Dhru Purohit Show - Top Hormone Expert: What Women 40+ Need to Know About Body Composition, Weight Loss, Muscle Mass, Sleep and Mood with Dr. Carrie Jones

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Manukora, and Fatty15.  What’s going on with my body around the age of 40? Many women ask themselves this question. While discussions about hormones and navigating this phase of life are increasing, many women still suffer in silence. Today’s guest is here to dispel the myths and provide actionable steps to empower women to feel their best during this new phase. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Carrie Jones to discuss the changes women’s bodies undergo at around age 40. Dr. Jones breaks down the stages and common symptoms women experience, how modern lifestyles can impact these symptoms, and the key labs women need to establish baseline data. She also highlights the importance of protein, maintaining and building skeletal muscle, and the role of mitochondria in hormonal health. Covering topics from HRT and key supplements to mood and boundaries, this episode is a must-listen for all women and anyone looking to support the women in their lives. Dr. Carrie Jones is an internationally recognized speaker, consultant, and educator on the topic of women's health and hormones, with over 20 years in the industry. Dubbed the “Queen of Hormones,” she was the first Medical Director for Precision Analytical (the DUTCH Test) and the first Head of Medical Education at Rupa Health. She co-hosts the highly popular show, the Root Cause Medicine Podcast, with over 10 million downloads. She is the Chief Medical Officer at NuEthix Formulations.   In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Jones dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): What’s going on with women’s bodies around age 40? (00:00:40 / 00:00:40) Does modern lifestyle impact these symptoms? (02:54 / 02:54) Breaking down the stages of perimenopause and menopause (06:28 / 10:23) The role of mitochondria and hormones (09:30 / 14:18) The role of protein during these key stages (12:33 / 16:28) Keeping and building skeletal muscle (14:20 / 18:15) Testing for accurate hormone assessment (16:28 / 22:25) Weight gain: accounting for calories and stress (21:00 / 26:57) Hormone health and metabolic health (30:20 / 36:17) Sleep as a key factor in metabolic health (32:00 / 37:57) Mood and optimizing how you feel (37:00 / 42:57) Hormone Replacement Therapy (42:00 / 47:57) Supplements to support transitions (47:30 / 53:27) Sayings that resonate in your 40s (50:20 / 56:17) Also mentioned in this episode: The Root Cause of Medicine Podcast  Dr. Carrie’s post about aging  TrueMed  To learn more about Dr. Jones, follow her on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or her website.  This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Manukora, and Fatty15.  Right now, BON CHARGE is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Upgrade to the creamiest honey, packed with antioxidants and prebiotics. Just go to manukora.com/dhru to get $25 off the Starter Kit and boost your energy, immunity, and digestive health today! Fatty15 is offering an additional 15% off its 90-day subscription Starter Kit. Go to fatty15.com/dhru and use code DHRU to replenish your C15 levels for long-term health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Kerry Jones right around the mid-40s to early 50s, so many women go through this shift in their health where they notice weird things happening. They are gaining unexpected weight around their midsection. Their mood often changes for the worst. Their sleep is way off. And most importantly, they start to feel like they don't recognize their bodies. You're one of the top experts on all things hormones. You've studied them for 20 plus years and you've seen thousands of hormonal panels over those years. Give us an insight, big picture as to a few of the things that are driving this shift for the women who are wondering what the heck is going on with my body. What the heck is right? I often joke when who designed this? Who thought this would be a good

idea in the way that us women move through midlife because if I was the goddess of the female body, I would make some changes. I would definitely throw a few upgrades in there. If our phone can get an upgrade, it seems like every month, why can't we? But these changes are happening because if you picture your reproductive years, whether you're trying to get pregnant or not, your hormones follow a very specific roller coaster, a very specific track. And so when I say hormones, I mean estrogen and progesterone in particular. Now, if we get older, and as we move into this midlife, this perimenopause, we feel like we're changing tracks. And so the estrogen and progesterone that used to go up and then down and then hip the loop-de-lou and then go up down again, all of a sudden it's way up. And then it's way down.

And then it's a flat line. And then it's a few, you know, corkscrews. And we're feeling not and we want to get off the ride. So when we have this change in hormones, it affects literally all 12 systems of our body. So we get all the symptoms you just said. We start to feel mood changes. We start to lose our sleep. We didn't used to before. We get hot flashes or night sweats. We gain weight. Our brain changes. We get weirdo symptoms like itchy ears and phantom smells. Like, who thought of that? And so with this shift, because it affects all of our systems, all our systems get involved. And they kind of raise the flag of like, hey, there's something going on.

We have to pay attention. You mentioned you wouldn't design it this way. But the question that so many women are asking is, is this normal? And secondly, is this optimal? Has this always been going on? Or is there something that's been driving these ships or accelerating these shifts in our modern world? So unfortunately, it has been going on for a long time. I mean, we know even, I believe, Aristotle,

mentioned it. The term menopause was coined in the 1800s and the, you know, the word hysteria, hysterical, hysterectomy, it all sort of ties around women issues and women's hormones. Now, they didn't understand it back then, but definitely our shift in hormones has been happening for a really long time. However, I would add our current modern area of stress, our current modern area of, you know, environmental toxicants that are acting like hormones, just the world that we live in is not helping the situation at all. Our nutrient deficient foods, our lack of exercise, I mean, it just compounds all of that as women are making this transition to make it feel heavier, even worse, harder now in this day and age. Carrie, I'd love to set up a promise for

our audience. Would it be fair to say for the women that are listening today that if they lean in to what they can control, which is a lot of what you're going to be talking about today, then it's a dramatically different experience navigating these stages. Yes and no, because I've definitely had women who say, I feel like I'm doing hashtag all the things, and it still hit me like a ton of bricks. And yet other women are like, I'm doing all the things. I've dialed down into my nutrition and exercise and stress and community and relationships and sleep.

And actually, I'm doing pretty well. So I feel like there's probably additional, of course, outside, whether it's genetics, again, whether it's environment, whether it's just the world that we live in that's adding to it. But just observationally, the women who are leaning into all the education, all the research, taking care of themselves as best that they can, doing what they can do, what we know we can modify, seem to have an easier menopause. They seem to be doing better in a lot of areas. Now, it doesn't mean it's a 10 out of 10, but it might mean that they're feeling like a 6 or 7 out of 10. Again, and this is assuming they're not using any hormones at all. They're just trying to control it, quote, unquote,

using all the foundational work, you know, like a more natural route. And so I have definitely, I definitely, I should say, I'm a big supporter of leaning the things you can control as best as you can. The problem is we don't ever get that education, right? If you think back to when you first learned about health in your younger years, let's say elementary school or middle school, maybe even high school, you learn very rudimentary things about your body, whether male or female.

