The Estrogen Truth Every Woman In Her 40s Needs To Hear with Dr. Siobhan Mitchell

we hear about the symptom of visceral fat, right? Waking up and it feels like overnight they've got this fat around the abdomen that just cannot go away. It showed up out of nowhere. So what's actually happening to a woman in that state? Is this insulin sensitivity that has gone kind of undetected?

Yeah, well, unfortunately it still comes back to just using that estrogen. When you don't do that, that glucose can go on to become a damaging factor on its own. So they're called advanced glycation end products. And they can also damage proteins. But then also that excess glucose can then basically turn into fat that then sticks on your body everywhere. So that's, that's a nutshell.

Siobhan, welcome to Rooted in Wellness. I'm so grateful that you hopped on so early from New Zealand. Thank you so much.

I'm so happy. I am very excited to just have a whole conversation.

Yeah, I was telling you a little bit about the background of the podcast and ultimately how I think that a world where we can merge Eastern medicine with modern-day medicine will bring so much healing. And the intention behind interviews like this is really to inspire listeners to become more rooted. That's rooted in themselves and their health and their happiness and their life. And as I was mentioning, what I think is like the awareness, the intuitives that the knowing that we all have to heal our body. So to kick things off, let me ask you, what are 2 or 3 things that help you feel more rooted in who you are?

Uh, all right, well, one's an easy one. I really love nature. That's one of the reasons why I moved to New Zealand. I will say that nature feels just everywhere here, and it's so empty and beautiful. So the main thing that I do to go, you into kind of more of a, the actual state I am, like who I am, is to go into nature. So take a walk in the woods. And it's funny 'cause I really love woods that turn into a tunnel. I don't know why I like the feeling is like I'm going on a journey and there's this tunnel and I'm seeing this light at the end. It just makes me so, yeah, filled with anticipation.

Like so magic. Yeah. That feels like a forest.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a little bit like you kind of tell your story while you're going through the tunnel and it just feels very, yeah, very grounding.

Beautiful. And do you have any morning practices that go with that, with getting into nature or setting yourself up for the day?

Oh, well, I do wake up and then go into the forest and run. So I'm running through the forest. So that's one of my main ones, but Gosh, I should say that if I had a real morning ritual, it's that because I take MitoQ, this supplement that my company makes, and that requires that you spend 30 minutes without food. So you have to take it with empty stomach. I'm someone who usually wakes up super hungry and I wanna eat right away. But it's interesting just sitting there going like, okay, I'm hungry, I'm not gonna eat because I'll just notice what it feels like to be hungry. and then I'll just appreciate my breakfast that much more. So I guess that's the ritual that has come about lately. But, um, yeah, I'm starting to appreciate it.

That's a beautiful reframe. And it's funny, we don't, um, I was sharing the story about the ashram. That's what happens there. We wake up, we have hot water. We actually don't eat breakfast for about 2 hours after we wake, and it's challenging, but the amount of joy that we have when we sit down to that first meal is pretty spectacular. And I have to say, Siobhan, you're the, first person, I believe, to ever say running. And I love that you said that because I met with a craniosacral therapist years ago, and she, you know, she said never stop running because it's tribal. That vibration of your feet on the ground, it's like a heartbeat or drum-like, so incredibly therapeutic. So I have to ask then, you must know when you, when you drift. All of us, we live in this insane modern world. You've escaped a big part of this Western world, but do you notice when you feel uprooted, or what's happening in your life when you feel uprooted.

Oh yeah. And I have a good example of that because as you were talking about your own burnout situation, I was thinking about my burnout situation, which happened coincidentally during the COVID pandemic. And I was working for what's called like a tech unicorn. So this idea that this, this company might turn into billions and billions of dollars. And so they were just saying, okay, everyone work really hard. 'cause you might be like a multimillionaire very, very soon if you just push, push, push. And it was just a disaster 'cause I, I was motivated by that. I was motivated by the wrong thing, which was money. And I just kind of went crazy and I just lost all sense of myself. I didn't have weekends anymore. I didn't have any kind of hobbies I wanted to do anymore. It was just work. So yeah, I had to escape that and I'm very glad I did. So yeah.

Yeah, yeah, we're not robots, right?

No.

And oh gosh, the one thing I realized getting older is that time just goes by so much faster. And to think about every second counts, right? So the priorities really shift. Yeah, the burnout in some ways I think is a blessing sometimes 'cause it makes us reflect. So I'm happy that you shared that as well 'cause I know a lot of our listeners have experienced or they're going through burnout as we speak. All right, to kick things off, we're going to go through some rapid-fire questions. This is quick answer, whatever comes to mind, and then we're going to go deeper on, on all of them. All right, so here we go. One symptom that women in their 40s dismiss as stress that's actually their hormones talking.

Yeah, so that is pretty much the thing that's happening in midlife, or at least I shouldn't say midlife because it does start happening in your late 30s. And that's just the feeling that you are just losing control a little bit and you don't know why. And you're doing everything you're supposed to, you've got all your rituals as we were just talking about. But what they don't realize is that your hormones are now starting to fluctuate a lot more than they used to. And all that fluctuation, you know, these extreme spikes, these dips of your estrogen, of your progesterone can bring on stress because believe it or not, yeah, you probably can believe it, Estrogen is controlling a lot of our emotional reactions. So this is where sometimes you just feel like it's coming out of nowhere, and that's why. It just— just, it could be your estrogen just doing a crazy spike dip and you just don't have any control.

Yeah, we'll dive deeper into that. I think every day feels like a surprise going through menopause.

What do we got today?

What are we dealing with today? All right, next, the worst food habit for women whose estrogen is declining.

Oh yeah. I, you know, it's interesting cuz when people go through perimenopause, there's a 65% increase in binge eating. So yeah. Wow. Yeah. And, and that's cuz your carb desire goes through the roof and that's because with lack of estrogen, you are literally not able to process your sugar as much anymore. Your blood glucose is not working as well as it used to be. So that explains it. So that it does— it almost makes sense when you start to have that kind of crazy impulse that you didn't expect. Oh, and estrogen also controls your appetite. Um, so it's a lot of influence on pretty much a lot of things you didn't realize.

I've never heard it framed that way. That's fascinating. We're gonna have big asterisks there so we can go back to it. All right, number 3, overrated or underrated: cutting calories to manage midlife weight gain?

Oh God, I hate it when people think that's a good solution. So just no. Quick answer there. Yeah, that's just no.

Hard no. Your body needs nourishment. Next, the one lab marker that women should be asking for that most doctors never order.

Ah, I mean, just we were talking about stress. I actually feel like it is good to know cortisol, and it's a little difficult 'cause you have to do salivary cortisol. It's not really that useful if it's blood. You have to do first thing in the morning cortisol, so it does take a little bit of effort, but it's totally worth it.

I agree. And those tests, by the way, let's just mention, they're pretty, they're very affordable. It's a, you know, you spit into these little tubes throughout the day for a day, you send it in the following day, super easy, so worth it. All right, last one, hot take. Is perimenopause starting earlier than we think?

Yeah, unfortunately it is. And I think that one of the reasons why is that some of the first symptoms aren't those typical symptoms that everyone associates, like the hot flashes, the night sweats. It's really, yeah, just, there's a survey that just recently came out on this. It's really emotional swings. So just kind of feeling like the brain fog, the confusion. And then also, believe it or not, it's, it's pain. It's like joint pain. So fascinatingly, women don't notice that. And I, I will tell you, like in my early 40s, I had a frozen shoulder and no one told me that this could be a perimenopause symptom. So I'm just like, what's going on? Am I getting multiple sclerosis? What's happening? Yeah, it's just not associated with perimenopause. So my doctor just was like, oh, tough for you. No real solution. Yeah.

