Menopause: How To Avoid The Common Mistakes | 060 - It Has to Be Me

Episode Transcript
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Tess Masters (00:02):
I am talking about proactive health over 40 today, my auntie passed away last night, and thankfully, she was surrounded by her loving family, my uncle and my cousin, but we are mourning the loss of her and also celebrating her life. And my mum turned 80 a couple of weeks ago, and she is in such great health, and I was grateful for that a couple of weeks ago when we had a beautiful family celebration weekend to honor her, but I'm feeling even more grateful for that today. So I've been thinking a lot about legacy and quality of life and health. This morning, my mum is an extraordinary inspiration to me in so many ways, but the way that she has looked after her health and been proactive about that her entire life. Is such a beacon for me to continue to take care of myself. She's such a glorious example of aging boldly and gracefully and with fire and thirst for life and continued curiosity about herself and the world. I have watched her be mindful about the way that she has eaten her entire life, but not depriving herself, finding this amazing balance between having fun but also eating a lot of healthy food, exercising every day, going for walks. She plays tennis three days a week. Still, she gets on the rebound of 30 minutes a day. She laughs. She gets out in the world and learns new things. She participates, she volunteers. She goes for her annual checkup. She goes to specialists. She is just so wonderful in so many ways. And it's being back in Australia has been a blessing for me in many ways, but I came back to Australia to spend time with my elderly parents. My dad got cancer. I talked about this in Episode 123, and four, when I talked about my personal story, if you want to revisit those episodes, and you know, that was one of the big reasons, was coming back to support my dad through his cancer journey, but it's been a blessing in so many other ways. I get to spend time with my mum and dad while they're in this phase of their lives, while they're still in excellent health. My dad made a full recovery. My mum is in very good health. They're still completely with it in a cognitive way, and we're able to have fun together, which is really wonderful. So I've had a really wonderful female role model of a way to age in a really proactive, joyful way. And thankfully, we're in an era where older women are really having their time, using their voices. And we've got all these fabulous role models for how wonderful being over 40 can be. But not everybody has those, those role models, and we're still flooded with myths about aging. You know that we're told that, you know, there's this monster called menopause, it's coming to ruin our lives, or that, oh, it's just your age. You know, over 50, over 60, over 70, it's all downhill from here. You know, you're not really going to be able to sleep through the night and have energy. You're not going to be able to lose weight, you're going to sort of feel like shit. And it's just simply not true, or it doesn't have to be true. But you know, when you're struggling with weight gain and inflammation and aches and pains, blood sugar issues. Maybe you're pre diabetic or already diabetic. You've got high blood pressure and cholesterol. One in four people now has fatty liver. Maybe you've been given the talking to by your doctor that you need to make changes, or that it's gonna gonna be really hard, you know, because of your age, or it's just just your age, you'll have to put up with it, you know, and if you're going through menopause, maybe you've got those hot flashes and sweats and fatigue and brain fog and mood swings and low libido, you're wondering if you're ever going to have a great sex life again. So when you've got symptoms and you're not feeling good in your body, it makes sense. You know that we we tend to see age as an obstacle to quality of life. And you know, if you're like the women in in our community, in our 60 day reset community, you've tried a ton of different things, to lose weight, feel good, achieve better health, and it just all feels like more of the same. And you've been disappointed by, you know, big promises that don't deliver. And maybe you're skeptical that anything can work to feel better as you age. Please don't give up hope and surrender to your symptoms, because you have more control over your health than you may realize. So if you're in your 30s or early 40s, listening, it's never too early. Really to get proactive about your health and set yourself up for a really healthy, joyful menopause journey and to age gracefully, like my mum. If you're in perimenopause, you're already feeling awful and you're worried menopause is even going to be more awful. There's so much that you can do to have a better menopause journey. And if you're listening struggling through menopause right now, you can dramatically change the way that you feel and get rid of your symptoms or reduce them significantly with some proactive strategies. And I'll talk about some of those things that I've learned in my personal story. I've learned by working with 1000s of women each year. But also on this podcast, we've had so many amazing guests who have talked about this stuff. So I'm going to just flag some of these episodes for you so that you can go and take a listen. If you haven't listened to those episodes already, maybe your post menopause, you're in your mid to late 50s, you're in your 60s, maybe you're in your 70s, thinking, Gosh, it's too late for me, it is not too late to feel better in your body and experience really great health. So I talked about my menopause journey and my my health issues in the past on several episodes, but I'll just recap just really briefly, if you haven't listened to those episodes that I am having a beautiful, healthy menopause journey, but I went through some uncomfortable symptoms to get here. And when I was in my early 40s to mid 40s, I went into perimenopause early. And I well, maybe that's not early, because a lot of people go in in their 40s, don't they, but I went into menopause early. I should say where I went into menopause at about 47 and which is, you know, technically, 12 months from the time of your last period. So I was in perimenopause in my 40s, and all of a sudden, what I was doing wasn't working anymore. I started to put on weight, and I was eating all the same stuff. I considered myself to be a very healthy eater, and I was, I was exercising, and, oh, the weight was just coming on, and it wasn't going off as easily anymore. I started to get hot flashes and sweats. I wasn't sleeping. I had fatigue. I had brain fog. I kind of had a bit of, you know, rage, and I was getting teary at the drop of a hat, and oh my goodness, I thought, What is going on? And I was in a bit of denial for a while because I thought, Oh, that's not going to happen to me. Look, this thing everyone's talking about, no, no, I got this covered, you know, I'm, I'm helping people with their health all the time, and I've got all this knowledge, and I wasn't mentally prepared for the discomfort that you hear about, and I was suddenly experiencing it. And so thankfully, I sort of kicked into gear. I did a lot of research, went to some really great doctors, some fantastic dieticians, and I got really, really strategic with what I was doing with my doctors checkups, what I was doing with my nutrition, what I was doing with my lifestyle strategies. I started going to some treatments. I mean, I really got some things dialed in. And thankfully, I figured out that the puzzle that the pieces of the puzzle that I needed to put together to feel really wonderful in my early 50s. I'm 52 now, and now this phase of life has opened up some really extraordinary opportunities for me to know myself better, to take better care of