"Doctors Are CLUELESS About Women's Bodies" - How To Take Your Power Back & HEAL

Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. A warm dinner, a full table, a peace of mind for every family. That's the holiday we all wish for. The Feeding America Network helps make it possible not just for one family, but for communities everywhere. Because when we act together, hope grows. Give now and your impact may be doubled. Visit feedingamerica.org holiday the Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a bold design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live. And with Sirius xm, everydrive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, the sports talk and podcasts that you love right in your vehicle or on the SiriusXM app. Every SiriusXM equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three month trial, so the experience begins the moment you drive. Learn more@kia.com sportage-hybrid Kia Movement that inspires Being smart with your money is one of the best ways to invest in yourself and your future. With State Farm Personal Price Plan, you can create a competitive price just for you when you choose to bundle your home and auto insurance. That way you can keep more of your money focused on your goals. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. So what would you say is the differences between how men should be thinking about burning fat versus how women should be thinking about burning fat? Unwanted fat?

Yeah. Oh, it's such a good question and one I've never been asked before. And here I'm going to make a really bold statement that I don't think a lot of women will love, but it's part of living in a female body. Is that a little bit of. We're meant to have a little bit of fat.

Oh, don't say that.

I know, right, right. Like a little bit. I'm not saying like, but we're not meant to be skin and bones. We're meant to have a little bit of extra fat. It's part of like the female body. And because here's what's interesting, both men and women have. The body has one major thing it's focused on, which is survival. But women have two we have reproduction. So our bodies always. It doesn't want to be think about when we're too thin, we, we bring calories down too much, our cycles stop.

Right.

So we need a little bit more padding to make the reproductive system work. Men don't need that.

And if a cycle stops for a woman, is that a bad thing?

Oh, it's a horrible thing.

Why is that bad?

Yeah, and thank you for asking that. I will say that one of the biggest ahas I've had from this book going out in the world is how many 20 and 30 year olds don't have a cycle.

Really.

So this is what women need to know. Your cycle is, is a detox. You are shedding the inner lining of your uterus and you are getting rid of what is not serving you. So it's not just an a, a troublesome situation you have to deal with. Your body is getting rid of hormones, it's getting rid of toxins, it's how we detox.

It's recycling. Yeah, it's kind of like a fast.

It's like a fast, really.

So a cycle is detoxing and getting rid of toxic things in the female body.

That's right.

And it happens once a month.

Right.

Every 28, 30 days.

Roughly 28 to 32. No woman has the exact same, I mean every woman's different. But 28 to 32, does it usually.

Go in the same time for most women or when does it line up? And why do you hear that? Some women and families or friends say, oh, our cycles are aligned. Does it have anything to do with astrology or the moon? Does it have to do with what you're eating, how you're sleeping, your environment, your mood cycles, your age? How does it all work?

It's kind of all of it really. So here's something that I think women really need to know that is again different than men and that's that our bodies are always adapting to our environment. Women's are, women's are. So if, if we're, if too many, if we're restrictive, too much with our calories, this is why I taught fast like a girl when to fast and when not to fast. If we're too extreme with our exercise, if we're too extreme with our, our stress levels, whatever environment we're putting in, our hormones are like navigating that and adapting to that.

And your cycle will change based on that.

Your cycle will base change, change based on that. I'll give you a great example. I had a friend who had, she had three at the time. She had two kids and was trying to get pregnant with a third. And she was struggling to get pregnant with a third. And she waited a year to go to this reproductive specialist who had her filled out. Fill out, like, you know, mounds of paperwork. She goes, after a year of waiting, she sits down with this guy and he says, I'll tell you how you need to get pregnant. You need to stop doing so much.

Wow.

You need to stop stressing so much. And she was so upset, she left. And she's like, I waited a year. I filled out all that paperwork. And then she was like, and that's what he told me. And she goes, and then I decided to try it. And within a month, she was pregnant.

Really? Why do you hear this a lot from, you know, women who. Who say they can't get pregnant? And then you hear stories of, well, they were too much in control or they were stressing too much. And the moment you let go and surrendered, then they got pregnant. Why do. Why do we hear that so frequently?

Yeah. So if you think about it, if reproduction is a top priority for a female body, if you're under so much stress, the body is like, it's not safe to house a baby.

Interesting.

The body's always doing the right thing at the right time. So if it's not able to have a baby, the first thing you have to ask is, for the female is, does my body feel safe? And sometimes you'll love this. Because you're such a mindset expert, I was gonna call you a guru. You're a mindset guru. If you are thinking toxic thoughts, if you are constantly under, like, not dealing with traumas in your life, if stress is really high, the body is always feeling like it's under threat, your hormones will go massively out of bounds.

Really?

Yeah.

So your hormones are connected to the way you think also.

Absolutely.

Do you think if a woman is subconsciously knows that they're in a relationship with the wrong person, they married the wrong person, or they're trying to have kids with some man that subconsciously they know they're not supposed to do you think that their cycle will be off or they won't get pregnant because they think that way?

I think it's very possible.

Really?

There's some interesting studies. I want to go back to the.

Because I don't feel safe.

Yeah.

Wow.

You have to feel safe for your hormones to be balanced. That's why fasting didn't work for women to do all the time. Because people. The body was like, it's too stressful. It's too stressful. But cycling, fasting works for women because you're using the principles of fasting to heal, and you're using the principles of food to nourish yourself so the body feels safe. And you do that in accordance with your hormones and your cycle. And the body's like, I'm safe. I can release weight.

I want you to talk about cycling and fasting in a moment, but I think I just cut you off from something you were going to say.

Yeah. So I want to talk about. I wanted to go into the pheromones for a second because why do we cycle together? And then I wanted to talk about one study about birth control that was really interesting. So we cycle together. Women do, because as. As crazy as it sounds, we smell each other. Really? Yeah. So there's a scent that we give off, and it changes our cycle. That's how powerful a woman's body is and how it will adapt to the environment it is in.

So when you smell another woman who has. It'll know when the cycle is happening, and it'll sync up your hormones with theirs.

Yes, but. But it's when you're, like, in families.

And work and family, when you're constantly.

With that person, it's constantly. It's not like you go out into the world.

It's not like you see your girlfriend once a month, and, oh, we're going to sync up right now.

They're called pheromones.

Pheromones.

Isn't that crazy?

That's fascinating.

Okay, second interesting study.

What is the reason behind that? You know, pairing of cycles within families or communities? Is that. Is there a safety thing when you're both in a cycle at the same time? Is it?

That's a great question. I always go back to our primal caveman days. I'm like, why did they. Because that's where you can really see. Why did we do that?

I guess men back in the day used to spread their seed a lot.

Maybe that was it. Maybe that was it. There was a lot of.

Who knows? To multiple women at once. It's true. I mean, in tribal days, it was like, okay, the man with the most money or the doctor or the. Whatever, the person with the most resources is able to kind of spread their seed to as many people as possible for survival?

Yeah, it's possible. I think there's something I wrote in both my books called the hormonal hierarchy, and it works in women because our hormones are more complicated and the hierarchy looks like this.

Wait, you guys aren't simple.

We're not okay.

Are you just figuring that out right now? We're not. It's so funny. So many men say to me, like, you said it, I didn't say it. So. And this is why I love conversations like this. Let's just. Yes, we're not simple and our moods constantly change.

Well, I think you can be simple when you understand a lot of this stuff, as opposed to feeling like, I don't know how to understand. Why is. Why am I feeling this way? Why are you feeling more stressed this time?

Yeah.

When we have awareness and we have an understanding of our body as a man, as our body, our hormones, or a different environment, things like that, we feel more at peace. It doesn't mean it's going to give us 100% peace, but we're going to feel like, okay, I have a sense of understanding around it.

That's right.