So exact same thing happened to me. I was going to the gym all the time and all of a sudden shoulder injury. I just thought, okay, I must have pulled something wrong. It lasted forever. And I finally went for an acupuncture session and I've shared this story before. This brilliant acupuncturist said, look, I can do acupuncture. I can put you on herbs. It's estrogen. And I started taking estrogen because of him. So yeah, that was a sneaky, unexpected turn that I did not expect. So thank you for sharing that. All right, so I know a lot of women who are gonna listen to this, a lot of the symptoms that we're talking about, they can really empathize with them. And like you and I just said, like, no one really prepares you for what happens. And, you know, looking at you, knowing a little bit about your background, I assume you're pretty healthy. And a lot of our listeners feel like they're doing everything right. They're eating right, they've got that wellness protocol, they're exercising consistently, and then all of a sudden their body starts stops, and then all of a sudden their body stops responding and they have these mystery symptoms. And then women were really good at working harder, and so we push ourselves a little bit more. And I know working with the clients that I worked with, you know, it's not about discipline, it really is about biology. And we're going to dive into, you know, you're such a pro at speaking to this, but when we think about how our metabolic rate declines the speed at which our estrogen drops. No one really tells us about what to do to move into this phase of our life with prevention. So let's start with the first question, which is what's actually happening physiologically when a woman enters her 40s and her body starts responding completely different to the protocol that had worked so well for her for so many years?

Oh yeah, and, and this is so true. I've had now countless friends, women coming up to me saying the same thing, that they'd started to get everything right. You establish like a good diet and you're, yeah, having some sort of exercise you like and you just feel like, yeah, you know, you're putting it all together finally. You're juggling all the stuff, the work, the kids, all the rest. And then you kind of hit the 40s and it all starts to feel a little bit like Hey, you know, I'm starting to notice I'm getting a gut, you know, I'm getting belly fat where I didn't have it before, or just I'm gaining some weight and I was doing all the same kind of eating and I'm, you know, keeping track of all my fruits and veggies and all the rest. And then the mood swings, 'cause I think the mood swings are really tough because once again, you've learned all the techniques, you try to keep that stress under control and then they just start to hit you. And I think worst of all is sleep. That was my bugbear. Is that I just lost the ability to sleep through the night. Like, what is that? Like, I could control everything else. I could control all other aspects of my day. But then when you wake up at 3:00 AM and you're just up, so unfair, right? Like, what do you do? And all this sleep hygiene stuff. I started doing it, but it took a while for that to work. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you my secret thing that worked in the end. But yeah, it was tough. So the other thing is just lastly, we just talked about, you start getting cravings that you don't normally have. Just that, that discussion about binge eating. Not that everyone's binge eating, but just, yeah, where you just feel a little bit like, hey, I'm hungry all the time, where I didn't used to be. We can see this with the rise of everyone wanting to be on GLP-1 agonists, not just people that might really need it, but a lot of my friends, they're just like, oh, I'm starting to gain weight, and maybe Ozempic's the solution. So It's understandable that people want to go for that quick solution because it just feels so out of control.

Yeah, it's wild, the changes that happen, and it's multiple— it's wild, the change— the changes that happen because it's multiple systems behind the body. And I think that when we work with a practitioner, we're trying to zone in on the one thing, right? Or we talk about root cause healing, but then all of a sudden there's all of these like system flare-ups that happen. And I think for many years, the way that women— we were taught estrogen, that estrogen was primarily just a reproductive hormone. And we assume, well, we don't really need that anymore. So if I don't need the fertility hormone anymore, then what's the big issue? But now we know, like, we have estrogen receptors in our brain and our heart and our gut and our skin. And what you'll share about in our mitochondria— like, who knew this one hormone was responsible for energy centers within our entire body? So Can you maybe expand on that and how estrogen really regulates our body beyond reproduction?

Oh yeah. So now you've gotten me started, right?

Yeah, there we go.

So mitochondria and estrogen.

We do.

But yeah, so it's true that estrogen is actually a really important modulator of mitochondria. And this makes sense if you think about it because estrogen, all those kinds of hormones that help us make a baby, they should also be in control of how we use nutrients, how we use fuel. So yeah, there's a lot of estrogen receptors on our mitochondria, and they can do things like make our mitochondria better protected against oxidative stress. So I'm sure you've talked about oxidative stress before, but just to kind of remind everyone, oxidative stress is when Basically you get these kind of very reactive molecules that the mitochondria are making while they're making energy and they're called free radicals and they can just basically damage and then destroy a lot of your cell's architecture. So it can damage DNA, proteins. It's kind of like one of the root causes of aging. So if you think about like, that's, that's, I would say my hypothesis, if you think about all the things that are happening in your body, Oxidative stress is the one that, you know, it's mostly under control when you're young and then it just goes out of control. Your, your body, the wear and tear makes it so the oxidative stress gets worse and worse and worse. So yeah, that's where estrogen is playing a big role in telling the mitochondria, put up those antioxidant defenses. And estrogen itself is an antioxidant. A lot of people don't know that. And it's also something. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also something that tells the mitochondria when to grow, when to make more. So estrogen is really important for, as we said, making that baby. So it's also telling you got to make more energy. And in fact, it's interesting, the ovaries themselves have more mitochondria than almost anywhere else in the body. So most cells in the body have about 1,000 mitochondria, like, like that's a muscle cell, for instance. But your ovaries, especially your egg cells, they have 700,000 mitochondria because they need so much energy to work, right? And they need to be able to respond to that energy really well. So yeah, this is where estrogen is extremely important in terms of using the fuel of your body. So estrogen is telling your body, okay, you need to use glucose better, bring in more glucose. So you actually become more insulin sensitive with estrogen signaling. And when you take away the estrogen, you are now gonna lose that sensitivity and you're not gonna bring as much glucose into your cells. And unfortunately, when you don't do that, that glucose can go on to become a damaging factor in its own. So they're called advanced glycation end products, and they can also damage proteins, et cetera. But then also that excess glucose can then be basically turned into fat that then sticks on your body everywhere. So that's, that's a nutshell. I can talk more about the mitochondria, but I just thought I would—

Yeah, we'll dive in.

Yeah.

I think like the future of medicine and healing will be so focused on mitochondria and frequency and energy and all of these things. And I love the reframe around thinking about estrogen as an antioxidant within the body. And the way that you're speaking to this, I wish that there was just a public reframe on how we are approaching and speaking to this dialogue, because right now, you know, women, the tendency is for them to blame their bodies or to resist getting older or to hate getting older and want to do everything to prevent it. And there's so much fear that's based behind that instead of the motivation to really understand, like, if we were to really care for this body as a vessel, right, and we were to understand the mechanism of oxidative stress, if we could actually see ourselves getting tired and overwhelmed as a result of living in today's modern world, I think that there would be a lot more empathy and desire to nourish oneself and care for oneself in a very different way. And even let's, let's pivot that to the bingeing and to the insulin sensitivity as well. I don't think the conversation or the feel around shifting diet would be around, oh, I can't have that anymore. You know, I'm I have to change my diet completely. I have to diet. I have to go hardcore. It's more of an understanding that your, your body's shifting. It needs different fuel, right? So when we think about the insulin sensitivity, when we think about the bingeing— gosh, this applies to me too. I never associated, you know, looking at a box of crackers, even the healthiest crackers with hummus and these healthy snacks. My body metabolizes them completely different now. And for a lot of the women that I work with, you know, we hear about the symptom of the visceral fat, right? Waking up and it feels like overnight they've got this fat around the abdomen that just cannot go away. It showed up out of nowhere. So what's actually happening to a woman in that state? Is this insulin sensitivity that has gone kind of undetected? What else is happening?

