It’s Not Too Late to Overcome Gut Issues in Midlife

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If you have unexplained gut issues, or you've passed off your gut issues as, oh, that's just normal for me, let's stop normalizing it, shall we? And this episode is for you. To overcome gut struggles in midlife starts with understanding how your gut impacts every part of your well-being. Conditions like SIBO, otherwise known as small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, can feel overwhelming, but maybe not after this episode. They don't have to define your quality of life. Recognizing root causes and exploring effective solutions can open the door to healing and thriving even after 50. Mindset plays a powerful role in transforming chronic challenges into opportunities for strength and resilience. If you've ever wondered how to overcome gut struggles, feel your best, and are reluctant to bring up these issues or these questions even in doctor's appointments, this episode is for you. My guest is Siobhan Sarna, the author of the Amazon bestseller Healing SIBO. She's a TV host, the creator of SIBO SOS Summits and Community Digestion SOS documentary series. The Gut and Microbiome Rescue Summit, the Liver and Gallbladder Rescue Summit, the Lymphatic Rescue Summit and Dental Health Connection Summit, the Fascia and Chronic Pain Rescue Summit and Chronic Condition Research. Are you getting the idea? She dives deep into the topics that we as midlife women care about. And she has a 501 nonprofit to further research underfunded medical conditions. Yeah, we're not fooling around here. After a lifetime of her own struggling with health issues, Siobhan made it her mission to demystify her own health struggles and share that information with others struggling. Her personal mantra is SOS— Save Our Selves— and that's what she's helped thousands of women do. Cannot wait to dive into this, and I want you to stay to the end. We're going to invite you to special summit, Her Next, that she is hosting. But guess what she's tapping into? Not just all these individual conditions that impact women in midlife and beyond, but the actual midlife and beyond. 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. Shivonne, thank you so much for being here.

Oh my gosh, I am so glad to be here. Thanks for having me, such an honor.

Absolutely. And we're going to shed some light on some things. Actually cannot wait to ask you the definition and to describe the symptoms, the, the what somebody needs to know about a specific topic. So stick around if you're listening, but I first want to dive into you because it's so interesting. My audience loves gossip, but we want to know your backstory. We want to know the dirt. And how did you end up doing what you're doing? Tell us about your health journey.

Well, where shall I begin? And I have so much. Anyway, I started— I worked in a moldy building for 20 years. It was a television station, and it was a shopping television station. So some people may recognize me from that. If not, maybe your moms do. Hello. I did that for 24 years. And during that time, which by the way, it was a great gig. I retired a couple of years ago from that and helped another girl get the job, which I feel very happy about. And she's happy. But what happened was it was moldy. And I also have had gut issues since I was 5. And over time, the bucket overflowed and I was really sick. And really bloated and people were writing me even though I was beyond my age range, but wishing me well for the pregnancy on email. I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah. Super awkward, but super sweet. Like, oh, you're glowing. I'm like, thank you. I have 3 pairs of Spanx on. Like, you know, it was tricky.

Oh no.

Yeah. But basically what happened was my husband was getting a CPA as a grownup. So, you know, they hear about like golf widows, like they, wives don't see their husbands every Saturday morning.

CPA widow?

