Menopause Isn’t a Breakdown. It’s a Brain Upgrade: The Science of Midlife Power with Dr. Mindy Pelz

Dr. Mindy, welcome back to the podcast. Today, we're talking about a lot of different themes together. And I'm so excited that you're the one here to walk us through those themes. We're talking about menopause and this major shift in a woman's life that from the outside, if you're undereducated about it, you can only sometimes see all the hard stuff. And yet here today and with your new book, Age Like a Girl, you're talking about so much more that's hidden in this journey that isn't often talked about. And we're also talking about how to step into this idea of mythology, especially in a woman's life and what this time period means and the lessons that it's bringing to women in particular as they age. But to start us off, I know you're a huge fan of mythology. And I just want to start there. Talk about your interest in this topic and then segue into the mythology around menopause. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. She wrote Women Who Run With the Wolves. She has been teaching something called the power of the crone for years. And the first time I heard about this concept, the power of the crone, I thought, oh, I hate the word crown. And then I started to dive into it, and you actually, the word crown means crown. And then I dove deeper into her teachings, and she has something called the life-death-life cycle that women go through. We live a life, and then when our menstrual cycle stops, part of that life dies. I mean, there's literally like an organ system in your body is done with its job. And a new life is forming. And so I've been obsessed with her teachings forever. But when I read The Power of the Crone and I matched that to this concept that women, if we're lucky, will live 42.5% of our life post-reproductively. And I matched those two things together and I thought, okay, something's happening here in menopause that we're not talking about. Because nothing the body does is ever by mistake. So why would a woman live 42.5% of her life? That's a long part of her life without a major organ system. And that's where I really connected dots that this is a transformational moment. This is a time for women who have done everything for everybody else to sort of dropped that role and actually start to do life for herself. Hmm when you went down that rabbit hole and you started looking into it What were some of the first big ideas that started blowing your mind? Or even rather that We're connecting dots that were already sort of swirling around. Yeah, well, there were like a series So the first one were scary thoughts You know, the most common time for a woman to kill herself is the decade between 45 and 55 When I heard that statistic at first I was like that can't be right And then I looked into it. It's absolutely right and I thought okay what's going on with women that, I mean, they're mothers, they're community members, their life is well-established. They're not teenagers that are trying to figure out life. They have already got that. And then I matched that with another statistic, which is 70% of divorces after 40 are initiated by women. I was like, okay, there's something else really interesting with that statistic. And so it led me to, actually, you've probably had Lisa Moscone on here. And when she put the menopause brain book out, I brought her onto my podcast and I was like, tell me what the purpose of menopause is. I want to know there's got to be a purpose. Why do we live so long? Why are women having struggling with their relationships and their life during this transition? And that's when she taught me about the brain pruning and that there are three times that a woman's brain will actually prune. Your wife's going through one of these right now. The first time is when we go into puberty. The neurons in our brain that kept us attached to a caregiver go away, and new neurons form that make us more independent. Anybody who's had a teenage daughter will agree, yeah, that's a tough moment. But it's for our survival so that if this, you know, with puberty comes the possibility of pregnancy. So if you're going to get pregnant, you better learn to have some neurons in your brain that are going to allow you to live on your own. So there's a natural pruning. Second time, postpartum, that when the hormones are really high and then they drop suddenly like that, all of a sudden the brain prunes away the neurons that are able to help us know where our keys are. I don't know if your wife is losing her things, but if it's a completely natural process, we can't remember task lists, just all we can focus on is our baby. Well, that's the way the brain reshapes itself because a baby can't talk. So the mom has to go into this highly intuitive state to be able to read a baby's cues. So the brain reorganizes itself for that. Okay, then the third time is menopause. So when these hormones drop, the brain reorganizes itself. And all the people-pleasing neurons that kept you addicted to, like, people telling you you look good, you're behaving good, you help me, and all of a sudden you're worthy. All the outsourcing of worthiness that women have done, those neurons go away. And new neurons form. And the new neurons allow us, A, to go and focus more on ourselves. and they also Lisa and I talked a lot about this that the brain rewires itself for leadership and that all of a sudden a female brain is actually at its best when we get on the other side of menopause what you just said there was really profound and there's a lot of obviously research to back it up yeah with Lisa's work and many others in this space even just before we get into menopause further, do you feel like they got the memo or what has prevented that memo from getting there about these time periods being new challenges in life, but actually a huge opportunity to show up differently at a new life stage? Yeah, it's such a good point because you have to remember, we were barely talking about the menstrual cycle publicly until like, you know, five, six years ago. Like Fast Like a Girl, you know, when it came out and I mapped fasting and food to the menstrual cycle, like that was revolutionary. That was only three years ago. Now everybody's mapping everything to the menstrual cycle. Menopause wasn't even talked about really publicly till like three years ago. So we're like, as a culture, we're babies in allowing women to speak about their periods, speak about menopause, like openly and compassionately. It's like we don't, and I can tell you as a woman, like, and the women listening to this, there was like embarrassment if we would be like, oh, I can't, I'm cramping right now. I don't feel like working out because it's the week before my period. I watched a lot of my friends that are older than me go through menopause and they would have to step out of the room when a hot flash would hit, the weight gain that happens with menopause. So we weren't publicly talking about this. So I don't think there was a memo to get because we didn't have the landscape we have now to talk about it. But that also means we're sort of in a state of chaos around it where, you know, so many are trying to find an answer for this unique transition. Yeah. Well, let's continue on there. When you look out there and you look at the conversation, obviously this is a huge part of what your book is about. What are some of the first things that you feel like, Hey, this is great that we're talking about this and maybe this is a starting place, but these couple of big ideas are completely being missed as a part of the conversation. So let's start about what's good about the conversations that are being had right now in the space that we're all celebrating the fact that women are becoming more educated about The men that love them are becoming more educated about them. And just even young people are becoming more educated that this is even going on in the first place. It's always funny because all the women who have been on this podcast and talked about menopause, they'll they'll all say in some version that, you know, when they hear from their community members or they themselves went back to their mom to talk about, you know, this time period, their mom or their older women that are in their lives. Maybe right now they'll say like, oh, no, it was totally fine. And they have completely different memories of their mother, caretaker, individual going through all sorts of different symptoms, issues, challenges during that time period. Nonetheless, what do you love about what's being talked about right now? And then let's get into what's missing. All right. Let's talk about supporting healthier, thicker looking hair that doesn't require pills, messy foams or complicated routines. Enter the Bond Charge Red Light Cap. 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If you care about brain health, recovery, and aging well, creatine is one of the most evidence-based tools you can use. And right now, Momentus is offering my listeners 35% off your first order. Just go to livemomentus.com and use the code Drew, D-H-R-U, to save 35% off your first order. That's live, L-I-V-E, Momentus, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com and use the code Drew, D-H-R-U, to get 35% off your creatine today. