Perimenopause with Lana Asprey

Hey, it's J.J. here. You know, I've been talking about environmental toxins forever, and laundry detergent is a sneaky one. A lot of them contain harsh chemicals like dyes, preservatives, and even UV brighteners. Those brighteners don't actually clean anything. They just coat fabric so your eyes think things look whiter or brighter. That's more chemicals I don't want on my family sheets or skin. And if you've got sensitive skin or allergies around the house, this can be a big problem. That's what got my attention about Earth Breeze. It looks like a dryer sheet, but it's actually laundry detergent. You toss one in the washer and that's it. No pouring, no mess, and no heavy plastic jug. Their packaging is lightweight cardboard, which helps reduce plastic waste. And if you choose the fragrance free option, it's gentle, hypoallergenic, non irritating, and non sensitizing. I really like how simple it is and how fresh and clean everything comes out without those unnecessary chemicals. Right now you can try Earth Breeze for up to 40% off with free gifts@earthbreeze.com virgin that's earthbreeze.com virgin for up to 40% off plus free gifts on your first order. Hey, JJ here. Can you believe how fast the holidays are knocking at the door this year? One minute it's pumpkin spice season, the next you're getting your guest room ready and wondering where their wrapping paper went. And that's when I turned to Wayfair. From bedding and towels to holiday decor and last minute stocking stuffers, Wayfair has everything you need to get your home and holidays together fast. And for way less. With Wayfair, I know I can refresh my guest room in no time. Maybe I'll add a soft new comforter or a few holiday throw pillows. With Wayfair, it's so easy and everything arrives super fast. Plus, there's free shipping for any order over $35 easy and total peace of mind. So whether you're hosting, gifting, or just adding those final festive touches, Wayfair has your back. And when the holidays wind down, Wayfair has everything you need to tuck it all neatly away. Smart storage solutions for every room from the kitchen to the closet. Get organized, refreshed and ready for the holidays. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. Wayfair. Every style, every home that's W A Y f a I r.com Ray Ban.

Meta Glasses come with open ear audio so you can listen to your favorite music without blocking out the world around you.

Hey, Meta, play Gorgeous.

Here's Gorgeous by Doja Cat.

You can also ask Meta AI questions.

Hey, Meta, when's Doja Cat's next concert? Doja Cat is playing at the Los Angeles theater next Tuesday.

Sweet Ray Ban. Meta glasses available at Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers.

Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show, where we'll connect with some of the coolest people in the world. Plus, I give you tips that you can put into fast action to uplevel your health and your life. Now, if you've been around my community, you've probably heard me talk about my brother, Dave Asprey. In fact, I've had people write in and say, hey, can you ask your brother? I'm like, well, he's not really my brother, but if Dave's my brother, then his wife Lana has is my sister. We spend a lot of time together and she is amazing, amazing person and kind of behind the scenes over there doing some incredible research and writing. She wrote the Better baby book with Dave and she's writing this perimenopause book that, that we're going to tell you about during the show and how you can get it for free. And she lives out there in Vancouver island with Dave on their bulletproof property with their biohacking lab. And she is a doc. She is a graduate of the Karolinska Institute of Medicine and Surgery in Stockholm, Sweden. Yes, she's Swedish. Her real name is Vet Lana. And we're going to talk about today what happened when she went through her her own hormonal hell. And we're going to share what she found out because as a doc, she wasn't satisfied with what she was hearing. So all the things that you don't know as you start to move into this time in your life of perimenopause and what you can do about it. And we're going to share some of our own stories, some symptoms that you never would hear about as symptoms are. It was the earliest way that I found out that I had an issue. So I'm super excited to share my buddy Dr. Lana Asprey with you. All right, let's do it. Lana Asprey, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

Thank you, Gigi. I'm really happy to be here with you today.

So my community asks about hormones all the time, so I was super excited to have you on. Because you've got some tweaks on the information that we'll be able to put into action right away. So let's jump in, because you're an internal med doc from Sweden, and now you're writing about perimenopause. So, like, why the shift?

Well, as in so many cases, it's not until you're there yourself that you realize how important it is to find some solutions. So the reason I became interested in hormones first was because we had fertility issues. And after that, when we solved that, I thought, great, my hormones are just fine, and I'm looking forward to coasting through the rest of my life with. Yeah, I do. Exactly. Yeah. So that's what I thought. Perfectly balanced.

