What Stem Cell Therapy Taught Me About Recovery, Mindset, and Reinventing Downtime

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. If you've had an injury, whether to a knee, an ankle, a hip, and definitely maybe even a shoulder, but if you've had something that's more both acute but potentially chronic, and you're just wondering when it will get to like what I call the critical mass, and you really need to do something about it, and you may be there if I've made you stop and think, wait a minute, this is limiting me from sleeping on the side I love to sleep on, from doing the activities that I would normally do without a thought. I'm thinking about it. This is for you and me. It's for us.

I'm Debra Atkinson, and 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 know to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with the science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. It's not just you, but it's the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert and 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 science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy you want, need, and deserve.

What if being sidelined could actually be the start of something bigger? In today's episode, I share my personal experience with stem cell therapy and the unexpected lessons that came from being forced to slow down. I say forced. I chose it. But still, it came with a, a bit of disbelief on my part. You know, like I thought she was kidding when she said like, you're gonna need to rest afterward. I didn't know she meant for a month. So whether you're choosing a procedure like stem cell therapy or suddenly dealing with an injury or illness, Or caregiving, something else disrupting you. Time off from your normal routine isn't just inconvenient, it's major mental and physical shift both, but it doesn't have to be a setback. In this episode, I unpack the power of reframing your downtime with 3 key focus areas. Number 1, and most important, the 6 inches between your ears— mindset. Number 2 is movement, and number 3 is meaningful redirection. So let's look at it this way. Number 1, this is a great time to talk about protein. Look, you can't out-exercise your need for high-quality nutrition and protein. I know many of you are absolutely against eating any processed foods, and I would be the first one to you unprocess your diet. Let's get away from those processed foods. But I will blatantly, transparently tell you, I eat processed foods. Flipping 50 produces them because any protein powder, any fiber product is processed, goes through plant. And I get it, none of us really wants to do that. But when you look at our lives today how busy, how on the go, how even the most diligent and serious of us who would carry coolers wherever we go still at times need something that is convenient, that is portable, that you can fly with easily. And protein powder fits the bill. I personally would rather take a protein powder than simply essential amino acids in powder or or pill form, either one. And the reason being is when I'm consuming protein in a protein shake, I'm not just mixing it with water. I'm talking about a— literally, I'm making a smoothie that carries vegetables in it, so it's got micronutrient density, maybe some berries and fruit, but I don't overdo the fruit. This is not a fruit smoothie. This is fruit added for flavor and for the lowest amount of sugar and the highest micronutrient density, which is berries and citrus, by the way. And I'm adding fat often and fiber to it depending on when I'm having it. So for a post-exercise smoothie or a workout shake or mid-afternoon something, or if I'm having it pre, you don't want extra fiber and fat, by the way, you want it to clear out of the gut fairly quickly. So in that case, I might have it with unsweetened almond milk Or I stir it into a goat yogurt actually, so I can spoon it in. It tastes, and I know this might be gross to some of you, but I still like frosting. So it tastes a little bit like cookie dough batter. I will stir it in, might add a little bit of, very rarely, some berries, or I might add some peanut butter powder. Now, I'm not a huge fan of that peanut butter powder, but it is non-fat, so it'll steer clear out of my gut quickly so that none of the energy is diverted to my gut where it should be delivering to muscles if I'm going right into a workout. Okay, so we'll put the link to protein in the show notes, so be sure that you pay attention there. Here's what I want you to know. Look, you know, my backstory, why did I opt for stem cell therapy? Well, here's the real reason, right? And that would be that I am, you know, experiencing too consistently something going wrong, right? I mean, it's just, I'm— they're swelling. Going on. There is a bit of inflammation, sometimes heat going on, and there's distinctly a difference between one knee and the other. The way that I'll most easily describe it to you is it feels full, like it does feel like there's fluid there on my knee. And I can see the difference. And actually, you know, a physical therapist looking at it will too. If I were walking through the grocery store, met you, you might look at my legs and you might even say I have nice legs. You wouldn't say, and thank you, but you wouldn't say, oh my God, did you see her right knee? You're not going to see it unless you're looking for it. And then you would see it. So a very astute trainer, because trainers often do this, we watch each other walk, we watch people walk, we watch gait, and they might even detect that I'm not quite using the legs in the same way. Not because there's a limp distinctly, but there is a difference in the way I'm weight-bearing. So that was true before