The Workplace Crisis No One Is Talking About

And right now there is a force that is exiting women out of the workforce. I'm looking at the labor and the unemployment data that is available. Some of it is hidden. Women are being forced to exit the workforce, taking involuntary leave, being laid off at a rate 15 times higher than men, especially women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. We have this crisis where women are not being given the right information about their hormonal health. They take on this personal shame that I'm failing as a mom and I can't be working and then they're easily being pushed out of contracting workforce. I think a key takeaway here is how many women start feeling anxious, they can't focus, they have brain fog, they are depressed, they can't sleep, and we blame it on stress. And it's actually thyroid, adrenal or perimenopause. And we can fix that.

Are you suffering from a busy brain? So today I am joined by Dr. Romy Mushtag. She is a triple board certified physician, a nationally recognized speaker, and a workplace wellness expert. And she is on a mission to heal hustle culture and to bring brain science into leadership. As the chief executive wellness officer at Great Wolf Resorts and the founder of Brain Shift, she helps Fortune 500 companies and organizations create culture of resilience. Her book, the Busy Brain Cure is a USA Today best selling book. And her insights have been featured everywhere from TED talks to Forbes to npr. And today we get really, really deep into the impact of perimenopause and menopause, even when it might start in your late 30s, on the experience in the brain and particularly how that affects women and where that may be playing out in your busy life, whether you're an executive, an entrepreneur, a woman who maybe is man, is handling man keeping, child keeping and elder carekeeping, whatever you have going on, we go in deep and give you the guidelines and the things that you might want to look at to help get rid of your busy brain. So, so let's talk and let's find out what Dr. Romy has to say. Dr. Romy, I'm excited about this conversation because I think, you know, you and I have met each other and, and you have such a unique perspective because of your, your history about women, particularly women in leadership, women in this time period of life and what stress is really doing to us and, and what, yeah, what is the background sort of impact of ignoring it? And I first want to start out so you spent years obviously as a neurologist and working intense hours, all of that, and you went through this Sort of success ladder. Take me through the moment where you were like this. This, this is not the answer.

Wow. Okay, thank you. Such a powerful question. And Dr. Betty, amazing to be here with you. I want to backtrack and tell you that this story starts before the word burnout was in the vernacular from medicine, the World Health Organization. So I did not know what going through as a neurologist and we didn't dare speak about our mental health. I was suffering in shame. I entered neurology. I'm a medical doctor at a time where less than 5% of the brain doctors in the United States were women. And my subspecialty, epilepsy, migraines. I was doing cutting edge research, not only seeing patients, but in academic medicine on the role of women's hormones in the brain and how it affected epilepsy, the lifecycle, migraines. So I was deeply entrenched in it. But girl, I felt like my brain cells were on fire and somebody else had the remote control to my brain. And I would look around in such shame going, nobody else is struggling. I can't focus. I'm having Difficulty sleeping. The 120 hour work weeks, the pressure. But that was my internal dialogue. Externally. She had it all together. I was like 30, in my young 30s, a full professor traveling the nation and the globe to talk about my research. Had a 6 to 12 month waiting list for patients to come see me. I was a dutiful daughter, a dog mom, and like, dare I say before Carrie Bradshaw entered the picture, I had that designer shoe collection like on the outside. I had it all and I was suffering and I couldn't medicate myself with enough chocolate or shoes. I didn't know what to do. And I kept pushing through and I started to have chest pain and I was really responsible. I went to the doctor and what did they say? It's just stress, it's acid reflux. And they started to treat me with antacids and antibiotics and it wasn't working. So, you know, I stopped that and I went straight back to the chocolate and the coffee because I was like, a girl's got a cope. I'm like in this high. Like, you know, it's like a high pressure executive position in academic medicine. It translates. And I ended up getting very sick and in life saving surgery in 2010. And I woke up in the hospital realizing that nothing in medical school had prepared me to do what's right next for my health. But the scariest part was I felt all alone. I was in the dark and I Didn't know who to turn to. And that is why I'm here today on menopause Mastery with you. It's why I run the Brain Shift Institute and work with global corporations and associations. I don't want anybody else to feel alone in the workplace, especially women. And we're going to unpack the data. Even from the time you asked me to do this interview months ago to today, there is a crisis for women in the workplace, in every industry, and you and I need to address it together. I am so looking forward to picking your brain about this as well. Oh, yeah.

You know, I think. I think you're pointing out so many things that you've got the, you know, how. How we should feel on the outside and how we're truly feeling on the inside. And then the other part is you pointed out something that a lot of people ignore. It's the professional environment of you don't have the right to show what's really going on. You don't, because it's like a mean girl experience, right? As soon as you show weakness, it's. It's the crab pot. We're gonna pull you, pull you down.

