Beyond Hot Flashes: The Hidden Impact of Menopause with Karen Martel

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And that's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. Ever heard someone say that your metabolism doesn't change during menopause? Pause. Or that weight gain in midlife is simply a matter of calories in, calories out? Well, today we're going to bust those myths wide open and explore what's really happening to our bodies during this transformative time. When it comes to menopause and weight management, there's a world of misinformation out there. Even if you eat perfectly, exercise regularly, and do everything right, you can find yourself gaining weight and feeling like your body has turned against you. But here's the thing. It's not your fault and you're not alone. Today we're diving deep into the complex relationship between hormones, metabolism and weight during menopause and perimenopause. We're going to explore why the 15 to 20 pound weight gain that seems to happen overnight is happening, why traditional approaches to weight loss often fail during this time, and most importantly, what you can actually do about it. Our guest today is Karen Martell. After experiencing early menopause at 42 and gaining 20 pounds despite maintaining her healthy lifestyle, Karen went on a mission to understand what was really happening today. As CEO of Hormone Solutions and a certified hormone specialist, she helps thousands of women optimize their hormonal health to her clinic and product line. Her acclaimed podcast, the Hormone Solution with Karen Martell, has become a trusted resource for women seeking answers about hormones, weight loss and overall wellness. Karen's approach combines cutting edge hormone therapy with holistic solutions to help Women thrive during every stage of menopause. In this episode, we're going to uncover the truth about hormone replacement therapy, explore the role of trendy GLP1s in menopausal weight management and and discuss practical strategies for maintaining metabolic health during menopause. Karen's going to share insights about when to start hormone therapy. It's probably earlier than you think. How to know which hormones you need and why. The standard wait until you're in menopause approach might be causing more harm than good. Whether you're approaching perimenopause in the thick of it or or want to understand how to maintain your metabolic health during this transition, this episode is packed with game changing information. 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So I was listening to a podcast the other day and they were talking about weight gain and menopause and the guy, the guy, the guy, the guy said, oh no, your metabolism doesn't change when you're going through menopause. It's calories in, calories out. So. Karen Martel, I'm so glad you're here because I was like, I go first of all, like be a 48 year old woman and then talk, dude. But I am excited to dig into all of this. Cause talking hormones, GLP1s when you should start hormones, weight gain. These are like my favorite subject.

Yeah, me too. Me too.

Love, love, love. How did you get into this being your favorite subject besides being your own case study?

That's really what it was. I really thought that I was gonna sail through menopause, you know, had someone asked me in my 40s because I was already a nutritionist dealing with women's weight loss resistance and hormonal weight loss resistance, thinking like, oh, I got this, I got it all figured. And then I didn't have it all figured. And I actually started to go into an early menopause at 42. So I started losing my cycle and you know, gaining the weight, having hot flashes, night sweat, all the things, everything that could happen basically happened.

Did you know what was going on? Were you aware or were you, because it was 42, thinking, oh, this couldn't be that.

No, it took me a little bit because I couldn't because I was super depressed. That was part of it. And I'm not a depressed person. And I suddenly found that, you know, like I didn't want to get off the couch and I'm like a go getter. And so I was like, what is going on? And so I kept thinking, maybe it's stress, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. But then the cycle started to get affected. My boobs started to get super enlarged and my skin was so itchy and I started to very rapidly gain weight. I probably gained about 15 to 20 pounds in less than six months after keeping the same weight for 10 years and thinking like, not d. Not having to diet or anything. You know, I always had to work at keeping my weight down, but I had it, I had the code. I was like, I'm following a paleo based diet, which was working for me and I was exercising the right way and I was doing all the things and then that happened without me changing anything.

And that's an important thing.

Yes, I think this is a very important thing because a lot of women that listen to podcasts like you or I, or just podcasts in general, do tend to be very health forward and they are trying to do everything right. Many of them are doing it. They're eating perfectly, they're exercising perfectly, they're prioritizing protein, they're taking the supplements, they're doing everything. Like I was. I hadn't drank in, in over 10 years. I didn't have a sugar addiction. I. I really was doing it right. And I thought, oh, my, if this can happen to me, the nutrition who's doing this for a living, right? This can happen to anybody. And it was a huge wake up call when I thought, oh, my gosh, this is perimenopause. That's hitting me. How is this possible? Because I was so healthy?

Well, I literally was just at a seminar where a woman came in and said, yeah, I believe we never have to go through menopause, and we don't, and we can do this all naturally. I'm like, you know that our ovaries don't have to age.

I'm like, well, where is she getting that from?

But I had another girlfriend who I hadn't seen for a year, and we met in the airport, and I looked at her and she had gained 10 pounds, frazzled, and she just thought it was stress. I'm like, okay, how old are you? And so I think this is what's really important here, is to have these shows because there's so many different symptoms and most people are missing this because it might be. For me, it was bleeding gums, and then it was. I couldn't recover from exercise. And then it was like this weird little weight gain when everything was consistent. So weight gain, that piece of it, because you'll hear, oh, your metabolism doesn't change till age 60. Oh, there's nothing, you know, menopause doesn't cause weight gain. I have my theories. I'd love to, love to hear what you believe this reason to be. I'm sure it's not just we started eating more.

That's part of it. That can be part of it. But even when you look at the research, jj, it says that we, on average will gain one pound a year in menopause. And I was like, where are they? Like, maybe back in the 1960s, like, when do you ever hear of a woman in perimenopause or menopause saying, I gained £1 a year. I've worked with thousands of women, and it's always, oh, my gosh, I literally just gained 15 pounds overnight. I gained 50 pounds. I gained 30 pounds. This isn't just a couple pounds. And over 80% of women will gain weight in perimenopause and menopause. And so it is, it is across the board. And yes, of course, healthy lifestyle, building muscle, all of these things, hands down, have to be part of this puzzle piece. But when you have all of those things down, guess what? It can still happen. And women are, of course, they always blame themselves. It's like, well, I'm not working out hard enough. I'm not fasting enough, I'm not going low carb enough. And they start to try and do these things or they hear these people, these, these men and some women, obviously. I actually just on that topic, two days ago, I'm watching Instagram and I see one of the most popular male health professionals. And I'm not going to throw them under the bus, but he says flat out, you do not have to take hormone replacement therapy in menopause. You can take supplements and diet to balance your hormones.

And I'm like, not what hormones producing them anymore?

