and workouts. When estrogen is high in our body,
our tendons and our ligaments and are very flexible. Right,

(09:42):
you can push your workout strong when estrogen shows up,
which is pretty much day one through day fifteen, right,
Like go ahead, do run a marathon. Push your workouts hard,
but the closer you get to ovulation, like day ten
to day fifteen, careful with your box jumps and your
hit training, because you could tear a muscle very or

(10:04):
a ligament really easily. So that's the only exception there.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
No, I've definitely experienced that.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
The first the week before my period, I have to
be so careful with how much weight I put onto
the machinefect or like if I'm doing hip thrust, then
actually the weight that I put, especially around my lower
bag or especially in my back ere or my legs,
I cannot do as heavyweights as I usually would because

(10:30):
I end up feeling back pain or end up injuring myself.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
So I've really learned.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
I lend it the hard way because I did it
a couple of years ago where I pushed myself way
too hard, and I was like, oh, there is such
a pattern I'm seeing between the week before my period
and how much I can really push myself in my workout.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
Okay, so this is a huge one. This is going
to end the question of PMS right here, is that
what you are expressing is progesterone. If she could talk
to you. She would say, Hey, week before your period,
I don't want you to raise cortisol too high. I
actually want you to do more of a recovery phase.

(11:06):
I want you to rest more. You the week before
our periods, we were meant to rest, we were meant
to raise glucose. We're not meant to push it. The
minute we push it and cortisol goes high, what happens?
I always say, progesterone goes shy, she's out. And then
all of a sudden, you were irritable because progesterone brings gabba.

(11:30):
So all of a sudden, we're irritable, we're starving, we
are you know, edgy. You don't want to be around us,
But that's because you're not playing by the rules that
progesterone has. And it's chill out, eat some carbs, relax, recover.
Once you start bleeding, boom, Now you can go into
hyper performance mode.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
And it's interesting that your body really does tell you
what it needs and what it wants, because those cravings come,
and sometimes it's not just your mind playing with you.
It's literally your body screaming at you, saying, I need
some more fuel, Give me some more.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
You'll stop your dying right now.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, And this is where like the female part of
it really gets to my heart, because we have been
taught to distrust our bodies. We've been taught that our
bodies are thriving. If there's a number on the scale,
that's the number that we like. We're taught that if
we look in the mirror and we like what we see,

(12:23):
or if we can put a filter on and Instagram
and make everybody go you look so gorgeous, that that's health. No,
your beautiful feminine body is like giving you signals all
day long. But culturally, we haven't been taught how to
clue in.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
I think we're also constantly taught how not to trust
our body, because we're told that we should always go
to other people to learn about bingo. I noticed that
so much growing up. I really I got to a
point where I was like, it's not that I just
don't know my body. I don't know my own mind.
And if I don't know my own mind, how can
I know my own body? And so I think there's
been there's such an emphasis put on if you get
a cold or and I'm not saying not to go
to the doctor's people but if you cold, you get

(13:00):
a cough, if you get anything, listen to what someone
else is saying yes, rather than saying, oh, why don't
you try and listen to what your body is telling you,
because it's screaming at you in some way, whether it's
through your skin, whether it's through your hair, whether it's
through the way that you're moving, the movement that you have.
Your body's trying to tell you something. But we're constantly
told to trust in other people's opinion about our own body.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Oh, I just love that you said that, because that
is the cruxt of every book I write, every video
I do, is I'm trying to explain it so women
understand it so that they can make better choices. And
I'll use an example, a recent one for me is,
since evacuating from the fires, I've woken up every morning

(13:44):
an incredible anxious state and I can feel this like
gripping in my chest. And so for three weeks I've
been walking around like an elephant on my chest. And
so two days ago, I was meditating in the morning
and I finally took my own advice, was like, okay, body,
what do you want? What are you telling me? And

(14:05):
the word surrender. It came and the minute I was like,
I don't have any control over what's going on with
my house and the palace, sads. I have to completely surrender.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
The pain went away.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
But we can do that with every single Symptomly have
that relationship with your body of like what are you
trying to tell me, as opposed to shaming it, guilty
in it, which is what a lot of women do.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
We seem to have gone through exactly the same experience
in the last week because I literally shared a post
on Instagram yesterday or day before because I woke up
with so much anxiety and I get that sometimes before
my period, it was like this overwhelming anxiety of loss.
And I spoke about it, saying that I woke up
and I was just feeling this like this unsothing feeling

(14:51):
of loss that I was thinking about my family and
then I was thinking about here, and there was just
so much going through my mind. And I sat before
my meditation and I literally said exactly the same way
as I said, I just surrender my fear and my
anxiety to you, like I'm surrendering it. I'm giving it
to you because I can't control this. That's everything that
I'm fearful of right now is nothing I can control,

(15:11):
and so I give it to you, Universe, to God.
I give it away because I can no longer hold
it in me. I don't have space for it. And
so but I do think it's interesting how I think
when there's collective anxiety and collective fear around you, energy
is so exchangeable, Like people around us are feeling that
and everybody in you know, everyone's a little bit uneasy

(15:34):
right now in LA. We don't realize that there's collective
energy that everybody ends up actually feeling and taking from
one another.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
But it's just interesting that we both had that.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, really almost same thing. I think the woman's woman's
body is meant to pick up on the subtle cues
collectively what's going on, and I think part of the
challenge that we have is that we haven't been trained
how to read those clues and understand them. And again,
I think a male's body is a lot more black

(16:04):
and white, but a woman's body is not that way.
And I hope people listening to this, like Honor that
when a symptom shows up, the best thing you can
do is ask that symptom what do you want how
can I listen to you as opposed to how do
I make you go?

Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yes, I completely agree.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
I wanted to ask a few more questions about fasting
because I think when people hear fasting, immediately their body says,
oh God, like I don't think I you know, the
fear of scarcity, the fear of not having your comforts
in the normality that you are used to, is quite scary,
and so I guess my first question is when do
you think is a good time for people to fast?
What the signs and symptoms in someone's body that they

(16:43):
should be thinking about how doing a fast?