I wouldn't even call this a mean girl experience because I had no other women around me. And when I went, I took leave and then I ended up leaving that institution. The open statement that was being made over and over. See, this is what happens when you let a woman into academic neurology. So it wasn't even the mean girl experience. Were no other women for me to turn to other than my mom and aunties that you read about in my best selling book, the Busy Brain Cure. You know, they are the voice of judgment when I have a busy brain and the voice of wisdom when I am calm. And that is, I think the authentic thing we need to say is so many women who are Gen X and boomers who are now going through menopause and post menopause don't have that network inside of work. And we need to talk about it. And then there's this second, I would say, fallacy inside corporate America that's slowly making it into healthcare, which is authentic leadership. And that's bs. Like, I cannot go into my workplace and tell you right now, personally, Betty, what I'm about to tell you is. Betty, Dr. Betty, I have bad days right now. I am worried about my hair loss. And my hair is a sign of my confidence and beauty. And I know there's something not quite right with the hormone replacement therapy on. That's an authentic conversation I literally. If you're watching video, I just showed you where there's recession in my crown, right. That I'm struggling with. And I got confused, and the experts are saying, don't take minoxidil or neutrophil. And I. I stopped it, and the hair loss got worse. So I went back on it because it was helping. And that's an authentic leadership moment of me talking about something I'm struggling, and it. My hair is something I love, and it's like, stressing me out. I can't go into the workplace and have that conversation. No, that's inappropriate. I'm a chief wellness officer in a company of over 14,000 people. I think I could say I'm perimenopausal, but even then I don't have that, you know? So I think we're really stuck and we need to have this conversation today, sister.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. You're right. You're right. It's. It's. It's the authentic. But where can you be authentic? Where it's not potentially. Potentially used as sort of a categorization.

As a woman, specifically as a woman, is because if we talked about our hair loss, we'd be labeled as vain. If we talked about some of the other serious symptoms you and I are going to unpack that have to do with brain and mental health in menopause mastery, you could be a target for HR or anybody that's competing for your job. And so we. That's why I want to have this conversation with you. Let's have the conversation that nobody is having.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm so. I'm so very excited about that. I'm so very excited, you know, So I think. So now that we're on this conversation, looking at what are the biggest symptoms of perimenopause and menopause that really translate into all parts of somebody's life. And I would say to me, the big three that I think about is depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Because not only do they affect how you live your life, like dealing with your family and whether you're present and how you feel, but they are absolutely 100% also going to affect how you are operating in a workplace that doesn't respect that you are different than your male counterparts because we have a hormonal change that's going on that is driving it behind the scenes.

So agree. I so agree. I want to backtrack and say, I think that's menopause. There are symptoms that start showing up in perimenopause. A lot earlier and to. I'm so thankful that menopause is having its moment in the media and on social media. But I think too many women in the workplace are like, well, I'm not having hot flashes yet and, or my libido or I don't have a dry vagina so they think they're fine. So thank you for bringing up the brain and mental health. In my research in the Busy Brain Cure, we looked at 17,000 individuals in the workplace and what chronic stress was doing specifically in women. I think even before the symptoms you talk about, a few things show up. Ruminating, anxiety, brain fog, and then the insomnia, the depression, the fatigue may come later. And I want to tell you about an executive that I'm desperately trying to help right now, Dr. Betty. And I think if I tell you about her, she's given me permission to talk about her podcast. We're going to use a fictitious name and a fictitious company. I work with many corporations. She's one of my executive coaching clients. So let's call her Sarah. Sarah is 47, but she looks older than stated age. She has a teenage daughter that just went to college who's having mental health crises. And so she's put her daughter's health ahead of hers. She is a high level HR executive in a, in a large company and I see her having these symptoms. She tells me she's in a brain fog and on a Microsoft Teams meeting and we're not, she's not allowed in that company to use AI so she's having difficulty taking notes and keeping up with what's going on in the meeting. And she'll leave the meeting with to do items and can't remember it and is struggling to read her notes and figure it out. She is, she thinks it's just stress because of what's going on with her child. And her chief complaint to me was, I'm about to quit my job. And I was like, are you kidding? In this job market you can't. And when I dig a little deeper, she's having that brain fog and difficulty sleeping. And I sent her for labs and you know, we're gonna unpack it. She definitely has Hashimoto's. She has the early labs that we would start considering hormone replacement therapy, especially progesterone. And she's in denial. She's like, I still have my period. My mom didn't have menopause until she was in her mid-50s. I don't need these medicines. It's just stress and I need to quit My job. And how many women listening can identify with Sarah, right now, somewhere in your 40s or 50s, somebody, even primary care doctors, gives you the message, you know what, you're a busy mom. You shouldn't be at work, you're past your prime. This is a game for women in their 20s and 30s. Stop climbing the corporate ladder, just exit the workforce. And right now there is a force that is exiting women out of the workforce. You and I are recording this interview in November of 2025. I'm looking at the labor and the unemployment data that is available. Some of it is hidden. And women are being forced to exit the workforce, I. E. Taking involuntary leave, being laid off at a rate 15 times higher than men, especially women in their 40s, 50s, 60s. So we have this crisis where women are not being given the right information about their hormonal health. They take on this personal shame that I'm failing as a mom and I can't be working. And then they're easily being pushed out of a contracting workforce. So. Dr. Betty, I know you're interviewing me, but I was so eager to have this conversation with you because so many women in my network could use your wisdom. Where do you start? With someone that has internalized the shame that they failing as a mother and they're not ready to face that their hormones can be fixed. Help me.

