Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - What's the Purpose of Menopause? (Why Your Brain Is Rewiring in Midlife) with Dr. Mindy Pelz

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

What if menopause isn't something to fix, but something to understand? In this solo episode, Dr. Mindy Pelz shares Chapter One of her new book Age Like a Girl and breaks down the real purpose of menopause through neuroscience, hormones, and evolution. She explains how the decline of estrogen and progesterone reshapes the female brain, why so many women experience anxiety, mood changes, and brain fog in midlife, and how this transition may actually be designed to reconnect women with their authentic voice, clarity, and power. If this conversation resonates with you, the audiobook of Age Like a Girl continues this journey with deeper insights, personal stories, and guidance to help you navigate this phase with confidence. To listen to the rest of Age Like a Girl, visit 👉 https://bit.ly/alagbook  To view full show notes, resources mentioned, transcripts, and more, visit 👉 https://drmindypelz.com/ep324  Check out our community membership at 👉 https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com Please note our medical disclaimer.  

On this episode of The Resetter podcast, I'm doing something very different that I've never done before. I am offering up a chapter from my latest book, Age Like a Girl, to you all, to listen here. And let me tell you why I'm doing that. If you haven't heard me say this before, Age Like a Girl is a deeply personal book for me. I really dove in to understanding what the purpose of menopause is. And I've been on this research of like, why do women live 42.5% of their life without a major organ system? I've been asking that question for over 10 years. And so when I synthesize this book, I really found a throughline that shows that menopause is a really empowering moment for women if you understand it from a more holistic point of view.

So what I want to do, I'm offering you up here, Chapter 1, what is the purpose of menopause? This hopefully will help you see the information that I gathered, but most importantly, it will help you discover a deeper part of you. It will help you discover your personal menopause path, and I never ever want anybody to feel hopeless with their health, which is why I brought forward age like a girl, because menopause, as you were about to hear, is something's really cool going on in our brains as we go through this major hormonal shift. And I want you to discover just how powerful you are. So enjoy. Part one, the philosophy behind aging like a girl. Chapter 1. What's the purpose of menopause? Let's get real for a moment. How many of you felt your brain go offline the minute the minute?

the minute you hit your 40s. It starts subtly at first and then can come roaring in like an out-of-control fire. Like many of you, when I hit my early 40s, my experience with my body and brain took a dramatic detour. I went from feeling completely in control of my health

to feeling like someone else was at the helm. Weight gain, night sweats, irritability, brain fog, trouble focusing, lack of motivation, insomnia, loss of libido, and stress intolerance. Those sound familiar? Yep, I experienced all that too. As I had taught my patients to do for years, I turned to my lifestyle to fix it. I dove into learning everything I could about how our day-to-day habits impact our declining hormones. I discovered a whole new set of health tools to help myself, which I wrote about in my book The Menopause Reset.

Things like fasting, carb cycling, microbiome repair, and detox became my guiding light. As I implemented each new habit, I felt like I was being reunited with my younger self. Throughout my early 40s, any time my perimenopausal symptoms, reared their ugly heads, I responded by course-correcting with my lifestyle. I had a plan that not only worked for me, but also for my patients and the millions of women who follow me on socials. Yet somewhere along the perimenopausal journey, my brain took a drastic turn for the worse. My attitude and behaviors became unrecognizable, not just to me, but to those closest to me.

Negative thoughts began constantly looping through my mind. I felt incredibly emotionally sensitive, randomly crying for no particular reason. I found myself constantly walking around in a state of irritability, struggling to find joy and unable to handle even the simplest of stressors. I struggled to focus on Monday,

tasks and could no longer put in a long day of work. It felt like the battery in my brain needed to be recharged. This was absolutely not a familiar state to me. Before menopause, I was the quintessential can-do girl. Give me a problem, and I could quickly show you multiple solutions, a great skill to have when your job was coaching women back to better health. Laughter and fun had to long been my fuel for getting me through the long days in my practice. Positive thinking and seeing the upside of a situation was the lens in which I viewed everything in my life. Working 10 to 12 hours a day was my norm. Yet as my hormones started to wane, so did my brain power. It felt like I was crashing. Very quickly, the best case scenario is that

permeated my younger brain were replaced with worst-case scenarios that spiraled me into a deep depression. In the past, I would have approached a challenge with the attitude of, this is all going to work out. But now, even the smallest of life's hurdles led me to thoughts of doom and panic. My superpower had always been hard work and grit, and now I had to cut my workload in half, just to make it through the day. Who was this in my head telling me all the ways in which life wasn't going to work out? Why was my brain shutting down on me not allowing me to put in long days of work? How could I not be joyful in a life that on paper looked picture perfect?

