Exercise for Menopause Brain Fog, Memory, Depression and Anxiety
29 Nov 2024 · 2 min
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Could your workout actually have a better effect on your menopause brain fog than it is right now? Here's the research on how to optimize your workouts for mood, for focus, for memory, and supporting yourself through depression or anxiety. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with 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. And it's not just about you, but the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, and an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made for menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the scenes and 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 that you want, need, and deserve. All right. This potentially could have a very positive effect on you firing on all cylinders, which is what I call it when you're really working at your optimal. You can remember things, you are creative, you are full of ideas, and, and I think also full of optimism because look, a significant number of women over 40, over 50, and then even more, it goes higher with each decade, will experience depression and/or anxiety. Now look, any of us can experience it during situational episodes. Say somebody passes, you're a caregiver, you are just in an extremely stressful situation, and that's all relevant unique to each and every one of us, but anxiety can rear its ugly head for any of us at any time. So I want you to realize that if you haven't been diagnosed, you're not somebody who calls themselves depressed or suffer from depression, don't go away. Stay with me because this could be you and, or it could be somebody near you at any moment. If you deal with menopause, specifically menopause brain fog, mild depression, anxiety at any time of year, this is for you. It's also for anybody who wants the latest science on exercise and brain health. It's not just for women in midlife, but of course everything I pull in here filters for you. I want to let you know why this comes up frequently and why I'm sharing it. And one of the biggest reasons is, you know, I have a huge large portion of my education came from counseling and from psychology because I am an exercise psych master's major. That was my area of expertise. Decided I didn't want to go the clinical route, you know, and be a professor basically, or go into sports exercise psychology. The money there is, of course, in sports. That's not what I wanted, but I wanted to focus on exercise behavior change because I knew we were missing that. Even when I went back to school, I graduated in 1986 and went back to grad school about a year, actually formally a year and a half later. And I realized at that point, we're missing the boat. There's a lot of pretty already fit people exercising, and we're just kind of passing them around and they try one program and then they try another one, but we're not tapping into the people who really need us. And that really bothered me. Really bothered me. And unfortunately, here we are 40 years later after my graduation, or entry, let's say that, an entry into teaching fitness and leading fitness, writing about it, reading about it, talking about it incessantly every day. And we are no further ahead. The slice of America, at least, that is doing enough exercise to improve their physical and mental health is at about the same percentage as it was in 1984 when I first began teaching fitness classes. And that, my friends, is sad. So we're going to dive into what is behind, first of all, our motivation or lack thereof. There's a lot of things I've shared over different episodes about why motivation might go down during menopause for you. And it is not you alone. Those of you that have been fit your whole life, loved exercise your whole life, and you feel like it's kind of flat right now for you, you just can't get that edge that you used to get from fitness. It's not you. We have fewer dopamine receptors due to the changes with hormones. So it's going to take a little more creative planning, you know, sunlight, friends, music you love, all of those things also help stimulate neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and pulling them all together in the same place may actually help your exercise boost that, okay, I got it, right? I got the edge. I have that high that we want. We crave that, I think. We crave that hour on the StairMaster again, not because we crave the hour on the StairMaster or we have an hour to give, but we want the feeling and we're not getting it, not because it takes an hour on the StairMaster, but because we just have fewer receptors. So it's not that you're doing anything wrong, by the way. So know that no matter when you're listening to this episode, it's relevant for multiple reasons. Doesn't have to be the holidays, which it happens to be now. As I release it during the holiday season, it can have more impact for sure. And whether you've lost somebody in this recent past year or any year at this time of year, or it's simply traditions and memories and emotions that occur or have, holidays can be equally as hard as they are magical. And this time of year, depression and anxiety can worsen for anyone. Anyone who previously had it and anybody who didn't have it already for various reasons. So for women with menopause brain fog and memory issues, the holidays can have an even greater impact. So I'm— I didn't put the word in negative, for instance, beyond menopause and brain fog. Let's talk about this. There is a global prevalence of depression in perimenopausal women Here are the numbers: 33.9%, that's almost 34%, and almost 35% in postmenopausal