Yeah, I, you know, I think, I mean even, even as somebody in the medical industry, I was under the understanding that particularly like estrogen. Right. So estrogen, that estrogen replacement would not be necessary until the periods ended. Right. And I, I'm in the functional medicine community on, on kind of the cutting edge. And you know, there's, there was a poster session during the Menopause Society's meeting a couple weeks ago looking at a 120 million women's records and, and the early, the early sort of take home message from that was, oh, we probably need to be replacing estrogen earlier because the absence of a period is not what you wait for. It's the onset of symptoms. And brain fog is definitely probably one of the biggest. And, and, and so I, I think the hardship is as women we take on the role and responsibility of being everything for our family. And, and the idea that we can't take care of or make everything better for our children is so, so very hard. And when you add that to all of the stress of running your corporate job and everything else, we get those overarching messages. And as women, we've never been told, your hormones are a symphony.

Oh, I'm going to stop and repeat that. Your hormones are a symphony. Yes. Okay. Break that down.

Yes. Okay, so here's the way to think about it. So, you know, if you've ever played music, it's. It's the percussion. The percussion section sets the pace and the tone. That is your adrenal system. That is what is responding to stress. Right. Think of your sex hormones as the wind, you know, the wind section. And think of your thyroid as the brass section. So here's the way to remember it is we go into perimenopause, the wind section. You know, some of the people aren't showing up. They're showing up too much. One day the music's a little bit out of whack, but they're over there doing their thing. But when you throw stress on top, it's essentially like the orchestra came to play a waltz and the percussion are starting to play scat jazz.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah. And so all of a sudden they're playing stuff that seems out of sequence, louder, softer, all these other, you know, different rhythms. The rest of the hormones start to shift. They go, okay, because your body's looking for homeostasis.

It's looking for balance.

And so when we. When we layer on the extraordinary stress, both emotional and physical, that all of us are under, both men and women. But I would say the internalized stress that women take on, because we've been told we have to do that, we will see things like Hashimoto's. We know that there is a thyroid effect of the perimenopausal journey that some women will experience. Experience. And again, it's because your symphony is looking how to harmonize. And so when things are out of harmony, everything starts to shift. We just have to recognize that perimenopause is really where the symptoms are most profound. And the average woman has those experiences.

For eight years, I think even longer. So being in corporate America, you know, giving keynote lectures and consulting and meeting thousands of women, to your point, the symphony is off starting in mid-30s, 40s and adrenals. Thyroid, to your point. And it can even create what seems like early perimenopause symptoms. And so that is something I also discuss in chapter seven of the busy brain cure is how many? 80. Somewhere between 70, 80% of women that have a mental health symptoms due to stress that all the things that are showing up is, God, I can't focus on this meeting. Do I have ADHD? Maybe this is anxiety. It's actually thyroid. That 70 to 80% of women, the Only presenting symptom that they recognize is difficulty focusing, adult onset ADHD or anxiety, the weight fluctuations, dry skin, irregular menstrual cycles, all of that comes later. And that's that. To your point, it's like they want to be playing a symphony and they're the, you know, step on the street playing acapella and struggling. Like it's, it's. I love this theory and it is so important and I'm on a mission. I don't know about you, but I get our employees that are in their 20s and 30s that you need to go into your primary care OBGYN appointments for, you know, anyone who was, you know, born with the, you know, gender assigned female is to get your labs done every year, including a full thyroid panel. You need to know what it's doing, you need to get screened early if symptoms of pcos. And I just think we're failing women at every generation, but especially our perimenopausal menopausal women. And it is, and I feel like a root cause crisis of women struggling in the workplace that nobody is talking about.

Oh, not at all. I mean, my, my perimenopausal symptoms showed up in my late 30s, you know, and, and they were highly, highly present. And, you know, and at the time I thought it was my stress. You know, I was like, oh, it's just my stress.

