The Menopause Metabolic Shift No One's Talking About

Welcome back, friend, to another episode of the Flipping 50 Show. I'm Debra Atkinson, your host, and in this episode we're going to go beyond hormones affect metabolism and into kind of the cellular cascade that most practitioners miss. But it's easy, it's very applicable. So we talk about it in terms that every one of us, just mere humans, can understand. So we're talking where declining estrogen creates metabolic dysfunction and more importantly, where you actually have leverage to intervene. Dr. Melissa Grill Peterson is bringing the research on what happens when resistance training stops working, or when you need to start it but can't find your motivation, why chronic cardio habit might be sabotaging you in midlife, and the real science behind peptides, where we barely break into this. And we're going to have her come back and talk about it because this is a part of her magic behind the But we're tackling the exercise paradox. Whether you've stopped moving entirely, you're spinning your wheels because what you're doing isn't working, or you're overtraining yourself into exhaustion but you can't quite seem— even though you mentally acknowledge that intellectually, you're struggling to actually stop that— we've got some tips and protocols for you. My guest is Dr. Melissa Grill Peterson. She's a chiropractor, a longevity researcher, and co-founder of Peptide University, where she educates clinicians worldwide on cutting-edge peptide and regenerative medicine. She's the creator of the BioHealthspan model, a TEDx speaker, and bestselling author of The Codes of Longevity. For over 25 years, she's been translating longevity science into protocols that help us live not just longer but better. And I'm all down for that. How about you? Let's get started. Melissa Grill Peterson, thank you so much for being here. I feel like I've stalked you a little bit in order to get this to happen. All right, well, even to say, all right, we are a group of women who, like all respectable women, we like the dirt. So we want a little backstory on you. And I'd love to know how you got started doing what you're doing. Everybody's just heard your bio and your book and what it is. And I— why our circles don't cross more often, I don't know. But tell us how you got to be doing what you're doing, and where was it that this longevity became, oh my gosh, this is my thing?

I, Deb, I've been trying to shorten this story because it was not— you know, I always say that we think our lives are supposed to just take this linear progression, when in actuality it's a bunch of beautiful, adventurous twists and turns and ups and downs. And, you know, we were speaking a little bit before you pressed record. No, I did not know at the young age of 5 that I would somehow land in the space of longevity and healthspan education and women's health and peptides and all things integrative health and wellness. When I was 5, all I cared about was dancing. And, I was in love with dancing, obsessed with dancing. And, in a strange way, That led me right to where I am today. So, one of the, you know, we have some commonalities in our background. I mean, for years, like, I started working out when I was in 6th grade. Dance, started dancing when I was 2 years old. But, what was interesting is my career took me on a very health and wellness cadence by way of fitness. So, I was running fitness programs in my teens and my 20s. I was choreographing. I was dancing. I was doing all the things, which kind of led me on this path into chiropractic medicine and the natural medicine. And, as I was dancing and doing all these great things, something really interesting happened. And, this is where a little bit of the dirt is and my interest and my story takes a twist and a turn. I was about to graduate with my doctorate and go out and start practicing. And, I got an opportunity to go participate and dance on television with the then number 1-rated show on TV, which back in that day was the Crazy Wild World world of professional wrestling.

Really? Okay. I would not have guessed that. I would have lost that one.

No. Yes. But here's what's so interesting is, again, it never takes a straight line, but yet because of dance, it led me into all these spaces and places. And so I'm dancing, I'm traveling, it's a live television show. And what was so super fascinating about that at the time is that Ted Turner actually was a little bit of a feminist. He wanted to redefine the role of women in wrestling. He wanted to change the persona and the understanding because we were a family show and he wanted little girls and little boys with their moms and their dads sitting in front of that television. And so we were really these spokeswomen. And so it was a very interesting thing to be able to, to take such a role. And yes, we were performing and backstage I'm adjusting everybody and I'm bringing people into my office the next week. And I was wearing these many hats. But as life kind of took me down all of it, you know, as many of us, as we chronologically age, things change around us. And I lost my mother and she transitioned at the young age of 54. And that was kind of a defining moment that I, I think as I continue just building my repertoire, doing patient care, being in health and wellness, being on TV, creating products and programs, I just knew it was about this this opportunity to take a message one-to-many. I fell in love with the fact of we are so much more than we think we are, especially as women. And, I feel that more strongly today than ever before because we've been kind of taught things. We've been taught a version of who we are not and led to believe that that's who we are. And so, I think my mission is not just longevity, it's sovereignty, it's ownership, it's empowerment, and it's absolute aliveness.