I think when women get understanding around their bodies, their cycles, their hormones, like why they're gaining weight and why they're losing weight and all these different things, when they're aware of it, they don't feel. They don't have to feel as bad or shameful or anxious or stressed about it. Yes, right.

Yes, that's perfect.

But at least you have awareness.

You nailed it. And this is why I'm trying to open this conversation up so we can all talk about it. If you look at what we've done historically in our culture and is women don't. We don't want to talk about our periods. We don't want to talk about menopause. We don't talk about it. It's like a shameful thing that we have to hide. And that's now changing, which is really great. But if we can bring it to the surface and talk about it, men and women can understand each other. Women can understand each other better. So it's so important that we bring it to the light. So. But here's what I want to go back to this fair.

I've gone off so many different tangents.

I know, but you've got me thinking and excited. So here's what I think happens is, is in this hormonal hierarchy, in order for your sex hormones to be balanced, you have to be insulin sensitive. You have to have that system. Right. Which is why I think fast, like a girl is so many women are getting their cycles back. They're getting pregnant for the first time because I help them see how to do that. But what's in charge of insulin is cortisol. So like we talked about, well, okay, if cortisol is high, you. You become more insulin resistant and you have a harder time balancing sex hormones.

And cortisol is stress.

Cortisol is stress.

And is stress based on food stress, lack of sleep, stress, environment stress, relationship stress. All of it.

All of it. Fasting raises cortisol.

Right.

Exercise raises cortisol, which is why we have to do it differently as women.

Interesting.

But at the top of that all is oxytocin. And this is why I think perhaps we smell each other and would cycle together. Because women are right. Women are meant to be in community. Because when oxytocin and we're connecting with each other, then cortisol goes down. This is why you should always let your gal go out on ladies night. Always?

Yeah.

Because now she gets oxytocin. It brings cortisol down, she's more relaxed. And then when she's more relaxed now, all the dieting and exercise that she wants to do makes her is going to work. And when that regulates insulin, now we can balance her hormones.

Wow.

So we're. We're just humans in general, but women are geared towards connection.

And so what about, you know, so you mentioned cycling, fasting, or fasting while cycling. How do we know. How does a woman know when to fast and how frequently to fast? Based on their cycle.

So in Fast Like a Girl, I created something called the fasting cycle for women. And basically I walk through the whole menstrual cycle, and I'll give you the basic principles of it.

Break it down for me.

Yeah. And showed women, this is when you fast, this is when you don't fast. And then I timed it to six different level fasts.

Give me the 101 of a menstrual cycle.

Okay. This is gonna be great.

When does it start or what happens? The day it starts versus when it ends.

Okay, great. And then you gotta go home tonight.

And be like, this is what I learned.

Yeah. And let me know how useful this is. Yeah. Because it's really interesting. If more men understood this, I think you'd understand the women in your life more. Okay. Day one through day ten. Day one is the day you start to. A woman bleeds. A lot of women don't realize that that's day one. So you have to use feminine care products. It's day one so your hormones actually come crashing down at that point. And for the next 10 days, you're going to specifically build a hormone called estrogen. Estrogen needs you to be insulin sensitive. So keeping your carb load down, keeping fasting longer, exercising More, Really? Those first 10 days, a woman can.

Do it, then that's when you can fast.

Yeah.

And exercise more.

Yeah, yeah.

Day one through ten.

Day one through ten. And that's where keto works. That's where, you know, the low, whole low carb situation worked really well in those first 10 days. The other unique thing about estrogen is when cortisol shows up, she doesn't care as much. She's a little tolerant of cortisol. The other interesting thing for you to know with anybody who's got a woman in their life, those first 10 days, when estrogen builds estrogen, one piece of estrogen, it's called estradiol, stimulates dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, bdnf, acetylcholine, glutamate. So she's going to be happy, focused, more outgoing, want to socialize more, really.

In the first 10 days?

Yeah. Give her a couple days after she starts to bleed. But as she gets closer to day.

10, because usually when it starts, you hear people say, a little more moody. Right.

I think that's because we don't mind the back half of our cycle, really. So when I go all the way through, I'll explain that.

Okay. Yes.

Yeah.

Because Martha, my fiance, she really doesn't get moody like she has. She doesn't get cramping. You know, it's really rare. If she feels pain or feels. She might, for like a couple hours, be like, I just want, like, to cut a little more or something like that. But I don't know, maybe that's.

She might be doing this right, though. We're not meant to have pms is because we're going against our. Our natural rhythm.

Really?

Yeah. Bad menopause symptoms also going against natural rhythms.

How many women do you think, percentage wise, have, you know, intense pms?

Oh, I would say the majority of them, really. But think about it. Women exercise the same all month long. Women eat the same all month long. Women don't think about, oh, progesterone's coming in. I maybe need to slow down my life a little bit right now. We don't talk like that until this moment in time. And this is what, again, another thing. I'm trying to open up this conversation. So we have been trying to diet and exercise and live life very much like a man.

Right. Especially in, like, the coastal cities. You see, you know, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but you see women going to the gym five, six days a week or getting up early and intense, yoga, hot Yoga every single morning. It's like you got to get it in and you got to work hard. And it sounds like yes, for a period of the month, but not the entire month.

Exactly.

Or for part of the week, but not the end. Every day.

Exactly.

That's what I'm hearing.

You say yes, got it. And that is so important for women to hear. And when I get to the back half of the cycle, you'll understand why. But we, our hormones pulse in and out in a 28 to 32 day period. You all have one hormone, you have testosterone.

That's it.

That's it.

How many hormones do women have?

We have, well, sex hormones. Let's like. So we have three. But you also have estrogen. But you make testosterone, it goes up into the brain and converts into estrogen. So the conversion happens in the brain. So all you have to think about is make more testosterone. And you get it every 15ish minutes.

Every 15 minutes?

Yeah. Just pulses in really. Hormones are always pulsing so they pulse in every 15 minutes and then it goes away. Then it pulses in and then it goes away naturally. Yeah, you're highest in the morning. Testosterone's highest in the morning.

Women, that's why men usually have, you know, extra sex drive in the morning.

That's exactly why men are have a higher sex drive in the morning. And it's a good time to work out. But if you use testosterone for you all when testosterone comes in, if you're lifting weights, you're going to help build that muscle more. We only get testosterone, check this out. We only get testosterone. A big surge of it. Day 11 to day 15, you don't.

Get it for 10 days.

Yeah, really, it comes in, in a big surge.

Right.

In ovulation. So it's a great time for a woman to build muscle. It's, you're going to notice her libido is going to go up.

She doesn't want to have sex during.

Then she's going to want to have sex more. Then that one is like mind blowing. Right. How many men and women are a mismatch? And again we're, this is purely obviously a heterosexual moment. But you, how many men and women don't feel like they're sexually matched? Right. But yet do we understand that women get that surge of testosterone in that five day period?

That's interesting. How do you time that up though? It's like okay, day one, she's got her period, she started bleeding. Right. And you think, okay, 11 days from now. Let me put a mental note or put it in my calendar. Okay. This is gonna be the day.

Right.

That doesn't sound so sexy, though, when you think about it. Let me mark this on my calendar and really be aware of when she's gonna be available at the best time.

Well, so here's what you can do is. I mean, I'm not saying don't have sex the rest of the. I'm just saying you got a shot, a big shot at that point. So just be aware of that.

Sure, sure. The woman may be more aroused.

That's right.

Gotcha.

She might have more desire naturally. Yeah.

And she can't even control it. She can't. I mean, well, the body is surging with the hormones, right?

Sure, yes.

I mean, I guess you could mentally block it, but the body is naturally more turned on.

The body is naturally more turned on.

Okay. I mean, yes, you can control anything, but I'm just saying the body, you can't block the hormone.

I was thinking of, like, all these. This visual of like all these women.

Like, jumping on men, ripping their clothes off.