Yeah. I'm trying to think of anyone I've heard coast.

Yeah, well, no. So, anyway, so I was coasting, and little did I know that there was a roller coaster, a really big, crazy roller coaster just waiting around the corner. So when it hit me, I was completely unprepared, which I must say is shocking. Having a medical education, you'd think I'd know about hormones. But it clearly and quickly came to me that not only didn't I know very much about hormones in terms of menopause, but a lot of doctors know almost nothing.

Yes, I. Fortunately, when I went through. Started going through, I'd been teaching a course to doctors called Overcoming Weight Loss Resistance. And one of them was, when estrogen and progesterone and testosterone start to go sideways, what do you do? So I was like, the day it started to go, I'm like, oh. You know. But then I had so many friends who were doctors. They're, like, throwing everything on me. I'm like, stop it. Stop it. So, yeah, it's. That's the biggest challenge. So let's talk about symptoms, because I know for me, like, the biggest symptom that I had that told me something was off was one I hadn't heard about from anyone. All of a sudden, I couldn't recover. When I went to the gym, I was just, like, achy all the time. So what are some of the unlikely symptoms, especially ones that maybe you went through and that you just don't hear people talking about?

Well, the one you mentioned is a symptom that you almost never read about, that you can suddenly, from one month to the next, feel like you've lost all of your fitness. What used to be simple is now like climbing Mount Everest. Literally.

Yeah, it was crazy. I literally would go to the gym. I was taking all of my exercise down by 25%. And I was just inflamed and achy. Oh, my gosh. Horrible.

Oh, for sure. And the second piece that I found, which, again, I had never, ever come across because I had always been doing endurance stuff and working long hours and at the hospital looking after kids and all of it with at least decent energy. So I found that come four o' clock in the afternoon, it was like I hit a wall, like somebody pulled the plug. And within 10 minutes, I could barely stand on my feet.

Thankfully, I didn't get that one.

But it was. It was monumental. You go from functioning at your usual speed till Suddenly, literally within 10 minutes, having zero energy, having to lie down, being very dizzy and feeling like, oh, my God, I think I'm going to pass out.

I know. And you had little kids, so even worse.

Oh, even worse. Especially when your husband is busy and travels and suddenly you're there and you're like, what am I going to do?

And no one really gets this. They're like, what? You know what? Nobody gets this up.

You know, you don't get it either, because two hours later, it's gone. Miraculously, without having done anything, Suddenly you perk up. You're like, oh, I'm good to go again. And you wake up next morning, oh, I'm feeling fine. That must have been just something really weird. What a fluke. But when it starts occurring, almost like clockwork every afternoon for the last couple weeks of your cycle, you start putting two and two together.

Well, you do, but not everybody does. And some people think they're just going crazy, so then they go to their doctor and they're told they're normal. And then what? What do you do?

Oh, my God, jj, you're spot on. That's exactly what happened. So I didn't have any hot flushes. I just had this weird, weird fatigue that would just hit me and then disappear. Hit me, disappear. Oh, and I also became dizzy. So I go to my regular primary care physician. I describe my symptoms because I don't usually treat myself. And he's like, have you ever had double vision? I said, yeah, come to think of it, on occasion, oh, we have to do a brain mri. You might have Ms. Or a brain tumor. That's what he pulled out of his hat.

That's what you got for. Oh, my gosh.

I know. So if I go, I have a brain mri, I'm thinking, no, I don't have a brain tumor. With brain tumors, you know, you have symptoms that come and get worse. And this is Just, nah. Anyway, it was clean, so nice. I come back to him and I'm like, you know, now I'm starting also to feel that I am sweating and I'm feeling really hot. He says, huh, well, you are 46. Maybe it could be hormones. He checks my hormones, they come back. Oh, they're all perfect. Yeah, but I'm not perfect. I'm feeling really well. I'm not feeling perfect.

Not feeling perfect.

What are we going to do?

Yeah. So you go to your doctor, he says, everything's fine, you feel rotten. What do you do? So what do you do?