stem cell. I was in the Colorado, um, foothills doing a lot of hiking, like 6 to 8 miles a day for 3 weeks prior to stem cell. So it wasn't limiting me. However, at the end of the day, you know, if I hadn't hiked and then rested, put put my legs up maybe, but even just sitting in a chair, sitting down, taking the load off, I would notice it. So one day after our retreat, and this is after 2 and a half weeks prior of hiking myself before retreat attendees came, one day after hiking, our longest hike was about 8 miles with the group who went furthest. We then went to do an hour of stand-up paddleboarding or kayaking. It was their choice. I chose to stand-up paddleboard, and that was the wrong choice. Sitting down, I probably would have felt better, but after standing, after hiking all day and standing again for an hour, you know, using my body as a brace on the stand-up paddleboard— if you're experienced, you know what I'm talking about— that led to a little greater inflammation, probably made me a little more inflamed for the rest of the weekend. So the reason I chose stem cell therapy is not because I couldn't move, I couldn't do anything. It was because I could still move. I just was noticing that nothing that I had done helped me. So what I had done prior was strengthen my glutes. So the first place that we're going to go if we have a knee issue, as a medical exercise specialist, a strength and conditioning coach, doing this for 41 years, this is the first places I would look is in the mobility of the hips, in the strength of the glutes, and in the strength of the hamstrings, because most of us are quad dominant. So there are certain exercises in the gym I watch people doing and I say, why are you doing that? Because they are dominant quad exercises and very few of us need those. What we need is every time we do a quad dominant exercise, you be sure that you you're doing a hamstring exercise. And sometimes we need to do a little bit more hamstring exercise than quad to balance that ratio again. So I've done that— strengthen the medial glute, not just the, the big glute muscles in the back, but the medial glute on the side. We don't move laterally much anymore. We use that medial glute when we're on one leg, unilateral. So when we step on one leg, we swing the other one through, we're using that glute med. If you're in yoga doing a tree pose, the leg you're on, you're using that glute med. When you are doing a side plank, you're doing a glute med exercise for the bottom leg, but if you raise the top leg up and down, you're also hitting that one secondarily. So the, the one you're weight-bearing on most, the other one is actually getting a good workout too, just not quite as good, almost as good. So many of those was very strong, and I had started with a weak glute, and so was optimistic. Hey, if I start doing this regularly, meaning daily, I'll be fine. Well, it wasn't fine. Might have been better and a little bit more stable, but I— it didn't go away. And I had also tried, and some of you have seen this, I've shared a an apparatus that is super helpful in activating the hamstrings and getting you to walk with a better gait. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes because there's a reason those things didn't help. And the reason is this: those things were actively engaging my soft tissue, and it's not a soft tissue problem. So having had a Prenuvo scan— that was total body scan. Basically, it's like an MRI on your whole body. It looks at your skeletal system, your muscle system, shows space between your, your spine, your vertebra, looks at any degeneration that may be existing. So it's going to tell you if you've got a little arthritis, if you've got to change in the bony structure, change from the one side to the other side. Showed me a couple things. I have Baker cysts behind each knee, not necessarily detrimental, no problem. Could be if they get inflamed, and the right one got a little problematic. But what I did see is a little degeneration on the medial side of my right knee. Now, there was a little bit on the left as well, but the left is not bothering me at all, didn't have any problem. And that was about a year ago, almost exactly right now. So it was about 10 and a half, 11 months from the point I actually got this stem cell therapy. Now again, I wasn't really bothered by it. It was more like, okay, that's information I'm going to put over here so I know if anything goes wrong. Well, you know, I had a little niggle at that time, you know, and I also had a new puppy and I blamed everything on him. And I— it was at the point he was pulling and, you know, you're holding a leash in one hand. You're not generally holding it in two. And as he began to get stronger and to pull— and he still pulls, let's just be honest about that— um, there was a point where I just felt it, and then I continued to feel it, you know. And I— he really is not responsible, by the way. So anybody who thinks I'm still blaming him, I think he did make me aware of something already there. And that's— that was his job. So thank you. He's done now. And ever since, it's not gotten better. It's not gone away, but it's gotten progressively worse. And I say worse, meaning I'm not in pain. I'm aware it's full. I have— if I wanted to go on a 10-mile hike, I went on a 10-mile hike, and I would come back a little bit more stiff, but I was still hop-skipping, you know, down the hill and, you know, going up as quickly as I wanted to. No issues with that. So just want to make it clear that all it made me do is, is have a heightened awareness of what will this be like if I don't do anything else and the things that I have been doing are not helping. So my legs are extremely strong.

