July 9, 2024 • 28 mins
This week, I’m sharing a personal journey that led me to change my mind about hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
I used to have a strong bias toward natural medicine and was hesitant to consider HRT, but a synchronistic experience opened my mind to new possibilities. It's not about choosing between natural and mainstream medicine; it's about what serves our well-being.
So, let's have this conversation as if we're on a walk together, chatting about the ups and downs of perimenopause and menopause.
Discover why I changed my mind about Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) and how it can impact your midlife experience.
I delve into the concept of naturalistic bias and how my own preconceptions about mainstream and natural medicine shifted when I realized that it's not about choosing one over the other, but finding what genuinely serves my well-being.
I'll dive into why I initially hesitated to take HRT, what changed my mind, and how it has impacted my life.
We'll also tackle some common misconceptions and biases around HRT and explore how we can embrace both natural and mainstream medicine to thrive in midlife.
So, grab a cup of tea or put on your walking shoes, and let's dive into why I initially hesitated to take HRT, what changed my mind, and how it has impacted my life.
Got questions or insights to share from your own menopause journey? Reach out to me and let's continue this conversation. Visit my website to learn more about the episode and join my midlife community.
Follow Meegan on Instagram here
Join the waitlist for The Midlife Upgrade Course: https://meegancare.co.nz/course/
Please note: The content of this podcast does not substitute or constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Kia ora. Are you a woman navigating midlife, menopause and beyond?
I'm Megan Keir, your midlife mentor and psychosynthesis counsellor and coach.
Join me as we dive deep into the heart of midlife, unravelling the complexities
of menopause and exploring uncharted territories that lie beyond.
Together, we'll navigate through self-doubt, bid farewell to people-pleasing,
(00:22):
conquer imposter syndrome and tame those overwhelming feelings.
It's time to celebrate this vibrant second chapter of life, claiming your authentic
confidence and courage along the way.
Midlife is not a time to settle. It is a time to unleash your purpose,
make an impact uniquely your own, all while prioritizing your well-being.
(00:43):
So buckle up for conversations that resonate with the essence of your midlife
journey. Are you ready? Let's begin.
So today's episode is entitled titled Why I Changed My Mind About HRT.
And I will preface it by saying I am on HRT now and I haven't stopped taking HRT.
(01:06):
So it's not that kind of change your mind.
It's a different kind of change your mind. So I didn't want to do a bait and
switch with you on the title.
There's no big revelation that I've stopped taking HRT. I'm still happily taking it.
But I wanted to share how I got
to this place and why taking HRT is not a panacea. It is not a quick fix.
(01:30):
It is not something that makes all of that midlife menopause,
perimenopause stuff go away.
But I have more to add to that because it can actually be incredibly helpful
for menopause symptoms, which I do bang on about quite a lot.
But I want to talk about my story around it because I think there's three reasons
why I want to talk about my story around this.
(01:51):
And the first one is that it's something that I talk about in person with women
a lot, whether we're at events or we're just sort of talking about menopause.
I've been asked by a few women to talk to them about my experience of menopause
ongoing on HRT as a way for them to figure out whether HRT is right for them
or it's the right time for them to start taking HRT.
(02:12):
So HRT we know stands for hormone replacement therapy. the common term for it now.
In medicine is MHT, menopause hormone therapy, but we've called it HRT for so
long it just kind of sticks with us.
So I'll probably continue to alternate between those two terms.
(02:33):
So that's one reason. And so because this podcast is all about having those
conversations as if you and I were going for a walk together,
as if you and I were chatting about the issues of perimenopause,
menopause and midlife this is a conversation I
have quite frequently with women and so I wanted to share
it with you with my podcast audience so that's
(02:56):
one reason the second reason is that I don't know about you but I had to go
through a place where I had thought I'd made my mind or my decision up about
not taking HRT for a long time and then I had it felt like one of those.
Synchronistic divine interventions one day, and I'll tell you about that in
(03:20):
this podcast, and that opened up a doorway of possibility around,
well, maybe I need to find out more about HRT.
Maybe it is for me. Maybe it can help me.
And so because we often get quite locked in our decision-making,
but we have to remember that perimenopause for
a start can last up to 10 years for some women even a little longer but then
(03:44):
menopause and post-menopause is really for the rest of your life and the research
that they're doing now on HRT is that the sooner you start it the better for
your bones, heart, brain,
general physical health but also that we can be a number of years past that
date of menopause which is the 12 months without a menstrual cycle and still
(04:08):
benefit from hormone replacement therapy.
So there's not the hard and fast cut off that there once was and research is
still being done around it.
So if you're five years post-menopause, like some women I've talked to,
you might think, well, it's too late for me.
I didn't start then, so my chance is gone. Well, probably not.
(04:29):
You can very likely still...
If you're a good candidate, receive the benefits of HRT from now going forward.
And so I really wanted to open up the conversation around that because I think
that's an important piece that maybe that window of opportunity hasn't closed
for you as a post-menopausal woman.
And then the third reason I wanted to talk about this topic and my journey with
(04:53):
HRT is a little more nuanced and it's around a naturalistic bias.