So what did I do? I was like, you know what? I don't think you are really willing to keep working with me on this. I'll go find another doctor. So I did, and I went through several people, and unfortunately, nobody really put anything together because my hormone levels looked so good. So no one was like, we're going to give you a little bit of progesterone. We're going to give you a little bit of estrogen. No. Everybody's like, no, no, you're, you know, you have regular cycles, your hormones look great. Nothing's wrong. Your diet's fabulous. Thank you, Dave. Asri, you know, so, yeah, so I said, okay, I need to look into this myself.

So you looked into it. And so what, what did you, what did you figure out? Because I hear this all the time. Here's the worst one. Normally you go and you end up on birth control pills and Prozac. That's the typical. So, you know, I know you know better than to do that.

Absolutely. So I was, I was offered that too, because in. At the end, my endocrinologist got exasperated and she said, you know, maybe you're just depressed. I'm like, ah, no, I don't think so, honey. I am doing actually really well. The only thing bugging me is this particular thing. But I'm not depressed and frustrated. So I started putting that together. I said, okay, fine, so the hormones look good. So perhaps it's not just the hormone levels. There's got to be more than that. What else is there? You start looking at other things that relate to hormones. How about your insulin? How about your glucose tolerance? What about your pituitary? And what about your hormone receptors?

And so how did you look at those?

So I just did a whole, whole bunch of research. And first of all, I took lab tests, of course, and, you know, my insulin was fine. I didn't have insulin resistance, leptin levels were good, et cetera. All right, what I came finally to understand, through researching all of this and talking to people who were doing research in these fields, though not related to perimenopause, was that there are actually three levels to this issue. Your hormones can look fine, but they might be fluctuating just a bit throughout the day, not necessarily even throughout the month.

And this is important because, remember, you're not. We don't have a way to test that's looking at your hormones all throughout the day. We're taking a moment in time and going, oh, they're fine. And hormones fluctuate.

They do and they fluctuate, especially female hormones. I mean, in one way I'm just awed by how complex our biochemistry is. And in another, I feel like, okay, could we have not figured out something somewhat simpler that wasn't quite so sensitive? Because the hormones do fluctuate. There is a diurnal rhythm, and for some people, that rhythm is very fine tuned. And if anything throws it off just a bit and you don't have the backup that you used to have when you had higher levels of everything, then you start feeling the consequences of that. And one of the things I learned was that in fact, estrogen and progesterone fluctuate throughout the day. And progesterone starts slowing down towards the afternoon, early evening. Which is why if you have sensitive receptors, they suddenly go, oh, we don't have enough. And depending on how the rest of your nervous system is wired, it can kick off an adrenaline response. And that's what was happening for me.

And then that's why you see women sleeping like crap as they start to go through this. You know, that's another one. It's like bad sleep.

Absolutely. Because what happens there is that your body. And again, not everybody's nervous system is wired like this. You know, we're all different. Some of us have more of the parasympathetic, others have more. The sympathetic. I happen to have more of the sympathetic. So when my calming levels are even a bit off or fluctuate a little bit too wildly, the sympathetic goes into overdrive. And what happens? You end up being hungry, of course, because your body thinks that it's running away from danger, it drops your blood sugar. Not enough to qualify as hypoglycemia, but enough to stress your body out. Hence the sudden bam, I hit a wall. I don't know what to do. I'm tired. I have to go lie down.

Now. I hear. I hear the kiddos in the background. And you had kids a little bit later. So what what part does that play? Because I know a lot of people are having kids. I mean, I'm trying to think of who I know who's had. Had kids in their 20s anymore. It's like, you know, we're all doing it later.

We are. And. Well, I'm glad I had mine later. It worked well for us. But in terms of perimenopause. So there's new research just started coming out recently, last year, mostly out of Sydney, Australia, showing that women who had their children in late 30s, early 40s, it can take up to 10 years for the brain chemistry to recover after the birth of the last child. All right, so what can happen is that if you had your last child at 42, which is what I had, your hormones would be recovered by age 52, except they don't get to recover fully, and neither does your brain chemistry, because the clock ticks and says, oh, time for menopause.

Oh, my gosh. And what could you do to make your brain recover more quickly, not waiting 10 years?

Well, other than having the kiddos early.

Yeah, we can't go back and do that.