Wow, I love that. I have chills. And I think everybody listening could say losing your mom, yeah, with her being 54, yeah, you know, I think there is that moment where you pass through that and then you're like, oh my gosh, she was so young, you know, because no matter how old you were at the time, that was your perspective. And it just changes everything the closer you get to that age. But Wow, what a story. Thank you for sharing that. Who knew?

You said you wanted the dirt, so there you go.

I want to ask you a few questions, and it's always my goal that I ask you questions so that it's not the same question you've always been asked, and that for my audience, that hopefully that's also a gift. But we, of course, are talking to women who are here because they're in some stage of perimenopause, menopause transition, or postmenopause. And they've probably come for the fitness and the wellness, but there's more to it. They're multi-layered. It's not just a matter of, okay, let's look at physiologically what's the ideal that we want you to do, because it doesn't always happen that beautifully.

Yeah.

But in all of your clinical studies and, and the practical application that you've done when you see a real live person, because that's sometimes different than clinical studies, very much, what's the single most surprising finding about women women's metabolic response in perimenopause that might have contraindicated or been a contraindication to what you expected to see? And what did it teach you maybe about the timing of interventions that we do?

Hmm, wow, what a really great question. Hmm, you know, I— what I'll have to say is I believe first and foremost it's that again, we, we as women have led ourselves to believe this idea of it's just aging, it's just part of the process. That— and so the surprising factor, and as I kind of break this down, and I'm a verbal processor, so I love this question, so I'm going to kind of unpack it in a few components, if I may. It's that, you know, we are not just chemistry. And of course, when we talk hormones, we're thinking chemistry. But we are physical, mental, emotional, energetic beings. And so one of the biggest drivers to our human physiology is what's happening in the outer world and what's our perception to it, right? So how is our mind informing and influencing along with the inputs from the world that we live in informing and influencing our health expression. And, you know, while we are all uniquely individual, there's a lot of patternization. And so one of the themes— so the biggest theme is that there is this slow progression into greater and greater states of metabolic dysfunction, metabolic insufficiency, and/or inflexibility. And, and I cannot say unfortunately that it's surprising. I think it was more a matter of case after case, woman after woman, and not just to label her but to look at these same markers, to look at the, these similar, hear these similar stories of what these women had been told by their other doctors to land in front of me at this time with metabolic, again, hormonal imbalance and just feeling hopeless, feeling fatigued, feeling less than her most radiant self, and just really wanting to reclaim her radiance and her health and her vitality. I just saw a pattern more than anything, Deb. And, and, um, and so I think the pattern of where we land with symptomatology is that the worse our stress earlier on, the more severe our symptomatology as we go into, you know, as we go into menopause, as we hit those categories. And, and there's very simple interventions that we can enact very early on that don't require a pill, a cream, a lotion, a potion, a pill. And so I, I would say for me, like, that's, that's what really stands out the most. And the fact that women are being robbed of that information and that, that authority over themselves to believe that they could do something early on and that they just have to live with it.

I so love that and echo that with health coaches and trainers. You know, as we early on started training them to, to become Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialists, I said, look, here's the shortcut right now. If you don't do anything, the fastest way that you can help a client is help her deal with stress, help her acknowledge that stress is her nemesis. It's what will accelerate her aging, and learning how to deal with it is the key to anything that you you'll do with her working better. Yeah.

And stress is such a funny thing, right? Because it's very personal. And then sometimes we go, okay, I shouldn't be stressed. Then we literally become stressed trying to not be stressed. And that's, that's the really interesting rub, you know. And so I always try to go, okay, if, if there's— what's, what's the easiest thing? What's the smallest thing that we could do today that can begin to shift the system overall? And, and so sometimes it is easier, as As much as I'm a proponent of let's understand our psychology because that will radically inform and influence our physiology, and we can sometimes really work ourselves up. And so sometimes it's easier to start to look at, okay, what's around me? What's in my environment? What are some things that I could just take some simple, immediate actions on that can have direct benefit on my system and how my system is reading the stress, right? So it doesn't have to be think my way through it or feel my way through it or coulda, woulda, shoulda all over myself. Okay, there's an actionable thing that I can do because somehow we think that we're supposed to do all the things.