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I love this question. It's so funny because my mom was the first person I went to in my early 40s and same thing. I'm like, what was menopause like? She's like, oh, it wasn't that bad. But I don't have any science to back this up. But I wonder every time we go through these brain changes, I wonder if somehow we get amnesia. You know, like, have you heard that with pregnancy? Like that the minute the baby comes out, there's actually neurochemicals that go into the brain to help the mom forget about the pain. because if she could remember the pain, she wouldn't have another baby. Totally. You just witnessed that, right? So, okay, the menopause conversation, we weren't talking about it. And in that, women were really suffering with mood and metabolic health. And there was nowhere to go because there was no conversation to be had. Then as early as like three years ago, we start talking about it. And now we have entered what I, I think we're moving out of this, but we, the good thing about talking about it is this is where the suicide rates end. This is where women can start to support other women. A woman can go into a doctor's office and say, I'm completely depressed and I'm 48 years old and be taken seriously for the first time. Yeah, that's phenomenal. Women are being given access to hormone replacement therapy, which has pros and cons. But for some women, it is definitely helping with the mood specifically and hot flashes, which believe it or not, hot flashes are a big challenge for women in the workplace. because you think about it you're around a board a board table and you're trying to be a badass corporate woman and now you're dripping in sweat is like there's some a lot of self-consciousness around that kind of experience so it's been great that we've had access to hrt um but the here's here's what's missing is that there are certain symptoms that when they arise are giving you a message. And some of those messages are that parts of your life no longer work for you. And so let's use depression as an example. Estrogen stimulates a whole bunch of neurochemicals. In the book, I call it her girl gang. And this girl gang is like dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin. So whenever estrogen came in, all these neurochemicals come in, like a neurochemical armor that a woman is like always walking around with as long as estrogen is there. This has allowed the woman to tolerate things she may not want to tolerate anymore. Behavior she doesn't want to do anymore. Parts of her life that she's put up with because she's had the neurochemical resources to put up with them. You following me? Absolutely. So then all of a sudden the neurochemical system shifts. The armor comes down and she looks around at her life and she's like, I don't like this. This isn't what I wanted because she's neurochemically changed. So now she's depressed. Now she's anxious. Now she's irritable. Rage is a big one that's showing up for women. And so instead of sitting with that woman and saying, OK, what's not working in your life? What do you need to change? How can we start to build a different life and help you with a different pattern? Instead of saying that, what's happening in the era of HRT is she's being told, go to your doctor, get on the right HRT. And if you go to that doctor, they won't put you on HRT. You need to find another doctor. So it's a little bit of like, I'm going to say this, but it's a little of an over exaggeration, but it's like putting a muzzle on the woman. what if we actually sat with her and was like what in your life no longer works for you because your brain is changing your neurochemical system is changing and there's an opportunity like clarissa pincola estes mapped out for you to let go of responsibilities and the people-pleasing way and actually start to take care of yourself now you see where that's where i want us to go Like, I had a really cool interview with Darren O'Lean. And he, you know, he's kind of a bro. And he like sat down across from me. He's like, well, I don't really know much about menopause, but I have a staff of women. And this is what they, you know, they've given me some questions to ask. But when we actually got into the heart of the conversation, turns out he had a single mom who raised him and his brothers. and he was sharing through the experience of watching his mom go through menopause, he goes, you know what? I remember the moment in which she was like, I'm not doing this for you all anymore. And she started to stop catering to everybody else's needs. And he goes, my brothers were really upset. And I went to them and said, mom has given us a lot. She's done a lot for us. Let's let her do what she wants to do now. That's what every woman deserves. Every woman deserves the opportunity through this menopausal experience to decide what I don't want to do anymore and who I want to become. And as long as we're putting patches on everybody, as long as that's the only message they're getting, we're missing that transformational moment. A bunch of important things you just talked about. Let's unpack a few of them. One that you mentioned, just like you were talking about, you see the spike in suicide rates for women. you see these initiations of divorce after the age of 40 70 of them you mentioned and talk about in the book being from women you see also these different um responses to stimuli that could from the outside be perceived as less compassionate right yeah well said rage you mentioned right So break that down because a lot of women notice that their tone might shift during this time, that they're more snappy. I'm putting this in air quotes, right? This is me not, you know, characterizing them as snappy. This might be somebody looking around them and saying, all of a sudden, you know, what's going on? I haven't changed. You've changed. Right. Especially if they're not around people that are, you know, supportive or not educated in this area. So let's take rage, for example. what's going on that it might be the same stimuli but connected again back to what you were describing in the brain that some of the stuff that was working previously and everybody around this individual has not really you know changed but the woman herself is feeling this intense emotion for me this book is about opening up a cultural conversation that we all get to stand in and have conversations like this and hopefully have conversations in our homes and ladies' night out about this. So I took four different lenses. I looked at the anthropological lens. I looked at the neuroscience lens. I looked at the mythological lens. And then I looked at the societal lens. And when I went to the societal lens, I found the teachings of a woman named Carol Gilligan. and she wrote a book back in the 1980s called In a Different Voice. And she studied teenage girls back in the 80s. Now, I want to help you, everybody, remember that the women going through menopause right now were teenagers. I mean, I graduated high school in 87. So Carol's work was like, when I saw it, I was like, that was me. She was studying me. And what she found is that if she asked a boy and a girl at like nine years old a question, like, let's say, what do you want to eat? They'll both tell you. They'll tell you. The boy will say, I want this. The girl will say, I want this. Then you ask again at 11 years old. The boy is still very certain. The girl's getting a little more hesitant, not quite sure, but eventually will speak her truth. By the time she hits puberty, well into 13, 14, the boy will tell you what he wants. And the girl will say, I don't know. What are you going to have? So as women, we have a thicker corpus callosum that connects our right hemisphere and our left hemisphere. And what activates that corpus callosum is estrogen. So when estrogen came in at puberty, we started using both our right and left hemispheres for the majority of the decisions that we make. The left is logical. The right is emotional. So the right is creative. The right is relationships. The left is task oriented. So we would bring relationship to every single decision when we had estrogen in our system. We were always thinking about everybody else's feelings. When estrogen goes down, that highway changes. And now I'm not bringing what you think to every single decision I make. So that is what I mean about the brain rewiring mixed with this societal expectation that we will be loved if we are selfless, which is what Carol finally her hypothesis was. Women in this culture are taught you are loved if you're doing everything for everybody else. You are loved if you're a size two. You are loved if you don't have wrinkles on your face. There's so much expectation from the culture for women to behave a certain way. Men don't have that expectation. When estrogen goes away and this neurochemical shift happens and our brain rewires, all of a sudden the behaviors you used to love about us, we're not so excited about anymore. And I think that's where the rage comes in. and the irritability is all of a sudden we can't do the behaviors we used to be able to do because we're neurochemically different the example i always use is i was a deep into perimenopause during covid and i was at home my daughter was off in college i was at home with my son and my husband and pretty soon i started to notice that every morning when i would wake up they're both night owls my son is a professional chef and they would be cooking up a storm in the kitchen and I would wake up to the mess. When I had estrogen in me, this behavior didn't bother me. Once I lost estrogen, I tried to explain to them that there was so much chaos going on in my brain that the chaos in the kitchen started to become like putting gasoline on a fire. And even though I used to be okay with the kitchen being so, so clean, I'm not okay with that now. Before they were, like, my son would say to me, like, you didn't, like, I'll get to the dishes by the end of the day. I'm like, no, I need to wake up and that