What are we balancing when we don't have them? And ladies, let me just tell you straight up. You cannot supplement, you cannot diet, and you cannot exercise your way out of menopause. And ovarian failure is going to happen to every single one of you. And so it's so much better to go, to be armed with education going, this is going to happen whether I like it or not. So what is the best way that I can prevent the weight gain and all of the other symptoms that go with perimenopause and menopause? And I'm very specifically talking perimenopause, because perimenopause is actually when we see the most weight gain. And this is the years leading up to menopause. So I know you have a very educated audience, but just for those that don't know and need a little refresher, fresher perimenopause can be 10, 12 years. Sometimes it's just a couple years, but on average, you're looking at eight to 10 years and is the time where your hormones start to drop, which typically begins in your late 30s. So this will last all the way through until typically your early 50s, which is the com most common age for menopause, which is considered one year without a period. They, they took, they got that number out of nowhere.

I know, it's the, it's the dumbest thing.

You know what, and this is an issue, like people are always like, well, who cares about that? But I'm like, it does matter because guess what? Most physicians will not prescribe a woman hormone replacement therapy until she has had one year without a period.

Is A year late. It's actually multiple years late. So when you start to look at this. And I had great. I always laugh because my 50th birthday party was in south beach and it was with Dr. Sarah Gottfried, Dr. Anna Kabeca. Like, you know, all my friends are hormone doctors.

Your hormone friends?

Uh huh.

But the minute mine started to drop is when I started to use this. But that was really not done. I mean, that was back in my mid-40s. And then I never had issues with progesterone, but then testosterone dropped. So I mean, we just watched it and started to do it. And so that's an important message to get across. Let's talk about what happens as you start to go into perimenopause so people understand how this is impacting your weight, your mood. And funny story, we just had a team meeting and one of the women in the middle of the team meeting, she pulls me aside, she's standing in my kitchen sweating. Like, I go, come back, come back into my bathroom to get an estrogen patch. We will solve this problem. Because she's like, I forgot my estrogen. Like, don't worry.

Also, I'll joke around with my staff as well. If they do something kind of like a little bit offbeat or I'll be like, did you take your estrogen today? Are you forgetting your hormones?

Husbands don't ask that, do not ask that. Don't. That's like asking if you're on your period. That will get you a similar result.

Okay, okay. So late 30s, we typically see a drop in progesterone, which. Progesterone. The bulk of our progesterone is produced when we ovulate. So the less eggs we have as we get older, the less we ovulate, the less progesterone we have. It is the hormone that is typically first to head out. It'll drop by about 75% by the time you're in. But mid-40s, if not sooner. Now we're seeing it starting earlier and earlier.

Why do you think we're seeing it earlier and earlier?

I actually think it's toxic overload.

Oh boy.

Yeah. We have so many toxins. I mean, I just read a stat the other day. It was something like, we have over 200,000 toxins or something in the system. Like, it's ridiculous. And heavy metals. These are. Yeah, they don't know what to do with it. They sit on the receptors, they block our hormones, they affect our cortisol, they affect our insulin. Like we can actually be insulin resistant. From things like heavy metals.

Oh, yeah, that's what the NHANES data showed. It wasn't the obesity, it was the toxins stored in the fat of the obese people.

Yes. And then the xenoestrogens, they are stronger than our own estrogens and they'll sit on the receptor and your body will use those, which is not right over your own production of estrogen, which is a great hormone actually, for metabolic health. When progesterone starts to go, for anybody that's ever done fertility testing, do you recall it was like day 14, you were looking for a rise in basal body temperature. That was your sign that you ovulated. And progesterone kicks in, is supposed to kick in after that. And your basal body temperature stays up for the second half of your cycle, thankfully, because with it, estrogen goes down and stick second half of the cycle. And estrogen is what, estradiol specifically is what helps us to be most insulin sensitive. So estrogen kind of comes down. It also, it helps us to make serotonin, the happy hormone. So in the second half of the cycle, we might not get as much serotonin. We're not getting this, you know, as much basal body temperature coming up because we're not producing this progesterone anymore. So with that comes a little bit of a metabolic drop because we need to have a good basal body temperature to help our metabolism to run optimally. And so this is where you'll hear women just say, hmm, I put on five pounds. Kind of out of nowhere. It doesn't, it's not a huge weight gain, like the 30, 50 pound weight gain. It's a couple of pounds. And they're just like, I didn't change anything. What's happening? Periods are starting to change a little bit. Maybe some heavier bleeding, you know, estrogen dominance kind of kicks in. And when I say estrogen dominant, I mean just simply not enough progesterone to counterbalance the growth of the estrogen. So it's not so much that I very rarely see women with actually too much estrogen. Every woman thick think she's estrogen dominant. They are xenoestrogen. Dominant. Yes, but not actual estrogen dominant, just in the sense of it's just not enough progesterone. And so that's when we start to see the weight gain happening. With that, we'll see a little bit of more insulin resistance. Some women will start to get thyroid problems. We need progesterone for proper working thyroid. And so little bit of metabolic changing, starting to happen. And then as we start to go into the mid-40s now, we start to get dysregulated for some women, testosterone. For some women, this is when their estradiol will actually start to drop. And even a little bit of estrogen dropping for some women can cause a lot of problems with their metabolism. And this kind of has to do more with genetics. And this is something that we all have to take into consideration. Like, for you, jj, you're very, very androgen dominant. You've been that wiry, easily put on muscle. You know, like, you don't. You don't struggle. At least you don't look like you struggle with weight. I myself am very estrogenic, so I have always had the curvy hips and. And really struggled with keeping my weight down my whole life. And so for me, when my estrogen drops even a little bit, it could look fine on a lab. But for me, it starts to cause me a lot of symptoms. And so that's why I'll get the hot flashes and the night sweats and the weight gain and the blood sugar dysregulation. My insulin, when I was 42 and my estradiol dropped, my fasting blood sugar went up, My fasting insulin went up. I had had perfect blood sugar my whole life, and it went up an entire point. I know I'm in different measurement than you guys are, but I was borderline insulin resistant. And I will tell you, ladies, I have done thousands of labs on women in midlife and almost across the board, when they lose their estradiol, they will become insulin resistant, Their cholesterol goes up, even liver enzymes can start to go up. So we see this impact happening from the drop of estrogen more than any other of the hormones, which is very shocking to most people, because everybody associates estrogen with weight gain because it is what gives us our curves. But you will gain more weight from the drop of estradiol than you will from the drop of progesterone or the drop of testosterone in most women.

Yes. Well, I will tell you, too, like, the only times in my life when I've ever struggled with my weight was when I dosed incorrectly with progesterone, Totally gained weight very quickly, and insulin went up again. And when I'm pregnant, like, immediately get pregnant, boom, 12 pounds.

Oh, 12. I got 60.

Oh, no, no, no. I ended up with 60.

Okay.

That was in a week.

Okay. Okay, good. Okay. I was like, oh, don't you tell.