So, so true. You talk about this, and so with a background in exercise psychology, I love to go here with people, but you talk about mindset as a longevity molecule. Oh yes. So we're very familiar here. I mentioned over and over Dr. Ellen Langer's research, you know, and Counterclockwise, and the knowledge that that a positive perception about aging actually can add 7.5 years to our lifespan. I mean, that's a pretty good return on investment right there. If we could just think a little differently about aging and present ourselves, put ourselves in the environment where we're around people who actually have a positive take on aging. You know, I don't know about you, but I'm the youngest of 4. And, you know, it's not uncommon, and I don't think she's listening to this, but I have an older sister who's just constantly like, yeah, aging is hell, there's nothing good about it. I'm just like, I can't hear you. Like, I, like, I can't listen to this.

Yeah.

Oh, what have you seen in terms of somebody's attitude on aging in the resulting their HRV, their inflammatory markers? Are there physiological changes that occur because of that change?

Yeah, and so we'll take it back a step, and even just around this terminology of stress. And so we know that there are different types— stress is neutral, it's a demand on the system, but how we perceive it, our frequency, duration, rate of exposure to it perception of it determines, do I see this as happening to me or for me? Good for me, bad for me? So that categorizes as distress or eustress. Eustress is good. Eustress actually lowers inflammatory markers. It actually lowers our cortisol rate. Distress increases those inflammatory markers, increases our cortisol rate. So I'm just going to keep it real basic right now. So now all of a sudden we take a step back even further and say, okay, well, what is my perception?. Now, we can say our perception of aging directly, but usually when we extrapolate out, it's not just that these individuals, you know, in like Ola Levy's works, it's not just that I think I'm saging. There's a lot more to it. Their outlook on life overall, like, they are— one of the, the statistics I love the most on research of centenarians is that centenarians hold this mindset of flexibility, that they're always looking forward to tomorrow. But they're not afraid to die today. So they, they have this like, I'm looking forward, I'm looking forward, I know more is around the corner. So even more than aging is good or bad, because whether you fill in the— fill in that word, whatever you say is good or bad, how does that feel in your system? That correlates to stress. Are you reading that as a good stress or as a bad stress, right? And so if we just look at those markers, And I just try to keep it simple for the listener today. I would say more than anything, it's not about trying to find the mantra or the, the, the thought process. I want to invite your audience. I want to invite all of us into the subtle invitation back into self. And that's really more about feeling. You know, if we think about our femininity, we are made to feel, and that's a superpower. So let's use it in a way of simply acknowledging what feels good. What feels alive? What feels comfortable? What feels life-giving in me? And what feels tense, tight? What feels heavy? What feels hard? So when we're carrying heaviness, hardness, frustration, anxiety overload, that's a little ding, ding, ding. Inflammatory markers are up, cortisol is up, glucose is up, insulin sensitivity is down. Are we going to go into metabolic dysfunction? All those kind of things, right? And so it's not like, ah, freak out. It's just going, oh, can I just take a moment and acknowledge? Because step one is we don't even acknowledge, right? So if we can just feel versus try to find the perfect script, we will already start to slow down that rate and pace of biological aging that does correlate with those different lab markers, inflammatory markers that speed us up or slow us down.

I want to speak into that just a little bit because I think somebody may be listening and— can't tell you how I know this because I don't work with clients ever— but you know, there is a little bit of an addiction buried in there somewhere. Like, like, this is how I get myself from my day to day. There's a little— I'm addicted to that adrenaline. Of being caught in it being a stressor. And if I, if I put that down, I think women fear maybe I won't be motivated to do anything. Can you address that?