That's right. It's not like that.

I can't control it.

It's not like that.

Yes, but the body, unless you, I guess, medically or put some medication, you can't block these hormones. That's what you're saying.

That's right. Well, I mean, there are. There are situations like birth control pill has blocking it. Yeah.

You're taking a medication to block it's changed it.

It's synthetically directing it.

And when a woman has been on birth control for multiple decades, what challenges might come up in their bodies with their hormones?

Well, this is a big. A major issue for women, especially the younger women, is because it takes a couple of years for the pattern, that of the brain and the ovaries to get to know each other. So if we come in with birth control a year after a woman started her period, there's never an internal innate sense of the body. And then we keep women on birth control until menopause, and we take her off of menopause, and now she has a serious hormonal issue because she never learned that pattern.

Wow.

So that's. One second. One is horrible for the microbiome. It decimates the microbiome. And. And you need your microbiome to make serotonin. You need it for immune system. You need your microbiome to break down estrogen. So.

So when you take that pill and it's like a daily pill for like, what, 10, 12 days or something?

Yeah.

It's on a month, like half the month.

Yeah.

You take it for two weeks.

Yeah. You have a cycle according to them.

When you take it, you take it daily for like two weeks or whatever it is. What is in that pill and what is it doing to your gut? Microbiome.

Yeah.

And what it's doing to your brain.

Yeah.

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Well, so it's controlling hormones for you. So you're adding in hormones into your body. So it's doing the controlling instead of the body naturally doing it.

Is that good?

My opinion is no. But we have to really think about what the alternative is. We don't have any. And here's a question for you. I asked my 21 year old son this recently. It's what has become standard for women to be the ones in charge of birth control. And when you look at the birth control pill, it is exogenously from the outside controlling our hormones, which is setting us up for a whole bunch of hormonal problems. There's some new research where they're looking at a pill for a man that would change the semen, the sperm.

Right.

Change sperm, huh? Now would you take it?

I wouldn't take it.

Why wouldn't you take it?

Why would I want to block my body's natural way of being then?

The same as goes for women.

Yeah. I'm not saying women should take it.

I know, but, but that, that's the, that's the, that is why.

And I also, I wouldn't take it unless they were like, listen, there are zero side effects and right when you got off of it, you would be perfectly back to where your body was in sync and your sperm would be Just as optimized or healthy or powerful, whatever it is. And there wouldn't be. You know, you wouldn't hurt your sperm later.

Yeah.

Then I'd be like, okay, well, if there's decades of research and this is proven and babies are still okay afterwards, you know, then I'd be like, oh, maybe. I don't know, if I was 20 or something, but it's not something I would take right now.

So that's. What's happening to women really, is that we have manipulated our hormones, and this is why. So women's health is in a really disastrous place right now. So I totally hear what you're saying, and I would agree, like, yeah, your logic is right. But we've been doing this to women forever.

Why? I mean, this is probably a whole nother subject, but why is birth control such a normal thing if it's so bad for women's bodies?

Yeah, it's. Why do we do it is because the alternative is nobody wants to have a child young. A young child.

Yeah.

And what's more.

What's more painful hurting your body for decades and maybe a lifetime? You know, having a child young, I get it's a big risk, and there's a lot of pain and pressure that could come to that, along with a lot of beauty and wonder and magic as well. But at what price?

Somewhere along the line, we decided that the woman was in charge of the birth control process, and we didn't think. And I will say this with as much kindness as I can.

Yes. And I'm not here to judge people.

Yeah, no, me neither.

My sisters were both on birth control for a long time. That's one of the reasons why I asked, because one of my sisters was on birth control, I think, for two decades, and she couldn't get pregnant, and it was devastating. For, like, four or five years, she was trying, and she could not get pregnant to the point where she gave up.

Yeah.

She was just, like, in tears for months. Sad that she wasn't able to have a child.

Yep.

And there were some other complications. I can't remember the terminology of things. It was something she had, but it wasn't. It wasn't in her cards anymore.

Yeah.

And she was in her late 30s, and she was devastated.

Yeah.

And then she got off of birth control and just said, okay, well, I guess I'm not going to be a mom. And then four or five years later, she was able to have a child. Like, it kind of magically happened. And now she's got an amazing one and a Half year old son. So it's a beautiful thing now, but it was really scary and painful for many, many years and it's sad to see. And it affected her hormones and different things. It took time for the body to re regulate.

That's it exactly. I mean, you just painted the picture that so many women are struggling with. And so when we come in with an outside source to manipulate our hormones, when we get off of that outside source, we don't have a natural rhythm. And that's honestly one of the things that I'm seeing with Fast like a girl, when I go and read my reviews and see how people are responding to it, is I just gave a lifestyle that allowed women to get back into routine with her hormones. So it's awesome. She has it now. It took her four to five years. But what I'm hoping is that we can use lifestyle as a way to give that rhythm back. Right.

And you said between day 11 and 15, that's when there's a surge of testosterone for women in their cycle. What happens after day? And that's when they, that's when they can be working out harder. That's when you can go to the gym four or five days that week and push it a little more.

Well, so day one through day ten, you can do the hard workouts. Day 11 to day 15, you get the most amount of testosterone you'll ever get. You have the most amount of estrogen you'll ever have, and a little bit of progesterone. So let's talk about that period because it's a really cool period. So testosterone is libido and motivation and drive estrogen. She's gonna wanna talk to you. She wants to have a. So if you wanna have sex with her, you better talk to her first. Cause during that time she's got estrogen. She wants to verbally process with you.

So her brain, especially late at night when you just were asleep, her brain.

Is like on fire. And then she's got progesterone, so she's a little bit calm. So that is, I call it, I called it in the book, the manifestation phase. Because I was like, oh, we are super, our superpowers, like we put on our hormonal superpower cape and we could manifest a baby, we could manifest a raise, we could manifest some new project at work because all our hormones show up then.

So for those four days is it just. You're sharper, you're more focused, you're more energized, you're clear, you're like Goal oriented during those days. You know what you want to create.

That's how we should be. So women listening that are like, I don't feel like that. I'm going to ask you to look at. Are you, are you living a lifestyle in accordance with your hormones? Okay, so let's go to your fiance who is like, this is kind of, you know, her period and menstrual cycles. Easy. She's probably, if you, if she looked at it, is living in accordance with her hormones.

She is. She is, yeah. She's doing amazing.

Yeah.

She's got great family relationships, great friendships. She's got a meaningful work that she loves. She eats very well, you know, very clean. She rests well. She's. And she's positive and joyful. She has an attitude of just gratitude and giving and thoughtfulness and I love that accepting. She doesn't hold on to grudges.

Yeah.

Like she has a calm mind in the sense that it's not a rigid mind.

Yeah.

She lets go of things.

That's amazing.

She creates boundaries and lets gos of things. Right. She give, forgives people. So she doesn't have a lot of stress and tightness internally.

Yeah.

I think that allows her to flow and not be in pain or have PMS or be like cramping a lot or off cycles.

You nailed it. I mean, you just gave the formula for oxytocin.

Really?

So she gets a lot of oxytocin is what I just heard all day. Yeah. So it's balancing everything else out.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I'm curious, how is this possible that there's only eight hours of, I guess, educational training for menopause when I've also heard you say about a third of all women are in some stage of menopause right now?