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah, so let me go to this place first that
if people haven't heard this, this one blows their mind.
We have two metabolisms. We don't just have one. We
have one that gets ignited when we eat food. It's
called I call it the sugar burner metabolism. And then
the other one gets ignited when we don't eat food,
and it's called the fat burner metabolism. So we are

(17:07):
like a hybrid car. We work off a glucose and
we work off of key tones, and we're meant to
metabolically switch in and out of these two different metabolisms.
So I'll tell you sort of the basic premise, and
then we can talk about why, how it maps to
a woman's cycle, or even how it maps to a
menopausal cycle. So we have to understand that every sell

(17:31):
in our body, and including the neurons in our brain,
need glucose and they need keytnes. So when you ask
when should you fast, well, the question really is when
do you need key tones? So keytnes are there to
fire up your brain so that whenever you need mental clarity,
whenever you need calm. So check this out. When keytnes

(17:53):
go up, gabba goes up, so you actually calm. So
people always think the longer I go out without food,
all be in bad shape. Actually the opposite. The more
you train your body to do this, the more you'll
see that actually there's a sense of inner knowing. Like
give me example, I haven't eaten today because I knew
I was coming down here. I didn't know what it

(18:13):
was going to be like to be back in LA
and I purposely didn't have breakfast because I'm like, I
need the key tone calm. So I was like, I
can do it. I'll eat dinner tonight. But that's an
example of how I used fasting for my mental and
spiritual benefits.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
Which is also so interesting because for I mean thousands
and thousands of years, monks have fasted for days and
days and days when they want to go into deep meditation.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
So we do two times a year we do a
three day water fast worldwide. So we did one the
week of the fires. We had one hundred thousand people
worldwide that we're doing a three day water fly.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
Oh and the most amazing the.

Speaker 5 (18:53):
Morning of the fire, I was supposed to lead these
people through webinar, and I literally in my head, I
was like, I just need to get to a parking
lot so I can pull my phone out and give
the webinar.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
But that, you know, the universe had a different pan
for me. But why I love doing that is there's
incredible spiritual insight because when you're not processing food, when
you're not putting all the energy to digesting food, you
become an open channel. The mind comes, the insights come in.
So the longer you go, it's those longer fasts you

(19:27):
really start to get some inner knowing that you would think,
oh my god, three days without food, I'd be dying.
I'd be you know it would be horrible, but actually
it's not. You enter a whole nother level of understanding
that you can't get when you're in the fed state.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Wow, I had no idea that the connection makes so
much sense.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
Now.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, we have a lot of fast in our culture,
and as part of our spiritual practices, we do like
grain free fasts, so we'll do full one day, like
twenty four hour water fast. But yeah, when you spoke
about it like that, it makes complete sense.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah. So that's why, like in Fast Like a Girl,
I put out six different level fasts, right, and I
was based they're all based off time, And what I
wanted to do with that is really allow people to choose. So, like,
if you just want to bring down some inflammation, you
want to get a little key tones, you want to
kind of just have a good little buzz, then you
can intermit in fast for fifteen hours, you're good.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
If you want to repair your gut, then go a
little longer, get twenty four hours, you're gonna get some
gut repair. If you want to go thirty six, then
you're gonna burn a little more fat. If you want
to like get yourself a new dopamine system and like
reboot it, then go forty eight hours, and if you
want to reset your whole system, then do seventy two.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
And my question to that is a lot of women
that I know had gone through yo yo dieting throughout
their life and that actually, from my understanding, really messed
up their metabolism. And so when you end up doing
these fast how does that compare to this idea of
starving your body for short pairs of time and then
going back to food and then you know that actually

(21:01):
messing up your metabolism to this, how does this affect
the metabolism?

Speaker 1 (21:05):
Yeah, it's such a good question. So when I look
at the fasting lifestyle, I look at it in a
twenty four hour period. I look at it every day.
I have a window in which I fast, and I
look at I have a window in which I eat.
So today I'm in my fasting window. But then when
I land in my hotel tonight, I will open up
my eating window. When you open your eating window up, eat.

(21:27):
This is not calorie restriction. This isn't even carb restriction.
You can go and get keytones without restricting carbs this way,
but you have to start looking at food as medicine
and seeing that you want to eat good, nourishing food,
and then you want to look at these as fasting
windows you're tacking onto your day. Now, let's juxtapose that

(21:49):
to the woman who's like has maybe and everybody's eating
disorder behavior will look different. But a lot of women
will get up, they'll have a little bit of breakfast,
and then they won't eat all day long, and then
maybe they'll have a snack at three and then maybe
they'll eat something at you know, a little something at
seven o'clock at night. Well, they're not fasting. That's not fasting,

(22:12):
that's disordered eating. That's restricting calories in a different way.
So I like to look at it as windows. So
and every morning I wake up, I'm like, when am
I going to eat? When am I going to open
up that eating window? And then every time I open
up the eating window, I go, Okay, what does my
body need? So I'm like, if I need more? Have

(22:32):
I eaten enough greens? Okay? Maybe I need to eat
more greens. Have I had enough protein? Maybe I need
to eat more protein. So I start looking at food
as medicine and fasting as tapping into an internal healing
experience that my body can only do in the absence of.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
Food and with intermittent fasting. So I intimate and fast.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
I you know, usually stop eating by six o'clock and
then I eat again, maybe at like ten or eleven.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Am perfect.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
But is that something you can do throughout your menstro
cycle or should it? Should you not be doing it?
You know, the week before your period?

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, the week before is the outlier. Your system works
great for every week except the week before. Okay, so
you should be eating something when you first get up,
and specifically carbs, but I call them nature's carbs. I
have not found too many reasons for us to be
doing refined flowers and sugars unless it's like a fermented

(23:24):
sour dough or something like that.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
I last week, I remember I was saying, I don't
know why I'm so hungry.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
At the moment.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
And you know what, no matter whether you track your
period or not, for some reason, for my whole team,
who are women, they're like, it was just such a
surprise when my period. Okay, you know you always end
up getting surprised, But for me, I was like, I
don't know why I'm so hungry this week or these
couple of days, and then my period comes out. Oh,
that's why I was hungry.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
So there's a beautiful moment where you can be like,
why am I so hungry?

Speaker 5 (23:50):
Ok?

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Okay, progest round? What do you need from me today?

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (23:54):
And so then you can tap in and like just
start asking your body what it needs during that time.
We haven't been taught that right, and we're like taught like,
oh my god, I'm so hungry today, I must be undisciplined,
and that's what I'm trying to free women from.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yeah, I completely agree.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Has I been anything surprising after all the years of
seeing different patients and seeing women go through this, what's
been one of the most surprising things that you found
out through the resets you've done?

Speaker 1 (24:22):
Oh my god? Okay, Well for starters fertility, Yes, the
fasting cycle that I did in Fast Like a Girl.
I had taken five of my employees who were struggling
to get pregnant through that fasting cycle.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Which one is it in your book?

