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

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

Today I have three extraordinary experts in women's health - Dr. Mindy Pelz, Dr. Mary Claire Haver and Dr. Ellen Langer. We dive deep into the often misunderstood world of menopause, hormonal changes, and how women can optimize their health throughout different life stages. From debunking myths about fat burning to revealing shocking truths about medical education on menopause, this conversation is packed with game-changing insights. Whether you're a woman approaching this life transition or someone who cares about the women in your life, this episode offers invaluable wisdom on navigating the complex journey of women's health. Get ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about aging, hormones, and the female body!IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:Why women's bodies are designed to carry a little extra fat and how it affects their healthThe surprising truth about menstrual cycles and their connection to detoxificationHow women can optimize their fasting and exercise routines based on their menstrual cycleThe shocking lack of education doctors receive about menopause and its impact on women's healthWhy prioritizing muscle strength over thinness is crucial for women's long-term health and longevityFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1676For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dr. Mindy Pelz – https://link.chtbl.com/1543-podDr. Mary Claire Haver – https://link.chtbl.com/1641-podDr. Ellen Langer – https://link.chtbl.com/1578-pod

Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. So what would you say is the difference was between how men should be thinking about burning fat versus how women should be thinking about burning fat, unwanted fat. Yeah. Oh, it's such a good question. And one I've never been asked before, and here I'm going to make a really bold statement that I don't think a lot of women will love, but it's part of living in a female body, is that a little bit of, we're meant to have a little bit of fat.

Oh, don't say that. I know. Right? Like a little bit of we're meant to have a little bit of fat oh don't say that I know right like a little bit I'm not saying like but we're not meant to be skin and bones we're meant to have a little bit of extra fat it's part of like the one female body and because here's here's what's interesting both men and women have the body has one major thing it's focused on, which is survival. But women have two. We have reproduction. So our bodies always, it doesn't want to be.

Think about when we're too thin, we bring calories down too much, our cycles stop. Right. So we need a little bit more padding to make the reproductive system work. Men don't need that. And if a cycle stops for a woman, is that a bad thing? Oh, it's a horrible thing. Why is that bad? Yeah. And thank you for asking that. I will say that one of the biggest ahas I've had from this book going out in the world is how many 20 and 30 year olds don't have a cycle. Really? So this is what women need to know. Your cycle is a detox. You are shedding the inner lining of your uterus and you're getting rid of what is not serving you.

So it's not just a troublesome situation you have to deal with. Your body is getting rid of hormones. It's getting rid of toxins. It's how we detox. It's recycling. Yeah. It's kind of like a fast. It's like a fast. Really? So a cycle is detoxing and getting rid of toxic things in the female body. That's right. And it happens once a month, right? Every 28, 30 days roughly. Yeah, 28 to 32.

No woman has the exact same. I mean, every woman's different, but 28 to 32. Does it usually go in the same time for most women? Or when does it line up? And why do you hear that some women in families or friends say, oh, our cycles are aligned? Yeah. Does it have anything to do with astrology or the moon? Does it have to do with what you're eating, how you're sleeping, your environment, your mood cycles, your age? How does it all work? Yeah, it's kind of all of it. Really? So here's something that I think women really need to know that is, again, different than men. And that's

that our bodies are always adapting to our environment. Women's are. Women's are. So if we're restrictive too much with our calories, this is why I taught fast, like a girl when to fast and when not to fast. If we're too extreme with our exercise, if we're too extreme with our stress levels, whatever environment we're putting in, our hormones are like navigating that and adapting to that. And your cycle will change based on that. Your cycle will change based off of that. I'll give you a great example. I had a friend who had, she had three, at the time she had two kids and was trying to get pregnant with a third. And she was struggling to get pregnant with a third. And she waited a year to go to this

reproductive specialist who had her fill out like mounds of paperwork. She goes after a year to go to this reproductive specialist who had her fill out mounds of paperwork. She goes after a year of waiting. She sits down with this guy, and he says, I'll tell you how you need to get pregnant. You need to stop doing so much. Wow. You need to stop stressing so much. And she was so upset.

She left, and she's like, I waited a year. I filled out all that paperwork. And that's what he told. And then she was, and that's what he told me. And she goes, and then I decided to try it. And within a month, she was pregnant. Really? Why do you hear this a lot from women who say they can't get pregnant? And then you hear stories of, well, they were too much in control or they were stressing too much. And the moment you let go and surrendered, then they got pregnant. Why do we hear that so frequently? Yeah. So if you think about it, if reproduction is a top priority for a female body,

if you're under so much stress, the body is like, it's not safe to house a baby. Interesting. The body's always doing the right thing at the right time. So if it's not able to have a baby, the first thing you have to ask is for the female is, does my body feel safe? And sometimes you your life, if stress is really high, the body is always feeling like it's under threat. Your hormones will go massively out of balance. Really? Yeah. So your hormones are connected to the way you think also. Absolutely.

Do you think if a woman is subconsciously knows that they're in a relationship with the wrong person, they married the wrong person, or they're trying to have kids with some man that subconsciously they know they're not supposed to, do you think that their cycle will be off or they won't get pregnant because they think that way? I think it's very possible. Really? There's some interesting studies. I want to go back to the- Because they don't feel safe. Yeah. Wow. You have to feel safe for your hormones to be balanced. That's why fasting didn't work for women to do all the time because people, the body was like- Too stressful. Too stressful. But cycling fasting works for women because you're using the principles of

fasting to heal and you're using the principles of fasting to heal and you're using the principles of food to nourish yourself. So the body feels safe and you do that in accordance with your hormones and your cycle. And the body's like, I'm safe. I can release weight. I want you to talk about cycling and fasting in a moment, but I think I just cut you off from something you were going to say. Yeah. So I wanted to go into the pheromones for a second because why do we cycle together? And then I wanted to go into the pheromones for a second because why do we cycle together? And then I wanted to talk about one study about birth control that was really interesting. So we cycle together, women do, because as crazy as it sounds, we smell each other.

Really? Yeah. So there's a scent that we give off and it changes our cycle. That's how powerful a woman's body is and how it will adapt to the environment it is in. So when you smell another woman who has, it'll know when the cycle is happening and it'll sync up your hormones with theirs? Yes. But it's when you're like in families and work environment. When you're constantly with that person. Yes. It's constantly. It's not like you go out into the world. It's not like you see your girlfriend once a month and, oh, we're going to sync up right now.

They're called pheromones. Pheromones. Isn't that crazy? That's fascinating. Okay. Second interesting study. What is the reason behind that pairing of cycles within families or communities? Is there a safety thing when you're both in a cycle at the same time? That's a great question. I always go back to our primal caveman days. I'm like, why did they? Because that's where you can really see, why did we do that?

I guess men back in the day used to spread their seed a lot. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was it. There was a lot of. Who knows? To multiple women at once. Yeah. It's true.

I mean, in tribal days, it was like, okay, the man with the most money or the doctor or the whatever, the person with the most resources is able to kind of spread their seed to as many people as possible for survival. Yeah. It's possible. I think there's something I wrote in both my books called The Hormonal Hierarchy. I think there's something I wrote in both my books called the hormonal hierarchy. And it works in women because our hormones are more complicated.

And the hierarchy looks like this. Wait, you guys aren't simple? We're not. Are you just figuring that out right now? We're not. It's so funny. So many men say to me, like, you said it. I didn't say it.