women. That's a third, that's over a third of us who are in menopause. Now, the number in menopause, you know, this is huge. It's huge. 1.2 billion women. So if we just pool those two numbers, right, that's a huge number of women is suffering from depression. And I wanna point out here that if you're wondering what's the difference between anxiety and depression, I think we all might think, okay, anxiety is when you get all wound up and tighter than a drum, and depression is when you're more depressed and slow. And actually they're very related. And so often when someone has one, they'll have the other. So that's not always true, but that's a very simplistic way to kind of help you understand, you know, this may be one in the same, not necessarily isolated either or. So why, why this large number of perimenopausal and postmenopausal women have this? It's due to estrogen and progesterone fluctuations, sleep disturbances. If you had children, the sleepless nights and how you felt drugged the next day, At least I did. I mean, I had a grazer for, I did 5 months of breastfeeding and I quit cold turkey. I don't know why I chose to do it on this day. We were moving across town from a townhouse to a new house and I had this 5-month-old. And so I was not very much help. You know, I wasn't, I was taking him and we were just running errands and getting things that we needed. And I chose that day to— that's it. I am not breastfeeding you anymore. Cry all you want, but you're going to take a bottle today if you're hungry enough. And I just couldn't do it anymore because the sleep deprivation was killing me. I mean, it was just literally, I can't do this. So if you remember those days and maybe you got luckier and you had a sleeper, you had a good sleeper. It's really important that you realize that this can happen to us at any time, but it tends to happen to a lot of women with insomnia, keeping you, you know, in that maybe more depression. You're going to experience it, or you're going to experience it for the first time, potentially because of that. Two-thirds of adults with depression don't receive adequate care. They might first get, oh, we'll give you a prescription due to the stigma or the fact that they don't respond well to antidepressants. So when I say they don't get quality care, number one, they may not seek it, right? Because nobody wants to admit that. And pharmaceuticals don't address the physical comorbidities associated with depression, like, you know, lack of sleep. And often lack of motivation to exercise, lack of motivation to make healthy food choices or cook for yourself. So weight gain and obesity actually are part of the deal as well. So exercise is well accepted, widely accepted in fact, as an alternative or complement to pharmaceuticals due to its accessibility, its acceptability. So catch both those words, right? Accessible, Accessibility, meaning you and I have access, we can go for a walk anytime. And acceptability, like people look at people who exercise as that's a really good thing. While people who take, you know, depression medications, maybe not. That might be judged or nobody wants to do that or know that you're doing that. And safety, I mean, exercise is far more safe, no negative side effects. Every medication. One that's needed even has negative side effects, unfortunately. So even physical activity below public health recommendations can yield significant mental health benefits, and it is a necessary place to start. By the way, this is really an important distinction, and I think sometimes when you're hearing what should we do for bone density, what should we do for lean muscle mass, and you're hearing fatigue between 2 and 4 or 4 and 6 repetitions. Yes. And after about 12 weeks, it's going to take you that long to safely lay a foundation and get there. You should not be starting that unless you want to rush yourself to injury. Even some of the docs that I, I love for speaking out and who are finally Calling attention to the right kind of exercise and fitness, because I think the fitness industry has made it hard for you, the public, to take seriously fitness professionals because there's such a wide gamut and because the regulations around the fitness industry are not hard and fast. I mean, we are not regulated very well. Anyone at any moment can call themselves a personal trainer. It's up to you to say, are you certified? And it's up to you really to know. That question means nothing. So you can get a certification out of a Cracker Jack box in about 8 hours. That's it. And you can take an online test and your cat could probably take it and keep clicking and get the right away the response to, oh, you got this one wrong. Here's the right answer. Go back and put the right answer in and oh, passing score. Boom. So it's really important that you understand, number one, certification doesn't mean anything, or it shouldn't to you. A basic certification only allows or enables someone to enter the field who potentially, hopefully, will not do harm, but they may not know what they're doing. So how that is not doing harm. I don't know, but therein lies the problem. So there's just not time to fit everything in with basic certifications. There's so much to learn. So realize you've got to, you know, answer to this. But some of these docs who are talking now and they're talking about fitness have not had much fitness background themselves. Some have, of course. So I want to make you aware of who would this be. That would be people who have, as say undergrads before they go and apply to medical school, went through a sports or exercise physiology or kinesiology program at Iowa State University. We're a scientific