Speaker 1 (24:37):
It's in my book and Fast Like a Girl. And
then I carried it over and Eat like a Girl.
They're kind of companion manuals. One's the fasting window, one's
the eating window. And so I had this cycle where
you go high carb, low carb, long fast, short fast,
and so I experimented with these five women and I said,
let's get that ninety days of this. All of them

(24:57):
within thirty days got pregnant. No, And so then when
Fasaga Girl went out, I was like, Okay, what's the
what's going to happen? And so all the amount of
people that sent me messages saying that they got pregnant
shocked me.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
Oh, I have to share that with a few of
my friends.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Actually, So that was one the number of postmenopausal women
that got a period after ten years of not having
a period. No, that shocked me. That was a crazy
shod shot. I would say. People losing like ridiculous amounts
of weight, Like I wish there was a way I

(25:37):
could go to my YouTube channel and maybe with AI
someday I'll be able to do this and extract the
amount of weight people have lost, but hundreds of pounds
when people tried everything else and nothing worked.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Those are great ones.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, okay, so weight loss, fertility, and menopause. Yeah, what
is the difference between men fasting and women fasting. Then
how does that differ. Would a man be able to
follow the same protocol that you've got there and get
similar results?

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, he could, but you know he doesn't. Really The
fasting cycles a little more sophisticated because we have three
sex hormones that we run off of. They don't have progesterone,
so men don't have progesterone. So we've already talked about
how she's an outline. Yes, but men work off a
twenty four hour hormonal cycle, so every fifteen minutes they

(26:24):
get a little pulse of testosterone and testosterone goes up
into the brain and converts to estrogen. For men, testosterone
doesn't really mind if you fast, and so it seems
to be that they just need to make sure they
don't fast all the time. And it's really every man's
a little different, but we are or way more sophisticated.

Speaker 4 (26:47):
The example I use, and the women love it and
the men don't, is that a woman's body is like
a sophisticated violin, and a man's body is like a kazoo.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, let's give it a recorder. I used to say,
a ukulele. It's just you can play it. It's very simple,
it's late to hear. It does its job. But a
woman's body is like, it's we're so intricate. And this
is why we're at this weird evolutionary mismatch right now,
because the modern world is throwing so much physical, emotional

(27:24):
chemical stress at us that our hormones are like what
WHOA We don't know how to respond to what's coming
at us. A male's body has one priority, and that's survival,
so the body will work off, always tilting towards survival.
A woman's body has two priorities, survival and reproduction. So

(27:46):
whatever environment you put yourself in, if you are in
a you know, running from fires and cortisol's going up,
all of a sudden, your reproductive system goes down. Whereas
a man that doesn't happen as much, his hormonal system's
not going to go off because stress goes up. If
a man eats, you know, the wrong foods, eats too

(28:08):
many carbs, not going to be a problem unless it's
like a really you know, bad ultra refined processed food carb.
A woman's body, she eats too many carbs over and
over and over again, she that might be a problem.
If she's too diety, that might be a problem. What
we need to all think, regardless of what age we're at,

(28:29):
is we need to think when I'm moving through my day,
am I in environments where my body feels safe? And
if it feels safe and nourished, then your reproductive system
will work.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
What do you think some of the main causes of
you know, the number of women that are having, like
you said, hormonal issues disorders because of that polycystic overy syndrome,
thyroid issues. You know from what you've seen, What do
you think of some of the main reasons that women
are going through these these hormonal discs is so.

Speaker 5 (29:00):
I can give you the philosophical reason that I can
give you the Okay, So.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
I'm gonna start with the philosophical one, because this is
really the tenets of the book I'm writing right now.
We live in a patriarchal society. To me, what the
patriarch means power over that we have structures in place
that say you are worthy as a woman if you
look a certain way, if you weigh a certain thing,
if your face is smooth and beautiful, and so we

(29:26):
are living in a world that's telling women what we
should look like what we should.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
Be doing dictated.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yes, that is making us feel unsafe, and the minute
we feel unsafe, our reproductive system shuts down. In my
new book that will come out at the end of
this year, I'm really quoting a feminist philosopher named Carol Gilligan,
and she in the nineteen eighties looked at teenage girls
that was me in the nineteen eighties, and found that

(29:56):
the patriarchal society taught girls and I think they still
we still teach girls this, that you are a good
girl if you are selfless. Yes, So as women, what
do we do? We wrap ourselves up in all kinds
of ways to like, be like, am I worthy?

Speaker 5 (30:13):
Now?

Speaker 1 (30:14):
If I look a certain way, we love me. If
I act a certain way, we love me. If I'm
successful enough, we love me. So many women are walking
around like that, and that is destroying us hormonally, and
so we can't get pregnant, we can't lose weight. We
have an insane amount of menopausal symptoms because we are

(30:36):
trying to wrap ourselves up to be acceptable to a
patriarchal society that says you need to look like Barbie right, Like,
there's only one way to act one way to be
so from a philosophical lens, I feel like it's really
the culture. And why I'm so adamant about this is
it takes conversations like this for us individually to break

(30:59):
out of that and say, like, I mean, I'm the fires.
I'll keep using it because it's what I've been through.
About four days after the fire, as I was running
from the fire, people kept sending me texts and they're like,
are you okay? Are you okay? Finally, on that Friday,
which the fires happened on Tuesday. On Friday, I was like,
peace out, I am not okay. So I just started

(31:23):
saying I'm not okay. You know how liberating it was
to say it wasn't okay, Like I don't have to
pretend for you all now that I'm okay. I'm just
gonna let you know I'm not okay. And then I
started having so many women messaging me and they're like,
I wasn't in a fire evacuation, but I'm not okay,
and thank you for saying you're not okay, because I

(31:45):
haven't been okay for a really long time. We don't
have a culture well where women can just say I
don't want to play that patriarchal game anymore. I'm really suffering.
I need to nurture myself. I need to find myself.
I want to have my own authentic voice here. Once
we do that, hormones will start to balance better.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
It's so interesting that you said, you know, when you
said unsafe, I was thinking, we think about that in
our environment, We think about that in our relationships. You
can say this person makes me feel safe, this house
makes me feel safe, walking down this street makes me
feel safe. But I don't know whether we ever really
sit there and think is this making my internal system

(32:24):
feel safe? Like is my digestive system feeling safe?

Speaker 3 (32:28):
Is you know?

Speaker 2 (32:28):
And I think you have this nervous system that you
sometimes listen to, maybe sometimes you don't, but you don't
think of food and what you're eating and those things
to think. You don't think about safety in that nature
that sense, like oh, when I don't eat, it's actually
making my body feel unsafe. Or when I do eat this,
it's actually making my body feel unsafe.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Right, So safety you have to be in a state
of safety for your reproductive system, because otherwise the female
body is like, we're not making a baby. Yes, why
would we make a baby right now? We're not even
feeling safe. So you bring up such a good point.
You could walk into your grocery store, grab a bag
of Doritos and a coke, and you have just sent

(33:10):
a signal to your body that you're not safe, that
you're not safe.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
Oh my gosh, Like, do we look at food like that?