kitchen needs to be clean. So, but that's because I changed. So the stimuli hit me different. Does that make sense? So this is important because this is how we save marriages. This is how we stop women from killing themselves, is if everybody understands that the stimuli that is really irritating her is hitting her differently. And maybe she doesn't want to participate in the relationship the same way. Maybe she doesn't. She can't just handle taking on everybody's emotional stress. She has to only take on her own emotional stress. Yeah. So important because there's a lot of layers to that. There's a layer of, yes, the brain is rewiring. Yeah. But there's also a layer of maybe some of those things were being reluctantly done previously. You got it. Some of them come from love. And it's like, oh, yeah, I was OK with this previously. And my brain is rewiring now. I'm not OK with it. But a lot of times there is a sense of I never was fully OK with it. That's right. But this buffer was kind of keeping me there. That's it. Yeah. And that's it was like a neurochemical buffer. I have a friend who said when I was telling her the concept of the book and she goes, oh, my God, that makes so much sense. because when I was drugged on estrogen, I used to behave in a certain way. And now that I'm postmenopausal, I don't behave that way anymore. And I thought, oh my God, drugged on estrogen. That's it. It was like we were drugged on estrogen. And so we were easy. It was so easy for us just to give and give and give because all the neurochemicals that come with estrogen, there's a lot of them. But when estrogen was like, peace out, all of a sudden we started to look at these behaviors and go, it's exhausting. I can't do it. It's not bringing me joy anymore. But from the outside in, I can understand how startling that would be. I, another story that I use is you know after the LA fires I my nervous system was so overstimulated I had to go live by myself for four months I like I just need to check out so I can like figure out how to ground myself My husband did not appreciate that. He was not super excited about that. I was trying to explain to him, I need to get to know myself, figure out where I can balance myself, and then I can come back and be a better member of this marriage, a better partner in this marriage. So this is a big part of the book is I want to open these conversations up so people can, instead of wagging their finger at their husband or having rageful moments with everybody, that a woman could go, okay, wait, I need to come back home to me. What do I need to do to settle myself? What do I need to do to be a better partner in this relationship? like I need to pay attention to me now so that I can serve in a different way. You know, it's about just a little bit past the one year anniversary of the LA fires. Yeah. A lot of us, you know, we're recording this in Los Angeles. You know, your entire neighborhood burned down. Yeah. I didn't live in the Palisades, but I lived right next to it. So many of my friends lost their homes. Very tragic, tragic time. You know, this book is really about how this new stage of life and the things that come with it, you know, put you in a position to reflect a little bit differently than you were before. Yeah. You're almost forced to because of these rewiring that's happening inside of the body and the brain. And it's also about the mythology about why that's important, what you're being called into as a woman who's going through these different stages of life. But coming back to the LA fires and pulling on some of that thread, because I'm interested and I'm sure my audience is interested too. What was your snapshot of where you were sort of pre fires and then post fires, right? Using that as, you know, it was a physical destruction. but in that same way even though many women listening today who are in that phase of life of let's say they're about to start into perimenopause they're fully into menopause it's there or they're even thinking about these topics they might have not gone through the same things as you but many times you can feel like hey my world is turning upside down right but let's talk about your story what was your where were you give us a snapshot of mindy like yeah pre-fires and post-fires. And I know a little bit about this is that, you know, you have a story in between of taking like 100,000 women through this online webinar. I'll let you talk about that. But yeah, give us a snapshot of where you were. In our house, love shows up as a lot of things, but especially comfort. It's the way that we wind down, take care of each other, and create space to actually rest and recover. 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In 2026, check out fromourplace.com slash drew. Well, like many women, I was already burnt out prior to the fires. And I had actually lost a really good friend of mine at 52. He died, just laid down on the ground and literally died, had a heart attack, was one of the healthiest humans I knew. So I knew I needed to write this book. I was already traumatized. And so I started off 2025 coming to LA because we were splitting time between Northern and Southern California. And I was like, I'm just going to sit in the Palisades, right age like a girl and heal because I grew up in this area. I know it really well. It feels very calming to me. So that was my intention. I was ready to heal myself at that point. The day the fire hit, I still was in a little bit of disbelief because I grew up in Malibu, and I know Santa Ana wins. And I've evacuated as a kid probably 15 times from fires. And then we went back home. We never had what I had there. So, of course, I just grabbed a few things because I was like, we're going to be out in three days. We'll be back in the neighborhood. I know how this works. So I grabbed a small amount of stuff. I got in my car and at that day I was leading 100,000 people through a water fest. Now, this is the important part of the story because I saw my back whole backyard on fire as I was in my car. So we were like right near the epicenter of where the fire and the wind was blowing towards my house. And so I threw stuff into the car and my brain was like, I just need to get to a parking lot so that I can lead these people, 100,000 people, through a water fest. So I'm in the car going out onto sunset. Embers are flying everywhere. Houses are igniting. People are panicking. It's complete gridlock. I don't know if you remember the palm fronds lit on fire and were falling on cars. So people were abandoning their cars. and I'm on the phone with my husband saying, I just need to get to PCH so that by 11 o'clock, I can lead the 100,000 people through the water fast. That tells you everything about who I was before. And my husband was the first one to say to me, honey, just get to the hotel I have you at in Santa Monica. Just go there. Don't worry about the water fast. but Mindy as a human was trained to think about everybody else she wasn't trained to think about herself there was one moment where I thought oh my god am I gonna am I gonna burn in this car today like I literally had that moment of like is this the day and am I gonna burn because I was watching things burn all around me and I'm still thinking I got to get to these people that typifies what women are doing constantly, thinking about others, even in crises, thinking about others, thinking about others. Reflecting back on my thought process over the last year, I've put myself first. I literally sat and was like, you need to reprioritize your life so you can think about yourself first. And I spent the whole year doing that. But the part that I think is helpful for women is that I went into an inquiry. I isolated myself for four months. I lived in an Airbnb in Santa Cruz. I wrote this book and every day I would ask myself, why do I eat breakfast? Do I like eating breakfast? Maybe do I want to, maybe I want to skip dinner. Do I, do I, what, what do I think of dinner? Then I went into, do I like how I dress? Cause I didn't have my clothes for a really long time. I only had like four sweat outfits. And so I was like, do I even like this? What time do I like to go to bed? You know, maybe I don't want to go to bed early. I've always been going to bed early. Maybe I need to go to bed late. Like I inquired about every behavior because I was by myself. And I got to know my own preferences out of the lens of my family, out of the lens of my work. I just literally spent four months trying to get to know me. and that's like today even i'll tell you i left mona i i was interviewed by mona before you and i thought it might be late the old me would have been panicked to be late for you the new me was like oh well okay if i'm late i'm late and i created a mantra in my head after the fires where i just told myself i'm not in a hurry anymore i'm not going to be in a hurry anymore So driving here, I was like, I guess if I'm late, I'm not in a hurry anymore. Hopefully Drew is okay. But that was the big change, is it took a trauma like that for me to see how deeply rooted I was in pleasing and taking care of everybody else. And the isolation let me actually get to know myself. I mean, anybody that's gone through a loss, a major life event, even men. Yeah. There's that period of time where you realize, like, how much shit actually really matters. That's right. Right? So there's a universal aspect. And there's a specific biological component that is unique to women that are on this journey. Yep. That are there on this perimenopause, menopause journey, as related to this conversation. And it's great to be able to touch on that because the conversation wasn't happening. A