university. Science and technology was our thing, and I chose that university over something that was a little bit more behavioral. Based in another university in the same state. And during that programming, we would have a lot— so I taught for 15 years and taught to a lot of pre-PT, pre-physical therapy. I know it gets a little confusing when physical therapy and personal training are both PT, but we don't use the word, the, the acronym PT for personal trainer. That is reserved for physical therapists here in the UK, for instance, it's often physiotherapist, or Canada, just depending on where you're from. We are a global community. I just wanna include everybody. And we would have pre-med students also come through the program and as a part of their undergrad, and generally they wanted to be some kind of an orthopedic surgeon. Um, maybe working in sports rehab, maybe wanted to be the doctor on the sidelines for a team, sports teams. And that's fantastic. Those people you can count on. Often we had chiropractors as well, so that also would be pre-med, but those people would be like the people you should look for. Like, what was their undergrad in? That will tell you a lot about what do they know, what should I be asking? And yet you also want to realize that the further they are from it, if they haven't actually been practicing, they haven't been that sideline doc, they haven't been doing surgeries, haven't been studying the science on the fitness. So I know an orthopedic surgeon who does great with surgery, lots of knee replacements, broken arm patching, things like that, but hires a personal trainer and really, you know, didn't know and wouldn't know how to program his own. And so it's really important for you to understand what does a doctor know, what does a personal trainer know, and how much experience do they have so that you're getting your information in the right place. So all this to say, it's important that you realize that there are benefits to movement at every stage. So just moving, going for a walk. Now, if your goals and priorities are bone density, muscle mass, you're not going to get it from that. You're not going to get it from just walking. You're going to stimulate more muscle than you would sitting on the couch. Yes. However, it's not enough. If you go for a run, are you getting more muscle from that? Minimally. Yeah, no, you need to be lifting weights. That is the strength, that's the muscle-increasing kind of exercise. And yes, if you are a runner versus a walker, will you have a little bit more lean muscle mass? I don't know. Now, not necessarily if you are getting too lean because you're running. And by the way, women in midlife, it often doesn't work that way. You may actually get fatter because you're increasing your cortisol level if you're running too long and getting into that sweet spot of cortisol now increases as opposed to decreasing. So it's important to realize that, you know, there is a continuum. And when we're talking mental health benefits, walking may be one of the best possible things, but all exercise is really beneficial for mental health. And I'll talk a little bit more about that and some studies that are included. And by the way, if you're a prove it to me girl, the science is in the show notes that I'll share with you. So this isn't just for you, but the 3 generations that you influence. I want to make sure that you understand, since the pandemic changes and potentially reliance on social media isolation increased the prevalence of anxiety and depression globally in all ages by 25%. 50% of young adults, young adults like 18 to 25 experience it, and women do more than men, just to give you perspective. And that's women across the board, all ages, but definitely older women. In a recent study published in the BMC— that's Biomedical Central Public Health Journal— over 200 randomized controlled trials showed exercise interventions may have more potent antidepressant effect than the SSRIs that are most frequently prescribed. That is like the first go-to people will suggest if you need an antidepressant. SSRI is a serotonin uptake kind of a drug. So when you're doing activities that create serotonin, those neurotransmitters, you're kind of giving yourself a drug. So if you need an SSRI temporarily or long-term, maybe you'll be able to wean off of it, take less, won't need it if you are walking outdoors, you're getting access to sunshine, you're getting more vigorous exercise, you're talking with friends regularly, laughing, you have a dog. Lots of things can help boost that serotonin level. So in spite of the evidence that there's no negative and only positive side effects. And a recent study set out to find which exercise interventions helped reduce depression levels the most in postmenopausal women, and if certain population characteristics responded differently. So they looked at specific exercise, and they were this: stretching, they were aerobic exercise, resistance training, mind-body exercise. And in that, they qualified that as not just yoga, but also Pilates, um, tai chi, um, other kinds of martial arts types of exercises. And then last but not least, multi-exercise. So mixing it up, in other words, kind of like a boot camp. You know, where you're doing one activity and then you're switching and you're doing a different one. Of all of those, the one that had the least impact was stretching, by the way. So just sitting on the floor and stretching, probably not going to help your mental health all that much. However, don't avoid stretching, do stretch. It's good physically, but mind-body exercise had the greatest efficacy on anxiety, followed by aerobic. Exercise. So what should you do? Two