You know, it's just me stress. Who isn't stressed. And, and then you get forced out of the workplace either through shame of your own. I talk about a high level executive, you know, Kelly, and my book in chapter 16, where I have this lab slip, whose primary care doctor actually told her she's a vice president in sales, was being considered for a C suite position, who told her to quit that you can't be a mom in a high level executive. That's literally the BS that the male primary care doctors were putting on her. And she begrudgingly joined the brain shift challenge while we were doing research because everybody else in the company was doing it. And they uncovered not only a thyroid nodule, but what was stage one cancer. And that got healed and she felt better and, and she too thought, oh, are these symptoms of menopause? So thank you just for highlighting. I think a key takeaway here is how many women start feeling anxious, they can't focus, they have brain fog, they are depressed, they can't sleep, and we blame it on stress. And it's actually thyroid adrenal or perimenopause. And we can fix that. Can't we, oh yeah.

I mean I have women come in and they're like, I think I already have the onset of dementia. I'm like, no, no, no, no, not at all. And I was like, and when you, when you get those things dialed in with diet, lifestyle appropriate hormone replacement, the brain turns back on. And I think that's, you know, the other thing. I think you probably, I know in your busy brain cure book you talk about this a lot. I think the other thing that is kind of a disservice is we are also getting the message that either you can replace these hormones naturally with supplements or I'm going to lose more hair.

If, if people keep telling me that, right?

Or, or that if you get hormones, it's like if you get on hormones, everything's magical. I'm like, you still have to have the foundational lifestyle diet. Like you have to find ways to integrate things into your life to reduce your experience of those stressors and put those pieces in place because it's not magic.

Here's the thing. I have a message for all the functional integrative medicine practitioners out there. So I'm no longer seeing patients still licensed and boarded. But my company serves corporations and large teams. Inevitably, no matter what city I'm going to speak or what company, people are like, Dr. Romy, find me a hormone doctor. Dr. Betty, I struggle to refer people to integrative and functional medicine practitioners. Why? Because they want to put my very busy executives who are traveling coast to coast on complex gut health diet protocols. And I know where you're going with this because the functional medicine research and textbooks tell you that. But you've missed connecting with that patient. They are mothers. They are busy traveling executives. Then they come back to me angry because they spent 3, 5, $10,000 and didn't get hell girl. Start with the low hanging fruit. My fellow colleagues, please start some low dose progesterone. Start the thyroid. Give something temporarily that's going to make them feel better. Because if you're in that perimenopausal brain fog, difficulty focusing, anxiety, the last thing you need is a complex nutrition plan. It has pushed more executives over the edge. But what I'm finding is you balance the hormones, there's a calmness, there's this sense of I have control back. And then there is a gentle way to bring in the lifestyle changes.

Yeah, you know, you're, gosh, you're preaching to the choir. I, I've heard so many times that the practitioner said I needed to earn my hormones. I'm like no, you need the hormones so you can execute the lifestyle.

Hormones, give the hormones. And, and I think to any woman listening in my community, we, Dr. Betty and I were talking beforehand. I'm so eager to share your wisdom, Dr. Betty, with our global Brain Shift community and all of our corporate clients is there is when a doctor says take the thyroid hormone, take the progesterone, take the estrogen, take the testosterone, there isn't a supplement that is going to replace that. And if somebody is giving you supplements instead of thyroid hormones like run, they're probably just making a really big profit selling you thyroid hormone, selling you supplements instead of giving you the prescription medication that in the US insurance will cover most of these medications at least partially for sure.

You know as a nutrition professional, I mean I have two masters and a PhD in nutritional biochemistry. I formulate things that can support women but it will not replace hormones, period. Full stop. Believe me if I could, I would have it and I'd make it available to everybody. But I think, you know, the, the other challenge is I like I've spent personally this year a hundred nights in a Marriott alone because I've been traveling. Right.

So she's titanium now.

But, but the reality is, and I'm also a nutritionist that does not like coming home at 7 o' clock at night and whipping up dinner. It actually pisses me off.

I'm tired.

I'm an executive.

I need whole clean organic vegetables. You're right.

No, I'm like I have to operate within an arena that I have to do things like food prep or buy things that are already cut, simplify meals. Luckily my husband does some of the cooking. But the reality is is I live the lifestyle of a busy executive. I am never, and neither is any of my team that are at my clinic in Dallas or my telemedicine company going to give complex requirements to somebody that can't execute it. You're setting people up for failure and instead it's like give something that gives an early win and don't gatekeep the treatment that they need.