lot of women who felt these different emotions, they started noticing that their behavior was changing or they were all of a sudden anxious in a way that they never really used to feel anxious. They felt that there was something wrong with them. They felt guilty, maybe, about prioritizing themselves. And now at least there is more of that conversation that women can participate in and say that, hey, there's reasons that these things might be going on. Exactly. And let's at least talk about it and have a conversation about what those are. You bring up a really valid point because what I wasn't aware of until the fire is how deeply invested I was in everybody else's happiness and not as deeply invested in my own happiness and my own preferences. And every woman's going to have a different version of that. They're going to be on words like we're all on a different kind of level of I've talked to some women are like, oh, I've only thought about myself my whole life. And I'm like, peace up. That's amazing that you can do that. But I think a majority of women have been conditioned to keep giving and giving and giving. And what we're hoping is if I give and I give and I give and I'm beautiful and I'm super mom and I work, that you will love me. And what I love about this conversation is now we're able, women like me, are able to stand up and say, you know what? I forgot one part of that equation, and that was, do I love me? I need to fall back in love with me. And in order to do that, I have to look at some of these behaviors that have been for you, but I don't want to do them anymore because they are taking me out of congruency with myself. we couldn't have had this conversation three years ago like literally if i had we had had this conversation three years ago people would be like what what is this crazy woman talking about i actually think we're even it's still a little green this part of the menopause conversation we're not giving women like i would love to see a culture where everybody's like you're you go you go do. It's like, Darren, I feel like we would stop the suicide rates. We would stop the divorces if we had that part of the conversation was happening where it was like, I know you're depressed. I know you're filled with rage. Now let's just sit and talk about what do you want to create in your life? Who do you want to be? What do you want to let go of? That's how I see the conversation going. You know, because you look at this from all different angles, you're looking at it from the biological side, you're looking at it from the mythological side, you're looking at from the, you know, the historical lens. Yeah. Is there anything that you can add to this unique experience that we have that we largely are not living in these small tribes where we're seeing other women who are going through this journey, getting the message from them that young boys or older men are not getting a chance to see, you know, the elders of the community, the women, you know, go through these rites of passage themselves and step into that. And largely people are living in these isolated areas and they're not even living off nearby their family enough to even have the conversation that's there. But anything you can say about that? One of the questions I walked around with the last couple of years was, how do we know where the wise elders are in this modern community? How do we know where they are? Because we are so obsessed with aging that we had to put the word anti in front of it. And then we had to create a whole commercialization around specifically for women, I mean, men are even involved in this now, of how do you make sure you don't look like you're aging? But if you go back into the mythology, look at even the way I've heard you talk about your family, that certain cultures look at these women as they age and go, you are a wise elder, and I want to hear what you have to say. We don't have a culture that's doing that right now, and we need to change that. I'll tell you in writing this book, I shifted my whole mental health team to women over 60. I'm like, I don't want to be advised by women younger than me. I want to be advised by women older than me. My current therapist is 83 years old. I love the wisdom that oozes out of her. But culturally, we're not doing that. And I think we're missing such a huge, huge piece. And if you go back to like the grandmother hypothesis that I wrote about, in the hunter-gatherer days, they did that. The women went into the post-reproductive time and they became the forgers of food. They became the passer on, they would pass on knowledge to the younger children. If you look at the Okinawa woman that we put on a pedestal, one of the things they do is they create moais where women gather together and share resources. So it might be they share a dinner or they share a home, but they are together as a united force. And then if anybody in the town has a question or a concern or a problem or needs help, they go to the Moai. Where is that for us culturally? And again, I know in your family it is, but for most Americans, most Western culture, we don't, once you have a wrinkle, we're like, ooh, we let go of you in corporate America, which is why women don't want to have hot flashes in the boardroom. This is what I'm trying to change is if you understood this brain rewiring, you'd be like, wait, that woman with a wrinkle, the woman with gray hair, she actually has the best brain of all of us. And she has years of wisdom. That's what I want to change. Every different group of people is going to have stereotypes that are there. But you look at how it can often be portrayed in either media, social media, or even just in conversation between people. Sometimes you can have this feeling of, um, like the crazy older lady. Yeah. Right. Or the, the, the Karen or the, this thing or that it's a negative connotation to refer to somebody who is older, more isolated, not understanding. And again, men have their, the crazy uncle, the crazy Nate, whatever it might be. Right. There's, there's, there's it on the men's side. And it's like when you zoom out, you think about like everybody's lost a sense of tribe a little bit. Yeah, it's well served. And even in my own family, I'm not going to put my own, you know, there's a lot of amazing things that are there. But it's not like every single one, you know, we have to fight for it regularly to try to recreate some of these circumstances. And yes, Asian cultures in general, there's still a lot of respect for like the elderly and how it's baked into the culture. But even that's changing a lot. Really? Wow, yeah. Yeah, it's changing as everything gets modernized and people stop. You know, there's a lot of benefits to not living together, you know, and people independence and freedom and other stuff. But there's a lot of challenges that come along with there. You don't get that knowledge transfer that's there. Where I was going with this is that everybody is been damaged for the loss of community that we've had where you don't have that level of of shared understanding, growth and that that kinship that comes from being in that sort of tight knit community with each other. Yeah. And it's it's unfortunate thing. And I do think it's been one of probably the biggest things that's on people's mind. Just not sure how to create it since covid. You know, we had this extreme isolation that was there. But I think it does start, at least in this conversation, for the woman who's thinking about this stage of menopause and navigating it. It does start first off with, OK, what are the key components of making sure that your oxygen mask is on for yourself? what should you be paying attention to because if you are not taking care of yourself if you are still in this pattern and hamster wheel of prioritizing everybody else uh falling for gimmicks that might be out there sales pitches whatever it might be you're not going to feel well enough excellent to to be able to show up for anybody else if you don't feel awesome so for that individual who's listening let's continue down the journey that's there. What are some key things that you want to have them be aware of? I'll bring up one. I'll bring up one to just kind of kickstart the conversation. Just like you were saying like, hey, this rage component, there can be a reason why a lot of women feel it. And even if it's not full-blown rage, why do you feel all of a sudden now that people are getting on your nerves more so than previously? There's a biological understanding of that. Another one that you talk about inside of the book is this idea of a lot of women notice that clutter can take a heavy toll on them in a way that it previously didn't. What do you mean by that? What are you describing? Well, okay. So let's look at it like your neurochemical armor, the buffer that kept you from allowed you to handle as much stress as a woman has been handling. It's like that armor comes off. And all of a sudden, she's a little more raw. So again, the clutter is so intertwined with the chaos going on in her mind. So the brain's rewiring, the neurochemical system is shifting, and all of a sudden, wherever there is chaos and clutter, she's going to be agitated. And that's because her brain is going through this process of getting rid of old neurons, new neurons coming in. And she's starting to realize that the things she didn't, she used to do, she doesn't want to do anymore, but maybe isn't able to speak it. It's so crazy how something as simple as just declutter the house for her. Like if there's anybody has a woman in her life listening to this, like declutter the house and then watch what happens. See if you get a different