Barbell Shrugged - [Women’s Health] Menstrual Cycles and Menopause w/ Dr. Stephanie Estima, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #777

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Dr. Stephanie Estima is a doctor of chiropractic with a special interest in metabolism, body composition, functional neurology, and female physiology. She's been featured on Thrive Global, of the Huffington Post, has over 3.5 million article reads on Medium.com, and has helped thousands of women lose weight, regulate hormones, and get off medications with her signature program, The Estima Diet. You can hear her every week on her podcast, Better! With Dr. Stephanie. Work with RAPID Health Optimization Links: Dr. Stephanie Estima on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Strong Family this week on Barbell Strong. Dr. Stephanie Estima is coming on the show. If you can hear in the background right now, I'm in an airport. We're traveling. We did a bunch of really cool stuff with some clients this week in Florida and we're doing show read and intro in this thing in the airport. That is the way you do it sometimes. We're going to be talking about menstrual cycles, menopause, all the female things today. And as always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidehealthreport.com. That is where you can check out all things lab lifestyle, performance, testing, and analysis. We are going to be hooking you up with inside rapid health optimization. As always, friends, that's over at rapidehealthreport.com.

Friends, we won't be in an airport next week. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Warner. Doug Larson. Coach Travis. Matt. Dr. Stephanie Estima.

I'm almost positive I mispronounced some sort of accent on Estima. No, you actually are the first person who is, everyone says Estima. So they always think it's like estimate. It's like, no, you think of self-esteem. And then you add an A, esteem. Boom, Anders. And you did it. You're literally the first person who said it properly. I was down in Costa Rica for four days last week.

And now I'm speaking Spanish fluently. Comidas tipicas. That means get chicken and rice on a bowl and you're good to go. That's all you need to know. Yeah. Today on Barbell Shruggedugged are we talking about all the things that we are not experts in like menopause perimenopause having a perfect period um before we get into this i would love to know your story into this path you are actually uh i love that

you said before the show started that you kind of had the same mentality that many of us males do where you go just suck it up like yeah deal with it up buttercups you said yeah yeah yeah i think that was my attitude before my attitude you know when you would hear a perimenopausal woman or a menopausal woman complain you would sort of like almost give yourself like a lobotomy with how hard you were rolling your eyes you're're like, Oh, just whatever, just eat less, move more, you know, just like, do it, just do the thing. You're not, don't talk about, you can't do the thing, just do the thing. And now myself being in perimenopause myself, I'm 46, I'll be 47 next month. Uh, I have been humbled by, uh, the changes physiologically, emotionally. I would love to hear the experience of entering or just perimenopause as a whole.

Like what happens? How do you know that you're in perimenopause? When will, besides getting in the car and you're like, roll the windows down. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's February in Toronto, stop. I'll be excited for that moment though. That'll be nice. I will. I will say before I get into this, I know we were talking a little

bit about the people who listen to the show. So a lot of these guys are gym bros. Hello. I'm also a bro. I'm with you. And I think that this information is for women and also for the men who love them. Right. So this is for if you have a wife, a daughter, you know, for you to understand some of the changing hormones in her life, you will be able to better connect with her in all the ways that matter to you. So I, I'm so honored. And also just want to say to all of you, thank you for inviting me on this show, because I think that talking about periods and blood and talking about perimenopause and all the things can be a little bit maybe queasy or off-putting, but just, it really just speaks volumes about the type of people that you are in terms of your curiosity and your willingness

to learn. So I just wanted to say that right from the beginning. Thank you very much. You're awesome. Nobody ever congratulates us for being us. Thank you. It's about time, guys. The other side of that is that I'm much more interested in this topic now that I'm in my 40s. My wife is in her 40s, and so I'm supporting her. The more I learn about it, the better

in my opinion. Yeah, 100%. I'll say for me, my own personal stories. I struggled with my menstrual cycle really for years. 20s and 30s just had like very difficult. I had, I would always, I would classify like I had one good week out of the month. And that was like the week after I stopped my period right before I ovulated. And then, so that's, you know, when we talk about the menstrual cycle, there's two main, there's two

sort of main parts of it. The first part is like day one is the day of your bleed. The day you start, it's like shark week, right? It's like the day we start bleeding. And then week two is like, you've stopped the period. And then you're, um, you have certain hormones that, that peak testosterone peaks in week two, estrogen peaks in week two. Most women feel very good because these are anabolic hormones. They're firing, not just, you know, we know, of course, I'm sure you've talked about this at, you know, almost ad nauseum, but testosterone is not just a sex hormone that is related to reproductive capacity. There are receptors for testosterone and estrogen all through the body, including the brain, including the lungs,

including the heart, including all of these vital organs. So most women feel very coordinated, very on, like all fire, you know, all cylinders are firing in week two, and then she ovulates. And then that moves her into the second half of her cycle, which we call the luteal or luteal phase, depending on the world that, you know, part of the world that you're in. And this is really, you have to ovulate in order to get into this stage. And then we see a different cacophony, if you will, of hormones there. So you'll see progesterone and you'll see estrogen sort of make a second rise. So if you are a woman who struggles with her period or if you suffer from PMS, the time that you're very likely going to feel those symptoms is after you ovulate. So it's in that second half of the cycle.

And that was very much me. So, you know, I would get very like lots of water retention. I couldn't sleep. I was running too hot mood and affect. I was very emotional. I was very, I was just my, and I'm by default, a very logical person was not a logical person for two weeks, a lot of body pains as well. And then my period, so the onset of that follicular phase, also very period, like very heavy flow, lots of lots of things were going on there, like lots of prostaglandins, high inflammation, blah, blah, blah. So I struggled with that for for years. And it really wasn't until I started changing my nutrition and changing the way that I train. So I was also like I competed in I actually have her right here. I'll just show you, if you're watching this on YouTube, this is my girl.