things. One, do a yoga workout, workout to video in your living room, go to a yoga class if that suits you. If you know yoga, do your own, but any of those can help. And go for walks regularly. Often I'm asked, what is aerobic? You know, is that like— we all think back to, I believe, the '80s where it was like take your heart rate, you gotta breathe hard, you should be breathing harder, heart rate should be up in that zone. No, going for a walk is aerobic compared to standing inside of your house or vacuuming, right? So it doesn't have to be heavy breathing necessarily for it to be aerobic. And above a certain point, it becomes anaerobic. That's when you're breathing hard enough that you would have to stop on a regular basis. So a study I shared Nearly a decade ago compared yoga to muscle conditioning exercise, like going to a toning class where they were going to do bicep curls and tricep extension and leg lifts and that, you know, the toning classes. But in a comparison of yoga to those muscle conditioning exercises, this study found significantly more improvement in cognitive function, like your ability to remember things, to solve problems, in the yoga subjects after 8 weeks with identical frequency and duration of programs. So when you maybe take a mini vacation and you have to focus on the activity, on the posture and the balance and your positioning and making sure your knee is over your little toe side, right? All the cues that I give in a class, you can't be thinking about your problems.. And that little mini mind vacation is very valuable to mental health and cognition. So published in Menopause, the journal, a study also found that mind-body exercise significantly decreased fatigue, insomnia, depression, and anxiety compared to no specific exercise intervention except for like get daily activity. Like one group is told, you know, be active on a daily basis, and another group actually did mind-body exercise. So either yoga or, um, tai chi or Pilates were, were among those that were included in that list. So very interesting, right? But get more organized, and that can be much more helpful. Now, if you did something like a walking meditation that also might be really helpful. So why mind-body? Why do you think, you know, yoga increases melatonin levels? And melatonin, if you'll remember, is the sleep regulator. We tend to produce less of that as we age, like so many other things. So it modulates your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nervous system. Sympathetic is like wired, fight or flight, like like gotta be on alert. Parasympathetic is calm yourself down. Hello, let's be fine. We're good. So parasympathetic nervous system, you can stimulate in lots of different ways. Take a deep breath with me right now, will you please? Exhale. That even just now stimulated your parasympathetic nervous system. If you did that 3 or 4 times before you ate a meal, and by the way, turned off your phone and screens, your digestion probably would be better. So small things that we can do can actually help. And by the way, if you happen to have tense upper back and neck muscles, you hold your tension there. Taking that deep breath in may have just made you aware that you were doing that and you may have put them down. Anybody else? Am I alone in this one? Okay. But you also have this brain-derived neurotropic release. These factors improve cognition. That's your ability to focus, problem solve. And by the way, if you work with people, you problem solve all day long and your memory. So these things are important for, yeah, feeling good, but also for kind of locking in the things that you did, saw, heard, were, were taught today so that you actually own them. The menopause brain fog many women experience may improve most with— are you ready? Do you have any answer to this right now? Before I give it to you, I want to give you a chance to think about it. If we were talking about all forms of exercise, do you know that there's one that really stands out when it comes to improving your brain fog, helping you to think more clearly and sharper, be more alert, have a little mood boost. Actually, it is high-intensity interval training. So when I say high-intensity interval training, I want to make clear what I'm— I mean, so it's not just your interpretation and mine separately in their own little world, but high-intensity interval training is literally getting breathless for very short intervals, maybe up to 30 seconds, but it doesn't have to be 30 seconds. And then recovering in between completely so that you're breathing through your nose, mouth closed. That's probably one of the best descriptions. And it's even better than where should my heart rate be? Where, where, where do I need it to come down to before I go again? You know, unless I'm actually testing you, I don't know. We used to use 120. Like if it's at— if your heart rate's not at 120, we would say don't sit down yet because your blood will pool. And we only knew what we knew. So I was following directions, but we know a little bit better now. And you can stand still actually between your high-intensity interval trainings, those intervals, and you're going to be fine, promise you. But what you want to make sure of is that you are working that hard.. And, you know, even not quite working that hard, are you going to get more benefits to your mental cognition, your memory, fire on all cylinders that day? Probably. But it's not quite as great, and it's not quite as great for fat burning either if you don't get that high. So let me describe what this is called. So Tabata, you all are probably very familiar with. We've been talking about it since the 90s when it was first derived