Speaker 2 (33:17):
No, but what an incredible way to change your mindset
and thinking like that. And when you paired it with
you know, fertility, it makes so much sense. Your body's
constantly sending signals through every single thing that you allow
through your senses. That's right, whether you are safe or
not saying.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Yeah, So your home environment, the people you hang out with,
like this is why you know, it's interesting. We've had
some chats about social media, but like on social media,
I don't know how you feel about this, but it's
a little bit of a double edged sword. I'm like,
what you see on social media is authentically me. I
don't put filters on. I'm like, this is a fifty

(33:53):
five year old woman. Because what is happening to especially
our teenagers, is we go to Instagram and we're like,
I can't be that person. And now you just picked
up your phone and you feel unsafe.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
You do you really do necessity?

Speaker 2 (34:08):
I think I don't think there's many people that can
say they've scrolled through social media for fifteen minutes and
that they feel safe from that whole interaction.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Ooh, that's so well seved.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah really, I don't think so. I mean, I can
speak for myself. It's whether it's you know, it's funny
because I'm turning thirty five this year and I'm like, yeah,
you notice your bodies start changing, and by the time
you hit your thirties, you start thinking that you are
aging because of how social media creates that feeling. And
not that I think that's the bad thing. I feel

(34:39):
the same way as you am, really like embracing every
single year and trying to live that way. But I
think that that narrative starts from twenties.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
Now. It's like from twenty you're thinking about the eighteen
year old.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Yeah. So here's a question that I can't find an
answer to. Okay, yeah, and so I've been like asking
people and trying to figure it out. Is in women,
what does wisdom look like? How do you know you're
sitting with a wise woman.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
How do you know you're sitting with a wise woman
and just.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
On looks, just on looks, she's not talking, she's not talking. Oh,
you just know you're with a wise woman.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
But I think about my grandma who's like ninety two
years old, and just by looking at her, not including
like energy, right, just by looking at them. Yeah, I
guess it is honestly, by like the incredible lines on
her face, by the beautiful head of gray hair that
she has that she owns. Yeah, And I think there's

(35:35):
like a gentleness to that too.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
There's a safety, there's a peacefulness. They've been through a.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
Lot, she's been through a lot, yes, so she has an.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Inner knowing that you can feel just when you're with Definitely. Okay,
So let's think about that for a moment. If everybody
freezes their face, how will we find the wisdom keepers?
If everybody dyes their hair? Where we we know people
by their wisdom strands? I callbrate here. I love that with, like,

(36:02):
how can we find the wise female elders if everybody
is freezing their face?

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, it's so true, and you're just constantly hiding from it,
and then at some point you can't you know, Yeah,
there's a point where you just can't stop hiding from
it because it's age is just that you know, in
our scriptures it says there's only four things that are
certain death, birth, old, age, death, and disease. Like they're
the only four things that are actually certain in this life,

(36:28):
and so you have to start coming to terms with
all of them, like they are all part and parcel
of night, not life, not something that you're supposed to
be running away from, right, right, They're meant to be
things that you embrace.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
I hit me one day, like we have this anti
aging culture, and I was like, it doesn't feel like
we should be anti aging. We should be pro aging.
We're all aging. And then I was looking through my
Instagram and I was thinking about like what sometimes those
Aboriginal women will come through and.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
A beautiful so beautiful and right, and you really feel
something when you look at them, Like if you take.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
Like an Aboriginal woman with like so many wrinkles, and
I look at that and I'm like, I wish those
wrinkles could speak. I wish that what would they say
compared to a woman who has a completely frozen face.
I would like, I don't know what you have to offer.

Speaker 3 (37:17):
Me because they're expression lines.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
I remember reading somewhere It's like, every single line represents
the laughs that you've had, the experiences that you've been through,
the conversations you've had with people, the shocks that you've had.
The surprise is like, that is what these lines are.
They're the lines of expression, that's right, the things that
you have felt showing up on your body, that's right.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
I thought that was such a beautiful way of putting it.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
I went through a phase in my late forties where
I was like wrestling with botox no boyah, And I
had people, you can know this as an influencer that
I had people literally messaging me DM and me and saying,
you should probably botox. I'm the same age as you,
and you have more wrinkles than me. And one day
I was sitting with my husband and I was like,

(38:00):
I just am wrestling with this because I don't want
to put toxins in me. And he looked at my
elevens up here and he said, you know what that
when I look at you and I see your elevens,
I know how deeply you have thought about issues.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Oh my god. I loved him he's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
I was like, thank you. I hadn't thought about that
if I made my elevens go away? And then how
would you know how deeply I'm thinking about things? And
so I think it comes down again to worthy, Like
we're taught that what is worthiness? And that might be
even another question to ask is like what does worthiness
look like for women?

Speaker 3 (38:37):
And what does health look like?

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Like?

Speaker 2 (38:39):
You know, the same battle you've had, I've had at
my age, thinking of oh, should should I go into
certain treatments and do certain things? And I feel the
same way about you. I don't want to put those
things into my body, and I also want to learn
how to embrace who I am at every stage. But
I think this battle that people go through, it's like
you're also constantly tell yourself. The more you move away

(39:02):
from who you are, you're telling yourself you're not worthy.
That's like that every time you're trying to hide certain
things on your face. And I think about that even
when I got like a spot on my face or
I used to get cold soores, and I used to
constantly try and like hide myself from people when I
was going through those things. And with aging, it's like
if you're constantly hiding yourself, you are not accepting yourself,

(39:24):
and so it's a really difficult battle. And by the way,
this is not you know, this is not criticizing anybody
who's chosen to get anything like that done. But it's
more of like a reflection of am I trying to
hide away from myself? Because then you're also not coming
to terms with who you are, Like you are not
accepting yourself so beautiful, and so then as soon as
you don't accept yourself, it's really difficult to find people

(39:47):
who also accept you for your own value.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
This is why I love conversations like this, because I
hadn't really thought about that. You know, eighty percent of
autoimmune conditions happen to women, wh and an autoimmune condition
is the body attacking itself. Oh my god, it's not
just a physical attack. It's not just a genetic thing.
But to you what you just said, if every day

(40:11):
I look in the mirror and I want to change
something or I criticize myself, I'm attacking myself.