This is my figure competitor trophy. I competed in figure in 2008 in what would be considered today, bikini, like, you know, figure has changed quite a bit, but so I I've been like a gym bro. Like I've been in the gym, absolutely loving training for decades, but I still really struggled with this hormonal piece. And it really wasn't until I started changing the way that I eat, the way that I would fast, how much protein, when I would cut, when I would pull back on carbs, like over the course of the cycle where I started to get some really like some reprieve from those symptoms that I just was detailing. And then the same thing with training. So like I said, in that week two, when you're sort of firing on all cylinders, like that's the time you're very, you have a lot of motor coordination that week. That is absolutely a great time for

strength gains for PRs, PBs, like your personal best, your personal records in the gym. That's a really great time for it. Not so much in the luteal phase when you're a little bit more clumsy, a lot of women will report like they're, they walk into a room and they don't remember why, or, you know, they just, they're dropping their keys out of their, like for no reason, they're tripping all these different things that we see. So we're typically a little more clumsy, uh, in the second half of the cycle. Um, and yeah, so that was, that's my story. And then, uh, wrote a book on it, uh, released it in 21. Got actually a lot of flack from it, from people like, this isn't real. There's no such thing as, you know, no such thing as changing the

way that you eat and the way that you train some of these sort of online trolls that we see sometimes. And I lovingly call them my trolls because they're really my greatest source of content. So it's like I'm hitting a nerve. I know I'm doing something right. And now I'm writing a book, like I mentioned before we got going on perimenopause, like some of the changes, like the body composition changes, the sex hormone changes, some of the mood and affect stuff, the hot flashes, like you mentioned, it's like, it's Toronto, it's February, but she wants the window down, you know, what's going on with that thermal regulation. So I know it's a long answer, but that's. Did you say that week one is when the bleed begins? Yes.

That's the beginning. Yes. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So week one, the first day of your, like the first day. Yeah. First day that you see blood, that's day one of your cycle. And I think. Follicular. Follicular. Yeah. You are taking notes. I love this, Travis. That's awesome.

I don't mess. Yeah, you don't mess around. You don't mess around. Gold star on your chart. So yeah, so bleed week, first day that you see blood is the first day of your cycle. Most women will have a cycle somewhere between 26 and 33 days. Like we often talk about it in 28, just because divisible by week, like it's divisible by seven really easily, but there's some natural normal variation there. If you're,

if your cycle is 30 days, that doesn't mean you're doesn't mean you have a wrong menstrual cycle. Like you're just, your, your ovaries are releasing every 30 days. It's fine. On the nutrition side of things, how should people, specifically females, how should females kind of like change their diet throughout that month? It's a good question. So the first thing I'll say is it's partly dependent on your goals. The majority of women that I come across want to lose fat in some capacity. They say they want to lose weight, but what they really mean is they want to reduce their adiposity, right? They want to lose fat and maybe they want to put on some muscle. So one of the things that I like to

talk about in the follicular phase, Travis, right? So the day that we start bleeding up until we ovulate. So that first two weeks, if you're somebody who likes fasting, we tend to be less hungry in the first half of the cycle. So if you wanted to, you can think about pushing fasting a little longer. I typically don't fast more than 12 hours at any point in my cycle. Even that sometimes is a bit long for me. But if you wanted to fast a little bit longer, you can think about pushing it then. You can also pull back a little bit on the carbs that those two weeks as well. Again, more of a more coming from the position of like a hormetic, like a like a stressor to the body.

It's a sort of form of caloric restriction. If the goal of the woman is that she wants to lose some weight, Sometimes when we temporarily, double underline temporarily, not permanently, temporarily restrict carbohydrates, we can sometimes see a drop in water weight or just some extra sort of bloat that she might be carrying on, that she might be carrying. So those first two weeks of the cycle are a great time for that. I'm a big advocate for protein. I've talked a lot about protein, especially as we age, it's probably the only macronutrient that changes like our requirements actually go up for protein as we age. So if you're kind of in that drop zone, 35, 40, 45, you really want to be thinking about a minimum of 30 grams

of protein per meal, evenly spread out through the day, like don't have 150 grams at breakfast and then just have carbs for the rest of the day, like don't have 150 grams at breakfast and then just have carbs for the rest of the day, like kind of split it up into, you know, your, your meals over the day. Uh, but dosing protein, like spacing out the bolus of protein over the course of the day, super important for muscle protein synthesis. That's another, you know, if a woman wants to gain muscle, we want to like mechanically stimulate the muscle tissue in the gym, but we also want to chemically stimulate it in the kitchen, right? So we want to like mechanically stimulate the muscle tissue in the gym, but we also want to chemically stimulate it in the kitchen, right? So we want to be able to get the

protein requirements for her that are appropriate to stimulate muscle growth and kind of pair that with resistance training as well. Do women often find that they become, they have like fewer cravings for protein specifically, like it gets harder to eat protein as they get older. Yes. Yeah. Because I mean, everyone, men and women are digestive tract ages, right? So the digestive lining, the lumen of the, so the sort of the, essentially the digestive system, like a really cool fact, it's technically not inside the body. The only time that something is inside the body is once it passes across the digestive tract layer and into the plasma, like into the blood. So we're basically like a tube. So when you have the food coming in, there's a very thin, what's called an epithelial

lining of the digestive tract. And that sort of gets trashed as we age, right? So as many things sort of become more dysregulated, there's more entropy, there's more kind of craziness that happens as we age. So a lot of women I do find, first we've been conditioned that protein is just like fire, barbecue, man, meat, you know, like we think that it's like not a female thing to be having meat or, you know, protein. I think creatine is another one that I think, uh, ladies are just like, Oh, that's just like for the, you know, the guys in the tank tops at the, at the gym with the six plates on the leg press. That's just for those guys, right? Everyone needs to be a meathead.

Yeah. Right. You're more comfortable with it. Well, I think, you know, what, before we got started, you said something really great. You said like, everyone has to have like a certain percentage of meathead in them, which I love. And I think for, I think for women, we have to really embrace our, you know, maybe our inner meathead or whatever, like creatine and protein is not just for men. It's absolutely for women as well. But to, you know, your original question was protein and do we have a hard time with it? And I think everybody, as we age, if you are not, you know, if you're not practicing some of the things that we've been talking about, the resistance training and your, your system is not used to

having protein, you know, having a large dose of protein is actually going to be very difficult for your body to first like break down the protein and then to assimilate the amino acids to kind of do its thing. So yeah, I think there's some, maybe some gentleness. There's, you know, a case to be made for like slowly increasing your protein, like not just going from like 40 grams of protein a day to 120. Like that's probably going to lead to a lot of GI distress, a lot of pain, maybe some distension, bloating, all the things. So can we slowly increase your protein intake?

Absolutely. And should there be a target for your protein? Probably, you know, if you're working in pounds, like, you know, one gram per pound of ideal body weight, if you're a kilogram kind of person, it's like 0.7 grams per kg of body weight are good sort of places to start. Yeah. How about the training? How does that vary, if any, throughout the month? I love this question. Okay. So the first principle before we even think about how things change is no matter what we are approximating muscle failure. So you guys know this, right? Like preaching, like talking to the choir, right? So

we don't have to get to muscle failure, although I think it is fun sometimes to kind of see what that looks like and feels like, but you can approximate muscle failure, irrespective of reps, irrespective of weight, right? I'm a big advocate for heavy weight that approximates muscle failure with an RIR of one to three. So you've probably talked about RIRs or RPEs before, right? So rest and reserve, one to three. Yeah, you got to try really hard. So I always get asked this question too. So before I kind of get into the mechanics of like week one, you do this, week two, you know, muscle failure looks like this. It looks like your velocity is slowing down.