Yeah, well, unfortunately, it still comes back to estrogen. Just using that estrogen. So, right. Yeah. I mean, we all know that, that men, for instance, take on a lot of belly fat and actually that belly fat, just to kind of add onto it, that, that inflammatory aspect of it can then bring on risk of cardiovascular disease. It can bring on risk of dementia. And in fact, there was a recent study where they looked at midlife women and how much body fat or belly fat they had. And if they had a lot of belly fat, they actually showed problems with their cognition. So they're just not doing as well in terms of cognitive tasks, and they had also more white matter degeneration in their brain. And not to scare anyone, like, oh my God, you know, my brain is degenerating. That's, that's not really exactly what I'm saying. White matter can change a lot all the time. And just to tell you what white matter is, it's basically this kind of insulation around your neurons. Your neurons can sort signal to each other faster. So it's basically increasing the signal. So white matter is great for a lot of good fast thinking, and when you lose it, you'll just feel a little slower. So kind of like a little bit that brain fog that people associate with perimenopause. But the main thing is that you, you do need to deal with that belly fat. It's, it's not a good thing. And the reason why we're starting to, yeah, take that on is that if you imagine your ovaries, that's making all our estrogen, or most of our estrogen I should say, they're not making as much anymore. They're kind of going into senescence. And then your body, especially your brain, that kind of wants to get a lot of hormonal signals, is then saying, come on, body, make more, make more, make more. And so there's another route that you can make another kind of estrogen, and this is estrone. And estrone is actually made by your adipose tissue, your fat tissue. So in a way, there's like a hypothesis that literally just bringing on belly fat is bringing on another way of making a form of estrogen. But the problem is, is that estrone is a more inflammatory type of estrogen. It's not as good. So yeah, that's one of the reasons why we think that we're getting belly fat, but probably one of the main Reasons too is just that, as I said, we are not using blood glucose as well. More, more times that blood glucose is just sitting around in your bloodstream, they'll then go into the liver and then it'll be turned into fat. Your fat cells will start to accumulate and yeah, you'll just, I hate to say accumulate weight. So women, they're gonna accumulate at least, yeah, a few pounds of weight every year of perimenopause. So unless you're really trying hard, but on average, the studies have shown this. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with you. It's multifactorial. And the challenge is, is when we're not feeling good, we're less motivated to make changes that we need to, to, to feel change. Right. And what's interesting about this focus on the ovaries is I'm curious how many women actually spend a lot of time talking about their ovaries with their primary care or their OB outside of going for their annual checkups. Right.

Probably never. Not at all. Not at all.

Not at all. Exactly. I certainly have never, ever talked about that, maybe with the exception of when I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was much younger. But even then it was detriment. There was nothing about resolution. And this is again why I love Eastern medicine. So an Ayurvedic practitioner recently prescribed rose oil. Have you heard of this? Putting rose oil, pure rose oil every single night over your ovaries as support. A traditional Chinese medicine doctor would prescribe acupuncture, right, to work on the meridians of the body, to increase the chi of, of the ovaries. So yeah, again, it's like something about ancient wisdom that they respected and honored within women that we need to get back to with modern medicine.

Yeah, that's amazing. That is, that is great to hear that there was an appreciation because we have totally lost that. No one thinks about ovaries anymore. And even just trying to understand, like, how are they doing in my 30s? Like, that, that is a good thing to know. Like, so we should get more hormones checked. We should get, for instance, AMH, anti-Müllerian hormone, checked, which is a really good way of knowing how much reserve does my ovaries have. Like, all of that is really important.

I have a feeling most people wouldn't even know. They would have to go in. Seriously, this is crazy. And this is our— this is our body. It's our life force, for crying out loud. Yeah, it's crazy.

Oh, I just, I just want to say one more thing is that like, I, I think this is also maybe also not talked about with a lot of doctors, is that if you can have a longer menopause, like, like have menopause go later in your late 50s or mid-50s, that is way better for your health. There's so much evidence coming out that if you can have that kind of later menopause, you'll have overall better vascular health, you'll have better brain health, So it makes sense to take care of your ovaries. If you take care of your ovaries and you get that later menopause, your health will just go better.

I might have you back for an episode specifically on that topic.

All right. Yes.

Let's turn it into a movement, shall we?

Yes. Yes.

I don't— I don't want to go back— or sorry, I should say, let's not— what am I trying to say? I want to go back and hover on the hormone and brain connection. You know, you shared about your story. For myself as well, the brain fog is really intense. The forgetfulness is really intense. The mood changes, as you mentioned, are really intense for a lot of people. And when I was doing my research, actually, from previous interviews from you, you'd mentioned that women are 2 times more likely than men to develop Alzheimer's. You recently— you just said before, estrogen plays a role in glucose metabolism in the brain, but with this, I think a lot of women are identifying that when they go through that, that's it. All right, my brain is changing. This is the way that it's going to be. This is the beginning of cognitive decline. I need to worry about this. So tell us a little bit about— you mentioned estrogen declining, but what can we do to kind of mitigate those changes so that we feel some relief?

Oh yeah, and this is really important because I just said a lot of things that sound a little bit depressing, but I don't think of this is depressing. I think, as you mentioned, it's a change. It's a change in the way our body works, but it's really just shepherding our bodies through that change so that we can come out the other side even more energized, ready to take on all sorts of new things. So that's why I think about it. So yeah, don't worry so much about, you know, oh, is it all going to get worse and worse and worse?

It doesn't have to.

So what are the main things? Well, yeah, we talked about estrogen, how important it is. So I feel like it's really important to think about some of the root causes of why your body is changing, and that's that loss of estrogen, and it's those crazy fluctuations. So why not try to find something else that can work on those same estrogen pathways, but maybe even more targeted, more specific? And so I'm talking phytoestrogens, and phytoestrogens are these plant molecules, so they're in a lot of the foods we eat. That can have a very estrogen-like activity because they look a lot like estrogen. And I know this scares some people because, for instance, sometimes we hear about, you know, estrogens that are feminizing our men, or, you know, estrogens that are maybe making us have a cancer risk, that kind of thing. I will tell you, a lot of that is overblown. So for certain, a lot of the plant estrogens, like all of the plant estrogens, are fine to eat. They're not going to make you have cancer or anything else like that. There's a lot of studies that have come out. So I think there's been a bit of fear of estrogen because of that one big study, the Women's Health Initiative, that seemed to indicate that actual estrogen or synthetic estrogen could, could cause cancer, but that was very much overblown. So just going back to phytoestrogens, totally safe, and they can have this really amazing estrogen activity. And so just to give you a sense of We were talking about estrogen receptors before. These phytoestrogens are usually acting on estrogen beta receptors, and we have two main kinds of estrogen receptors. Beta receptors are on non-reproductive organs, so they're in our brain, muscle, bones, heart, and they're really, I would say, the thing that are protecting us through most of our younger life. The estrogen alpha receptors, I won't go and talk about them that much because they're not really relevant right here, but they're more on our reproductive hormones. So the kind of proliferative action that causes us to help have a baby, for instance. So a lot of the symptoms that people don't like with hormonal replacement therapy are from the estrogen alpha receptors that, you know, breast tenderness or kind of, you know, changes in gut health. The estrogen beta receptors are really, I would say, the thing that makes your brain work better. For instance, they're the thing that makes your vasculature work better. They're the thing that helps our blood glucose be more in control. So my favorite phytoestrogens for that are from soy. And I know some people might say, oh, soy, that's another one I'm a little scared of. No, it's really just fine to take them and My favorite kind of phytoestrogen from soy is actually a really special one because most of the phytoestrogens from soy are not very bioavailable. So there's two main ones, daidzein and genistein. But if you have a right kind of microbiome, and I have to say not everyone does, 20 to 30% of women in the West that have that, you can make this amazing phytoestrogen called S. Equal. And S Equal is, I would say, a game changer in terms of overall women's health. It is not well known about here in sort of US area, Europe, but it's really well known in Asia. And yeah, you can appreciate that a lot of stuff just stuck in Asia and we don't hear about it here, but I am hoping to spread the word. So for instance, in Japan, they've been studying this molecule for over 20 years because when they saw that people who could make S, S equal in their microbiomes from soy, they seem to have so much more protection from many, many different things. So S equal producers had better heart health, they had better brain health, they had better body composition. So yeah, like less belly fat and like the things they're just talking about. So S. equal seems to be like this amazing sort of metabolic master. And yeah, it's also very brain bioavailable. Not a lot of phytoestrogens are. So yeah, I'm, I'm very excited about this. I've known about this molecule for years, but because it was only something that you could make from a microbiome that was kind of well situated, it was sort of like, well, what can you do? You know, how do you become an S. equal producer? It's not really clear. But just recently, there's been a lot more ways of fermenting soy to get that S. equol, so we can have those benefits that you don't have to— you don't have to change your whole microbiome. You can now just take S. equol and get a lot of these amazing benefits.