Yeah, I was a CPA widow for a little while. And so I really also was not feeling well, like brain fog very badly. One day I couldn't speak, like words would not leave my mouth. And it scared me so much. I like immediately took to the bed and a couple of hours later, my brain did come back online, but it was extraordinarily frightening. Food was not my friend at that stage. I was hypervigilant about everything I was putting in my body. And I was just like so bloated and so miserable and had gone to so many doctors, health coaches, gastros, you name it, foot reflexology, acupuncture, Ayurveda, you know, very much a patient journey where you try everything and it doesn't work. Although all those modalities are fantastic. But if you don't know the root cause or the right test to take, you're not making progress. And so what I always say is one hour with a specialist is worth years with people who are not specialists in the condition, but then how do you find that specialist? Specialist and the condition without, you know, it's a whole cycle. So I went through all of that and I had some time on my hands. I had a computer, I had good insurance, and we had Dr. Google. So I went down that rabbit hole and I had the privilege of all of that. Not everyone does. And I really figured out that not from a negative place of like, oh, no one knows what's wrong with me. It was this. I know someone out there knows what's wrong with me and I'm going to go find them. And then when I find them and the information, I like vow, as God is my witness, I'm gonna share that with the world. So that's what happened. And that then I was gonna do, write a book. I had this big notebook with everything in it about all my tests and all the attempts. And doctors would look at me in the appointments and go, oh, you're gonna write a book, right? I'm like, well, yes, as a matter of fact, I am. Writing a book is harder for me than a summit because I'm a talker and I'm a TV lady. So I had been a client of summits. I had been watching some summits, and this is 2016, so there weren't as many. And I decided to do a SIBO summit. And Dr. Allison Siebecker, who was a specialist I found, I asked her to, I was so scared too, I asked her to allow me to interview her. And she said, not only will I allow you to interview me, I will help you meet other SIBO practitioners and specialists. And so she and I have been in this long-term relationship ever since with co-creating courses and websites and stuff like that. And then the whole thing though, was that I was so ill and was losing my hair, was in perimenopause, was, you know, concerned about lymph and fascia since my mother died of lymphoma. And so when I decided to go official and make a company, it's Chronic Condition Rescue. And I've dealt with all of those topics in my 10-plus, going on 11 summits since then. I hope that helps.

Oh my gosh, that is amazing. Yes, it's amazing. And every woman here now today, right, 2025, has been, you know, an attendee participant in a summit and have benefited from it. And I think everybody in my audience may or may not roll their eyes when, oh, here comes another one, because there is a little bit of overwhelm and information overload. But in the long run, if you are able to filter the information that you want and need and treat it like this is just such a great opportunity to educate yourself, then it's right on. And I love that you're doing it and you did so many things seamlessly that the audience is not going to detect that I did. Girlfriend, it did not escape me, by the way. So I will be talking to them in my Fitness and Health Pros membership about what you just did so seamlessly. However, I want to let everybody know that if you have the opportunity to attend a summit, you're going to want to take advantage because of her background. I mean, that's the difference, I think, when you know how to pull out the right information. Number one, because you've been the clueless and in the dark and the seeker for a long time, and you are also established as an interviewer.

And so, yeah, at the end of the day, I'm a host and a connector.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it. Okay, so for the real thing that my audience here wants to know about is What is SIBO? So, and to anybody here who's like, what is that? How do you spell it? It's capital S, capital I, capital B, capital O. So if you're seeing it in writing, you know what you're looking for, but please define it for everybody here.

You bet. It's small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And I always say it's the least sexy term for a condition. I'm glad they gave it an acronym because saying that is a mouthful and it's also like, Who wants to hear about an overgrowth? Not me. So I was very resistant to, like, you know, identifying as a SIBO patient for a really long time. IBS is caused by SIBO. And number one, the most prevalent reason why people get IBS is SIBO. You can get it from other reasons too, but that's the number one underlying cause of IBS. And it— let me go over the symptoms with everybody just so you can decide if you want to, you know, identify with any of them. Bloating, alternating constipation and diarrhea, pain, a lot of belly pain, food sensitivities, fructose intolerance, rosacea, restless leg syndrome. And that's just like sort of the tip of the iceberg. But that's a lot of it. That's like, you know, the ones we're bloated, the tote bag comes in front of the body when you take the group picture so no one sees. Okay, I'll speak for myself. And so that's SIBO for you.

So is SIBO something that a woman can overcome by herself naturally without intervention or not?