myself, and we talk about this a lot on this podcast and in my office hours every week in my 60 day reset, it's just really become a passion of mine to help other women do the same thing through our 60 day reset, but also on this podcast. So hopefully this episode is going to contribute to that, because every listener that I hear from every member of our program that I meet, it just makes me even more determined, because there are so many women suffering unnecessarily. And you may be listening to this, relating to some of these symptoms that I'm talking about, and feeling defeated and lost and not knowing where to start, feeling burnt that you've spent all this money and time on other things that didn't work, and maybe you've got some access to some inaccurate information, because there's so much information out there that we have access to now, and not all of it is credible and based in science or the latest science. So it's really important that we're being mindful about where we're getting our information from. In episode 55 I spoke to shavita Kotak about embracing menopause as a sacred rite of passage to really beautiful conversation. I highly recommend listening to that, and I'm really leaning into that being proactive and just embracing this phase and what it has to offer. So I'm

(09:59):
going to. To be more and more people on the podcast about menopause, about proactive health over 40, and just in general. So I'll just recap some of the things we've already done. But I'm determined to fill in the holes, so to speak, and continue fleshing this out so that we have this really beautiful library of conversations and resources. So through working with 1000s of people in our 60 day reset as a coach, I see the same mistakes that women are making over and over, and I was making some of them as well, you know. And I think the biggest one is like I was saying, thinking that it's all hopeless and that there's nothing that you could do, and menopause is something that happens to you, and you just have to put up with it. And it's just simply not true. The other big mistake that I think a lot of us make, and it makes sense, because we're really brainwashed into thinking that thriving during menopause is all about balancing your sex hormones. It's all about estrogen, progesterone, DHEA, all, you know, testosterone, all that sort of stuff. But it's, it's very important piece of it, but it's only one piece. And unfortunately, because of the 2002 Women's Health Initiative study about hormone replacement therapy that made women think that they were going to get breast cancer and all these terrible things if they did. HRT, we're still seeing the residual effects of that, where it's really permeated society, where a lot of women are scared to do hormone replacement, to take hormones, and the that's all of that stuff has been debunked now, and the way that we administer hormone replacement has changed dramatically. Now whether you're on hormone replacement or not is a very individual choice. There's no right or wrong. We support women in our community, for example, who I take who are on HRT and those women who are not. So that's a conversation to have with your doctor who's looking at your labs and your whole medical history and story to determine what may or may not be appropriate for you. So I'm not going to get into that today, because obviously that's outside the purview of my expertise, because I'm not a medical practitioner. That's why, in our community, I insist that every member of our community has access to medical practitioners. So that's why I have dietitians. They're the medical practitioners who understand how to use food to support your health goals and your lifestyle goals. So I just want to mention it, though, because you may be suffering unnecessarily where hormones may actually help you, but what I've experienced is that they don't fix everything. We've got to put a few other pieces into place here, so it's sort of more of a holistic solution, you know, to feeling good during menopause. It's not just about hormone replacement. It's not just about eating. Well, it's not just about exercising, it's not just about sleep. It's about managing your stress. There's all these different pieces of the puzzle and your bio individual, so your hormone, your menopause journey, is unique to you. So the pieces of the puzzle that are going to come together for you are going to be unique to you as well. So the other mistake that I see a lot of women making is putting their body through a diet. So you may be listening going, well, I've never actually been on any of those crazy diets. You may or may not have done a diet or some kind of a program before, but you may be putting your body through a diet process without realizing it. And this is what we see a lot with women that come into our program. So if you're being a slave to your food choices and obsessing about what you're eating all the time and thinking you only have to eat healthy, and feeling guilty if you have a piece of cake or a donut or a slice of pizza, that's a form of disordered eating if you're calorie counting, obsessing about every little thing on your plate, if you're actively restricting what you're eating, if you're skipping breakfast, you're only eating a couple of meals a day, eating tiny amounts. You know, because you're so worried about putting on weight or maintaining the weight loss that you have already attained. Sometimes it may just be that you're really busy at work and the whole day has gone by and five o'clock comes and you haven't eaten all day. Maybe you're drinking coffee or weight loss shakes in place of well balanced meals. You're depriving foods. You're depriving yourself of foods that you love, turning down dessert, anything pleasurable, missing out on social occasions because you're worried about the food that's going to be on offer. Anything like that, I would classify, my dietitians will classify, as putting your body through a diet. So food is one of the great pleasures of life. It just, you know, we're doing it every day. It just has to be joy. Full you know, it's such an important part of quality of life, you know. So it's an interesting question, you know, are you under nourishing your body? And we see so many women under nourishing themselves and only eating one or two meals a day. If that and restrictive eating could be making your symptoms worse and your menopause symptoms worse. Dieting in any form could be making your weight gain worse. So one of the reasons why I called our community skinny 60. Skinny is a really polarizing word, isn't it? I actually really dislike the word, so I chose it deliberately because part of the nutrition education that I'm really committed to providing is reframing the way that we think about weight and dieting and restriction and the diet culture has really brainwashed us into believing that the only way to be skinny or thin is to diet, restrict, control, expensive procedures, ozempic, now all of these things, right? And I just think it's not very much fun, right? Restriction dieting kind of sucks the joy out of everything, right? And you do not need to diet to reach your health goals. And here's some reasons why we shouldn't be dieting, particularly during menopause. I feel like it's kind of the kiss of death, right? Diets miss with your hormones. So when you don't nourish your body properly, it causes estrogen, progesterone and other key hormones to decline even further, and we don't want the down regulation of those hormones during menopause. And blood sugar is such an important factor in health at any age, but during menopause, it's really, really critical. So the diet spiral of restricting binging causes spikes and crashes in your blood sugar, not eating throughout the day. We want those beautiful rolling hills and even blood sugar, not those spikes and crashes right every time that you spike and you