I think it's multifactorial as to how we got here. And I left, I was a program director in 2018. I left that job. So I was teaching at an academic institution. I had seeing patients, teaching med students, residents. But I was in charge of the curriculum for the residents as dictated by the American Board of obgyn. Okay. So I know exactly up until that point what was required and menopause was required. But we didn't have menopause clinics. We didn't have more than just a few required lectures. It was really just menopause is the end of the period you might get osteoporosis. Just the most cliche kind of basic, basic learning. No nuances about treatment and training. And so, you know, how do we get to where this is a natural process, but it affects 100% of women who live long enough completely going into ovarian failure, okay? Loss of all of sex hormone production from the ovaries, pretty much. And then she's expected to live the last third of her life without the benefit of her sex hormones. And no discussion around how that affects her heart or her brain or her bones or her general urinary system or her mental health, you know, and how, like, we can shepherd her through this last third of her life to live as healthfully as possible, you know, by limiting these effects of the hormones. And so, I mean, I went through the training program, I was all on board till 2018, until I realized I went through menopause and was like, wait a minute, this is much bigger than we're teaching, than I was taught, than what I actually believed as an OB gyn.

When you started entering menopause, did you think that you were prepared and educated?

Not at all.

Even though you were treating women and helping women in menopause for years, you didn't feel prepared?

Gas lit myself for probably six months. So a lot of things were happening to me at once. As most women my age at that time, what was happening? So I was 48. I had been on birth control pills for treatment of polycystiovarian syndrome, which worked great for me. It's not for everyone, but I was. I was fine on them and had been on them for years and years, decided to come off and to see where I was at hormonally at 48. 48. And so average age of menopause is 51. So I figured it was coming, okay, let me see where I'm at. And I get off and I'm like, my brother gets really sick. So I'm from a huge family. I have six brothers and one sister. My oldest brother died when I was nine. My next brother, Bob, the second in line, had HIV and hepatitis. And so he. I got a call from the hospital. I was in the or, and I get a call, like an emergency call, and they kind of put the phone up to my ear. I was finishing a case that my brother had had a stroke and was in the hospital. And he'd been kind of in and out of the hospital for a while, so he was in the end stages. And so I just, like, went home. He got discharged from the hospital to hospice, and my sister and I did his end of life care. And like, everybody come into that really was a beautiful way to die, you know. But I had just stopped my birth Control pills. And I just kind of forgot. Now, remember, I had been on them for treatment of a condition where I didn't have periods. Okay? So me not having a period was not a red flag. So here I am, months into this. I think I'm grieving, which I was. But every single thing that I'm going through, I'm attributing to my grief. Definitely there was something there. But then as the grief fog starts to lift and I'm trying to get back into my habits, I'd gained weight, and I wasn't sleeping. You know, I realized, wait, when was my last period? This is a hot flash. You know, Like, I. I'm in menopause. Like, I literally could not figure it out for months in myself. And so I always thought I would treat hormone therapy like an epidural in.

In labor.

Like, we'll see how I do. You know, if I'm a good girl and I'm strong, I won't need it, right?

You know, if I could take the.

Pain, of course I got an epidural at 3 cm, which is in the process because I was in so much pain. And so I felt like hormone therapy was an act of not being strong enough and throwing in the towel. I had no idea the protective benefits of HRT for my heart, for my brain. You know, All I knew was it was the last ditch treatment for debilitating hot flashes. And that pretty much there wasn't much else he could do for me. And so I go on HRT because I can't sleep. And I know if I don't sleep, I'm. I'm setting myself up for failure and everything. Plus, I was working shift, work at the hospital. You know, very busy life, trying to raise teenagers, Teenagers, all the things. And immediately I feel better. And all of a sudden, other things are getting.

After therapy, after hormone.

After starting hormone therapy, okay, I start sleeping. The hot flashes go away. But also, like, the weird joint pain I was having gets better, gets better. Some of the brain fog lifts. I'm like, whoa, this is a bigger deal. The same time, I was struggling to lose some of the weight I gained through the grieving process. And what now I know was menopause, and I couldn't get it off. And I'd been thin. I'd had thin privilege most of my life. Like, I, you know, could diet for a week and get back into whatever, jeans, and, you know, I just. It was easy for me. It was like melting off, and it was not coming off. And it was about £20. It was all in my midsection and I was like banging my head against the wall, like getting up at 5am to go work out. I was doing two a days. I was calorically restricting to dangerous levels. I was doing all the negative, negative things. And my husband like pointed out, your girls are watching.

You're what?

Your girls are watching.

Like they're modeling after what you're doing.

You're exhibiting behavior. I was like literally an almond mom, you know, like I was just, and judging them for their food choices. And it was all really about me. And so my husband was like, I was, he was going on a trip and it was like a two week trip. And he said, I said, when you get back, I'll lose this £10 or whatever. And he goes, I don't care what you look like. Like, I love you, you're beautiful, but you're not happy. Like you're, you're, you're getting up at night to pee and you're weighing yourself. You're constantly talking about your weight. You're, you're, you know, this isn't working. And what do you tell the kids when you can't exhibit, you know, you can't expect change if you keep utilizing the same behaviors. And he's like, figure it out. You're smart, you're a doctor. And so I took that as like a challenge. And so I went to the PhDs at the university I was employed at and you know, I was everybody's doctor at that point. I was like, what's going on in menopause? I can't lose weight. My patients aren't losing weight. What is this around my middle? And they're like, well, that's visceral fat. I'm like, what's that? Because you don't, I didn't even know, right? You know, like I didn't even know the difference between subcutaneous and visceral fat. Like we learned nothing about nutrition in medical school. I mean the minimum. And so they send me a few articles, I just start going down rabbit holes about inflammation and visceral fat and nutrition. And so that's where, you know, the whole my first toe in the water with menopause was let's get this weight off. And it was the pain point for so many of my patients.

What is the number one pain point for women in menopause? Is it getting rid of excess weight? Is it dealing with hot flashes? Is it dealing with.

So when we look at. So for forever, menopause was only quantified by absence of Periods and hot flashes. Those were the top two. But when you actually.

What is a hot flash?

Good question.

Just so I can be.

Yeah.

A hot flash is a thermoregulatory dysfunction. So there's a little thermo temperature gauge in our hypothalamus, in our brain, and it has a really a set point. And when our estrogen levels decline, we end up with dysregulated serotonin, which then resets the temperature gauge. So what we used to just kind of go with the flow. All of a sudden, we'll have this profuse sweating. Profuse. Like most women, it'll start somewhere in their chest area, and you'll feel this heat building, and then it'll just rise up. I can probably make it happen. Go up into your neck, and then your head starts sweating. It's going down your arms. I mean, some women will drench their entire clothes, but it usually starts central and it goes peripheral. It lasts seconds to minutes, really. But it is completely disruptive.

Does it. Is it happen multiple times a day?

It depends on the patient. So it could be. Some patients will have multiple times a day, like to the point where she. You know, so that's severe. Some will have it once a week. It really does vary from woman to woman, and it's not really tied to exact estrogen levels. So it's more to do with neurotransmitters and how those are affecting her. But 85% of women will have those. But probably 90 to 95 will have body composition changes. Almost 100% will have fatigue. Like, differences in almost every single woman that I talked to was like something wasn't right. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I felt different. And either it was through sleep or her, what her body was doing, but like, she wasn't changing anything in her nutrition, in her exercise, in her stress levels. Like, everything was stable, but her body was changing. And the thing is, we have estrogen receptors in every organ system of our body, and it will affect each of us differently. And so doctors love the duck. You know, walks like a duck, talks like a duck, quacks like a duck. It's a duck. Right? So we have these checklists of things. Da, da, da, da. Okay, this is the flu. This is, you know, broken leg, this is whatever. But menopause.

Yeah. The symptoms of menopause.

Right.

Are variable. So 85% of the top flashes. Sure. 100% of women will lose their fertility and their periods will stop. Normal regulatory periods will stop, but probably 90% you know, fatigue, probably 80%, sleep disruption. 50% of women at any time will have sexual dysfunction. So changes in libido, pain, you know, we see almost 100% body composition change. So not just weight gain, but where we gain weight changes. So we stop depositing fat so much in the subcutaneous area. We can still do that, but we start shifting a lot of fat to the intra abdominal cavity or that visceral.