When you say naturally, I say with herbs, it can be treatments. So there's a lot of DIY you can do. There's a lot where if you get a great practitioner, it will make it, I think, faster. But there are a lot of people that have, you know, read the book, done the course, they've overcome it. However, if you've had, like me, I had it since I was 5. I didn't know what it was even called. I went to gastro and he was like, you know, I think you have IBS, go run 3 miles a day. Well, the dude, like I could barely move. So in my book, I actually call him Dr. Run 3 Miles because like you'll name, name, but the bottom line is that there are 3 main treatments for SIBO. You do a SIBO breath test to find out if you have it. Then there are 3 main treatments you can choose from. You can rotate with, you can do multiple times. And then there is a retest that happens, and then there is prevention. And a big overlying myth that I want to bust is that diet does not cure SIBO, but it does manage the symptoms. You can feel better with sometimes even as much as one day with a low fermentation diet because you're fermenting that food and those little microbes that are overgrowing in the small intestine are like a microbrewery.

Got it. So my question is, once SIBO, you always have SIBO? Is it always there, or?

Great question. No, not necessarily. A third of the people who get SIBO and do one treatment are often like never to be seen again. But there are other people that, depending on their underlying cause, will have SIBO that requires more treatments. And then there are other people that have an underlying cause like scleroderma, endometriosis, the antibodies from food poisoning that may have it ongoing. But what I always say is that a treated chronic condition can help you feel 100% better than a non-treated chronic condition. So yes to your answer, you can resolve it. But for those people who have it in a longer term, it's not a death sentence or anything. You can get your life back. You can feel fantastic. You know, have cake and, you know, at birthday parties and Christmas and all that. You don't have to be on like a crazy restricted diet. It's a process, but it's definitely doable.

So you and I were not too long ago at an event together. So when you're at an extended 3, 4-day event, are you like hypervigilant about what you're eating at dinner? And I—

well, so hypervigilance and vigilance is definitely on a spectrum, right?

Yeah.

Oh, I used to be. I am not anymore, but I've been working on it, right, for a while now.

Yeah.

And I'm doing great. Sometimes I just will be like, you know what, I'm gonna have this and that and I'm gonna go for it. Like, I would never have garlic, I would never have onions, and I would never have like a fermented kombucha or something because one of my underlying causes is Ehlers-Danlos, which is a connective tissue disorder. I have a mild form of it and that can just lead to laxity in the organs as well as the joints and your being. And then I also have the antibodies that confuse the migrating motor complex, which is the key to SIBO that come from food poisoning, because I had terrible food poisoning when I was 5 and when I was 7. Once in a trip to India and once to an upstate New York farm from the big city, New York City, where I lived. And we milked cows on this field trip. And I guess I was unsupervised with a couple of other teenyboppers and we drank some of the milk from the cow right there without pasteurization. And that did not go well for me. Speaking of which, once you have food poisoning, you're more susceptible to getting it.

Stop it.

Yes. So you and I are at, let's say, and everybody's sitting at the table. We all have the same thing. I might go home and get food poisoning back at the hotel room and you and 9 other people at the tent top. Are all fine. So what do we do? We say it can't be food poisoning because everyone ate the same thing. Right. But in actuality, maybe my immune system wasn't able to fight off that pathogen.

Exactly.

Was able to.

Right. Yes. You're describing a lot of things for me. They're falling into place now. All right. Now, well, yes, not good, but I want to go back to, well, two things. One thing I don't want to forget to ask you this, so I'm going to hold up my other finger. I don't forget. But the other one, so you call them Dr. Run 3 Miles. So his solution to that, and I just want to pick up on that for anybody who is curious about that, exercise or running, not necessarily running, but it can be great for gut microbiome. So was that the recommendation or the why behind that?

Oh no, no, no, please exercise, please get moving. I'm a yoga teacher. I want you to move. I want you to move your lymph. I want you to move for all of the reasons. So thank you for bringing it up because that was no, in no way, shape, or form a diss on exercising. For the love of the Lord, go exercise.

Oh no, no, no. And I didn't take it that way. I just want to clarify for anybody who was confused and didn't understand it. Yeah, good.

Thank you. It's— IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion. It means you don't have Crohn's, you don't have colitis. So what you have here is irritable bowel syndrome. And, you know, one of the best laxatives you can do, quote, is running 3 miles. Like, yeah, I run every day 3 miles. I'm like, dude, are you kidding? So anyway, that's what it came from. He was trying to get my motility going running 3 miles, where I was like, that's adorable, right?

