Massive Women's Study

We'll look at a massive study that looks to shine a light on a big women's health issue with Dr. Jim Applegate.

https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2025/10/researchers-lead-$37m-study-to-shed-light-on-perimenopause-and-psychosis

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm glad Schmide is here because we are going to
talk about researchers with Doc Applegate. This is West Michigan's
Morning News, Steve Kelly, britt Keata, Lawrence Smith doing a
study to shed light on periomenopause and psychosis. And I'm
not going to presume any usual connection. I don't even
know necessarily what peria metopause is compared to menopause. So

(00:22):
Doc Applegate, former Family Physician of the Year in the
State of Michigan, take it away.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Well, thank you that really we had not studied a
women's life throughout their different changes, and metopause is officially
the official definition is one year of not having periods,
but that's not really a practical definition because I know
as a practicing physician, and I've said this, and I've
actually been booed off a stage talking about this, that

(00:49):
the year's running up, which we now call the perimenopausal period.
Women have significant amount of symptoms that have been totally
ignored by medicine. And I think one of the things
that's happened is now that we have more women in medicine,
women are now as professions seeing mental changes, seeing physical

(01:10):
changes that you just can't go to the literature and
find out. So MSU is going to do a study
that's specifically going to look at changes in your mental
status and correlate try and correlate that with your hormone levels.
Whether that turns out to be true exactly or not,
but there's definite changes that occur in women in their

(01:31):
run up two benepause, so somewhere around forty you'll start
feeling symptoms that are very, very different.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
This is so very niche being the woman on the show.
I have friends of mine that are as young as
thirty six years old that are already facing these kinds
of symptoms and then they're looking for help. There is
no literature, there is no These doctors they are going
to are saying, I'm doing my best, but I don't
really know exactly what to tell you based on science.
This is really exciting, and men listening, it's a big

(02:00):
deal for you too, because you're living with these women
and you can be helpful if you know what's going
on right.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
My favorite one is a woman came to me one
day when I was young, intended still at Hairshire doc.
I have CRS, I can't remember anything and what's going on?
And it's like, I don't know. So we did all
the battery of test. She doesn't have dementia, she doesn't
have Louis body dementia, she doesn't have anything. And then

(02:26):
after a while I had a number of women who
talked about this and it has to be some sort
of subtle decline in their hormone levels that are causing
their brain not to function as well. And then I
remembered when I again, when I was in medical school,
we did this interesting study. We took a nerve and
we ran current down the nerve and then bade that

(02:47):
nerve in estrogen, and guess what happened. The nerve worked better.
So definitely with the decline and estrogen, at least both clinically,
and some of the I've seen research wise will show
that your brain doesn't work as well, which can bring
on a whole set of problems with memory, with mood,
all of those things in that perimidal pazzal period, and

(03:08):
they're real. That's the one thing when I'm listening on
it is to get that if you're having those problems
with memory with mood, they are real. If you're in
your forties or fifties. I just saw a woman the
other day who came into me at forty having all
of a sudden having anxiety, never having anxiety before. Nothing
else has changed, If anything, her life has gotten better,
but she's having a lot of chronic anxiety. This research

(03:30):
will help maybe tell us what to do with her,
not just giving her some benzos, not just trying to
get rid of her symptoms, but maybe to approach this
in a much more biologic way.

Speaker 4 (03:41):
And doc it makes sense. Goes to Smithy's point for
guys out there, what are we hearing more about now too?
Is loss of testosterone? Right? You lose your energy, you
lose different things. So I mean it's it makes sense
that it's happening to both genders.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
It happens. It happens much more to women though. Ruse
women go from that forty to fifty year where they're
really productive of their hormones, are just really going. They
are the best that they can be, and then all
of a sudden, God says, boop, no, you're not going
to have them anymore.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
How big is this study?

Speaker 2 (04:08):
How many people are we talking? They're talking a couple
of thousands, So it's not going to be huge, but
it's but this is very expensive research. They're going to
use saliva measures to measure hormone levels, which may or
may not correlate with blood levels. So it's at least
a good shot at what is a major health problem
for women as they age and for our population as
they age. It's it's I'm very excited. Like I say,

(04:30):
I have gotten. We've talked a little bit about this
on this from this program in the past. Professionally, I've
I've talked on panels and and not have been received
very well talking about this. This will correlate and I
think it's going to show that women need something as
they go into their forties to stay at their peak performances,
to really be able to do what you're doing into

(04:53):
my age.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Dare I say anything else? Many? Okay, I just want
to coffee. Still in here, good radio news time ET
forty one. Thank you, Doc,