Cortisol is the Missing Link in the Wellness Conversation

Gut stress? Just kidding. I know we all do all the time. And actually, someone the other day said, I love stress. And I said, that's kind of like saying I love Monday. And yet, shouldn't we? Shouldn't we love it? And actually, cortisol wakes you up in the morning. So I don't mean go buy a dog because then you'll get woken up by cortisol in the morning. But this episode, we're going to unpack cortisol again in And yes, I know we've talked about it before, but no, you haven't heard this one and you haven't heard my guest. And just a hint, there's an accent. So he had me at hello, but then we opened the door to a lot of other things and we are gonna talk about a product. So don't get triggered by that. There's no pushing, there's no selling going on, but we are talking about why and the problem of stress and why cortisol, we, we both think at what is at the tip of the iceberg as the problem and the foundation of the triangle or the pyramid as the solution. Stay tuned. I'm Debra Atkinson, and you're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness and menopause and beyond before you know to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with the science and the practical application of proven protocols. While living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. It's not just you, but it's the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made made for menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the science of optimal hormone balancing, fitness, and longevity, and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy you want, need, and deserve. So in this episode, all about our good friend cortisol, we're visiting again So I know, but cortisol truly is the missing link in the conversation about wellness, about health, about fitness, about fatness, about sleeplessness, or getting the sleep and the optimal body composition that you want. Cortisol is at the root of it. And you'll hear us discuss this in more than one way today. We're gonna take a look at how cortisol follows a natural rhythm. We'll talk a little bit about Why most health trends are focused on sleep and/or hormones, your hormone decline in menopause, your need potentially for hormone replacement, why your, say, libido has gone to Tahiti without you. We're going to talk about each of those things and the role potentially of, of diet. We touch on that very lightly, on movement and on your sleep, but we overlook the hormone, quite frankly, most often that governs them all. This is a discussion on why cortisol is foundational to any health protocol, but most particularly for you and for me. If you are here, you're listening in any stage of perimenopause or post-menopause. This will be true till death do us part. We need to get this one right above all. My guest today is Justin Hai. He's the co-founder of several award-winning wellness companies, including Alastin Skincare, and he is now in charge of Rebalance Health. With a background in industrial design and an MBA from Pepperdine, Justin blends creative vision with real science, holding multiple US patents, and has presented to NASA and to the Pentagon. He's somebody, y'all. He was also a featured expert in the upcoming Amazon Prime documentary Shield, along with yours truly. He's a passionate advocate for redefining wellness through the lens of hormonal balance, sleep science, and stress mastery. So yes, here we go again with cortisol. My hope is that by revisiting cortisol, adrenals, and the discussion on and their impact ultimately on thyroid, but on every other component of life, is that you have a better and better understanding of it and why pushing through in other areas or ignoring this one critical thing could actually be holding you back, where if we focused on this, we can open the door much more quickly. Let's roll. Justin, hi. Thank you so much for joining me. So I'll have to tell everybody first, in the green room, we've already had the conversation before the conversation and you, you're gonna wish you heard it. So we're gonna try to regurgitate that. But first, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

And as we mentioned, cortisol is no newbie to this podcast. I feel like it's actually— there's 3 people in the room right now and cortisol sits over there hopefully behaving, but we talk about cortisol a lot as if she's not in the room. And we're gonna do that today, but I want to know why cortisol, why are you talking about it so passionate about it? There usually is a reason, but we need to know it.

Absolutely. So, um, oh, about 6, 7 years ago, uh, I was asked to look into supplements for skincare on the heels of my last company, Elastin Skincare. And we were very interested in hormones at the time. Uh, seemed like everyone was transitioning to some sort of peptide that was was going to support hormone health. And I didn't like the idea of a supplement for skincare specifically. I didn't think that the delivery of an oral product versus a topical made sense for most consumers. And so I was looking at kind of the market in general and looking at hormones, and it just stuck out like a sore thumb as I was doing my research. I'm like, yeah, everyone's talking about estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, or the different peptides that can support the human body. But when you really do an analysis on hormones, there's one that sticks out like a sore thumb. And for me, it was cortisol. And the way that I describe it is it's the master hormone. If it is off, everything is off. And people don't kind of acknowledge that. People think of it as the fight or flight hormone, but they don't realize the cause and effect that cortisol has on your entire well-being on a daily, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute basis.