I think that's what it's called, a naturalistic bias or the
naturalistic fallacy and I'm just
learning more about that now but basically
it's where my blinkers were
(05:13):
on around being able to support myself and because of my internal biases around
mainstream medicine and natural medicine I chose a path and then became quite
trapped in that path in terms of my physical health in perimenopause and postmenopause.
(05:33):
And so I wanted to open the conversation around that because we can easily get
locked into black and white thinking, this is right and this is wrong.
And I also think that for some of us, our brains more tend to do that,
go into that black and white thinking. And we do that a lot as teenagers.
And then the adult brain should, in theory, be able to hold more nuance and
(05:58):
tolerate more gray and in between the black and white.
But we're very influenced now, of course, by social media.
And social media offers information in these very tiny little sound bites.
And so it's hard to get the nuance of the information that's coming through.
So it can feel very black and white.
For example, example HRT is bad for you, it is not natural, it is not what nature
(06:23):
designed, therefore it is bad or HRT is the answer to all of your questions as a midlife woman.
It is going to make you completely turn around and change and own and rock your life.
You're going to feel incredible, you're going to look amazing,
you're going to lose weight and life will never have felt better.
You can see that we get those sound bites of information come through on social
(06:47):
media and And that sort of makes that black and white thinking a whole lot worse.
So I wanted to introduce that concept in terms of my journey with it and probably
admit some of my own faults and failures to see the broader perspective and
evidence-based facts that are out there. So, yeah.
(07:07):
Where to begin? Let's begin at the doctor's office.
So I find myself in my doctor's office. I hadn't been to the doctor for a very
long time, a number of years actually.
I thought that I had been looking after my health. I had a naturopath on board.
I had been seeing colleagues for acupuncture. I had been having natural medicine.
(07:31):
I had been watching my diet and introducing really nourishing foods.
It felt like a surreal moment. Why did it feel like a surreal moment?
Because I'd been really invested in natural medicine and complementary medicine.
If I'm really honest, I had Crohn's disease when I was a young woman.
I went through my 20s struggling with this chronic illness and to all intents
(07:54):
and purposes, I healed it.
I went from having Having a body that was 39 kgs in weight, incredibly underweight
with multiple fistulas, which are a side effect of Crohn's disease,
not being able to eat or take care of myself and very slowly and gradually naturally
(08:15):
healing to a stage where I had my first child.
And then once we got a handle on that, seven years later, decided to have another
child and was doing really, really well. And...
I'd had such a lot of trauma in the medical system when I was sick that I had
(08:36):
very much avoided mainstream medicine since that time.
And that's probably another story.
But I mean, if you've gone through childbirth, if you've been sick in your life,
you'll understand that mainstream medicine can be very traumatizing.
And that's not just about the physical pain that goes on, right?
Mistakes can be made. the way that we are treated can often be not respectful
(09:00):
or thoughtful or adapt to our own sensitivities and predispositions that can
lead us feeling very untrustworthy of mainstream medicine.
So there I am sitting in my doctor's office and lucky for me,
she was very well versed in in menopause.
So she is an integrative GP here in local New Plymouth.
(09:25):
And I had no knowledge whatsoever of what was going on, of what I wanted or what I needed.
So nine years prior to that, I had had the conversation with my doctor that
I was, they told me that I was post-menopausal, that I was in post-menopause.
I hadn't had a cycle for more than a year.
(09:46):
My numbers, numbers according to
them clearly showed that I was in post-menopause premature menopause
of course at the age of 41 the average age is
51 52 in New Zealand and I
had worked really hard to manage the symptoms to manage life to keep moving
through for those nine years so here I am sitting in the doctor's office asking
(10:10):
her about HRT something I never thought I would do and never Never say never though, right?
And she laid out for me three different options and I can't quite remember them
now, but they went from the most...
Minimal to the medium to the full HRT, estrogen patches plus progesterone.
(10:31):
And of course, I had a lot of questions. I had a lot of fear.
I had a strong negative bias away from HRT, but she was in no way pushing me
towards one thing or the other.
I had gone because something had changed for me
literally overnight although often when
(10:52):
there's an overnight change there's a big lead up to it and
I'll talk about that in a sec but she scribbled down
all the options for me on a piece of paper she gave me
the backup documents and some studies
that I could go home and take a look at and I went
home and this was before HRT was
so mainstream because I've seen in the last three
(11:14):
or four years it become much more
to the fore and we talk much more openly about it we now understand much more
clearly what we take what is the normal protocol for HRT for a woman in New
Zealand at that time I didn't know anybody that was on HRT it was very very
(11:34):
new to me so So from that conversation,
I decided to start with estrogen patches at 25, the low end of the prescription.
And obviously the progesterone goes along with that. And my doctor prescribed
melatonin at the same time.
We did a whole bunch of blood tests and the melatonin because I was still struggling with sleep.
(11:57):
I was managing it okay, but I was still struggling.
So I would wake up at, say, three in the morning, maybe stay awake for a couple
of hours and then get a couple of hours sleep from five to seven or six thirty
and then wake up and haul myself through the day. But my sleep was not deep.
I felt like I was waking up really easily and relaxed.
(12:19):
I could feel myself getting more and more tired. How did I get to that place?
I had been struggling with sleep, struggling with energy, struggling with hot
flushes. When I first found out I was in menopause, I was post-menopausal,
hot flushes were not a massive issue.