This is so interesting to me. So can you become an S. equol producer then by shifting your gut microbiome, or is it genetic?

Yeah, this has been an area of very hot research for years in Asia, right? Because as they start to see that as equal, not only benefits women, but it benefits men as well. So there's just this feeling of like, what is the magic? What is the secret? And we do know some things. We know that in our microbiome, a lot of the phytoestrogens, the soy isoflavones, for instance, have sugars attached to them, and you need to be able to break off that sugar to help the absorption into the gut and make them more into the active form. And so that's one thing you need. And those are things that we know well. So the sugar-breaking kind of activity, it's called beta-glucanase activity, is from Bifidus strains. So, um, Bifidus longum, Bifidus breve. And that's one thing. Then you need a whole bunch of other things. As well. And interestingly, you need things like Akromancia monacifolia. This is something that people have been hearing about lately because it's a GLP-1 kind of stimulator. You need, um, things that make butyrate. So butyrate is short-chain fatty acid that seems to, yeah, help with sort of fiber use in your gut. So you need all those things. But what was mostly understood was that all the interventions that people were trying did not really work as well as they'd hoped. Like, so they gave people soy and hoped, all right, we've given you lots of soy, maybe now you'll make S. equal. Didn't work as well, at least not for Western women. Worked a little bit for Asian women. But the things that they've noticed about S. equal producers is they seem to be vegetarians. They seem to be drinking a lot of green tea. They're having— yeah, weirdly enough. They're having a lot of fiber in their diet. So they're eating lots of fruits and veggies and whole grains. Yeah. And those are the main things. So, and yeah, they seem to have this microbiome that have a lot of kind of youthful qualities. So they have a lot of that Bifidus strains, cuz yeah, I think you probably maybe talked about this before that microbiomes can look younger or older and yeah. One of the reasons why people can live to 100 is supposedly cuz they have youthful microbiomes. And Bifidus seems to be sort of a younger strain, so you lose Bifidus as you get older. Well, when you're a kid, teenager, 20s, you've got lots of Bifidus.

God, our bodies are so magnificent.

So cool.

Fascinating. I was so blessed when I was in school for nutrition. Um, I had two Japanese teachers and, um, they kind of debunked the soy myth back then and just showed rates of cancers that were not happening in Japan with such a predominantly high diet in soy. And I think in the West, yeah, we villainized it, which was terrible. I think with monocropping and stuff like that, I think the type of soil that was available here was probably not the best. But soy goes on the majority of my clients' meal plans, whether that's through the form of miso soup every single day or non-GMO organic soy products every single day. It's such an incredible source of protein. Now, with this understanding too around sequal, It kind of makes sense with those studies because it sounds like they were diversifying their gut microbiome, right? Like with, um, uh, fiber from different types of plant veggies and with green tea and the antioxidants that would have been in that every day. It's like, yeah. Would you recommend listeners do a stool test? You know, you've talked to so many doctors and practitioners. I moved away from them for a little while, but with the onset of all these probiotics coming on the market we can kind of understand what you're deficient in. And for even acromantia, now they can test for levels of acromantia. Now, what are your thoughts on stool testing?

Yeah, it's not a bad idea in terms of when you feel like something's just wrong and you don't know what it is. Like, I think that's— I mean, if you're mostly fine, no reason. But if, if you are, like, so for instance, I go to China a lot And in China, everyone gets a C. difficile test, right? So even if you don't show a lot of symptoms, they're just like— so C. diff, for everyone to know, is basically this, yeah, kind of pathogenic bacteria that can reside in your gut and lead to things like IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, or IBD. And, um, so this is where— no, IBD, sorry, it's inflammatory bowel disease. I'm not kidding, all my acronisms. So this is where It's just good to know if you have C. diff. So yeah, I mean, I didn't have C. diff, but my colleague did, and she's like, oh yeah, I have been having gut issues. It's like, oh yeah, take care of that. So that makes sense to me. So I don't know if you need to go crazy into detail about like everything about your microbiome, because it's a lot we don't understand. But I think for sure you should see there's Bifidus strains, you know, pretty high amounts. There should be diversity, and you should be able to see if there's pathogenic stuff there.

I think you nailed it. Yeah, I think if you are going to be somebody who's investing in supplements and has curiosity around how to better direct or fuel your body, then it could be beneficial for sure. Um, let's talk about that, the gut connection as well. So this is where hormones and the microbiome intersect, and a lot of people don't think about that. Um, I think this is part of the conversation that we're also missing today. I don't think we should be talking about HRT unless we're also having the conversation around optimizing the gut microbiome.

Totally.

So when we think about S. equal and what you mentioned around those studies in fiber, um, what does that reveal about gut health and the hormone connection then?

Yeah, so gut health and the hormone connection, there's, there's so much of it. And just to start off with, once again, when you lose estrogen, your gut health starts to deteriorate. You start getting more bloating, you start getting more inflammation because literally you need estrogen to keep the lining of your gut in kind of optimal form. So without estrogen, you can start having leaky gut. Leaky gut means that you're starting to have a lot more kind of pathogenic bacteria entering your system and causing inflammation, which can cause aging and also a lot of other unfortunate symptoms. But the other really interesting thing about your microbiome is it's also regulating your hormones. It's regulating your estrogen. And one of the ways it does that is it helps recycle your estrogen. And so this, this kind of understanding of the microbiome being able to modulate estrogen is called the estrobolome. And so the estrobolome is this term of just, hey, guess what, guys? Like, if you want to know how your hormones are doing, you have to look at your gut. And so yeah, these microbes, for instance, the beta glucuronidase— oh, sorry, the beta glucuronidase microbes, the ones that have that activity, are very important for estrogen signaling. And to explain why is that, you know, we're making estrogen, we're making estradiol, and it's going through our bodies and doing all these nice good things for us. And then at some point they'll reach the liver and the liver will kind of mark it for removal. And the way the liver does this is it conjugates it. So it puts a sugar molecule on that estradiol, and that basically is a signal for the body to eliminate it. So then it gets flushed into the intestines, and right in the intestines, this is where you start to have the beta-glucuronidase activity kind of get to work on that estradiol. So these microbes that, that kind of can basically eat that sugar break that sugar off of the estrogen. And now, lo behold, that estrogen is active again. So now that's in its active form, it can get shunted back into the body and get used up as estrogen again. And this is really important because, yeah, as you get older and you're having your ovaries not make as much estrogen, you kind of need to save as much estrogen as you can. It really protects you against those dips and spikes. So it's very important to take care of your microbiome as you go through perimenopause, because it can literally just be giving you that extra estrogen you need. So that's, I think, a really key thing that people should understand. Um, but I could go on, but I'll just— yeah, I'll stop there.