Amen. You know, I— when we first developed a framework for working with women in menopause, especially one that we knew we were wanting to pass on to trainers and to fitness instructors who see so many of them attempting maybe to reach fitness or optimal body weight or composition in the wrong way, when you think about cortisol I used to tell them if the one thing you did was focus on improving their stress levels and helping them be aware of cortisol, you'd be way ahead of the crowd because instead of being part of the problem, we could be part of the solution. So, so true. Talk about cortisol today in, in 2025 and beyond. Why are we, why are we talking about it so much? Is it just that we've gotten so much smarter, we know so much about it, Or is it that it is such a bigger problem?

It's a massive problem. And I don't think anyone's smarter about it. I think people are ignorant around cortisol. I think our egos get in the way and we're very entitled as a population as to what our lifestyle should look like. And we haven't actually come to terms with these— there's some very fundamental facts around the human body that we're ignoring. And that's why we developed a product called Rebalance. That's a lozenge that you take throughout the day to help support cortisol. But I'll get into why cortisol is so high today. But let me explain the cause and effect, and it'll be a big aha moment. You make all your hormones in your sleep. If you don't get 7 to 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, you're at a hormone deficit for the next day. Simple as that. The reason you can't get to sleep and stay asleep is cortisol. It's that simple. So cortisol is too high. You can't fall asleep quickly. You can't stay asleep for the required amount of time for optimum health and hormone production naturally. And then you wake up in the morning with a hormone deficit. So you're tired, lethargic. You don't have your energy, brain fog. You can't lose the weight. You can't keep muscle mass on. Your libido's not to speak of. Your hair, skin, and nails are suffering. Everything suffers because hormone production was not optimal. And every day when this repeats over and over and over again, you haven't broken the cycle and you're at a hormone deficit. No wonder everyone's running for HRT. It's not because HRT is evil, because it's not. It's a fabulous solution. But if everyone kind of understood what cortisol was doing to the body, you wouldn't need as much of it.

Okay. And based on what you've just said, to all of our listeners who are women between 45 and 70, roughly, and by the away if you're an outlier. We see you too, don't go away. But our tendency, our conditioning, and to apologize for the fitness industry, the conditioning that they've done is that we should do more of the thing that actually makes the cortisol worse in order to feel good.

Absolutely. Exercise spikes cortisol. It's very well known, but it's ignored. It's ignored. And if you want to suppress perimenopausal symptoms like hot flashes, guess what? We need to support your cortisol and we need to get you to sleep. And if you sleep, your symptoms, they go away. They go away. And I have clinical IRB studies proving it. My products, my lozenges, Rebalance lozenges, you take them throughout the day, you take the Dream at night, you get better quality sleep. Your hormones are produced naturally in the body. Not a lot, but the ones that you need during that process are manufactured by your body naturally and your symptoms go away. 80% of the— 80% of the women— sorry, 100% of the women in our study saw an average of an 80% reduction in hot flashes.

Wow.

I'll say that again. 100% of the women in our clinical IRB double-blind study saw an average reduction of 80% of hot flashes. 76% improvements in sleep recovery, a 40% improvement in libido, 38% 8% improvement in hair, skin, and nails, better rest, better recovery. Why? They slept. It's a miracle. They slept.

What happened was supposed to happen. But I want you to back up just for listeners who are walking and they're driving, they weren't fully paying attention. You're in the middle of that, that bent-over row and you're efforting. I want you to hear this. Explain what double-blind or IRB is just so that they know the value of that.