What was an issue was fatigue, intolerance to any alcohol.
(12:41):
Not that I was a big drinker, but one glass of wine at night would have me in a hangover the next day.
Frequent headaches and migraines, insomnia and just this creeping generalized
anxiety had started to build in my system.
There was this English woman on YouTube and she started to talk about when she
(13:05):
first started taking HRT and because her story was so similar to mine she had
a strong natural bias she was
very much invested in natural medicine and then a
friend talked to her and and she was really
really struggling with symptoms of perimenopause postmenopause
for 10 years she said and then a friend talked to her and said why don't you
(13:29):
go and try HRT and she was very much like me she was like no I'm a natural person
so this is where the the natural bias comes in.
She said, I trust mother nature, me, tick.
I trust my body, me, tick. I've healed my body before.
(13:51):
I know my body can heal. I identified with that as well.
I don't trust mainstream medicine over the long term.
And so she had all these biases against HRT.
Now, her story was, turns out to be quite similar to mine, but it was really
triggering me in a great way because I was like, oh, that's me.
(14:12):
That's me. She was trying all these natural medicines. She was growing regularly.
She was getting all these treatments. I could see myself in there.
And then she said, and then when I started on HRT, everything changed,
not overnight, but everything changed.
And she went on to talk about her own bias towards natural medicine and something
(14:33):
opened up inside of me where I understood that I had been perceiving this from
a very black and white place where my brain was saying natural medicine,
good, Western allopathic mainstream medicine
bad and a light switch
went off for me and I realized this is
(14:55):
getting worse not better my well-being is getting worse not better I am struggling
to keep up here what is it worth to me to have a quality of life I am 50 I was
50 then how many more decades on this planet have I got?
A few, I hope. Quite a few, I hope. Do I want to struggle through them?
(15:20):
And remember, I do struggle well. I've done struggle well.
I know how to cope with that. Or do I want to thrive and live my best life for
this next chapter of my life?
And so that little YouTube video flicked a light switch for me and I was able
to identify my own natural bias.
(15:42):
I was was able to look at it from higher perspective like a bird's eye view
and go is this really serving me still I've been at this for quite a long time
am I living with the vitality and the.
Resourcefulness and the inner energy that I want to
and can it be improved and I
(16:03):
had just at that time done a whole bunch of inner work as well
and I think somehow all of that medical
trauma that I I went through when I had Crohn's disease and some
from very early on in infancy which was very
subconscious to me became more resolved and
so then you combine those two pieces together and there's a doorway that opens
(16:23):
where I realized that there was another choice available to me that I hadn't
yet taken and that just because it sounds so simple now yeah it sounds so simple like Like I want to...
Go back in time, go back in time and tell my younger self, my 45-year-old self
that there's an easier way to do this.
But in any case, what I learned through that moment was I don't have to choose
(16:48):
between complementary natural medicine and mainstream medicine.
It is not either or, it is not good versus bad, it is both and.
It is what serves me, it is what does the research say,
what does the data tell us what are we
learning about women's bodies and just because
something served me then nine years
(17:11):
ago really truly being honest with
myself is it still working at its capacity for me now and the answer to that
was no it's not and because I could take the blinkers off and see the shades
of gray and make a choice that didn't have to feel black and white that didn't
have to feel like I was closing one door by opening another and going with HRT,
(17:34):
that I could utilize HRT and natural medicine,
that I wasn't betraying anyone or anything.
I don't even know how that belief got in there, but there it was.
And that ultimately I was on a path by making a a new choice at that stage.
Nine years after I was deemed in post-menopause,
(17:57):
I was changing the course of the next chapter of my life and that it wasn't
too late and that I could still receive all of the benefits of HRT if it was a good fit for my body.
And so far, it has been.
So that's that unwinding of the naturalistic bias.
And so the other piece of it is around what might serve me at the beginning
(18:21):
of my postmenopausal journey or later perimenopause might not still serve me
two years, five years later.
And that was my experience because I was kind of okay when I was in early postmenopause.
But because I was in premature menopause, my symptoms may be very different
(18:42):
to what the normal kind of baseline is, but I was okay early on.
And then there was a slow creep, like I said, of difficult symptoms that came up.
So the insomnia and the anxiety and the fatigue and all of those horrendous headaches.
And so I, you know, in the beginning, what helped my sleep was the herbal medicine
really helped my sleep. That was great.
(19:04):
But then it got to the stage a few years later where my sleep was terrible again.
It had shifted into a different pattern, but it was really bad and it wasn't
restorative. It It wasn't helping me through the day.
I was just kind of going, oh, it's okay. I can help.
Meditate in that awake time. I can have naps in the day.
(19:26):
I can adapt my life around it. But that's that piece I learned to adapt my life
when I was really sick with Crohn's.
But in all of that adaptation that I was doing, I was actually not able to see
that there was another choice for me.
And so I think that that's really key because I hear this quite a lot where
we say, and I do it all the time where we say, HRT is not for me.
(19:51):
No, I'm sticking with natural methods.
This was me. And then I've sort of signed on the dotted line,
right? I've signed my contract with my post-menopausal self.
And then I had in my brain and my mind and heart that this was the choice I
made and there was no changing that now.