Like, you know, rep one. Did you see the look on Masha's face when she said velocity? Oh my gosh. Nice. Were there hearts coming out of your eyes yeah if we had emojis right now that man would like yeah i feel like a like a valentine's day emoji coming out of him right now i love it i love when i can get the heart emoji from from my yeah so velocity slows down right set one doesn't look like or rep one doesn't look like rep 12 or whatever whatever ropes that you're doing um the perceived weight of the perceived weight also goes up yeah there we go everybody that can't see it

i literally just hit the heart i did that so again rep 12 it feels really heavy right rep 12 does not feel like rep one it feels like the perception of the weight is much heavier that's what it looks like and then you can subjectively ask yourself like hey how many more reps could i do right maybe you're full range maybe you can't do full range anymore maybe you're allocated to like the long length do you guys talk about long length partials at all here we talk about long lengths at all i mean i have i don't know if we've done it on here before because it's a great it's a great idea yeah look okay just yeah she's talking about being in the bottom of the squat and coming in the stretch going back down yeah it's like the latest thing yeah i didn't get a hard emoji on that one so i'm a little it's a good one though yeah that was a good one yeah so long like really

really velocity and the perception of the weight that's how you know you're getting to failure and then what i for me like let's say it's a squat we'll use the squat as the example i can't necessarily get all the way down in the hole anymore or i get stuck so then what i might do is i might do like maybe not maybe maybe i'll do actually partials on the top there so that's not a good idea okay you know what i'll give you like a hamstring curl. So I'm on the hamstring curl machine and I can't do a full range of motion anymore. And so I'll do like a couple of like reps in the stretch position when my legs are straight to about, let's say, 30 degrees of flexion.

And I'll kind of do that until I can't anymore. And the literature is still like not, you know, full range of motion, I think is always king or queen, right? It's always like the best thing. You always want to go through full range of motion. It's not just for the muscle, but it's also for the joint and the cartilage and the tendons and all that. You always want to preserve your range of motion in the joint. But when you can't do the full range anymore, I think there is an argument to made for like kind of finishing the muscle in a long, in that, in that stretch position. Another one is like a lateral, when you're reaching up, like I can't do the full range anymore,

like after whatever rep. So I'll kind of in the stretch position, I'll sort of reach up and like do whatever I can until I can't do that anymore. Yeah, there's a lot of good literature that say like, you can maximize subpar really good for tendons especially yeah we talked about okay so all that first who was it brian bornstein we did episodes yeah that's right on that show but outside of that we haven't really talked about too much on barbell shrug okay cool yeah so that would that's like the first thing it's like it doesn't matter what week you're in uh you have to be working the muscle

to approximate failure so rir of one to three, RPE of eight to 10. Then you can play around with, if you're a woman in her fertile years, I'll say that irrespective of whether you want babies, your biology is wired to optimize for fertility. So when we're thinking about training, keeping in mind that we're always working to muscle failure. What I often find for women, let's say in their first week, so bleed week, so week one to day one to day seven, let's

say, a lot of times, especially in the first couple of days of her period, maybe there's like some cramping, like the uterus is contracting, she's expelling, you know, the lining of the uterus or whatever, which is actually what the period is. So there can be a lot of like, fatigue, pain, her capacity to push herself is not quite there. So I often will recommend something like an eight to 12 rep range. So again, making sure that rep 12, like you're done like dinner, right? So it's you're finished there, but you don't have the, it's not as mentally taxing, let's say, as like a five rep set, right? So like when we're really lifting very heavy weights, which would be my recommendation for the second week. So you finish your period, now you're in

week two, testosterone and estrogen are kind of peaking. This is really when we can train for strength. And certainly we know that hypertrophy and strength are technically two different outcomes, but they sort of correlate with each other, right? So I like in week two for there to be like five to seven, maybe five to eight for your set length. But that means that to do five reps or seven reps, like it has to be pretty heavy. You know, there has to be some jump in weight compared to the first week. Week three, you know, we've ovulated, we're starting to get potentially if a woman is dealing with that PMS or some of those sort of inflammatory, like those pro-inflammatory symptoms, we can kind of return to that eight to 12

rep range for her. And then in week four, I like to have actually longer sets. So if you are going to be inflamed, if you're going to be feeling crappy, it's in week four, I like to have actually longer sets. So she, if you are going to be inflamed, if you're going to be feeling crappy, it's in week four, right before your period starts. So contracting the muscle more often. So a 15, let's say a 15 rep set or a 20 rep set or a 25 rep set, even a 30 rep set, although it's really long, but you know, muscle hypertrophy happens anywhere between five to 30 reps. We know that from literature. So let's say it's like a 15 to 20 rep set, let's say. You're going to get more contraction from the muscles. And of course the muscles are not just beautiful to look at. They're also endocrine organs, right? So they, they will release things into the bloodstream that help with reducing inflammation. They're called

myokines. I'm sure you guys have talked about myokines here before, but they're these basically anti-inflammatory chemicals that help to bring down inflammation. So a woman who's feeling like really puffy, really gross, like she's like lots of water, her husband's annoying her, everything's bothering her, her partner, um, having a bit like decreasing the weight, but increasing the volume for her in that week can be really helpful, um, in reducing inflammation. So it's like, you're kind of dosing all through the month. You're sort of dosing the, um, the volume based on kind of the hormonal environment. I feel like that might help too with quite, I could be wrong. But like with the – you said earlier week three might feel clumsy,

like the cognitive decline maybe. Because I feel like the guy we had on who was talking about learning and all that, he talked about myokines. I'm pretty sure about how we – that's how the muscles communicate with the brain as well. So the way that strength training will help with cognitive improvements is through myokines as well. Yeah, well, they're called the molecules of hope, right? So that's sort of their nickname. I haven't heard that. Molecules of hope.