crash, that's a blast of inflammation, slash aging, basically, right? So a lot of women, when they go into perimenopause and menopause, become insulin resistant, so you don't process carbohydrates and sugars efficiently, and it sends your hormones completely out of whack. The other thing about why it's so important to eat regularly throughout the day and eat balanced meals and snacks is we have this thing in our body called the fence status factor. And when we aren't eating enough foods, enough quality food, our thyroid gets starved of the nutrients it needs for our metabolism to function properly, so you can't lose weight and keep it off. And so we see a lot of women over 40 with thyroid problems. It's not a coincidence. You know why so many women are getting Hashimotos and graves and and diagnoses of thyroid disease, basically, so your thyroid needs that regular nourishment. And then there's the stress factor that we often ignore as women, because we're so busy nurturing and taking care of others and balancing all of the things and juggling everything we need to be doing, right? So when you starve your body, you don't take in the appropriate nutrition to meet your needs, your stress hormones, like cortisol, one of the primary stress hormones, go through the roof, and it's already, oh, it's already, you know, getting elevated because estrogen and progesterone and declining, and they're protective hormones. So we're just compounding the effect that happens when our hormones are shifting so that can increase your blood pressure, your your blood sugar. It messes with your sleep, it affects your ability to cope with stress, and that's what leads to the mood swings, the anxiety, the depression. So if you've been dieting or doing any of these things I'm talking about, and you can't seem to get ahead and lose weight and feel better, there's nothing wrong with you. It's just a strategy that's not working for you. You know, and science tells us that starving ourselves is not the way to get healthy or lose weight at any age, but particularly during menopause, because diets only address weight. It's only one measure of health. It doesn't fix the root cause of why your body's out of balance and why things aren't working properly. So diets like dieting, is like plugging a hole in a sinking boat. And the other thing that's so common is taking a bunch of supplements. Now, supplements can be wonderful and they can be very effective. So I'm not anti supplement, per se, but we have a really food forward approach where supplementation is really a resort that we would suggest, for example, after we've tried some food strategies, and Megan, our lead dietitian, who I'll have on the podcast next week. She's really, really careful about prescribing any kinds of medications or supplements or suggesting that your doctor does, because

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there's so many things that you can do with food. And the thing about supplements. Know? Oh gosh, it's, it's really like the wild wild west out there, because there's really no regulation about it, you know. And maybe you know somebody you know. You know someone who's taken a supplement, they've got an amazing results, you know, they feel better. You've seen an influence on influencer on social media who's talking about how great this supplement is. They probably have been paid to say that, by the way, you've seen an ad of this beautiful woman, you know, who you would love to be like, who's changed their life with this product. I mean, there's just a lot of supplements promising quick wins, and the marketing is so effective that it makes sense that we give these things a try. And a supplement may help alleviate a little bit of your discomfort, but it's not going to address the core issue, again, of why your body is out of balance. It's kind of like putting a band aid on the symptom, providing temporary support or relief, but it's not going to actually fix the core of what's going on. And actually, some supplements may actually be making your symptoms worse and aggravating your body. We see this all the time, where a lot of women, it just irritates, disrupts and overwhelms the body. And when you take some things away and you just simplify some things and let your body clear itself, things start to balance more easily. So just be aware of that. And of of course, the big one now is that so many women are going on ozempic and other GLP one agonist injections. Now, these drugs, these peptides, can be really effective for helping support weight loss, but it stands to reason that anything that has an effect has a side effect. So in many cases, most people are taking really elevated dosages, and so it's causing all kinds of negative side effects, so anything from digestive distress, nausea, abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, mood swings, irritability, rage, anxiety, depression. A lot of women that we know and it's documented are reporting headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, hair loss. It just really, can really disrupt things. And it makes sense, because GLP one is a hormone that is produced in the body, and it affects your hunger and satiety. You know, GLP one speaks to your pancreas about how much insulin is released to regulate your blood sugar. So when you put large amounts of a synthetic version of it, it stands to reason that it's going to disrupt your hormones. So again, you may go, Well, it's been great for me. So it may have helped you with weight loss, has it helped you reduce or get rid of your menopause symptoms like hot flashes, sweats, brain fog, mood swings, all these other things that I'm talking about. So we have a lot of people come into our community who have either taken these peptides, these injectables, or they've come off of them and then they've gained all the weight back, or they're just feeling really, really awful on them, but they don't know what else to do to lose weight. What we're learning by taking these elevated dosages of these peptides is that in most cases, you need to be on them for the rest of your life in order to maintain your results. So a lot of people that have weaned themselves off of it are gaining the weight back, or even gaining even more weight afterwards. So it's just something to think about. And I had a really interesting conversation on in Episode 48 with Sarah Kennedy, who's the CEO of callow curb, and they're offering a natural alternative to these appetite suppressants. So fascinating. She's seeing incredible results of people just taking Calico. You don't have to be it on it every day. You don't have to take it all the time. You can just take it when you need it. They're working with practitioners who are using lower dosages and micro dosages of these injectables, and then using Callo curb with it. There's all kinds of different ways that this is proving to be really successful, and it's all natural. So definitely a conversation to check out if you are on one of those injectables or you're thinking of doing it. So how do we avoid making some of these mistakes that I'm talking about? I think the number one thing is assembling a really good medical team at any age, but during menopause, it's absolutely critical. So I've talked in a lot of episodes with experts, doctors and healthcare practitioners, about how the statistics show that only about 30% of OB gyns actually get menopause training. So the OB GYN that may have helped you deliver your babies, for example, may not have menopause training and be the appropriate practitioner that's going to support you effectively through perimenopause, menopause and post menopause. So it's really, really important to find practitioners that understand the nature of what you're going through with all of the hormones changing your age. Managing body, etc. So in Episode 42 I had a really great conversation with Melissa and Stacey, the co founders