What was happening to my thoughts? It was becoming harder and harder to live with this brain. I absolutely needed a new tool. Perhaps my new brain required just the right dose of exogenous hormones to function better. In desperation, I spoke with my OBGYN about hormone replacement therapy, otherwise known as HRT. At this time, we didn't have the upgraded vision we do now on HRT. Under her guidance, I tried creams, patches, pills, you name it. I tried it. Some worked. But unfortunately, most didn't. I wanted to know more. So I sought hormone

expert after hormone experts seeking to understand what was I missing, trying to bring my positive, energetic brain back. And while HRT did help with hot flashes and sleep, it was in no way a silver bullet for my moods. In fact, most of my attempts to find the perfect dose of hormones for me only made my brain more agitated. Then the suicidal thoughts came. I now know these thoughts are common for menopausal women. One frightful summer afternoon, somewhere deep in my late 40s, I found myself yelling at my family over something extremely trivial. Horrified by my outburst, I locked myself in my bedroom. My inner voice kept telling me that I could no longer live with a brain that reacts to life so acutely and feels so out of control.

If this is what my new menopuzzle brain was going to be like, I wanted out. It was a very, very dark moment for me. I realized that something had to change. My schooling and clinical experience taught me that nothing the human body does is by mistake. Symptoms are the way our body talks to us. Our brains act as a control tower, taking information from both our bodies and the environment around us. When something is off, our brains will respond by giving us signals such as pain, fatigue, confusion, forgetfulness, panic, or anxiety.

These are warning signs telling us that something's not right. I spent over 25 years in practice helping women navigate these warning signs. My patients range from women wanting tools to keep themselves and their families healthy to very sick women that the medical profession had given up on. For every diagnostic challenge I ever found myself in, I always asked, what is the brain and body trying to tell us? As I watched my thoughts, behaviors, and actions change in this new part of my menopausal experience, I turned that question on to myself. What is the message behind these new brain signals? How do I interpret them?

and more importantly, how do I make them go away? This led me on a decade-long quest to understand the brain changes that occur in women after 40. What is actually going on with the brain that is deeply affecting our moods, behaviors, and cognition? Do we just need more HRT or is there something deeper at play here? I needed to understand more. My first stop was a prominent neurologist who had spent years scanning and studying women's brains. Surely he would have a clear explanation of what was happening to our brains as we lose our reproductive hormones. I dove into all of his teachings and then brought him on my podcast to answer my one burning question.

What is happening to our brains as we go through menopause? Why are so many of us suffering from unstable moods, brain fog, and memory challenges? And most importantly, what can we do about it? His response both shocked and ignited a fire in me. He literally said, oh, it's because you weren't supposed to live that long. Wait, what? As a woman, I wasn't supposed to live past my reproductive cycle? Was that my evolutionary design?

In the past, fewer women reached old age, but women today live 40 to 50% of their lives in their post-menopausal years. We need to understand what that means. Are we just supposed to expect that our brains will suffer at the back half of our lives? That's a really depressing thought. So depressing, in fact, that I absolutely refuse to accept it as a final answer. My passion and curiosity, and I will admit, my frustration and anger, fueled me to look even deeper. There had to be an evolutionary reason for menopause. The human design rarely comes with major flaws.

It felt reminiscent of the years I spent researching fasting. Studying our primal friends often gives us great insight into how, we have lost our way in this new modern world. Like I did with fasting, I turned towards science to find the answers. Although research is extremely limited when it comes to women, especially menopausal women, I first found studies showing that our main sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone, don't just work in a silo. They stimulate a whole array of neurotransmitters. a cocktail of molecules like dopamine, serotonin, and GABA, neurotransmitters that help our moods stay balanced

and keep our memories working well. When we lose these main sex hormones during menopause, we potentially lose close to 12 neurochemicals that keep our brains sharp and our moods stable. Is this why so many women, including myself, mentally struggle through the perimenopausal journey? I began to think of it as the loss of our neurochemical armor. During the menopausal journey, our neurochemical armor sheds,

and we no longer have the same relationship with our emotions, or even our brains, that we used to. I also found some really startling statistics. Like, did you know that the decade between four, 45 and 55 is the most common time for a woman to commit suicide? And did you know that 70% of divorces that occur after 40 are initiated by women? Is this because of the loss of these neurotransmitters? What is happening to women when they enter this massive hormonal neurochemical shift? Although we often refer to menopause as reverse puberty, these women are not teens.

teenagers navigating the uncharted waters of an emerging adult life. We are mothers, wives, professionals with well-established careers, and beloved community members. Many of us are living purposely curated and quite meaningful lives. It felt like I was missing something. Perhaps another part of the story around menopause wasn't being discussed. As exciting as this new neurochemicals, armor discovery was, I knew there was more to the menopausal brain picture than just chemistry. So I dove deeper. I wondered, was there also a societal influence that contributes to the dramatic changes in brain function that many of us experienced during menopause? That's when I discovered the

work of psychologist Carol Gilligan published in her book in a different voice. Check this out. In the 1980s, Gilligan studied the differences in moral reasoning between girls and boys. She found that around the time of puberty, when they experience an influx of hormones, young girls start to develop a more relational brain in which interpersonal relationships and feeling responsible for others take priority over their own. voices. This is the beginning of what many of us women do. People, please. We put everyone else's needs above our own, doubting ourselves and silencing our own distinctive voice in favor of the feelings and thoughts of others. We do this in order to meet the expectations of a society that