I didn't really think about it. It was just signed and sealed and locked away.
(20:12):
But it was that dissatisfaction with my current state of well-being and then
also I love how life just sometimes sends us the right people,
the right conversations.
The right YouTube videos or it could be in this case the right podcast episode
that just opens another doorway for us and that's what happened for me and I
(20:36):
followed down that path and came to a different plan at that time.
That even though I had signed that subconscious contract with myself about how
I was going to handle my post-menopausal years, and let's be clear,
I've had so much influence from women that say that menopause is natural,
that why would I want to take HRT because that's just the patriarchy controlling us again.
(21:02):
Why would mother nature give me menopause if it didn't want me to have this experience.
Being a postmenopausal woman is equal to being a crone, equal to being a wise
woman, equal to being a powerful, intuitive, psychically adept woman.
(21:24):
This is all of the messaging that I had.
I didn't receive the messages that said, you can
take HRT and be
a powerfully intuitive vital woman
in your 50s and 60s but
we got here anyway and here's what happened when I started HRT because I wasn't
(21:45):
sure what to expect it doesn't always happen this quickly but from the first
few days that I started taking it and it was probably something to do with melatonin
and the progesterone together because the progesterone can be really calming,
I started sleeping better.
In fact, I think in the first two days, I slept.
So much better and then of course if you sleep better you
(22:05):
generally feel better the next day
so that started to take place and then after
a few weeks I started to go I've got
a little bit more spring in my step and that
kept compounding that kept improving and
the hot flushes that I was getting which were pretty
difficult to manage I wasn't getting night
(22:27):
sweats very often but I was getting the hot
flushes so I wouldn't wear a long sleeve merino
like I'm wearing right now just in case I
had a hot flush because if you've had them and they're quite intense
you'll know that it's heat yes but it's not
like being hot at the beach it's like this heat from the inside out that also
speeds up your nervous system a little bit so you've got this fight and flight
(22:50):
well that was my experience as well and so I would sometimes feel a little bit
claustrophobic with them and have to work quite hard to slow my breathing down
and just to slow my system down.
This just went. They went. They disappeared.
And I told a few friends that I was taking HRT.
And from one friend in particular who was struggling with menopausal symptoms
(23:12):
as well, who was a few years older than me, she was really interested.
But a lot of friends I had then a lot of pushback from around the dangers of HRT.
Why would you mess with something that's natural haven't
you heard that it causes cancer have you
heard any of these i i have and
(23:32):
that's alarming isn't it but of course if
we look at the research the research
shows us that actually body identical hrt is very safe and another friend said
to me oh but i don't want to take it because what if they come back in a few
years and say they got got it wrong and it's now not safe to take.
(23:55):
But for me, the way I perceive it now from having taken HRT for about three years and.
Is that the quality of life that I've gotten from that hormonal therapy has
been so, so good that I'm willing to take that tiny, tiny, tiny risk as it stands now.
(24:16):
Medicine is always changing, research is always changing, I get that,
but it's also changing around the food that we consume and the environments that we live in.
Science will always move on and will always change, and when we know better,
we do better. But I'll finish the podcast by saying this.
I still hear pushback from friends.
(24:37):
I have a lot of friends in the natural medicine space, in the wellness space.
So there's still a lot of stigma around HRT and around its potential dangers,
as there is for a lot of mainstream medicine and natural circles.
And I can be with both sides now, which I really appreciate,
and that I've opened up to be able to look much more rationally around these
(25:03):
different forms of medicine and really understand that they are there to work with us, right?
I don't take HRT and then go and drink loads of alcohol, not exercise all day
and eat junk food all day.
I might do a tiny bit of that, of course. but I don't
expect HRT to be the cure for all
of my ills I also now take care of my body but
(25:24):
the difference it's made is that it gave me enough energy to think about the
small improvements that I could make in my life that were going to increase
my vital energy by changing the exercise that I do or before HRT all I could
really manage was a walk that was it I was done it's given me that.
Extra boost to be able to dial
(25:46):
in those changes that have improved my
well-being over the last three years and I now
say to my friends that because often friends ask me well how long you take for
and that's another myth is often spoken of right oh you're just suppressing
the symptoms of menopause and when you stop taking HRT then all of those symptoms
(26:07):
are going to come back and you're going to have to go through it anyway.
There's absolutely no evidence that this is the case. That is not the truth.
We're replacing hormones that help us be well and vital that are very low in our body.
Now, why nature has chosen to make our body function in this way,
(26:27):
I don't really know, but menopause is natural.
Yes, tooth decay is natural.
Osteoporosis is natural, but we still do
something about those in our body right
we support support our body in whatever
way we can to be well if we're experiencing those
just because it's natural doesn't make it okay
(26:49):
and right and that we should just tolerate
it exactly as it is in our body and
that's why I sometimes say as a joke but when
friends ask me well when are you going to stop taking HRT I
say I'm not intending to stop anytime
soon they can put me in a
box in a coffin in the ground with my
(27:12):
patch on because it is staying with me for as long as it is viable and the research
is still developing on that so watch this space but currently you can as far
as I'm aware the protocols say that you can keep taking HRT well into your 60s
and they're still doing research on it.
Because we're women, the research is really, really lacking.