And this is why I love conversations like this. Let's just, yes, we're not simple. And our moods constantly change. Well, I think you can be simple when you understand a lot of this stuff, as opposed to feeling like, I don't know how to understand it. Why am I feeling this way? Why am I feeling more stressed this time? Yeah. way? Why are you feeling more stressed this time? When we have awareness and we have an understanding of our body as a man, as our body, our hormones or a different environment, things like that, we feel more at peace. It doesn't mean it's going to give us a hundred percent peace,

but we're going to feel like, okay, I have a sense of understanding around it. I think when women get understanding around their bodies, their cycles, their hormones, like why they're gaining weight and why they're losing weight and all these different things. When they are aware of it, they don't feel, they don't have to feel as bad or shameful or anxious or stressed about it. Yes. Right? Yes.

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

it to the light. So, but here's so important that we bring it to the to the light um so but here's what i want to go back to this fair i've gone off so many different i know but you've got me thinking and excited so here's what i think happens yes is is in this hormonal hierarchy in order for your sex hormones to be balanced you have to be insulin sensitive you have to have that system right which is is why I think Fast Like a Girl is so many women are getting their cycles back. They're getting pregnant for the first time because I help them see how to do that. But what's in charge of insulin is cortisol. So like we talked about, well, okay, if cortisol is high, you become more insulin resistant and

you have a harder time balancing sex hormones. And cortisol is stress. Cortisol is stress. And it's stress based on food stress, lack of sleep stress, environment stress, relationship stress, all of it? All of it. Fasting raises cortisol. Right. Exercise raises cortisol, which is why we have to do it differently as women.

Interesting. But at the top of that, all is oxytocin. And this is why I think perhaps we would smell each other and would cycle together. Because women are, right? Women are meant to be in community. Because when oxytocin and we're connecting with each other, then cortisol goes down. This is why you should always let your gal go out on ladies night always yeah because now she gets oxytocin it brings cortisol down she's more relaxed and then when she's more relaxed now all the dieting and exercise that she wants to do makes her is going to work and when that it regulates insulin now we can balance her hormones wow so we're we're just humans in general but women are geared towards connection. And so what about, you know, so you mentioned cycling fasting or fasting while cycling. How do we know, how does a woman know when to fast and how frequently to fast based on their cycle? So in Fast Like a Girl, I created something called the fasting cycle for women.

And basically I walk through the whole menstrual cycle. I'll give you the basic principles of it. Break it down for women. And basically, I walk through the whole menstrual cycle. I'll give you the basic principles of it. Break it down for me. Yeah. And showed women, this is when you fast is when you don't fast. And then I timed it to six different level fasts. Give me the 101 of a menstrual cycle. Okay, this is going to be great.

When does it start? Yeah. Or what happens the day it starts versus when it ends? Okay, great. And then you got to go home tonight. That's what I learned. Yeah, And let me know how useful this is. Yeah. Because it's really interesting. If more men understood this, I think you'd understand the women in your life more. Okay. Day one through day 10. Day one is the day you start to, a woman bleeds. A lot of women don't

realize that that's day one. So you have to use feminine care products. It's day one. So your hormones actually come crashing down at that point. And for the next 10 days, you're going to specifically build a hormone called estrogen. Estrogen needs you to be insulin sensitive. So keeping your carb load down, keeping fasting longer, exercising more. Really? Those first 10 days, a woman can do it then. That's when you can fast and exercise more.

Yeah. Day one through 10. Day one through 10. And that's where keto works. That's where the whole low carb situation worked really well in those first 10 days. The other unique thing about estrogen is when cortisol shows up, she doesn't care as much. She's a little tolerant of cortisol. The other interesting thing for you to know, and anybody who's got a woman in their life,

those first 10 days when estrogen builds, one piece of estrogen, it's called estradiol, It builds estrogen, one piece of estrogen, it's called estradiol, stimulates dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, BDNF, acetylcholine, glutamate. So she's going to be happy, focused, more outgoing, want to socialize more. Really? In the first 10 days? Yeah. Give her a couple of days after she starts to bleed, but as she gets closer to day 10. Because usually when it starts, you hear people say a little more moody, right?

I think that's because we don't mind the back half of our cycle. Really? So when I go all the way through, I'll explain that. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Because Martha, my fiance, she really doesn't get moody. She doesn't get cramping. It's really rare if she feels pain or feels... She might for a couple hours be like, I just want to cut a little bit more or something like that. But I don't know, maybe that's... She might be doing this right though. We're not meant to have...

PMS is because we're going against our natural rhythm. Really? Yeah. Bad menopause symptoms also going against natural rhythms. How many women do you think percentage-wise have intense PMS? Oh, I would say the majority of them. Really? But think about it. Women exercise the same all month long. Women eat the same all month long. Women don't think about, oh, progesterone's coming in. I maybe need to slow down my life a little bit right now. We don't talk like that until this

moment in time. And this is what, again, another thing I'm trying to open up this conversation. So we have been trying to diet and exercise and live life very much like a man. Right. Especially in the coastal cities, you see, you know, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but you see women going to the gym five, six days a week or getting up early and intense yoga, hot yoga every single morning. It's like, you got to get it in and you got to work hard. And it sounds like, yes, for a period of the month, but not the entire month. Exactly. Or for part of the week, but not the end every day. Exactly. That's what I'm hearing you say. Yes. Got it. And that is

so important for women to hear. And when I get to the back half of the cycle, you'll understand why. so important for women to hear. And when I get to the back half of the cycle, you'll understand why. But our hormones pulse in and out in a 28 to 32 day period. You all have one hormone. You have testosterone. That's it. That's it. How many hormones do women have? We have, well, sex hormones. So we have three, but you also have estrogen, but you make testosterone, it goes up into the brain and converts into estrogen. So the conversion happens in the brain. So all you have to think about is make more testosterone and you get it every 15-ish minutes.

Every 15 minutes? Yeah. Just pulses in. Really? Hormones are always pulsing. So they pulse in every 15 minutes and then it goes away. Then it pulses in and then it goes away. Yeah. You're highest in the morning. Testosterone's highest in the morning.

Women- That's why men usually have extra sex drive in the morning, right? That's exactly why men have a higher sex drive in the morning. Right, right. And it's a good time to work out. But if you use testosterone for you all, when testosterone comes in, if you're lifting weights, you're going to help build that muscle more. We only get testosterone, check this out, we only get testosterone, a big surge of it day 11 to day 15.

You don't get it for 10 days? Yeah. Really? It comes in in a big surge right in ovulation. So it's a great time for a woman to build muscle. You're going to notice her libido is going to go up. She's going to want to have sex more then. That one is like mind blowing, right? How many men and women are a mismatch? And again, this is purely obviously a heterosexual moment, but how many men and women don't feel like they're sexually matched right? But how many men and women don't feel like they're sexually matched right?

But yet, do we understand that women get that surge of testosterone in that five-day period? That's interesting. How do you time that up, though? It's like, okay, day one, she's got her period. She started bleeding, right? And then you think, okay, 11 days from now, let me put a mental note or put it in my calendar. I'm like, okay, this is going to be the day. Yeah. That doesn't sound so like sexy though.