And then it was like, all right, go out into the world, good luck. So imagine if women, men too, but imagine if women were taught, like, hey, we're going to give you a refresher. And here's what's happening through the decades. And kind of every five to 10 years, we're going to give you a refresher. Every time you go get your physical, we're going to give you a quick little refresher, what's coming and how we can prepare for that. Imagine if the generation's new, if grandma told your mom, mom told you, the aunties knew,

everybody kind of knew how to take care of themselves and what to expect and how to navigate it. That's where I think it would get a lot easier and it just be better for women overall. But we don't get that education. A lot of women slam into this stage of life and feel literally like they've slammed into it and they don't know what's going on. Well, that's why we have you here. and you're the queen of hormones.

So give us some of this education. In fact, one of your most recently popular videos was breaking down the various stages of perimenopause and menopause. Can you share some of that information with our audience? We think of perimenopause. It's an entire transition. So it's an experience. You will see a lot on social media.

Like, oh, perimenopause, menopause is having a moment. I'm like, no, it's having a movement. It's a whole experience because it can last two to ten years depending on the person. And it generally starts since somebody's 40s, but it can start as young as their late 30s. And it generally ends in their early 50s, 51, 52, where then they, their period stop, assuming they still have a uterus and ovaries, and then they move into the postmenopausal stage. So it can be this long transition for a lot of women.

And technically, there's two stages to perimenopause early and late. But I'm a little bit extra than that. And I feel like two stages is not enough. So I kind of coach people on. There's like this middle stage, this third stage, this gray area stage. So technically the first stage is when you are entering into perimenopause. You're starting to get some symptoms and you might notice your cycle is changing. If you have a cycle, find out seven days.

So maybe it's coming seven days early. Maybe it's coming seven days late. Then what they call late stage perimenopause, that's when we start skipping your cycle. So maybe you've gone 60 days or more with no cycle. Now you can get it back. You may skip two months, get it back. back and then skip three months and then get it back. But it's longer times in between. I feel like the middle part, the gray areas where a lot of women live for a lot of years. So they're not,

they're not quite seven days maybe, but they're definitely not 60 days. Their cycle is wonky, and they're having all the symptoms. I mean, technically there are, I think, 34 symptoms of this transition, but when you ask around, you quickly realize it's probably closer to like a hundred signs and symptoms that women get. And when they're making, they're in this gray area, it's nice to know where you started and where you're going because helps them just have a light, a beacon to follow. Like, all right, here's where I'm at,

and then here's where I'm going to be my next stage. Once your period stops completely for 12 months, you have no bleeding at all for 12 months, the day you hit 12 months, it's considered menopause. That's your menopausal day. And the next day, you're considered postmenopausal. And what's really cool is you're going to be postmenopausal for the rest of your life. If you're going to live till 80 or 90 or 100, that whole time you're going to be postmenopausal.

And this is why I'm so big on education. Because you want to live those next decades thriving and feeling good and not having big risks as much as you can, like heart disease and cancer and osteoporosis and breaks and falls and neurodegenerative disease. And so I want women to have this education so they know where they're going to be. they're at, where they're going, and then how we can best do that. So I want to zoom out for just a quick moment. Something fascinating that I heard you talk about, that I hadn't heard anyone else talking about is the role that our mitochondria play in our hormones. Can you share a little bit more about that? The mitochondria, we all did learn about that in school, is our cellular powerhouses. They make our ATP or cellular energy or little battery packs to make everything work in the body.

What we fail to teach people is that's also where we make our steroid hormones. Stereid meaning estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol. It's the very first step for most of those hormones, and it's the first and last step for cortisol. And what I mean by that is your mitochondria has a lot of actions. It actually has a lot of jobs. It has a very long resume, if you will. But one of the jobs is to pull in a cholesterol lipid droplet, an LDL. So we think a cholesterol all the time is bad. But actually, LDL lipids are the backbone to a lot of our hormones. So pulls it in the mitochondria, turns it into a hormone called pregnant alone. Pregnantalone leaves goes next door with its buddy called endoplasma particulum, and then we'll

finish out as testosterone or estradial or progesterone, or unless your cortisol, it will come back into the mitochondria. So your first step of all hormone production is mitochondria. And if you don't have healthy mitochondria, you're not going to have healthy levels of hormones. What are the top most damaging things to our mitochondria, especially, around our 40s and 50s when all these changes are happening. So if we think of the mitochondria, again, is like that cellular powerhouse. And we think of it in terms of batteries or how bright our lights are in our house. Then you can think of anything that's going to dim the light is going to dim your mitochondria.

So we can think of anything from, again, environmental toxicants, stressors, whether it's environmental stress, physical stress, mental stress, hazardous. type stress. We can think of alcohol. We can think of drugs. We can think of lack of exercise. We can even think of dehydration. We can think of viruses, bacteria, mold, yeast. Anything that's going to especially impact the body in a chronic way is going to negatively impact our mitochondria. Think of blood sugar. If you have pre-diabetes, if you are diabetic, if you have insulin resistance, If you have fired up immune system for whatever reason, you're swimming in inflammation, all of that is going to negatively impact our mitochondria.

So not only is it going to dim your light, you're going to feel it, you're going to feel tired, and a lot of your systems aren't going to work. You're also going to struggle in the hormone department as well. You know, you had this great viral post on Instagram that was titled, things that I'm saying more of in my 40s. And we'll be talking about this fullest soon. But one that I want to touch on is a question that you've been asking more of in your 40s, which is how much protein is in this?

How much protein is in this? Why are you asking that question and more often? And why are you thinking about lean muscle mass more in your 40s, especially as it's related to mitochondria and hormones? Oh my gosh, they're so interrelated. You'll hear this a lot on social media with good reason. It's definitely not like the new trendy thing, the new fad. A lot of women tend to be under-proteined.

Now we think, oh my gosh, I get chicken with salad or I have a smoothie or, you know, I do a protein bar at lunch. I don't understand. But really research is showing that women need a lot of protein. And we need that protein as a stimulus because we need the leucine, the amino acids, and it to help build lean muscle. And when women are getting a decline in their hormones, they are at risk for not maintaining or building their lean muscle. And if we don't have our lean muscle, one, we're not going to be strong. So we're going to be more frail at more risk for balance issues or slip and fall or breaking something. Two, we are going to struggle with mitochondria and blood sugar issues because our lean muscle

play a big role in how we do or don't handle glucose and insulin, insulin resistance, diabetes, pre-diabetes, et cetera. So by just getting enough protein in as a start, now we have the building blocks to make the things such as our muscles so we can then take care of the rest of our body. And we lose this as we get older as we hit our 40s and those hormones decline. Naturally, unfortunately, our muscle mass can tend to decline as well if we're not taking care of it. And we don't want that in a midlife woman. So just like we're talking about the value of protein and protecting lean muscle mass,

any other tips that you want to highlight that are protective of our mitochondria, those building blocks of our hormones. Well, it goes with protein, of course, is exercise. And this is a big one. I had to learn the hard way. And I'm just as guilty. I had to increase my protein as well. I was being under protein.