Yeah. I like that. And that's one of the things, like if you're feeling really awful, you know, one of the sort of jokes that I sort of make like tongue in cheek is like half joking, half truth is all jokes are, you know, it's like every four weeks, my husband, I'm like, why does his chewing bother me? Like every, it's just every four weeks. He just like the way he chews just bothered me. It's like, oh, that's, that's because I'm in week four. Okay, good. I'm just going to check myself before I wreck myself. And then, but what I do is I get to the gym, right? I get to the gym

and I train and I do higher volume and I release those myokines and then all is, all is well in the world again, right? Like I have that renewed sense of pride from doing a workout that I maybe didn't feel like doing. I feel, you know, more in love with my husband. I feel better in my own body. All that, all that sort of works itself out jack does the answer yes this is such a good podcast man this is i mean like i'm learning it's just how do i how do i relay this information to my wife that's the question and all the men listening don't go telling your wife what you know that you know this stuff now you better be smart learn the old guy here always ask questions maybe ask your wife to listen to this one not to don't go telling her don't mansplain to her tonight guys you get that ass whipped is what'll happen can you take that that whole process that whole summary

week one two three four as far as fluctuations in training volume and rep ranges and all that and just like quickly summarize that so we can yeah sure so week one i would say eight to twelve first actually let me just back up and say always auto like always auto regulate check in with yourself if you're in week one and you actually feel like going hard like you do you boo but generally week one eight to twelve week two five to week three, we're coming back to that eight to 12, eight to 15. And then week four, we're going to increase our volume and go 15 to 20, 25. Yeah. Something like that. It's kind of like medium, low, medium, high. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And all of them, like I said before, you're still working to failure. So you're still adhering

to the principles of hypertrophy, right? Which is, should be every woman's goal. This is not just for the guys. I mean, guys, yes, muscles look absolutely beautiful on men, but they look beautiful on women as well. And we cannot afford, like, it just needs to be in our, we need to, all women need to know what an RPE is. We all need to know what an RIR is. We all need to know that we should be taking five megs of creatine a day. These are things that are principles that apply both to men and women that are going to help with our physiology and, you know, help us feel better in ourselves. And it's, it's really, um, at least my experience in talking to women, like we've even myself,

like I grew up in the cardio section of the gym, right? Like I was on the elliptical for like, you know, I was, I was spending so much time in the car. So I really want women to sort of move from being these, I like to say, cardio bunnies to moving to becoming muscle mommies. I want you to be a muscle mommy. It's so beautiful to have muscle, and it's not something you can buy.

You can't order it on Amazon or order it in from Uber. It needs consistency and dedication. And in the process of building muscle, you also find who you are and what you're made of. Right. So it also forges like all the other benefits of mental health and mental strength and voluntarily putting yourself in a, you're voluntarily put making your muscles approximate failure. Like that's not necessarily a normal thing.

No, but it should be, man. I'm so glad that my daughter gets to grow up with a mom that loves to get, have muscles and she gets to grow up around all the women that i coach who love muscle so she'll never be in a family that like you know yeah give societies you know regurgitate society's thoughts on what a woman should look like woman should look like whatever she wants to look like but muscle is definitely going to be celebrated in our home. Yeah. Your daughter is so lucky.

And I would say that, like, you know, I have sons and I'm starting to train with my sons are teenagers. I'm starting to train with my older teenager, which is like such a joy for me. But it's also for, it's, it's for our daughters too, right? It's for the, it's for the generation that's coming up behind us. Like we were taught, you know, I sort of grew up in like the Kate Moss era,

love the supermodel, like super waif, like androgynous, like no curves. And I never looked like that. I, you know, I was like, well, my thighs, they're always going to touch. And I got a big, you know, I got, I got curves, right? So thank God and thank God. But when I was growing up, it was skinny,

like skinny, skinny, skinny, skinny, skinny. And I would love for the women in my generation to really shed that archetype of skinny and really adopt a new one of being strong. Right. I think being like strong is the new skinny, you know, like 30s. Yes. Yeah, man. I never understood that skinny thing. I've only called her little diesel. She's got to be that. Yeah, man.

Jack, lean, and tanned. That's it. That's the motto. My daughter has no chance of being like, she's going to be. With a mom and dad like she has, zero chance of that. She's so lucky. She's so lucky. She's so lucky.

Yeah. Yeah. She's going to have a big caboose. You're welcome. I'm going, she's, you're welcome. I'm going to tell her, you're welcome. Maybe I'll be dead someday, but you're welcome. I always say for women, it's like, we want big glutes and we also want size delts. We want, we want big glutes and we want delts that match. Yeah.

Thank God. You know, what was that? Our buddy, uh, Brent Ferris makes his living off making women's butts bigger. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Applaud. I mean, he got it right, man. We failed. Yeah.

No doubt. You briefly mentioned the cardio side of this. How does that play into it? Any fluctuations with how you should approach cardio week to week? Yeah, this is a great question. So first I'll just say cardio is hardio, right? I'm much, I'm much for training, but I do see, I do see the value, like, especially as we age, right? So as women lose estrogen, we also lose that cardio protective effect,

that ability to vasodilate and vasoconstrict. Like estrogen has a really prominent role in sort of the suppleness of our arteries. And so you do need to maintain that with maintaining your cardiorespiratory fitness. However, Doug, like you very intelligently just said, for a woman in her fertile years, that fluctuation of estrogen certainly affects the vasodilation and constriction of our arteries, but also estrogen also has a direct effect on our ligaments and our tendons. So it can make our ligaments a bit more lax. So this is like just a technical term that means like a little bit more loosey goosey, and it can make our tendons a bit stiffer. So what that means is that we are very well suited when estrogen peaks

for very heavy resistance training, which is in week two, why I talk about this like five to eight rep set, because the tendon, which is basically the extension of the muscle that's pulling on the bone, gets stiffer under the surging estrogen. But our ligaments, so the ligaments in our knees, the ligaments in our shoulders, they become a little bit more loosey goosey. So we are a little bit more susceptible to injury this time as well. And actually, if you look at female athletes, you'll probably find that in their reproductive years, they have a much higher incidence of like ACL injuries, things of that nature, especially when you see explosive type, like when you see sprinters, for example, where it's a burst activity, a lot of times

you'll see a lot of knee damage. And if you start to track it over the course of her menstrual cycle, when she's injured is usually in week two. So the only thing I'll say is if you are like an orange theory, you know, you pray to the church of orange theory or whatever, I would just say you can dial that. What is that? I don't even know what you mean. Orange theory is like...

You don't know what Orange Theory is? It's like a gym... I don't know what their physicals are. It's all high-intensity training. It's like soft CrossFit. Yeah, so they'll do circuits. I hope I didn't offend anybody by saying that. Probably.

