During menopause, your body raises cholesterol to make more testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone as ovarian production drops. This shift also triggers insulin resistance and changes where your body stores fat, which becomes more inflammatory and produces its own estrogen.
Why are we seeing cholesterol go up? Well, cholesterol is a precursor to testosterone and estrogen and progesterone. So our body's actually trying poorly. These are compensatory, not so great mechanisms, but cholesterol goes up because we're trying to get some hormones in our body. And then insulin resistance, our fat. So a lot of people will say you don't always gain weight, but at least your fat distribution, right? Your body masses changes. I like to call it shifting sands. Shifting sands, I like it. It's like, oh, I do not want that. Oh, the shifting sands. So adipose tissue, poorly inflammatory, makes estrogen. And so it's like the body's actually kind of smart trying to eke out some neurohormones when the ovaries have outlived their life. I just like thinking about it that way because it helps it make sense. As others are like, why is this happening? It's like it's happening for a reason. Yeah. None of this is, is different. Once you are going back to what you said, once you understand physiology, once you understand cellular mechanisms, Once you understand that cholesterol is a precursor to neuro— these neurohormones, it's not confusing anymore.