So it's a, it's an independent review board that takes a clinical study and validates that it's got true medical scientific protocols back behind it. There is strict rules and regulations around it and there's reporting. And then when it gets double-blind placebo means the patient doesn't know what they're receiving, whether it is a placebo or a sugar pill. Basically, or whether they're actually receiving the right, the actual active product. And then that product is given to them. They don't know which one it is, and they report based on blood draws, subjective questionnaires, and different studies that have been validated in terms of questionnaires. All that data is collected by a third party. They evaluate it, they look at it, they compile a document at the end. It gets submitted to a medical board for review. Doctors and scientists review the outcome, and they determine whether or not they'd to publish it in a medical journal. This is how pharmaceuticals are established and done through their studies. We had over 300 women in our study who had the end of their wits, right? They have tried everything and most of them didn't want to go on to HRT for whatever reason. They didn't want to go on it. And that's the outcome we had. And we were published. We've been published. We've done multiple studies and we've been published in multiple medical journals. So it's Not nonsense. It's fact, scientific fact. Now, it might not work for everybody, right, given people's inability to stay consistent. Why? You have to stay consistent. But it's not a magic pill. And this is where cortisol becomes complicated because cortisol is triggered by everything around you. You have your loved ones, your environment, your work, your emails, the news, everything that's going on around you, the weather, everything impacts how you react. And what has happened over the past 30 years has been unprecedented. What has happened in 30 years has been the onset of technology, the internet, social media. And let's put everything in one big bucket and let's call it content, whether it's Netflix, whether it's the news, whether it's email, whether it's work, it's all content. And you've been trained to be addicted to it. We all have. 30 years ago, there was a news hour, not a news channel. 30 years ago, at midnight, the national anthem came on, followed by static, snow, and then there was no broadcasting. When I was a kid, there was a cartoon hour in the morning on the weekends. There wasn't a cartoon channel 7 days a week. The amount of information and content that is coming at us is unprecedented. It's never, ever, ever been like this before. And what's happened is our bodies have now been trained to the dings, the notifications, the buzzing, the flashing lights, everything. And we do not know the difference between an emergency and a calendar invitation until we pick up and answer that device, whether it's something on the computer or your phone. And so we're constantly living on edge up here at a high level of anxiety and elevated cortisol levels. And what Rebalance does is bring you down into the normal levels and gives you a more even playing field. Now, there's nothing crazy in our products, right? We've got all natural herbs and roots, ashwagandha, maca, l-theanine, magnesium, zinc, you name it, all the good stuff. But it's given to you in a lozenge and you suck on it. And everyone's going to say, well, you're going to have to suck on it forever. Yes. Yes. Unless you become a Buddhist monk and figure out how to control your addiction to this device. But it's amazing how people's cortisol comes down when they go on holiday because they're not attached to that. And so that is really what's happened is technology and information has come at us so quickly. And everyone is scrolling the Eiffel Tower on their phones for social media and going through everything, and it's just causing anxiety. We have basically given up our souls to these devices, and we are slaves to them unless you can break that pattern and understand the cause and effect and put screen time on your phone for yourself, not for your kids. It's designed for everyone, not just our kids, right? You know how many people that tell me, "Yeah, I use screen time. My kids are only allowed an hour screen time. What about yourself? Oh, but I use it for work.

Right.

9 to 5. Oh, no, no. I work 15, 16 hours a day. That's not a badge of honor.

Right. I was just going to say, we still think that it is, right? Or, or somehow we think mythologically that we're going to get ahead if we put in that 15 hours because not everybody will do that, but we will. Yeah. And it's not working out very well for us. Okay. And, and I have to say this, so we talked a bit about this unbeknownst to the audience who now thinks you live in England. You live in Boulder, Colorado, which having been there, you know, people retire there to become more active as they age. I think Boulder is really good at getting outside and playing. What do you do? You wrote the book. So what do you do to get away?