I thought I had enough. I did not. It made a world of difference. And two, the type of exercise, a lot of women have been conditioned to do a lot of cardio. They go to the gym or they go for a run and what they choose are the cardio machines. And what I have now learned is that our heavy lifting is really important for this stimulus to maintain or grow our skeletal muscle. And even to support our bones, we lose bone mass. as we get older, puts us at risk for osteoporosis and our bone fracture, even, which we don't want.

So by encouraging women, like, yes, cardio is great. It might be helpful for reducing stress, but I actually do need you to start getting into weightlifting. So go slow if you're new to it, hire somebody to teach you. But if you've been in it a while, are you just picking up the same weights? Are you progressing at all? We need to get that stimulus for you to make muscle. And so that's where I've definitely ramped up, not, only the weightlifting part of it, but even the fun aspect of it, such as sprinting, such as jumping, such as pliometrics and really trying to help my body maintain muscle, bone, balance, all these things. So good for the mitochondria. Yeah, a little bonus tip that I saw on your

Instagram is the power of rebounders, these mini trampolines, which you're a huge fan of. Why are you such a huge fan of them? There's so much fun too. And so you don't have to by a crazy expensive rebounder, although they are out there. And it's exactly what you said. It is a mini trampoline. It's great for the lymphatic system because you're jumping up and down. Some research shows it is good as cardio doing 10, 15, 20 minutes of rebounding, especially if you're doing it pretty hard, not just sort of or randomly jumping, can get that heart rate up. But the rebounding has also been shown to be really great for muscles and for bones. And it's just fun. So then, of course, it's good for the brain and other hormones like oxytocin.

So I'm all about rebounding. And I literally have it. I mean, right now it's in my garage, but I will pull it in the house because it's just a mini trampoline. And I'll rebound if TV is on talking to my husband. I'm that person. And I found out a lot of people are like me. They just don't want to admit it because they're kind of embarrassed

that they jump on a mini trampoline. It's a lot of fun. What's the best way to get an accurate understanding for the women that are out there who are wondering where their hormonal health truly is? right now. When it comes to perimenopause, and technically you don't have to have testing. There's no actual test for perimenopause, but it is nice. A lot of women are like, where am I? What are my actual levels? I would like to know. Yes, absolutely. Let's see where you're at. If somebody still has a regular cycle, they still get regular periods. Ideally, they're going to get their hormones tested

about five to seven days after ovulation, assuming that they know when they ovulate, their doctor can help them pinpoint that and figure that out. If she's not regular, though, if she's skipping months, if she's like, oh my gosh, I haven't had a period four months, and then I get a period randomly, and then I get skipped two months again, that's where it can be a lot harder to pinpoint.

Of course, the two main hormones, estrogen, estradiol and progesterone, but we can still look at all the other hormones. We can look at thyroid, the full thyroid panel. we can look at the androgens such as testosterone and D-H-E-A-S. We can look at even the metabolic markers, the inflammatory markers, the lipid markers. So I would never tell anyone not to test. I'm just picky and specific where in their cycle, if their cycle, what I'm looking at. Having said that, let's say somebody's listening right now and they said, well, I do get a cycle.

What do I test? So you're going to ask for hormones. You're going to ask for sort of the main ones. you're going to ask for a progesterone, you're going to ask for an estradiol. And assuming it's a blood test, you're going to do a total testosterone, a free testosterone, a sex hormone binding globulin, and a DHEA S. And by looking at those, it helps give us an idea, especially if you've gotten them before, like when you were younger, then we can see sort of a progression with time in what's going on.

And again, there are other hormones we can look at, but that's kind of a basic hormone profile that we can run on somebody who's cycling regularly still. So let's say that a woman gets these tests done and their doctor comes back and says, hey, everything looks normal. So many people that are listening today have heard this. But normal may not be optimal. And often the women are left feeling, okay, so everything's normal, but I still feel like so now what?

What would you recommend? Yes. And we're hopeful, I think with the movement we're having right now, what I tell people is look for somebody who's actually trained up in perimenopause and menomal. like that's how they advertise they have it look for somebody who's in functional medicine or holistic medicine integrative medicine i myself am a naturopathic doctor trained in hormonal medicine um and as i said there are different societies that are out there there are different websites that are trying to help women get paired up with a practitioner who actually understands this and i think this is very important

because when i go see my primary care my primary care is very clear with me i don't do hormones i wasn't trained in hormones. I don't know. Like, I can do your physical and run the basics, but hormones isn't what I'm trained in. I'm like, absolutely, thank you for answering honestly. And I will go find somebody who is actually trained in hormones. So it's okay to add to your medical team. If you really like your OB, if you really like your primary care, but they just don't know hormones. They're not trained in hormones. Even though, think of like health span, longevity. These are some key words to help you. Optimization. Then it's okay to go searching for. someone else because guess what? There are a lot of things you can do. You don't have to just settle

for, well, that's normal. That's common. You could be so proactive, but having somebody to coach you through it is ideal. You mentioned some websites, resources, and directories. Anything you'd like to highlight right now while we're talking? I have a few. So there's one, and it's a test as well. That's an option. It's called the Dutch test, which is a urinary test. So they have a find a practitioner on their site. They're also a hormone test. So that's dutchtest.com. You can also go to the Institute for Functional Medicine, IFM, they also have a find a practitioner. If you are specifically looking for somebody who is North American Menopause Society trained, NAMS, North American Menopause Society, they have a finder practitioner as well. And so I'm loving some of these

databases that are out there to help. And if you're looking for like me, a naturopathic doctor, the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians also has to find a practitioner database. So a lot of options out there. It's just unfortunate that many people know. that they exist. I want to come back to some of the early things we talked about, these shifts that women notice and why they're happening. Let's start off with weight gain. So many women feel I'm following the same thing I've always done. I'm eating the same way I've always ate, but my body composition looks totally different than before. What could be possibly driving some of these changes? Oh my gosh. So the big one is the change in estradial. So when our

estradial drops is women, we get a shift in the ratio for a lot of women. We get a shift in the ratio for a lot of between their testosterone and their estrogen. So when the body sees as somebody is more, quote unquote, testosterone dominant, and that can change body composition. So instead of being pear-shaped, so maybe gaining weight around the lower half, they start to gain weight around the upper half, like an apple shape. On top of that, the change in estrogen changes the way that we break down and utilize our fatty acids.