(27:34):
That's just the culture that we live in.
So watch the space and hopefully there's more information on that coming soon.
I really hope that's been helpful in one way or another, sharing my story around
why I changed my mind about HRT and why I'm really, really pleased that I did.
Go well, my friend. I look Look forward to talking with you again real,
(27:58):
real soon. Hey, thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Really appreciate you. Check out my course where we just go so much deeper than
I can ever do on a podcast over an eight-week period.
The Midlife Upgrade course is a blend of video and learning modules and weekly
live calls where you will discover a roadmap for psychological freedom in midlife.
(28:22):
Check out all the details on my website. So I really, really would love to have
you join the course, megankeira.co.nz forward slash course.
Kia ora. Are you a woman navigating midlife, menopause and beyond?
I'm Megan Keir, your midlife mentor and psychosynthesis counsellor and coach.
Join me as we dive deep into the heart of midlife, unravelling the complexities
of menopause and exploring uncharted territories that lie beyond.
Together, we'll navigate through self-doubt, bid farewell to people-pleasing,
(00:22):
conquer imposter syndrome and tame those overwhelming feelings.
It's time to celebrate this vibrant second chapter of life, claiming your authentic
confidence and courage along the way.
Midlife is not a time to settle. It is a time to unleash your purpose,
make an impact uniquely your own, all while prioritizing your well-being.
(00:43):
So buckle up for conversations that resonate with the essence of your midlife
journey. Are you ready? Let's begin.
So today's episode is entitled titled Why I Changed My Mind About HRT.
And I will preface it by saying I am on HRT now and I haven't stopped taking HRT.
(01:06):
So it's not that kind of change your mind.
It's a different kind of change your mind. So I didn't want to do a bait and
switch with you on the title.
There's no big revelation that I've stopped taking HRT. I'm still happily taking it.
But I wanted to share how I got
to this place and why taking HRT is not a panacea. It is not a quick fix.
(01:30):
It is not something that makes all of that midlife menopause,
perimenopause stuff go away.
But I have more to add to that because it can actually be incredibly helpful
for menopause symptoms, which I do bang on about quite a lot.
But I want to talk about my story around it because I think there's three reasons
why I want to talk about my story around this.
(01:51):
And the first one is that it's something that I talk about in person with women
a lot, whether we're at events or we're just sort of talking about menopause.
I've been asked by a few women to talk to them about my experience of menopause
ongoing on HRT as a way for them to figure out whether HRT is right for them
or it's the right time for them to start taking HRT.
(02:12):
So HRT we know stands for hormone replacement therapy. the common term for it now.
In medicine is MHT, menopause hormone therapy, but we've called it HRT for so
long it just kind of sticks with us.
So I'll probably continue to alternate between those two terms.
(02:33):
So that's one reason. And so because this podcast is all about having those
conversations as if you and I were going for a walk together,
as if you and I were chatting about the issues of perimenopause,
menopause and midlife this is a conversation I
have quite frequently with women and so I wanted to share
it with you with my podcast audience so that's
(02:56):
one reason the second reason is that I don't know about you but I had to go
through a place where I had thought I'd made my mind or my decision up about
not taking HRT for a long time and then I had it felt like one of those.
Synchronistic divine interventions one day, and I'll tell you about that in
(03:20):
this podcast, and that opened up a doorway of possibility around,
well, maybe I need to find out more about HRT.
Maybe it is for me. Maybe it can help me.
And so because we often get quite locked in our decision-making,
but we have to remember that perimenopause for
a start can last up to 10 years for some women even a little longer but then
(03:44):
menopause and post-menopause is really for the rest of your life and the research
that they're doing now on HRT is that the sooner you start it the better for
your bones, heart, brain,
general physical health but also that we can be a number of years past that
date of menopause which is the 12 months without a menstrual cycle and still
(04:08):
benefit from hormone replacement therapy.
So there's not the hard and fast cut off that there once was and research is
still being done around it.
So if you're five years post-menopause, like some women I've talked to,
you might think, well, it's too late for me.
I didn't start then, so my chance is gone. Well, probably not.
(04:29):
You can very likely still...
If you're a good candidate, receive the benefits of HRT from now going forward.
And so I really wanted to open up the conversation around that because I think
that's an important piece that maybe that window of opportunity hasn't closed
for you as a post-menopausal woman.
And then the third reason I wanted to talk about this topic and my journey with
(04:53):
HRT is a little more nuanced and it's around a naturalistic bias.
I think that's what it's called, a naturalistic bias or the
naturalistic fallacy and I'm just
learning more about that now but basically
it's where my blinkers were
(05:13):
on around being able to support myself and because of my internal biases around
mainstream medicine and natural medicine I chose a path and then became quite
trapped in that path in terms of my physical health in perimenopause and postmenopause.
(05:33):
And so I wanted to open the conversation around that because we can easily get
locked into black and white thinking, this is right and this is wrong.
And I also think that for some of us, our brains more tend to do that,
go into that black and white thinking. And we do that a lot as teenagers.
And then the adult brain should, in theory, be able to hold more nuance and
(05:58):
tolerate more gray and in between the black and white.
But we're very influenced now, of course, by social media.
And social media offers information in these very tiny little sound bites.
And so it's hard to get the nuance of the information that's coming through.