And when you think about it, let me like mark this on my calendar and really be aware of when she's going to be available at the best time. Well, so here's what you can do is, I mean, it's not, I'm not saying don't have sex the rest of the month. Right, right, right, right. I'm just saying you're, you got a shot, a big shot at that point. Like, like, so big shot at that point. So just be aware of that. Sure, sure.

The woman may be more aroused. That's right. She might have more desire. Naturally. Yeah. And she can't even control it. She can't. I mean, well, the body is surging with the hormones, right?

Yes. I mean, I guess you can mentally block it, but the body is naturally more turned on. The body is naturally more turned on. The body is naturally more turned on. Okay. I mean, yes, you can control anything, but I'm just saying the body. That's right. You can't block the hormone. I was thinking of like all these, this visual of like all these women like.

Women like jumping on men. Ah, ripping their clothes off. That's right. It's not like that. I can't control it. It's not like that. Yes. But the body, unless you, I guess, medically or put some medication, you can't block these

hormones is what you're saying. That's right. Well, I mean, there are situations like birth control pill has- That's blocking it. Yeah, it's manipulating it. And you're taking a medication to block. It's changed it. It's synthetically directing it.

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

So that's one. Second one is horrible for the microbiome. Really? It decimates the microbiome. And you need your microbiome to make serotonin. You need it for immune system. You need your microbiome to break down estrogen. So when you take that pill, and it's like a daily pill for like, what, 10, 12 days or

something? Yeah, yeah. It's on a month. It's like half the month? Yeah. You take it for two weeks? Yeah. You have a cycle according to them.

When you take it, you take it daily for like two weeks or whatever it is. What is in that pill and what is it doing to your gut microbiome? Yeah. And what is it doing to your brain? Yeah. Well, so it's controlling hormones for you. So you're adding in hormones into your body. So it's doing the controlling instead of the body and naturally doing it.

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

The sperm, right? It would change sperm. Huh. Now, would you take it? I wouldn't take it. Why wouldn't you take it? Why would I want to block my body's natural way of being? Then the same as goes for women.

Yeah, I'm not saying women should take it. I know, but that's the... And I also, I wouldn't take it unless they know, but that's the, that's the, that is why. And I also, I wouldn't take it unless they were like, listen, there are zero side effects. And right when you got off of it, you would be perfectly back to where your body was in sync and your sperm would be just as optimized or healthy or powerful, whatever it is. And there wouldn't be, you know, you wouldn't hurt your sperm later. Yeah.

Then I'd be like, okay, well, if there's decades of research and this is proven and, and babies are still okay afterwards, you know, then I'd be like, oh, maybe, I don't know if I was 20 or something, but it's not something I would take right now. So that's what's happening to women. Really? Is that we have manipulated our hormones. And this is why women's health is in a really disastrous place right now. So I totally hear what you're saying. And I would agree.

Like, yeah, your logic is right. But we've been doing this to women forever. Why? I mean, this is probably a whole other subject. But why is birth control such a normal thing if it's so bad for a woman's bodies? Yeah. Why do we do it is because the alternative is nobody wants to have a child. Young.

A young child. Yeah. And we- What's more painful? Hurting your body for decades and maybe a lifetime? Having a child young, I get, it's a big risk and there's a lot of pain and pressure that could come to that along with a lot of beauty and wonder and magic as well. But at what price? Somewhere along the line, we decided that the woman was in charge of the birth control process. And we didn't think,

and I will say this with as much kindness as I can. Yes. And I'm not here to judge people. My sisters were both on birth control for a long time. It's one of the reasons why I asked because one of my sisters was on birth control, I think for two decades and she couldn't get pregnant. And it was devastating for like four or five years, she was trying and she could not get pregnant to the point where she gave up. For like four or five years, she was trying and she could not get pregnant to the point where she gave up. She was just like in tears for months. Yep.

Sad that she wasn't able to have a child. Yep. And there were some other complications. I can't remember the terminology of things. It was something she had. But it wasn't in her cards anymore. Yep. And she was in her late 30s and she was devastated.

Yep. And then she got off of birth control and just said, okay, well, I guess I'm not going to be a mom. And then four or five years later, she was able to have a child. Like, it kind of magically happened. But, and now she's got an amazing, you know, one and a half year old son.

So it's a beautiful thing now, but it was really scary and painful for many, many years. And, you know, it's sad to see. And it affected her hormones and different things. Yeah. It took time for the body to re-regulate. That's it. Exactly. I mean, you just painted the picture that so many women are struggling with. And so when we come in with an outside source to manipulate our hormones, when we get off of that outside source, we don't have a natural

rhythm. And that's honestly one of the things that I'm seeing with Fast Like a Girl when I go and read my reviews and see how people are responding to it, is I just gave a lifestyle that allowed women to get back into routine with their hormones. So it's awesome she has it now. It took her four to five years. But what I'm hoping is that we can use lifestyle as a way to give that rhythm back. Right. And you said between day 11 and 15, that's when there's a surge of testosterone for women in their cycle. What happens after a day? And that's when they can be working out harder. That's when you can go to the gym four or five days that week and push it a little more. harder. That's when you can go to the gym four or five days that week and push it a little more. Well, so day one through day 10, you can do the hard workouts. Day 11 to day 15, you get the most

amount of testosterone you'll ever get. You have the most amount of estrogen you'll ever have and a little bit of progesterone. So let's talk about that period because it's a really cool period. So testosterone is libido and motivation and drive. Estrogen is she doesn't want to talk to you. She wants to have a – so if you want to have sex with her, you better talk to her first. Because she's – during that time, she's got estrogen. She wants to verbally process with you. So her brain is – Especially late at night.

Yes. When you just want to sleep. Her brain is like on fire. And then she's got progesterone, so she's a little bit calm. So that is, I call it, I called it in the book, the manifestation phase, because I was like, oh, we are super, our superpower is like we put on our hormonal superpower cape and we could manifest a baby. We can manifest a raise.

We can manifest some new project at work because all our hormones show up then. So for those four days, is it just you're sharper, you're more focused, you're more energized, you're clear, you're like goal oriented during those days, you know what you want to create? That's how we should be. So women listening that are like, I don't feel like that. I'm going to ask you to look at are you living a lifestyle in accordance with your hormones? Okay. that, I'm going to ask you to look at, are you living a lifestyle in accordance with your hormones? So let's go to your fiance who is like, this is kind of her period and menstrual cycles, easy. She's probably, if she looked at it, is living in accordance with her hormones.

She is. Yeah. She's doing amazing. She's got a great family relationships, great friendships. great family relationships, great friendships. She's got a meaningful work that she loves. She eats very well, very clean. She rests well. And she's positive and joyful. She has an attitude of just gratitude and giving and thoughtfulness and accepting. She doesn't hold onto grudges. She has a calm mind in the sense that it's not a rigid mind. She lets go of things. That's amazing. She creates boundaries and lets go of things. She forgives people. So she doesn't have a lot of stress and tightness internally. I think that allows her to flow and not be in pain or have PMS or be cramping a lot or off cycles. You nailed it.

I mean, you just gave the formula for oxytocin. Really? So she gets a lot of oxytocin is what I just heard. All day. Yeah. So it's balancing everything else out. Interesting. Yeah.