I think I think there's a bunch of things that you just hit on. And the word that I love is playing. Yeah. I play with my wife, I play with my kids, I play with my dogs all the time. I think we're too serious as a society. And that play, like real play. And I'm not being sexual. I'm talking about playing, being joyful, being light of heart. Yes, intimacy is an important component, but it's all about playing and not being so serious. Right? One thing that happened to my wife before I met her was that she suffered from a very, very, very severe brain injury. She's actually missing 25% of her frontal lobe. It's gone. And so there's very little short-term memory. And so as we started having a family, we used to live by some very simple rules. Very simple. Do you remember where you left our kids?

Yeah. Okay.

Right. Do you remember where you left them? Yes. Great. Do you know who I am? Yes. Great. Nothing else matters.

Okay. Well, good.

That's really what it comes down to. And at the end of the day, we lost car keys, we lost rings, we lost wallets, we lost everything, right? Why? Short-term memory. No big deal. But it kind of helps you understand what's important in life because all the other shit isn't important. And so we have a different mentality. Like, you know, you don't want to go out to a concert, you know, you don't feel good, you know, okay, well, it's not going to cost us any more money not to go, right? Just don't have to take everything so seriously. So playing, number one, playing. Absolutely. Absolutely. Just play.

I want to come back to something that you just said, because I think everybody will step over it if we don't, like not going to the concert that you bought tickets for because It didn't— doesn't cost you anything more not to go.

Not to go.

Yeah, you know, I just dealt with that this morning with a trip that I had planned, and I can't get the— I can't get refunded for the tickets. But it was like, right now it just feels like too much on my plate, right? And you're exactly right. Doesn't cost anything more than that.

But there's always going to be a silver lining if you look for it, and if you, if you stay positive. And that's a wonderful way of keeping your stress down. Right? And then I know it's idealistic. The glass is always half full, not half empty. Right? I know it's idealistic. And God knows there are tough days all the time. But if you can find that silver lining, if you can send out love and happiness and gratitude, as opposed to frustration and anger, it's amazing what happens. It's amazing what happens to your cortisol levels and smiling.

Yeah, yeah, so true. And I want to ask you something, and so I'm gonna make this a little personal— personal for you, personal for me. Do you have a question for a podcast? A question you'd love to ask, or maybe a story you want to tell? Did you know we have a special group just for podcast question roundups and the answers? My community coaches and I provide answers daily inside of this group, but it's also where I go when I occasionally say, okay, open call for podcast questions, or tell your story, would you like to be a guest? So if you're looking for a community of women who are also interested in optimizing their health, strengthening their mindset, and looking forward to every new year, join the Flipping 50 Insiders group. That's Flipping 50 Insiders on Facebook. We had this common denominator that I lived in both older, and I visit there frequently actually. We have family still there. And, um, you know, when you go through tragedy— we talked about in the green room— it changes your perspective on what is tragic. You know, sometimes at work it helps me because I'm like, okay, that was a mistake, but nobody's dying or bleeding. And I can say that literally, that it's not as big a deal anymore. But then I sometimes wonder Did I, did I raise my tolerance level in a negative way? Right. Who knows?

Who knows? I don't know. I've definitely got calmer as I've gotten older. I know I was far more aggro when I was younger, right? You have ego and everything to contend with and, you know, attitude and somewhat. And as I've gotten older, there's a lot more of Oh, well. Oh, well. But doesn't mean I stop fighting and jumping into what I believe in and I'm passionate about. But sometimes it doesn't work. I get, you know, I've been trying to get on a few podcasts, promote the company, promote the book. And I get all kinds of, you should be ashamed of yourself, you know, you're peddling nonsense. And I'm like, wow, really? Did you read the studies? Did you read everything? I think I'm in the 1% of all supplement companies in the world right now. We actually studied our product, not the ingredients. Ingredients come with the studies, but unless you actually test your finished product, you can't have any claims on anything. And so, you know, people come at me and they can be a little aggressive, and sometimes you just act professional and send love their way. And, you know, sorry, we have a different opinion, and be more mellow. And I think my wife has taught me that over the years. And one part of the journey in developing this product was about a year and a half into it, my wife was diagnosed with Cushing's, which is an elevated cortisol level. It's like the universe hit me over the head and said, oh yes, you're on the right path, but you need to do it right. You need to make sure it works.