Yeah, I think, um, I think a concept that people are starting to fall in love with is becoming the CEO of your, your health. Which is great. It feels really empowering. However, there's so much information and so much data out there. And I think with the onset of things like irritable bowel syndrome or even simple bloating, maybe that someone never experienced before, I've worked with a lot of people who instantly want to go on like a gut healing cleanse or a gut healing protocol without thinking that a lot of these products that are out there can actually strip the gut microbiome significantly, right?

Totally.

And if we're not thinking about that, addressing estrogen as a primary cause, right? I don't think people are necessarily making that connection yet. Then I think that's something that has to be considered before you do something that's harsh or intensive. You really have to look at balancing through the modalities that you're talking about as well.

Yeah, I mean, I, I know a lot of people got interested in ketogenic diet for a while. Ketogenic diet can be great sometimes for your brain, but you have to think about if you're just gonna eat a lot of meat, if you're gonna stop eating fiber, your, your microbiome will suffer. You will lose all that. Yeah. Oh, and just to kind of round out the estrobolome, so Bifidus bacteria, a lot of them can actually have estrogen signaling as well. So that's like a whole other thing. So they can be really important during perimenopause. So yeah, there's a lot of studies showing probiotics like B. breve can help with, yeah, getting rid of excess fat. To help control appetite, to help control your blood glucose. So yeah, even, even things like that where you think there's no connection to hormones at all. No, there can be a really strong connection. So definitely something to look into. All right.

You mentioned a diet, so we've got to go deep into that now.

Yeah, why not?

The diet.

What do we do?

What are we eating?

Right. So yeah.

Okay, so let's put a different lens on the diet then. Let's talk about, in the same way that we, we talked about beneficial soy, let's put the lens of how do we eat for our estrobalone.

Yeah, yeah. So it is, yeah, in a nutshell, a lot of just making sure you're having fiber. But I, I know, for instance, it's interesting, I go to these sort of supplement kind of exhibitions, and right now there's huge emphasis on fiber, which I think is funny because I think it's coming from GLP-1 agonist overuse where everyone's stopped eating, they're constipated, and then suddenly it's like, oh yeah, I need fiber. And they go out and they buy a big jug of fiber and they just think that's the solution. But I am telling you, fiber works a lot better if you are having it in its original form. So I think that's really important. The other area that I am really passionate about, um, in terms of helping with, yeah, the brain fog, the brain function, I think is really important is having a ton of antioxidants from your food. And then maybe if you're not, you know, for instance, getting vitamin C every day, you should think about supplementation sometimes because your brain literally needs a huge amount of antioxidants to run. So talked about the mitochondria before, how important they are. So important for the brain. Your brain is the most energy-hungry part of your body. It's using up to 70% of the ATP your mitochondria are making. For instance, any kind of loss of energy will lead to that brain fog. And if your mitochondria are starting to kind of get a little bit of dysfunction because they've lost a little bit of that estrogen, then you will, you'll see more brain fog. So one way to protect your mitochondria is to have a lot of antioxidants that are available for the brain to use. So vitamin C is a good one. Mitochew, one of the things my company makes, is really great because it's developed to get into the mitochondria. It's kind of unique that way. But then just lots of fruits like berries. I'm in love with berries. I— that's one of my morning rituals I did not tell you about. Every morning I wake up and when I get to have my breakfast, what I'm very excited about, It's a big bowl of berries. And even when they're not in season, I just have a big bowl of frozen berries because they're so good for your brain. There's literally dozens of studies showing people eating berries. So blueberries, raspberries, cherries, like all those kinds of berries can literally help blood flow to your brain. They can help you improve cognition acutely, and they can protect you against cardiovascular disease. As well, but then they're also protecting you, your actual neurons. So they, they just have so many benefits. Yeah. A little bit passionate about berries. Oh, but lastly, berries and spices. I've done a lot of work on things like curcumin. So yeah, yeah. Just to mention, I'm a neuroscientist, so I've worked on nutrition for the brain for the last 25 years. So I've worked on curcumin, which is a component of turmeric. And that is so good for your brain. It is the thing your brain can really help with, like the inflammation that's going to happen during aging. It helps with neuron biogenesis, so it's making new neurons for you, and it can help improve cognition. So, and then lastly, I will just mention this because this is also important, is omega-3s. And so omega-3s like DHA, EPA, The one thing is that it's actually sometimes better if you think about the form they're in, because I've done research on, for instance, DHA, and it's shown, and my research showed this, that the phospholipid form of DHA, which is basically DHA with this kind of phosphate group that allows better brain entry, is way better for your brain. And you can get it from krill oil, for instance. Supplements or krill oil supplements. So the other types of DHA, they can be helpful for the rest of your body, but they might not be helping your brain as much. Sorry. So I'm just getting a little nerdy here because now you know you and I can get around good. My passion is nutrition. Yeah, because I've done so much research in nutrition and I, I feel like people are always just like, what should I do? You know, I'm so confused. I'm like, Oh, there's so many options. But just, yeah, sometimes I feel like people are just like, eat right. And I'm like, well, that's not always helpful because it's helpful to tell them the facts so they know how it's helpful. And that's motivating.

And when it comes from a neuroscientist, it has a little bit more impact. So I love that. And I love that you can geek out of it. You're like me. I'm smiling so much talking about food. Um, and, uh, when I think about my greatest healing, when I went back to the ashram, you know, we had— we heard a trend over here saying to aim for 30 different types of plant fibers in a week. When you go to an ashram, even I'm sure, like, gosh, the times you've been to, to Asia, you can often get that in one meal from the fruits, the veggies, the spices, the herbs that they're using. There's so much variety that's in it that's supportive of the body. And looking back, it doesn't surprise me that I lost so much weight. Working with people today, there's so much unlearning that needs to happen around consuming either that much fiber or being able to support the body and getting there again, or the fear around sugar that might come from it. You're making me think of Jim Kwik. Do you know Jim Kwik? He calls blueberries brain berries. Yeah, he's a brain diet also for memory.

That's great. I love it.

Yeah, we'd have a great breakfast together. Bowls and bowls of berries. I'm with you on that. Brain fuel. Let's stay on this topic for a little bit. So supplementing, I think, is essential when it comes to things like krill oil for those omega-3s. I know we have a lot of vegans that listen to this episode. Do you know any benefits with— is there— obviously there's a big difference with conversion and stuff like that with algae oil and what's available.

Algae oil can definitely help the rest of the body. It's Yeah. Still not the form of DHA that's going to get into the brain as well. But we did do a little bit of a trick in our research where we tried to see if whether you took, um, yeah, a DHA, like a regular DHA with other kinds of lipids, phospholipids. So conveniently enough, guys, one of the main phospholipids you can get is from soy. So if you have soy and DHA together, you might get more entry into the brain. So like that algae DHA, for instance. So yeah, that might be— that might be a new tip you haven't heard before.

I love it.

Yeah.

With the change of season, I've been prescribing starting your day with miso soup. So, yeah, it's so supportive. Obviously, it's great for the gut microbiome. It's something that's hot that's going in the system first. Having something savory, I find with a lot of my clients, it helps to retrain their taste buds if there's someone that traditionally craves sweet first thing in the morning also. So I'll merge that with some berries now.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. I love it. And, you know, it's fermented, so that's good too. So yeah, so many benefits.