I'm curious, how is this possible that there's only eight hours of, I guess, educational training for menop teaching at an academic institution. I had seen patients, teaching med students, residents, but I was in charge of the curriculum for the residents as dictated by the American Board of OB-GYN. Okay. So I know exactly up until that point, what was required and menopause was required, but we didn't have menopause clinics. We didn't have more than just a few required lectures it was really just menopause is the end of the period it's you might get osteoporosis just the most cliche kind of basic basic learning no nuances about treatment and training and so you know how do we get to where this is a natural process but it affects 100 of women who live long enough completely going into

ovarian failure okay okay, loss of all of sex hormone production from the ovaries pretty much. And then she's expected to live the last third of her life without the benefit of her sex hormones and no discussion around how that affects her heart or her brain or her bones or her general urinary system or her mental health, you know, and how like we can shepherd her through this last third of her life to live as healthfully as possible, you know, by limiting these effects of the hormones. And so, I mean, I went through the training program.

I was all on board till 2018 until I realized I went through menopause and was like, wait a minute, this is much bigger than we're teaching, than I was taught, than what I actually believed. As an OBGYN, when you started entering menopause, did you think that you were prepared and educated? No, not at all. Even though you were treating women and helping women in menopause for years, you didn't feel prepared. So I gaslit myself for probably six months. So a lot of things were happening to me at once, as most women my age at that time. What was happening? So I was 48. I had been on birth control pills for treatment of polycystic ovarian syndrome, which worked great for me.

It's not for everyone, but I was fine on them and had been on them for years and years. Decided to come off and to see where I was at hormonally. At 48. 48. And so average age of menopause is 51. So I figured it was coming. Okay. Let me see where I'm at. And I get off and I'm like, my brother gets really sick. So I'm from a huge family. I have six brothers and one sister. My oldest brother died when I was nine. My next brother, Bob, the second in line, had HIV and hepatitis. And so I get a call from the hospital. I was in the OR. And I get a call, like an emergency call. And they kind of put the phone up to my ear. I was

finishing a case that my brother had had a stroke and was in the hospital. And he'd been kind of in and out of the hospital for a while. So he was in the end stages. And so I just like went home. He got discharged from the hospital to hospice. And my sister and I did his end of life care. And like everybody coming to that, it really was a beautiful way to die, you know. But I had just stopped my birth control pills and I just kind of forgot. Now remember, I had been on them for treatment of a condition where I didn't have periods. Okay.

So me not having a period was not a red flag. So here I am months into this. I think I'm grieving, which I was, but every single thing that I'm going through, I'm attributing to my grief. Definitely there was something there, but then as the grief fog starts to lift and I'm trying to get back into my habits, I gained weight and I wasn't sleeping, you know, I realized, wait, when was my last period? This is a hot flash. You know, like I, I'm in menopause. Like I literally could not figure it out for months in myself. And so I always thought I would treat hormone therapy like an epidural and in labor, like, we'll see how I do. You know, if I'm a good girl and I'm strong,

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

all the things. And immediately, I feel better. And all of a sudden other things are getting- After therapy, after hormone therapy. After starting hormone therapy. Okay. I start sleeping, the hot flashes go away, but also like the weird joint pain I was having gets better. Some of the brain fog lifts. I'm like, whoa, this is a bigger deal. The same time I was struggling to lose some of the weight I gained through the grieving process and what now I know is menopause. And I couldn't get it off. And I'd been thin.

I'd had thin privilege most of my life. I could diet for a week and get back into whatever genes. And it was easy for me. It was like melting off. And it was not coming off. And it was about 20 pounds. It was all in my midsection. And I was like banging my head against the wall, like getting up at 5 AM to go work out. I was doing two a days. I was calorically restricting to dangerous levels. I

was doing all the negative, negative things. And my husband pointed out, your girls are watching. Your what? Your girls are watching. They're modeling after what you're doing you're exhibiting behavior i was like literally an almond mom you know like i was just and judging them for their food choices and it was all really about me and so my husband was like oh he was going on a trip and it was like a two-week trip and he said so when you get back i'll lose this 10 pounds or whatever and he goes i don't care what you look like. Like, I love you. You're beautiful, but you're not happy. Like you're, you're, you're getting up at night to pee and you're

weighing yourself. You're constantly talking about your weight. You're, you're, you know, this isn't working. And what do you tell the kids when you can't exhibit, you know, you can't expect change if you keep utilizing the same behaviors. And he's like, figure it out. You're smart. You're a doctor. And so I took that as like a challenge. And so I went to the PhDs at the university I was employed at. And, you know, I was everybody's doctor at that point. I was like, what's going on in menopause? I can't lose weight. My patients aren't losing weight. What is this around my middle? And they're like, well, that's visceral fat. I'm like, what's that? I didn't even know. Right. You know, like I didn't even know the

difference between subcutaneous and visceral fat. Like we learned nothing about nutrition in medical school there. I mean the minimum. And so they send me a few articles. I just started going down rabbit holes about inflammation and visceral fat and nutrition. And so that's where, you know, the whole, my first toe in the water with menopause was let's get this weight off. And it was the pain point for so many of my patients. What is the number one pain point for women in menopause? Is it getting rid of excess weight? Is it dealing with hot flashes? Is it dealing with... So when we look at... So for forever, menopause was only quantified by absence of periods and hot flashes. Those were the top two. But when you actually... And what is a hot flash?

Good question. Just so I can be educated. So yeah, a hot flash is a thermoregulatory dysfunction. So there's a little temperature is a thermoregulatory dysfunction. So there's a little temperature gauge in our hypothalamus, in our brain, and it has a really a set point. And when our estrogen levels decline, we end up with dysregulated serotonin, which then resets the temperature gauge. So what we used to just kind of go with the flow, all of a sudden we'll have this profuse sweating. Profuse, like most women, it'll start somewhere in their chest area and you'll feel this heat

building and then it'll just rise up. I can probably make it happen. Go up into your neck and then your head starts sweating. It's going down your arms. I mean, some women will drench their entire clothes, but it usually starts central and it goes peripheral. It lasts seconds to minutes, but it is completely disruptive. Does it, is it happen multiple times a day? It depends on the patient. So it could be, some patients will have multiple times a day, like to the point where she, you know, so that's severe. Some will have it once a week. It really does vary from woman to woman and it's not really tied to exact estrogen levels. So it's more to do with neurotransmitters and how

those are affecting her. But 85% of women will have those, but probably 90 to 95 will have body composition changes. Almost a hundred percent will have fatigue, like differences in, and almost every single woman that I talked to was like, something wasn't right. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I felt different. And either it was through sleep or what her body was doing, but like she wasn't changing anything in her nutrition, in her exercise, in her stress levels. Like everything was stable, but her body was changing. And the thing is we have estrogen receptors in every organ system of our body and it will affect each of us differently. And so doctors love the duck, you know, walks like a duck, talks like a duck, quacks like a duck. It's a duck, right? So we have these checklists of things,

okay, this is the flu. This is, you know, broken leg. This is whatever, but menopause. Yeah. The symptoms of menopause. Right. Are variable. So 85% of us have hot flashes. Sure. 100% of women will lose their fertility and their periods will stop. Normal regulatory periods will stop, but probably 90%, you know, fatigue, probably 80% sleep disruption, 50% of women at any time will have sexual dysfunction. So changes in libido, pain, you know, we see almost a hundred percent body composition change. So not just weight gain, but where we gain weight changes. So we stop depositing fat so much in the subcutaneous area. We can still do that, but we start shifting a lot of fat to

the interabdominal cavity or that visceral cavity. You're talking about from the legs and the butt to the stomach. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So when most women typically, estrogen drives a more pear shape, which is natural and healthy versus all of a sudden you're having new fat in the abdominal cavity. You're like a half pear. Yeah. Half pear. Suddenly you look pregnant. Interesting. Yeah. Or their pants are getting tight and they can't figure out why. It seems like there's a lot of challenges or changes that women go through during this period of time. And how long does menopause tend to last for? Yeah. Great question. So menopause is actually one day. So let me walk you through all these

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

So the over, so. So it could be once every two weeks. It could be. It could be 10 times a day. It could be, it's very, very variable. So here's why, here's why. What I think your listeners and followers should understand, difference between us. I was born female, you're born male, right? You make your genetic material in the testes every day. And you can do that probably till you die. It might be a little harder as you get older, but you can do it, right?