Me that, like, one week. I mean, you can't gain £12 in a week.

Yeah.

So that is really interesting. I will tell you. Back when I used to work with clients one on one and they would come in with their labs, I was working out of a doctor's office and he would have me see everybody and I knew without asking them if they were on hormones or not, because you could see it in all their cardiovascular risk factors. Yes. It was so clear cut.

Yeah. It'll almost happen across the board. I think for every single one of us. Unless we are replacing the hormones, we have a much better chance of not becoming insulin resistant. So the estrogen, it's, it's not only that, it's not only the effect it has on our insulin, how we process our blood glucose, we also start to lose. Estrogen is very important for protein synthesis and muscle building. So now we're losing muscle, which, as you know, is our biggest processor of glucose in the system. Estrogen. We have estrogen receptors in the hunger centers of our brain. So this is where we can have dysregulated eating patterns, where we can't, we're eating too much or we're getting hungry all the time and we're like, what's going on? I usually have so much control over my food and now suddenly I don't have any control and I'm eating way too much. Now we're not sleeping because progesterone is important for sleep. So if you haven't replaced the progesterone, now we're becoming more insulin resistant because the progesterone is going down and we're not sleeping. Progesterone, super important for sleep. So we have multiple factors coming in, not just about the blood sugar, not just for the liver, not just for the brain. Like every organ in our system becomes impacted by the loss of these hormones. And then if we start to lose testosterone, we're also going to be losing muscle tissue and we're feeling low about ourselves and we're not having the energy to go out and actually work out. We see about 50% of women become hypothyroid or subclinical hypothyroid. It is, it goes down along just alongside the other hormones, estrogen being very important for it. And it actually goes both ways. Too much estrogen can cause thyroid issues in a bad way, but too little estrogen can, has, has a huge impact on the thyroid receptor sensitivity. So without the estrogen now we're, now our thyroid's becoming impacted. And then like you said, too much progesterone. Some women are being told to dose high, high doses of progesterone every single day and not cycle it. And that's a problem in and of itself and can cause major water retention as well as can contribute to insulin resistance.

Well, think about it. The way I was taught about progesterone, I used to do these workshops with this Dr. Diana Schwartzbein. She was one of the pioneers in all of this, was working with Suzanne Somers, et cetera. Took a lot of heat as an endocrinologist because they said she shouldn't be doing sex hormones. She was a thyroid fellow. I'm like, well, if not the endocrinologist, then who? One of the things she taught me is she said steady state progesterone. Because we had a person in our hometown of Palm Desert, where I was living, who put everyone who came in on thyroid to drive them as close to zero as possible. And everyone, men and women, on progesterone, which is why I tried it once and gained, like, a bunch of weight quickly. But what she taught me was that steady state higher progesterone can lead to insulin resistance. Because the only time you ever have steady state higher progesterone is when you're pregnant.

Pregnant, right. Yes.

So it makes sense. But yet that's such a common practice and extreme.

Extremely common.

It kind of drives me crazy that they sell progesterone over the counter here in the United States. I'm like, this is a hormone. Like, what are we doing?

Yeah, yeah. Which.

As if it's innocuous.

Yes. And it is a growing movement, which is very frustrating because people like Dr. Mercola is demonizing estrogen publicly and saying that every woman needs to be on high doses of progesterone every day and that we're all tissue estrogen dominant. There's massive Facebook groups for it, telling these women, don't take estrogen, just take these really high doses. We're talking 400, 600, 800 milligrams of progesterone every single day. And I'm like, how is this any different than any of the other hormones like testosterone? We all know, or many know, that too high of testosterone for men or for women all the time starts to lose its effect. So how is progesterone any different?

And, you know, we'll block estrogen, so there is a problem there. Wow. I had no idea. The one possible thing there is that women will feel so rotten, they'll figure it out and stop. But, you know, now they're missing that there's sometimes on estrogen. So that's frustrating.

Yes, Yes.

I had no idea that was going on. I heard a little whisper that he was doing that, but I'm like, oh, oh, oh.

It's been terrible. I have so many people, you know, they all send. Did you read this article that Dr. Mercola put out there or did you listen to this podcast? And I just, I saw all these women on his feed when he, when he posted this podcast episode that he did, saying that they were going to stop their estrogen. And I was like, wow, this man has really, seriously harmed thousands of women.

It's like the Women's Health Initiative strikes again.

Right. This is it. Like, we've come so far. And then he goes, does this and we take the 10 steps back when we just took 10 steps forward. So it's really frustrating, you know, like.

Now you're going to have time when you're like, your bone mineral density falls off the cliff when your estrogen drops. It's not like you're gonna get that back.

Yes. Same with when you're progesterone and testosterone. And when we use progesterone in high doses or even regular doses every single day, what begins to happen over a period of time is you lose the effects of it and you lose the effects then of also of estrogen, because it'll actually start to suppress estrogen because you've got progesterone in there every day. And guess what? Estrogen is needed to upregulate progesterone receptors and then progesterone is needed for estrogen receptors. So it's this beautiful dance. Mother Nature doesn't do things by accident. We produce the bulk of our progesterone in the second half of the cycle for purpose. So why are we trying to recreate something in perimenopause or menopause by giving these women these super physiological doses of progesterone, which in the long term really can negate the effects of these hormones and the benefits that you could be getting from them. Now, that all said, there are many women that are still thriving on these protocols because it's actually the most common way to prescribe progesterone. And estrogen is static dose every single day, both of them. And there's millions of women doing well on that.

But there's a lot that maybe even better.

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I was taught by like again early on when I was helping Dr. Diana Schwarzbein with these seminars was like, you cycle and first of all, you do everything you can in terms of your adrenal glands, your thyroid, your insulin, so that you are as healthy as possible. So you can use the lowest doses, cycling as possible to get the desired effect, which makes complete and perfect sense to me and that you're mimicking normal physiology.

Thank you. Yes. So the smallest dose is not typically the physiological dose that is needed to protect. So it is.

Well, but small dose would be the physiologic. I'm saying the same thing as you. I'm not. I'm saying that, yes, I know you are going to make the difference. Protect your bones, protect your brain, protect your heart. You'll see it in your hscrp, you'll see it in your APOB and ldl. So you'll see it. You'll know if you're there or not.

But most doctors, when they say the smallest dose to get the benefits or to get relief of symptoms, they're actually, when they are talking about it, that is different. They're saying like these, we're going to give you the tiniest babiest dose of estrogen just to get rid of those hot flashes. And that's all you get. And then you're. And then you typically can't. You're not going to get the dose high enough, your levels high enough to give you the protection that you're talking about, that heart rate, that those levels actually have to get up pretty high. Brain protection. They've seen in some of the research that we don't get the brain volumization from even 1 milligram of estradiol a day that you do from 2 milligrams of estradiol a day, which is unheard. You don't ever hear about unless they're on like a Wiley Protocol or something like this. But you don't often hear of women being put on 2 milligrams of estradiol a day. Like, have you. Were you ever told to do that much?