of hot paws health. This is a fantastic website where you can get really credible, reliable, science based information about perimenopause and menopause. They have a fantastic Medical Advisory Board. They really carefully curate evidence based articles, you can learn about proven treatments, connect with qualified practitioners. Really a great resource. And one of their colleagues, Dr Tanya Goodrich, I spoke to her in Episode 21 and she and her colleagues at ever now, another amazing resource. They are really changing the level of healthcare for women over 40. So all of their practitioners are trained in menopause, and they do telehealth. So it's a really great resource ever now, how you can connect with practitioners who really, really are up with the latest science around menopause and perimenopause. Another really fantastic resource is Pandya health. So in Episode 43 I spoke to Dr Sophia yen, who is the co founder. She's also a professor at Stanford Medical School. She was sharing how the contraceptive pill, which is the same hormones, just in a different dosage, can really help to reduce the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause and help women transition with ease. Really, really interesting conversation, I highly recommend that she also debunks the fear around hormone replacement, and so it's really great to hear it from someone who's an expert in that area. In episode 20, I talked to Dr Lara zacharya about the benefits of advanced lab testing. So that's another really important piece of this, is making sure that you're getting your annual checkup with your wonderful doctor that you find, and then getting referrals to any specialist that you might need to see. But some of the standard lab lab panels that are available in the United States and Australia any any country that you're in, they don't show you enough information to really drill more deeply. So making sure that you're seeing a practitioner who is abreast of some of the more advanced panels that you can have that are going to show you more information about what's going on. And in Episode 28 I also talked to Amanda Hinman, who is a functional medical practitioner who is really helping women with all kinds of thyroid issues and hormone imbalances? So if you've got Hashimotos graves, that's a really interesting episode to listen to. She was also emphasizing the importance of advanced testing that goes beyond standard lab lab work, Dutch tests, stool samples. We talked about micronutrient labs and those advanced thyroid panels that you can get to get more comprehensive data, to really figure out the minutia of what's going on in your body. Another really important thing to do as you reach 35 and beyond is to really be looking after your pelvic health. And I shouldn't even say 35 and beyond, because when you're in, you're in, you're a teenager, when you're in your 20s, when you're in your 30s. I mean, it doesn't matter which age you are, it's really, really important. But obviously the reason why I was saying 35 and more is because we tend to have a lot of pelvic floor issues as we get older. So if you're peeing multiple times a night, you've got that leaking when you, you know, you pee a little bit, you know, when you laugh, you cough, you sneeze, and you've got to kind of hold on to it. If you've got incontinence, if you've got pain during intercourse, which is really common for women over 40, please know that there's, there's so much that you can do to correct this and get over this. So that episode with Dr Tanya Goodrich about pelvic pelvic health, pelvic floor therapy. She's a pelvic physiotherapist, and we also talked about bone health and osteoporosis. So it is such a fantastic conversation. She really busts some myths about those Kegels and explains why doing them could actually be making your symptoms worse that it's not the answer for every woman. She likes to call them blueberries. It's a hilarious conversation, just for the pure entertainment factor, she's such a fantastic character, but the information is really next level. And she is also telling us about osteoporosis, and there's an amazing organization in the UK called sticks and stones, and they've got a mandate for eradicating osteoporosis by 2050 so she was really giving us some great information about what we can do to support better bone health, like walking with a weighted vest,

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and telling us exactly how to Do that. She's got a fantastic Google sheet, which is filled with amazing resources for perimenopause and menopause. It's highly curated, and I've got the link to that in the show notes for episode 21 so definitely check that out. She also, like Dr Sophia yen, really debunked a lot of the misinformation about hormone replacement. And and shared some of the latest science. So a lot of great information there. She also talked about the importance of earlier DEXA scans and bone density scans, right? So getting that DEXA scan, typically, people were getting them in their 60s. Now they're recommending that women get them in their early 40s. Really, really important to be learning about your bone density, about your muscle mass, about what you need to be doing to set yourself up so that you don't have those falls, those fractures, all those things that can happen later in life, in our 60s and 70s. So you want to be being proactive and setting yourself up so that you're again, going to be in the best health possible. So doing resistance training, making sure that you're doing at least two to three resistance training sessions per week is what are the general recommendations, and that's at a minimum. So starting small, just standing in front of the news with some soup cans, and then starting with one pound weights, then two pound weights, and then slowly building up gradually. So again, I definitely check out the the resources in her Google Sheet, because that was, that was some really great information. The other really, really proactive thing, which of course, is what we do in our community, is getting your nutrition dialed in, and I mean, really dialed in. So there's a big difference between healthy eating and strategic eating. So what do I mean by strategic eating? I mean eating foods and eating in a way that is appropriate for your body and your needs at this phase of life. So what was working for you in your 20s will be very different, or maybe slightly different than what you need in your 50s, because our needs are different. Our hormones are different. You might be on different medications, different stress levels, different activity levels, different health goals, etc. So in Episode 11, I spoke to Kristen Kirkpatrick, who is a dietitian from the Cleveland Clinic. She's the author of skinny liver and the follow up book regenerative health. She wrote it with Dr Hannah nay, and they are considered two of the foremost experts on fatty liver. I mentioned earlier, about one in four adults being diagnosed with fatty liver disease. It's very, very common, and in our community, we when we get the member questionnaire for each member, so many women are reporting that they've been diagnosed with fatty liver, so definitely get that checked out, and in a standard blood panel, it will show you if you have elevated liver enzymes and so forth. But that's a really great episode to learn more about what you can do to be proactive about your liver, because as your protective hormones, your those progesterone, estrogen are in decline. They're protective hormones. Your liver takes a beating, one of your primary mechanisms for detoxification. So everything's sort of your digestion takes a beating. Your gut health takes a beating as everything's getting disrupted during perimenopause and menopause. So really important to be monitoring that as well. So what you need to be doing as you're older changes, and so we constantly want to be