I agree. And, and that's why when you approached me about your telemedicine company that's in 50 states and I need you to unpack it for me. Now. I jumped on it because I want to share a couple stories. I've paid tens and thousands of dollars to functional medicine practitioners that put me on the soy free, gluten free, dairy free, grain free diet and with my Pitta Ayurveda personality, with my, I, I think just my labs Like, I need some whole grain carbs in the morning. Give me my steel cut oats. Give me, you know, granola I make at home or we buy from the grocery store that's organic. Give me something. But you took that away. I was struggling and I hated it. And I became less competent on the road. And, you know, for people who don't know me, I serve as chief wellness officer in a company of 14,000. I get hired by to speak keynote lectures or run our consulting wellness programs. I have to be on my peak performance a game. And I was arguing with them about my macros and I know what works for me. And I just, it made me feel sad for the patients that don't know how to advocate for themselves. And that's why I was so excited that, like, a busy lifestyle. Okay, so we're going to use me as an example. I need to switch my care to your telemedicine company. Like, what exactly does that mean? I get women going. I think I've been perimenopause. I think it's thyroid. What Most people who are not doctors don't know what it means. Could, could you tell me what it means to come and get care? Yeah.

So I think, you know, first and foremost, we have to understand that the standards today, so conventional care standards, the requirement to seek out any kind of treatment is. You think it's happening. That's. We have, we have no requirement that says you need to jump through a particular hoop to be examined for hormone replacement in this perimenopause transition. And that could start as Young as late 30s.

And women are getting turned down by their primary care doctor, OB GYN going, oh, you don't have hot flashes, you don't need anything.

Now, I went through menopause at 48. I've never had hot flash or night sweat. I had a hundred other things, but I didn't have those.

I want to highlight, we're barely getting the data, but we know women of different ethnic groups actually don't. So I'm of Asian descent. We typically don't. Our mental health and insomnia symptoms are actually what's worse. And then metabolic syndrome and high rates of heart disease. So I think we have to address that. So to all the women out there who are turned away from primary care or obgyn, it's not perimenopause. What do they do next?

Yeah, so, so essentially, once somebody signs up with Minerva, they meet with one of our medical providers that's going to listen to your symptoms and we, we have an questionnaire. So a lot of times we, we think menopause, again, that, that transitional perimenopausal experience is hot flashes, night sweats, maybe insomnia. But it's, it's actually much more extensive. Because the other thing is, is if we look at the body again as the hormonal system, as a symphony, we want to understand are there thyroid symptoms also? Are there, are there symptoms of excess cortisol, which I would say is 99% of all women. We just kind of know that because it's like that's the season we're in. Also metabolically, do we potentially have some insulin resistance pre diabetes, even if you're, even if your BMI is normal. Right. We could have, I'm going to translate.

All those for the non medical audience because this is the danger of two doctors sitting.

Oh yeah, and we could nerd out.

When you're having busy brain symptoms and you're wondering also, is this perimenopause? We don't just look at estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, we look at cortisol levels, we look at fasting, insulin, your blood sugar control. All of these labs are in chapter 16 of the busy Brain Cure. You rip out that lab slip or print it out from online and you can even take it to your doctor. I, this is the one thing I feel really proud of, Dr. Betty, was I created the lab list. It may not be complete in the functional medicine world, but it's actually covered by all insurance companies in the US by na, the national healthcare system in Canada and the United Kingdom. So like anything we can do to help women with their labs and the cost is great. And then they come to you because they're like, something's wrong. We've checked thyroid, we've checked insulin, we've checked, you know, adrenal cortisol and we're checking your sex hormones. What's next at Minerva?

Yeah, so next would be obviously if we find obvious symptoms of deficiency. Right. So for most women, if you happen to be in that perimenopausal state, usually it's the decline of progesterone because that declines early. But let's say we do find thyroid and other things, particularly if the labs reflect that we, we start treatment now. Where we, where we start to add our special sauce from a just services standpoint is we also integrate health coaching and nutrition around that. Because at the end of the day, if I'm grabbing food on the go out of a vending machine at an airport and I'm you know, entertaining at a business meeting until 11 o' clock at night and I have to work at 7:00 in the morning, I'm also not going to feel great even if I get those hormones balanced. So we're also, we're also working with them to help them understand what are small minuscule changes that we can make that can improve it.

I love that, you know, one of the ones I give to my executives because they can't sit at a business dinner and say, I'm being treated for perimenopause. I can't have this alcohol or carbs. Like one of the small wins I'm giving them is have your greens or protein on your plate first and nobody's even going to notice what you're doing. You know, the toss the cocktail back behind your shoulder trick. And if people don't know what that means, like, you know, there's this old party trick of when you know you had to do it, but like literally it's paying the wait staff to bring you some a mocktail and not let anybody know what it is. And so you're not being pressured to have four to six cocktails or glasses of wine. Maybe you had one and nobody is going to notice. And that's really what I want to break down because nobody's having these conversations for women and, and, and we can't be like, oh, I, I'm unbar. Because it's just not appropriate in a business setting to say these things.