I love that you brought this up. Okay, so one of my favorite books is called Existential Kink. And Existential Kink, it sounds naughty, actually. It's a little naughty, but it's actually— but not— it's, it's amazing personal healing work. It's like a really deep introspection for women, but it's exactly this. So, so if we think in the lane, lane of kink for a moment, yes, ladies, we're going there. But there's this idea that everything elicits a charge in our system, right? And so a lot of times we are our own dom, so to speak. We are our own abuser. We are the one that's our own, like we are putting down the, you know, the, the discomfort in our system because it elicits a charge. Now, interestingly enough, the charge that is negatively kind of activated versus positively, it's the same kind of thing. It's the same type of thing. And I— and they give you— she gives you a lot of prompts as you go through this. I did this work in myself to realize, because just like you're saying, Deb, I will admit, ladies, firsthand, I own multiple companies, I wear a lot of hats, and as that small womanly-owned business, you know, creator, I've taken on way too many roles. I take on way too much responsibility, way too much obligation, all the things that we all do. And I would get stressed out and burnt out. My system would wreak havoc in it, right? And I didn't feel good. And I'm like, now I could find my bookends at the beginning and the end of the day and sink into those moments of ease and pause. I'm like, okay, it's always all worth it. But I'm like, really? Like the majority of my day, I was just feeling like crap, right? That's not okay. For what reason? And so I really started to play into understanding the things that would activate me. And I could— you can feel the charge, you can feel what sets you off. And I started to say, well, okay, A, do I need that charge in that same way? Or what would be like— what's the exact opposite? So if we flip that coin to the opposite side, okay, so there's a negative way that you can get that adrenaline rush, but what's the positive way you could get the adrenaline rush, right? Like, do I want to feel stressed out, like, like, uh, or do I want to be so excited, like I'm moving towards versus I'm moving away, right? So, so there's a couple of ways that we can, we can activate that system. And I think it's a great book if you want to explore kind of what makes us do the things we do and start to rewire yourself, that you can put down the negative impetus and you can really, you can really supercharge yourself with more of the things. Again, I say that kind of are life-giving to you, and they can still give you all that good energy and charge.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that is so good. And, you know, I think I had a conversation probably within the last 24 hours with someone whose, whose greatest fear is that she actually acknowledges she's got an identity wrapped up in the doing and the being. You know, that is, that is who she is. And if I'm not that, then who am I? It's a, it's a huge fear. So I want to kind of go there for those women And I think we have to look at both ends of the continuum in fairness. So if you right now are listening and you're not exercising or can't find your motivation, we're going to come back to you. So don't go away. But for that woman who is actually doing too much, she's kind of in that vicious cycle of exercise in addition to probably whatever else she's doing in her life because she's an overachiever everywhere, not just one place. But she's, she's doing, you know, 60-minute spin classes. This is just for example, 5 days a week. Boot camp. Her HRV is tanking. She's gaining belly fat. She's exhausted but still pushing herself, possibly because for 30 or 40 years she's gotten these memes telling her, you know, fatigue is pain leaving your body, or you need to be sweating it out, or you got to be doing more. But she also maybe can't relax, or thinks she can't relax if she doesn't have this way to negate her stress. What's your— what's your advice to help her with the nuance of we need to stimulate muscle and bone density. However, we also need to, you know, coddle and hug our adrenals and cortisol levels. Hey, real quick, before we go further, a little break from our sponsor. And this is from Bioptimizers, the makers of the magnesium I now have fallen in love with. It's called Magnesium Breakthrough. But let me tell you why. Number one, one of the number one reasons magnesium is so important is up to anywhere between 60 and 80% of us are probably walking around with insufficient levels. And it's really a key for me as a fitness professional in muscle as well as bone building. And if I'm working with a client who isn't sleeping, you know, the best exercise prescription in the world is not going to work if they're not getting their sleep. So I start there, and often one of the first 3 things I will ask is, are you supplementing with magnesium, and can we talk about that? So here's why I take it, and over the last 15 years I've taken so many different brands of magnesium in effort to one, be as regular as possible and get adequate or sufficient, if not optimal, sleep in order to help my muscle and bone building strategy from fitness. So whether you're not sleeping well, you're not getting the muscle and bone benefits you should from workouts, or you're not very regular— and just a little birdie told me from all the client conversations I've had, there are a lot of you out there who fit that category— the problem isn't magnesium. Or lack thereof, because many of you are supplementing. You've been listening, but the problem with a lot of magnesiums is they aren't absorbed. Magnesium Breakthrough is formulated with ingredients that help absorption and deliverability. So I'm not just taking them, I'm absorbing them. It's a game changer, and I thought I was doing great till I tried it. So Magnesium Breakthrough is different because it's all-natural supplement that helps you reduce fatigue and sleep more peacefully, even helps strengthen muscle and improves your heart and brain function. And while most magnesium supplements are not full spectrum, meaning they isolate maybe 1, 2, sometimes 3 different types of magnesium, Magnesium Breakthrough is the only magnesium supplement on the market that contains the optimal ratio of all 7 essential types of magnesium. Imagine having the strength and energy to get out of bed every morning, face the day boldly, courageously. Does that sound like a Star Trek commercial? Because it felt like one. But literally, getting a good night's sleep and being regular are really crucial to your level of motivation for exercise. I challenge you to do this. If you're not taking magnesium, to potentially consider it and start. If you are, Empty out your current bottle and get Magnesium Breakthrough. Try it till the bottle is empty and then come back and tell me that you don't feel better. I dare you, because I don't think it'll happen. For an exclusive community offer, go to buyoptimizers.com/flipping and use promo code FLIPPING50 during checkout to save 15%, because it's worth it. Sleep, muscle, energy, regularity— those are priceless.