So you can learn a little more. Here you go.

You can learn a little more. So it became personal. It was a passionate project. It was something that was fascinating to myself and my partners and my investors that, wow, this is really there's something here. There really is something here. And people are missing the steps. They're jumping straight to testosterone or right to estrogen and progesterone, and they're not dealing with the underlying cause. And the underlying cause is simply stress and cortisol. And you have to learn how to handle it. And as my wife was diagnosed, nothing was working for her. And so it was like, yep, not cutting any corners, not compromising on anything. It's going to work. And we're going to use the best ingredients, the best product, the best manufacturing for a reason. And we're going to do it. And we went through 64 iterations of the product before we perfected it. Well, it wasn't just, hey, let's grab this, let's grab this, put it together and let's sell it. It doesn't work like that if you want to do it right. And so we developed this product for cortisol and out of the blue, after a few months, we started getting phone calls from women going, you've changed my life. And I was like, well, that's really nice of them. Thank you. Oh, wow. That was a wonderful testimonial. And then, then a week later, we got another one or two. And then another one. And all of a sudden, the phone is ringing all the time, and people are emailing us. And we're like, what's happening here? And the women are saying, my hot flashes have gone. I'm sleeping. My kids like me again. I have a libido. And the funniest story is one woman called and said, my kid, young kid, about 8 years old, said, Mommy, have you taken your magic lozenges yet? Because they noticed the difference between how calm mommy was when she took the lozenges versus when she wasn't.

Wow.

And we're not picking on the women because we have products for men. It's the same thing. Um, but the fundamental cause and effect is if you can bring cortisol back into normal levels and you follow some good lifestyle habits, which we can talk about, and you get good quality sleep, your symptoms will start to go away.. Now they won't go away on day 1, but they will go away. And within 2 to 4 weeks, we are seeing better quality sleep, better mood, better energy levels, better mental capacity, less brain fog. And yes, after a couple of months, women are going, I'm down a couple of pant sizes. I'm losing that, that subcutaneous visceral fat around my midsection that I have been unable to lose. Why? Well, when you're Cortisol is high and you're in fight or flight. Your body doesn't use metabolism. It holds on to everything because it doesn't know when it's going to eat next. Even though you might be feeding it all the time, it doesn't know when it's going to eat next because it's in that alert state where it's naturally ingrained in our DNA that when we have high levels of cortisol, you're in fight or flight mode. So you may not be eating for who knows how long. And so the body thinks, I've got to store all that fat, their energy, just in case. Just like your libido goes poof. Why are you running from a bear and a tiger? Do you really need libido right now? No. And when your body calms down, your body starts to use metabolism again. It starts to burn off the extra fat that it's storing and the libido comes back.

And I think this is so important for us to realize and, and again, come back to this point where you're going to be pulled back into a conversation, most likely on social media, the next time you decide you're scrolling in your hour. And you're gonna be told that, well, it's because your estrogen and your testosterone have declined that you have this issue, or that you don't have a libido. But even, even our 20 and 30-somethings, they're struggling with fertility issues. And, and I think that is a part of this whole problem. I mean, their screen time is worse than ours.