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Well, thank you.

Well, and you know here's the other thing that I know this is, was my personal experience when I was traveling because I was in corporate America. But when I really started that menopause journey is I, I would be so frustrated, so tired, so, so rageful under the surface because I was so burnt out that I get into those situations and I'd be like, forget it. I'm gonna have the cake, I'm gonna have the wine, I'm gonna have, you know, because I was done. I got to nighttime and I was done and I, and I would self sabotage, I deserve it. And, and I think that, I mean there's, you know, there's a lot of ways to unpack that. That was very true for me and.

I think it's true for a lot of people. So do you know how I unpacked that? In the Busy Brain Cure. This is somewhere where I'm just gonna warn you, get an oxygen mask. Because like my colleagues in functional medicine are shocked at this. I don't believe in putting people on a diet in the Busy Brain Cure. And when I said that at the American Counseling and American Psychological association meeting, I got a standing ovation in the middle of my keynote. The strictness of putting on a diet you and I have alluded to it already feels like punishment and raises stress hormone levels and is not compatible with the American busy professional women lifestyle. We actually say schedule comfort food food once to twice a week. That's not the stress eating, but that's saying like last night I got here to Florida and I'm seeing my parents and my dad loves pumpkin pie and I do. And I'm like, we're not waiting till Thanksgiving for pumpkin pie. We're going to have some tonight. We love it. It's a special thing this time of year and I'm sharing it with a loved one. So it was joyful to share the pumpkin pie. And that's comfort food. So number one, if we did that, we found that the clothes cravings to stress eat the cake and the wine and french fries for me would come down. And the second thing is we say to if you're going to have caffeine in any form, the no high glycemic carbohydrates one hour before or after. And if you're having the cake, the white bread, white flour, white sugar, white rice, then no caffeine. And we just found that rule was easy for people. And the, you know, blood sugar spikes from the stress and the busy brain calm down and really worked. And so that's just a Simple thing in our brain shift protocol. And then I feel like once we get them to these simple steps, I can send them to you and your coaches. So I love this. And, Minerva, people see a doctor, they get their labs done, they see a coach, but the most important thing is they get the hormones. There is no gatekeeping. Am I right?

There's no gatekeeping. And even more importantly, I want to say something about, like, the. The other thing that I found kind of in the. The same is when I. When, like, when I went through that same thing, and I was like, I gotta change this sort of mindset is I thought about adding. I was like, I don't care what else is on the plate, but I'm gonna add either a vegetable or a salad that's not completely loaded with cheese, but something that would be like, this is a healthy choice, and I'm gonna eat that before I eat the thing that I'm gonna. Comfort foodie. Just so you know, I had chips and queso this weekend with my husband, and I loved every bit of it, because that is a comfort food.

And here's the thing. If you're watching the video of our recording, you're seeing Dr. Patty smiling and about the chips and queso, and I'm smiling about sharing pumpkin pie with my elderly father. And that's what comfort food is. It's actually food and memories that are being created with a loved one that bring you joy versus B. I have a hundred nights in a hotel room, and I deserve French fries with parmesan, garlic, and truffle oil tonight. That's. That's stress eating. And there. There's a big difference.

And so most of the time, they're not done in the same environment. Right. That stress eating is usually done alone and separate, whereas comfort. Comfort is in the experience of others, and you get it from the experience of others.

I love that. So thank you so much for describing Minerva. We're talking about the busy brain.

Yeah.

Really? Because what I find is so many women executives that have thyroid issues, adrenal fatigue, as they're going into perimenopause, have busy brain symptoms, and we need to get them to hormonal health. Here's the next question that I hear all the time, and I answer it in a certain way. But I need your help. People feel shame that, oh, my God, if I start this thyroid hormone or progesterone or estrogen, am I gonna have to be on it for the rest of my life? And I tell people, like, this is not about a medication. This is about me adding to my health so that I know I'm not going to have a heart attack. I'm protecting against getting dementia. My maternal grandmother had dementia. You know, I am. But then here's the next thing I tell people. If I don't know if you remember meeting me, Dr. Betty, at the JJ's, you know, event a few years ago, I was heavier. I was stressed out because my book was about to come out. So the cortisol, the thyroid is imbalanced. Everything. I've gotten a glow up. I've lost weight. Even though I'm struggling with hair, it looks better. My skin is glowing. And people who see me say I look younger. And I tell them, you want to know the secret to my glow up? I'm like, it wasn't the botox. I mean, I'm not going to lie. I have to cover my gray hairs every three weeks. But it was my thyroid, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. Like, hallelujah, Amen.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I've been on thyroid medication for 25 years. I was going to try and fix it naturally. The reality is, is it, you know, I just wasn't making enough thyroid hormone.