from the science on elite male bike. But the use of Wingate, it's called the Wingate protocol. In a study in 2018, it's not the first time the Wingate protocol has been used, but it was published, this particular study in 2018 in the Journal of Exercise Nutrition and Biochemistry, compared to longer endurance exercise and their outcomes. So in the Wingate Protocol, there's 30 seconds of all out, like fast. I'm either sprinting, maybe I'm running uphill or going fast on a treadmill, or I'm going hard against resistance. So for those of you that may be, maybe on a spin bike, say you put it on really high resistance and you're trying to pedal as hard as you can, you may not even be going fast, but because you're working so hard, your heart rate goes up. 30 seconds all out either way. And then you do this 4 to 6 different times separated by about 4 minutes of total recovery. And this is literally called the Wingate method. It's an interval training strategy that I will use with clients, but sometimes it doesn't go so well because clients are making it muddy. They don't truly recover during the 4 and they don't go all out during the 30. So, It's not going to work the same if you do that way. The total intense exercise, when we add that up, if you're doing 4 to 6 bouts of this 30 seconds hard, the total intense time is 2 or 3 minutes, right? And a total session lasting 20 minutes in as little as 6 sessions, and that's 3 times a week for 2 weeks, for that's 15 minutes. If you can do math with me. 15 minutes of high-intensity work, skeletal muscle oxidative capacity improved, meaning over 2 weeks people got fitter faster just by doing that. But here's the deal again, if you don't go that hard and if you don't let yourself recover 100%, you're not going to get those benefits. So Work hard, play hard, right? Work hard, recover all the way. This is really important. So 6 weeks of this protocol has been shown equivalent to traditional endurance training. The benefits that you would get if you did 4 or 40 to 60 minutes, 5 days a week. Now, for any woman in midlife or beyond, I would recommend do not do that. You don't want aerobic sessions that are 40 to 60 minutes in length. Number one, that timeframe is cortisol central. It's like, hello, cortisol, come over here. You're sending it an invitation and saying RSVP, come on, let's go, let's do this. You don't want that. And then doing it 5 days a week. No, you don't want to do that either because hello, Where's the recovery in between? You've got to have a harder day, a longer day, a shorter day, a lighter day, a moderate day, a total rest day. We need all of it, which requires 2, if not 3 times as much time. If you're doing that endurance training where you're throwing yourself under the bus, which is a bad idea anyway, but we're talking 1.5 hours a week total. Versus 4 or 5 hours a week if we were, you know, doing 3 sessions of high-intensity interval training. And now what's really important here is it may not take you 1.5 hours a week even to do this, because 20 minutes versus 30, that's a big chunk of change. You don't need 30 minutes of intervals even. You need a good long runway because it's going to be harder, it's going to be Higher intensity, more muscle tearing. So if your joints, um, and especially if you're on your feet, but if you're on a bike, you may not need as much time because it's not impact. There's not going to be as much breakdown. The shorter time duration of exercise seems to be a part of optimizing hippocampus signaling. Shorter time seals the deal. It's like, kind of like plugs things in, lights it up, and then it's like, okay, it's all we needed. We can unplug now. That's it. Anecdotally, I will tell you this. So outside of the research, what I've seen and experienced and witnessed in our clients and our students in the last 11 years, but I've worked with midlife women for 40 years. Most women report that high-intensity interval training leaves them more energized and feeling lighter, more focused. Than long endurance training does. Long endurance training, they tend to equate to words like my legs felt heavy, like it just felt heavy afterward and more tired, you know, and I felt good that I had accomplished the workout, but just, you know, kind of felt tired the rest of the day. Interval training doesn't leave them like that. It makes them question, is this enough? Because most of us went to those 40 and 60-minute-long classes, or we did two back to back back in the day. You know you did that. I know you did. I did. I taught two back to back. But from all of the first studies that featured postmenopausal women with osteoporosis in high-intensity and high-impact protocols, kind of since 2016, we've seen more of those kinds of studies Researchers have found no increase in injury and low attrition rates. That means low dropout rates compared maybe to longer endurance activity. Plus, there's a surprising positive response that researchers were surprised about when they were reporting it because the HIIT exercise, they actually enjoyed more. So anecdotally also, resistance training has been easier for clients with anxiety to implement. And I think that's potentially because the cardiovascular kinds of exercise, whether it's steady state or it's actually high-intensity interval training, kind of mimics the feeling of having anxiety. Now, I think that's part of why doing any exercise gets you over or more resilient, more resistant to the anxiety. But if it makes you uncomfortable, too much so that you don't want to do it, you're not more likely to. So strength training doesn't rev your heart rate up quite as much. You're going to lift, but, but for a minute, you're not so wildly