Can't go back and do that. So that's something that I feel is really important for women who have their children later in life to start considering. You have to replenish, replenish, replenish. You have to get yourself on a really good diet that gives you the right fats. Absolutely the right fats, so you can rebuild your hormonal systems. You should have proper lab testing done, not just on your hormones, but also on any neurotransmitters you can afford and fatty acids. Because what isn't stressed still is that we women, we actually empty a lot of our reserves when we go through pregnancies, even when we eat well. And we should really be on it. Recovery diet, postpartum for at least six months.

Oh, my God. And especially if you're breastfeeding, you're just dumping omega 3s, you know?

And you would know about that. Yeah. So that's one of the things. So if you've been breastfeeding, you should really, really push your vitamin levels, your omega 3s, make sure that your fatty acid profile is in balance, because that's going to help your brain recover.

All right, Now, I know we talk a lot, like we've talked on this show about hormone replacement, but besides that, besides diet, totally dialed in with diet. And besides hormone replacement, what else could you do?

So there are supplements, depending on what it is, like I found in my place. For me, what happened Was that I was kicking into the sympathetic very quickly.

And you have to explain. When you say sympathetic comparison. Pathetic. Explain. Explain what those mean for everybody in case someone doesn't know, of course.

So happy to do that. So basically, we have two nervous systems in our body. One of them is the fight and flight, which is what drives us to do things. And the other one is basically rest and recuperate, which is be calm, rest up, get some sleep, build your body back up. Right? So there's always a balance. There's a dance between those two. Now, some people have one, the sympathetic. Fight and flight. And those would be more than eight type people. Right. Theirs is often stronger. Other people who are more calm and laid back and all that there's. Parasympathetic is stronger. Right. And when I say that my sympathetic would kick in was that when my hormones started fluctuating, my body would see that as a threat and pour on the adrenaline, pour on the cortisol, and. And this would start all sorts of stress processes. It can trigger headaches, it can trigger panic attacks, it can trigger nightmares. Sweating, as in hot flashes, rapid heartbeats. You think, oh, my God, I'm having a heart attack. Take me to the ER and so on. So one of the things to work with is that you need to keep your blood sugar levels very stable throughout the day. And you can take supplements to help you manage your cortisol and blood sugar.

And this is key, you know, this is blood sugar stability is like the foundation for everything. You've got stable blood sugar, life gets better.

Every cell in our body needs stable blood sugar. So, yeah.

Yes, that's a key thing. That's why it's like you look at all of this and go wherever you are right now. You want to make sure the big things. You mentioned diet and really, like making sure you're taking care of your adrenals, you're keeping your cortisol balance. Those are key for being able to sail through this as much as you can sail through it.

Let's be.

Let's be real.

You can get off the big, big roller coaster to a smaller one.

The manageable one. The manageable one. Okay, I'm gonna throw a curveball at you. So, Lana, Lana, what's the one thing you do every day that makes the biggest difference in your life?

I get up in the morning, I walk outside my front door, I stand there, I take 10 deep breaths, I look at the sky, whether it's sunny or rainy. You know, we live on Vancouver island so often rainy. And I Go. I'm so happy to be here and I'm so grateful for this, this day. And I really do that religiously. That's what I do. And it sets me up right for the rest of the day.

I love that. It's my biggest mindset hack in Miracle. Mindset Academy is starting the day in gratitude. There you go. And I did, you know, there it is. I love that. Awesome. All right, now I know you've got something cool for everybody listening that they can get@jjvirgin.com Lana. And that's L A, N A. What is it?

So I decided, even though I'm not an endocrinologist, to put all these things, things that I found through now four years of my own reading up on this and researching to put this into a ebook. I would love to offer that to women because once I started talking about this, I cannot tell you how many women who, if you look at them, looked like they were, I mean, put together everything well, going well in their lives. And when you start talking to them, they be like, yeah, this is killing me. It's driving me nuts. My husband thinks I'm certifiable. Yeah, we shouldn't go through this. And besides, this is something husbands should read as well, so they don't just stand and go, where's the woman I married?

Yeah, I love that you have in there how to talk to your husband. Because you do. You have to explain what's going on because it's. I still remember being sleeping with my fiance and getting like, tossed across the bed. Not in a good way, unfortunately. He's like. He's like, you're a Duraflame month ahead.

You know.

Get away from me. I'm burning up.