Okay. And all of you who are listening who are struggling with a little cortisol and adrenal fatigue, this is not necessarily the greatest exercise advice for you either. But the whole idea is, yeah, movement actually does improve your gut microbiome and can help stabilize either way if you're struggling with constipation or you need to get on track. So I'm glad we clarified that. I, I want to go back to— you had issues since you were 5 years old.

Yeah.

And then you're well into, you know, young adulthood, midlife, before you figure it out. Along the way, I mean, are there other, you know, negative side effects because potentially you weren't absorbing nutrients, micronutrients, your energy? Hey, this is Debra Atkinson, and there is one thing you can't do in the gym at your age, and that's get all the protein that you need. You've got to do that in the kitchen. To make it easy for myself, not only to get the protein but the fiber, the fruits and vegetables I want daily, I started drinking a smoothie a day 30 years ago. But when I realized all the junk the sugar and the extras that you don't want, that I don't want, hiding in most protein powders. That's when I finally caved in after years of saying I will never ever ever sell supplements. Stop skipping, skimping, and sabotaging yourself in the morning after workouts by always being prepared. Look, yep, I agree, real food first, but it's just not convenient. Convenient to carry a turkey sandwich. Sometimes the protein— and don't forget the fiber— they kill cravings and they boost satiety. And you've got to make it easy to do the right thing. You can use code PODCAST for 10% off your first order at flipping50.com today.

First of all, I have a very strong constitution, so I overcame a lot of it by the sheer will of my DNA and lifestyle. I have very yogic lifestyle, so that worked in my favor big time. But it, the downstream consequences of this type of SIBO is malnutrition, which can actually lead to weight gain because body is trying to grab all the calories it can. It can lead to, it can lead to brain fog. It can lead to anxiety. It can lead to some other, like, sort of constellation of symptoms, includes what I said before, like, you know, rosacea, restless leg, but it— histamine issues can come from it because it impacts the villi on the inside of the intestines. So once you get the SIBO resolved, it's wonderful because a lot of things clear up, including your histamines, your brain fog, the headaches, the pain in the gut, the ability to eat some fruit more easily. So yeah, you definitely want to find out if that's what's driving it. And in rare instances, the same symptoms I described can be attributed to like ovarian cancer. So bloating is caused by, distension is caused by a lot of things. So you need to find out what is, if you're like looking at your belly going, I don't even think that it's fat. Like there's some fat there, but this is like a balloon in there. You know, that's definitely something to investigate and it also mimics parasites, right? So you get to the root of it so you can figure out your action steps. And it's a weird feeling after years of not feeling well and wondering what was wrong with me, a very strange feeling to actually be thrilled to get a diagnosis. But the relief that came from knowledge, and if knowledge is power, then that part was empowering. But then there's a letdown after you get the diagnosis, like, oh, Okay, well, at least we know what it is, but the work.

Oh my gosh. Okay. So I want to repeat something you said in there for the people in the back, because this is a really important one to many of my audience who we grew up in the '70s and the '80s, and we still have some mentality from the '70s and the '80s between those ears about, you know, deprivation dieting. You said malnutrition can lead to weight gain. So I think also it's important to say to everybody here, you know, we also, if there's malnutrition and it is coming from food deprivation, which you might be doing because you want to avoid gut issues, and so you're masking it and now calling it trendily, oh, it's intermittent fasting, I'm just fasting, but you're avoiding the problem, you're actually not fixing the problem. So interesting. But just kind of dive into that maybe just for another comment or two to drive this home, malnutrition and weight gain?

Yeah, think of, you know, feast or famine. There it is. You're in the village, you are not easily receiving food like we do today with this, you know, abundance of riches that we have. And your body is in its innate sense of survival going, oh, I don't really see a lot of food sources coming, so I will hold on to whatever I do get. So that calorie deprivation in some cases can lead to your body holding onto the calories more, even though there's more to it. As we all know, calories do not necessarily yield weight loss or weight gain. There is more to it than that, including your microbiome, and SIBO is a microbiome condition.