No offense to Orange Theory, but I do know women that are there four, five, and six times a week. And they're like, I don't know why I'm getting like a belly. And like, it's not even high intensity. It's like moderate because you just can't do that high intensity for an hour. Well, I mean, that's the thing, right? Can we talk about that for a minute?

Like true high intensity is like 30 seconds. It's like running at 5K. Beyond 30. At best. Like, you know, like usain bolt at best right so 30 seconds maximally and then we're into like you've already exhausted you've already started slowing down at 30 seconds yeah if you hold if you hold top speed for 30 seconds yeah stop what you're doing call me you're let's go to olympics yeah you're not yeah you're not

really doing high intensity yeah these classes are like 45 minutes so what people do is they say okay i'm going to budget this much for this sprint exactly this much for that like they don't actually do all out you know balls to the wall like high intensity they sort of dial it back because they know they have to last for 45 more minutes yeah yeah yeah if you're talking to the person beside you, you're not high intensity, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. If you're not getting to where you can't talk, then you're not, it's not high intensity at all. Completely. Yeah. So I would, I would just say for anybody who absolutely loves like these high intensity classes, not just orange theory, but just in general, I would dial it back in that second week, in week two of the cycle,

just because this is when we see there's two main peaks of estrogen. One is in week two, we get kind of a smaller one in the luteal phase, but it's not as pronounced as it is in week two. So I just say dial back the HIT in week two. But all other times, you know, once or twice a week, I think HIT is great. I think that we should be trying to aim for like 150 minutes of like moderate you know zone two three if we're talking in zones like zone two three ish uh activity um yeah just just find something like walking with a weighted vest that can get you into zone two as well yeah so many notes what is your book i guess we'll do that at the end but i'm for sure i'm gonna get through it yeah it's called the betty body yeah the what the betty body so yeah so b-e-t-t-y yeah i'll show you actually have like a little there you go i'll show you here so this is it

the betty body so it's like purple dress, pink background. Um, my podcast is called better with Dr. Stephanie. So my Betty's are, you know, my listeners, my community, they started calling themselves Betty's and I was like, Oh, that's pretty juicy. So we just, we'll just go with that. So the Betty body is really for, it's like a love letter to my community, like on how to understand your cycle and how to attune your movement and your nutrition and your stress to um to your menstrual cycle so that's the book um the subtitle is a geeky goddess's guide to intuitive eating balanced hormones transformative sex yeah sounds like you know your audience very well transformative sex you got me on they should have led with that i'm not sure screw all this muscle building crap let's transform the sex got me yeah yeah

well i mean this is the other the other thing too with women is like we've also been taught like sex is like for at least i can talk about my own like raised roman catholic you know it's like you own like it's sex is just for marriage it's not for pleasure or anything like that but when you actually look at the design of a human body, it tells a bit of a different story. And then, of course, physiologically, we know that when we are orgasming, when we are connecting with someone,

we get this beautiful secretion of oxytocin, which is that love hormone, that bonding hormone. We get dopamine, we get serotonin, we get endorphins, all of these beautiful things. Best drug of all time. Yeah, yeah. It's the best drug of all time. Like you, I can get, you know,

and there's nothing that makes you feel more connected. I mean, you're so vulnerable, right? Like this is the most vulnerable if you're with a partner, let's say. You're your most vulnerable. And what a beautiful thing if you were in a nourishing, healthy, loving relationship to be able to totally let your guard down and be free.

I can't think of a better strategy to balance your hormones, actually, than that. Yeah. Yeah. Let's transition. What? Yeah, exactly. We're talking about sex, man. Stay right here.

Stay right here. Stay right here. Regarding hormones and libido and sex drive, like what are optimal hormones? Like what's like a natural change that you should expect? And there's kind of quote unquote, nothing you can do about it. And like, what do you actually have some amount of control of using lifestyle factors, nutrition, and all the things we normally talk about on the show versus like hormone replacement therapy or any other methods that might be great. Here we go. And this is into, we're talking about perimenopausal change, the menopausal change, et cetera, there, right? Yeah. Okay. So I would say, and I'll state my bias, I think that there can be a marriage of both the pharmacology, which is hormone replacement therapy, um, and the lifestyle. And you can't really have one

without the other. Like you can't be gaining weight, um, and doing nothing with your nutrition and just get on some estrogen and progesterone. I think that that's going to solve your problems. Like it will solve some things. Uh, it will solve, uh, maybe your sleep like progesterone is very well known for helping to modulate sleep. Estrogen can help with the vaso, you know, the hot flashes that a lot of women complain about, but you're not really going to get the body composition changes. Like you got to work for that. Like you got to be, that has to be created in the gym. Um, so some of the things that we can expect, uh, and I think, uh, Travis, you asked this at the beginning, like when does perimenopause, like it was an off the cuff

question. I don't think I answered it. It was like, when does it even start? Like when does perimenopause even start? And usually I'll say somewhere around mid to late thirties, we start to enter into that perimenopausal transition. And the reason why I say that is because that is when we start to see, if you're collecting data, like if you're doing blood work, you will start to see your progesterone levels start to dip. It's not a sudden dip, but it is a steady and a relatively reliable and predictable drop in progesterone such that in your early forties, now you might start having women saying like, I just, I can't sleep. You know, I'm waking up. Well, it's either like

they can't fall asleep or they can't stay asleep. It's like usually one of those two things or both. The other thing in your process, right? Yes. A, 100%. So the, the age, the, the, the average age of onset for menopause is about 51. So if you think about that, like, you know, you're like mid to late thirties, you start to see progesterone drop and then the, and then in your forties, your estrogen and testosterone follow suit. So as you said, Doug, it can be like a 10, sometimes a 15 year process. Like it's a not, it's not nothing. Like it's a pretty significant part of a woman's life. And so we can see the progesterone, we see sleep disturbances usually first. It's usually not like people think that, you know, perimenopause is like hot flashes

and irregular periods. And those things are really late signs. Like it's usually you'll see that late forties, early fifties, usually it's sleep. People will notice sleep. And then the other thing is like the anxiety and mood regulation starts to go. So they'll all of a sudden be way more anxious, maybe more anxious about their kids or like regular problems that they, you know, have been able to deal with in the past seem very overwhelming for her. And that's a little bit harder to identify because it's subtle, right? It's a little bit more subtle, like she's maybe a little bit more irritated. She's a little bit more agitated. So it really requires her to be even tracking her cycle or tracking her symptoms to be able to identify that kind of change, because sometimes it's so slow and subtle that she doesn't realize