100%. And you're, and you're right. But let's, let's just go back to what you said, that you're— the reason why you have no libido is because your testosterone or your estrogen, your estrogen is low. That is a correct statement. But why is it low? And that's where people are not going. And that's why you're saying cortisol is, is understood to be fight or flight or stress hormone, but not truly understand that cortisol is stopping you from sleeping. And you make your estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone whilst you're sleeping. If you wake up once once in the night is clinically diagnosed as a poor night's sleep. Once. And so that goes into lifestyle now, right? So how do you set yourself up for success to control that time in which you want to be asleep? And that goes back to, well, should I be eating and drinking late at night? No. Why? Because we're all aging. You can Gotta put your ego to one side. We're all aging. Anyone over 45, your bladder isn't going to be able to hold the fluids and the food the way it used to when we were in our 20s. And therefore you're going to run to the bathroom. You're going to need— your body is going to wake you up to use the bathroom. So eating early, consuming all your fluids, like before 3 o'clock in the afternoon, just drink. I mean, literally, I go through like 5, 6 of these before even lunchtime. Why? Because I want my fluids, my hydration to be there. And if I start drinking late at night, I'm going to run to the bathroom. I'm in my 50s. I'm going to run to the bathroom. There's nothing I can do to stop that. Alcohol, guys, you're going to hate me. Everyone's like, I need that glass of wine. Am I wrong? Wine is not a sedative. It is a stimulant. And an hour or two later turns to sugar and it's a stimulant and that's going to wake you up. And now you've got sugar running and now you're up. They can use the bathroom. So there's things that, like I said, our lifestyles, our egos are telling us, I deserve that glass of wine, I deserve that chocolate, I deserve that. And yeah, live your life. I'm not a monk or Buddhist, right? I went out for dinner last night with my friends and my wife, and I got home at 8:00 and I had eaten at 7:00, right? And I go to bed at 8:45. So yeah, I had to maybe go swim or do something else to burn off some calories and some energy, right? No one's perfect. But if you understand the cause and effect, and there's logic around all of this, you'll be like, oh yeah, yeah, that's, that's why I can't sleep because I keep eating dinner at 9 o'clock and I go to bed at 10, or I'm watching TV and blue light, or I have my phone next to my bed, or I haven't got good sleep hygiene habits, meaning my room isn't cold enough. I'm not sleeping in an environment that is conducive to being relaxing. Maybe I work on my bed. No, not good. You want to keep that bed for intimacy and sleep, nothing else. Don't work on your bed with your laptop because now you associate it with stress and work and so forth. Tons of stuff that you can do, all of which is in the book.

Fantastic. So good. Talk just a little bit, if you will, about what's in the lozenges. But I also want to ask you, did you consciously choose lozenges? I mean, obviously, yes. Is that a comfort, like sucking from, from birth?

Actually, no, no, no, no, no, it's not psychological, it's actually scientific. So, um, the best delivery method for ingredients in the body is a subcutaneous injection, an IV, directly into the bloodstream. The next— but that would be a drug, right? That's a pharmaceutical, that's a drug. Yeah. So the next best delivery methods are nasal spray or a lozenge. And call me crazy, I don't like nasal sprays, nor do most people. And so lozenge seemed obvious as the next best choice. And then it was further supported because obviously we were during COVID when we started the company, and the FDA and the CDC recommended a zinc lozenge as the only supplement to take to help combat COVID. They did not recommend a zinc pill, and they certainly didn't recommend a zinc gummy. They recommend a zinc lozenge, and that kind of triggered us. That kind of makes sense, right? So let's, let's do that. And so the lozenge was based on science. It was based on that. And we actually have a published study in Vitamins and Minerals medical journal that basically we did blood draws for someone that did a melatonin lozenge, our lozenge, versus a melatonin gummy and a melatonin pill. And the study showed that we were 75% faster acting, we were 300% more bioavailable, meaning when we took blood from the subjects, there was 300% more melatonin that we could trace in the blood than the other two, right? That 300% bioavailability lasted 100% longer, 100 minutes longer. At the highest level, and we outlasted the study at 33%. So all of that's on our website. So we actually tested that the lozenge was a better method to take the product than a pill or a gummy. And that came with its own unique challenges like taste, because if you take ashwagandha, Tongkat Ali, any of these types of ingredients and you suck on them, they're horrific. They're absolutely horrific. They're very bitter. And so So we spent a lot of time and a lot of money and multiple flavor houses figuring out a natural solution to mask the taste of the natural ingredients with a natural mint flavor. And we, we do have it. And that's why we call our products mints, right? So there's Meno Mints for menopausal, perimenopausal, postmenopausal women. There is Mellow Mints for everybody who wants to just calm down. And then there's Man Mints, obviously designed for men. The formulas are very similar, but they are different. Meadow Mints definitely has more ingredients to calm the nervous system down for women because women going through perimenopause definitely need calming in regards to their nervous system. And compared to men, we're Neanderthals. We're absolutely complete idiots when it comes to our hormones in contrast to women, right? Women, from the moment they have their first menstrual cycle, they know when something is off, something's about to happen. They're intune with their bodies. You could hit us over the head with a brick, we wouldn't know if our testosterone is high or low, if our estrogen was high or low, and so forth. We just wouldn't. And it happens to men roughly when we go through the equivalent of menopause called andropause. And we're like, oh my God, I can't get an erection. The world has ended. And I go and you can go to the doctor and you can get any types of medication for it. Men or women are very, very, very similar. But women suffer exponentially more than men. Men still have brain fog, weight gain, muscle mass loss, anxiety, right? We have hair, skin, and nail issues as well, right? We have libido issues. We do get hot flashes, right? Ever been in bed with your husband or your partner and they throw the covers off at night? "Oh, I was hot." Well, they were having a mini hot flash.