Love it. And I think we're also talking to an audience of, you know, they've heard suck it up, buttercup, and they've heard, I don't want to be the high maintenance one, you know, be seen, not heard, you know, and we don't want to raise our hand. Like be the problem child. So we can sometimes ignore things when it's us. We would never do it for a child or a dog or a cat. But why is it so important not to let this go on?

Okay, let's— it's 2025. Come on now. It is time to claim your power, be heard, be seen. You are important. I know these all seem trite, but it's true. Look, it's confrontational, especially if you were raised with that societal set of norms. So what is it that you can use as a filter? Like, if my daughter or my husband even was in this situation, what would I do? I'd make a doctor's appointment for them. I'd make sure they had the time off work or school. Okay, just turn that around to you in a loving way and go, I will now take care of myself as well as I would take care of someone else. And remember, if the oxygen mask drops down, you're supposed to put it on your face first before the one next to you. Because if something— if you're going full out, flat, exhausted, burned out, you— and your value system is to take care of those that you love. If I'm going from that angle, you will not be able to do that if you are not well.

Love it. Yeah, great message. All right, what are the root causes of SIBO? I mean, say somebody didn't have severe food poisoning when they were 5, what else might it be?

Okay, here's the deal. It doesn't have to be severe and it doesn't have to be from way back then. It can be from way back then. And that's what's so weird. You're like, what? That was— I was 5. It just depends on you, right? Your microbiome, your setup. So it could— it could be stomach flu. It could be the revenge of the water you took a shower in when you were in a different country. It could be the salad bar at the 5-star restaurant. It could be the the turkey buffet at Thanksgiving and you ate from a side of the Bunsen burner platter that didn't get hot enough consistently throughout the day that buffet was happening. Like, really, holidays, please make sure you're eating cold food that's supposed to be cold and hot food that's supposed to be hot. Make sure that you feel confident in that. Just the other day, I bought some cheese. I got home. It didn't look right. And all of a sudden it smelled kind of funky and cheese can smell funky and still be delicious and okay. And I just listened to my intuition and I thought that cheese was $10, Siobhan, are you kidding? And I hate wasting food. But then I remembered every time I don't listen to my intuition, when I have that wave of caution, I suffer. So I, the cheese is in a better place now, not my belly. So, you know, really just listen to your intuition and be careful of food poisoning episodes and incidents. And it could have been a stomach flu. It could have been that you had diarrhea, or, you know, you had diarrhea and like, gosh, that's weird. It just stuck around for, you know, half a day and now I'm fine. You could have had surgery on deep anesthesia. My friend just had her hip replaced, followed by pain meds, opioids. That slows the concept of the migrating motor complex down, which I need to explain because what it does, the MMC, migrating motor complex in the small intestine, sweeps food and bacteria and organisms out of the small intestine. Therefore, if that migrating motor complex, which think of it as like a microperistalsis, if that's not working well, then the debris can stay there and overgrow. And then some of those players, which Dr. Mark Pimentel and Dr. Ali Rezai at Cedars-Sinai in the MAST program, God bless them, seriously, we can pray for them. They have actually identified the organisms that are driving this dysregulation within the microbiome that leads to this motility issue. Yeah. Like breaking news. I'm thinking Nobel Prize and stuff. Seriously. They are mapping the small intestine. It's so cool. So once those negative overgrown players, who by the way are okay in small amounts and part of a healthy microbiome, but when they overgrow like a gang in a neighborhood and take over, It's chaos, it's mayhem, and even the other good players, or even ones that are like not great players but still need to be part of the community, they— it gets out of control and the bad players take over. And then that leads to this MMC, migrating motor complex, being totally disrupted, either too fast or too slow, because sometimes you can have diarrhea, sometimes you can have constipation, or mixed, depending on what is overgrowing in the small intestine.