Cavity you're talking about from the legs and the butt to the stomach.

Yeah, yeah. So when most women, typically estrogen drives a more pear shape, which is natural and healthy, versus all of a sudden you're having new fat in the abdominal cavity.

Half pair.

Yeah. Suddenly you look pregnant. So. Yeah. Or their pants are getting tight and they can't figure out why.

It seems like there's a lot of challenges or changes that women go through during this period of time. And how long does menopause tend to last for?

Yeah, great question. So menopause is actually one day. So let's let me walk you through all these definitions. It's so confusing. So menopause is, is medically defined, which I think is a terrible thing. One year after your last menstrual period, that is menopause. And it's one day. Everything after that is post menopause and everything before that. So you go normal reproductive cycles, that very 30 years or something. EKG, like ebb and flow of your hormones that happen each month in a healthy patient. Very predictable. Right. So we know she's going to peak on day 14 with estrogen and then that's going to drop and it's going to rise a little bit more, but then we'll have a surge of progesterone and the whole thing starts over every month. And that's very, very predictable. Perimenopause is when that predictability starts declining until your period stops.

So it could be once every two weeks. It could be.

It could be ten times a day. It could be. It's very, very variable. So here's why. Here's why and what I think your listeners and followers should understand. Difference between us. I was born female, you were born male. Right. You make your genetic material in the testes every day and you can do that probably till you die. It might be a little harder as you get older, but you can do it. Right. Females are born with all of their eggs and it has to last them until they go away. So we actually reach our maximum egg count 5 months in utero when we're. Our moms are still pregnant with us. And then they decline. So we lose quality and quantity over time.

How many eggs do you. Most women start with at birth?

1 to 2 million.

2 million eggs. Holy cow.

And then by the time we're 30, we are down to 10% of our egg supply, roughly about 120,000. And then by the time we're 40, we're down to about 3%. And menopause is when you have no more eggs.

You're done. It's the day all your eggs are gone.

It's. Yeah. And there's nothing else? No sex hormones are being produced by the ovaries anymore, usually.

What's the average age of that?

Yeah. So menopause, 51. Average. However, normal is still 45 to 55. Peri. And I'll walk you through that. Peri begins seven to 10 years before that. So the hypothalamus, pituitary, right? Two glands in the brain. You probably know them well. The hypothalamus is constantly sampling our blood for estradiol. It is what drives that monthly period. Okay, so the brain is like, we're good. Estrogen levels are good. Oh, they're getting low. They're getting low. Sends something called GnRH, gonadotropin releasing hormone to the pituitary. Pituitary is like, all right, boss, I got it. Starts pumping out LH and fsh, which are stimulating the ovaries to ovulate and make those hormones. Right? And so what happens when we start losing quality? We reach some critical threshold in the number and quality of our eggs. Then the brain's. Then the ovaries, like, can't do it with the same LH and fsh.

It's not.

It comes resistant to those signals. So the brain's like, where's the hormones? I sent the signal, and the material goes like, I try. And he's like, try harder. So you get these bigger surges of those stimulating hormones. Almost like what we give in a fertility shot, right? And then the ovary's like, okay, fine. Spits out an egg. So we get these wild fluctuations, super high surges of estrogen, way higher than you ever had in your normal reproductive stage. Then these crashing lows. So what used to be this EKG predictable thing becomes a zone of chaos. Literally everything looks like this. It's trending down, but it is a roller coaster on the way down. And then you end up in menopause, and it's like, flatline.

That doesn't sound enjoyable.

Well, it's less tumultuous if you understand.

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Happening so educating yourself is half the battle. If you're educated and knowing when you hit these ages there's gonna be a lot of changes. Well, you don't have to be afraid, right?

Don't be afraid. It's gonna happen and we can coach you through it. And there's so many things, nutrition, exercise, stress, you know, all the pillars of health are helpful, but just understanding what's happening and so you don't gaslight yourself and being able to stand up for yourself at your doctor's office. Because here's the problem. Like the first question you asked was like how did we get here? Where a woman can't reliably walk into a doctor and get information. She has no idea what's happening to her body, how society views aging, how society views women in aging, how the medical profession deals with women. You know, in my training there was this under score of women tend to somaticize their symptoms, meaning giving a psychological reason instead of biology, just blaming. It's all in her head basically. And that's been going on for thousands.

Of years called ww, right, the ww.

The Whiny woman. So the WW was a term used by my upper level residents for a woman who was coming to our clinic who had a laundry list of vague symptoms. Some headaches, some fatigue, depression, libido, joint pain, whatever.

Everything's an issue. It sounds like it's like a little.

Bit of issues everywhere. This is Texas, so I have this long tall Texan, you Know, in his white lab coat with his cowboy boots, meaning, well, suck it up. It was taught to him saying, woo, there's not much we can do for her. You know, like, it's just this. Women go through this at this age. And I just bought it, I bought into it.

There was no education on, like, can you prevent some of these symptoms? Can you optimize certain things? No.

And my last year of training was when the Women's Health Initiative came out and HRT was taken off the table. So there was no education around perimenopause and how we can intervene and decrease symptomatology and improve. You know, then the other thing. So we have the chronic things, the hot flashes, the night. So it's the things that bring people to the office. But what I think the bigger impact is that if you look at men and their risk of heart disease, so there's things that lead to heart disease. Hypertension, high blood sugar, you know, diabetes, stroke risk, et cetera. It's pretty linear with age for the most part, as much as that could be biologically plausible. Women are pretty much lower than men until menopause. Then they shoot up and then they go past them. So menopause is a huge risk factor for chronic disease. The loss of estrogen affects the liver. Cholesterol goes up. You know, it affects the intima of the artery. It's very, very protective of the lining of the arteries. So much less atherosclerosis. You take age match. Women remember, it's normal, 45 to 55. So if you go through menopause on the younger end, you are higher risk because your body's away from estrogen longer and all the protection that it offers.

Don't women in general live longer than men?

They do, but 25% of that life is in poorer health. So their lifespan is lower, longer, but their health span is horrible. Women are three times more likely to end up in a nursing home or three times more likely to end up with dementia and frailty. Whereas men, that doesn't happen. They kind of live, have a short decline and die.

Right.

So they're way more functional in general, of course, not every man, not every woman. But what we're seeing, the trends are women are living three to four years longer, but they're in nursing homes and they can't take care of themselves.

Do women suffer dementia more than men?

Yes.

Really?

Yeah.

Two to three times more.

Why is that?

So there's a great book on this subject. Lisa Moscone wrote the Menopause Brain and the Double X brain. And she explores a lot of this. And we know that estrogen is really protective in the neurological system. And when those levels decline, we start seeing acceleration of disease.

But what about for men? If we have less estrogen? Right.

Yeah. So you actually kind of your estrogen stabilizes. It's lower than women's. But once we go through menopause. You have more than me.

Come on.

You have more than me.

Wow.

Yeah. So you still have a little bit of baseline protection that kind of stays.

Most of your life. Now with all these different. I guess, I don't know if you call them symptoms or challenges that women face during these years of menopause. The. I guess it's one day, but the years of experiencing.

Right, the post menopause years. Yeah.

What would you say is the biggest loss for women? Is it the gain of fat, the unwanted fat? Is it that they don't have the sex drive that they once do? Or it shifts and it changes. Like, oh, now I'm actually getting older. Am I as valuable as a woman in society?

I think all of it. I think. I think it's all of it. Like, it's all hitting at once. They are sealing. So, you know, they're lo. Okay, so like at work, when you look at the economic impact of menopause, this is an age. So I'm 55, you know, I am at the top of my career and it's only going up. And had I been suffering from brain fog to the point, one in five women will quit their jobs because of cognition changes in menopause. This is at an age when we should be leaning into our careers. The kids are grown for most of it. You know, we're just at that age.