So when you have a fat cell and it breaks apart, the fatty acids inside, have to essentially go to a factory to break them down. And if they don't get broken down well to be moved on to other areas such as energy production, that it gets stored in the middle as visceral fat. Viceral fat is that inflammatory fat around our organs that we don't want. So it becomes this vicious cycle of estrogen drops. It shifts our ratio often with testosterone. It shifts where we put fat and it's often visceral fat, the fat on the organs.

That's inflammatory. So now we have more inflammation. We struggle in the factory to break down our fat. That's not as effective as it used to be. And on top of that, the change in estrogen can also make us more insulin resistant. Put this at higher risk for prediabetes or even diabetes. In fact, I've had a lot of women say to me, I never had an issue with my blood work. I never had an issue with glucose, my triglystriids, nothing.

And all of a sudden, I feel like overnight everything changed. And yet I didn't change anything. Like you didn't change anything outwardly. It's all inward. It's that shift in estrogen dial down that contributes. I'm sure you're familiar with this, but on Instagram, one of the debates that's often there in this world of changing hormones, you have this sort of functional medicine, integrative, naturopathic doctors on one side.

And you would have largely what I would call the sort of evidence-based calories in calories out group that often is on the other side. And I personally feel that there's a lot to learn from everybody. And one of the things that I've seen, just anecdotally, with the women in my life, they're at that age, is they're often first and foremost, their kids are getting older, they often have teenagers. That's a very stressful time period. If you have aging parents and you're often the caretaker that's there,

you are the first to feed everybody else and prioritize everybody else and the last to feed yourself, And there's a whole bunch of factors that are there in addition to the fact that even for people who are generally relatively quite healthy for the last, you know, five, 10, 15 years, there is more healthy processed food that actually tastes really good, way more than ever. You can get, you know, healthy cupcakes, keto this, I'm putting healthy in quotes. And a lot of these foods tend to be high calories, high concentration of fats and salts. it's easy to overeat them, even if they're free of seed oils, even if they're gluten-free, even if they have healthy amounts of protein.

So one of the things that I've seen that I feel like can't be discounted, there are so many pressures that men and women, and men are gaining weight at this time period in their life too. It maybe shows up differently than women. And do you think that there could be a sense that in addition to the hormonal changes, that just lifestyle factors around this age can cause people to overeat without really auditing their calories. I'm not saying it's the whole story, but it feels like it could be part of the story. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I definitely think that could be a part of it, for sure. I mean, there's even been some looking into, you know, alcohol consumption may go up at this stage of life just to deal with the stress or because of the marketing and advertising out there. And I'm with you. I think it's never one thing single. handedly. Now, I do think in percentages, I do think the change in hormones makes the biggest percentage change, but it's compounded by all of the societal implications that you just said. I think calories and calories out on its own is not 100%. And I feel the decline in estradiol on its own is not 100%. But it's some sort of combination of the two. And in which,

It's almost like a domino. Like the esteridial starts declining. It can affect a lot of women's hunger. So their hunger goes up. Their resiliency goes down. They're, you know, craving more, quote-unquote, comfort foods, packaged foods, chocolate, alcohol, what have you. Maybe that consumption goes up as well.

So the first domino might have been the low estrogen or the stress or both. And then the downstream effect is what they use. use and choose to combat that. So we take that information and then we educate of like, hey, we know this. So let's reverse engineer the domino effect. Let's start increasing our protein. Let's start with the heavy weight lifting. Let's start focusing on sleep. Let's focus on stress management. And again, when it comes to stress, I'm all about resiliency, but I'm also trying to pull as much water out of their stress bucket is possible. So what can we say no to? What can we set boundaries around. Who are we as a person heading into this next phase of life? So I agree with you.

I think it is some combination therein, but it is not 100%. You cannot single-handedly blame. Like, well, it's just calories and calories out to a 45-year-old or a 51-year-old. She will punch you. So be careful. Well said. You know, this is a great opportunity. There has been a viral article around some research that came out recently around the key ages that people age. There's an accelerated aging around some key ages. You covered this on your Instagram and we'll link to the articles in the show notes below. And you can see the, you can't see the title over here, but it's basically talking about these key ages where you see a huge spike in accelerated aging. Can you talk about this for a second for our interviewers that aren't familiar about why around the age of 44 and 60 leads to these sort of bursts of aging?

It's interesting is that with this article, it hit really close to home. So they're talking about, and they were looking at a small group, which I understand this small study can be frustrating to people. But where they found these molecules that burst and accelerate aging, like you said, 44 and 60 years old. And I found myself, I was like 44 years old. That's probably about what I noticed my perimenopausal symptoms started to ramp up. And I thought, I think I've hit midlife. I think I'm starting to change. And when I asked, threw it out to social media, asked a bunch of colleagues and friends,

all of them put their hand on their hip and went, yeah, me too, actually. That's so funny, like around the same time. So even though with that study, there is some pushback around, well, it's just a small focus group. and looking at that, when you anecdotally ask the crowd, the crowd's like, yeah, I can totally tell. And even women who were postmen a puzzle and 60 approaching 60 after 60 said the same thing. They were like, oh, my 60s are a different decade than my 50s. Like things definitely change at 60. Be careful. And I heard that in practice time and time again.

I heard 44, 45, you know, you're not going to sleep anymore. You won't be able to drink alcohol. You're going to gain weight, watch out. And I heard it again at 60. So I think there's a lot of at least small study credibility with this, with the researchers found, and then large dose anecdotal of what everybody is reporting. So it's nice, again, to be aware of this is when these bursts are happening and what

can we do to help improve our health span, right, our longevity and just feel better. But one of the things that we can do that you have been a huge fan of for a long time is that even if we care about the topic of hormones, hormones don't exist. in isolation. They're part of our overall health and they're part of our metabolic health. So make the connection between our hormone health and our metabolic health and how they play on each other and the interplay that's there. Just keeping it really simple, estradiol tends to have a positive effect on our metabolic health. Estudial, when we're in that part of the roller coaster, we feel stronger, we feel better, again, assuming it's where it should be in the range. Our blood sugar

is generally better. Our insulin is better. How we handle food is better. Our cravings are way down. Where we get in the second half of our cycle when progesterone dominates, we become a little more insulin resistant. We don't become as efficient with our glucose. We have a lot more cravings. We're in this sort of nesting, potentially going to be pregnant building stage. So as we move into perimenopause and progesterone does drop, but estrogen can swing wildly and then drop, That wreaks havoc on our metabolic system because now it's impacting, again, key areas, glucose, insulin, leptin, triglycerides, all these hormones that have to do with how we do and don't utilize energy in our body. And so just, again, big picture, where you are in your cycle plays a role and the change of perimenopause can absolutely amplify it, even more for the worse. You've already talked about the power of focusing on lean muscle mass, increasing protein.