re evaluating that. So what will work for me, for example, at 52 with my genes and what I want to achieve and what's going on in my body will be a little bit different for you, which is, you know, a big reason why our program, our 60 day reset happens live so that we can help you, once we get to know you through the member questionnaire, we can help you develop a plan that's appropriate for you, taking in all the factors, not just your medical history, your health status, but your personality, your lifestyle, what you like to eat, all of those things play a role, not just numbers on a spreadsheet or lab work. You know what's actually going to work for you depends on what you're actually going to do, right, which depends a lot on what you like to do, right? But this bio individual approach to nutrition is so important, and this is why I love I love dietitians. So dietitians, as I said before, are medical practitioners. They have to train in hospitals with doctors and specialists, and then they themselves go into a specialty. So Megan, who's been on the podcast several times and will be on again next week, she specializes in digestive health, kidney disease, FODMAPs. So she's gone into that specialty where digestive health just really fascinates her, and obviously most of the people she works with are women, so she specializes in women's health, all kinds of other issues. And so some dietitians go into oncology. They go into all kinds of specialties. So but what I love about dietitians, as opposed to nutritionist health coaches, some of these terms that we hear get banted about, and they you think that they are interchangeable, they're very different. So dietitians have a medical license, unlike some of these other people, and I'm not downing nutritionists and health coaches, there are some wonderful people, but I really, really like dietitians, because I like people to be under the care of people with medical licenses, and they have to constantly up. Update their credentials, continue to train further, and again, they're very, very adept at collaborating with doctors and other medical practitioners in order to come up with a cohesive strategy. So, you know, dietitians are not going to they're not going to prescribe medications, for example. So I said that phrase earlier in the episode, but Megan would never do that. She would be looking at what your doctor is prescribed, but she may advise you about supplements that don't require a prescription, but only after she's assessed to the whole situation, and you'll meet her next week if you haven't already met her before. But she's very, very gentle. She doesn't over,

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over medicate, over prescribe. And I am when I say over medicate, I mean with anything, with food, for example. You know, we're sort of self medicating with a lot of these strategies. So really, really important that we get strategic and we figure out what's really going on, all right. So the other thing that is so important is managing stress, like I mentioned before. You know, our cortisol, adrenaline, these stress hormones, they just go through the roof, particularly at this phase in the world right now where there's so many distressing things going on, and then we put the hormone changes on top of it. You put your life experience, what's going on with your family, your work, and it's just stress, stress, stress. We're just barraged with it all the time. So really, really important to be managing that with Mindful self care practices, getting quality sleep, being really careful about that stuff. So we've had a lot of episodes about that. Episode 13, I spoke to Lauren Roxborough about fascia and foam rolling and rebounding in Episode 14, I spoke with Connie Zach, the co owner of sunlighten, about sitting in infrared saunas and the benefits of that in terms of regulating our system. Episode 24 I spoke with Kelly Lubeck about regulating our nervous systems with somatic practices. Alana kozakovich was on episode 53 she's a kinesiologist. We were talking about strategies for combating burnout, stress, fatigue. In episode 54 I spoke with Julie Hannon, who spoke about medication, medication, meditation and heart focused, listening to really just calm ourselves to be listening in a balanced way. It was a really beautiful episode. They all were in. Episode 57 recently, I spoke to dr ava Rubin about the power of Chinese medicine, acupuncture, the five elements of Chinese medicine, and how we can use that to help balance our our systems. Episode 58 I spoke with Pete Coles about somatic practices again and transpersonal therapy and listening to our bodies so there's so many wonderful resources on the podcast where you can be gathering tools for how you can combat stress and help bring your body into balance every day you know, and just be listening to what's going on so that you can attend to what's required. I think another really beautiful practice is staying connected with community, so finding communities of other women who are going through menopause or who are in their 60s or 70s, older women who are taking life by the balls and being proactive and wanting to be better and wanting to learn and grow and wanting to be really healthy and present. And so that's one of my favorite things about being in our community is that I get to connect with all these fabulous women, and it's my favorite thing about hosting this podcast that I get to interview all these extraordinary people who are willing to be open and answer my questions about things. So find those points of connection with people in your community. You can find them online, if you live alone, if you're in a remote area, or you just feel quite isolated, even if you're surrounded by people just finding that really great community. We're not supposed to do things alone, you know. It's just not possible. We need support, you know. And the number one thing that I would recommend to anybody, but particularly over the age of 40, is to look after your gut health. In addition, that's part of being a strategic eater, really, but it's just so important. If I had to go through perimenopause all over again, that's the thing that I would start with, because it was the thing that made the most difference for me. Now I was already attending to it, but not enough. So I I really encourage you to really look into this. You know, there's so much information about the gut microbiome, it's not going anywhere, because it's science, and the more we learn about it, the more. Scientists and doctors are realizing that it really is the key to feeling great in your body at any age. So when you look after your gut, you can really start to fix the core of what's causing imbalances in your body. So we all know that there's the central nervous system, which is our brain and our spinal cord, then there's the peripheral nervous system, right? So the enteric nervous system is that gut brain connection that you might have heard about. It's a real physiological thing in the body. And so our gut and our brain are connected by a system of nerves, and you may have heard it called the gut brain axis. Right, your gut is your second brain. There's so many things that we hear now, but basically your gut sends messages to your brain. Your brain sends messages to your gut like an information superhighway. So your gut microbiome controls your blood sugar, your hormones, your stress responses, your metabolism, it is all connected. So when you have got a gut microbiome that's out of balance, where the bacterial balance is not in your favor, we get all kinds of problems. It's like working with a glitchy computer that's sending all the wrong messages around your body, you know? And again, like I said before, when we're going through menopause, we just think that it's all about the sex hormones. But there's over 150 hormones in the body the control how we feel