Where you've got the most wisdom, the most experience, the most knowledge.

Right. And now they've lost so much career confidence because they can't find their words or they can't calculate anymore and they can't, you know, they're used to these high level cognitive function and they've. And they've lost executive functioning. So we see add, you know, mental health changes. The dopamine changes, the serotonin, the norepinephrine. All of this is linked to our hormones. And when they, you know, when these changes happen, especially in Perry, where it's so chaotic, the brain loves to know what's coming. Right. So the brain really thrives for most of us in that estrogen is going to surge, progesterone is going to surge. It's used to it. And then when we get to Perry and we see this chaos. Mental health, I think it's 40% increased risk of depression and perimenopause. Greatest risk of a female to commit suicide is between 45 to 55. I mean, just look at the numbers. We look at serotonin, SSRI use. So antidepressant use doubles between premenopause and post menopause and then goes up after age 65. So. And these are things that don't have to happen, that we can actually intervene early and, you know, provide education, counseling, therapy, and decrease these risks as we age.

Walk me through. Because you've worked with a lot of. How many women have you worked with, like, one to one, privately and since my menopause clinic. Oh, but.

Oh, got a thousand. Over a thousand. Yeah.

So walk me through if you can, and put me, anyone, man or woman, in the seat of. What is a woman feeling emotionally, spiritually and psychologically, when they realize they no longer have any eggs left and they can no longer, even if they didn't want to have kids anymore, but they can no longer have the ability to have children themselves. What emotionally comes on with women who experience that moment, there's no more.

I think it's a fleeting moment. And I went through it myself, and I've talked to all these patients. You go through a little bit of mourning, and then you're. I don't have to worry about it anymore. We're done. I mean, I had my children, you know, I purposefully did not have more. You know, I, I, I wanted to focus on the two that I had and, you know, was happy with that. We did try one more time. It never worked out. But, you know, at a certain point, I was like, we're done.

Yes, but you had a rhythm of a cycle. Yeah, you know, a physical cycle.

But you go through this chaos, you know, so it's not like the door shuts one day. You, you go through months, years of what. What the hell is happening to me? So also, you know, they're losing confidence because of, you know, cognition changes. They're losing libido, their, you know, marriage is affected, their relationships, they're losing their resilience to anxiety and stress. And so, so many things are happening to this one. By the time they get to my office, they've seen five or six. They've gone to one guy for palpitations, another woman for, you know, they've been dismissed, Gas lit, told, this is normal. It's part of your life. Weight gain, eat less. You're just lazy. You're fat, you know, and then they get to me and I'm like, I got you, boo. You know, and they're so great, like the tears pour. I have Kleenex. I'm just one. That they're validated. And then, then we start talking. Okay, what are our tools that we're going to use to pull you out of this?

Someone. So imagine I'm, I don't know, you can imagine I'm a 49 year old woman or 50 year old woman that's gone through five, seven different doctors, finally gets your book and realizes, oh, I need to come see you. And I come and for two hours I'm sobbing, I'm crying, and I'm telling you every symptom I've had. And I say, I don't know what to do. What's the next thing you say to me and what will you do to support me? Or any woman watching who's uncertain on how they can feel safe and protected about what to do next?

One, I listen to her and I believe her. And that is half of the therapy right there. So because of the way society perceives women, the way medicine perceives women, the way we're training our clinicians, you know, by and large, at least in my generation of this, you know, it's all under head and women are just, you know, emotional to like have someone believe you and just say. And we say, yeah, yep, that dep. Yes, yes, yes. Here's a study that proved, you know, here's da, da, da. Now let's talk about what we're gonna do about it. And I mean, I could basically tell them to go home and do handstands and eat toast or something and they would feel, you know, and. But we start with therapeutic options. We go through hormone, non hormonal pharmacology, nutrition changes. I do so much blood work. I'm looking for autoimmune disease, I'm looking for hypothyroidism, nutrition deficiencies. I'm just trying to get a broader picture of her whole health. And so once we kind of get the acute things taken care of, get the hot flashes under control, get her brain working again, get the muscle pain back in order, then we start plotting out the next 30 years so they're focused on. I'm like, tell me about your mom. Tell me about your grandmother. How did they age? Did they fall and break a head? Were they incapacitated? How long were they in the bed at the end of their life? You know, did they have to hire someone to come in the house. Were they in a nursing home? Like, what do you want? And they don't want that. So we start mapping out nutrition, exercise, you know, look at a risk for osteoporosis, look at a risk for heart disease. What can we do on what I call the toolkit? You know, to put some new things into place that are going to limit that time.

Yes.

Where you can't take care of yourself.

If you weren't able to do blood work for someone, someone's watching and they're not. They're not able to come to your clinic. What would be the three to five things that you would say? If you can only do these three or five things right.

And I can't write your process.

Yeah. I can't write a prescription. But these three to five things will drastically help improve in any way possible. What would those three to five things be during menopause?

So I would tell her she needs to watch, watch her fiber intake. So she needs to be getting minimum 25 grams of fiber per day.

More fiber.

More fiber.

Okay.

Most Americans are getting. Women are getting 10 to 12. And so maybe half of what they need. That fiber is going to feed our gut microbiome, keep it healthy. It is going to decrease the rate of which the blood glucose goes up. It'll decrease the absorption of sugars into the bloodstream. It will also decrease, keep the. Keep us fuller longer. So it decreases some of those hunger cues that are going on which go absolutely cattywampus. And menopause. It will. The foods that are rich in fiber are also rich in minerals, vitamins, co factors, you know, all the things that keep us healthy. So nutrition should come first.

Okay.

That's number one.

Second is limit added sugars. So added sugars or sugars added in cooking and processing, not fruits and vegetables. So much of the glucose, you know, my patients, A1C, start creeping up. You know, in menopause, their cholesterol starts creeping up. Fiber will go a long way with cholesterol, but the added sugars are huge. So limiting those to 25 grams or less per day, most people are getting about 100.

They're giving that in like one drink.

Right. So. And like starting to pay attention to that and be like, oh, my God, you know, like, I got 80 today and I didn't even think about it. So working on that, prioritizing sleep, it's hard enough. So things like what many of my. And I'm so excited to see research come out on this, but alcohol consumption is so sleep disruptive for Anyone. But it is literally debilitating in menopause. Like our ability to tolerate alcohol in the ways that we used to. If you're a drinker, change. And no one can tell me why yet. I know there's data coming, but. And we. And our sleep is so much harder as we get older because the hot flashes, the night sweats, the hormone changes. It is, you know, and then when you add in alcohol, like, I know if I choose to drink more than a glass of wine, you know, then I'm choosing not to sleep. It is. It's just not going to work for me.

Yeah. There's a study, I think, Doctor, Dr. Daniel Amen has a study of, I think, over a hundred thousand brain scans. I don't know if you've seen this study, maybe it's more than a hundred thousand, but something like hundreds of thousands of brain scans.

He wants to scan mine. Exactly.

I did a scan and I asked him about alcohol and many other things, like any types of drugs, cigarettes, alcohol. And I go, is there any benefit to drinking alcohol in the brain, the body or anything? And he goes, I can't see any benefit.

Right.

And it only depresses you and suppresses your ability to think, to recover and to feel healthy. It makes you sick. And I get. There's a culture around drinking. I've never been drunk. I've never had a glass of wine. I never had a. A can of alcohol. I feel like it's sips in my life, but I've never had a full can. And I think life can be challenging enough without alcohol.

Right.

It's like, why add a depressant if. Especially during a challenging season of life where you're already facing symptoms that are challenging.

Right.

And why put more pain on yourself?

And we see through the transition because there's the lack of understanding, education. And women are desperate. They're turning to alcohol to lay.

I'm sure, because you want to. You want to have some relief.

Right.