So there's, there's a— this is a master class. It's a great question, and, and I want to have— I have absolute love and compassion to every woman because I think we've all gone through this to a greater or lesser extent somewhere along our journey. So we're all in good company, and, and there's no judgment here. This is a safe, beautiful space. There's zero judgment. And I think step one is let's Listen, just be willing to love yourself wherever you're at on it. Okay, like if you're gonna do it, even if you're like, well, I could or I should or I shouldn't, or I've got to do more. Like, if you quit being your own Dom, let's go back to existential kink for a moment. Like, what if you just said, yeah, this is where I'm at today. This is how I'm living today. Maybe I should or could do it differently. But maybe I don't want to. Maybe I love being the overachiever and the doer. And I'm okay with that. So step one is, can you simply love, accept, appreciate yourself for where you are in this moment? Just accept you. Okay, that's step one. And for most of us, that takes a long time. But let's assume that we're kind of going, okay, I can play with that idea. I think I can start to kind of lean into just going, sure. You know, one of the things I used to talk to my clients about all the time, Deb, is food is a big thing, right? Like, we get obsessed with food. Food is so deeply personal. And especially when somebody's having a health crisis, and especially all of it, and they're just like, I want to be out of this pain and discomfort of this health issue, so I will do anything. Sure, I'll change my diet. Okay, well, with that comes the, again, the, the self-imposed I shouldn't, I shouldn't, I shouldn't, but I want to, I want to, or this is bad for me, or that's too many calories, or that's too much fat. And I'm like, okay, just Just stop. Because guess what that's doing? That's creating more of that pro-inflammatory stress. This is the exact thing that's fueling the imbalance, that's fueling the dysfunction, the dysregulation, the condition. Let's just air quotes that. So if you're gonna do something, then just decide to do it instead of beat yourself up with it. Now, if you cannot say, you know what, I want the ice cream, I just want the ice cream, and I'm going to eat it, and I'm going to love it, and I'm going to savor every freaking single And if the only thing you can do while you're eating that ice cream is beat yourself up, then don't eat the freaking ice cream. You're doing more harm than good. If you can sit there and truly savor— because life, life is a freaking gift. And if you love doing 60-minute spin classes and then another hour weighted workout and then another, and you do an 18-hour fast— if you love that and that is like who you are, then go all in. Okay, go all in. I can tell you from the data, and there's also— listen, there's always outliers to everything, but if we look at patternization, we go with kind of the global meta-analyses and all of that. When we're thinking about longevity, one of the key metrics to a long life lived well, to chronologically aging without disease is— it is a direct correlation to how well we recover. And the term is resilience. Resilience is a measurable marker in our body as we start to break down faster and faster, as we, as we biologically age internally faster and faster, and we can't repair the same, we can't recover, we can't rejuvenate in the same ways is because we lose resilience. And resilience requires rest for recovery. It requires it. And there are different types of rest. Rest doesn't always mean that you have to be flat on your back. HRV is one of the most important numbers to give you a glimpse into your body. And without obsessing over HRV, if you see that it keeps tanking and tanking and tanking, then that's just knowing that, okay, my body and I are on two different pages. Mentally, I think this is really good and what I love, but physically my body is letting me know it's not super happy with me. And so, and I'll wrap this up because I know we've only got a little bit of time, the best thing I would offer up to your listeners, and I would talk to this with my patients all the time, is I'm like, when you start to look at your wearable, look at your body battery, look at your readiness score the next Okay, so that's a compilation of your sleep, of your HRV, of multiple metrics to see if you really are recovered. So even if your HRV is low, but your body battery is showing you're at 100%, you're fully recovered. Okay, then you've got good gas in the tank and you can really move forward into your day, you know, and, and you can still kind of take on the world. And yes, there's still a lot we'd want to do for HRV, but right now let's just talk about this readiness score. If, however, you're not waking up in that 90th to 100th percentile. You're not in the A category, right? Let's say you're 75, you're 63, you're even— you're 82, right? You're somewhere below that top 100%. That's giving you an indication that your body is— just think of your cell phone. Your, your body's not fully charged. We are electrical beings. And so now if you go try to do all those spin classes classes, you try to go do that 18-hour fast, you try to have those 20-hour work days, you know, you try to be Superwoman and you do all those things, but you don't have gas in the tank, your body can only go so long before it has to start drawing resources from your bones, from your bones, from your, from your brain, from your tissue, right? So if we're not giving it what it needs, it's going to take it because it's essential to survival. Goal. So this isn't that you're doing it wrong, and I'm not judging you. Love where you're at and who you are. Yet if you look at your data and your metrics and you see that your body is showing you something different than your mind is thinking about your actions, then that's simply an invitation to get curious, to say, okay, body, what is it that you need a little more of and a little less of?