What else do you do? Do you have any tricks? I've heard you talk about the power of MCT oil. Is that something that you do every day?

I don't do it every day. I kind of do it as a little bit of a tweak when I do feel like my brain is just starting to have a little bit of like a, you know, not quite there. So yeah, as I said, MCT oil, another podcast, is great for brain function because it's an alternate source of fuel that your brain can use. So your brain mostly wants to use sugar. That's its preferred source. But as I've mentioned before, during perimenopause, you can actually stop using glucose as well in your brain. And sometimes that can get very severe and it can lead to, yeah, your brain breaking down white matter to, to use as another fuel source. But, you know, another alternate source that can use is ketones, and you can get ketones directly from having MCT oils, medium-chain triglycerides. And yeah, that's way easier than doing a ketogenic diet. So Yeah, I've tried ketogenic diet before. I'm not good at just leaving carbs behind forever. I like carbs too much. So yeah, I will have a little bit of coconut oil even though coconut oil is not the best source. It's sometimes that is— that's the only thing you can get in New Zealand. When I'm in America, I will also try to get pure, I would say, MCT oil that is 8-carbon in length. So that's aprylic oil. So octanoic acid is also what it's called, and you can get that from any kind of like health food store.

Yeah, yeah, it's everywhere here. And I'm with you, it's something— it's in moderation. Use it as a tool, keep it, you know, as an ingredient in your, your cupboards for when you need a little bit of a boost. But I wouldn't say it's a daily thing. A lot of my men, male clients, do a lot better with the ketogenic diet than, than women do long term anyways, so but lots of clinical data. Yeah, exactly.

I think they like that kind of like, oh, I'm, I'm just gonna really do something hard and tough.

Exactly. Yeah.

And, and for me as a woman, I'm like, I don't understand the point of the tough thing for no reason. Like, I, I understand if it's like a really, you know, useful thing, like it helps someone else, for instance. Yeah.

So anyway, yeah, women have been there, done that. We don't need that anymore. All right. So the takeaway, really, you mentioned so many great tools, but for Western women to really optimize or produce S. equal, it's the variety that you're talking about. It's optimizing gut function. It's looking for a diet that's high in antioxidants, high in variety, high in diversity. Yeah, I think that that should be—

that's what we know. Yeah, we don't know as much. I mean, I would say probably at this juncture, and we don't know as much as we should, like probably just go out and find an S equal supplement. Cause even when you do all this stuff, like you might not know if you're making S equal. Fortunately, I think there's more knowledge about it lately, but it's not at the point where you can go to your doctor's office and say, test me for S equal production. Like they don't do that yet. So yeah, just try the modal—

try the food, food first, notice the difference. Right. That's the takeaway. Let's talk about MitoQ and the science behind this and everything that you're excited to share. My audience knows that I never choose to partner or, you know, talk a lot about supplement brands that I don't wholeheartedly believe in. And I look at the science and I look at the data. There's something really special around MitoQ. So can you give us a little bit of a background around your entry with the brand and I guess we'll, we'll take that into the mitochondria.

Oh yeah. Yeah. And I will tell you, I am so passionate about mitochondria. And the reason why is I've spent my life trying to understand how the brain can be protected against dementia, Alzheimer's, and how can you do that through nutrition? Because I don't think drugs will ever work. I don't think you can get to the point where you have Alzheimer's and have a drug just reverse it. So I'm very much like, you have to prevent it. You have to think about nutrition. And the way that it has looked for the last 20 years is that the best way to protect your brain is to protect your mitochondria. Your mitochondria, as I've said before, are these wonderful little organelles that are making most of the energy for your cells, making ATP. And that is, that is amazing to me. Like, I am amazed we have them. Still, because like they're so complex, they're, they're crazy. But they are also at the same time making a lot of oxidative stress. They're making these free radicals that damage your cells. And your mitochondria, they've been around with us for 4 billion years. We've developed a lot of ways to protect ourselves against that oxidative stress, the free radicals that mitochondria make. But as you get older, a lot of those kinds of abilities go away. So for antioxidants. Mitochondria make antioxidants like CoQ10 to protect itself. It's a very potent antioxidant. It's wonderful. But CoQ10 starts to decrease as you age. And yeah, this can lead to all sorts of mitochondrial dysfunction and more wear and tear in your body. And what happened was with MitoQ— I heard about MitoQ for the first time, I think, maybe about 15 years ago, um, I have been frustrated about— I want to protect my mitochondria, but very few things get into the mitochondria. They're really protected. So they have these transport systems that only let very few things in. So even though I was trying to look at all these different wonderful nutrients like curcumin— curcumin's not going to get into your mitochondria. Resveratrol is not going to get in your mitochondria. So what these scientists in New Zealand did was that they looked at CoQ10. They saw All right, this is a huge molecule. You could take it orally. In fact, it's a very popular supplement, but that oral CoQ10 is not going to get into your mitochondria because it's just too big. So can protect the rest of your body. It's not going to protect your beautiful mitochondria. So they said, all right, we'll make a special molecule that has a tag, has a molecular tag on it that allows to get sucked into the mitochondria. And so that's what they did. They made this antioxidant molecule that looks very much like CoQ10. They added this tag called triphosphonium and voilà, now you could get this antioxidant to mitochondria up to 90% while CoQ10 maybe could get in 5%. So that was a game changer for me when I first heard about this. I'm like, this is it, you know, this is what we need to protect our brain, to protect the rest of our body. All our mitochondria, um, in all 37 trillion cells. So yeah, I, I joined the company about, um, 4 years ago, and, um, I will tell you, we have so many studies on this molecule, MitoQ. It's also called mitoquinol, that's the chemical name for it. And we have studies, we have like 8 different studies on how it protects our heart health. And it's really great, for instance, for improving our artery flexibility, which is really important as you age. Like, people don't realize that when we're looking, you know, in our 30s and 40s and we feel great, that our arteries are becoming less and less flexible. And that's a problem, like less blood flow to our organs, you know, leading to, you know, even things like the fibrillation that you're experiencing or you, you did experience. So this is where really good to protect your arteries. Protects our heart. There's a recent study where Mitochew, um, actually improved heart function and improved energy production in the heart by up to 15%. And so, yeah, it's, it's wonderful for heart health, but it also has many studies on improving our exercise. So improving overall muscle function, sort of power output, just performance. In terms of exercise and also muscle recovery. So when you do that crazy hard workout, which we just talked about perimenopause, the workouts become harder. You know, I hate to say it, but they do. And it's, it's terrible when you try to do the exercise and realize like, I am still in pain from the day before. So Mitochew is, is good at helping make that kind of inflammation from all that sort of exposure to muscle damage less. Um, yeah, there's, there's 29 clinical studies on MitoQ. So I'm kind of just going on and on about each study, but there's too many. So I don't know if there's a particular area you want to focus on, or I, I will tell you maybe one study that is important for women. But yeah, maybe you've got something you want to—

That was my next question. You know what I really think about, you know, as a brand, what's revolutionary is the attempt to really look at the body in a different way and kind of how we started the podcast. We're constantly consumed, overconsumed, and everything that we have to fix instead of focusing on the beauty of bringing back the resilience to our body and what it already knows how to do. And here we are living in this modern-day world where I can only imagine the assault that our mitochondria take just as a result of keeping up with everything today. And now anyone listening, God, if you've had a sick loved one or parent and you go into a hospital, the hospital beds are full. You know, like our system is not prepared for us to live this long. And here we are talking around, talking about living to 120 and beyond for people who have that as an interest, right? We want to be able to do that well. And I think for the studies that you're talking about are so essential because I think the supplement industry is just going to become a little bit more like the Wild West. But you have to look at brands who are sharing their clinical studies and data in the way that you are to really understand the significance of that. So let's break it down in two parts. One, why should someone start to care about their mitochondria? You've kind of given a glimpse of the responsibility of what they do, but like, you have the scientific mind and the way that I'm interpreting how you're speaking to it, you're like, you're in love with understanding the power and the function about the mitochondria. So share that with us. And then let's put it through the lens of women's, women's health as we age.