I was—

I've been lifting heavy, strengthening and doing all the right things, doing mobility work, and nothing is getting better. So I was visually thinking, what's that like in 10 years when I still want to be hiking and going to do rim to river to rim in the Grand Canyon annually? And I want to, you know, be able to go to Colorado every year for 2 to 3 weeks or a month or two and hike my buns off and, you know, visit all my favorite haunts and jaunts and climbs, you know, and I began to think I have to think twice about doing that. And I didn't like that outcome. So this is why I did stem cell now before the degeneration got worse, because nothing you do with soft tissue will help your hard tissue or bony structure regenerate. And that's what I was looking at. So if there's an opportunity to regenerate, it occurs when you're healthiest, not when more damage is done. So it's, you know, we often do this wrong and backwards, I think, when you get advice to, you know, well, don't get that replacement done yet, don't get that work done yet, it's not really that bad, you know, you'll let me know when you're ready. I've heard that from doctors before. And you know, the real thing is the sooner you do it, the less likely you are to start compromising in other ways. You and I won't potentially realize we're compromising, we're favoring one side, but that is going to happen. So I chose this, and what I want you to understand is that's one thing. You're from the mindset of either you chose it or it happened to you. So say I had instead injured my knee and maybe had to have surgery for that. I would be down and out and out of options or choice. You're just doing this, period, end of story. And you're going to do it right now because that's when you had the injury. I had the option to say, you know, we're not going to get this done soon enough for me to be ready for prepping for the hike at a retreat, so I'm going to wait until afterward. And that's in fact exactly what I did. And knew that it was going to be a hot summer. It's, you know, 112, 110 here. There's a little less hiking going on, I can tell you that. So, you know, there's less outdoor time. And I thought that's probably a pretty good time for rehab and recovery. So again, I chose it. That's a different mindset than having it imposed on you. So there's two things going on there. So I'm also a very active person. If you too are, you have to detach your identity from being physically active and physically extremely capable of doing whatever it is that you want, because that's where I've lived for a very long time. Or within the scope of things that is possible and desirable by you. So we have to kind of separate ourselves from who else we are, what else we do, and dealing with, I think for some, rest guilt. Like, I feel like I'm not doing enough, you know? And I'm about to go into that danger zone right now as I record this. I'm on day 8 post stem cell therapy treatment. And I had both knees done. And I distinctly remember her saying, you will regret doing too much. You won't regret doing less. Yeah. So here's why that matters. Like locally, I had injections to my knees. So your thought might be, and my naive and optimistic thought months ago was, oh, well, I'll be able to use my upper body. I'll be able to get in the pool and, you know, I can swim without having to weight bear, flex my knee, put a lot of load or weight on it. But no, that's not how it works. So stem cells are like a systemic thing. So what you need is for your immune system to be buff and really focused on doing the repair work and being able to sustain you. So it's not unlike you've got the flu, like you're not going to go and work out and leave your stomach flu at home, right? So you've got to say, "Okay, I need everything possible to help me recover and heal from this issue that I've had." So similarly with your stem cells, and many people report that if they've got stem cell therapy and they've had it for one thing, it often helps with anything throughout their body that they may have dealt with in the past or had issues with lower backs or, or something else unrelated to the actual area of treatment. And that probably is going to be lesser likely to happen if you start back too soon. So just to give you an idea, and I, I would say every physician who does stem cell probably is slightly different in what they tell you to do, probably also has some— something to do with you and your condition and what you're up against. I know a friend who has had recently stem cell therapy to a local area And yet she is under conditions where she has a deadline. She had to be starting to do some fairly strenuous activity for long endurance hours of many, many days stringing in a row. So she's not taking total rest and she's doing something far more than she had been used to doing for months and months prior. So very different. And yet she still got stem cell thinking this was going to help. And be better than not having had it. So in my case, you know, I was still fairly active, but I really want this to work and I don't want to screw it up. You watch the movie Hitch, you remember this line, your job is not to screw it up, right? She's already interested in you. She's already on the date. But the deal is I've already had that stem cell therapy. It's there just trying to heal, do the magic. So all my thoughts are going to that. I'm going to do so much better. So there's no rest guilt for me. I feel guilty if I've gone on a 20 or 30 minute walk because I've got a dog. I need to do that. And I always, I wonder, okay, did I do too much? You