moving in motion. You're under control the whole time. You're breathing out the whole time, helping that parasympathetic nervous system. So I believe resistance training has been more favorable for my clients who've had depression and/or anxiety because they feel a little more empowered right away and a, and a little less apprehensive or threatened by the environment. So I share that with you too in case this is you. You've tried a form of exercise, but maybe it didn't work for you. Please don't give up. Walking outdoors with friends combines 3 sources of serotonin for women. Particularly the movement, the sunlight, and the venting and talking that, you know, happens when women get together. Short-term interventions get the greatest compliance. So in all of the studies, a lot of these were like 4 weeks long. Whenever a study goes longer, you know, 8 weeks, not so bad, but 12 weeks, you know, now it's getting a little bit longer, there tends to be a little bit more dropout. So it can be harder to get results and say what happens long-term for this. There's a dose-response effect true here, just like it would be if you were taking medication, right? So the more regularly activity is done, the better the results will be. You can't— if you're trying to help your depression, your anxiety, you can't be a weekend warrior and go for an hour and a half walk on Saturday and then not do anything. You know, the rest of the week or for days, you're going to need it again. And ideally, conditioning your mind, not just your body, to exercise on a regular basis is going to be the most possible help for you. So that said, twice weekly 90-minute yoga sessions had a positive effect on both physical and mental health benefits in another study. Now, a lot of people will do yoga and then also participate in other activities. So it's not as if, okay, I'm just doing this yoga once a week, and so am I starting over, you know, next week if I don't do it again? You know, with strength training, potentially, yeah, you are going to lose some of those benefits that you've gained. You won't retain all of them unless you do it more regularly. But with something like yoga, ideally you are warming up and moving through full range of motion or cooling down and doing some stretching with every activity that you're doing. So you go for a walk, you're stretching a little bit afterwards. My hope is likewise, you do strength training, you're stretching afterwards. So you are not necessarily quote unquote doing yoga, but you are retaining some of the benefits, reducing some of the muscular tension, and holding onto some of those. But remember, the biggest benefit may be to your mind. And what you're doing is, it's like time management. It's like energy management, focus management. While you're doing it, you're training your mind to focus on a certain thing, on feeling a certain way, on the awareness of dropping your shoulders down, feeling like there's a string at the crown of your head. And that mental conditioning stays with you. You can remember if you go to yoga on a regular basis, does anybody recall this feeling? When I go to yoga on a regular basis, I know this is true. And actually it's true for me teaching it. I notice fewer wrinkles around my eyes because when I'm in yoga, I become aware that I am holding tension there unnecessarily, that I might be holding or clenching my jaw unnecessarily, might be holding the muscles around my mouth, and I don't have to. So breathing in and out can be really beneficial. So I hope that was helpful to any of you who are looking for support through the holidays. And I have one more thing to offer. If you are listening to this during the holidays or as we approach them in November of 2024, we offer something called 12 Days of Blissmas, and it's a challenge. If you're not in an exercise program or if you're in one and you fear, oh, I don't have time to do this full-out program during the holidays, but I do want to stay consistent, the 12 Days of Blissmas is very appropriate. It is not just 12 days of yoga. There is a lot of yoga in it, but there are short movement for agility. Not necessarily are you gonna get high-intensity interval training. You may get breathless, but not all of you would, and you will have strength training within it. But these are all fairly short, very doable to keep you on schedule, keep you on track. And I promise that we've had a huge response to it so much that that our members asked for it and we put it in there as well. So I will put the link to that in the show notes. So please do consider joining us and I hope that was helpful. Share it with someone else, whether it's for the holidays and for anxiety, depression, dealing with emotions, or it's for firing on all cylinders. Somebody who wants more productivity and creativity. We all really wanna hone into this. If you're dealing with menopause brain fog, I'd love to hear from you if this was helpful. Thank you so much. You'll find it at show notes at flipping50.com/menopausebrainfog. Thank you for listening. To listen to a decade of episodes and to get the show Notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all the previous episodes. And I made it super easy to make the most of your listening time and get exactly what you want to listen to as top priority by getting the top 10 episodes in the areas you most care about, like how much protein do you need, weight loss, and other 3 ultra important important topics we've identified as our community's top 5. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife women. So go and listen right now. 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? 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