Yeah. Yeah. And I, I will tell you that I'm hoping everyone will also be in love with their mitochondria. Like, I think people thought about mitochondria like a few times, like in high school biology, and then it's just like, that's it. But they are so important for everything we do. And just to give you an example of how they're important. So we all know that we're aging, right? And one of the first signs that we're aging is that we can't exercise as well the way that we did in our 20s and 30s. Then, you know, this starts to go down in your 40s and this is inevitable. Everyone seems to be kind of having that slow decline. And this is because your mitochondria aren't functioning as well. So they're one of the first things that you start to see decline when you're young. People usually kind of go like, oh, I notice I'm getting old when I have wrinkles. Well, did you realize that your brain function— so the way that you can actually even have reaction time is optimal in your early 30s, and then it starts to decline and it'll never be the same again. And that's because the mitochondria in your brain are starting to dysfunction. So most diseases of aging that are going to probably kill you, like cardiovascular disease, like diabetes, like liver disease, seem to have a mitochondrial origin. We're finding out more and more things are starting up with mitochondria, and I'll give you a quick example. So, so with MitoQ, this, this beautiful mitochondrial-targeted antioxidant, they were trying to understand what is the origins of diabetes, like how does that start. And, um, so this is a, a published study that actually got a lot of attention last year because it was really showing that, that sort of first moment of when you start having that insulin resistance. And they showed it by giving men, um, a big amount of fat. So they kind of put in much— as much fat in their bloodstream as you would get getting from, like, you know, eating a huge pizza. And they saw with just that amount of fat, in that one instance, you caused insulin resistance So the muscles of these men were no longer able to take glucose, like transport glucose into their muscle cells as well, just from that one instance. So that's how it starts. And when they tried to understand like, why is this happening? They looked at mitochondrial oxidative stress. So they looked at how much oxidative stress is going on in the mitochondria and they saw that there's a lot more once that, that huge amount of fat brought on. you know, all this kind of like lipotoxicity. And so then they took MitoQ and with one dose of MitoQ, albeit a very large dose, so don't try this at home, kids, they saw that the MitoQ could improve that insulin sensitivity just in that one moment. So it was proving that, that oxidative stress from the mitochondria is causing that loss of glucose transport. And that you could bring it back through something like MitoQ. So that, I think, is just a nice illustration of how this matters. Like, just when you, when you go and you have that huge meal— and I don't feel like people should go like, oh, I should never have a huge meal, because sometimes, you know, you're feasting, you're celebrating— but you also have to think about, like, how can I protect my mitochondria during that event? And Yeah, you can, you can take in a lot of antioxidants and all the rest, but they might not go into mitochondria as well. So MitoQ does seem to be a bit special that way. So that's, that's just one illustration. Did I cover everything? I'm trying to figure out something. Yeah, yeah.

No, no, no. That's super powerful. Yeah. The message is like, gosh, one day we're going to have, you know, some sort of a device where we can look at the cells of our body every single day to see how they are reacting. I cannot wait for the day where we can actually, you know, really test our mitochondrial function and the things that we're doing to optimize. But right, I know, but the goal is fall in love with your mitochondria. So let's put this through the lens this way. What are 2 or 3 things that are really elevating oxidative stress for a woman? And where could supplementation now come in to really support her long term when she's thinking about aging well?

Oh yeah. So I hate to say this, like one of the things that really causes a lot of oxidative stress is high stress. So high mental stress. So cortisol, you probably experienced this yourself, is bringing on a lot of oxidative stress through the fact that it's, it's supposed to be a good thing. It's, it's cortisol supposed to kind of be mobilizing energy for you to deal with whatever it is that you're dealing with. But the problem is, is chronic stress. Now you get chronic cortisol, so you're always trying to mobilize energy. And just to give a sense of how mitochondria work best, mitochondria work best when they're making just as much energy as you need, which then kind of keeps oxidative stress at a lower level. If you're revving up mitochondria, you are then causing them to make more oxidative stress and actually dysfunction.

More.

And I kind of love this concept because it's, it's almost an Asian concept of like balance. You need, right, mitochondrial balance. So that is really important. And it's interesting actually, because there's a study that's going on with MitoQ for people who have had early childhood mental trauma. So you're probably aware of this, that when you have trauma, you are hurting your vascular system. So your vascular system starts to dysfunction. This is really well known for PTSD patients, that they have vascular system that doesn't, you know, bring on blood flow and control blood flow as well. Same thing for kids that have had a lot of bad experiences. They grow up and they become adults that have more likelihood of disease because their vasculature isn't working as well. So How do you fix that? You know, how do you fix that sort of cortisol kind of like out of control kind of responses that they're often having? And so they're looking at MitoQ to actually help with their vascular function. So, so I think that's something that women especially deal with. I feel like we are all under so much stress and that's the one thing that we can't control. Like, I, I want to go out and do things. Like, I have a lot of ambition. And I, I know many of your listeners, you know, they're ambitious, but it's also that feeling of like, how can I have that ambition that doesn't crush me, that makes it so that I am not going to be able to function as well and I'm going to be not there for my family, I'm not going to be there for myself. So I feel like we have to look at stress as like, it's just going to happen to us. We have to have a lot of coping skills. So I'm so there for the coping skills. You should see me deep breathing in my office all the time. Beautiful. Yeah. But then, you know, other times you just can't control it and your mitochondria are going to suffer. So yeah, this is, this is just one thing you can try is maybe Mitochew. Though I will say that probably the best thing for mitochondria, and this is almost so clichéd, is exercise. Exercise, of course. Really tells your mitochondria like, okay, be resilient now. Like, no, you need to make energy in just the right way. As I said, it's all about balance.

You're preaching to the choir. I think for this audience, the amount of times that I've drilled in the fact that the everyday foundational truths of health, the unsexy stuff, it's all the things that we're learning. Put back that resilience to the body. And the studies that you're sharing, like, my jaw is just open thinking there's so much I can imagine that there is still left to uncover about this. And with my coaching lens, I think about, you know, the nervous system. A lot of us have these nervous systems. You'd mentioned the trauma that children have been through. We have a nervous system that's been trained in a certain response that even small stressors seem big and overwhelming. Again, no doctor's probably brought mitochondria into the play with that, but it's really refreshing because it makes us realize that our body is actually equipped to be able to heal and to be able to move beyond stressors in a way that we might identify as being completely debilitating. But the modalities are there, and this is where science is really exciting because we can adopt, you know, ingredients and tools that are really designed to support us. And to support us in aging well and feeling well at the exact same time. So it's not so overwhelming.

I just want to give one more example because I— this is a study that just literally came out this week and I was reading it and I was kind of vindicated, but also it's kind of tough. So they're looking at people with depression. So they took cells from people who are depressed and they saw that these cells from depressed people couldn't make energy as well, especially when under stress. So they looked somewhat normal when they were just in kind of a resting state. But when you had any kind of energy demand on it, like put them under stress, they couldn't do it. So I thought that was such an illustration of how important mitochondria are. So it's literally controlling a lot of our emotions as well too, just in terms of You know, can we make the energy we need to get through this bad time? If we can't, then it could just predispose us to a lot of sort of emotional, yeah, I would say conditions.