I hate to tell you.

Interesting. Right? But again, you turn up the dial to 1,000 for women. Men can't even relate, but they suffer the same way. But it starts at roughly mid-30s and goes into their 70s. They have 40 years of this, right, which we put down to aging. Women, when they go through perimenopause, God bless you guys, you go through it through 7 to 14 years. It's far, far more compact and condensed, and it's exacerbated, and all the symptoms are horrific. And so that's why that formula has more ingredients to calm nervous systems down. Men obviously more focused on testosterone and melamine for everybody. So that's kind of what we've done and why we do it.

That is amazing. And I don't think I've ever heard anyone describe andropause quite like that. So everybody got a lesson here. So if you didn't catch that, I want y'all to rewind like 3 minutes. You're going to want to, you're going to want to use that at some moment. And I know it will come in handy. So just hang on to that. This was phenomenal. So first of all, When does the book come out? When can everybody get their hands on it and where?

Absolutely. So Stress Nation can be found at stressnationbook.com. And we have links to everyone, Books-A-Million, Amazon, you name it. But the reason why I'm sending you to the website stressnationbook.com is because I offer a free perimenopause educational course over a 5-day email process, which is completely free. It's actually in chapter 1, the end of chapter 1. There is a QR code in the book that will take you to the website and give you that free perimenopausal course where I get rid of all the nonsense and all the stuff that people have been trying to push over the past 5 years that should be shot. Because my biggest message is you're not broken and you should slap anyone that tells you otherwise because women are not broken. It's a beautiful journey. It's a transition into the next stage of our, of your lives. Just like puberty is for everybody else. There's no special diet. There's no special exercise protocol. There's nothing wrong with you. Just no one's been listening and no one's telling you the truth. You just need to get some sleep.

It's true. Although I would have to argue there's kind of a special exercise program because sometimes getting the sleep and reducing the cortisol is related to changing the exercise that you were doing 10 years ago.

Well, yeah, I mean, it depends on what what you're pushing, right? Because there's always fads, right? 10 years ago, what was it? Tae Bo. And, you know, everyone's got a new program or exercise, right? That's going out. There's a new diet that's out every single, you know, every 10 years, 5 years, there's a new one, right? Whether it's the South Beach diet, the keto diet, the paleo diet, you know, there's hundreds of them. And in the book, we talk about it. The best diet is the one that you're going to stick to. And the bottom rule is really simply eat less calories than you burn. That's it. That's, that's the secret. Eat less calories than you burn and understand what you put in your body. When it comes to exercise, the one you're going to do is the best one. However, with that caveat, I'm a huge proponent for lifting weights. Huge, huge proponent because that's going to help you with fighting off osteoporosis. It's going to help your bones stay strong. It's going to help your muscles stay strong. Keep your brain healthy. There's so many benefits to lifting weights. And I'll leave you with a little teaser. People are maniacal for cardio. They just jump on and they do it forever. Yeah. Let me leave you with this. You can eat more calories in 30 seconds than you can burn off in an hour in the gym. And so you just honestly kind of wasting your time. You got to figure out what you're doing in the kitchen, what you're doing in the gym to optimize your life and I'll leave it at the rest of that. You're the exercise expert. I'm really just someone that understands it. But to me, lift weights. Yes, cardio is important, but if you, if you're tricking yourself thinking an hour in the gym on the treadmill is going to beat the kitchen, yeah, you're fooling yourself. Absolutely.