I do one and a half. But I fought for it.

There you go. You fought for it. I just had a woman recently in my group say she was put on 2 milligrams. I'm like, no, probably not. Can you just Check that again. She's like, no, no, it's 2 milligrams. Like, I. Out of the thousands of women that I've worked with, nobody ever says that, that some practitioner put them on 2 milligrams.

Well, let's take this then to, like, how does someone know? So what I'd love to address is what is your preferred way to cycle? What are your preferred. Oh, gosh, what's the word I'm looking for? I swear I just had my estrogen. So I can think what your preferred forms and how to test. Because I think these all fit in here. Because we're Talking about that 1 milligram for one person might be great and someone else might need one and a half. So how do we. How does one know?

Yes. And this is where I always encourage people. You really should. If you can work with a hormone practitioner, because everybody is so different. You don't want to go by just labs, but you also don't want to go without labs either. A lot of doctors say, oh, I'm not going to bother testing you. Which is fine, maybe for a menopausal woman that's been in menopause for a while. While. But you should still get a baseline. And if you're in perimenopause, yes, you want to start with testing, but you also want to take into consideration what are your symptoms? And this goes back to, you know, somebody like, you could lose just a tiny smidge of your testosterone, and it could look Great on labs, J.J. but because you are the androgen person, you may really feel that rather your estrogen could get quite low and you don't feel it as much. And so it really does come down to the person, because for myself, I need high doses of estrogen, and I've had to have higher doses and keep my levels to a certain point, or I start getting all of the hot flashes, night sweats, and all of the weight gain. But testosterone, if I go too high on testosterone, I get water retention and I get breakout and acne and I. And I guess. And then you get the long chin hair coming off that you don't. That you miss for three months. Yeah. So I always tell women, go with how you're feeling and don't. Don't push that aside because that tells us that you need hormones and your hormones could look great on labs, but for you, that's not a great level. And let's remember that labs, lab ranges for hormones are red, ridiculous, even if you do it on a specific day of your cycle. Let's say you go on the proper day, which is day 19, 20 or 21 of your cycle, you go get your progesterone, estrogen, testosterone tested and your labs can look great because it's, the range is something like, well, if you're between 50 and 1,000, you are okay, you are in range. So for you it might be that if you even get below 100 pg per ML, that's too low for you. Rather, some women, they can get down to 30, which I don't recommend, but let's say that can drop to 30. They can even still have regular cycles and they don't even feel that. They don't know, they don't notice. And so really pay attention to how you're feeling, what you need. Genetic testing can be a great thing. Dutch testing can be a great thing because Dutch can tell you how you breaking these hormones down, it gives you a reflection of free levels of hormones. That's the other thing blood labs tell you total amount of hormones. So if you're not testing your binding proteins, sex hormone binding globulin, then that could be a problem. And that's what happened with me, was my sex hormone binding globulin, which is a protein that you can kind of think of it as a bus that's going to shuttle your hormones around the system. But they've got to get off the bus for that cell to utilize it. So one of the things that can raise this binding protein, which means it's going to bind up testosterone and estrogen so that your body can't use it, is thyroid medication. Now, nobody knows this, nobody's talking about this. I was put on boatloads of thyroid medication.

Wait, so any thyroid medication, or I'm.

Assuming more T3 than T4. So there's T4, T3, there's desiccated thyroid. So in the functional world, there's a lot of desiccated thyroid being used. So that's the combination of T4, T3. So that will raise sex hormone binding globulin. And so as we see that going up now, your testosterone's getting bound, then your estrogen's getting bound, and now you're getting these symptoms of menopause even though your labs look fantastic. So there's these and there's other things. There's like boron deficiency that can raise shbg. If you're fasting a lot, it will raise sex hormone binding globulin, which makes sense because it's this backup. This is my own theory. I Can't. There's no research on this. But when you think about hunter gatherer days when there wasn't a lot of food around in the winter, it would make sense that if you're not eating very much that this binding protein would go up naturally, bind up these important hormones so that you couldn't as easily get pregnant.

Well, I wonder.

And then we.

Fasting. Or is it the caloric restriction? Both. Or is it the. And you know, would keto trigger a similar thing? Like what?

Yes, it does low carb diets. Fasting when in conjunction, like if you're not eating enough, which most people, if they're doing a lot of fasting and they're eating, let's say one or two meals a day, just are not going to be getting enough calories in and then that will raise the shbg. People with insulin resistance actually have low shbg. It's one of the drivers of polycystic ovarian syndrome is high testosterone because they have high insulin, low shbg. So they have a ton of testosterone and that's what starts to affect their system and why they get the androgenic symptoms. So all of these, like. It's very. Pre. Hypothyroid is very prevalent for women especially nowadays. It's like a re. It's a serious growing concern. I think we're just starting to catch it more and doing more proper testing. So we're seeing that. But also toxic load. All those things contribute to it as well.

Yeah.

And we're being put on all this medication and this. And then that's negatively affecting the sex hormones. So there's. Yeah, yeah.

If your thyroid's low, it negatively affects your sex hormones too.

Absolutely. Yes. It's all. They all work synergistically together. But it's something that needs to be watched. If you're. If this. If you're on thyroid medication, especially if you're on monotherapy, T3 monotherapy. So if you've been put on T3.

Only medication, I think that's not very common though. Right. Most people don't get that.

It's. It's not. It should be more common because we're having so many issues with the conversion of T4 to T3. And that's what happened to me. And so I was put on a high dose, 75 micrograms of T3 only medication and it drove my SHBG sky high.

That's a very high dose. I have. It is, yeah.

Yes, yes, it is. I had a full replacement dose. I actually was up to 100. There's a protocol. We won't get into it, but you dose it high, and then you come back down.

We talked testing, and it is important testing plus symptoms and working this together. I always like in perimenopause, too, because where I live, I can go paddleboard, and it looks really calm in our canal. And then you go paddle around the corner right into perimenopause. And then you come back, it's calm. Then you go back. It's crazy. You know, it's like, kind of like you're trying to balance in the storm here. And then there's the calm days. You're like, I'm okay. And then it goes back again.

Yeah, yeah. And unfortunately, doctors will typically refuse to treat women in perimenopause with hormones. It is very. It's probably 90% of practitioners, even functional practitioners, at least with estrogen, will say to a woman like, oh, you can't have estrogen until you're in menopause.