Speaker 3 (40:18):
With my own thoughts.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Yeah, I'm literally looking at myself and I'm rejecting myself.
So imagine every day you look at your partner, and
they're rejecting you every single day, every time they saw you. Right, Yeah,
I've been really trying to change that narrative. Jay asked
me this morneing. He goes, have you been doing any
positive affirmations lately? He said, he's really been trying to
practice them in his mind. And I said, you know,
the only I wouldn't say I'm be doing positive affirmations,

(40:39):
but I've been doing a lot of correction. And so
whether that's looking in the mirror and I say something
that I isn't actually very nice, I will try and
correct it with something positive, like change the narrative in
my mind, which hopefully lead to positive affirmations. But sometimes
it's hard to have. If you've got a narrative that's
in your mind regularly, it's hard to automatically go to
something positive, and so to work my way towards that,

(41:00):
I'm like, no, I think what I'm really trying right
now is correction. I see myself, I'm like, oh, the
first thing I noticed was this thing on my face.
But then I'm trying to correct it with what you're saying.
I'm like, it's expression, Like, it's expression, Yeah, it's this
it's that, and so the correction has really helped me
versus trying to just constantly, like positively affirm when I
don't necessarily feel as positive about it.

Speaker 3 (41:20):
Yeah, yeah, as I should.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
When I was about your age, I started to like
think about how I look in the mirror very different.
And one thing I realized is that I every time
I would get dressed or wash my face or get
ready for bed, I would look in the mirror and
I would find the thing I didn't like. Yes, And
I was like, one day, I was like, what if
I find the thing I do like? Yeah, And so

(41:42):
I started training my brain to just go, Okay, I
like that. I like that. I like that. And it's
hard at first because you're like, I like that, but
I hate that.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like no, basface, but wait.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yeah, but that's okay. That's okay. You can hate something.
But if you train yourself over time to look in
the mirror and be like, oh I love that. Yeah,
I'm so grateful for that, it really over time you'll
change the way you look.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
At your fixation changes.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
I wanted to ask one more question about fasting and
then move on to menopause, but I have a lot
of Muslim friends who fast the thirty days Ramadan, and
I guess one of my questions I want to ask
was they're always asking me as the nutrition is like
what are the best foods I should be eating when
I come off my fast because they're fast loss from
sunrise to sunset? And so what are some of the
foods that people who are doing this fast for Ramadan

(42:30):
that they should be eating when they break their fast?

Speaker 1 (42:32):
So I always break break in a fast into three categories,
and one is are you trying to rebuild your microbiome?
So you have a really cool opportunity because when you're
not eating, all the bad ones start to die off
and the good ones are like feed me, feed me,
So more probiotic, fermented foods, more polyphenol foods like olives

(42:53):
and nuts and seeds and berries, and more prebiotic foods,
which is also nuts and seeds. I list a bunch
of women both books. But think about feeding your bacteria,
not your taste buds.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
Yes, big difference, big difference.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
Yeah, you know, I don't know if they eat meat,
but if they do meat, bone broth is incredible because
it has glycine in it and it starts to actually
repair the inner lining of the gut. You can do
mushroom broth, vegetable broth. Broths are really good to break
a fast with.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
Too amazing.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
And is it something which should they be aiming not
to eat too much during that period of time that
they're eating, or like you said, should they be getting
in as much as possible?

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yeah, get in as much as possible, Like nourish yourself.
Food is not bad. It's what we did to food
that made it bad. Yes, But if you go back
to nature's food and like look at things that haven't
been manipulated, things that don't have an ingredient label, those
are going to be the things that are going to
nourish you the most. So the microbiome is one. Muscle
is another one. That's a big thing that I hear

(43:52):
a lot of people say, Well, isn't fasting going to
break your muscle down? Yes, Well, in the moment of fasting,
it will. That's the purpose is to get get rid
of the garbage and the muscle that's not serving it.
So you want to add in a lot of protein.
So if you're plant based, then make sure you add
in your plant based proteins and if you're omnivore, add
in your animal meat. And then the third one is

(44:13):
really interesting because a lot of people boomerang. So a
lot of people do this thing where they're like, you know,
they start to eat and they're like, oh my god,
I'm just gonna eat everything, and even if it's ramadan
or not. So I always say, make sure it has
some fat in it.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
Okay, So I.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Drizzle, like my first meal in, I drizzle tons of
olive oil on it so that my blood sugar doesn't
go up and then crash, and now I'm craving something.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
Sweeting and then you don't feel good either. Okay, Yeah,
that's great advice, Thank you. I want to move on
to menopause. Yes, I guess my first question is I
think a lot of women, you know my age, are
starting to be more curious about it, wanting to learn
more about it. Can you tell us what menopause is?
And then also what's the average age are you finding
that women are going into menopause?

Speaker 1 (44:58):
Yeah? So I love the way you ask this question
because I think that we have the conversation all wrong
right now around menopause. So, starting at thirty five, your
first hormone that's going to go down as progesterone. So
the challenge with that is you start to feel like
you did some anxiety. You're maybe a little more hungry
the week before your period. So it's sort of the

(45:21):
beginning of the whole experience. So this is why we
need to know how to cater to her. So that's
that's the first one. Then about forty your ovaries, if
they could speak, they're like, Hey, I'm gonna go into retirement.
I only have like a certain amount of eggs left.
It's gonna take me about ten years to like fully retire.

(45:43):
And in that time, I'm going to hand over the
job of making sex hormones to other organs. I'm gonna
hand it over to the adrenals. I'm gonna hand it
over to some peripheral tissues in your body, and slowly,
over time, I'm going to back away. This is when
estrogen's she's down, she's up, she's down. As somebody you
probably experienced this with curly hair. When I was going

(46:05):
through perry menopause. It would be like one day my
hair was fluffy and curly, the next day was stick straight.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
That's me on an average day, going on humidity.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
Yes, Okay, there I go. But I was like, oh
my gosh, Like one day your skin is moist, the
next day your skin is completely dry. So estra dial
the hormone that goes away, that version of estrogen that
goes away in menopause. She actually stimulates a whole bunch
of neurotransmitters. She stimulates dopamine and serotonin and acetocholine. She

(46:36):
brings collagen there. She makes you insulin sensitive. So if
she's like on this wild ride up and down, it's
your Your lifestyle has to change, right, And I think
that's kind of the biggest thing that we're missing in
the conversation is that thirty five is the moment you

(46:56):
need to think of your lifestyle different. Wow, you need
more rest and recovery the week before your period, and
you're going to need to become more glucose sensitive on
the beginning half of your cycle so that you can
make sure that estrogen isn't going too low or too high.
So there's what I'd love to see the culture talking
about is that there's a lifestyle change that happens in