Wow. Okay. Which is all great clues, I think, for somebody listening. So if you're trying to— I hate to use the word, pun intended— eliminate yourself from the list, you know, it's a little harder to do now. So you have to keep an open mind about what might this be if things just are not normal. And then I'm using that word, and I know that I'm listening or I'm talking to a group of women who might say, well, that's my normal, that's normal for me. Oh gosh, let's stop that, right?

Normalizing this kind of constipation, diarrhea is common, especially with women.

Yeah.

But that normalizing is essential to have a disruption and wake-up call and go, you know what, it's not normal. It's not the body enjoying eliminating nutrition from it too quickly in diarrhea, and it's not the body flourishing from having toxins in the large intestine longer than it needs to be. So there's downstream effects from having this lack of harmony in the gut.

So I've got a question for you because I think everybody here either has recently probably had parents that have passed or have aging and older parents. And I would say 80 to 90% of the older people that I've ever known, certainly been related to, have had digestive issues. Do you think this is related to like a lifetime history of cumulative effects, and it's not necessarily we just get old and we start shutting down?

I think that's such an insightful question. I think that we've normalized a lot of symptoms. Look at the television commercials for acid blockers, you know, all of these things that were really probably only meant for acute scenarios but have become chronic medications. I'm not a doctor, I'm a patient advocate and patient, and profoundly committed to cracking the code for everybody on this and telling people so that they can empower themselves. But fiber, laxatives, antacids are a huge, huge industry because of what you're saying. They, some of them do a really nice job and a temporary fix that we end up relying on. I know someone who's been on docusate sodium and docusate calcium as a stool softener for 30 years. I don't think that's what the intention was.

It's not. Totally get it. We've already hinted at some really good ones, but any other suggestions that you have for our listeners here, which influencing themselves, but also 3 generations potentially overcome chronic conditions?

Well, absolutely. Functional testing can really help. Do some of my friends think it's overdone? God bless Michael Ruscio. I love him. He thinks chronic— the functional tests are way overdone, but when appropriately used, are helpful. I also have friends, and I'm from this concept of if I have these symptoms, I want a SIBO breath test. I want to know what— is it a gas that's generating methane? Is it a gas that's gen— I mean, is it an organism generating hydrogen sulfide or hydrogen? And depending on those gases that are getting generated from those organisms as they fart out after eating my food, like, that's what's causing the bloating internally. And sometimes you won't fart, by the way. Cause your motility is so slow, just FYI. Okay. I want to know, so there are SIBO breath tests. You have the treatments that are 3 options. Herbs that take a month for the first treatment, antibiotics that are a 2-week round, but a very special antibiotic. And believe me, antibiotics are overused, right? But they can also save your life. So we need to use discernment. And then there's something called the Elemental Diet, which is the other treatment, which is a medical-grade food diet that is liquid. So we're not talking about a liquid diet from like drinking the cans of, you know, sugar-coated, you know, strawberry-flavored stuff. It is amino acids that get— it's the elements of food, elemental diet, that get broken down so much that your gut doesn't have to digest them. It just sort of is automatically absorbed. It used to taste disgusting, like vomit. I'm not kidding. And over the years, different companies have created them to taste better. And in clinical studies, they have shown that certain formulations can reduce SIBO by X, I mean, a lot, by like 80, 90%, a lot. But you're on a liquid diet for 17 days. So it's a mindset. It's a very specific set of circumstances. You have to make sure you're consuming enough so you get enough calories. And some people gain weight from it because they had been malnourished. You're underweight and you have not been nourished. Sometimes getting the— oh, your body's like, oh my gosh, I know what to do with this. That can be very helpful. It's not a weight loss program, but a lot of people say, I can't do a liquid diet. If you do it properly, there shouldn't be a big change. You'll lose some water weight, but it's temporary. It's very temporary.

Amazing. And I want to ask you a little bit about— I mean, obviously you've got this background of being a great host, a great interviewer, and you are— we have recently come in contact because because you are hosting something coming up and I want to tell everybody about that. So throw out the name of the title and if you can tease any little tidbits with speakers or aha moments that you love.