version of that woman or see if you can just like, I can tell you one thing I've done recently this year is like, I don't do full work days where I'm just going from thing to thing to thing to thing anymore because I found I, by the end of the day, you didn't want to hang out with me. I was so edgy. So we have to remember that there is this new experience that this woman is having with her old life because she's neurochemically different. And that is every individual is going to find something different with that, right? Like I've talked to, I have a lot of friends that are total control freaks and they, you walk into their house and everything is spotless. Now, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to make a big generalization, but my friends whose homes look like that had very traumatic childhoods. And I know when I walk into their home that I'm going to make sure I keep things clean because it's the thing that keeps them calm and safe is a clean home. That is also happening to a lot of women as this chaos in her brain is going on, she all of a sudden needs things to be a little more organized, a little more decluttered, a little bit calmer, because what you're not seeing is underneath the hood is total chaos in her brain. And that's where I'm so happy that we're having these conversations. But imagine now that woman in a marriage where her husband doesn't understand her and is like, what do you mean, you know, you're not making dinner? What do you mean you're not doing the things I used to love that you did? So we have to start to understand she's becoming different. Now, the other thing you mentioned that I want to point out is like, okay, what about the woman who has no idea about this and all of a sudden she lands in the middle of this mess? I think that's what I tried to get across in the book is we can use our lifestyle to start to neurochemically help ourselves. Here's a classic example that everybody can do. We have serotonin receptor sites in our eyes. When we see full spectrum light in the midday, we take that light into our eyes and we convert it into serotonin. Estrogen stimulated serotonin production, but estrogen is going down. So you need more serotonin. And it'll help you feel a little bit better, like just feel a little happier. So really simply, are you going outside in the middle of the day? You can sit in your backyard. You go for a walk without sunglasses so you can make your own serotonin. Same thing with melatonin. Melatonin, estrogen actually controlled our whole circadian rhythm. She was the master controller of that. Now she's gone. So all of a sudden, the internal timekeeper in the brain is like, I don't know what time of day it is. because estrogen left, my messenger left. So you have to find a different way to tell that timekeeper what time of day it is. You got to see morning light. You need to see evening light. Like there are principles to follow. And I did a whole chapter on sleep in there. So I think that's where I'm trying to move us all to is we're not victims. This isn't, we walk around just upset at everybody. This woman is going through a massive transformation that requires a lifestyle shift and different conversations to be had with her loved ones. Like that example of getting more sunlight, being more part of nature, because the distance from nature is now going to have a bigger toll on the body is what I'm hearing from you. You might've been able to get away with it before. What are some other things like that that you want to highlight that you might've been able to get away with this before? Yeah. But now this is really going to be taking its toll if you're not mindful. Yeah. So food I gotta go to food and fasting Um because I saw in my community that postmenopausal women could fast like queens Like they had no problem fasting And I was trying to this was about 10 years ago I was like, what what is it that their that their bodies can do that a 40 year old's body can't do? So at 40, as estrogen goes down, a woman's becomes more insulin resistant. every woman has the potential to become more insulin resistant so the meal she was eating at 35 that didn't cause her to gain weight now she eats that same meal at 45 and she's gaining weight and she has brain fog because estrogen finely tuned that whole glucose insulin system So you're changing your food, learning how to create fasting windows in your daily. And we're not talking long fasting windows, just being able to keep your glucose levels low, your ketones going up. That is going to fuel the postmenopausal brain. And you didn't maybe have to think about that when you were 35. But 45, 55, yes, you need to start to understand the impact a poor diet is going to have on you. Because it doesn't work the same way now that estrogen left. It may have never worked is what I'm partly hearing from you. And but it's magnified even more so. Yeah. At this time period. And, you know, your body can get away with certain things. Just like when we're all younger, you can stay up super late and you just bounce right back. Yeah. And great. That's fine when you're in your teens and early 20s, mid 20s, even early 30s. And then a lot of those behaviors start to catch up with you. Think about it through the lens of a woman. And like, she's like, like, you know, we've done 2,500 videos I've done on my YouTube channel. And the most popular video that I ever do is on menopausal belly weight. Like, everybody wants me to talk about menopausal belly weight. But all menopausal belly weight is exactly what I just mentioned. It's that your system changed. And so you changed your whole metabolic switch. So your diet needs to change. and this is where I fear with the HRT conversation some women are not getting that message like cleaning your diet up right now like at 45 is so massively important or even the smallest amount of your favorite food is going to give you it's going to start to pack on weight so there's like the body will give you clues. Like you can't sleep. Okay. Well, you got to reset your circadian rhythm through things like light. Oh, you're gaining weight. Okay. Well, good news. You came with another fuel source. It's called a ketone. And if you learn how to do small little dips into fasting, you can get that ketone. Depression. Like, okay, well, you lost dopamine and serotonin. Well, we already talked about serotonin. You can go out in the sun and get some serotonin, But you know what dopamine loves? Dopamine loves novelty. So what if you rearrange the furniture in your house? What if you drove your car a different way to the grocery store? Like anything new is going to bring dopamine back in. So this is what I mean about like if we understand what's going on, then we can make the proper lifestyle change and look at our symptoms. Like I put in the book a whole chart like if you're having these symptoms, here's the neurochemical experience you're having and here are some of the activities you can do. As opposed to women were suffering before when all this was going on, nobody talked about it. And now HRT, antidepressants, there's your solution. And once again, we're just pulling power and pulling power away from women. And what I wanted to do with Age Like a Girl is say, no, you're in control of this experience if you understand that your lifestyle has major neurochemical impact. But doing the same thing you did at 25 and 35 may not work for you now. What are some things for you that you are like incorporated into your daily routine that maybe didn't get the same level of priority, you know, when you were in your, you know, 30s or early 40s? Anything that you think about now, it could even be something that you've been doing for a little while, but that's a reflection or an example of what you're talking about here. Well, we haven't talked about exercise. So I was a competitive tennis player. I played on a tennis scholarship at the University of Kansas. I've been an athlete my whole life. When I put down the tennis racket, I then picked up the running shoes and I started running all the time. And then somewhere in my 40s, I kept getting injured over and over and over again. Ankles, knees, hips, like, but I was running the same amount. So then I went over to weightlifting because that's the trend now. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to start lifting heavier weights. And all of a sudden I got frozen shoulder. Well, when I dove into that, I figured out that estrogen stimulated collagen production and estrogen stimulated creatine production. So that's muscles and ligaments and joint protection. But as estrogen levels went down, your joints aren't as protected. So your workout needed to shift. So I started changing the way I work out. I don't run anymore. I hike. I like going out into nature. Weightlifting. I do like a TRX type weightlifting experience, or I'll put a rucking vest on and go out and have that weight close to my body as opposed to impacting a limb. I took up surfing now that I'm in Santa Cruz, and I love how strong my arms are getting from all the paddling. But for me, I'm not going into the gym to lift heavy weights because I've been there and I got injured and it wasn't my path. And I'm not signing up for marathons anymore because I used to do those. And all I did is get injured the minute I went into my perimenopausal years. So I had to shift all of that. Finding activities that worked for you. Yeah. With also your, you know, everybody has a unique history, I'm sure, in tennis, especially being a competitive athlete. Yeah. You know, maybe your shoulder is even more prone because of how much wear and tear. It could be. Very possible, yeah. Potentially. Yeah. You know, or, you know, people have that sometimes with running. They have that with this. So really personalizing your activities to be something that is a sustained level of movement that works for you. And here's the emotional thing I want to say behind it is if a woman hits 45, she's gaining weight and she goes to Instagram and she sees people saying, you need to eat more protein, you need to lift more weights. And then she starts doubling up on her protein amounts and then she starts lifting heavier and heavier weights. For some women, that advice is going to be great. And I've sat with a lot of women that are like, I love my trainer. I love the gym. That's amazing if you love it. But when we start to put these like have-tos on women, like you're in this season, you better start beefing up on protein. You better start lifting weights. And then she injures herself. She doesn't think it's your fault because you delivered the message to her. She thinks it's her fault. something's wrong with her. This is what we do as women. We internalize it. We're like, okay, well, that person said eat more protein. I didn't. I gained weight, but she didn't gain weight. Ah, it must be a problem with me. I know I'm supposed to lift weights, but now I can't, I can't like lift my arm. It must be something wrong with me. And that's why I just want us to open this conversation up and say, everybody's different. If you understand the principles of what's going on, then you can self-select the lifestyle tool that is best for you. You, not the women around you. Personalization along with agency that at the end of the day, you're the CEO of your health. That's right. And the more that you step into breaking away from any marketing message that's out there, then you can pick and choose and create a program that works for you. This is something that has been talked about in this conversation. What do you think the idea of DEXA scans and or anything else that helps a woman there's the internal feeling that she might have there might be how she's noticing her body change uh there might be how she's noticing you know other aspects of her life uh shift around it what are some uh healthy things to give a snapshot of where she might be let's start off with like a DEXA scan are you a fan are you not a fan do you think about bone density for this sort of population that's here i think bone density is important that's actually a genetic marker that i'm um looking to avoid because my mom has really bad osteoporosis so i've spent a lot of time researching osteoporosis because i know that's in my genetic pool potentially and my sister and i who my sister's two years older than me we talk about it all the time so i do think and and rucking has shown to be incredible for bone density because that added weight causes your bones to have to be stronger so and it has one of the least injury levels right yeah so like yes if you need that as an indicator um where i sit at 56 i'm doing everything i can right now to keep my bones strong i definitely will need a dexa scan coming down the road but let's just call out what happens whenever you get a medical test is if there if it shows up that I have low bone density then I'm going to have to sit with the possibility of do I want to take medication and the medication for osteoporosis has all kinds of weird side effects and weird results and I'd rather try everything natural right now before I plow down that road and I think we can use my midwife taught me this back when I had my kids, she said for a woman, her reproductive system and her health in general is best measured next to a sibling. So you can look at your sibling and see what kind of things your sibling is getting. And that's actually a better measurement of what you might have in your genetic pool than a parent. So my sister and I talk all the time about different tests we do and different blood work if she's two years older than me. So I sort of watch and she has a very similar, a little different, but 90% of her lifestyle is very much like mine. So yes, you could go down all these crazy tests, but I don't, I think we always have to ask ourselves, what am I going to do once I get the answer to that test? What will I do? And right now, for me, I'm going to do everything I can to keep my bone density. And then, yeah, when I hit 60, I'll probably get a DEXA scan. So we just need to not over-medicalize this experience. I actually think the best measurement any woman can go through this process is just focus on hemoglobin A1c. just get your metabolic health in order and you will be shocked at how all the other symptoms start to improve so let's just keep it similar yeah so hemoglobin a1c is a measurement of metabolic health over 90 days so it's glucose and insulin but this is really important because if my hemoglobin a1c is in like 5-9-6-0-6-2 and i'm in diabetic pre-diabetic land what that means is that your body can't use glucose and so what it does is it takes that glucose molecule and it gums up what is called a red blood cell and that red blood cell is delivering oxygen to your tissues so if you have a high hemoglobin a1c you have mismanaged glucose and you're not getting oxygen to your tissue and whatever tissue doesn't have oxygen going to it is going to decay. So yes, we can do fancy hormone tests. Yes, we can do DEXA scans. We can do, I mean, in the biohacking world, you can do all kinds of crazy tests. What is going on with glucose in your system is more important than any other marker, more than any other health test, any other hormone test. So, and it does 90 days. So it'll tell you how you've been eating and your glucose insulin system for 90 days. It's a great snapshot. I'm one of the few people that are out there. I don't know what the total percentage is in the population, but there's some individuals that have slightly stickier red blood cells. So- I have a friend who has that. So you get a high number? I don't, not like crazy high, but like slightly below, like in the high normal range, right? But then you do my fasting insulin. Yeah. It's great. I have a friend who's like that And I panicked when I saw her hemoglobin A1C and then I saw her sisters. And I was like, oh, this is interesting. There's a genetic something here. Yeah, yeah. There's some people that their red blood cells, apparently it's your, I had learned about it first from Chris Crestor. He has a whole article. We can link to it in the show notes. There's some people that their red blood cells stick around longer. So it sort of artificially pushes the test in this one direction. And a lot of people started noticing it because they would do, I'm an investor in a company called Levels. They would do these CGMs, whether through levels or just going directly to, you know, any one of these companies, Abbott and, you know, Freestyle Libre and whatever. They would do their glucose. And then a lot of these companies started offering labs and they would get back their A1C or they would go do their A1C. And they're like, what is going on? Like, I don't, I'm like, I'm healthy and like everything is good, but like my glucose isn't a really good place. But my A1C is really high. Yeah. Right. Again, this is not the vast majority of people that are out there. This is like a small subset of individuals. And they would say, okay, yeah, there's this thing, there's this phenomenon that happens sometimes that people's red blood cells stick around a little bit and you can fact check it with a fasting insulin test that's there. so going back to what you were saying is that when you get your glucose under control which a part of that which is also great too is that any type of resistance training or anything that puts some weight and resistance on your muscles even rocking can be a good example of that you know you build up your muscle you're going to be able to move through more glucose inside of your body, right? So it's both activity and it's also, of course, food, diet, lifestyle, stress, emotions, all those things. So you're saying that getting that together is one of the main things that you'd be looking for and advocating for women. I actually will go as far as to say if every woman at 40 had a hemoglobin A1C that was 5.5 or under, we would not be having the menopause conversation we're having in our culture right now. Women just wouldn't have the symptoms that they're having. And let me explain why. And I put this in every book, and it's still so important, is this hormonal hierarchy where hormones work in a certain order. And at the bottom of this hierarchy, the lowest on the totem pole are sex hormones. What controls sex hormones is insulin. PCOS is a great example of this. So if I become insulin resistant, then I'm more, and I have a gene for PCOS, I have more of a tendency to trigger that gene and I'm going to express PCOS. Infertility is another one. So many, I mean, so many women got pregnant after doing the fasting cycle that I wrote out in Fast Like a Girl. Because if you can get your metabolic system in order and you get insulin working right, then those sex hormones work right. But above insulin is cortisol. So you can't be stressing out all the time and trying to balance your glucose insulin system. It definitely, stress has a huge impact on that. And we see it in our community all the time that, you know, I'll get people who'll be like, I did everything you told me to do to lose weight with fasting and food. And I still haven't lost weight. And I'll be like, okay, tell me how much downtime you get in a week. And I go, oh no, I got three kids and a husband and this and that. and there's like no self-care, there's no downtime. This human is just completely swimming