Yes.

And that it, you know, you're not medicating to hide a symptom. You're restoring a hormone that is no longer being regulated properly in the brain. And I think, you know, here's the thing is we Forget that in 1900, our average lifespan was less than 50 years. If you were an average woman was less than 50 years in 1900. Right. If you were wealthy and well off. If you were wealthy and well off, you made it into your. The average woman's lifespan was in, like, 57, 58. So you, you know, the fact that I'm 56 right now would have been unique. Right. And say something.

One doctor says to another, you look younger than stated age. Like, that's ultimate compliment in the medical world.

Thank you.

Like, I've done my biological age. I. I am younger than 50, you younger than 56. And both are saying the same thing. It's because we are restoring our hormones. I have been on when I first found an integrative medicine doctor as I was studying for my board. I started it when I was 38, 39 years old. And I shared the story in the Busy Brain Cure. It was the first time in my life I had a regular menstrual cycle.

Like, you probably were always hypothyroid, right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And. And, and I couldn't get the help I needed. And that's why we, we do the work we're doing. So. Oh my God, I'm so excited. I just feel so strongly that women need to know and you're. And I are not gatekeeping is my sisters. Your brain is not broken and your mind is not a mess. You're not failing as a mom, you're not falling behind as an executive. We need to restore your hormones.

Yeah. You know, and, and so if we look at that so we, we truly spend a third of our life post menopause. Right. When our, we weren't designed to live this long. But so, so here's the way to think about it. Here's what I do. I go, okay, evolutionary science, regardless of what you think, we know that things just evolve. Gene mutations occur because of environmental pressures. So what that means is things change as are we experience different environments. So if we flash forward a hundred thousand years from now, maybe women will go through menopause at 75.

Yeah.

Right. And so, and so all we're doing is restoring the hormone deficiency that occurs because of the loss of ovarian function because we ran out of eggs.

The egg.

Egg carton is empty. To preserve the impact of those hormones, which is a full body effect, every single tissue, every single cell, except for two.

And so I want to translate to the workplace is when you're in your 30s and 40s and we've taken on too much. You can do all the work around setting boundaries and finding confidence and all of that. But the key is to start with restoring your hormonal health and taking care of your brain and mental health. And that's key. You're modeling it for your children, number one. Number two, it's at 50. People are like, how do you do what you do? Yes, I travel for speaking, promote a book, do ongoing research for my next book, and then also be a chief wellness officer. And how I do that is because I'm restoring my hormones when I travel. My assistant has my grocery list and it's not perfect. Right. Because in the functional medicine world, everything organic, GMO free, we do the best we can in the cities I'm traveling, but we have Instacart or Uber Eats deliver food to me. So I'm getting the right macros and that's literally how we do it, you know, and so that when I am at these business dinners, which I am a lot, at least once or twice a week, I've already gotten the right amount of somewhat protein and vegetables during the day and I can make decisions without everybody, like, oh, God, Dr. Romy's hair. We all are gonna have to eat our greens. And I'm just like, eat whatever you need. Like, no worries. You know? So, yeah, I love that. I mean, thank you. Congratulations on the launch of Minerva. I'm so eager to start working with you and your entire team there to just help women. And so the last thing I have to ask is you, you assess and if people need hormones, either thyroid or estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, no matter what state we live in, it gets shipped to us correctly.

Correct? Correct. You know, I want to go back because you were talking a little bit about research. So one of the other pieces, and this is actually why we're raising capital right now, one of the major pieces of Minerva, and actually it's, I would say 75% of the entire company, is we're building a women's digital health intelligence platform that with the intent of it being the largest longitudinal database of women's health. So what does that mean in non geek speak? What we were trying to do is capture information about you individually. So most of us are wearing like some sort of ring. A lot of us are wearing toys. Right. But nowhere is that toy data, the Oura ring or the Apple watch or the Whoop coming together with your symptoms data to help you understand what really happens when you wake up in the middle of the night or you don't sleep half the night. And so essentially, the technology platform will have an app women can download, and it's gathering information from you about your symptoms, your. Your wearable data, if you have them, what you're eating, all of those things. It's literally like you're going to be talking to a girlfriend. You wake up and talk to Minerva, and she's going to ask you how you slept, and she's capturing information.

I can't wait. Okay, America and I are about to become friends because I need somebody other than my girlfriends to whine about my hair too. So like 100%.