And I get it. Right. Sugar, alcohol, drugs, what? Cigarettes, whatever it might be. But that's only going to hurt you even more, isn't it?

Yeah, but the short term, it's hard to.

So hard.

Let that go. It somehow when I phase it, I phrase it in terms of sleep, it makes more sense. Sense. And they're like, oh, well, I really. I know I need to sleep. I'm like, okay, when.

When women aren't getting sleep during this phase of menopause, everything goes bad. Everything goes bad.

Yeah. I mean, it just. I describe it as a traffic Circle. So we have like our healthiest traffic circle where good nutrition, good sleep, stress reduction, you know, all these things feed in. So we're just much more resilient. We can handle the viruses and the, the bad days and the parents dying, you know, all the things that life throws at us. And then we have the circle start slowing down and then start spinning the other way. And that's, you know, the loss of sleep and it all kind of. And then the. Increases visceral fat and then the weight gain and you feel bad about that, then your mental health takes a hit. And now you can't think at work, you know, and it's just you end.

Up in this shame and whatever.

Yeah. And so you're embarrassed, you're ashamed, your relationships are falling apart. You're, you know, just so. And so we talk about trying to slow that negative circle down and start to, you know, getting it to stop and then spinning it the other way.

Okay, so that's the third thing. Prioritizing sleep. What would be one or two others?

So movement, exercise. So most in my generation, we moved to be thin. Thin was a measure of health. And that is probably one of the biggest fallacies, you know, you know, just moving your body to be thin, just eating to be thin was how we were raised. And I have had to do some massive self reflection and some therapy to let that go. Really. And that number on the scale for so many of us was what, how we judged ourselves, how we set up, you know, get on the scale in the morning, it's a good day based on that number. That number represents water, visceral fat, muscle mass. You know, I could have gained 10 pounds of muscle, but I would have felt so horrible about myself. I did not understand that that muscle is what is going to keep me healthy as I age.

If you could give one piece of advice to any woman in her 20s and 30s about their body.

Strong over skinny, strong over skinny, nutrition over calories. And educate yourself about what's coming, because it's coming.

What is the biggest risk women have in their 20s and 30s about trying to stay thin and skinny versus strong and healthy?

So it's. It's hard for them to see it because they're 20, right. And they feel good and they look great. They feel like they look great because the clothes are, you know, and. But what they're not seeing is we peak our muscle mass and our bone density at about age 30.

Wow.

And it's. That musculoskeletal unit is tied together. And so you have to the. The. Wherever that line is for you. We start losing muscle and bone mass after age 30, and menopause accelerates that. When we lose estrogen and testosterone, like Matt, we start losing it really fast.

How much harder is it for you to gain muscle now?

Oh, my God. Is so hard. I mean, it's literally every day I'm, like, looking at my plate and I'm like, protein, plants, fiber, you know, I'm not even caring about calories. And I'm totally changed the way I move my body, really. Weightlifting. I mean, I used to, like, work out, like, you know, in Zumba last year, a couple years ago with the eight pound weights, I never got any heavier. I wasn't trying to be stronger. I just, you know, and now I'm, like, trying to bench press my weight, you know, and do all these things because I sit there in the gym and it's all about me staying out of the nursing home when I get older. And that muscle mass determines your basal metabolic rate, determines your. Determines your resilience to insulin resistance. Like, it's everything.

Yeah. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon has been a big proponent of promoting muscle.

She's where I learned all this stuff.

Yeah. And just really, like, she changed my life. The number one factor of aging, I think, is, like, a lack of muscle or just like. Or of death. I can't remember what it is, but.

Like, one of the main greatest predictors.

Is, like, a lack of muscle. And mostly because you fall and you can't get up or you can't function after you break something. And the muscle will prevent that from happening and keep you stronger and healthier.

So what I tell my patients is osteoporosis is real, and 50% of women will have an osteoporotic fracture before they die. Okay. If you fall and break your hip, your chance of death in one year is 30% with surgery.

Why is that?

If it's decline, you can't get out of bed. It's like the beginning of the end. And then if you don't have. If you're not healthy enough to have the surgery, 79 will die in one year.

Wow.

Because you're bedridden.

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And so and that year is horrible, marked with decline. Now some people, it's not everyone, some people can recover from a hip fracture. But man, if you're over 60, 65 and you have a hip fracture, it is really a bell ringer for a very bad outcome for you. But this is preventable. And it start, it can start in your 30s. Like that's what I'm telling the younger patients. Like get to the gym, start lifting weights, focus on your vitamin D. Make sure you're getting good dietary calcium. Like do everything you can to get strong muscle and bones, eat enough protein. Thank you Dr. Lyon. And focus on that is going to keep you healthy and strong and also probably help you lose the fat. But you know what, curves are beautiful and we all have different shapes and sizes and subcutaneous fat does not necessarily mean that you're not healthy. Yeah, it's the visceral fat.

Right?

Exactly.

Okay, so movement and then one more.

What would be so stress reduction and why menopausal patients are finding that easier now really? Because they are realizing that no one's coming to save them and it's time to start prioritizing themselves. And that can look different for different People. But in menopause, women are really like, okay, this is it. If I don't do this. Like, they are really putting up boundaries. It's fun to watch.

Really.

They're like, it's my time. I'm done.

Oh, wow.

Feed yourself. Make your own food. Take care of that. I gotta take care of me. So it's really, really awesome for me to see them.

They're like, mom's changing this.

And, like, you can make your own dinner.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, like, I'm meditating. Leave me alone. So, but what that stress reduction looks like, like, can be boundaries, can be meditation, can be journaling, can be a phone call, can be hanging out with a girlfriend, can be, you know, whatever. But, like, find that.

Okay. Those are great. I think you gave me five different tools that women can do during this menopause phase to make it more enjoyable, make it less stressful. You've got so much information backed by research and science, talking about how to heal our bodies, how to heal our minds, how to reverse our aging. All these different things that I'm fascinated to go into because I think a lot of people don't believe that you can change your body and the pain within your body with your mind and your thoughts. And I'm curious if someone is saying this is just a bunch of crap. You know, I don't believe any of this. I only believe that, you know, I have to take a pill or medicate myself to heal my body. What would you say to that?

I'd say I feel sorry for you because you're missing out on a great opportunity to take care of yourself. It's interesting that we have a notion of mind and body is separate, and that's ruled for so long. That's why people think, you know, the only way you can heal yourself is. Is by taking some medication. There's no reason to have a mind and body as separate. They're just words. And lots of this book is based on the idea of putting them back together, even just for useful purposes. And if you have a mind and body and they're one thing, then wherever you're putting the mind, you're necessarily putting the body. And so now I have decades worth of research showing that we can put the mind in very unusual places, take the measurements from the body, and indeed the effects are clear. I think that for this person, the non believer, you might ask them if they've ever seen this may be off color, whatever, somebody regurgitating on the side of the road, and how did they end up Feeling, because many people need to vomit just by watching somebody else. Nothing is happening to them. Maybe a less colorful example, better is you're walking down the street and a leaf blows in your face. You're startled by it, just a leaf, but you can feel the changes in your body. You know, my first experience with this mind body unity was many, many years ago. So I was married when I was very young and we went to Paris on a honeymoon. And I was now 18, 19, going on 30, so had to be very sophisticated. And we're in this restaurant and on the menu was this mixed grill that I ordered. And on the plate came pancreas. So I said to my then husband, which of these is the pancreas? He points, that one. So I meet everything else and now comes a moment of truth. I have to eat it because after all, I'm married. I don't know how that followed, but it seemed to at the time. So I started eating and I'm literally getting sick. He starts laughing. I said, why are you laughing? He said, because that's chicken. You ate the pancreas a long time ago.

Oh, man.

All right. So I was thinking myself ill.

Interesting.