Females are born with all of their eggs and it has to last them until they go away. So we actually reach our maximum egg count five months in utero when our moms are still pregnant with us. And then they decline. So we lose quality and quantity over time. How many eggs do most women start with? At birth, one to two million. Two million eggs? Holy cow.

And then by the time we're 30, we are down to 10% of our egg supply, roughly. It's about 120,000. And then by the time we're 40, we're down to about 3%. And menopause is when you have no more eggs. You're done. Today, all your eggs are gone. Yeah. And there's nothing, no sex hormones are being produced by the ovaries anymore. Usually, what's the average age of that? Yeah. So menopause, 51 average. However, normal is still 45 to 55. Perry, and I'll walk you through that,

PERI begins 7 to 10 years before that. So the hypothalamus pituitary, right? Two glands in the brain. You probably know them well. The hypothalamus is constantly sampling our blood for estradiol. It is what drives that monthly period. Okay. So the brain is like, we're good. Estrogen levels are good. Oh, they're getting low. They're getting low. Sends something called GnRH, gonadotropin-releasing hormone, to the pituitary. Pituitary is like, all right, boss, I got it. Starts pumping out LH and FSH, which are stimulating the ovaries to ovulate and make those hormones. Right. And so what happens when we start losing quality, we've reached some critical threshold in the number and quality of our eggs. Then the brains, then the ovaries like

can't do it with the same LH and FSH. It's not, it's comes resistant to those signals. So the brain's like, where's the hormones? I sent the signal and the material was like, I try. And he's like, try harder. So you get these bigger surges of those stimulating hormones, almost like what we give in a, in a fertility shot. Right. And then the ovaries like, okay, fine. Spits out an egg. So we get these wild fluctuations, super high surges of estrogen, way higher than you ever had in your normal reproductive stage. Then these crashing lows. So what used to be this EKG predictable thing

becomes a zone of chaos. Literally everything looks like this. It's trending down, but it is a rollercoaster on the way down. And then you end up in menopause and it's like flatline. That doesn't sound enjoyable. Well, it's less tumultuous if you understand what's happening. So educating yourself is half the battle. If you're educated and knowing when you hit these ages, there's going to be a lot of changes. Well, you don't have to be afraid. Right. Don't be afraid. It's going to happen and we can coach you through it. And there's so many things, nutrition, exercise, stress, you know, all the pillars of health are helpful, but just understanding what's happening. And so you don't gaslight yourself and being able to stand up for yourself at your doctor's

office. Because here's the problem. The first question you asked was like, how did we get here? Where a woman can't reliably walk into a doctor and get information? She has no idea what's happening to her body, how society views aging, how society views women in aging, how the medical profession deals with women. You know, in my training, there was this underscore of women tend to somaticize their symptoms, meaning giving a psychological reason instead of biology, just blaming it's all in her head, basically. And that's been going on for thousands of years. It's called WW, right?

The WW, the whiny woman. level residence for a woman who was coming to our clinic, who had a laundry list of vague symptoms, some headaches, some fatigue, depression, libido, joint pain, whatever. Everything's an issue. It sounds like it's like a little bit of issues everywhere. This is Texas. So I have this long, tall Texan, you know, in his white lab coat with his cowboy boots, meaning well. It was taught to him saying, saying well there's not much we can do for her you know like it's just this women go through this at this age and and and i just bought it i bought into it there was no education on like can you no prevent some of these symptoms can you optimize certain things can you and my last year of training was when the women's health initiative came out and HRT was taken off the table. So there was no education around perimenopause

and how we can intervene and decrease symptomatology and improve. Then the other thing, so we have the chronic things, the hot flashes, the night. So it's the things that bring people to the office. But what I think the bigger impact is that if you look at men and their risk of heart disease, so there's things that lead to heart disease, hypertension, high blood sugar, you know, diabetes, stroke risk, et cetera. It's pretty linear with age for the most part, as much as that could be biologically plausible. Women are pretty much lower than men until menopause. Then they shoot up and then they go past them. So menopause is a huge risk factor for chronic disease. The loss of estrogen affects the liver, cholesterol goes up. It affects the intima of the artery. It's very, very protective of the

lining of the artery. So much less atherosclerosis. You take age-matched women. Remember, it's normal 45 to 55. So if you go through menopause on the younger end, you are higher risk because your body's away from estrogen longer and all the protection that it offers. Don't women in general live longer than men? They do, but 25% of that life is in poorer health. So their lifespan is longer, but their healthspan is horrible. Women are three times more likely to end up in a nursing home or three times more likely to end up with dementia and frailty. Whereas men, that doesn't happen. They kind of live, have a short decline and die. So they're way more functional in general. Of course, not every man, not every woman. But what we're seeing the trends are women are living three to

four years longer, but they're in nursing homes and they can't take care of themselves. Do women suffer dementia more than men? Yes. Really? Yeah. Two to three times more than men? Yes. Really? Yeah. Two to three times more. Why is that? So there's a great book on this subject.

Lisa Moscone wrote The Menopause Brain and The XX Brain, and she explores a lot of this. And we know that estrogen is really protective in the neurological system. And when those levels decline, we start seeing acceleration of disease. But what about for men if we have less estrogen, right? Yeah. So you actually kind of, your estrogen stabilizes. It's lower than women's, but once we go through menopause, you have more than me. Come on. You have more than me. Wow. Yeah. So you still have a little bit of baseline protection. That kind of stays most of your life. Now with all these different, I guess, I don't know if you call them symptoms or challenges that women face during these years of menopause, I guess it's one day, but the years of experiencing menopause.