(47:19):
this process. Because reproductively, that chapter is closing, and any
woman that wants to have a baby in the forties.
I'm not saying you can't, but it is a closing
down of a moment that you've been in, which leads
me kind of to the other piece of menopause that
I'm really feeling. Sad. Isn't being talked to enough? Is

(47:42):
that women humans live forty two point five percent of
our life in post reproductively. We are the longest living species.
We live forty two percent of our life without a
reproductive system.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Okay, why Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
So it's because this is a metamorphois. This is a
moment that we can transition into a different version of ourself.
I believe this is the moment we take our power back.
This is the moment we live life through our less
Oh yeah, this is the time we stop adapting to
a culture that has us adapting in all kinds of
weird ways, and we step into our own power and

(48:23):
we go, hey, I'm going to live life my way now.
And when you look at the statistics, they're not great
for that process. Like forty five to fifty five is
the most common time a woman will kill herself.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
Oh my gosh, no way.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
So why is that? I believe it's because we are
coming into our own selves. We're coming into our own
version of ourself, and we may all of a sudden
realize that the life we created is one that isn't
congruent with the person we want to become. So and
statistics like after fifty sixty five of divorces are initiated

(49:01):
by women.

Speaker 3 (49:02):
Yeah, I've had about that.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Like, I think that's because women are changing. We change
through the menopausal process, and the marriages that survive are
the ones that understand that the spouse is turning into
a butterfly, right, She's going into a new version of herself.
This is my whole next book, because I think we've
made it to mechanical. I think menopause is a spiritual

(49:26):
journey and it's a returning back to yourself.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
I agree.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
You know, I saw my mom go through menopause and
she's now in her late sixties and she no, she's
tenning seventy. I think, yeah, and she is just come
into the best version of herself that I've ever been,
that I've ever seen exactly, And it was because, I mean,
my dad is incredible. He's so supportive, so loving, he

(49:50):
is just phenomenal. But I also think she gave herself
this second life, like she chose to not slow down,
not slow down in terms of like, you know, she's retired,
but she created a new life for herself by seven
community and so like this whole new version of herself
has come through and my dad helps her with it,
and it's just beautiful because you know, I think for

(50:14):
a lot of people, if they don't have community, you
end up feeling like after the age of sixty or seventy,
it's like, I guess I've gotten a purpose here?

Speaker 3 (50:22):
What am I supposed to do here?

Speaker 1 (50:23):
Right?

Speaker 2 (50:24):
And I think that can really affect once your children leave,
you know, your children, and your children go off, they've
got their own life. Then it's just you know, you
and your husband and you and your partner, and you're like,
what do I do now? And so there's this whole
like crisis that comes that you go through. But when
you end up trying to find a new purpose, like
you're speaking about, whether it's spiritual, whether it's community based,

(50:45):
you end up feeling like, oh this life, like now
I have so much more meaning in my life and
there's something that is coming from this.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Have you heard of the grandmother hypothesis.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
I think so, but tell me about it.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Okay. So this is part again part of my new book.
Is something that a lot of menopuzzle leaders have talked about.
But I think if we break it down a little
bit more, we can explain what happened to your mom.
So the grandmother hypothesis is a hypothesis that the reason
that we live so long in those peace post reproductive
time is because we're supposed to be leaders of the culture.

(51:19):
Right And if you go back to the evolutionary tribal
you know, cave man woman days, what happened was that
typically the man would go out and hunt. What's interesting
about that, And this is gonna sound really sexist, so
hang in here for people who were like, what so.
But he would go out and he would hunt, and

(51:39):
only three percent of the time he would come back
with a kill. Staying at home around the around the
in the clan was the fertile woman who was either
nursing babies, growing babies, or tending to babies. Right then,
we had a whole bunch of toddlers that needed to
be cared for. And because they only came back with
food three percent of the time, we need somebody go

(52:00):
find food. So when the idea is that the grandmother
was the one that actually went and found the food,
the grandmother was the one that took care of the clan.
So in the absence of a reproductive system, there is
an energy that is given back to women. And the

(52:21):
grandmother hypothesis says that we put it in three areas.
We can put it in fitness, which is totally blows
the whole idea that we should physically slow down, But
in the tribal days, they needed or in the cave
person day days, they needed to be able to go
and get food and walk long distances. Second thing they
used it for was cognition that extra energy and we

(52:45):
needed to go figure out They specifically pulled out tubers,
which are sweet potatoes sun chokes, so you had to
go be able to figure out where the tubers were.
And the third thing we used it for was social.
So in the grandmother high pothesis, what happens is women
start in their elder years, start rallying around each other.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
This is your mom, my grandma as well.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
My grandma started like a whole kind of grandma club
where her and her friends would get together do spiritual
prayers together, they'd sing together, they'd dance together. And my
mom also the that's so funny you said fitness, because
she has She used to be a fitness instructor when
I was really young. She hasn't done it for like
twenty years. Someone found out. I must have spoken about it.

(53:29):
The community found out that she used to do that.
They're like, do you want to start up some classes
for some of the community free of charge.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
She was like, of course.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
She spent like two three months practicing her routine and
now every week she's teaching fitness to like people my age.

Speaker 3 (53:42):
She's doing fitness classes.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
So she's in the fitness the community, and she's always
she's very intelligent anyway, so she puts it back into that.
But it's so beautiful because when you're saying that, I
can literally see that happening in my mom's life.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
I think menopausea is an initiation. Yeah, It's an initiation
into the next version of you. And this is I
think why we're suffering is because we're not looking at
it that way. We're like, oh my god, I can't
think straight, i can't sleep, I've got hot flashes, I'm
gaining weight and we're too focused on that as opposed to, Wow,
I can't wait to see who I'm going to be

(54:14):
on the.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
Other side of this, Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
Like what a difference menopause would be like At thirty five,
you could be.