So imagine that she's going to be gathering information and giving feedback like, hey, we noticed you're not sleeping. Here's some ideas. But we also going to allow women to order their own labs, see their own lab data in, in real time, married with that data. So normalizing all of that data so you can really see it as graphically. So when somebody. And then making diet and lifestyle and other recommendations so somebody can start dialing in those pieces of lifestyle that they want. And when someone really needs or wants to explore Hormone replacement. Obviously, we have our telemedicine services available. And then where it even changes. The other part of that is one of the things that always bothered me about medicine is we prescribe. Right. I'm not a prescriber, but I have prescribers that work with me. And that is the data that all decision making is done all on. What does the EMR say was prescribed? Well, we know statistically the likelihood of that prescription actually being taken exactly as prescribed is next to null. So the other piece of what Minerva is going to capture is Romy. Dr. Romy. What. How. How did you. Did you take your progesterone last night? Did you take all of it?

Did you remember and. And be mild and being like, I forgot my medicine and I was on the road for a week, and I haven't had progesterone for a week.

So we're capturing what they call titration. Right. So how you take it.

What.

You take it with the idea of being proactive, preventative, and predictive for women. So we could start getting in front of it and going, hey, we know what you.

This is what you need next. Okay? And then also, I gotta interrupt because I. I'm like, I have to ask this because the Indians.

Me.

But on behalf of every sister and every one of my executive clients that's been pissed off going to Functional Integrated Medicine, they are not paying 5, $10,000 to enter your system.

No.

To be clear, this is why I was so excited. So let's break down the cost. And I know HSA will cover it as well, because I already started to look into it. So I'm so excited. Yeah.

Yes. Yes. So. So we're building the technology. It's not completely built yet, but we're working very, very quickly on that. So that is coming. So our. Our current. Our current program is 299, but that includes your sex hormones. So if you're getting progesterone, testosterone, estrogen, you know, thyroid would be separate, but thyroid often gets covered.

Yeah, 300amonth, right?

Yes, 300amonth. And that really allows us to say.

Like, right now for anybody, I take bioidentical hormones. My bioidentical hormones cost just about that already. And you're including it in there, but you're including labs, but you're including the doctor fee.

So just.

I'm paying a lot more money to the doctor fee to my labs and the hormones separately.

And.

And you've got it all in one place.

Yeah, and we have. So we have a lab that we Include in it that looks at hormone metabolism because that's important to know whether you're really dialed in or not. But most of the time the labs that we're using are actually covered. So we allow people to, to order them direct or to, to utilize it. We do have. We're just starting to work with a company that allows home draw and much cheaper than even some of the other labs that you might get.

So somebody will come to your home or office and draw the lab.

No, no, no. You can do it on your own. It's a little device that attaches to your arm like a, like a glucose monitor.

Just oh my God. Technology.

Have somebody on screen to talk to you while you're doing.

Not wait, I can wait. I, I am going to become a customer. I am sending women. I know. And doctor, thank you. And for any woman that has a busy brain, please like follow Dr. Betty because you hear me talk about it over and over. In the Busy Brain Cure, we start by looking at your thyroid. Then we look at your cortisol and insulin and looking at every woman at every age. Your progesterone, estrogen, testosterone is so key. So just. Thank you, Dr. Betty.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And we do have another program for those that want to get more, let's see, more granular, you know. But the vast majority of women can get very good care there. And then as we build the technology, it'll become more and more personalized. And so, you know, our goal is to really create that so we can do women's health research. Right.

Amazing. I just sign me up. By the way, sign me up like here to help on the brain, mental health side. Sign me up. So like.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So Dr. Romy, this has been amazing. And, and if, you know, for anybody that's listening to this, if you have not read the Busy Brain Cure, it's amazing. You know, even if you're not an executive, we are all stressed out. Every woman is. Has way too much meant for entrepreneurs.

Anybody that said, I'm not sleeping, I can't focus, I'm anxious, I'm stressed out.

Caregiving, parents, children, all of that, man keeping whatever you might be up to. All of those things. Yes. That's a new term I have learned.

Over the last couple of weeks.

Oh my God, I love it. I love it.

You and I could talk forever. But I love this. But no thank you. Yeah. We are here with an eight week protocol we research to help you get out of burnout and then transition into care. Like if it's perimenopause with Dr. Betty. So excited.

Dr. Hormi, this has been amazing. I could go on for hours. We'll have to come back and do it again. I love it.

Have a big conversation. Actually, you know what? Let's sign me up as a Minerva patient and bring me back. I got you. You know, I want people to know. And we'll. We'll send a few of my executives over, too, and we're going to have a conversation. Let's do that.

Yeah, Absolutely.

Okay.

Wonderful. Yay. Thank you for being on. And thank you, everybody, for listening, watching Menopause Mastery.

I'll be back with you next week.