What would be some other things that you would share? Again, specifically for women, obviously there's parallels for men that are out there too. But for women in particular, what are the top do's and don'ts to make sure that we pay attention to our metabolic health? Let's talk about some more dues. Sleep. We haven't talked about sleep. Sleep is a huge one. Melatonin is a hormone is really helpful for our metabolic health.

And melatonin that goes out in circulation in our body is made from the pineal gland in our brain. And it's like the moon. It comes out at night, whereas cortisol is like the sun. It comes out in the day. Now, what can happen is is people age. They don't sleep as well as they used to. They're deep sleep. They can't fall asleep.

They can't stay asleep. And so focusing in on sleep is absolutely critical. We rest, we repair. We go through some detoxification at that time. And melatonin is greatly impacted by light and dark. And so you hear a lot, sleep in complete darkness, wear a mask, get off your phone, get off your computer, get off TV about an hour before bed. It's no joke, especially as we get older. We can't get away with the things we used to and expect to have a good night's sleep.

So focusing on sleep is super critical, not only for brain health, but for metabolic health as well. That's fantastic. Just want to touch on sleep a little bit more. What have been the biggest things that you've seen? You mentioned a couple, avoiding artificial light at night, wearing maybe blue light blocking glasses, dimming the light, anything else that you've seen that's been a game changer to help you get the amount of sleep that you need

to not only support your hormones, but feel good. This is me personally. There's a couple of key things. I'm a huge fan of magnesium glycinate, so I do about 400 milligrams of magnesium glycinate before I go to bed. That has been huge. that has been super helpful. I also take a supplement that has calming urns in it just because

stress, I'm in my 40s, sleep is an issue, I'm going to support going to sleep, falling to sleep, staying asleep. The other thing that I've done and I don't have an affiliation, but I am going to totally promote them is the eight sleep pad. I don't know if you're familiar with eight sleep. Huge fan. Good to know. I recently got an eight sleep to put on the bed and it has this autopilot adjust that it can make the bed hotter or cooler. And as somebody who's in her 40s, I have slept so much better just having the coldness. I think a lot of women wake up hot. And that heat, of course, then can trigger hot flushes, night sweats, they can't sleep.

And by having the ability to cool or stay cooler, has been huge. I know a lot of women sleep with fans. They sleep with light sheet. They sleep with the window open. So anything you can do to make the room cooler, I find is just in general really helpful for all things sleep. And lastly, is giving up alcohol. I largely don't drink anymore. Alcohol absolutely wrecks my sleep. And it's not worth it. And so unless it's a great celebration or an amazing wine, because I do love wine, then it's a hard no from me because sleep is way more important.

And I also, I go to bed at like nine. I mean, I'm not fun anymore. So, you know, it's all the things that we need to do with kids. I wish I could do now. Like, go to bed early, take naps, eat your food. Like, that's me. I'm in bed at nine reading. I love it. I love it. I have no affiliation with Eighth Sleep. They're not a sponsor, but just a little plug. I'm an investor in a company called Trumed, started by Callie Means and Justin. And what I love about them is they, if you have an HSA or an FSA account, often people have money in there. And if you're healthy like us, you're like, well, what do I use it for? Maybe acupuncture, chiropractic, contacts. But often, you know, there's a lot of money sitting in there. I think in America, there's like $40 billion plus

dollars sitting in these accounts. So if you have money in there, you can use those, that money tax-free, and you can work with TrueMed, the website's, you know, TrueMed.com, and we'll link in the show notes. And they can help you get one of these eight sleeps and a bunch of other things at, you know, with these pre-tax dollars. That's how I bought my latest version. I had the original eight sleep. And they've made so many modifications. And I'm like, all right, it's time to get the new one and I got it through HSA dollars. So a little plug for a company that I'm an investor in, but they're really out there to help people get things a little bit easier and more inexpensive, which is obviously the goal of this whole thing. Let's make everything as accessible

as possible. Yeah. Yeah. One other thing on the sleep side, a few experts have come on this podcast and talked about the importance of sleep pressure and how specifically movement, getting our steps in, exercise, these other things they create, even sauna. these things can create a little bit of this sleep pressure versus when you're sedentary all day, which is also something that tends to happen as your responsibilities and you're running around and you're active in your car and you're taking care of parents or you're picking up kids, you're doing other things. But when you actually look at the total amount of steps, you might have only gotten

4,000, 5,000 steps, which is considered sedentary. So it's so important to make sure you have movement that creates the sleep pressure. Anything you want to say about that? I notice it myself. If I do not get a lot of steps in the day, if I have a particularly busy day where I am literally in my seat at my desk all day and I don't make time or have built in time to get up, move, exercise, I can absolutely tell a difference. It's the same in travel when you travel all day and you get to where you're going and you haven't been able to work out or move much. I can tell in my sleep. One of the first things I crave is let's go for a walk.

And I really appreciate a lot of my friends and colleagues, same thing. We get to the conference wherever we're going, and it's immediately, who wants to go for a walk? Who wants to put their shoes on and go for a walk? Because we can all just tell a difference. And a walk is free, cheap, and easy. So. Yeah, why not? At the beginning of the interview, we talked about a few things.

We talked about unexplained distribution of weight, body composition. You touched on that. We talked about sleep. You just did a whole little deep dive on that. One of the ones that we didn't get a chance to talk about as much was mood. What is going on with hormones and, and mood where I'm always careful as a man to talk about this because I hear from my audience,

I hear from my sister, my older sister, I'll hear from my friends that are in this age range that are women that are telling me straight up that they're seeing that there might be a little bit of a shift in mood. And often it's not, oh my gosh, I'm feeling amazing.

It's like I'm a little bit more irritable or this is kind of getting on my nerves or that. And at the same time, there's been so much, positioning of women throughout the years of the hysterical woman, hysteria, as you've mentioned before. So how do we talk about this honestly? That's why we have you here. Can you tell us what the hell is going on in the body that is leading to some of these shifts? Yes. And I think it's twofold. One, I think the change in hormones is taking, it's empowering women. It's taking the filter off.