So it can feel very black and white.
For example, example HRT is bad for you, it is not natural, it is not what nature
(06:23):
designed, therefore it is bad or HRT is the answer to all of your questions as a midlife woman.
It is going to make you completely turn around and change and own and rock your life.
You're going to feel incredible, you're going to look amazing,
you're going to lose weight and life will never have felt better.
You can see that we get those sound bites of information come through on social
(06:47):
media and And that sort of makes that black and white thinking a whole lot worse.
So I wanted to introduce that concept in terms of my journey with it and probably
admit some of my own faults and failures to see the broader perspective and
evidence-based facts that are out there. So, yeah.
(07:07):
Where to begin? Let's begin at the doctor's office.
So I find myself in my doctor's office. I hadn't been to the doctor for a very
long time, a number of years actually.
I thought that I had been looking after my health. I had a naturopath on board.
I had been seeing colleagues for acupuncture. I had been having natural medicine.
(07:31):
I had been watching my diet and introducing really nourishing foods.
It felt like a surreal moment. Why did it feel like a surreal moment?
Because I'd been really invested in natural medicine and complementary medicine.
If I'm really honest, I had Crohn's disease when I was a young woman.
I went through my 20s struggling with this chronic illness and to all intents
(07:54):
and purposes, I healed it.
I went from having Having a body that was 39 kgs in weight, incredibly underweight
with multiple fistulas, which are a side effect of Crohn's disease,
not being able to eat or take care of myself and very slowly and gradually naturally
(08:15):
healing to a stage where I had my first child.
And then once we got a handle on that, seven years later, decided to have another
child and was doing really, really well. And...
I'd had such a lot of trauma in the medical system when I was sick that I had
(08:36):
very much avoided mainstream medicine since that time.
And that's probably another story.
But I mean, if you've gone through childbirth, if you've been sick in your life,
you'll understand that mainstream medicine can be very traumatizing.
And that's not just about the physical pain that goes on, right?
Mistakes can be made. the way that we are treated can often be not respectful
(09:00):
or thoughtful or adapt to our own sensitivities and predispositions that can
lead us feeling very untrustworthy of mainstream medicine.
So there I am sitting in my doctor's office and lucky for me,
she was very well versed in in menopause.
So she is an integrative GP here in local New Plymouth.
(09:25):
And I had no knowledge whatsoever of what was going on, of what I wanted or what I needed.
So nine years prior to that, I had had the conversation with my doctor that
I was, they told me that I was post-menopausal, that I was in post-menopause.
I hadn't had a cycle for more than a year.
(09:46):
My numbers, numbers according to
them clearly showed that I was in post-menopause premature menopause
of course at the age of 41 the average age is
51 52 in New Zealand and I
had worked really hard to manage the symptoms to manage life to keep moving
through for those nine years so here I am sitting in the doctor's office asking
(10:10):
her about HRT something I never thought I would do and never Never say never though, right?
And she laid out for me three different options and I can't quite remember them
now, but they went from the most...
Minimal to the medium to the full HRT, estrogen patches plus progesterone.
(10:31):
And of course, I had a lot of questions. I had a lot of fear.
I had a strong negative bias away from HRT, but she was in no way pushing me
towards one thing or the other.
I had gone because something had changed for me
literally overnight although often when
(10:52):
there's an overnight change there's a big lead up to it and
I'll talk about that in a sec but she scribbled down
all the options for me on a piece of paper she gave me
the backup documents and some studies
that I could go home and take a look at and I went
home and this was before HRT was
so mainstream because I've seen in the last three
(11:14):
or four years it become much more
to the fore and we talk much more openly about it we now understand much more
clearly what we take what is the normal protocol for HRT for a woman in New
Zealand at that time I didn't know anybody that was on HRT it was very very
(11:34):
new to me so So from that conversation,
I decided to start with estrogen patches at 25, the low end of the prescription.
And obviously the progesterone goes along with that. And my doctor prescribed
melatonin at the same time.
We did a whole bunch of blood tests and the melatonin because I was still struggling with sleep.
(11:57):
I was managing it okay, but I was still struggling.
So I would wake up at, say, three in the morning, maybe stay awake for a couple
of hours and then get a couple of hours sleep from five to seven or six thirty
and then wake up and haul myself through the day. But my sleep was not deep.
I felt like I was waking up really easily and relaxed.
(12:19):
I could feel myself getting more and more tired. How did I get to that place?
I had been struggling with sleep, struggling with energy, struggling with hot
flushes. When I first found out I was in menopause, I was post-menopausal,
hot flushes were not a massive issue.
What was an issue was fatigue, intolerance to any alcohol.
(12:41):
Not that I was a big drinker, but one glass of wine at night would have me in a hangover the next day.
Frequent headaches and migraines, insomnia and just this creeping generalized
anxiety had started to build in my system.
There was this English woman on YouTube and she started to talk about when she
(13:05):
first started taking HRT and because her story was so similar to mine she had
a strong natural bias she was
very much invested in natural medicine and then a
friend talked to her and and she was really
really struggling with symptoms of perimenopause postmenopause
for 10 years she said and then a friend talked to her and said why don't you
(13:29):
go and try HRT and she was very much like me she was like no I'm a natural person
so this is where the the natural bias comes in.