Where does it come from, this.

This whi. It's just the fear around estrogen is still extremely prevalent. I just had a woman who was 51 years old. She's been bleeding for two years straight. She's been to multiple gynecologists, two nurse practitioners, her. Her main physician. Every single one of them said, you cannot have hormone replacement. And because you are not in menopause. And instead, they put her on birth control at 51. And this is what is happening. This is. This is what is given out. You're given the option of. Even in the early days. They're not saying, oh, let's look at your progesterone, because you're bleeding out every month, and you've. You're gaining weight and you can't sleep, and you're, you know, you're getting severe pms. It's. Here's your antidepressant, here's your birth control pill, or here's a hysterectomy. That's. That is what is most common. It's not, oh, let's give you some natural progesterone, which is probably the cause of all of the above. You know, not always, but there's a good chance if it's come on suddenly and you're in your early 40s, guess what? It's probably the drop of progesterone. And then estrogen kind of goes on this wild ride in our late 40s, where sometimes it's gonna be high and you're gonna be experiencing estrogen dominance and bleeding. Super heavy. And then the next month is gonna drop and so your periods will go shorter, then they suddenly go longer. And this goes on for years. I mean, it's been going on for years for me. I didn't have a period for four months and then I just had spotting for four weeks. Like, it's just like I'm doing all the things. So if it can happen to me, this can happen to everyone. But I put myself on estrogen and progesterone at 42 and it was a lifesaver because. And I've stayed at this nice steady low dose of Astra, dial only.

And how are you taking it? What's the form you're taking it in?

So like you, I do a low dose patch, but then I supplement on top of that with my own cream that I have. So I have a low dose 0.25 milligrams of an estradiol cream that I cycle because I'm still, I'm trying to still cycle. And I brought the period back and I was able to, you know, get myself out of that fast track to menopause. And I got a regular cycle for several years. And then it's just been in the last couple years that things have started to go a little bit wonky now. But I will try kind. I kind of do this like modified cycling that I, that I got from Dr. Felice Gersh who I know you've had.

I love Felice.

She's amazing. I love Felice. I was just thinking, I just heard your podcast about heart disease on your. That you did with her.

Fantastic. I've known her for like 25 years. She's amazing. Amazing.

She's amazing. Yeah. So I've, I've taken her training and it's great because she does this modified cycling because she's a firm believer that, you know, which is true. Our body does these things for, for purpose. And so day 12, our estradiol peaks. This upregulates a tumor suppressing gene called P53. Hello. We all want a tumor suppressing gene, you know, and then progesterone comes in in the second half of the cycle and it's doing things. That cycling is doing things not only to the body, but also to the brain and to the bones and to the uterus. And so yes, you're going to get a little bit of a shed, a bleeding, you know, but I'm good with that. I'll try and keep a little bit of a bleed probably for the rest of my life.

And progesterone Are you doing two weeks out of the month? One week out of the month?

What do you do? Just two weeks? Yes, absolutely.

Are you doing an oral dose?

I mostly do cream because I have progesterone's oral sense, the oral sensitivity, which a lot of women have, and that's called neurosteroid sensitivity. So too high of oral progesterone creates a lot of metabolites which for some women can cause depression, weepiness, fatigue. And so if I take too much oral, that starts to happen to me. So I do, sometimes if I'm having a really hard time sleeping, I'll do some oral progesterone. But I, I like the progesterone cream. Yeah. So I cycle, I try to mimic my cycle a little bit, but I always keep the baseline of estrogen because I run through estrogen really fast. And so I found that doing a gel or a cream just once a day, it was never enough. It usually has about a five to six hour half life in the body. So if you apply your estrogen in the morning, it's typically gone by the evening. So the patch is nice to have as a baseline if you are so sensitive to fluctuations of hormones. I would get migraines, things like this. So that nice low dose is something I'll always keep in and I won't take that away from myself. And naturally we produce estrogen every single day. So I see it as being totally okay. And then I increase it at certain times of the month or if I feel like I need that little boost. There's some months where I use more, there's some months that I use less. Now I understand that not everybody can be this nuanced with that. They're like, give me a break, just tell me what to do and how much to take every day.

I feel like once people start to understand, you know, oh, you're not sleeping well, that can be progesterone. Oh, you're getting hot flashes that they start to recognize the signs of which is which. And I'll tell you, early on, gosh, it was like probably 20x years ago. Dr. Uzi Reese wrote a book, and it literally was the book on how you could start to self identify. Because the labs were this moment in time and here you were during perimenopause going, is it low? Is it high? You know, and so it is good to educate yourself and notice the nuance because, boy, you can make a huge difference.

Yeah. And you know, majority women, they need to be nuanced. They need to be, to see Themselves as an individual and be taken care of like that. If they have a practitioner, they need to be seen as an individual individual.

If they understood the symptoms. It was very interesting. I used to teach a course all over the country, but it's how I met people like Felice and Dr. Diana. But I taught a course called Overcoming Weight Loss Resistance, and it was all the ways you could gain weight or have trouble losing weight. Of course, sex hormones were a big one, but in that, I talked through all the symptoms. Of course, I didn't know all the symptoms back then of perimenopause, because there's so many. It's unbelievable. But, you know, the symptoms of low thyroid, the symptoms of low estrogen, the symptoms. And for me, what was fantastic is I knew immediately when my thyroid dropped. And what was crazy is my TSH was 2.25.

Yep, there you go.

That's all. You know, totally normal range. And I had constipation, lost the outer third of my eyebrows. I went from being a sweaty person to always cold. Boom. You know, little thyroid, totally fine.

And that was perimenopause.

That was. That was coming into it. It was before then. The next symptom I had was I couldn't recover from the gym. Now you hear Dr. Vonda Wright talk about musculoskeletal menopause syndrome. Like, aha. And I had clients at the time. I remember frozen shoulder, all this stuff. I didn't know there was such a thing thing as that. And then I went to the dentist because I had bleeding gums. He's like, it's estrogen. I went, oh. So, you know, the more you can learn about these things, it can help you, especially during the. It's so easy. You know, once you're postmenopausal, it's easy. It's so easy. Nothing changes. It's fantastic. I highly recommend it. There's a couple things I think are fantastic.

I can't wait.

Empty nesting and menopause. These two things are fabulous things.

I love that, and I love that attitude about it. Like, that's what we have to. That's where I want every woman to get to. Not to fear it, but to be like, yeah, like, I'm going to be 50 in a year. And I'm like, bring it on. I feel amazing. I feel better now than I did at 38, 39, and just wait till you turn 50.