They're getting stronger boundaries. And so it's outside perceived, oh, you're being moody. You're being rude, you're being irritable, when really she's just speaking her truth and she's tired of the BS. So there's that aspect that I want women to lead into. What is actually going on is they're making this transition. However, what I don't want to miss are the actual diagnostic type mood situations, anxiety, depression, even with mood, it could even tie along with attention, focus, motivation, feeling connected in their community or not. That is real and that has also been studied. as well. Both estrogen and progesterone play a big role in the neurotransmitters in our brain. I mean, here's an example. Progesterone is a very calming hormone when it gets broken down.

When a woman makes progesterone or takes progesterone, it breaks down into a metabolite called aloe, not like the plant. It's A-L-L-O. And it goes up into our brain and touches on our GABA A receptors, which is our very calming receptor. So if you have a lot of anxiety, you don't feel very calm, you're very irritable, no patients, it could be related to low progesterone. There's also low estrogen, and that plays a role in dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. So as an example, low estradiol can cause her not to make serotonin, which of course is one of our neurotransmitters in our brain, like she should. Estrogen is a big trigger for the body to convert tryptophan into 5HTP, which then goes on to

make serotonin. And estradile plays a role in the creation of oxytocin, which is our community bonding love hormone. So when we have a combination of low GABA, so she's feeling anxious and not calm, and we have a combination of low serotonin, low dopamine, low oxytocin, then absolutely a lot of mood changes can occur. And I don't want her to miss it of, well, that's just what happens at this time. Well, it's just stress. It could be, or it could be all the changes happening in brain. Circle back to some of the recommendations you made before because I know a lot of women are asking, okay, great, let's pay attention. There's this aspect of me speaking my truth more, which is very common, especially in 40s, 50s, a lot of women feeling like, I don't have to live for everybody

else. I need to live for me and I need to set appropriate boundaries, which we'd want for men and we'd want for women at every single age. Of course, we want that for everybody. But for those women are asking, okay, I feel like my lifestyle might be encouraging some of this negative mood or some of these irritation or anxiety. Give us a little bit of a recap of some of the top suggestions that, you know, what do you need to focus on in your health to start to bring that back into homeostasis? Everything we just talked about. Just hit rewind on the entire podcast and exercise, sleep, community, you know, thinking about alcohol, nutrition, hydration, all of that is going to contribute to mood. Your blood sugar absolutely contributes to things like anxiety or depression.

So just those foundations alone even hits everything in the brain. Now, let's stack on top of that. We have supplements. We have foods that are good for the brain. Even hormones, hormone replacement therapy can be really life-changing for women if they're a candidate to really support their brain. If calm and anxiety and panic attacks are a problem, then talk to your practitioner about progesterone. is it time you do progesterone capsules? Depression, lack of motivation, not feeling bonded, feeling very introverted, not wanting to go out and do things anymore. Let's talk to your practitioner.

Yes, one of the options, of course, are antidepressants or even anti-anxiety medications. However, is it the mood that's associated with the changes in these hormones? And maybe you don't need an antipresent, what you need is some estrogen. Maybe you don't need an anti-anxiety, which you need is some progesterone. And so just having that education alone of like, look, you've got options is life changing. So you can go in armed with this education and say, I'm at this age, I'm having this symptom. And I think I'd like to either get tested or I would like to do something to help support me. What does that look like? All the topic of hormone

replacement therapy, especially bioidentical hormones. I know you're a fan of the work of Lisa Mascone and all the work that she's done. A big part of her recent book is, you know, often for women, it's getting started earlier and more targeted. And you've talked about this, that a lot of women are told, hey, we're not going to start you on estrogen for 10 years, and then we'll see how to intervene. So can you just talk about this subject and why it's so important for women to understand that they might want to be thinking about these things earlier than what they were told previously in their doctor's office from a doctor who means well, but it has no training in this area? Or they're not up to date on what the latest research is.

Yes, Dr. Mascone told me that, you know, and we were talking about this, that a lot of practitioners say, well, you have to wait until you've gone 12 months without a cycle. Assuming you still have ovaries, uterus, like once you've gone 12 months in a cycle, then you can start estrogen. And she and I were both saying that that's a lot of time with estrogen missed in the body. Why would I want somebody to wait four months, six months, nine months, 12 months, suffering, I've already said, I've already laid the groundwork that it impacts all 12 systems

of the body when you don't have estrogen for that long, progesterone too, but specifically estrogen. So once she gets, once she's moving into that late perimenopause, once she says to me, I'm having all these symptoms which align with low estrogen and I may be starting to skip cycles or they're going longer

than I expected, then we can have the conversation around estrogen. And risk benefit, is she a good candidate? And let's go. Let's start estrogen. I don't make women wait. 12, 13 months before they go on estrogen. I don't want her to miss out on that brain, that bone, that mood, that genitone urinary health, which we haven't even talked about yet.

I want her to get support right away if she can. And thankfully, it's looking like Dr. Mascone's work is pointing to that direction also. Whenever you talk about these topics and talk about a pharmaceutical intervention, biodendical hormones are a pharmaceutical, right? They're a prescription that's prescribed by a practitioner and they're targeting. therapies that people can bring in if they're a candidate, you naturally have a lot of people. I see that it's often younger individuals who have a bias towards natural medicine, natural interventions. I have a bias towards that, right? And as I get older, I've kept more of an open

mind. There are time periods where I've had to juggle. Do I want to start this medical intervention because I'm not willing to roll the dice? I'm very honest with my audience. One example is, I debated. I've had a really high APOB, and even though my clearly scans, my CCTA scans, my heart scans, all show, no plaque, and they look really good, do I want to live from 40 to 100, knock on wood, with high APOB? So I made the decision of, with my cardiologist, Michael Twyman, hey, I'm going to take a low dose of a Zadamide, which will help block some of the reabsorption of cholesterol. And who knows, maybe in a few years I'll reevaluate it. years ago, I would have never thought that I want to do that. When it comes to the topic of hormone replacement therapy, anytime I post a clip, I'll post some clips from this podcast here. Naturally in the comments, I see something like, well, women in Europe aren't doing this and there's people all over the world that are women that are aging in a healthy way. Like, why is it that we're telling people and women in particular that they have to seek this out as a first

option? Shouldn't they be doubling down on all the natural interventions that are there? What would you like to say to that comment that I know you are very used to seeing? I tell people, I am a holistic doctor and I take a holistic approach. I think you need both options available and that's the issue we have right now. It's not that every single woman in the whole world needs to go on hormone replacement therapy, but definitely they're not even getting the opportunity to get talked to about it. They don't have anyone who's trained that they're seeing that's like, gosh, you know what, with all these symptoms and your risks, we should probably start you on some.