All of the research supports that. You know, it's interesting. Again, I thought of this just the other day. I might even have it in the book and have forgotten it. But I was in Missouri several decades ago and a friend dragged me to an iridologist. And, you know, I'm up for anything. I mean, I'll go to. I went to see this iridologist who looked in my eyes and she says, I have problems with my gallbladder. Okay, fine.

Just by looking in your eyes.

Okay, so the game is over. And then eventually I go to the doctor and lo and behold, I had a gallstone. Really? Yeah.

Now, do you think you thought that to occur or did you actually have it?

No, no, no, no. That's a good question. I'm going to go there. I don't know how it, how it happened here. The point for me was by looking in my eye, she, you know, she knew there was something in other parts of my body that were not right. And you know, what people don't realize is that every thought, if I lift my arm, my whole body is different. Different in tiny ways that we haven't been able to measure. But it's all connected, which in some sense lends more credence to this whole idea of mind body unity. And the first study we did was a study where we took old men to a retreat that we had retrofitted to 20 years earlier.

Right. What was this called again, though?

We called it the counterpart clockwise study.

Yes.

So they were going to live for a week as if they were their younger selves.

And they were in their late 70s. 80s.

Yeah. Even older 80s. Now, remember, that was quite a while ago.

Okay.

You know, that was when seven day was the. In the new 90 or even 100 or whatever. I mean, they. They were. They were really old.

Yeah.

In, like, walker.

They get younger as I get older.

So they're in walkers, they're in canes. They're immobile. They're very slow.

Well, actually, you know that when I was interviewing people to do the study, so their adult daughter would typically go and bring them to the lab, and I see them tottering down the hall. And at one point I said to myself, why am I doing this? I don't know if they're going to live through the day, no less be able to live for the week. It was. It was. And I took on something that only the younger of me would have considered taking on. You know, I was in charge of their entire lives, these several, you know, seven men, old men, every aspect of their lives for a week at any rate. You could, you know, you looked at them and didn't matter what number you attached to them, they were old. Now they were going to live for a week as if they're their younger selves. So they'll be talking about current events, things from the past as if they're just unfolding, and other things as well.

Like they would have newspapers from everything.

30 years prior, and they were making their own meals and they would correct each other. So if you would say was. Somebody would tell you is because the past was now the present for that. Wow.

And they were listening to older music and watching older movies and everything.

I could spend the whole time with you. Just so I know that study. So you want me to give more details, Just tell me. But let me tell you the results. Those were amazing. So they lived as their younger selves for a week without any medical intervention. Their vision improved their hearing, improved their memory, their strength, and they looked noticeably younger. And I must tell you that almost from the beginning, the changes were palpable. And most people accepted the findings. There were a couple of people. You can't make people younger. I'm not saying that chronologically we're changing your age, but it is the case that we associate certain ways of being with certain times in our lives and that these men were living their lives now very dependent on Their adult daughter presuming that they can't do many of the things that they used to do and they were wrong. And so that set the stage for a host of studies, most of which, well, all of them actually to date are in the mindful body.

That's fascinating. What would you say are. You know that study was a while ago, right?

Yeah, no, that was. Let's see, we designed it in 1979.

Wow.

Yeah. A long time before you were born.

Yeah. Wow. So what would you say in the last 44 years? I guess what is the new.

Has the world changed?

Yeah, I mean, or what are the, what are the, what are the new studies or research that you've done to show how to either reverse aging or to, I guess, create longer aging in the biological sense.

Remember, it's all one.

Okay.

Mind and body. So we don't have a psychological as opposed to biological.

So it's both. It's the mind and the body.

But I thought you were asking me, so I'm going to answer the question I thought you were going to ask, not the one that you did. All right. Which was how has the world changed? A lot of years and way back at the beginning, the medical model believed that psychology was more or less irrelevant. All right. Now I'm sure everybody thought it was nice to be happy, but that wasn't going to affect your physical health. Now that's changed. And now what most people believe is a biosocial model. So these things like stress and so on matter, but they don't go nearly as far. And I'm saying down the road, psychology will be the most important aspect of your well being. So that's a change that's come about slowly. Now for me personally, once we had those data, I did several studies where we simply make elderly people. Every time I say the word elderly, I stop now being older myself. But we make seniors more mindful and they live longer. So it's important for you to know that mindfulness as I study, it has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is fine. It's just different. Okay? When you meditate, you take yourself out of the world and you say your mantra to yourself over and over. Mindfulness as I study, it couldn't be more in the world that what you're doing is not a practice, it's a way of being. You actively notice new things about the things you thought you knew. You come to see you didn't know them at all. And then your mind naturally goes to them. Now if we start off with the realization that Everything is changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives. The idea of being certain of anything becomes silly because you can't know it's not what it was the last time you looked. And if you could adopt just one mindset, it's the only one, I believe that is good for you, that uncertainty is the rule, not the exception. Then you don't. You don't know. So then you tune in. The problem is our parents, our schools, the media, virtually everything is trying to teach us absolutes. And when you think you know something, you don't pay any attention. So I'll do what I do probably too frequently. Now, let me ask you a simple question. This is the one that everybody knows.

Oh, man.

How much is one plus one? Two. Okay. And that's what everybody says.

I feel like this is a trick question.

Well, it is, though, because one plus one isn't always two that if you are adding one watt of chewing gum plus one watt of chewing gum, one plus one is one. If you add one pile of laundry plus one pile of laundry, one plus one is one. You add one cloud plus one cloud. One plus one is one. In the real world, one plus one probably doesn't equal two as or more often as it does. So now look at the difference. Somebody is unlikely. But after we finish, somebody comes over to you and says, how much is one plus one? You're not going to mindlessly say two. You're going to pay some attention to the context, and then you're going to answer more mindfully and say, it could be. And then you're going to say, it could be one, it could be two.

Interesting. It's all context.

Exactly. Exactly. Everything changes. And our minds tend to hold things still. We think we know. We want to know because we think that gives us control. But since things are changing, you don't want your mind to hold it still while in fact it's changing, because then you're giving up control that you otherwise would have.

Wow, this is fascinating stuff. Now, I'm curious about, you know, chronic health. Thinking our way to chronic Health. This is the subtitle of your book, the Mindful Body. You say we can think our way to chronic health.

Yeah, well, you know, the reason I want to use the term chronic, Just because it's a little startling, because we only think of chronic illness. But people tend to assume that as you get older, you're going to fall apart, you're going to get sick. And sickness and aging are not the same thing. One can live their entire life without illness, and the way to live one's life is essentially the same when you're 10 years old or when you're 80 years old. Just by knowing, you don't know. And tuning in. Now, people don't like not knowing because they think you can know. And what I'm here to tell everybody is you can't know. So what you need to do to live the kind of life that I'm suggesting is be confident and uncertain. All right? If you think you should know, then you pretend, but you can't know. Now, that makes everything possible. Now, I was at this horse event many years ago. After this, I'm going to use only news stories, okay? And this man asked me if I'd watch his horse for him because he was going to get his horse a hot dog. Well, as you might know from the credentials you read, I was an A plus student. So I knew as well as anyone in this world that's ridiculous. Horses are herbivorous. They don't eat meat. He came back with the hot dog and the horse ate it. And at that moment, I realized everything I thought I knew could be wrong. Now, for me, that was actually exciting because that meant that everything was possible. All of those things that we were taught are impossible not to strive for actually became available in a whole different way. And the next step in the reasoning for me was to see that, recognize that experiments, science, science give us our facts mostly right, but that science only gives us probabilities. There's no experiment that gives you anything absolute. So it's sort of most horses, under the conditions that were tested, didn't eat the meat, which is very different from all horses never eat meat. Right? You know, and so, and it's very important for one's health because you have to realize that any information you're given is a best guess. Now, it's an educated guess, but it's still not an absolute.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description Description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links and if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness+channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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