Okay, thank you for this opportunity. So I've taken on fascia, I've taken on lymph, I've taken on the liver and gallbladder, I've taken on biological dentistry, IBS, SIBO, the gut microbiome, and I'm now taking on The New Science and Wisdom of Menopause.

So, yes, it's about time, right? Right.

So it's the New Science and Wisdom of Menopause Summit. We have incredible speakers like you. We have JJ Virgin. We have people that no one has ever heard of before, which I'm excited about as well, because they've been in their clinics working on this with women with biologically identical hormones for decades, like really thought leaders. Menopause providers are not on every street corner. Even a gynecologist often is not trained in menopause care. But if you're having a baby, that's the place to be. Such a moment becoming a revolution. I'm so excited about it. And I watched my mother, who was a geriatric pregnancy. I was born when she was 39. My father was 69, by the way.

Wow.

Happy anniversary. Surprise! Why is this when you're 8 and 9 years older? Anyway, the bottom line is I saw her struggle. So as a young girl, I remember my mother sweating from the forehead in her beautiful silk outfits from India. She was Irish, daddy was from India. And I remember her also weeping at like no— things that should not have caused weeping, but her neurotransmitters and her hormones were so out of whack. That she just, her chemistry just like couldn't handle it. And a lot of clammy, a lot of hot flashes. I just remember her suffering. I had no idea what was going on. Oh, but you're going to love this. We had the book Our Bodies, Ourselves in the living room. Cause my mom was such, do you remember that?

No.

Oh, Our Bodies, Ourselves. It was in the, I don't remember. It was like a seminal publication in the '70s of like a woman's cooperative. And you could see like babies coming out of vaginas and all this natural health.

Crazy things.

Crazy thing. Well, my living room, and like, how old was I? I was like 8. And so I was like, yeah, I'm not having a child. Closing that book. I do— I don't attribute my ability or my desire not to have kids to that book, but I do think it impacted it. I was like, that looks like it hurts. So God bless those of you women who have gone on to help perpetuate the population anyway. So I'm very passionate about chronic conditions and getting rescued. That's the name of the company, Chronic Condition Rescue. And it is because we are not having these conversations in typical doctor appointments, and that has got to change. So you want to talk to me about pain in the body and you don't know what fascia is, we need to have that conversation.. And after me having cortisone shots and, you know, all kinds of anti-inflammatories just to figure out like, oh, it's actually a fascia issue. Oh, and by the way, if you have a frozen shoulder, you need to come to this summit because that is an unexpected consequence of low estrogen. So anyway, you get the idea. I'm on a roll. Please come to the summit. See what our, our lovely host today has to say. Find out what JJ Virgin is talking about with muscle mass. I have speakers talking about how not to fall. I have speakers talking about all kinds of different approaches to bioidentical hormones. So, you can make an educated decision. You can take studies. Every single speaker has shared that— that did a masterclass, 3 studies, so that everything is evidence-based. And, that being said, I don't think that a presentation is diminished in any way, shape, or form by having a speaker share clinical pearls that have not been studied. Because like, obviously we need to know that too. So that's what it's all blended together. And there are 60 speakers, Debra, 60.

That is awesome. Yeah. And I've seen the lineup. I know how great it is. It's awesome. And I know the, the strict, you know, code that you asked everybody to abide by. So to anybody who's listening, number one, how ironic or not serendipitous, but just this week, Frozen shoulder was a request. Could you make a video? I mean, it's coming up over and over again. There's so many of us that have this. We don't know what to do with it. So there you go. We've got something new out for you. So by the way, if you're listening and you want to jump in, now's the time. You can do that at flipping50.com/newscience. New science. And we just run those words together, no spaces. So if not, it'll be in the show notes so that you can come over there. Siobhan, thank you so much for being here and for the work you're doing, putting everything out there. Because as a woman right here in the midlife of it all, you know the questions to ask before maybe she knows to ask them.

Thank you. Thanks for the support. And thanks for all you do.

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