hormones. So I would just like women to take all the foundational stuff we talked about, put that first and foremost, and be able to have the conversation with their prescribing practitioner of, is it time for hormones? Do I need hormones? Am I candidate for hormones? What's the risk benefit for hormones? That's what I am pushing for. If she wants hormones, she's a candidate, it's a great fit. Let's go. Start her on hormones. If she doesn't, if she's nervous, if she's not a candidate, she doesn't feel she's ready for it. At least I want her educated on what the hormones do. It's her decision at the end of the day, I'm going to support her either way. So that's the argument that I think a lot in the space are trying for is at least just to get the conversation around

hormone replacement going because it hasn't been going for 20 years, thanks to that study, the Women's Health Initiative. One of the topics you brought up was supplements that when you're lifting weights, when you are getting good exercise, when you're prioritizing sleep, when you're largely focused on a diet based around whole foods, minimizing ultra-process foods, and you're also practicing these stress interventions, lowering stress, having community and minimizing alcohol, then, you know, there can be supplements that can be very powerful. Are there any supplements in particular? You've already mentioned magnesium and how that's supported for sleep.

Anything else that you want to give a little spotlight to that can be very helpful for women around this time period? Yes, a couple. So one, of course, vitamin D and the vitamin D cofactors, which does include magnesium and vitamin K2. So I think vitamin D is gone up and down in popularity. I think it's still worth testing, seeing where people at, since we know what vitamin D magnesium K2 can do for the bodies, even the bones, et cetera. So I think vitamin D is a big one. But again, I'm going to say it again, for those cofactors.

Another supplement that I completely have changed my mind on is creatine. Creatine, I used to think, was what bodybuilders used before they went to the gym and subsequently have studied a lot of the research that it's done on women. Not only does it support the brain, but also very helpful to muscles and bone. And we need all of that as we are making this transition. In fact, I was just talking with Dr. Stacey Sims and she was like, absolutely women need creatine. It helps more systems than we think. It even helps take the pressure off of detoxification in the body. so three to five grams of creatine, huge. And then I am a fan if you eat fish,

then I'm doing either fish oil or something like fatty 15, something that is going to help, one, good for the brain, two good for your cell membranes, which are aging also. Three, really helpful for lowering triglycerides, if you have high triglycerides.

Four, fish oil's been shown to be helpful for mood. So if you can get a high enough, two to three, four grams of fish oil. It's been shown to reduce anger and even anxiety in some people. And so just getting some of these key basics in that you're probably not eating a lot of fish. You're maybe inside all day and not getting a lot of vitamin D. A little extra magnesium, because that's my total favorite. I think everybody should use magnesium.

And then the creatine is the bonus for your brain, your muscles, and your bones. It's a little more well-rounded and supported because we're just not going to get that, unfortunately in our diet, given the soils and processing and our digestion, it's just not there like it used to be. That's great. That's a great list. I want to come back to the idea of boundaries, self-reflection, checking in. I mentioned you had this viral post.

I think it almost has like 900,000 views on it. And I'm going to share it on my screen here for those that are watching on YouTube. But we'll also read along here. There's a couple that I want you to talk about in particular that are things. that you've been saying more in your 40s. Let's start up with the first one. I want the directors cut commentary on some of this. So the first one is just simply no, period.

Why is that an important thing that you've been saying more of in your 40s? Well, first of all, it's a full sentence. So you don't have to have because or why your explanation. And I find a lot of women are burning the candle at both ends. As you've mentioned, putting themselves last, they feed themselves last. They don't even rank themselves on the top. It's their kids, their family, their work, their obligations, and then they choose them. And so just by being able to have the confidence and age and experience to say no, then it's a full sentence, period, and can help start not burning the candle at both ends.

It can help start put her more to the top of the list. It can help start more with healing and boundaries. So I'm all about the sentence, no. And then if we need more, we add on the second sentence, which is try me. me. Yeah, for those of those didn't catch that, try me, period. That's great. Yes, and the number of people in the comments who were like, I feel the same way. Yes, try me, right? Like, I wish they would, which is the third sentence. Yeah. And I think that when I look at those things, it's also the remembering of how strong that you are, if I'm, you know, I have 18 first cousins on my dad's side

alone and the vast majority are really strong, amazing women. And they're all women that grew up in the immigrant sort of Indian world. And a lot of them were sort of told their whole life. And it's not unique to them. A lot of women have gone to this to be the good girl, right? They all have higher education like you. They all have advanced degrees. They've all been used to prioritizing everybody else. And really, when I look at these first three, no, try me, I wish they would. it's the reminder that maybe you are preconditioned, you are conditioned the first part of your life from being born to 40s to put everybody else. And these are mantras internally to say, hey, do you really want to do that? Because doing something resentfully is only going to make you

more unhappy and is going to eat away at your own internal happiness. Sometimes the nicest thing that you can do for somebody else and for you, it's just to say, hey, I can't do this right. now, I have a lot of other stuff going on, you know, but I wish you will. Yes. And I love that you said resent because I think a lot of women in my anecdotal experience in 15 years seeing patients came in with a lot of resentment. They had decades of resentment build up. And because of the shift in hormones, they're coming in because they're saying, now I'm being told I'm moody. Now I'm being told I'm irritable. Now I'm being told I'm combative. And really what I'm doing is standing up for myself. I'm recognizing my power from within.

I'm choosing to put myself first or first or second and the list. And the answer is no. And I don't want to do this anymore. And I'm always like, that's okay. I am giving you full permission because nobody gave you permission for any of that growing up in the decades prior. You go, girl. Let's jump ahead to a couple of these. I'm going to jump around.

The next one is I know it's 830. I'm still going to bed. Talk about that. Yes, because my husband and I, joke a lot that if an event is a certain time of the night, it's somebody's, you know, dinner, it's a concert, it's whatever. And it's at nine o'clock. I'm like, nine o'clock. I'm in bed by 8.30. Or thank you for inviting me. I'm like, no, it's 8.30. I'm still going to bed. Or somebody texts you, calls you, come on, come on, girl. Let's go out. Let's do this.