Siobhan, that's so powerful. Like, look at what's happening in the world today, right? When we think about the rates of anxiety and depression that are on the rise despite everything that we know, and this isn't just adults, it's children as well. So I think that the more that we learn about this. And my God, if that isn't a study that ends up being vindicated, then it's only going to evolve, right? I can imagine now we're going to open up new ways of really investigating this so that the future can look really different because unfortunately we can't forecast a world with less stress at this point, right? So we need to—

it's sort of coming at us. So yeah.

Yeah, but this is where I think the mitochondria holds such a beautiful story. And tell us a little bit about your supplement stack then. Like, everyone wants to know, with all the knowledge that you have then, tell us a little bit about what you're taking daily. And it's not to say that this is something that's prescriptive for everyone, um, but in terms of how you're thinking about, as a woman aging well who could live until you're 100 or 120, what are you prioritizing outside of the foundations that we've mentioned? The diversity, the sequal that you're focusing on refueling through that biodiversity, through, through diet. What else? What's— Yeah.

So this, this will sound very mitochondrial oriented, but it kind of makes sense cuz I, I really think if you're targeting your mitochondria, if you're taking care of your mitochondria, like you will, yeah. Do no end of good for your whole entire body. So yeah, first off, I, I do take MitoQ cuz yeah, I've read all the studies, I've read all 29 studies. We have 10 more studies in the pipeline. I know what it can do. I have like my parents on it and all the rest. Um, so yeah, I take that every day. I also am very interested in NAD+ loss during, um, during aging. So we all know that NAD+ is another important part of our mitochondrial functions. So NAD+ is helping make ATP for us. And it's helping with all our kind of cellular repair and sort of mitochondrial repair functions. So I do take NAD precursor, so I'm very into NR. I think that one's pretty good as a precursor, but I also just take nicotinamide as well too. So yeah, we actually have a product that has these kind of ADD precursors for us. And then the other thing I'm very passionate about is magnesium, like the rest of the world. Right.

It's worth it.

So I do take magnesium, but I, I think of it as, as a mitochondrial enhancer. So your mitochondria need a lot of magnesium. So I, I think of it as just, you know, you're helping that as well. And then the same thing for omega-3. So I take, yeah, omega-3. Actually, I take a high EPA omega-3, interestingly enough, because that one seems to be better for overall brain health, which, as you know, I'm very passionate about. Exactly. And that EPA is also really good for your mitochondria. So it's really good for helping with inflammation. It's helpful for, you know, membrane flexibility. So you have to actually think about your mitochondria membranes as this flexible thing that need a lot of kind of adaptation to them. And then the other one that I take a lot of is this new one that I just mentioned with the S equal. Because so way back in the beginning of the podcast, I was telling you how I had really bad sleep during like pretty early stages of perimenopause. And I just did not have anything that worked. You know, I just sit there and try to like think about good thoughts or, you know, whatever. And it didn't help. But then I read about S equal, or actually I knew about S equal, that, that now that there was an actual supplement available. So I started taking S equal. I had to special order it from Japan. And it just suddenly just made my sleep so much better. It was amazing. Wow. Happened in like 3 or 4 days where I was sleeping through the night, which felt like the, literally the first time that that was the case for months.

Wow.

So yeah, that was amazing.

And is that available? Yeah.

Yeah. So this is something that MitoQ is, is now making as a product with S-Equal and also a probiotic to kind of help with that estrobolone kind of functionality as well, the estrogen recycling. So yeah, I've gotten better with my sleep overall, so I kind of didn't have Equal for a while and I still felt okay with my sleep, but I'm very happy to have it back again. So yeah, and that's because it's brain bioavailable. So that's the other thing is that I hear people saying, oh, take black cohosh or red clover for sleep, for phytoestrogens. And I hate to tell you, it's just not brain bioavailable. So you have to find someone. Yeah, something that works.

Yeah. And this is something that people forget when you're meeting with an herbalist or practitioner who's prescribing those things. They're not prescribing them in solitude. Like, they really are, you know, herbs that need to be working synergistically with other foods or other ingredients or other other herbs as well. We can't— we kind of screwed that up. Um, when it comes to supplementation though, a lot of the supplements that you have mentioned are things that have standing ground. Um, the studies are there. We're starting to have some longitudinal studies which make them really relevant. And coming from you and your background and obviously your expertise is, is so much more powerful. With MitoQ, so I'm on month 1 and I have to say You know, there's no drastic, I'm jumping out of bed. But I will say that last month there was an urge to be done with my day at 8 or 8:30. I would crawl to bed, but I got a little bit more oomph at night. So, which is, as a mom of two little kids, that's everything. Because if I have energy at the end of the day to still pour into them and then take a little bit of time for myself. So it's subtle. I'm going to continue to share my experience and my listeners know we're going to link out everything below because I think it's just fascinating. And I, I love that you're a brand that publishes a lot of this data for people to really understand if they do want to dive deep. I think that's a lot of my, my audience as well. So thank you for all of the insight that you've shared. Go ahead and use code Mona at checkout to save. My intention and what I'm feeling from you and your incredible energy around this is a bit of the reframe that we talked about. My hope is that women they understand the power of looking into science and these modalities that are available to us, especially around HRT, which is important to look into and understanding your biology and your levels. But it sounds like what you're uncovering in the science that you see is really understanding a much deeper wisdom within the body. And I think a lot of women, when they hear that, are going to be so much more inspired to support our body's wisdom instead of throwing Band-Aids at the problems, right, which tend not to work long term. So thank you for showcasing such a beautiful story around that. Um, your passion and your energy are like really contagious. My cheeks are hurting from smiling for a lot of this episode. So people just say, are you—

but I'm glad you're interpreting it that way. Yeah.

Oh yeah, I get that reflection too, which is probably we're on the same vibe. But do you communicate with your audience Do you write? Do you publish? How can people find more of you?

I do put in what I find cool, like cool studies, mostly in mitochondria and brain health. I will tell you on things like LinkedIn and Twitter— sorry, X.com and Bluesky. Actually, I think I'm more on Bluesky lately, but I also invite people if people have questions about anything I said. I'm happy to share my email. So it's smitchell@mindoq.com. So if you have any direct questions, I, I wanna make sure that people understand and truly love the science cuz I think science is so liberating. Like I am very passionate about what you're doing about bringing together like the holistic sort of needs of like, who are we as people? What do we want? Because you can't ignore that. Um, but I also feel like the understanding of science This only adds to that. So yeah, I agree.

You are so generous. Thank you for that. Yeah, I have a feeling that ancient wisdom has known about mitochondria for centuries, and now we just have a word and the science to back it up. So I'm so excited to see the evolution of it. And a lot of the things that we've talked about, whether it's how you eat, how you move, how you sleep, being in nature, those walks that you go for, um, you don't need science, like, practice it. Put it into practice and you feel a physiological shift in your body. And that's what you have to trust. I think that's key. To close things out, can you tell us what kind of excites you about science in the future? That could be through the lens of mitochondria or not, but what's getting you really excited right now?

All right. Well, this is— this is going to not be too surprising. I am really excited about women's health because I feel like women have been ignored in terms of their needs for so long. You know, most of the clinical studies that are looking at, for instance, medications have been done in men. No one really understands women's reactions to a lot of these things. So I am— I'm feeling like women are only just entering into their superpower of just having an amazing kind of like first half of life and then also second half of life. So I feel like that's It's gonna be really exciting.

So beautiful. Thank you for that. And thank you for your incredible— I hope people give you the reflection. You have such a beautiful brain. The fact that you can make so much science so tangible for people, it's a great skill as an educator. So thank you for your time today, and, uh, we'll have you back. Let's have you back talking about women's health again in the future.