it until she's hot flashing. She's getting a divorce. You know, she's screaming at her kids all the time, like all that stuff. So, um, and, and this is why I say like this information is like so important for men as well, not in a condescending way. Like you're not going to leave this, you know, conversation and be like, let me tell you, I think you're in perimenopause. Like you probably need your progesterone. Like you're not going to do it, you know, hopefully you're not going to do that, you know, but for you to understand that this, this drop in hormones is not nothing like it's a significant impact on her brain, on her heart, on her lungs, on her, on her, you know, her reproductive system, on her body,

like her whole body is changing. So progesterone starts, and then we will start to see often in the forties, we start to see like kind of estrogen just goes on this like wild, like you're on a, you know, you're on the back of, you're on a rodeo. It's like up and down and up and down and up and down. Like some months you're too much estrogen, some months you're not enough. And that's really when a lot of women will start to say like, I have raging PMS, like out of nowhere, or I am, I am raging. Like I am so angry. Everything is so, you know, everything is bothering me so much. And usually that's because we are like her ovaries are just failing to produce the right amount of estrogen. Some months it's too much, some months it's too little. And then she just kind of feels like she's losing her mind. Like

she feels like she's losing control of her body. And then testosterone kind of has a slower, but also, you know, a decline as well. And then at that, when she does go through menopause, which is 12 consecutive months, no period, her hormones are now at like 1% of what they once were. So one of the things to like kind of keep in mind is like you as her husband or her partner are, if she doesn't have hormone replacement therapy, literally are going to have more, you will have more estrogen than she will. You are going to have more testosterone. I mean, you already do, but you will have more sex hormones than she will. So I think that there is, so that's kind of what to expect. And any coach who understands perimenopause can

kind of lay this out for her women or his, you know, whoever the coach is for their client. And then think about some of the lifestyle changes that we can make. So we've already talked a lot about weightlifting. This is probably the most important thing from a lifestyle perspective that we can do for our beautiful women. It's like teacher to lift heavy, teacher to approximate failure, full range of motion, because muscle really is our metabolic currency. It helps with mobility, but it also helps. It's the primary site for glucose utilization, for fat utilization. It is how, if you're having a carb meal and you have like a good amount of muscle mass, like your muscles are kind of going to sop that up a little bit. It's also when you're training your muscles, if you are, let's say, lifting weights, you're going to get a transient rise in testosterone, like natural endogenous,

like your own production of testosterone after the lift, right? Depending on how fit you are, that, you know, the more fit you are, the shorter it lasts, but let's say 10 hours to anything up to like 48 hours after your session, you can have a transient rise in testosterone, which is really great for your brain. It's great for your body composition. It's great for your thermal regulation, fat, you know, all the things. Um, so muscle is really the first thing that she needs to, um, she needs to start doing, uh, hiring a coach, like all the, you know, all the people that you have on the show, all of the things that you're talking about, I think that she should be following. It's not just bro science. It's like, you know, it's bros and I don't know,

actually, maybe not, maybe not hoes, but something like, like pals and gals. Yeah. Like something like that. Like my, my friend, my, my, my kid's friend group, it's like pals before gals. I'm like, oh, that's so sweet. That's like the pre-girls before. Okay. So it's like for girls, it's for women and for men that we should be lifting heavy. And then the other thing I'll say around muscle is anything that your muscles do, your bones also follow suit. Right?

So what we want to do for our bones as we age, particularly with women, is we want to keep them really dense. We want to keep them really thick. One of the things that happens in the absence of estrogen and testosterone is that we actually, our bones get very brittle. So you trip and fall down the stairs or you live on the East Coast as I do, and there's ice outside and you slip and fall. We want to have the bones to have the resiliency to withstand that, that blunt force trauma, right? We want to be able to fall on the hip and not to have the hip shatter. Um, so weightlifting is not only important from an aesthetic point of view, but it's also from a functional and longevity, you know, health span

point of view, um, as well. So that would be like the biggest thing I can say, like just get in the weight, just get in the gym and do something, hire a trainer. If it's available to you, learn the, you know, the movement patterning, you know, squats, like everyone talks about squats. No one can really do them well. Like they're very tech. It's a very technical lift. So get someone who kind of understands female mechanics, female, like pelvis is wider than a man's. We have a greater Q angle. Like our knees are going to collapse more than a guy's will on a, on a squat, let's say. So learn how to squat well. And then the other thing is like the, the food that we've been talking about, like protein,

you gotta, you gotta be getting in your protein. Get in touch with your inner protein shake, right? If it's hard for you to get all that chicken and beef and all that in there, you know, there's lots of whey protein, beef isolate, like there's all, there's a lot of different ways that you can get protein in, in a way that's gentle on the stomach as well. Yeah. I can't, I don't think I could even get all the, I've never been able to eat enough just straight chicken. I've always had to supplement. It's not a huge eater. I do too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just get, I put some Greek yogurt. I put in a little bit, like I put in a scoop of my protein,

which is about 25 grams of protein. And then you get the Greek yogurt, which is probably 17 to 20 grams. So already I'm at like almost 40 grams. Right. It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful meal. It's very filling, some honey, some nuts. And it's like a lovely, lovely little thing. Yeah. Lovely little thing. Do you know when they started doing research on perimenopause like how long ago uh research well or research done poorly um well for sure uh

the i guess why why i'm interested in this is um anytime i feel like i'm trying to like problem solve health fitness things like that it's kind of, let's just go back before all this stuff was like easy. Like before there were gyms before there, like we ran a lot, we sprinted a lot. We lifted things in nature. We were always barefoot. That's probably the way that our physiology was like designed to operate in a much more like natural way. Um, I don't know how much further back we would need to go from where we are in technological advancements now and medicine, but, um, I'd love, I would, I guess I was just curious, like, have you read anything that what happened, uh, in menopausal, like how was it treated or what was the conversation, any research from before HRT was like a thing?

And how did women navigate this time of life from going from fertile to infertile? And then what were the health topics around that, if any? Yeah, this is a really interesting question. And I think that there's a couple of pertinent points in the timeline in terms of women's health and women's research. I would say currently we can start maybe today and work our way backwards. I think I just read this last week, it was like 9% of the funding last year went towards women's research, which is like really sad, right? So I think that, um, I think that we, we don't know what we don't know. I think there needs to be a lot more research around it. There was a very big study done in 2002 called the Women's Health Initiative. Um, and it's unfortunate because

they really butchered the study and they really put, um, it was, and I don't think it like the cost associated, like the, I don't think that the, we'll ever see a replication of it, but they had basically taken women who were well past menopause. So they were maybe 65, 70. So they had like 10 plus years after the onset of menopause. All happened to be obese. Many of them were smokers. So if we think about cardiovascular risk, it's like obesity, smoking, age, right?