She said, I trust mother nature, me, tick.
I trust my body, me, tick. I've healed my body before.
(13:51):
I know my body can heal. I identified with that as well.
I don't trust mainstream medicine over the long term.
And so she had all these biases against HRT.
Now, her story was, turns out to be quite similar to mine, but it was really
triggering me in a great way because I was like, oh, that's me.
(14:12):
That's me. She was trying all these natural medicines. She was growing regularly.
She was getting all these treatments. I could see myself in there.
And then she said, and then when I started on HRT, everything changed,
not overnight, but everything changed.
And she went on to talk about her own bias towards natural medicine and something
(14:33):
opened up inside of me where I understood that I had been perceiving this from
a very black and white place where my brain was saying natural medicine,
good, Western allopathic mainstream medicine
bad and a light switch
went off for me and I realized this is
(14:55):
getting worse not better my well-being is getting worse not better I am struggling
to keep up here what is it worth to me to have a quality of life I am 50 I was
50 then how many more decades on this planet have I got?
A few, I hope. Quite a few, I hope. Do I want to struggle through them?
(15:20):
And remember, I do struggle well. I've done struggle well.
I know how to cope with that. Or do I want to thrive and live my best life for
this next chapter of my life?
And so that little YouTube video flicked a light switch for me and I was able
to identify my own natural bias.
(15:42):
I was was able to look at it from higher perspective like a bird's eye view
and go is this really serving me still I've been at this for quite a long time
am I living with the vitality and the.
Resourcefulness and the inner energy that I want to
and can it be improved and I
(16:03):
had just at that time done a whole bunch of inner work as well
and I think somehow all of that medical
trauma that I I went through when I had Crohn's disease and some
from very early on in infancy which was very
subconscious to me became more resolved and
so then you combine those two pieces together and there's a doorway that opens
(16:23):
where I realized that there was another choice available to me that I hadn't
yet taken and that just because it sounds so simple now yeah it sounds so simple like Like I want to...
Go back in time, go back in time and tell my younger self, my 45-year-old self
that there's an easier way to do this.
But in any case, what I learned through that moment was I don't have to choose
(16:48):
between complementary natural medicine and mainstream medicine.
It is not either or, it is not good versus bad, it is both and.
It is what serves me, it is what does the research say,
what does the data tell us what are we
learning about women's bodies and just because
something served me then nine years
(17:11):
ago really truly being honest with
myself is it still working at its capacity for me now and the answer to that
was no it's not and because I could take the blinkers off and see the shades
of gray and make a choice that didn't have to feel black and white that didn't
have to feel like I was closing one door by opening another and going with HRT,
(17:34):
that I could utilize HRT and natural medicine,
that I wasn't betraying anyone or anything.
I don't even know how that belief got in there, but there it was.
And that ultimately I was on a path by making a a new choice at that stage.
Nine years after I was deemed in post-menopause,
(17:57):
I was changing the course of the next chapter of my life and that it wasn't
too late and that I could still receive all of the benefits of HRT if it was a good fit for my body.
And so far, it has been.
So that's that unwinding of the naturalistic bias.
And so the other piece of it is around what might serve me at the beginning
(18:21):
of my postmenopausal journey or later perimenopause might not still serve me
two years, five years later.
And that was my experience because I was kind of okay when I was in early postmenopause.
But because I was in premature menopause, my symptoms may be very different
(18:42):
to what the normal kind of baseline is, but I was okay early on.
And then there was a slow creep, like I said, of difficult symptoms that came up.
So the insomnia and the anxiety and the fatigue and all of those horrendous headaches.
And so I, you know, in the beginning, what helped my sleep was the herbal medicine
really helped my sleep. That was great.
(19:04):
But then it got to the stage a few years later where my sleep was terrible again.
It had shifted into a different pattern, but it was really bad and it wasn't
restorative. It It wasn't helping me through the day.
I was just kind of going, oh, it's okay. I can help.
Meditate in that awake time. I can have naps in the day.
(19:26):
I can adapt my life around it. But that's that piece I learned to adapt my life
when I was really sick with Crohn's.
But in all of that adaptation that I was doing, I was actually not able to see
that there was another choice for me.
And so I think that that's really key because I hear this quite a lot where
we say, and I do it all the time where we say, HRT is not for me.
(19:51):
No, I'm sticking with natural methods.
This was me. And then I've sort of signed on the dotted line,
right? I've signed my contract with my post-menopausal self.
And then I had in my brain and my mind and heart that this was the choice I
made and there was no changing that now.
I didn't really think about it. It was just signed and sealed and locked away.
(20:12):
But it was that dissatisfaction with my current state of well-being and then
also I love how life just sometimes sends us the right people,
the right conversations.
The right YouTube videos or it could be in this case the right podcast episode
that just opens another doorway for us and that's what happened for me and I
(20:36):
followed down that path and came to a different plan at that time.
That even though I had signed that subconscious contract with myself about how
I was going to handle my post-menopausal years, and let's be clear,
I've had so much influence from women that say that menopause is natural,
that why would I want to take HRT because that's just the patriarchy controlling us again.
(21:02):
Why would mother nature give me menopause if it didn't want me to have this experience.