Amen. So good. You know, I think the risk is here that whether a woman is using her new trainer chat or Claude, or she's actually seeing a trainer, or she is getting a 'here's the workout of the day,' that women are very likely to— okay, here's my assignment, I've got to check the boxes. Yeah. And we kind of ignore how we feel, even our response to that over time, until we reach a critical mass where we can't ignore it anymore because we're not functioning very well. And, and, or hopefully we have somebody in our life who loves us who will tell us the truth. Like, really, the purpose is to be fit, but you're not the most energetic person in the room. Why would that not be true, right? So what if we flip right now to the woman who has maybe stopped moving And, you know, what's the minimum effective dose of movement to start metabolic signaling in a woman who's been sedentary, maybe as perimenopause or postmenopause started? Because it hits women at a different time. But sometimes women have just— even if they were active, they just feel all of a sudden they've hit a wall. Or, or there's that woman who maybe never was really active and didn't bond with exercise but now realizes, I'm getting the message I know I need to, but I can't get motivated. What's, what's the minimum effective dose where she can start to see I'm really doing myself some good here?

Okay, I've got an answer you're gonna love that's not what everybody expects. The minimum effective dose is— doesn't really require much movement, but it requires light and dark. And so my answer for you— and, and I ran a group container with more than 5,000 women. This is not just made up, and this is not just even I mean, this is— there's this beautiful thing called our circadian rhythms, right? So the 24-hour light-dark cycle and how the light and the dark talk to our brain. But here's what's really important for everybody to know. Every cell in your body has what are called clock genes. So there's constant communication between the outer world, your brain, and every cell in your body. Now, this light-dark cycle is one of the biggest movers of your endocrine and your metabolic hormonal pathways. It's massive. So when all of a sudden you're going through all this metabolic and hormonal dysregulation and you haven't moved a lot and you don't feel like you've got the energy and the wherewithal— where do I even begin? I don't need you going out and running a marathon. I don't even need you going and lifting heavy weights. Not yet. I need you to simply get light and dark in your eyes at the right time. And here's why. So if you can Debra Atkinson, hold off on coffee, hold off on caffeine until ideally 8:30 or later every morning. Rise with the sun. So rise as the sun is coming up, you get up. You don't have to be up at 5 AM, you don't have to be up at 7, just be out there somewhere before 10 AM. Okay, get up. And the moment you get up, within that first 60 to 90 minutes of being awake, you want to actually view the sun with your eyeballs. You want to open a window. Ideally, you want to go outside. That's the most ideal. And you want to take it in. So not even like— there's, there's different, um, reduction of the rays that we need through windows in your house. It's better to get outside. You need as little as just even 1 minute begins to set this into motion. Ideally, if you can get 5 minutes, go stand outside, take in the sun. You can do some gentle stretching. Clean. Okay, it doesn't have to be anything aggressive. All of a sudden, you are going to set up your proper metabolic efficiency. So we want— that's going to help to improve glucose regulation, insulin, leptin, ghrelin, all these great things. And again, we can have another conversation for another time. Rise with the sun, eat with the sun, 3 meals a day. We naturally want to be eating around 8:30 AM, around 1 PM, and around 6 PM. Around 8, 1, and 6, by way of how ghrelin works in our body. So when you kind of rise with the sun, eat with the sun, move with the sun, rest with the dark, and fast with the dark, that is the place to start before you have to go. And then the next place I would add in is just postprandial walks. So after you've had your meal, go enjoy a nice evening walk with your beloved, or just with yourself, or with your puppy, or, you know, just take— and it can be as little as 10 minutes. You will make major shifts in your physical, mental, emotional health and well-being.