Like, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah, Yep. So there's that. So I love that, that you can get that@jjvirgin.com forward slash Lana, all of this stuff that you found out. And Lana is a super fact finder and super smart, so she's put it all together for you. Plus how to. How to let those around, you know, what the heck's going on so they don't think you've lost it. Super important. Thank. Thank you so much for joining me. I so appreciate it. All right, after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

One of the number one reasons people have food intolerances is due to a leaky gut. But when taking out the offending foods and replacing them with healing foods isn't working fast enough for you what can you do? This is where JJ Virgin's Leaky Gut Support Formula comes in. This blend of therapeutic nutrients promotes proper intestinal function, helps heal ulcers, reduces inflammation, and supports regular bowel function. If you're struggling with gas and bloating, food intolerances, or any other digestive unrest, visit jjvirgin.comproducts today and give JJ's leaky gut support a try.

Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. Today's question comes from Barbara in Sugarland, and she says, jj, I know you've talked about your own hormonal journey. What are you doing to keep your hormones in balance? I know, I know. Such a perfect question. I had to use it for this podcast when I saw it come up. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about what I went through. I shared a little bit during the podcast. But, you know, my son Grant was a victim of a hit and run when I was 49 years old, right at the smack. Most challenging time for something like that to happen because, you know, women's hormones can start going wonky, gosh, as early as 40, but, you know, usually 45 plus. And the year before, I'd started to notice some shifts in my thyroid, some shifts in my estrogen. And so when this happened, I was already on a little bit of thyroid replacement with Dr. Alan Christensen and a little bit of an estrogen cream and a little bit of a progesterone cream and cycling. And then this whole thing hits. And one of the big things you want to think about when you're going through menopause is that you want your adrenal system to be as fired up and really working well and balanced as possible because things go all off when this starts to hit. So here's how I walk through it. Number one, you want to make sure that your thyroid's really dialed in. TSH of 0.5 to 1, somewhere in that range. Okay. I felt crappy when my thyroid TSH went over 2. That's when I noticed all my symptoms. And for me to feel really good, I stay between 0.5 and 1. You want to make sure your free T is good, 3, free T3 is good. And that your thyroid antibodies are super low. Okay? So that's the first thing, because you cannot have balanced female hormones if your thyroid's not working well. And then you course dial in your adrenals. You do that through an adrenal salivary test. So that was one that I really had to work on. Obviously, when my son was in the hospital and I was under a crazy amount of stress, so I was doing everything I needed to do to take care of myself, including good sleep and taking a lot of supplements that helped with lowering cortisol and adrenaline. Then, of course, it's eating a really good healthy diet so that your receptors stay sensitive. And omega 3s like Dr. Lana talked about, are super important for keeping your receptor sensitive so they can hear the hormones so they don't become blocked so they can hear it. And then of course, you need good healthy fats and good protein so you can carry those hormones. So you got to be able to make and carry your hormones. So that's where diet really comes into play and is super, super important. Then when you all of that's dialed. I believe in using the least amount of bioidentical hormones as possible. So for me, I use something called Nature Throid or what actually it's called Westhroid for my thyroid replacement. I do supplements to help with my adrenals, but a lot of that is really much more lifestyle. I get really good sleep and then I use an estrogen patch, estradiol, and then I use cycling progesterone for a week, a month, and a testosterone shot once a month. And it's all done with the work of an integrative doc. I have Dr. Alan Christensen helping with that, but again, I stepped into it. My feeling is that you, you've got to dial in your thyroid, your adrenals, your diet, your lifestyle to support hormone balance and then use the least amount of any of those things while monitoring as possible and find yourself a great functional medicine doctor who specializes in this. All right, if you'd like to submit a question, just head over to my Facebook page at JJ Virgin Official. Look for the little blue check mark. I watch for questions because I love to line up the questions with the podcast at hand. So put them on out there and I have favor to ask. I would appreciate it so much if you could jump on Stitcher or itunes and leave a review for me. It helps a bunch. And while you're there, subscribe and share the show with your friends. Thank you. All right, this is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you to live courageously.

Show up, step up.

You are stronger than you think.

Toyota Thon is on. So stop by your local Toyota dealer and test drive a stylish new Camry or sleek and capable Corolla with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com for more toy yoga. Let's go places.

The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US Based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday work with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.