I wish I could have turned 50 at 30. Seriously, if I could have done the mindset shift that happened at 50. At 30, 30, it's like a little switch flips. The. I don't really care what you think switch flips.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

You know, I was just telling my husband about that the other day. I was like, you know, I'm always being interviewed about these terrible things that happen in perimenopause and menopause and the weight gain and the dry vaginal tissue and, you know, like, Lola, be like, horrible things. But, ladies, you gotta understand that if you can educate yourself on this and you stay on top of it and you get the help when it's time to get the help, and that's key. You will love this time more than any other time.

Yeah.

Because you have a mind shift. You can. And this is like a time in our life where women are finally going, okay, well, what do I want? You know, your kids have grown up, and you don't have little tiny ones anymore. Well, some women do, but most women don't have little toddlers anymore. You know, you've picked your career. You've chosen the partner by this point, you know, in most cases. So it's all about you. And it's. And I really think that our bodies will start to scream louder to us if we're ignoring it. If we're just drinking ourselves away and, you know, just going, oh, I got to ignore these symptoms.

It's stress. I'll have more wine. Yeah, you see it whispering. And that's the biggest thing is, like, when the whisper happens again. For me, I was like, you know, why am I not sweaty anymore? When the whisper happens, just pay attention. And that's where I think a scale, a bioimpedance scale can be so fabulous because that along with a tape measure around your waist, you'll pick these things up so early. Like, what's going on? You don't want to go, what, ten pounds? You know?

Yes, yes, exactly.

It can happen with athleisure wear.

Yeah. And we see that if. If women start hormone replacement therapy at a proper age, which is when you are starting to lose these hormones, you are going, okay, I'm not. The same. Things are starting to change. What's happening? Okay, look, I need a little bit more progesterone. Oh, I need a little tiny bit of testosterone. I need a little baby dose of estrogen. And then suddenly everything's better again. And then six months down the road, you're going to go, oh, something. Now, what happened? Okay, now we got to adjust. And this, too, like you just said, this will happen until you're actually in menopause, and then you'll, you'll know exactly what your body needs and it usually stays the same. You don't need a lot of time tweaking. But these years, this decade of our life, stay on top of it. Because it shows in the research that women that replace their estrogen have less weight gain and less belly weight than women that don't. And I will tell you, I see so many women that are in menopause or late perimenopause, they're already have gained the weight, they're already a hot mess. And when they start the hormones at that point, especially the longer out you are in into menopause, the harder it is to reverse because you would just assume like, well, if this is all happening, if I just gained 20 pounds because I lost estrogen and progesterone, testosterone, I should just be able to put it back in and everything's going to be fine. I'm going to just lose the weight. Which occasionally, yes, the unicorn, really typically, though it's not exactly. And that's when you know if you're doing all of the base things, you've put in the hormones. So your body now has the tools it needs to lose weight. You're lifting heavy, you're eating a good diet and you're still unable to lose the weight, which unfortunately, this is extremely common. And I, and I just hate. It just bothers me so much that it's not easier for us, but we become extremely weight loss resistant.

Yep.

The older we get, even if we're doing all the things and replacing the hormones. And so this is why we actually brought in the GLP1s into our practice, into our telemedicine clinic, because it was like women, we just needed that little helping hand, that little tool to help get the weight off. And these were for the women that they were doing it all right. And I used it myself. I was able, I gained that 15 pounds. I radically shifted everything, replaced the hormones, started lifting heavier, started upping my protein, and I was able to come down probably about six pounds, almost half of that. But then it stopped. And so I was still at the heaviest weight I ever was, even though I had lost that some of it. And so I had been like, okay, well, I guess this is, this is where it's going to be. And I was embracing that and going, okay, I softened a little. This is what happens with menopause. I just got to embrace it. And I would tell people that all the time, like, we need to be more accepting of this because you could be doing everything Right. And it might not come off. And then I used the GLP1 in micro doses, like small doses. Still did everything right. Worked out even harder, didn't lose any of my muscle, and was able to go back down to a healthy weight and a whole bunch of other benefits. I was actually able to come off of majority of the thyroid medication thanks to the GLP1. It was like my inflammation came down. I got a ton of other benefits from it.

And this is important. This is the big thing with GLP1s. I just was on a panel at the this event called eudaimonia with two scientists, GLP1 scientists, and then Callie Means and Jillian Michaels. And they put me in the middle. I'm like, oh, boy. And everyone's like, boys have reason. Because I'm like, use them as a peptide. Low dose. They have amazing. But where I got initially interested in them. And I love. I've been messing around with peptides now for years. And for the listener, like, peptides are just a string of amino acids. A short string of amino acids. Anyway, I was at a lecture at a medical conference, and there was a peptide scientist talking about their use for neurodegenerative diseases, of which, of course, I have a son with traumatic brain injury. So I'm like, let me see this. And I started digging into the research. I'm like, why are these not the ultimate longevity peptide? They reduce inflammation, they improve insulin receptor sensitivity, they improve microvascular dilation, they lower blood pressure. I was like, this is the most amazing thing. You just don't need to use this big old thing of it. Like it's just being dosed incorrectly.

Yes.

It's wild. And I think for a. When you look at a woman going through menopause, and if she hasn't been on hormones, so her estrogen dropped, she became insulin resistant, she became inflamed, and, you know, now her cholesterol markers are all going the wrong way. Everything is shifting not the right direction. And you can use a teeny dose of this. Like you said, it's a small dose. It's not the dose that they're using for in the medications. And all of a sudden, you drop her inflammation. You have her secreting insulin when she should and not all the time. You know, her mood improves and she can move again. I mean, are you kidding me? You can pull her out of the metabolic hole. It's like you just threw her a life raft.

Yes. Yes, it is. Like we have right now, between the two groups, we probably have about 300 and something women on them and over a thousand that have gone through. And we're just an educational source. We don't sell the peptides. These are women that are. Take. Have chosen to take the peptides. It's just a female group, midlife women. And we're. We're trying to educate that, hey, you gotta. If you're gonna do this, you gotta do it right. And you gotta make sure that you're, you know, lifting weights, that you're prioritizing protein and then you're replacing your hormones. They actually did a great study that showed that women on GLP1s lost 35% more weight. For the ones that were taking hormone replacement, they were on hormone replacement therapy. 35% more. And I will tell you, it's been a year and a half, and every time somebody in the group says, I had to increase my dose to 7.5 or I had to. I. I'm at a plateau, I can't seem to lose anymore. Or I haven't lost any. Or I lost two pounds and it's been three months. Every single time it was hormones, whether it was thyroid or her sex hormones, every single time.

That's amazing.

Yeah. And so it was like, no, nobody should have to go up there. Because if you've got all those things dialed in and you're eating right and you're exercising, I don't see people having to. This is Tirzap and I. Any. Any farther than 5 milligrams being the top of the dose?