know, I am to the point on day 8 where I'm feeling pretty good. And the last couple of days I had flown out of state and I'll come to that in a moment. But, uh, my son and his wife have 2 dogs, and so they've taken them for walks in the evening. And I've been there enough with them to know when they walk the dogs is not at a great pace, really. So, so I— it's fine. Like, I wore flip-flops. That's that fine. And So I wasn't too worried about going. One day, however, I took off on a walk, not a, not a long one. I said, I think I'm gonna go for like a 20-minute walk. And I went and I got a little lost, like, not lost, but I tried to walk around a block, but it wasn't a block. You know how that goes. Now I'm winding through this neighborhood and I'm like, Oh my, should I go back, or is continuing on the shorter of the path? So I continued on. Probably wouldn't have mattered at that point, but ended up walking for about 35 minutes, and that was the most I'd walked since last week. So felt okay when I got home, but took it easy the rest of the day. And, you know, so that's really what I'm I'm up against while I was gone. Also, for them, I was at her baby shower. So first grandchild on the way, you'll definitely be hearing about that. But her car was full and she said, are you going back to the house right away? I said, yep, can. And she's like, could you take the gifts in your car? My car is a mess. I said, sure, no problem. So as I began loading up the car, I wasn't parked really close to the door. I was like, I loving this. I'm like, this is as close to weightlifting as I've come in 6 days. This is awesome. So I— they weren't that heavy, really, to tell you the truth, but it was like back and forth. And I thought about it because I had to step over something, you know, a, you know, one of those railroad tile things in the parking lot. And I was like, very careful, but I was like, okay, I don't mind. I'll load the car. I'll be unloading the car. It's the most activity I've had and it's not really loaded. These aren't really heavy things, but it was, it was the first activity that I'd really had. And I realized, okay, I remember her words were also, you don't have to baby it. So these are lifestyle, you know, not necessarily things you do every day, daily activities, You know, it wasn't hard labor. It wasn't like I was lifting 40-pound bags of potting soil or salt pellets for the water softener. So there's frustration, you know, about the inability to move. And for the first few days, you know, that's really where I was feeling more like I was in jail. And yet I also felt a bit like I'm tired and needed a bit of recovery. I was more tired, slept really well, and that was unexpected because I know she'd said that, but I was really in disbelief that that would be true. Well, it was. And there is this too that I'll point out to you. For those of us who are busy kind of go-getters, can be very easy for us to go through a day as busy go-getters and not allow ourselves the time or the opportunity to feel tired, maybe we're a bit out of touch with the need to rest and recover. And I'll be the first to admit that that potentially could be true. So I've wondered, I wonder if I've needed a day off, is it that, or is it the stem cell was actually kicking my buns? Right. So, um, I don't know about that. I can tell you that, you know, in day 5, day 6, day 7, I was traveling, slept really well, but not an exhaustion kind of thing. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't going to bed at 7:30 in the way that I was the first couple of nights at home after stem cell. So I think there was something to it. So just getting aware of, you know, how I was wrestling with what I want to do. But, you know, everything took just a little bit longer you know, so I was a little bit more careful in the shower. I— it took a little longer walking the dog because I was very careful with him, making sure he didn't pull me because I still had to walk him. So, you know, we got that little shock collar on. And by the way, I don't use it. It's just getting it on— he thinks you're gonna use it. It works very well, by the way. Just a little white lie. And so I've confessed, I'm all good. So what I do I did mindset-wise, I knew I was going to have stem cell therapy, and I didn't know once I'd scheduled it or when I scheduled it that there would be a baby shower out of state that I'd go to, but it ended up working out really well. So I actually stayed an extra day, and it was just a great diversion. So just the, you know, what happens on a travel day, it's time-consuming, you, you know, you're packing, you're ready, you're going, you're getting there early, you're waiting, you're delayed and delayed and delayed, and then you finally travel, you know. But while you're there, you're out of your own element, you're doing things you otherwise wouldn't do. And that was all a really beautiful distraction, just being able to, you know, be somewhere else, hang out with them, wanting to use every moment. To be, right, and be with them. Uh, so using that time in a way that otherwise, you know, I probably would have felt a little stifled not having as much activity as I would like. Um, so that was a great diversion for me. So think about that if you're able to travel when you do have to take time off. What would that look like, and can you do And I was just learning to accept the pace, you know, without resenting it by thinking about, you know, what else is there. And I'll talk more about that in a second, but it really is about, you know, what was I doing? What was I thinking?