It's like, no, I'm still going to bed. And setting that boundary, making my sleep a priority most of the time. It's not all the time, but most of the time has made a huge difference and not only my mood, but everything else about myself. And I find, again, other men and women who set the same boundary, who get that sleep, who prioritize going to bed, just naturally feel better in their life. They do better. What I love about this, I want to link this to your comment that you mentioned earlier that you said, listen, I'm a fan of wine. I'm a fan of, you know, hanging out with people. And it may be that you're going to save those for the special, truly special moments where it's going to mean something to you, where it's like a magical experience that you've been sort of planning for, or you're

with your girlfriends that you haven't caught up within a while. And these are truly things. They're not happening weekly. They're like, you know, every other month or once a quarter, right? There's a handful of times that most people can say were truly great nights that it was worth staying up for. So this isn't about being perfect. This is that if you have that budget and you're going to spend it wisely without sacrificing your entire health or sleep for the rest of the year, it's okay to allocate it to the things that you really want to give it to. And I was talking, Dr. Kayla Osterhoff, she said a lot of women compare the old them to the current them. So they're judging themselves against the 30-year-old them, but yet they're 45 or they're 51. And she's

like, we can't do that anymore. We are an entirely new decade. We are an entirely new experience. so only compare yourself to the person you are today or maybe even yesterday. And I love that because the 30-year-old me was very different and did very different things than the 47-year-old person that I am today. And now that I understand this, I don't have that comparison. I don't have that. Oh, my gosh, I wish I could stay up until 10 o'clock every night. I wish I could go to every event.

I don't want to. And giving myself that permission for my health is just been amazing for me. and I know it's helpful for other women to hear that too. I was very curious about the director's cut for this one, which was what was I just going to do? Talk about why that's something you're saying more of in your 40s. That was the very first comment I made to myself when I realized I was in perimenopause.

I was probably 44 and I was on this computer and I opened up a tab and I thought, what was I just going to do? It was so important that I opened up the tab. And I have found that more and more that I'm just, about to do something. I know it's important. I know it's the next step in what I need to do. And I have to stop for a second and think, oh, right, that's what I was going to do. Okay. And I've never had that brain falter before. Again, educated, firstborn, female type A, you know, partially photographic

memory. And to hit this in my 40s, not a fan. Not a fan. But as Dr. Mascone said, she said, it's because our brain is remodeling. And it's remodeling for the better. Think of like cleaning out your closet or even remodeling your bathroom or your house, except you're living through it. So she said a lot of our wires are getting pulled out and restructured. And so when it's, so I joke, I just feel like when I'm, came up what I'm doing. Like, oh, yeah, that's Dr. Mascone teaching me. Like a wire just got pulled out. Like, I didn't need that wire anymore.

And then eventually I'll move on. But I think a lot of women can relate. Absolutely. You know, now that was a very fun list and you had a lot of really great comments from a lot of your friends and my friends on there, like, Cynthia Thurlow and many other individuals who have been on this podcast before. And I think it really just highlights the sort of open, playful, and reflective and strong attitude that's needed around this time period to continue to thrive.

That's how I saw from the outside. And I think that this really brings up the larger question that's at the root of all this, is that change is difficult for anybody, man, woman, ask a teenager, ask a little kid who's going into middle school. Change is tough for everybody. And a lot of times it can feel that it's happening to you rather than happening for you. For anybody that's here today listening, especially this podcast is themed around women to provide them as much value in education as possible because you are the go-to person in this area,

the queen bee of hormones, for anybody that's feeling like it's tough to make that mindset shift from this is happening to me, to this is happening for me, and there's lessons involved in this, and my best years are still ahead, are there any things that you think can be useful support systems from them? Ideas, books, habits, actions. Oh my gosh. The more education, I think, the better. And number two, talking about it. If you think you're going through this alone, I can assure you you're not. Half the population of the world are female. Half of those are going through the perimenopause, menopause transition are already postmenopausal.

You are not alone. The difference now is that it's being talked about so passionately, so vigorously on social media. So get that education and do exactly, as Drew said, like this is happening for you. You are about to be the next butterfly of your life as you go into. to the next couple of decades. And lastly, and I have this on a little reader board on my side here, it says healing happens at joy. And I think in this stage in life, we get bogged down.

We're stressed out. We don't like this changed. It feels overwhelming. And we forget to find the glimmers. We forget to find the joy. And the joy is where the real healing happens from the inside out. Yes, healing can happen from the outside in, but from the inside out also. So just remember to connect with your people.

to find the little bits of joy, to read the funny memes, you know, to listen to great podcasts like this that make you laugh and hold on to that because that's where the healing starts and happens. That's incredible. A great reminder. Dr. Kerry Jones, this has been fantastic. I want to just give a little bit of an opportunity here. You're involved with some great companies.

You know, you have some fantastic different projects. You are also part of this larger movement that's happening right now. So anything that you'd like to give an acknowledgement to, send our audience to resources, it could be both stuff that you're involved in, and also just people that you're a fan of, that you're paying attention in the space for individuals who are listening to continue that education. For everything that I do, you can find on my website at Dr. Careyjones.com or my Instagram at d.r.com.com. And I dip my tone to TikTok. No promises. I'm trying. It's the Wild Wild West out there. And then definitely there's some wonderful menopause experts out there that, as you can see all over social media, you've already mentioned like Cynthia Thurlow being one.

Mindy Pels, we didn't talk about intermittent fasting, but she's a big one for me that I'd love to give love to, Dr. Felice Gersh. And then I'm actually the technical reviewer of a menopause book that's coming out in September. And the two authors for that, Maria Klapps and Kristen Johnson, I want to give a special. shout out to them as well. So there's a ton in the menopause base, but specifically, lately who really helped and supported me, those are some of them. That's fantastic. Well, I want to say a big shout out to my sisters, who were the first people many, many years ago that told me about your work. And I've been following you ever since, and I've had you on a list of, oh my gosh, I've got to reach out to her. I've got to reach out to her. So I'm so glad

that we've gotten connected here. And I'm so thankful of your time for you to come in and not just educate the women in our audience, but educate also the men that love them. You know, I will say as a man sticking up for men, we often get made fun of for not knowing a lot of, you know, about the women's bodies or pregnancy or other stuff. And really, if we zoom out beyond the battle of the sexes, we are in an education deficit across the board. Women don't know enough about their bodies, men don't know enough about their bodies, and we're all learning together.

And when we come together and we understand what happens at these key life stages, we can actually learn how to support each other better because you want to have a happy marriage. You want to have a happy relationship. You want your sisters, your mothers, your family members to be thriving because you care about them. And that's the same thing they would want for you. So if we can all go on that education path and journey together, the world will be a better place. And it's physicians like yourself, naturopathic doctors that are really leading this education, in this movement. You've been doing it well before it was popular on Instagram and you'll keep on

doing it afterwards. So a big note of gratitude for you for dedicating your career to helping everyone. Oh, I so appreciate that. I love it. Thank you. Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that

I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health. sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This, or just go to Drew Perot.com,

that's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.