Yeah. And for most people, it's more like one and.

And then, yes, there's like, a lot of the semaglutide, we don't see people having to go higher than 1.5. And so these are micro. This is not what your doctor is gonna. You're gonna get. It's gonna go up to 15 for Manjaro. It's gonna go up to 2.5 for semaglutide. And they just go higher, higher, higher, and don't teach them how to eat properly and how to, you know. And a lot of people don't know. And so, yes, it's been done. Being done incorrectly. And there's a lot of naysayers out there, and people are, you know, they can't handle the fact that it's like people are taking the easy way out or something. But it's like, yeah, if you could hear from these women that are like, I've tried everything I hear every single day. I'm here because I've tried everything. I'm in Perimenopause, nothing's working to get those £15 off.

And they just need the thing that starts to heal that metabolism, lower the inflammation, support appropriate insulin secretion, and that changes everything. That's the biggest message. I love that you just said that. Like, when you get into a metabolic hole, it's very hard to dig out of. You have something that can help you. Like, I think it's mental mean, you know, I do not understand. You have, like, why are, why is there all this shaming around this? It makes no sense to me. You wouldn't shame people for using a blood pressure medication, right?

Or an antidepressant or it's like saying someone that has depression, well, why aren't you just doing. Why aren't you exercising more? Because that helps you to be happier. Why don't you just be happier? And that is, that is the equivalent of what you say to somebody, especially somebody that's suffers with an eating disorder or they're obese. Saying that to them is. Is the harshest, most cruelest, judgmental thing that you could say to that person. Food is just as much of a drug as alcohol, as cocaine, as all of these things. So to tell someone just, oh, you're going to take the easy way out by taking Ozempic? Like, oh my God. And it's so mean what people say. I get so angry because I'm like, well, clearly you've never suffered with a weight issue and I. Or, or you were just one of the lucky ones that maybe some diet did work for you. But it. We know that diets fail. 98% of diets fail. That's a reality. And these drugs are close to a miracle. Like when you hear the success stories and the relief of these women. I've lost 30 pounds in the last year and a half being on this. I've never felt so good. I've put on more muscle. I'm happier, I'm not as stressed. I don't have the squirrel brain anymore. Like, they don't, they don't want to eat the sugar anymore. Like, I take a really micro dose just for maintenance because it just levels out all of my cravings. And I didn't have a ton of cravings, but. But I was still like, I liked my ice cream and I like, sometimes I'll actually not take my tirzepatide for a couple weeks so I can want ice cream. So I can. I just want to enjoy ice cream again, you know, Or I couldn't drink two cups of coffee because that second One was like, ugh, I couldn't do it. So it really helps with these things that maybe were giving you a little bit of a dopamine high before it shifts that. And that is this huge relief not to have to stressed about food anymore and just be wanting to, like, always eat really well. And it really can be a phenomenal tool.

I had a. That. That same doctor I was telling you about had a line, and it was, you don't lose weight to get healthy. You get healthy to lose weight. And I just would put metabolically healthy in front of it. And I think if people could understand that and then if they were used, my position on this panel was we're dosing it wrong. And if I were benevolent dictator of the world, what I would do is I would say, if you're gonna use these, you have to test your body composition, you have to eat optimal protein, you need to lift weights, and it's gonna completely pull you out of the metabolic hole. You'll feel great. So I love that you're doing that. Like, that's just fantastic. Now, the reason I say stalked you was. I think I may have been listening. Yes, I was. I remember where I heard. I was in London with Ben Greenfield at Health Optimization Summit, and you guys were. And listening to him on a podcast. Even though we're going out to dinner, I'm like, listen to him with you on a podcast. And you were talking about your. Your estradiol cream. And it was interesting because I used to get this compounded for myself. I didn't know that you could buy it over the counter. And I'd already been making a note to ask one of my friends here in Florida to get it compounded for me. So I've been trying to find it again, and this has been going on for months, and it just kept getting on my to do list. And all of a sudden, I listened to this podcast, and you're talking about your estradiol and estriol cream. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I can get it. So I was like, in London buying your cream to get shipped home. So that was very exciting.

Which Ben now uses my progesterone cream, which is hilarious. His wife said to me, yeah, I don't use it. Even though I sent it to her, he uses it for sleep. And so he was telling me when I met up with him, he was like, yeah, I put it on right. Like, right before I take a nap, and it just helps me to sleep better. I'm like, great, that's awesome. But yes, estrogen for the face. And if you get it from a pharmacy, you're gonna get a lot of junk in it.

I was just gonna say, you don't know what you're getting in there. And I have such sensitive skin.

Same. Well, I started at 42. I bought my own estrogen online because nobody was going to prescribe it to me. So I found this bias cream. And at that time, part of one of my symptoms was I had always had really great skin, and suddenly I was getting really enlarged pores. And I had seen this happening to other friends that were going through perimenopause, where their skin would just radically start changing and their pore size, it was. It was terrible. And this started happening to me and I was like, what is going on? I always had great skin. So into the rabbit hole I go, and I find this research on topical estradiol and estriol on the face. And within six months, pore size shrunk between 60 to 100%, wrinkle depth decreased and collagen increased. So I was sold, started using this on my face. And no word of a lie. I have never had that problem since. You won't find a pore. I mean, I'm sure there's pores. Yes. But when you look closely at my face, you don't see them.

You're not going to see them. Look at her pores. It is, it is interesting because I had a dermatologist once tell me, you know, the woman walks in, into my office, I can tell if she's on hormones or not immediately by her skin. I'm like, oh, wow. And so that's why long ago, I was like, I need, I need estrogen cream.

I did it on my face and.

I'd used it for a while and then, you know, couldn't find it. So.

Yeah, and I've heard, like, dermatologists say they'll use, like old school Premarin gel on their face. Yes. There's a really popular woman online that talks about it. Yeah, I've heard her on podcasts. I'm like, no, I would rather not put that on my face.

Yeah, I don't want to.

So I created one that you could buy. It's. It's a hormone cosmetic cream. And so it's extremely affordable as far as, like, anti aging creams.

Yeah, super. Like, compared to the other stuff I use, I go, this is the best deal on the planet.

You know, $200 for this little tiny serum bottle.

I know, but I love me some timeline Might appear. I know you're probably talking about that.

No, that's the one that I use. That young goose vital. I love them all. I have them all. And I. And I combine them with my estrogen cream because I think that there's a place for both.

So we're going to put into the show notes. You're going to give a guide which I want you to tell about, too, and 10% off, but tell them because I think there's two different types. Right?

Yes. Yes.