in cortisol. So cortisol is going to make you insulin resistant. Insulin resistant is going to really throw your sex hormones off. The beautiful thing is at the top, back to where we even started in this conversation, is oxytocin. So if you can get a good burst of oxytocin, you're going to calm cortisol, you calm cortisol, you become insulin sensitive, and then you balance your sex hormones. that's a holistic way to look at this and that's what if you start to look at that hemoglobin a1c number and you're making diet and fasting and movement changes i agree with like i'm not saying don't lift weights because if you lift weights you're going to have all kinds of new receptor sites for insulin in those muscles that's phenomenal but we can't do it at the expense of raising cortisol. And we can't do it in isolation where we're not in any kind of oxytocin experience with another human or with any, you know, with your animal, whatever. But there has to be a holistic look at this. And I like hemoglobin A1c because I can sit and have somebody tell me I'm doing everything right. And then I can say, okay, tell me about your stress. Tell me about your connection to community. Tell me about how you're taking care of yourself and getting some downtime. Does that make sense? Like I'm trying, I really want people to pull it out of a silo. These little pieces of information, we like hook onto them, but we forget to look at it from a more complete level, which is why I like hemoglobin A1C because it tells you a really big story. Told you a genetic story. Yeah. I think you had a video recently on social media talking about, especially this time of year, this sort of pervasive feeling of needing to do everything right and doing a lot of things. And there's an endless amount of things that you can do. Going back to this transformation, this stage of life that women will find themselves in, and they're looking for the tools, techniques, mindset, guidance to help them navigate it. It's that sometimes maybe the best thing for you is doing less. I think nine out of 10 times, especially for women, it's best if we do less. You know, we have to keep in mind that the male body has a major priority, and that's survival. That's pretty much the male body will always do whatever it needs to do to stay alive. The female body also has that priority of survival, but the second thing, that it has a priority of the reproductive system. So men don't have that as much. So when a woman goes into all the things she's doing, she throws her body into a sympathetic dominant state. Once your nervous system's in a sympathetic dominant state, your reproductive system starts to shut down. We're back at cortisol. It starts to be like, I can't make this work. We need to run from a tiger. so what I it keeps showing up in all the books that I've been putting out and and the conversations I've had around these books is that the minute you put a woman in a stressed environment over and over and over again you are going to watch every hormone in that woman's body completely go off kilter women are our bodies are very sensitive and the overdoing is destroying our nervous system And the minute our nervous system is destroyed, now we're insulin resistant and our sex hormones are completely off. Does that make sense? Yeah. But it's hard because you have a powerful woman at home and I'm a powerful woman and I can do a lot. But what I'm learning is if I go into a period where I'm doing a lot, I need to then come out and do and rebalance it by doing less. The restorative things. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not so much how much, you know, there might be times and seasons in your life that there are these very stressful situations, stressful events, launching a book, launching a business, having a baby, whatever it might be. You can always predict or you actually want some of these things that are there for you as part of your growth. Yeah. And the question that I'm hearing you sort of say is that do you have the restorative things that can help you from that to build yourself back up? That's right. We can't just keep go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. all the time eventually the nervous system is going to go into a lock itself into sympathetic dominance and it and so many women are here and we're never using that parasympathetic nervous system this was me before the fires and i was so locked in a sympathetic dominant place with my nervous system because of all these books i've written all these launches i've done all the interviews people wanted me on. And so I never took time to rest. And so I was already breaking when a major trauma hit. And then I could not regulate. I couldn't regulate myself. So I had to isolate myself. I might be in extreme situation, but so many women don't take time to rest. And in the rest is digest. It's the rest and digest nervous system. It's where the immune system comes in. It's where we balance hormones. Like the female body needs to rest and we can't just keep pushing through. So we were talking about taking a snapshot earlier. One way biologically you were referencing that A1C as one example of something that somebody could take a look at. On the mindset side, how do you take an inventory? How do you take a look at your life and say, where do I need some support because maybe I haven't addressed some things things that have been there for a long time and now that the neurons are shifting I'm able to see it that hey this has been something that I've swept under the rug for some time yeah how do you take that inventory of what you need on the mental, the mindset side, on that part of life at this stage. So here's a really fun part of the book that I really loved writing and researching. And it's our internal navigation system. And this is for all humans, but it's really accentuated in menopausal women and especially post-menopausal women. Our body is always assessing if we are in a safe environment. And it will actually send a message to the prefrontal cortex. There's a one specific part of the brain called the anterior cingulate. And this part of the brain looks outward. It takes the signals in from the body. It looks and sees is what the body is experiencing and what I'm seeing on the outside are those a match. And if it's not a good match, it will send a signal down to the body and give the body a reaction. Anxiety is a good one. I'm going to use me today. I'm not going to lie. When I flew in to Burbank this morning, I started to have a bit of a panic attack. And I was like, okay, body, what's going on? Tell me what you're experiencing. And it was, we were flying over Malibu, the Palisades. It's January. I had my whole body started to have a reaction to what I experienced last year. And so I just kind of sat and had a conversation with my body of like, okay, tell me what you're anxious about. Oh, that was last year. oh okay you're still feeling some grief is really what i went through deep grief around not being where in this beautiful neighborhood i wanted to be in i'm sure your friends who lost homes are having that same kind of feeling but a year later i was having that but to be able to go in and and talk to my internal navigation system and remind it that we're not running from fire anymore that yes, I'm back in LA in January. It feels really similar, but we're not running from fire. We're not about to lose our life to fire right now. I think we all have those internal cues, but I think what's happened, especially for women, is that we've actually over, we override them all the time and we don't tune into them. And so I think the big thing the biggest thing you can do is really start to read your body clues and the signals it will get you If you not sleeping okay body what do you need Well, maybe you can't sit and watch a movie or some action-packed movie before you go to bed because it agitates your nervous system too much. Try different strategies before you go to bed and see if that internal navigation system gives you a different response. so I think we've got to use the messages from our body a lot more as we go in so that we can square what the brain is seeing and what the body is feeling yeah does that make sense absolutely are there rituals things that you find helpful or that you find in your community you know some people say meditation some people say listen pick your choice even getting outside for a walk and checking in but just whatever you do just pause the inertia of life there you go the notifications, the messages, the being in front of the computer, the seeing the news for people that still watch the news. People are still watching. There's a lot of people that still watch the news out there. Pause the inertia and have the courage because it is actually very uncomfortable. That's a universal thing. It can be uncomfortable for all people, men, women, young and old. Pause the inertia. Have the courage enough to pause the inertia and go inward to actually just pay attention to what's there. There's a reason that 80% of autoimmune conditions happen to women is because we don't pause and we don't try to slow ourselves down. And so we're constantly in this go, go, go, please, please, please do her kind of mode. there's something in the pause that's really important and um i want to go back to the parasympathetic nervous system this is the part of the nervous system that calms you most women don't know how to access it i was one of them for sure and how you access it is by pausing and slowing yourself down. Our nervous systems can't take in all the information that's being sent at us right now. You combine that with a neurochemical armor that comes down