It's like a number one, two, and three in terms of risk, and then put them on what's called Premarin, which is pregnant mare urine, which is supposed to have like conjugated estrogens and synthetic progesterones and such. And what they did was they actually halted the study early because they saw an increase in breast cancer. So this is kind of the big thing that we still see has residue today. A lot of women who were on HRT in and around the 2000s were abruptly taken off because the sensationalization in the media was like, HRT causes breast cancer, you need to get office immediately. And we still see that fear today. Like we still even have physicians who, if you, as a woman, if you go to your primary

healthcare provider and say, hey, like I'm 46 or I'm 50, whatever age, and I'm starting to notice some changes, I would like to, you know, explore progesterone or estrogen or, you know, combination, you know, it depends on whether or not you have a uterus or not. There's a couple of different ways that we do it, but many physicians will say, oh no, that causes breast cancer or like, no, you don't need it. You're fine. Like you don't need. Same people putting all the 13 year olds on birth control. Right, right, right. And you actually, you actually get a lot of perimenopausal women on birth control. So they'll offer the birth control pill to a 49 year old or a 51 year old woman instead of HRT. And they'll say, oh, well, it's low dose estrogen, implying that estrogen,

like that we're, why are we vilifying estrogen? Like that? Anyway, so there's so many things I have. I have an issue with a birth control pill, to your point, 13 year old, 14 year old, 16 year olds on birth control pill for decades without any reprieve, any long-term data to support that practice. You know, I could go on and on about the birth control pill. I have an ax to grind there, but yeah. So I think, I think that we need, so there's that. And then, you know, you were asking about sort of prior to HRT, some of the things that I often will hear is like, oh, well, the only reason why women live, like we're one of the only species that live past our fertile capacity. Right. So I think it's humans, giraffes.

And then there's some I forget the fish. It's like a it's like a dolphin or I forget what it is. But there's like three species that sort of live into menopause. It's like, well, why, why don't we just die off? Because we have sort of exhausted our, from an evolutionary standpoint or a teleological standpoint, like, why are you still here? You've sort of given birth or you haven't thought about that. It's very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So there's something that's been proposed called the grandmother hypothesis, which I think is really interesting, which is to say that women who live, the reason why many women live past their reproductive capacity,

human females, is to help with the, to help being like, help be a grandmother. We all know, I mean, if you've had, you have wives with children, we all know how taxing it can be to raise a child in isolation. So grandmother comes in to give mom a break, to play with the grand. So she's no longer reproductive, but she's incredibly productive in her community, in her connections with her community. If I was evolution, I would say you're right. Yeah. We need more grand grandma yeah we need more grandma massively helpful yeah yes absolutely i think that that might be what why we live like

some people say oh it's just because of medicine that's why we're all living longer and it's like yeah yeah and i think that there's some i think that there's some productivity um and some and old men wouldn't know what to do we would lose our minds we would have no clue we just buy ourselves oh yeah i don't know i'm just stuck here i love it i love it yeah i think that you know i always say you know for women i'm like yes maybe you're training for your bikini body but you're also training for your old lady body like you want to be able to lift that 10 pound baby up get on the floor play with them on the floor and be able to get back up off the floor, take the baby to the park, you know? I saw you actually, that quote, I was just looking at

your book and like, I saw you say, I want to, you want to be able to throw your grandkids up in the air. Yeah. I want to be the favorite grandmother. Like I want, I totally want to be the favorite. So I'm training for that moment. Uh, if i ever am blessed to join that club to be grandmother i would love i'd be honored to do that and i think grandparents got it made it sounds awesome you don't even have to do bedtime eating them get them ice cream you just leave them with their parents like all right exactly right yeah yeah yeah so that's sort of how i think about female aging is like probably probably evolved our capacity for that long life is probably related to being a grandmother or just embedded in our community to help out um yeah i don't know what i was expecting out of that but

i think you nailed that answer oh thank you yeah it's uh it's it's like kind of the framework i worked through of like solving all of my own it's like a solid framework for me to ask my own questions of like what does my body really need yeah um kind of going back to the beginning before all the all the niceties existed but i never really think about it from like a the biological uh the biological, uh, menopausal perspective, which is not there yet. So I'm like, how does that, how does that play into like really why this exists? Um, I think it's also strange, uh, on the, on the, like, we talk a lot about the physical side of that but the mental changes that go through

uh from probably from being a fertile female to losing essentially like the biological function of what is like creates life uh it's like a massive shift in just who you are as a person um and there's grieving that happens with that yeah i mean you there has to be some grief like what if we just woke up as males one day and they're like sterile sorry you just don't do this anymore it'd be a very i feel like my dad's going through it at the at his old age of like reverse puberty where he's just an old man now oh my wife would see you better you better figure that mess out that's not an option i hope he's not listening to this show figure that out boy he always uh he texts me he's like dude i don't know testosterone just

doesn't exist anymore like like i'm just old like you need to go get on that fake testosterone like imagine your wife had like at one point, like she just all of a sudden has more testosterone than you. Like it's, it's crazy. You would, it's, it's a reframe. It's a total pattern interrupt than what you're used to. And that's what happens in menopause. Like your partner will literally have more estrogen than you.

If you're not on HRT, if you're not on hormone replacement therapy or menopausal. I would immediately get on it. I would immediately get on it. I would immediately get on it. Yeah. I know. Well, that's the thing. That's the thing.

I love that you said that because I think that there's a stigma with men on TRT. I think that it's less so, but I still think that it's like, oh, he's on, you know, he's on Anabot and he's on, you know, faking it or whatever. I don't care. Yeah. Well, I love that about you because I think that there are so many women that are like, oh, well, menopause, it's a natural thing. And it's like, okay, so bacteria and viruses are also part of the natural world. Have you ever taken a antibiotic? Like, no doubt.

Yeah. Yeah. So what about cancer? You know what I mean? You have, don't take chemotherapy then. I mean, like, what's medicine for? You know, I love that freedom you have not sort of shackled your mind around some of these limitations which is lovely and I think if we can get more people to think like you I think that would be wonderful both from the TRT for men and women TRT also very controversial

still for women at the time of this recording which is crazy and HRT in general is often very controversial women really have to advocate women at the time of this recording, which is crazy. And HRT at large, like in general, is often very controversial and tart. Like women really have to advocate for themselves. They have to ask multiple times, often change healthcare providers. It's difficult. It's difficult to get what they need. That's too bad. Well, conversations like this help, right? Like if there's men that are listening and they have a woman who's struggling, there can be a conversation and there can be something that can, you know, something that can come from it. So maybe she can start listening to all the episodes that you guys put out.