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So in the second, what exercise could I do? Now there's always something. Now I personally was supposed to take time off to really get rest, and yet in getting rest, you know, I always look at if I'm working with an individual who is a very active person, like, what they should do when they're in rest and recovery would be different than someone who is fairly sedentary, right? So for mindset, mental health, and healing, you need your mental health to be at its peak as well. So for me, I was moving in ways that activated my core. So whenever you've got somebody with an issue, or I do, on their right side, their ankle, their knee, their hip, there is going to be an adjustment that happens on the opposite side, putting them in an asymmetrical balance. That's not ideal because what will happen often is lower back begins to feel the pain, or the knee or the hip on the opposite side begins to feel an issue. So we want to keep the core activated, and that can help keep alignment in place. So I did a lot of pelvic tilt, rocking back and forth on my knees, although not a lot. The first couple of days they were a little bit tender just because that's where the injections went in, on carpet, um, or flat on the ground. But I would do a little cat-cow back, even in a standing position, like hands on a chair, cat-cow back from there. And then I would do belly down, so flat on the floor, alternating arms and legs. So simply a bird dog, but not on all fours. Again, in the first couple of days, I didn't wanna be on my knees. By now, by today, I'm able to do that, no problem. And those kinds of things keep your spine mobile, flexible. So as you're laying down quite a bit, you're sitting down quite a bit, not spending a lot of time standing because in those first few days that's gonna cause swelling and It is some mechanical stress, although you're not loading it or not impacting it, still a little mechanical stress. So just ways to move smarter, not harder. Walking the dog. He had very, very short walks those first couple of days. Now, as the heat was dialing up, he was okay with that. Not a problem. But I also had to be sure he realized that he had to take me seriously. He couldn't, he can't body slam me with a ball. The way he would normally do. So I had to be really careful and cautious and use my big girl voice with the dog. There's that. So I was still able to do core exercise, was able to do really some stretching, and that helped with just lateral, lateral standing spinal stretches, a little bit of rotation, but no torque on my knees was the ideal. So I didn't do a lot of rotation, but just rotating from a seated position in a chair. In fact, I just did that right now just 'cause it feels good. And when you're too stiff, too static for too long, whether it's sitting, lying, standing, your spine will complain. It wants to move. I think, you know, last but not least, you know, I began to walk. First, and then as soon as— so there is a— was, you know, an extraction of my adipose tissue. That's where the stem cells came from, in my back. So right around the waist, in your back, called your flanks. Not a pretty word any of us wants to own, but my flanks is where they took the fat out of. And from that place, there was one incision. She squeezed the fat from the right, squeezed the fat in front, the left side. There was a little incision. I, for 7 days— let's say 6 and a half, okay, true confessions again— I couldn't stand it. Um, I would never have made it in the 1800s with a corset, by the way. It's good they didn't have me be on the earth at that point. But I wore that corset, and for a while the scar, or kind of the incision, had a scab on it. And once it got scab. It was no longer oozing. I know, also gross. But that only lasted 12 to 24 hours, and afterward I kept the gauze there and I kept thinking there's gonna be more, but there wasn't. It actually healed up really well, which actually is kudos to me, right? That's a sign that you're gonna heal faster and more quickly. I had no bruising in part maybe because the compression did what it was supposed to do. I can still put my hands back here and it feels just the tiniest bit of like a bruise, but there is no visible bruise. I can still feel, you know, it. And that was really all I felt during, because she numbed the area and then was just moving it. It felt weird, uncomfortable, maybe a little discomfort, but not painful. And yet when I went to sit down or lay down with my back against something, the first couple of days I was like, oh, oh, oh, didn't realize it wasn't a sharp pain. It was just like, oh, that feels like you're leaning on a challenging bruise. And, um, when I'm sitting away from the back of a chair, I don't notice anything at all. Driving, flying, no problem either way, to or from, perfectly fine. But that incision, once it's healed, I got in the pool. I was in for about 15 minutes on Friday, just that. And then on Saturday, I was in for about 25, maybe 30, but swimming nice and easy, not racing, not