Right. The post-menopause years. Yeah. What would you say is the biggest loss for women? Is it the gain of fat, the unwanted fat? Is it that they don't have the sex drive that they once do or it shifts and it changes if they feel like, oh, now I'm actually getting older. Am I as valuable as a woman in society? I think all of it. I think it's all of it. It's all hitting at once. They are feeling so... So like at work, when you look at the economic impact of menopause, this is an age, so I'm

55, you know, I am at the top of my career and it's only going up. And had I been suffering from brain fog to the point one in five women will quit their jobs because of cognition changes in menopause. This is at an age when we should be leaning into our careers. The kids are grown for most of it. You know, we're just at that age where- You've got the most wisdom, the most experience, the most knowledge. Right. And now they've lost so much confidence because they can't find their words or they can't calculate anymore. And they can't, you know, they're used to these high level

cognitive function and they've lost executive functioning. So we see ADD, you know, mental health changes, the dopamine changes, the serotonin, the norepinephrine, all of this is linked to our hormones. And when they, you know, when these changes happen, the dopamine changes, the serotonin, the norepinephrine, all of this is linked to our hormones. And when these changes happen, especially in peri, where it's so chaotic, the brain loves to know what's coming, right? So the brain really thrives for most of us in that estrogen is going to surge, progesterone is going to surge, it's used to it. And then when we get to peri and we see this chaos, mental health, I think it's 40% increased risk of depression

in perimenopause. Greatest risk of a female to commit suicide is between 45 to 55. I mean, just look at the numbers. We look at serotonin SSRI use, so antidepressant use doubles between premenopause and postmenopause, and then goes up after age 65. And these are things that don't have to happen, that we can actually intervene early and provide education, counseling, therapy, and decrease these risks as we age. Walk me through, because you've worked with a lot of... How many women have you worked with, like one-to-one, privately? And since my menopause clinic opened? Yeah.

Oh, got over a thousand. Yeah. So walk me through, if you can, and put me and anyone, man or woman, in the seat of what is a woman feeling emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically when they realize they no longer have any eggs left and they can no longer,

even if they didn't want to have kids anymore, but they can no longer have even if they didn't want to have kids anymore, but they can no longer have the ability to have children themselves, what emotionally goes on with women who experienced that moment? There's no more. I think it's a fleeting moment. I went through it myself and I've talked to all these patients. You go through a little bit of mourning and then you're like, I don't have to worry about it anymore. We're done. I mean, I had my children, you know, I purposefully did not have more, you know, I, I, I was wanting to focus on the two that I had and,

you know, was happy with that. We did try one more time. It never worked out, but you know, at a certain point I was like, we're done. Yes. But you had a rhythm of a cycle, you know, a physical cycle, but you go through this chaos, you know. So it's not like the door shuts one day. You go through months, years of what the hell is happening to me. So also, you know, they're losing confidence because of, you know, cognition changes. They're losing libido. Their, you know, marriage is affected.

Their relationships. They're losing their resilience to anxiety and stress. And so, so many things are happening to this woman. By the time they get to my office, they've seen five or six, they've gone to one guy for palpitations, another woman for, you know, they've been dismissed, gaslit, told this is normal, this is part of your life, weight gain, eat less, you're just lazy, you're fat, you know. And then they get to me and I'm like, I got to move, you know, and they're so great.

Like the tears pour. I have Kleenex. I'm like, I got to move. And they're so great. Like the tears pour. I have Kleenex. I'm just... One, that they're validated. And then we start talking, okay, what are our tools that we're going to use to pull you out of this? Someone... So imagine I'm...

Imagine I'm a 49-year-old woman or 50-year-old woman that's gone through five, seven different doctors, finally gets your book and realizes, oh, I need to come see you. And I come and for two hours, I'm sobbing and I'm crying and I'm telling you every symptom I've had and I say, I don't know what to do. What's the next thing you say to me? And what will you do to support me or any woman watching who's uncertain on how they can feel safe and protected about what to do next? One, I listen to her and I believe her. And that is half of the therapy right there. So because of the way society perceives women,

the way medicine perceives women, the way we're training our clinicians by and large, at least in my generation of this, it's all under head and women are just emotional. To like have someone believe you and just say, and we say, yeah, yep, that, yes, yes, yes, here's a study that proved, you know, here's that. Now let's talk about what we're going to do about it. And I mean, I could basically tell them to go home and do handstands and eat toast or

something and they would feel, you know, and so, but we start with therapeutic options. We go through hormone, non-hormone, pharmacology, nutrition changes. I do so much blood work. I'm looking for autoimmune disease. I'm looking for hypothyroidism, nutrition deficiencies. I'm just trying to get a broader picture of her whole health. And so once we kind of get the acute things taken care of, get the hot flashes under control, get her, get her, you know, brain working again, get the muscle pain back in order. Then we start plotting out the next 30 years. So they're focused on, I'm like, tell me about your mom.

Tell me about your grandmother. How did they age? Did they fall and break a hip? Were they incapacitated? How long were they in the bed at the end of their life? Did you have to hire someone to come in the house? Were they in a nursing home? What do you want?

And they don't want that. So we start mapping out nutrition, exercise, you know, looking at risk for osteoporosis, look at a risk for heart disease. What can we do on what I call the toolkit, you know, to put some new things into place that are going to limit that time where you can't take care of yourself. If you weren't able to do blood work for someone, someone's watching and they're not able to come to your clinic, what would be the three to five things that you would say if you can only do these three or five things during your menopause process?

Right. And I can't write your prescription. Yeah. I can't write your prescription. But these three to five things will drastically help improve in any way possible. What would those three to five things be during menopause? So I would tell her she needs to watch her fiber intake. So she needs to be getting minimum 25 grams of fiber per day. More fiber. More fiber. Most Americans are getting, women are getting 10 to 12. And so maybe half of what they need. That fiber is going to feed our gut microbiome, keep it healthy. It is going to decrease the rate of which the blood glucose goes up. It'll decrease the absorption of sugars into the bloodstream. It will also decrease, keep us fuller longer.

So it decreases some of those hunger cues that are going on, which go absolutely cattywampus and menopause. It will, the foods that are rich in fiber are also rich in minerals, vitamins, cofactors, all the things that keep us healthy. So nutrition should come first. Okay. That's number one. Second is limit added sugars. So added sugars are sugars added in cooking and processing, not fruits and vegetables.

So much of the glucose, my patients A1C start creeping um, my patients, A1C start creeping up, you know, in menopause, their cholesterol starts creeping up. Fiber will go a long way with cholesterol, but the added sugars are huge. So limiting those to 25 grams or less per day, most people are getting about a hundred. They're giving that in like one drink. Right. So, and like starting to pay attention to that and be like, Oh my God, you know, like I got 80 today and I didn't even think about it. So working on that. Okay. Prioritizing sleep.

It's hard enough. So things like what many of my, and I'm so excited to see research come out on this, but alcohol consumption is so sleep disruptive for anyone, but it is literally debilitating in menopause. For anyone, but it is literally debilitating in menopause. Like our ability to tolerate alcohol in the ways that we used to, if you're a drinker, change. And no one can tell me why yet. I know there's data coming, but, and we, and our sleep is so much harder as we get older because the hot flashes, the night sweats, the hormone changes. It is, you know, and then when you add an alcohol, like I know if I choose to drink more than a glass of

wine, then I'm choosing not to sleep. It's just not going to work for me. Yeah. There's a study, I think Dr. Daniel Amen has a study of, I think, over 100,000 brain scans. I don't know if you've seen this study. Maybe it's more than 100,000, but something like hundreds of thousands of brain scans. He wants to scan mine. Exactly. I did a scan and I asked him about alcohol and many other things, like any types of drugs, cigarettes, alcohol. And I go, is there any benefit to drinking alcohol in the brain, the body or anything? And he goes, I can't see any benefit. And it only depresses you and suppresses your ability to think, to recover, and to feel healthy. It makes you sick.

And I get there's a culture around drinking. I've never been drunk. I've never had a glass of wine. I've never had a can of alcohol. I feel like it sips in my life, but I've never had a full can. And I think life can be challenging enough without alcohol. It's like, why add a depressant if, especially during a challenging season of life where you're already facing symptoms that are challenging, why put more pain on yourself?