and what we think, you know. So that gut brain connection controls that entire messaging system. And then there's all these neurotransmitters that are part of it, too, you know, dopamine, serotonin, gab, all these things that make us feel good, make us feel calm, they all go out of whack when our hormones are getting disrupted as well, right? So really, really important to be looking after your gut, because if your gut is in trouble, the rest of your health is in trouble, and your hormones are in trouble. So what you eat is really, really important and dramatically affects your menopause journey. So whether you're on hormone replacement or not, whether you're losing weight on ozempic or not, this gut health piece and this strategic nutrition piece just has to be part of the puzzle, because we're eating multiple times a day, hopefully and maybe more if you're snacking on healthy things throughout the day, which is what we suggest, so that you can have that regulated blood sugar throughout the day. There's nothing wrong with snacking, right? It's just that typically, we're snacking on, you know, potato chips and candy and things like that, but when we're snacking on balanced things, then it's a really, really positive thing, you know, because if your gut health and your digestion isn't working properly, you can be eating all the healthy foods, but you're not absorbing the nutrients from those foods. You know that catchphrase, you are what you eat. It's actually technically not accurate. You're literally what you digest and absorb. So you want to be making sure that your digestion is working properly, so you're absorbing all of those nutrients. And in Episode 18, Megan was on the podcast talking about the gut brain connection and the science behind all of it and what you can do to improve your gut health. So I highly recommend listening to that episode. And then in Episode 10, I spoke with Sharon Flynn, the founder of the mentor of the fermentory. She is widely considered to be the foremost natural fermentation expert in Australia. She's wonderful, and she gave some great advice about how to include more fermented foods, more probiotic rich foods, into your life, and just to connect the dots between gut health and estrogen, because we're so focused on estrogen. Estrogen, for it to work in the body effectively, it has to bind to a receptor. They're called bind to a protein basically, basically, they're called estrogen receptors. And there's tons of estrogen receptors in your gut, so it makes sense that better gut health means better estrogen receptiveness and better hormone balance, right? And your gut health is also connected to your mood stability. Your gut controls your mood. So if you're feeling stressed out and anxious, you have those horrible mood swings, you're feeling teary or angry, you're experiencing the depression, which these are all so common during perimenopause and menopause and at any time in life, quite frankly,

(44:20):
over 95% of your serotonin, your feel good, neurotransmitter that speaks to these other hormones, is produced in your gut. We think that it's produced in our brain, but less than 5% of it is produced in our brain, so our gut sends it off to our brain, basically. So poor gut health means less serotonin production, which means moods can be all over the place. The other big connection is sugar cravings. So if you're having a lot of sugar cravings, which, oh my goodness, we hear this from women all the time, I'm a slave to my sugar cravings. I'm just addicted to sugar. I think about it all day. I want it all day, every day. Well, that's also controlled by your gut, so lower serotonin means increase. Appetite and food cravings. So the power of gut health is absolutely life changing for better metabolic health, better immune health, better mental health, absolutely critical at any phase of life, but it is paramount during menopause if you want to feel better specifically. So when you reset your gut health. You your hormones come into balance more easily. You can regulate your blood sugar. You can avoid getting diabetes, heart disease, cancer. We're all predisposed, more predisposed to these things during during menopause and over 40. So you can finally sleep through the night. You can bound out of bed with energy, you can just feel better and reach all of your health goals. So it's really, really, really important this gut health piece, and also just recognizing that there is no one size fits all with regards to nutrition. That's another huge piece of this. So I talked about strategic eating and why that's so important. We're really brainwashed into thinking that there's this one one solution that's going to work for everybody, this one diet that works for everybody. And I think that's where most diet programs fall short and disappoint people is is because it's good marketing. When you can sort of say this works for everybody, well, it's like selling snake oil, because it just doesn't exist because of all the reasons I've been talking about, we just cannot ignore bio individuality. So there is no one blanket diet that's going to work for every woman. You're unique. And so one of the big things that I was really frustrated with when I was looking at the diet culture and working with people was these huge promises that don't deliver, and these ridiculous statements that it's going to work for every single person, it's just simply not possible. So my dietitians and I were constantly frustrated by this. So we are just so committed to offering something different and educating as many people as possible to realize that this bio individual, strategic component is where the magic happens, and working with, in conjunction with your medical practitioners, to look at your labs, look at the anecdotal data by listening to your body and figuring out which foods make your body feel good and which good and which foods don't, and then making a plan from that place that's unique to you. So I'm looking for the test diet you're looking for the you diet, and they're slightly different, even though there's general nutrition parameters that we know work for everybody, may or are important for everybody. I should say more accurately, which is eating a lot of plants, eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, eating fiber, hydrating, you know, all these sorts of things are really, really important. So this personalized nutrition piece of the equation is so incredibly important. Eating healthy foods is just not enough, and it's really not enough. Over 40, you've got to get more strategic. So I hear this all the time, but I'm eating all the foods on the healthy list. I'm eating all the good foods. Well, it just may not be that it's the quantities, or there's certain foods that irritating your body, or putting them together in a combination is irritated. There's so many reasons why it's not enough, but it's about figuring out what your specific body needs at this time. The other piece of it during menopause is knowing your triggers, you know. So they're very well documented, food triggers that can exacerbate hot flashes, sweats, all kinds of things. So it's things like gluten, dairy, soy beans, grains, sugar, caffeine, alcohol. Now, it doesn't mean that you're never going to be able to eat these foods, and it doesn't mean that all of these foods are problematic for you, but it's really, really eye opening when you start to discover which foods are actually causing disruptions in your body. I'll give you a personal example, when I was in my mid 40s, soy was problematic for me. I discovered through working with dieticians and doctors and doing some food challenges and just reintroducing things gradually, oh, every time I eat soy, I get a hot flash. Now, soy is a phyto contains phytoestrogens. So it's an interesting food, because for some women, it can it can help to balance hormones in certain quantities, and