getting my heart rate up. Really, you're horizontal in the pool, so not a lot of stress for my system. Again, we want the immune system to be on peak, and you would too. But if you can get into a pool pool and you can't do other things, maybe because of a hip, a knee, ankle, lower back issue, water walking is one of the very first things that they'll have people do post-back surgery as soon as incisions heal. Again, between nipple and navel depth is ideal, so your lungs are not completely submerged, so you're really in control, but you're also taking a lot of gravitational force off of you, making it easier. But yet you're moving through water, and the resistance of that If you move forward, you can also move backward. You may sidestep. Now, in my case, I wouldn't have wanted to water walk because my knee didn't need any mechanical load. So swimming made more sense. In fact, I swam with a pool buoy between my legs just to stabilize and kind of immobilize them. They just held it. The buoy held them up in me in better position. So it was less effort in the swim, even though But let me tell you what I did so that I didn't overdo it, so that I didn't say, "Oh, this feels so good. I'm going to stay and swim longer." I made myself have no more time than that before I had to get out. Both times I did that because I am that person that I was like, "Oh, there can't be anything wrong with this. This feels so good." You know, and it feels so good to move, right, that I also wore both times a swimsuit that is not a lap suit. It was like dragging water, catching water, and it felt heavy. And I did that on purpose both times. So again, I didn't want to wear my lap suit. I didn't want to give myself, you know, an hour and a half so I could have stayed in longer. I just made it so I had time to get in, and then I had to get out and leave in order to Saturday catch my plane. So I realized that you had to know yourself, know who you are, and maybe, you know, that's not you. Maybe you need to make sure you're going with somebody and asking them not to let you off the hook in order to get up and go and do something. But arrange those things. So some movement matters, and is better than none, but not better than more. When you're healing, it's finding it, and the better place to be there is do less, not do more. Don't overdo, underdo it. That is actually training philosophy. If you are training for any kind of event, especially like a marathon or an endurance triathlon, It's better to be undertrained than overtrained if either of those is the option. So ideally, perfectly trained is ideal, but that's a very hard thing to gauge. Undertrained is always better because you're always going to be able to count on a little adrenaline on race day. In this case, that's not what it is. But if you overdo, you know, in my case, my immune system is going to take a hit. Because remember this, that after exercise, particularly strenuous exercise, we have an inflammatory response and an immune response that's kind of one and the same. In this case, I don't want that happening. I want my own body to have it, that immune thing going on for the stem cell at the knee. So no distraction is really the key. So last but not least is focus shift. And I want you to think about, especially if you're incapacitated, you're not on the mend. You have a longer period of time where you're inactive. We have had members in our community who've had, um, their pelvis broken in order to fix something. They've had major surgeries to their pelvic floor. They have broken their foot or broken a hip. Broken a femur or a wrist, a forearm, a shoulder, and really had to take rest. So you might think, you know, if they've got a femur, well, they can do upper body, but that'd be very hard, right? So imagine manipulating yourself so you could do it. There'd be a challenge. So what can you do? You know, is there extra time that you can dedicate to non-physical personal growth? You know, I've taken a week-long retreat twice with Joe to spend And the reason I've taken that is because sometimes you just have to break away from your life because it's so tempting. Every morning I consider, when I wake up, doing that short 20-minute meditation, and then Moses looks at me and says, really? And the things that are Oh, I, I'm gonna send an email to you. I'm gonna draft the show notes or the interview questions for the podcast. I'm going to put together the summit invitations, whatever it might be. I've got a list, you've got your own. Those things come flooding in. But when you have gifted— you've been gifted time that landed in up, this is an opportunity to use some of that time. Maybe you'd use yours just for extra sleep, just to read a juicy book that's not a business book and that you're just reading with a paper sack on it because it's that kind of a book. But what would be something that you'd want to use that time for and find it valuable? Maybe for you it's business growth, business planning, learning, taking a course, catching up with a CEU course that's sitting there. Think