So what. How does someone know what they need and then tell them about the guide we're going to give too?

Yeah. So I wanted to make hormone creams available for women that can't afford it. Like to go see a hormone practitioner that specializes in hormones or they're being denied, which 95% of the time you will be denied in perimenopause hormones by your general practitioner. It's just. This is just the way it goes. They're just not educated in this. They're not the person to go to for hormones. But this is typically where women go. So I wanted to create a line of clean, affordable hormone creams that you can get without prescription, which is legal to do in the United States.

I'm just so surprised. I didn't think you could get estradiol without.

It's been like that for forever. And I have the only.

Let's keep this under wraps so that nothing changes.

I'm so afraid of it changing.

Our secret.

Yes. So right now we have a 50 milligram progesterone cream and one of the only low doses of estrad only because I'm a very big believer in estrad only, even though I have a bias cream. We.

We.

That's a whole other conversation.

That's the. What I. I use the estradiol. Well, I remember early on in hormone replacement therapy, it was always biased and now everyone's just doing estradiol. But I, I use your estradiol cream. Yes. Religiously. Face, hands, chest, neck.

Yes. And so we have a 0.25 milligram estradiol only. And then we also have a high concentrated dose of biased. And so it's got. Well, we just came out this, we just launched this today, actually, is a new precision pump for the biased. And so four pumps now equal one pump of the old cream pump, if that makes sense. So it was 4mg estriol to 1mg estradiol, which is a very concentrated dose. So now we've put it so that one pump is 0.25mg estradiol and 1mg estriol. And because both have been shown on the face to create those benefits. So I did a combination of both.

Would we be better off using that?

Yes, because it's more concentrated. I think that's the one you have.

I don't know now I don't know what I have.

I'm pretty sure that's what you have. Yeah.

Okay.

I'll send you one with the new precision part pump, though, because it makes it easier. Yeah. This is one in case you don't have it.

You will. I got one. Then I had to get another one for my travel bag. Then I was, like. Had to have one in reserve so I don't run out. I mean, there. There's very few things that I do that with. Usually I have all this stuff, and when I run out of something, I jump to the next thing. Not this. This. This stuff. Like, literally this. And timeline. Like, I'm like, those travel with me. I don't go away from them.

Yep, yep. Same. Yeah. I have to say, that's the same with me. I put it into a little travel thing, and it comes with me everywhere. Back of the hands. Great spot to put it.

Yeah.

Now, if you are in early perimenopausal days, late 30s, early 40s, you gotta be very careful, because you use enough of it, it is gonna raise levels systemically. In that research that I was talking about, it didn't raise levels systemically, but it doesn't say, like, exactly how much they were using. It was a percentage of concentration. So what we've seen is that some women who were deciding to drown themselves in micrane because they loved it so much, they. Their levels did go up, and they, like. One woman had breakthrough bleeding. And I said, well, how much are you using? And she says, a full pump. And I said, okay, well, the directions is a pea size, hence the precision pump. Right? Yeah. So we've got those three, and then the next one that's coming out is a progesterone oil in MCT oil with melatonin.

Oh, wow. Snoozy. Snoozy.

I'm right. I'm just so excited about this. Because melatonin affects our. As it drops. It does affect things like our FSH and our other hormones, and it precedes menopause. The drop in melatonin precedes menopause. So we know that transdermal melatonin, you'll get a slow. Like a timed release where it comes out slowly through the night and so it'll help you to stay asleep. Because what's one of the most common symptoms that you hear? I wake up at 2 o' clock in the morning, I can't get back to sleep.

But you still could cycle that, right? You'd still cycle this.

You would still cycle it. So it's great for women that are in, that are still cycling and that have trouble sleeping in the second half of the cycle, which is really common. So that would be great to use. Then we will come out with just a melatonin transdermal.

But for now, wow, you are doing great things over there.

It's so exciting. I have not. I, I don't know of a single other product that has progesterone and melatonin in it. I don't. It'll be an MCT oil. So legally you can't sell oral progesterone online. Oral, but you can sell transdermal. So this will be safe for oral consumption, but it is to be used transdermally. So you decide personally, I'll be rubbing it on my gums and I'll be rubbing it on my. If you wake up in the night, you can just take like a squirt either of the progesterone cream or this melatonin and just put it on your chest and you'll, you'll find, you'll go back to sleep.

That's fabulous.

It works really well.

We are going to put this. The gut. What's the guide that you're giving everyone?

So this is a user guide to hrt. It's great because it does give you that, like, here's the symptoms that you're going to be looking out for that would maybe tell you that you could be losing your hormones and then things to look out for if you maybe don't need them. You know, like if you're using it and you start experiencing estrogen dominance and what would that look like? And so it's a nice little guideline of, you know, look out for this. This could mean dropping hormones. Here's, here's our information about our creams. And then I can give some research papers that you can look at and read for yourself.

And we get 10 off. So I think that code's going to be JJ10. That's what we usually do. JJ10.

That's what we did.

Yeah. And. Okay, cool. And that everything will be at, you know, they had it@jjvirgin.com Karen I don't know in the States. I was going to do hormone cream because I feel that Karen's just become an interesting name in the States. Hormone cream.

Yeah. That works.

Oh, my gosh. It's such a. It's so funny. So. Yes. So jjvirgin.com hormone cream. You will get that guide. I'm so glad you have the symptoms in there. That's so perfect. And then also you'll have the coupon JJ10 so that you can get 10% off all this goodness over here. This cream is a do not live without cream. It's amazing. And I'm just. I literally.

It lasts forever if you're just using it topically on your face. That. That pump has something like.

Yeah, it does last forever, I can tell you.

Pumps or something like that.

I haven't even gone through the first bottle yet that I got back in July.

Yes.

Yeah.

So.

And I'm a big user, like, of things, so.

And yeah, very quickly to show changes. Like people will say, like, will write me. It write in and say, like, my necks, my skin. This was. I really listened to this one. She said the skin on my neck changed within a month. And I'm like, yeah, what menopausal woman doesn't want that? That's where we see it. Is the skin the next skin?

No gobbler for any of us.

Yes.

Not on our watch.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh, Karen, you are such a wealth. It's fabulous. Thank you. Thank you. Such a wealth of information and making super cool stuff that we all need and will love.

Yeah. And that you can trust. It's clean.

Yes. It's amazing.

Yeah.

Thank you. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and are built to last. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast at subscribe to JJ.com so you don't miss a single episode. And hey, if you're loving what you hear, don't forget to leave a review. Your reviews make a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you to spread the word about aging powerfully after 40. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next episode.

Foreign.

Hey, JJ here. And just a reminder that the well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health. You should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional and make sure that you do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.