for other women, like myself, when I was in my mid 40s, it was causing disruptions for me. Now here's an example of how it can change. Now, when I eat soy, I don't experience any of those things, so I think it's a combination of my hormones have changed from 45 to 52 but also my I really got some other things dialed in. So my system's more imbalanced, my gut microbiome is more imbalanced, etc. And I'm sure it's a number of other factors as well, also the quantities, you know, we don't want to be eating huge amounts of it all the time, you know. And I could say that about. Most foods. So really interesting to notice about that as well. And I think that's where a dietitian that specializes in food intolerance, so Megan, for example, our lead dietitian, that's another specialty of hers. And so working with someone who understands how to help you navigate that journey is really important. So I'm not a big I'm not a fan of Dr Google, and just kind of navigating this stuff on your own, right, because you really need somebody to help you do that so that you're not removing foods unnecessarily and and restricting things that you may not need to restrict. So we're all about the least restriction possible, because it's just not joyful and it's not very social. You know, where you feel like you can't eat the same things as as other people. So you don't want to be restricting things if you don't need to. So this, figuring this out, this, this balance nutrition and strategic nutrition piece is really, really important. Another big piece of it is understanding the balance of macronutrients that's going to work for you. So this is the biggest question that we get, what's the right ratio? Well, there is no perfect ratio for every person, despite what you might learn from Google. It's actually not possible, because everybody's needs are different for a variety of reasons, like we've been talking about, but figuring out the right balance for you and that could change depending on you know, if you're going to be running a marathon today and tomorrow, you're not going to be then your needs are going to be different. So a lot of the work that we do is helping people figure that out, what's going to work for them, you know? And it's, it's like a little bit of a puzzle, right? It's not a problem, it's a puzzle. And the protein piece of this is so important. Now we, we all pretty much know that protein is important. It's responsible for every metabolic process in the body, from digestion to cell repair. But there is a lot of misconceptions about protein, like more is just more with protein. So it's about taking in what's appropriate for you. So we can also only absorb so much protein per meal a snack. So taking in an enormous amount of protein at dinner, for example, when your body can't assimilate it, what's going to happen? Your body's going to is going to store the excess as fat. And so this is another piece of the big education around protein. And so your protein needs are going to be dependent on your activity levels, your weight and your health goals, and that's going to be different for everybody. And so what we see in our community is most women are not even getting half the protein. Many women not even a quarter of the protein that they need, and it's causing all kinds of health issues and getting in the way of weight loss, better energy, better sleep, all kinds of stuff. So protein is important at any phase of life, but it's critical during menopause. It controls your appetite by communing, communicating with your hunger and satiety hormones. It stimulates collagen production for better skin, better bones, muscles, prevents your breasts from sagging and it is just a game changer in terms of sleep and energy, like I said. So a lot of people that are in our program, they'll say, Oh, I'm feeling really, really good two weeks in, but I don't have as much energy as I'd like. I thought I'd have more energy. I'm like, Are you meeting your protein needs? Oh, no, is typically where we start. And sure enough, within 48 hours, boom. So it's, it's, it's, it's a good one to look at, because it's, it's,

(53:31):
really changes a lot of different things, all right. So I also want to talk about carbs, because there's so many misconceptions the carbs make you put on weight, the carbs, if you eat carbs, you can't possibly lose weight. Now, carbs are not the enemy during menopause, carbohydrates are your body's preferred source of energy. We see a ton of women coming in, out of community from low, low carb, keto, all these, these restrictive diets, and they are so ill and they don't feel good, you know? But it's about taking in quality carbohydrates, carbohydrates that are efficient, that are going to help your body run better. So simple carbs, like candy bars and things, well, of course, that's going to be problematic, but it's really important to be taking in those quality ones, because we've got to be taking in fiber. So fruits and vegetables are quality carbohydrates. Beans, quality carbohydrates, oats, things like that, right? Because they contain fiber. And over 75% of women are constipated. So if you are not moving your bowels every day, we're going to be looking at some stuff because, like we were talking about with pelvic health, all of that plumbing down below is all connected. So if you've got a problem in one area, it's going to cause problems in the other areas. So if you are not moving your bowels every day, so many women have recurring UTIs, recurring urinary tract infections, pain during intercourse, all kinds of pelvic floor issues, it's all connected. So again, if you want to. Listen to that episode with Dr Tony Goodrich. She talks about the connection between all of these things, and it affects your your bladder health, your sexual health, everything so really, really important. And when I was talking about that blood sugar piece before carbs affect your blood sugar, it's one of the keys to balancing your hormones during menopause, and your blood sugar is controlled by your gut. Your ability to process carbohydrates efficiently is controlled by your gut. So again, all roads lead back to the gut. And so many women, as I was saying before, are diagnosed with insulin resistance. Right? Your gut tells your pancreas how much insulin to release to control your blood sugar. Estrogen and progesterone also help to control your blood sugar. So when these hormones are rapidly decreasing, if your gut health isn't good, then you don't process those carbs, and then you have excess insulin in your bloodstream. I should say you don't process those carbs efficiently enough. So then you have excess insulin. That's when you become insulin resistance. That's when you get the pre diabetes diagnosis, all the things right. So when your hormones are out of whack, you over produce estrogen, which causes the dryness, the hot flashes, the sweat, the brain fog, the fatigue, the mood swings, this can all be corrected or radically improved with better gut health and strategic eating. So that's the great news, is that you have so much more control over how you feel than you think you do, and it's quite extraordinary when you experience it for yourself. So you can listen to me talking about this, you can read an article about it, but the knowing that you have when you feel the difference in your body, and then you look at your blood work three months later, and you see all your levels have improved. Then that knowing you can't go back from that. So then you're a believer, and then you want to do it even more. And that's when sustainable, healthy practices, you know, become your reality, right? So making changes is difficult on your own, isn't it? You know it's, I think it's meant to be, because we're not supposed to do it on our own. Would you rewire the electricity in your home? No, you're not an electrician, right? You're gonna hurt yourself and potentially burn