And we see through the transition, because there's the lack of understanding, education, and women are desperate. They're turning to alcohol to like- I'm sure. Because you want to have some relief. and i get it right sugar alcohol drugs what cigarettes whatever might be but that's only going to hurt you even more isn't it yeah but the short term it's hard to so hard let that go it somehow when i phase it phrase it in terms of sleep it makes more sense and they're like oh well i really i know i need to sleep i'm like okay, when women aren't getting sleep during this phase of menopause, everything goes bad. Everything goes bad. Yeah. I mean, it just, I, I describe it as a traffic circle. So we have like our healthiest traffic circle

where good nutrition, good sleep, stress reduction, you know, all these things feed in. So we're just much more resilient. We can handle the viruses and the bad days and the parents dying, you know, all the things that life throws at us. And then we have the circle starts slowing down and then start spinning the other way. And that's, you know, the loss of sleep and it all kind of, and then the increase in visceral fat and then the weight gain and you feel bad about that. Then your mental health takes a hit and now you can't think it works, you know, and it's just, you end up in this.

The shame and whatever. Yeah. And so you're embarrassed, you're ashamed, your relationships are falling apart. You're, you know, just, so, and so we talk about trying to slow that negative circle down and start, you know, getting it to stop and then spinning it the other way. Okay. So that's the third thing, prioritizing sleep. What would be one or two others? So movement exercise. So most in my generation, we moved to be thin. Thin was a measure of health. And that is probably one of the biggest fallacies. Just moving your body to be thin, just eating to be thin was how we were raised. And I have had to

do some massive self-reflection and some therapy to let that go. And that number on the scale for so many of us was how we judged ourselves, how we set up, get on the scale in the morning, it's a good day based on that number. That number represents water, visceral fat, muscle mass. I could have gained 10 pounds of muscle, but I would have felt so horrible about myself. I did not understand that that muscle is what is going to keep me healthy as I age. If you could give one piece of advice to any woman in her twenties and thirties about their body. Strong over skinny. Strong over skinny. Nutrition over calories and educate yourself about what's coming because it's coming. What is the biggest risk women have in their 20s and 30s about trying to stay thin and skinny versus strong and healthy?

So it's hard for them to see it because they're 20, right? And they feel good and they look great. They feel like they look great because the clothes are, you know. But what they're not seeing is we peak our muscle mass and our bone density at about age 30. Wow. And that musculoskeletal unit is tied together. And so you have to, wherever that line is for you, we start losing muscle and bone mass after age 30. And menopause accelerates that when we lose estrogen and testosterone,

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

metabolic rate, determines your, determines your resilience to insulin resistance. Like it's everything. Yeah. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon has been a big proponent of promoting muscle. She's where I learned all this stuff. Yeah. And just really like- She changed my life. The number one factor of aging, I think is like a lack of muscle or just like, or of death. I can't remember what it is, but like one of the main reasons- Greatest predictors of early death.

It's like a lack of muscle and mostly because you fall and you can't get up or you can't function after you break something and the muscle will prevent that from happening and keep you stronger and healthier. So what I tell my patients is osteoporosis is real and 50% of women will have an osteoporotic fracture before they die. Okay. If you fall and break your hip, your chance of death in one year is 30% with surgery. Why is that? If it's decline. You can't get out of bed.

It's like the beginning of the end. And then if you're not healthy enough to have the surgery, 79% will die in one year. Wow. Because you're bedridden. And that year is horrible. Marked with decline. Now, some people, it's not everyone. Some people can recover from a hip fracture.

Horrible. Marked with decline. Now, some people, it's not everyone, some people can recover from a hip fracture, but man, if you're over 60, 65, and you have a hip fracture, it is really a bell ringer for a very bad outcome for you. But this is preventable. And it can start in your 30s. That's what I'm telling the younger patients. Get to the gym, start lifting weights, focus on your vitamin D, make sure you're getting good dietary calcium, like do everything you can to get strong muscle and bones, eat enough protein. Thank you, Dr. Lyon. And focus on that is going to keep you healthy and strong and also probably help you lose the fat. But you know what? Curves are beautiful and we all have different shapes and sizes and subcutaneous fat does not necessarily mean that you're not healthy. It's the visceral fat. Right. Exactly. Okay. So movement and then one more, what would be the- So stress reduction. And my menopausal patients are finding that easier now.

Really? Because they are realizing that no one's coming to save them and it's time to start prioritizing themselves. And that can look different for different people, but in menopause, women are really like, okay, this is it. If I don't do this, they are really putting up boundaries. It's fun to watch. Really? They're like, it's my time. I'm done. Oh, wow. Feed yourself. Make your own food. Take care of that. I got to take care of me. So it's really, really awesome for me to see them really lean into this and like, you can make your own dinner. You know, like I'm meditating, leave me alone. So, but what that stress reduction looks like can be boundaries, can be meditation, can be journaling,

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

What would you say to that? I'd say I feel sorry for you because you're missing out on a great opportunity to take care of yourself. It's interesting that we have a notion of mind and body as separate, and that's ruled for so long. That's why people think, you know, the only way you can heal yourself is by taking some medication. There's no reason to have a mind and body as separate. They're just words.

And lots of this book is based on the idea of putting them back together, even just for useful purposes. And if you have a mind and body and there, one thing, then wherever you're putting the mind, you're necessarily putting the body. And so now I have decades worth of research showing that we can put the mind in very unusual places, take the measurements from the body, and indeed, the effects are clear. I think that for this this person the non-believer you might ask them if they've ever seen this may be off color whatever somebody regurgitating on the side of the road and how did they end up feeling because

many people need to vomit just by watching somebody else nothing is happening to them maybe a less example and better is you're walking down the street and a leaf blows in your face. You're startled by it, just a leaf, but you can feel the changes in your body. My first experience with this mind-body unity was many, many years ago. So I was married when I was very young and we went to Paris on a honeymoon and I was now 18, 19 going on 30. So I had to be very sophisticated and we're in this restaurant and on the menu was this mixed grill that I ordered and on the plate came pancreas. So I said to my then husband, which of these is the pancreas? He points that one.

So I eat everything else. And now comes the moment of truth. I have to eat it because after all, I'm married. I don't know how that followed, but it seemed to at the time. So I start eating and I'm literally getting sick. He starts laughing. I said, why are you laughing? He said, because that's chicken. You ate the pancreas a long time ago. Oh, man. All right. So I was thinking myself ill. Interesting.

And all of the research supports that. You know, it's interesting. Again, I thought of this just the other day. I might have it in the book and have forgotten it. But I was in Missouri several decades ago. And a friend dragged me to an iridologist. And I'm up for anything. I mean, I'll go to...

I went to see this iridologist who looked in my eyes, and she says, I have problems with my gallbladder. Okay, fine. Just by looking in your eyes. Okay, so the game is over. And then eventually, I go to the doctor, and lo and behold, I had a gall over. And then eventually I go to the doctor and lo and behold, I had a gallstone. Really?

Yeah. Now, do you think you thought that to occur or did you actually have it? No, no, no, no. That's a good question, but I'm going to go there. I don't know how it happened. Here, the point for me was by looking in my eye, she knew there was something in other parts of my body that were not right. And what people don't realize is that every thought, if I lift my arm, my whole body is different. Different in tiny ways that we haven't been able to measure, but it's all connected. And which in some sense lends more credence to this whole idea of mind-body unity.