Speaker 4 (54:20):
Like, Oh my god, I'm so excited I'm going into menopause.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
Because I can't wait for this transition into this new
version of myself that I've witnessed in my mother and
my grandmother.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
Yeah. Yeah, they are pretty spectacular.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
I have a question though, So for all the women
who are that four or thirty five still thinking about
having children, what's some advice that you would give in
terms of like to keep their fertility in the best
shape possible for the next couple of years while they're
trying to conceive.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
Yeah, it's great question. So I would say three things. One,
you'r arrhythmic human. You need to start eating and fasting
and doing supplements and exercising to your hormonal Some of.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
The best supplements that you supplements you recommend.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
From magnesium, I mean magnesium zinc are like requirements for
hormones minerals in general, we don't have enough, we don't
get enough of them, and so we really need more
minerals and to be brought into And.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Do you recommend sprays or taking tablet taking like supplements?
What do you know when the brand I love and
you know it's just the brand I lovemendation.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Yeah, it's called Beam Minerals. And the reason I love
it is it's fullvic and humic acid minerals that were
taken from the Earth. So what happens in that situation
is when you're taking a mineral as a complex, a
collective group of minerals from the Earth. The Earth didn't
make a mistake, right, the Earth figured out the ratios
that you need and it's a liquid. I take a

(55:50):
little shot of them every morning.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
So I like it's kind of like food based minerals,
right because once we start to put it into a supplement,
I know now has manipulated it. Yes, And how do we.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
Know it's right? We don't and we don't so that's possible.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Yeah, exactly. Magnesium and zinc are like some of the
really important things cycling supplements. I would you know, go
check out the fasting cycle or just know that you
are rhythmic, so if you're eating the same thing all
every day of the month you're not necessarily in rhythm
with your hormone.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
And you say cycling supplements, could you do you want
to explain that just the list bit for people who
don't know what that is.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Yeah, you know, a supplement should be a supplement.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
Yeah, exactly, it's not meant.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
To be on it all the time. So you know,
there's a lot of companies out there now that are
doing hormone cycling supplements. You know, I could go through
the whole list, but it might be not import So,
but do you know when we're taking a supplement all
the time, it's really not.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
It's almost like medicine.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
You kind of have to see it as as you know,
when your body needs something, have it, and then you
may be full of it. You may have got everything
that you need and then you have to come off it.
Maybe you'll need something else at that point in your life.
And so you know, do you recommend getting a blood
test done regularly or like to know what your body
is deficient?

Speaker 3 (57:11):
You know what it needs.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
I think once a year is a really good plan.
I like that, and working with an integrative ob is
really helpful. Somebody who knows supplements and can read a blood,
blood work, and be able to tell you which supplements
is really important.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Okay, so magnesium you said, zinc, zinc, and obviously cycling
is supplements.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
Yeah, and then just knowing which supplements, I mean, you
need a lot more B vitamins at the front half
of the yeah, that in the back half, you know, magnesium, magnesium, magnesium, Okay, yeah,
like progesterone needs magnesium. So like if you start at
thirty five, you can't sleep very well. Try megadosine magnesium, right,
see how that works? Okay, So yeah, so rhythmic. And

(57:52):
then two other things I wanted you to point out.
Please let's go back to the safety conversation. You know,
make sure the environments you're putting yourself in feel safe
and that you're nurturing yourself and you're not you know, say,
unsafe might look like running marathons all the time. You
might need to run a marathon and then maybe do
chill out, do a yoga retreat, so it could look

(58:16):
like that. It could look like working too much.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
Yeah. Yeah, so like.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Could look like you're just working your fanny off all
cycle long. So just you know, really do it. A
safety inventory I think is good. And then The last
one is a harder, hard one, but it's toxins. And
the reason toxins throw our whole cycle off is that
there are only two parts of the brain that don't
have a blood brain barrier, and the number one part

(58:44):
is your hypothalmus, which controls all hormones es so BPA, plastics,
heavy metals. I mean, I don't know if you guys
have talked about what's in the air in LA right now,
but it's definitely been an interesting conversation I've had with
other people. If you're in a moldy environment, those kind
of things can get in that hypothalmis and then they

(59:06):
start to change your hormonal cycle.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
Right, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
So is any things that people should be taking or
doing to prevent those toxins right now?

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Yeah? I mean I think people should be detoxing every day.
And what that could look like is are you eating
enough leafy green vegetables like you got to? You know,
fiber is going to help feed those microbes that will
help to detox you. Are you prioritizing sleep? Yeah, at night,
our brain actually shrinks and our sribel spinal fluid goes

(59:36):
up and washes our brain and detoxes it every single night,
things like corilla and you know some of the deeper
green spirillina are you are you leaning into those? And
then we have big detoxes binders like activated charcoal and zeolites.
We're doing some really interesting things with next Health, which

(59:57):
I think you.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
Guys have max stelf. I just had my blood done
waiting for the test results to.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Get back, so Darshan is, I'm actually tomorrow we'll go
for my third total plasma exchange, which is where they
take out sixty five percent of they take out your
blood and they filter sixty five percent exact. Yeah, so
we have some really cool new detoxes coming online as well.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
I know you mentioned stress and you know the safety
aspect of it, but I guess the question that came
up in my mind was is some element of like
should we be trying to eliminate all stress in our
life or should we be trying to find well, I
guess there's twofold should be trying to cope with the
stresses or should be really as much as possible, like
whether it's work or all the things that you mentioned,

(01:00:39):
You know, is there an element of stress just being
part and parcel of our life. If you're able to
manage it, how do you know whether you're going from
a point of this is too much stress for my
body to handle.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
Good Again, I'm thinking for myself.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
I uah, well, okay, so for a cycling woman, just
really the time to just bring everything down, your work production,
your fitness production, like just nurture yourself, give yourself grace
to not work out if you don't feel like working out.
Is that week before Okay, So if.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
All we did is don't push it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
Yeah, just don't push it, like slow it all down.
Cut the workload that then put into your brain, like
cut it all in half. If you can that week before,
and then what will happen is once your cycle starts,
once your period starts, you'll actually be more productive. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
See, you're so right.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
And I have to say this because I notice if
I have a really intense week that week, it throws
me off for the rest of the month. Yeah, like
I am struggling. I had this past week was quite
an intense week for me. And you know, I start
my careers a couple of days ago. But I would
say that usually at this point I'm feeling really energetic
and I am not. And it's because the few days

(01:01:49):
before I was coming out, I was like I was
really pushing myself. I'd had some late nights, I was
like waking up super early. I was working the whole
day and my mind was working my body. I was
pushing myself and my workout to ye And I've noticed
the cycle of when I do that, the week of
and the week after, I'm like struggling.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
Instead of thriving.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Yeah, And it's that has become a sign for me
that perfect you need to listen and slow down in
that period, and when I do do that, I am thriving.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
For the rest of the Monthfect I know, I'm like
my lesson, I just need to make sure I stick
to it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
So so you know, there's something called the Polyvagel theory
where our nervous system is supposed to go into fight
or flight and then rest or digest. But if we've
been in fighter flight for too long, we go into
a third nervous system called freeze. And in the freeze
nervous system, what ends up happening is we numb ourselves.
So we can numb ourselves with food, With social media,

(01:02:45):
we withdraw so all of a sudden we don't want
to be around people. Yeah, this is kind of this
can be our teenage world right now, or we become
really hyper sensitive to everything. So I'll use myself as
an example. After three evacuations and I actually lost a
really dear friend in October. So when I lost my neighborhood,

(01:03:07):
my home's still there, but I evacuated for two days NonStop.
And then I on the heels of losing a good friend,
I literally went to my staff and I'm writing another book,
and I'm like, I need a ninety day timeout. I
need to go somewhere in nature for ninety days to
reboot my nervous system because I can't do it on

(01:03:30):
its own. But we don't really you know how hard
it's been to fight for that. Yeah, we don't have
a culture that accepts.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
That, because then you're like, oh, am, I just not
doing my day, or like not doing the work I'm
supposed to be doing. You know, but you've got if
you've got teams, you feel like you're letting the teams down.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
Like imagine a world where we were like, hey, it's
the week before my period. I'm just going to take
it a little bit easier I'll throw in, I'll work
six days seven days once my period starts. But for
right now, I'm going to nurture myself. I think two
things would happen women in general. Would you know, people
would be like, you're a loser, You're like, you know, like,

(01:04:07):
what are you doing.

Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
Especially exaggerating, You're you're over.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Exaggerating, You're so emotional. So there would be that that
that judgment on us. But I think it would be
the internal judgment that would be the hardest.

Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
Yeah, I'm not doing enough.

Speaker 1 (01:04:23):
And if I'm not doing enough, then I'm not worthy enough.
And if I'm not worthy enough, then I don't feel
good about myself. And then when the spiral.

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):
Start, it's such a spiral. Yeah, you're so right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
So I feel like if people do have the opportunity
to just whatever you can take out of your diary
during that time, it's so worth it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
And give each other grace, Like conversations like this are
so important so that we all go, hey, I'm not
going to go to ladies' night out. It sounds it
sounds really fun.

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
But I can't do another late night right now today.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Or you know what to your to your staff to
be like Hey, I really am the create juices aren't flowing.
I'm feeling really exhausted. I'm going to take a few
extra days and then you know, once my cycle starts,
I'll put it into high gear again.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
The funny thing is what all women, and we've all
most of us have cycle sinks, so we're like, okay, cool,
we'll take this week off and I'll see you next week.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
You know, there's all new models of work that are
showing up right now.

Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
Really yeah, and a.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Lot of like the health world and the podcast world
is actually sort of bringing that forward. So I've heard
of one where they do, like a company will do
like a six week sprint where everybody's like full on
for six weeks and then they take a full week off.
So if you were all women, it'd be really interesting
to do like a three week sprint where everybody's working

(01:05:46):
a lot more and then the week before your period,
everybody brings it down.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
We just all like have We had a puppy day
today where we had some puppies that came in for
one of the girl's birthdays from a shower. They're so cute,
but everyone at lunchtime just had all these little puppies
around them, and it just soothe that everyone everyone'snav a system.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
So that was what a great idea.

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
It was a great idea.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
I wanted to just touch on perimenopause because I think
there's you know, confusion between what is even the difference
between perimenopause and menopause. Yeah, what are some of the
signs and symptoms to look out for?

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
Yeah, So perimont menopause is when those hormones are starting
to go down, but you're still have a regular cycle.
So you're still having a regular cycle, but you're starting
to notice, hey, I might not sleep as well as
I used to, seem to be reacting to stress a
little bit more acutely. Sometimes you're like the same routines

(01:06:41):
that helped you lose weight don't help you anymore. And
that was the menopause reset. That whole book was about
how the diet you did at thirty five doesn't work
for you at forty five, right, So it's it's really
a time in which the hormones are starting to go
down and you're starting to experience yourself different, right, And
like things that used to work in your health habits

(01:07:02):
are not working. So skin changes, hair, changes lubrication to like,
you know, moisture, mucosal membranes, libido goes down, you don't
feel like working out, you're injured a little more like
like you're just like something's up, and it's because you're
these amazing wisdom molecules are starting to go away. So

(01:07:25):
that's usually that's kind of the indication. But it's it's
the warm the worm down.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Like.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
What's really interesting is it takes about ten years from
the time that you start your period to be like
fully in your glory. So if you start your pard
it's thirteen, it takes your body about ten years for
the brain and the ovaries to get their.

Speaker 3 (01:07:47):
Groove going true.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
Right by twenty three, you're in well at thirty five,
now you're going ten years where it starts to wind down, right,
So it's not it's not like one day that was
kind of the big thing that I was shocked at.
I thought you were just fertile one day and then
one day it went away.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
Yes, a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
I want to talk about HRT because obviously a lot
of women get put on it and all women do.

Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
All women get on HIT when they go through menopose.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
No HRT is coming back in vogue. I think it's
a very personal decision. It's not going to be a
free pass from lifestyle changes. You want to work with
somebody who can work with the dosage because what would
be a appropriate dose for you may be completely different
for somebody else.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
And if someone if this is a natural process that
your body will just go through, does someone needs to
be having HRD No, I think that's it's hormonal replacement.

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
Hormone replacement therapy, right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
So, like I've been doing some research on the different
HRT uses, Like throughout the world, only four percent of
perimenopause and menopausal women in Japan use HRT, wow, whereas
fifty percent use it here in the US. Okay, let's
start to unpack what the lifestyle differences are. So it's

(01:09:08):
a personal choice, and I don't think a woman should
be shamed to go on it. I don't think she
should be shamed to not go on it. Yes, I
think you have to look at your lifestyle changes first
and then make a decision if it's right for you.
And then what happens to most women is once you
go on there's a little bit of a learning curve

(01:09:29):
you have to figure out what your proper dose is.
That's why you need a really good.

Speaker 3 (01:09:33):
OBI right, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
So is there anything else that you would want women
listening to know that you haven't mentioned already, or any
last pieces of advice.

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
I mean, I love this conversation. It was great, So
thank you, thank you. I just don't give up on yourself. Yeah,
we were really the way the culture taught us to
treat our bodies. This is so wrong. Like you were
born in a miracle. Your body's always doing the right
thing at the right time. It's always working for you.
The more I study the female body, the more blessed

(01:10:05):
I am to have lived in a female body. And
it's really just about getting to know this incredible miracle
that you get to live in. So be curious about it,
don't be shameful about it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
Thank you so much. You have been absolutely incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Thank you for your knowledge, your wisdom, your energy, and honestly, everybody,
please go out and read these books because you will
learn so much more about yourself than you can ever imagine.
And you can just improve your health a day and
day out, and that's such a beautiful blessing to have
the opportunity to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:37):
So thank you doctor Mindy.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
This is so unerul. I appreciate you, appreciate you,

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Radhi Devlukia

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Optimizing Female Health, Mindy Pelz on Fasting, Menopause, and Fertility