They can listen to my show and then they can start to be able to advocate for themselves in these situations. But that is absolutely what is necessary. Yeah. Really help all of our listeners, specifically the male ones, how should we as husbands show up as you are entering perimenopause? Honestly, just listening to conversations like this and having some empathy for her. Like, you don't need to change anything. I struggle with that second one. I really do.

I know. You said that word that I suck at. Have you ever seen that video with the, I think it's called like the nail or something. Have you ever seen this one? I'll send it to you guys. Make sure you put it in the show notes too. There's a girl,

she has basically like a nail coming out of her head. And he's like, well, why don't you just pull the nail out of your head? And she's like, I don't want a solution. I just want you to listen to me and he's like uh okay sometimes when i'm putting a sweater on it gets snagged and i get these headaches and he's like well just take the thing out of your head you know like she he wants to fix it right and so it is hard man it's hard it's hard when you're a fixer and you're a protector and you're a male who wants to,

who loves his woman and wants to see her happy and thriving. It's, it's, it's very tempting to get in there and be like, let me just, let me just put this, let me just organize this for you. So I would just say, listen to her. Don't try to fix it. Have her listen to this conversation. And then maybe you both afterwards can have a conversation. Like, what did you think about the show?

What did you think about what he was saying? What'd you think about what she was saying? And can have a conversation. Like, what did you think about the show? What did you think about what he was saying? What did you think about what she was saying? And then have a conversation about it. And then maybe you can come up with a game plan from there, like talking to your healthcare provider, finding a provider who has menopausal or perimenopausal training, that kind of thing. Hiring a trainer at the gym.

Like there's so many different ways that she can advocate for herself, like on her own in the gym, they can start working out together. Like there's so many different ways and beautiful ways that men and women can sort of collaborate and, and problem solve together. But I will say, yeah, like coming at it, if you're a guy and you're like, well, let me just fix this for you.

Usually you're either going to, your head's going to be taken off. So just like have some empathy, understand what's happening for her. And then like, just invite some conversation. Like, what like what do you think like what do you think about that how did that how that sound to you good bad ugly like what's your thoughts bros next week on barbell shrug shows on empathy i need a coach yeah and none of us are going to say anything. Somebody else. Stephanie, this is, oh, go ahead. Sorry. I was just going to compliment you all again. Like, I just, I just feel like you having the courage to have a conversation like this

and to listen to me in the way that you have and to let me sort of go off on all the tangents. Like, it's very impressive. And I think that your followers, I hope that your followers also see that, uh, in you because you three are also helping change the narrative and the game, uh, for women in perimenopause as well. So I just wanted to thank you and, and send my congrats and like hat tip. Uh, it's hard to have these, it's hard to talk about blood and it's hard to talk about, you know, all these like estrogen and testosterone and sex. And it's, it's hard to talk about those things. Um, they can still sort of be a little bit controversial in a way,

but you all have the open-mindedness and the curiosity, which I think is required for change. I mean, I love talking about sex. Where can people find more about you working with you, your book, all the places. Yeah, sure. So the book is any, you working with you, your book, all the places? Yeah, sure. So the book is any, you know, you can go to Amazon Barnes and Noble where all books are sold.

It's called the Betty body. You can find me. I have a wait, hold on a second. You're going to be my new Barnes and Noble bragging to my kids. One of my favorite things to do is take my kids to Barnes and Nobles and bring them to the fitness section. And I'm like, look at all of daddy's friends. You want to know about that person?

They think I'm cool. I love that. Audible too. Now you're my biggest celebrity on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. I love that. You're on Audible. Yeah, I just saw that. That's what I'm getting.

I'm an Audible guy. Yeah, and I read, so I also did the, so I spoke for the Audible. So that's me. So Audible, you can find, I have a, I have a podcast called Better with Dr. Stephanie and the whole premise of the show is like, you don't have to be the best. You just got to be better. So how can we be better through conversations with thought leaders and scientists and like, what does it mean to have a well-lived life? There's that. And then you else, you can find me on drstephaniestima.com. We have newsletters. We have a lot of free content that we give. There's a blog there. So drstephaniestima.com if you want to join our newsletter.

It's called The Mini Pause, my play on menopause. So we have a weekly roundup of action items for women. Very cool. Coach Travis Mash. Mashlead.com. That was awesome.

So Dr. Stephanie, got took a lot of notes i'm not gonna tell them to my wife but i'm definitely gonna say maybe you might want to listen to the leading question maybe listen to this if you want to yeah if you would like to yeah if you like yeah you don't have to i'm not saying it's for you. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. That's the best way to do it. I love it. I love you. Yeah. This was great. This was so awesome.

Mask. Tell the people. Oh, Masley.com. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, go by Dr. 70s book. Yeah, I'm going to. There you go. Douglas E. Larson buy dr 70s book yeah i'm going to there you go douglas e larson there you go i'm not gonna have to soft pitch this to my wife at all i'm just gonna go listen to that show and she's gonna be like okay cool thank you it's gonna be an easy conversation

um you can find my instagram douglas e larson uh yo i didn't say this on the show but it wasn't until the last couple years that i like that i put together that menopause is like almost on par with like going through puberty again with the with the level of change that happens where everyone understands puberty. It's like everyone gets it because everybody went through it. That's in their 20s and 30s and beyond where you understand that before you're one person during it, you're kind of another person figuring out who the hell you are. And then afterward, you're yet again, a different person. And that having that understanding that menopause is really quite similar in that respect. Um, I think it's going to make it radically easier to support my wife through the transition. So, uh, yo, I appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective with us. Cause I'm going to be a better husband for

having listened to your thoughts today. So appreciate you hold him to that. Marcy, if you're listening to this show, you heard Doug say he's going to be a better husband which means currently he's not being the best she's going to be a better husband I doubt there's one person on this podcast that couldn't be a better husband right now right

I got room to grow already perfect I'm just I'm going to ask your wife I'm just. I'm going to ask you. Yeah, I'm going to ask you. I'm Andrew Varner at Andrews Varner. And we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. And make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com.

That is where you can find out about all the lab lifestyle performance testing. Maybe if you're a professional athlete, you can work with Travis Mash because he's awesome. And learn about all the programs. Come and work with us. Schedule a call. You can access all of that over at rapidehealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.