So good, and such a relief for a lot of women, and a natural way to kickstart motivation. And I, I think I think it's fair to say just everybody, it's not willpower, it's not lack of discipline, right? So yeah, okay, so there's another, uh, persona, if you will. So we hear from women all the time who again hit menopause and I'm doing everything right. And this is, I mean, truly the woman who has educated herself and she knows the framework for exercise in perimenopause or post is different. It's not what she did at 30 or tried to do at 25. But I'm doing everything right. I'm lifting twice a week. I'm walking daily. I eat protein, but nothing's changing. So when her resistance training stops working, what are the metabolic bottlenecks you first investigate?

So I'm always— I'm going to first look at what are these key inputs into the system. And what I mean is I have to look at what are those stressors. And okay, so she's eating protein, she's doing all the right things. One of the areas that we are missing is when we think about the, the weights, you know, the way I was training is no longer working. I'm doing all the right things. I start to look at what's happening. I'm thinking about cell receptor, I'm thinking about mitochondria, I'm thinking about energy utilization. So step one, am I getting the right key nutrients in? And that means both macro and micronutrients. That's vitamins, that's minerals, that's essential fatty acids. You know, that's, that's, that's making sure we've got the right key movers in that the cell needs to make energy inside of it. So this is one of the biggest things that happen. But on the other side of it, I'm also thinking about cell receptor site. I'm thinking about that cell membrane. Can I get the good stuff in? Can I get the bad stuff out that the cell actually needs? Because if we have been dealing with any high level of metabolic dysfunction, which I'm— you're saying, hey, this woman really isn't dysfunctional until menopause hits, but I'm still looking at, have I had weight gain? Do we have visceral, uh, fat? What, you know, what's happening with our body composition? What is happening with our hormones? What are— I mean, we've got to look at the labs, and I don't mean just sex hormones. I'm talking what's going on with thyroid, right? I'm talking like, let's understand insulin, let's understand Cortisol, let's understand thyroid and leptin and adiponectin. Let's understand these components and let's understand sex hormones because it's not just willpower and it's not just about your workout. There are real changes. So I'm a huge advocate of, you know, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. But first, we want to start with cellular health first. Are you getting the right micro macros? Let's assume you are. Then what's happening? Are we— do we have the right amount of hormones in the body? We don't need to go to super physiologic. We can start upstream. We can look at some simple things first. Again, once we regulate glucose and we really help with that insulin sensitivity and receptivity, we're going to think DHEA, we're going to think pregnenolone, we're making sure thyroid is optimized. And then seeing where we get with that, then we can look into if we need to go into bioidenticals, potentially peptides. Because here's the thing, ladies, a lot of it is really what's happening at that cell site. You could be doing the right lifestyle physical behaviors, but if you can't get the good stuff in and the bad stuff out, then we start to have a lack of integrity again at that cell membrane, and there's just breakdown, and you need some additional support, and there's nothing wrong with that.

So good, such a great answer. All right, I wanna wrap up with this one because I think so many women listening are reaching out to trainers or health coaches, And there are a significant number of trainers or health coaches listening. So we see you guys and I'm glad you're here. I wanna ask this because I think all of us, if we're working with somebody, we want them to get results. We want them to see results and we wanna end frustration by not. What are the most common mistakes or what is the most common mistake if you can single it out that you see practitioners make when trying to say fix a woman's metabolism in midlife? Whether it's testing they may skip, interventions they sequence wrong or miss, or a dogma maybe that even health and fitness pros cling to?

Oh gosh, again, another long conversation. So I— so one of the first things, there's a few dogmas, and this happens not only by way of the practitioner, but it is also happening by way of the coach as well as the, the client themselves, which is fasting So one of the biggest misnomers I see is too many women are fasting and are being put on different types of nutritional protocols that are really having them restrict their eating window because the idea is, well, I can't get the weight off, I've got to go with some time-restricted eating, I've got to do caloric reduction. And, um, and that actually often makes the problem a lot worse. So that, that's one of the first things that I just think everybody gets way too wrong.

And I'm gonna— can I interject here? It's— I feel like this is really important to say, and it's— I'm an Aries, so I can be dramatic, and I think it's important right now to be dramatic. But I think so many of you listening, we've been on a diet in a deficit since 1985. Yes. And so if you're trying to further restrict, what we're doing is we're just— we are not getting the micronutrients in because we can't possibly in as little as we're eating And so you're hearing all the time, too frequently I think, count your calories, macros, you got to know how much you're eating. And they're saying create a deficit, and many of you are in a deficit. So we actually have to go the opposite direction. We have to slowly bump that up. And let me tell you, I just made a lot of you very nervous. Yeah, I know what just happened.