Where can listeners follow you, Justin? Where can they find you on social?

Yeah, they can find me at Rebalance Health on social media. Look at me for Justin High, Justin A. High, I believe. You can Google me, look at me up that way. I'm everywhere. But I'm trying to help as many people as I can without spending lots of money. Our products are inexpensive. They're $40. The book is $29. I'm giving away courses for free because it's information that needs to be spread because it's truthful and it's rooted in heart and helping people like I wanted to help my wife. You know, I can tell you one last crazy thing about me. I actually took my estrogen to zero medically. And I induced hot flashes because I was curious. Wow. It was horrific. I lasted 4 weeks. It was horrific. I can't imagine lasting 4 months, let alone 4 years or 7 years, 14 years. They're horrific. And I mean, everyone was laughing at me. But literally every couple hours, I'd have like this crazy spell, have to change my clothes. Because I was curious as to what what was going on. And I'm not saying that I've gone through perimenopause or menopause. I'm saying I've experienced a symptom for as little as 4 weeks. And I can tell you, I'm not man enough to put up with it any longer.

I feel like that should have been a documentary.

Probably, but it wasn't about that. But it was— but it's like, yes, you can— I actually think every husband should put themselves through that to have some empathy for their significant other. So you can understand what it's like, but it's not fun.

I can tell you it's not fun. Yikes. Wow. That's taken one for the team for sure. On that note, Justin, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me, Debra.

If you are struggling with cortisol, I just want to pipe in and give you this one quick reminder. The 10-Day Hot Not Bothered Challenge is a perfect start, restart, or reset. And again, if you've tried to do what most of us would do because of the conditioning we've had for years. We try to exercise more, longer, and harder in order to lose body fat, belly fat, or just total overall weight gain that we don't know the reason for. We try to over-exercise and we are making the problem worse. If you're in that spot where you think, "I'm doing it all," and very definitely, potentially you are, or you don't know where to start, both places are perfect. If you're not started yet, you know you need to. Maybe the reason you stopped was because you were exhausted, sick, or injured. Let's start right this time. If you're already following a program but it's not working, in fact it's backfiring, you're couch compensating and/or injured, let's stop, stop the craziness and get on the right program.

Program.

Take 10 days. It's actually a little longer than that. The sooner you get in, the sooner you take advantage of what we call the green room, where you get access to some special videos that explain the benefit of the program you're about to do, how your hormones can be improved from it, how the type and the timing of the exercise that you do actually does positively or negatively impact your hormones, and how to take control. You'll get all of that by the end of 10 days. My hope is always that you are confident walking away with tools to make any exercise program you'll do in the future better and serve you. You're not doing it wrong. The program you might have done before was failing you. If you do decide to take a next step, here's even better news. The $69 registration fee will be credited back to you, and you can apply it toward your next eligible step. We tell you that eligible step— yep, we like to keep secrets— in the breakthrough session. But I promise you, again, for the price of or less than price of a coffee a day, you'll get information that will be invaluable and priceless to you going forward, no matter what you decide to do. You can join with the link at the website at flipping50.com. You'll see it right there on the homepage. We make it easy for you to get in. Thank you so much for listening. To listen and access a decade of episodes and the show notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all of our prior episodes. And I made it easy for you to make the most of your listening time by selecting 5 specific areas most commonly high priorities for our community and giving you top 10 lists if you let me know. You'd love them. If you know a midlife woman or a soon-to-be one who wants to optimize her midlife energy and time with the right exercise and lifestyle changes and a mindset shift about just what is possible, share this podcast with her, and I thank you. There is no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife woman.