about, you know, the power of journaling for you or writing. Maybe you too are writing a book. I'm in the middle of writing a book and on an ordinary day and week and month, it's hard to find time and carve it out for that as much as I want it done. Every little week and every little month that passes, I think, and when is that gonna happen, right? So now is a really good opportunity. And actually for me in this book, book that will be titled Flipping Menopause. This is a great topic, so I can actually tap into this and use it, and, um, will be doing so. So you'll see probably better, well-thought-out content coming in there, but also the psychology behind healing and our thoughts, the biology of belief. By Bruce Lipton may appeal to you if you're looking at that, if you're healing or want to yourself, something to consider. So make your mandatory time off count long-term. You know, for some people, and, and of course it depends on what's injured, but if you can dedicate time to, you know, collecting recipes that you'd love to use and be excited about, to looking deeper into making changes with your gut health by eliminating foods that might be potentially inflammatory or anti-nutrient kinds of foods, meaning disrupting your ability to absorb micronutrients. So often doing something like an elimination diet is heavy when you're also trying to change exercise or create an exercise routine. But if the exercise has been removed, now you suddenly have a little more bandwidth. You're not changing lots of things all at once. You could just focus on changing the diet at a time when that could really pay off for you. So right now, if I normally eat clean, I am really, really eating clean. So I'm avoiding dairy, gluten, wheat, actually avoiding raw vegetables. Although I messed that up yesterday and I didn't realize it until afterward. I had 2.5-hour delay at the airport, and so I ended up eating what I would call a crappy salad, the best crappy salad I could find at the airport. And I realized, oh, I'm not supposed to have raw vegetables, you know, later after I was done. And the reason is actually raw vegetables by way, are just a little bit harder to digest, and your body may not get all the micronutrients from them. So just lightly cooked and steamed takes down the oxalate level, so there are fewer anti-nutrients in there, things disrupting your absorption. So thinking about, you know, what would that be for you? Not necessarily food, but is there something else? Is there a book? Is there studying? Is there meditation? Something that you've always wanted to dedicate some time toward And I don't mean watching the new series on TV of something, but there is a way to make that possible. I'd love for you to connect, join if you're not already in a program or the membership that offers the Facebook group for your community specifically, consider joining our Facebook group, uh, the Flipping 50 Insiders. Sleeping Five Zero, by the way, insiders. That's a great place for you to ask questions. We do a roundup from time to time. We answer questions directly related to podcast episodes there so that if you— if this triggered a question for you, that'd be a perfect place to put it if you otherwise don't have access to me. Thank you so much for listening, and if this was valuable to you at all, or you know somebody who's got to take time off because of an injury, their foot is in a boot, they, they for whatever reasons have to take time off and it's a challenge for them, share this with them. And thank you in advance for doing that. If you're listening today, I would love for you to do me a huge favor. Take a screenshot of this, you know, and share it to your story on Instagram or Facebook and tag me at Flipping 50 TV, and help. Let's flip the script on recovery, recovery time, downtime, and help everybody else understand it's not just wasted time. There may be a way to make the most of it and see the light at the end of the tunnel. You're never going to be as young as you are now, so taking time off now or having to making it the juiciest time possible, so much better than having to take time off later. Thank you so much for listening. I know you've got lots of choices and choices with your time. My hope is that you might be listening while you're walking or you're working out, and if that's true, we love to hear it. Thanks so much.

Thank you so much for listening. To listen and access a decade of episodes and the show notes, visit Flipping50.com, where you'll be able to find all of our prior episodes. And I made it easy for you to make the most of your listening time by selecting 5 specific areas most commonly high priorities for our community and giving you top 10 lists if you let me know you'd love that.

Them.

If you know a midlife woman or a soon-to-be one who wants to optimize her midlife energy and time with the right exercise and lifestyle changes and a mindset shift about just what is possible, share this podcast with her and I thank you. There is no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife woman.