Yeah, yeah. And, and however, ladies, I mean I cannot explain enough that your cells, you're more than 37 trillion cells, and they do not work without key nutrients. And so again, like I said earlier in this conversation, if you are not nourishing your body and giving it what it needs, it will take it. It will take it from your bones. It will take it very quickly from your bones. It will take— it'll break down your muscle. One of the fastest ways to age is by way of loss of muscle. Your muscle is your currency for longevity. Do not be afraid of muscle. We can, we can be lean and strong, okay? But you need it. You need to have great body composition if you want to have longevity, literally. So it's not about a number on a scale. And, and as you change your body composition, your number is going to change. Yes, that number might go up and you can become leaner, right? And you guys know this, I'm sure you've had the conversation many times. Yet I— and I know we only have a few minutes left, so there's two more parts to this answer that I want to call out to women because I want to give them all a little bit of grace. I think the two other things that are just absolutely, just upsetting is the fact that many women are told it's just, it is what it is, so it's all in your head, right? So I think too many women are overprescribed, um, unnecessary, you know, antipsychotics, any type of mood stabilizer, depression, any type of medication to modulate your mood and emotion. Heaven forbid, as a woman, you have a mood or you have an emotion. It must just be in your head. So, so they get gaslit a lot, which is— and, and then you talk and you go, oh, okay, yeah. I literally was last week, I was speaking at a conference and with two women. One was 59 and the other was in her early 60s, and they were both talking about how they're like, our mothers never talked about this. Our mothers never talked about menopause. And so, meaning we've all been brought up through multiple generations of just going, shh. And so then if you're like, but wait, something doesn't— right, that's just the way it is, it's in your head, just take this pill and get over it. That's wrong. It's bananas. Okay, so there's that. And then the last part to it is that if you go to just a standard insurance-carrying OB-GYN that hasn't been trained in a more integrative approach to health, you're going to be told that, you know, the Women's Health Initiative is going to be quoted. You're going to be told that hormone replacement therapy is bad for you, it's going to cause cancer, and there's a tremendous amount of fearmongering. And so, you know, what's been great even over the past month is we are hearing more and more go, "Oh, we realized that study was inaccurate," and there was there's many flaws and it was bogus. And we've all been— multiple generations now, of, uh, decades rather, of clinicians have been trained how dangerous hormones are, when that's the exact opposite truth. They are essential. Hormones are chemical messengers that you— and women, we need estrogen. Like, we need these hormones. And when we don't have them, it accelerates our risk of cardiovascular disease, it increases our rate risk of Alzheimer's, absolutely increases our rate and risk of osteoporosis. I mean, like, so my lovely ladies, you are this beautiful symphony of chemistry. And so may you feel deeply into your heart and your soul. May you love your body instead of criticizing your body. May you understand and appreciate that muscle is, is mastery. It's going to help you to move through this life with grace as you bring your wisdom out more and more every day. And you know yourself better than anybody does. So please don't let somebody gaslight you and tell you it's in your head. And no, no, aging really is optional. Again, another conversation for another time. 100%. It doesn't have to look and feel like what we were shown by our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents. We know better. We have much more. We, we have so much science showing us such a different reality. If we choose to engage with it. But it begins with you again taking— being your own advocate for the health and the life that you want.

So, so awesome. Amazing conversation. And we didn't even tap into peptides, which I know is part of your expertise. We need to have you back. But for now, tell listeners, where can they stalk you?

Ah, well, I think you can stalk me— there's a lot of places. So you can go docmelissa.com. The website's a little outdated, we're going to be updating that soon, but that's kind of like a little good place. DrMelissaGP on Instagram, uh, peptide— mypeptideuniversity.com, humanlongevityinstitute.com. I got all the places, so I'm sure we'll make sure that Deb's got links and they can be probably with this to keep it easy.

Absolutely, we'll get all of those in the show notes for today. You'll find that at flipping50.com forward metopausemetabolicshift. Thank you so much for being here and for the work you're doing. It's groundbreaking. It's, it's a really exciting time to be a woman in menopause, aging, and changing the way women age, I think, for our future generations.

Thank you for having me. It's been an honor. I, I loved it.

Thank you.