the house down. I really feel like that about health and nutrition. We've got to be going to medical practitioners, to people that are the experts in a particular area. So absolutely make sure, again, that you're assembling, assembling a great medical team, and not just people that are excellent clinicians, that are up at the latest science, but they're going to listen to you. They're going to listen to what's going on with you, and they're going to work with you to find solutions. Because a lot of doctors, they just gaslight you. We just hear this constantly from women in our community, women and male doctors, female and male doctors. It's It's just unbelievable. So even if someone's an excellent clinician, if they're not listening to you, I would argue, find a different doctor, and where do you find quality practitioners? I mean, I always start with asking friends and then asking other quality practitioners that I'm seeing, because they're all gravitating towards each other, because they want to send their clients to really, really quality people to get the best care. And I just ask people that I trust, and then just go from there, you know, and then you can use some of the other resources, like resources I talked about through ever now, through hot pause health, through some of these other platforms that are really sending people to really, you know, great practitioners I highly recommend, when you're assembling your medical team of seeing a dietitian and a dietitian that specializes in women's Health, in digestive health, in hormone health and and other things that you might be experiencing, you know. So your menopause symptoms are real, or your health symptoms, if you're listening to this and you're not going through menopause, they're real. It's really happening in your body. So you want to be working with a medical team that's going to acknowledge that, you know. And I really believe that when you get your blood work done every year, you have your annual checkup, your doctor tells you what's going on, and hopefully you're in great health, but maybe there's some things that need to be rebalanced and addressed. You need to go off for further diagnostic testing. I highly recommend going and seeing a dietitian. You may only see them once a year, and you go, here's my blood work, here's my test. This is what's going on. It shows that I'm deficient in this or that I'm really tired and I need to do this. And they're going to help you use food as a functional tool for better health, you know, and how you can tweak what you're eating to support your health goals. It's so important to be putting this piece in place. So all of the dietitians that I work with specialize in digestive health, they specialize in working with women, and they specialize in working with women over 40, right? So most of the people in our community are women over 40. We help women of all ages. So there's women in their 30s, and we've helped women in their 20s. We help men as well, by the way, but I. Are. The demographic of our community is typically women 45 to 70, but we help women over 70 and over 80, you know, but a lot of women going through perimenopause and menopause, you know, in the beginning, we've really expanded the resources about menopause on our website, because so many women were coming in, and then we're getting rid of their menopause symptoms, and we're losing weight, finally, and sleeping through the night, and all the things that they thought, you know, was just the hormones. It was impossible. It was happening through this gut health and strategic nutrition approach. And so that's when we really started speaking to women about menopause and the science behind gut health and strategic nutrition, because it was so incredibly effective for women who were on hormone replacement and women who were not. So I think that the other piece of this is the community, like I was talking about before. So if information was all we needed, then you'd listen to this episode and go and do some of this stuff, or speak to your doctor or read a medic, you know, a medical article, and go and talk to your doctor about it, and if that's all you needed, then we'd all just read our way or listen our way to getting all about everything that we want, and we know that it doesn't work that way. So we need support, and we need guidance, and we need daily guidance in order for this to be successful. And I think that that's the piece of our community. That's the secret sauce, is not only the credible scientific information and the science based strategies and the access to medical practitioners and dietitians, but the community support, the daily support and the hand holding, so that we can help you tweak things. You can express what's going on for you. You can listen to what's going on to other people that may or may not relate to you, but it may be something that might be relevant to you in the future, and all of us coming together all the time. So we have daily emails in our program, but we also have two live video calls every week, so we have a dietitian Q and A, and then I have my open office hours every week, where women can come together and just share what's going on for them, and can be everything from I'm just feeling really emotional, and I don't feel particularly motivated, and I'm worried this isn't going to work. To, I don't know how to get my kids to eat broccoli or whatever it might be, right? Or my husband won't eat this. Or, how do I get, you know, how do I get motivated to exercise or whatever it might be? We could all just be laughing about how wonderful someone's results are and celebrating it. And, and I say laughing, but you know, I mean joyfully, smiling and celebrating is what it meant. So I think putting all these elements together is really, really important. So registrations open for the next 60 day reset. So if you would like some support and this gut health, strategic nutrition approach looking after your stress, these lifestyle strategies, focusing on balancing your hormones, by recognizing the relationship between gut health and metabolism, looking after your metabolic health, your blood sugar, and learning how to make this sustainable so that you can experience vibrant health as you age and as you transition through menopause and then into your 60s and 70s, you're able to maintain it so you can learn more at it has to be me.com/menopause

(01:03:35):
when you join our community, you get lifetime access to our website and all of The resources so you can stay connected to our community, and you can continue learning and growing and maintaining your results beyond your 60 day journey with us. And a lot of people return, you know, just to tap into the community, or sometimes they fly away and we never see them again, but we see them logging in and using the resources, and again, there's no right or wrong way to move through the journey and use the community. It's just what works for you and your personality. So yeah, please leave a comment in the Facebook group and a review about what resonated with you, what has worked for you to feel good during menopause. What are you doing to be proactive about your health over 40? Who are the role models in your life, the women that are beacons of hope for you and serve as examples for the kind of older woman that you want to be. What disappoints you about what's going on in the world right now with regards to women's health? I mean, I just want to hear all of it. I just find it all so interesting and not interesting because I can't think of a different word of interest. I just find it really fascinating, and it always helps me be a better coach, too. To hear from you about what's working or not working. So I can't wait to hear from you. Yeah.

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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;}Menopause: How To Avoid The Common Mistakes | 060