And the first study we did was a study where we took old men to a retreat that we had retrofitted to 20 years earlier. Right. What was this called again? We called it the counterclockwise study. Yes. So they were going to live for a week as if they were their younger selves. And they were in their late 70s, 80s? Yeah.

Even older. 80s, 90s even older 80s now remember that was quite a while ago okay you know that was when seven day was the in the new 90 uh-huh or even 100 or whatever i mean they they were they were really old yeah in can't like walker they get younger as i get older right right as i recall so they're they're in walkers they're in canes yeah they're immobile, they're very slow. Well, actually, you know that when I was interviewing people to do the study, so their adult daughter would typically go and bring them to the lab.

And I see them tottering down the hall. And at one point I said to myself, why am I doing this? I don't know if they're going to live through the day, no less be able to live for the week. And I took on something that only the younger me would have considered taking on. I was in charge of their entire lives, these several, seven men, old men, every aspect of their lives for a week. At any rate, you could, you know, you looked at them and didn't matter what number you attached to them, they were old.

Now they were going to live for a week as if they're their younger selves. So they'll be talking about current events, things from the past, as if they're just unfolding and other things as well. Like they would have newspapers from 30 years prior. And they were making their own meals and they would correct each other. So if you would say was, somebody would tell you is

because the past was now the present for that. Wow, and they were listening to older music and watching older movies and everything. I could spend the whole time with you just so I know that study. So you want me to give more detail, just tell me, but let me tell you me to give more detail, just tell me. But let me tell you the results, because those were amazing.

So they lived as their younger selves for a week. Without any medical intervention, their vision improved, their hearing improved, their memory, their strength, and they looked noticeably younger. And I must tell you that almost from the beginning, the changes were palpable. And most people accepted the findings. There were a couple of people who said, you can't make people younger. And I'm not saying that chronologically we're changing your age, but it is the case that we associate certain ways of being with certain times in our lives. And that these men were living their lives now very dependent on their adult daughter, presuming that they can't do many of the things that they used to do, and they were wrong.

And so that set the stage for a host of studies, most of which, well, all of them actually to date, are in the mindful body. That's fascinating. What would you say are, you know, that study was a while ago, right? Yeah. Now that was, let's see, we designed it in 1979. Wow. Yeah, a long time before you were born.

Yeah. Wow. Wow. So what would you say in the last 44 years, I guess, what is the new... Has the world changed? Yeah. I mean, what are the new studies or research that you've done to show how to either reverse aging or to, I guess, create longer aging in the biological sense? I guess, create longer aging in the biological sense? Remember, it's all one. Mind and body. So, we don't have a psychological as opposed to a biological sense. Interesting. So, it's both. It's the mind

and the body. Yeah. But I thought you were asking me, so I'm going to answer the question I thought you were going to ask, not the one that you did, right? Which was, how has the world changed? Because that's a lot of years. And way back at the beginning, the medical model believed that psychology was more or less irrelevant. Now, I'm sure everybody thought it was nice to be happy, but that wasn't going to affect your physical health. Now that's changed. And now what most people believe is a bio-social model. So these things like stress and so on matter, but they don't go nearly as far. And I'm saying down the road, psychology will be the most important aspect of your well-being. So that's a change that's come about slowly. Now, for me personally, once we had those data,

For me personally, once we had those data, I did several studies where we simply make elderly people, every time I say the word elderly, I stop now being older myself, but we make seniors more mindful and they live longer. So it's important for you to know that mindfulness as I study it has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is fine. It's just different. When you meditate, you take yourself out of the world and you say your mantra to yourself over and over. Mindfulness as I study it couldn't be more in the world. That what you're doing is not a practice. It's a way of being. You actively notice new things about the things you thought you knew. You come to see you didn't know them at all. And then your mind naturally goes to them. Now, if we start off with the realization

that everything is changing, everything looks different from different perspectives. The idea of being certain of anything becomes silly because you can't know. It's not what it was the last time you looked. And if you could adopt just one mindset, it's the only one I believe that is good for you, that uncertainty is the rule, not the exception, then you don't know. So then you tune in. The problem is our parents, our schools, the media, virtually everything is trying to teach us absolutes. And when you think you know something, you don't pay any attention. So I'll do what I do probably too frequently now. Let me ask you a simple question. This is the one that everybody knows. How much is one plus one?

Two. Okay. And that's what everybody says. I feel like this is a trick question. This is the one that everybody knows. How much is one plus one? Two. Okay. And that's what everybody says. I feel like this is a trick question. Well, it is though, because one plus one isn't always two. That if you are adding one watt of chewing gum plus one watt of chewing gum, one plus one is one. If you add one pile of laundry plus one pile of laundry, one plus one is one. You add one cloud plus one cloud, one plus one is one. In the real world, one plus one probably doesn't equal two as or more often as it does. So now look at the difference. Somebody, it's unlikely, but after we finish, somebody comes over to you and says, how much is one plus one? You're not going to mindlessly say two. You're going to pay some attention to the context and then you're

going to answer more mindfully and say, it could be, and then you can say it could be one, it could be two. Interesting. It's all context. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Everything changes and our minds tend to hold things still. We think we know, we want to know because we think that gives us control. But since things are changing, you don't want your mind to hold it still while in fact it's changing, because then you're giving up control that you otherwise would have. Wow. This is fascinating stuff. Now, I'm curious about chronic health, thinking our way to chronic health. This is the subtitle of your book, The Mindful Body. You say we can think our way to chronic health. This is the subtitle of your book, The Mindful Body. You say we can think our way to

chronic health. Yeah. Well, the reason I want to use the term chronic, just because it's a little startling because we only think of chronic illness, but people tend to assume that as you get older, you're going to fall apart. You're going to get sick. And sickness and aging are not the same thing. One can live their entire life without illness. And the way to live one's life is essentially the same when you're 10 years old or when you're 80 years old, just by knowing you don't know and tuning in. Now, people don't like not knowing because they think you can know. And what I'm here to tell everybody is you can't know. So what you need to do to live the kind of life that I'm suggesting is be confident and uncertain. If you think you should know, then you pretend. But you can't know. Now, that makes everything possible. Now, I was at this horse event many years ago. After this, I'm going to use only news stories. And this man asked me if I'd watch his horse for him because he was going to give his horse a hot dog. he was going to get his horse a hot dog. Well, as you might know from the credentials you read,

I was an A plus student. So I knew as well as anyone in this world, that's ridiculous. Horses are herbivorous. They don't eat meat. He came back with the hot dog and the horse ate it. And at that moment, I realized everything I thought I knew could be wrong. Now for me, that was actually exciting because that meant that everything was possible. All of those things that we were taught are impossible not to strive for actually became available in a whole different way. And the next step in the reasoning for me was to say that, you know, recognize that experiments, science, science give us our facts mostly, right? But that science only gives us probabilities. There's no experiment that gives you anything absolute. So it's sort of most horses under the conditions that were tested didn't eat the meat, which is very different from all horses

never eat meat. And it's very important for one's health because you have to realize that any information you're given is a best guess. Now, it's an educated guess, but it's still not an absolute. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well.

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