tells us to behave, be selfless, and not disrupt or rock the boat. This made me think, if that's what happens when our hormones come in during puberty, when our hormones go away during menopause, do we begin to hear our own voice again? Perhaps as if it was for the first time, our depression, anxiety, and irritability, all the mental symptoms we experience during menopause related to the realization of how much we have adapted to fit in to the expectations of the culture. Is menopause a moment when we no longer have the neurochemicals to keep us playing by the rules society is set up for us? Perhaps we are finally hearing ourselves again, and if so, is that making us realize that we are living a life that is not completely congruent with who we truly are?

A picture was starting to emerge, one that shows how our transition out of our reproductive years is a massive neurochemical upgrade. Those neurochemicals that kept us calm, happy, focused, and cognitively strong, shift. This shift can possibly change how we relate to the expectations placed on us by the culture. Yet, as clarifying as these discoveries were, I knew there was still more to the menopausal brain picture. There had to be an evolutionary reason for menopause. Too many post-menopausal women talk about how happy they are in the back half of their lives. Is there some kind of brain remodeling that goes on as this neurochemical shift happens to us? My research all coalesced when I had a life-changing conversation with the brilliant Dr. Lisa Moscone,

the world's leading female brain researcher. She was promoting her new book, The Menopause Brain, when I sat down to interview her. The very first question I asked her was, What is the evolutionary reason for menopause? To my utter delight, she had a precise scientific answer. I sat in awe as she explained how there were three major hormonal moments in a woman's life, where her brain dramatically changes. Puberty, postpartum, and perimenopause. As our hormones shift, neurons we no longer need prune away, and new neurons emerge.

Neurons that are necessary for our next phase of life. She also told me about something called the grandmother hypothesis. An evolutionary theory that proposes that women live so much of their lives post-manapausal because the changes they undergo when their hormones wind down are an adaptive advantage to the success of our species. In the primal days, the post-menopausal woman was pivotal to the survival of the clan. Without her energy being siphoned off for reproduction, The post-metapausal woman had a renewed energy that she could use for fitness, endurance, cognition, and social collaboration.

While many of the men were off hunting to bring home a large animal kill, it was the grandmothers who would gather each morning and head out foraging for food to feed the tribe. It was her strength, insight, an ability to think in a new way that kept the clan alive. This led me to investigate the Hadsah tribe, a modern-day hunter-and-gatherer tribe in Tanzania that still practiced the principles of the grandmother hypothesis. I began to follow the work of American anthropologist Kristen Hawks, who has been a huge champion of this hypothesis. Please note that this hypothesis doesn't mean we all need to be grandmothers. But as you will learn in the next chapter,

Hawks' research proves that our evolutionary design is not one where we are sidelined once we hit menopause. Rather, the opposite. We are culturally needed more. More on this in Chapter 2. The pieces to the menopausal brain puzzle were all starting to connect. But I had one last stop. A wise elder.

Surely female doctors of our time have written about how the brain changes that happen at menopause initiate us into a new place within our culture. Enter Clarissa Pinkola Estes. A few years ago, a very good friend of mine recommended I read her book, The Power of the Crown. I was familiar with Dr. Estes' women who run with the wolves. But the Crone? I didn't feel like I was old enough to relate to a book about old women. Have I reached that part of my life where I need to consider myself a crone?

I asked. She asked me, do you know what the word crone means? It means crown. Mindy. It's a book about how aging is an opportunity for us to put our crowns on and celebrate our power as wise women who live unbound by societal constraints and rich with life experience. Now that excited me. I was all in. As I dove into Dr. Estes' teachings, I discovered a whole new way of looking at not just my own menopausal journey, but every woman's path. Estes emphasizes that the journey into cronehood is not bound by age,

but is a right of passage into a deeper understanding of oneself and the world. She invites us in to shed societal expectations, honor our scars as symbols of growth, and step into roles as wise elders who lead with compassion and courage. This work serves as both a celebration of feminine resilience and a call to action for women to reclaim their inherent power and wisdom. In a culture that teaches us to fear aging, Estes offered us a very different option. Step into your power.

Lean into your strong female intuition. Be free from the rules the culture made you play. Don't dim your light. Shine brighter than ever and put your crown on as a wise woman so all can see. My decade-long search for an explanation of why our behaviors, moods, and preferences change during menopause

had finally come to fruition. When we put these pieces together, we can see that menopause isn't an evolutionary mistake. The shedding of our neurochemical armor and the reconnection with our inner voices, none of that is an accident. The brain changes that happen at menopause are crucial to our well-being,

and of societies. It's as if we enter a major construction project. Our brains are undergoing a massive transformation, and so are our lives. When looked at holistically, we start to see that the purpose of menopause is to transform us into stronger, more powerful, more authentic, and more intelligent version. of ourselves. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest

takeaway is.