Being a postmenopausal woman is equal to being a crone, equal to being a wise
woman, equal to being a powerful, intuitive, psychically adept woman.
(21:24):
This is all of the messaging that I had.
I didn't receive the messages that said, you can
take HRT and be
a powerfully intuitive vital woman
in your 50s and 60s but
we got here anyway and here's what happened when I started HRT because I wasn't
(21:45):
sure what to expect it doesn't always happen this quickly but from the first
few days that I started taking it and it was probably something to do with melatonin
and the progesterone together because the progesterone can be really calming,
I started sleeping better.
In fact, I think in the first two days, I slept.
So much better and then of course if you sleep better you
(22:05):
generally feel better the next day
so that started to take place and then after
a few weeks I started to go I've got
a little bit more spring in my step and that
kept compounding that kept improving and
the hot flushes that I was getting which were pretty
difficult to manage I wasn't getting night
(22:27):
sweats very often but I was getting the hot
flushes so I wouldn't wear a long sleeve merino
like I'm wearing right now just in case I
had a hot flush because if you've had them and they're quite intense
you'll know that it's heat yes but it's not
like being hot at the beach it's like this heat from the inside out that also
speeds up your nervous system a little bit so you've got this fight and flight
(22:50):
well that was my experience as well and so I would sometimes feel a little bit
claustrophobic with them and have to work quite hard to slow my breathing down
and just to slow my system down.
This just went. They went. They disappeared.
And I told a few friends that I was taking HRT.
And from one friend in particular who was struggling with menopausal symptoms
(23:12):
as well, who was a few years older than me, she was really interested.
But a lot of friends I had then a lot of pushback from around the dangers of HRT.
Why would you mess with something that's natural haven't
you heard that it causes cancer have you
heard any of these i i have and
(23:32):
that's alarming isn't it but of course if
we look at the research the research
shows us that actually body identical hrt is very safe and another friend said
to me oh but i don't want to take it because what if they come back in a few
years and say they got got it wrong and it's now not safe to take.
(23:55):
But for me, the way I perceive it now from having taken HRT for about three years and.
Is that the quality of life that I've gotten from that hormonal therapy has
been so, so good that I'm willing to take that tiny, tiny, tiny risk as it stands now.
(24:16):
Medicine is always changing, research is always changing, I get that,
but it's also changing around the food that we consume and the environments that we live in.
Science will always move on and will always change, and when we know better,
we do better. But I'll finish the podcast by saying this.
I still hear pushback from friends.
(24:37):
I have a lot of friends in the natural medicine space, in the wellness space.
So there's still a lot of stigma around HRT and around its potential dangers,
as there is for a lot of mainstream medicine and natural circles.
And I can be with both sides now, which I really appreciate,
and that I've opened up to be able to look much more rationally around these
(25:03):
different forms of medicine and really understand that they are there to work with us, right?
I don't take HRT and then go and drink loads of alcohol, not exercise all day
and eat junk food all day.
I might do a tiny bit of that, of course. but I don't
expect HRT to be the cure for all
of my ills I also now take care of my body but
(25:24):
the difference it's made is that it gave me enough energy to think about the
small improvements that I could make in my life that were going to increase
my vital energy by changing the exercise that I do or before HRT all I could
really manage was a walk that was it I was done it's given me that.
Extra boost to be able to dial
(25:46):
in those changes that have improved my
well-being over the last three years and I now
say to my friends that because often friends ask me well how long you take for
and that's another myth is often spoken of right oh you're just suppressing
the symptoms of menopause and when you stop taking HRT then all of those symptoms
(26:07):
are going to come back and you're going to have to go through it anyway.
There's absolutely no evidence that this is the case. That is not the truth.
We're replacing hormones that help us be well and vital that are very low in our body.
Now, why nature has chosen to make our body function in this way,
(26:27):
I don't really know, but menopause is natural.
Yes, tooth decay is natural.
Osteoporosis is natural, but we still do
something about those in our body right
we support support our body in whatever
way we can to be well if we're experiencing those
just because it's natural doesn't make it okay
(26:49):
and right and that we should just tolerate
it exactly as it is in our body and
that's why I sometimes say as a joke but when
friends ask me well when are you going to stop taking HRT I
say I'm not intending to stop anytime
soon they can put me in a
box in a coffin in the ground with my
(27:12):
patch on because it is staying with me for as long as it is viable and the research
is still developing on that so watch this space but currently you can as far
as I'm aware the protocols say that you can keep taking HRT well into your 60s
and they're still doing research on it.
Because we're women, the research is really, really lacking.
(27:34):
That's just the culture that we live in.
So watch the space and hopefully there's more information on that coming soon.
I really hope that's been helpful in one way or another, sharing my story around
why I changed my mind about HRT and why I'm really, really pleased that I did.
Go well, my friend. I look Look forward to talking with you again real,
(27:58):
real soon. Hey, thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Really appreciate you. Check out my course where we just go so much deeper than
I can ever do on a podcast over an eight-week period.
The Midlife Upgrade course is a blend of video and learning modules and weekly
live calls where you will discover a roadmap for psychological freedom in midlife.
(28:22):
Check out all the details on my website. So I really, really would love to have
you join the course, megankeira.co.nz forward slash course.
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