and a brain that's remodeling itself, rewiring happening. And if you don't slow down, you're just going to be walking around reacting. Everything's a reaction. So what you say to yourself is important. like one of the things I decided was I start saying now this is where it came up today and getting here I started saying no I'm not going to rush there because I'm not in a hurry anymore I can't tell you how many times I say it throughout a day I'm not in a hurry anymore I'm not rushing to things anymore that was a huge transformation that I found last year when I go to do the dishes or I go to do any activity I'm like how do I do this slowly there's like a retraining of the nervous system that needs to go on and if you can retrain and stimulate that parasympathetic nervous system you'll start to see that the way you react to a stimulus is is is dramatically different yeah yeah that's great it's beautiful it is a retraining and it takes it takes time anytime you're going to go through a retraining yeah and it takes a little bit of space as well too yeah to go through that sometimes that could be finding an 83 old therapist yeah sometimes that can be you know following a book or methodology or being part of a you know since we're talking about women being part of a circle a women's circle that gets together and prioritizing that yeah and prioritizing that so i'll tell you something interesting and i'm going to think about how i how i want to phrase this because it's really personal but it's a huge and I haven't really quite figured out how to put words to it. I was so maxed, my nervous system was so maxed, again, like many women, that everything my husband would say to me felt like a threat. And when I removed myself from him for a few months to settle myself back, and I came back to being in daily relationship with him, I started to notice that as I calmed my nervous system, the things he did that set me off didn't bother me anymore. This is the 70% of divorces initiated by women. I think we go rushing into our menopause years totally maxed out. Our nervous system is stuck in sympathetic dominance. and then all of a sudden, you know, anything that anybody does to us feels over, like we have an over-exaggerated reaction to it. This is why I'm wanting women to help themselves because what I found, I am not joking, that the more I healed myself, the more my parasympathetic nervous system came online, the more I understood, oh, if I need dopamine, I just need to do something new, and if I need serotonin, I'll go get sunlight. And if I need oxytocin, I can pet my dog. And if I need BDNF, I can lift weights. And like once I started to see that I could neurochemically control myself differently, my marriage changed. And it moved into one of the most beautiful places it is right now because I rehabbed my own self. Now, I'm not saying every marriage is salvageable. Mine is. I have a really good husband. I have a really good guy. But I had to calm myself in order to come back to the relationship and see it with a different set of eyes, which was really a different nervous system. Anything you want to say for the partners, husbands who also might be listening in that are watching the women that they love? Maybe it's their wife. Maybe it's their sisters. Maybe it's their mom. and they're seeing them go through this period of time, this transition, and they want to best support them and be an ally on their journey, what would be the things that you'd want to tell them? Yeah. I mean, so I did do an appendix to men in the book because I knew that women would read the book and then they'd want their husbands to read it. And if their husbands were anything like my husband, he'd be like, the whole book? You want me to read the whole book? So I did one section. Here's what I'd love for the men to know is if you can get to know her as she transforms, you will save that relationship. If you get to understand the chaos that's going on in her brain, if you can understand these neurochemicals are shifting and you can be present with her in that, Like, sometimes that might be you walk away because she's spinning. If you understand it's a different version of her that is unwinding itself, but she's going to end up on the other side, if you patiently and lovingly care for her through this process, you will end up in a better relationship than you've ever been in before. But what's harmful for women as they go through this is when men or employers are like, we don't understand you're overreacting. Or even other women. Or other women. Yeah, like you're overreacting. I don't understand. You've changed. You're supposed to change. You know, this whole thing around the We Do Not Care Club. Have you seen that? I actually don't know what that is. Oh, wow. Well, probably because you're a man. But this woman got on, picked up. She couldn't take it anymore. She was in perimenopause and she was sitting in her car in a parking lot about to go into Target and she picked up her phone and she said like a cry to all women. I'm starting a club for perimenopause and menopausal women and I would like to put the world on notice that we do not care anymore. And it started a movement of millions. Literally, this woman went from an everyday woman to within months having millions of followers on her I do not, we do not care club site. Okay. We could translate that into, she was maxed. She couldn't do anything anymore. And so her declaring, that's all she was saying is I am maxed. I can't care anymore. But actually if her loved ones sat down with her and were like, Hey, what can we take off your plate? What else, what do you want to do now that you're not able to do? How do you want to change how you're interacting in this relationship? Like these are the kind of conversations I'm trying to have all of us start as opposed to, I just don't care anymore. I have two friends who left very successful marriages with very successful men because they kept like waving the white flag saying, I need you to do this. This isn't working for me anymore. Here are the things I need different in these relationships. And both of these men were like, I liked the way you were. So they left because there was no, like, come along the journey with me. There was no understanding of why this woman doesn't care anymore, why these people are changing. So I think we need to all understand that the woman's changing. If you can sit with her and listen to her, ask her questions of what she wants to let go of, ask her what she wants to do that she's not doing, ask her who she's becoming. Those kind of things will start to create a new foundation to your relationship. My husband and I ended up doing something that I think was transformative. We categorized our marriage into three sections. We decided marriage 1.0 was before we had kids. Marriage 2.0 was when we had kids. And now we're building marriage 3.0 without as empty nesters and me postmenopausal. So we will have conversations where I will say, yeah, in marriage 3.0, I don't do that. In marriage 3.0, what you just said to me, actually, I can't put up with that statement anymore. And my husband, thank God, because he's so willing to see me through this metamorphosis and be involved in it, is like, okay, well, tell me what you're thinking now. it's the languaging really really mattered as i started to shift he could be there to support it as we were like we're recreating something we met when we were 21 and we're now recreating our marriage at 56 with mindy in her post-menopausal glory yeah and i'm sure with your husband on you know not biologically having gone through the same changes that are there but life changes that are there too, which you opening up and sharing what you need. Anytime you do that with anybody, your kids or anything else like that, where there's that true, beautiful communication, you're now creating a table where that other person also gets to open up. That's right. You create this level of communication that is so easily lost in every single system. You have to fight for that level of communication to come back, even in a business partnership, even, you know, your relationship with your siblings, but most importantly, of course, your relationship with your partner, your relationship with your kids. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the hard part. Like, we met at 21, and so he's like, I love who you've been. What do you mean you're changing? And then I had to explain to him, but some of my behaviors are exhausting to me, and I can't do them anymore. One of my fire stories that really hit for me was I was leading this group through, you know, this water fast, So I had to kind of pull myself together the day after the fire and lead the group. And I led it for three more days. And on the last day, I just started to kind of fall apart. And I said to this group that we had on that webinar, we probably had 5,000 people of the 100,000 people because people watch it at different times. And I said, okay, we've come to the end of the water fast. I need to tell you all something. I am not okay because I could just feel myself falling apart. But what I will tell you is I'm going to become okay. I will find okay. And I'm just curious how many of you here feel like you walk around all every day not feeling okay. 5,000 people. The chat just blew up with women. They're like, I'm not okay. I'm not okay. I'm not okay. That's what we're talking about here. We're talking about giving women permission to say the way I've done it, I can't do it going forward because my brain rewired, my neurochemical system shifted, and I need to do life in a different pace with different thoughts, with different priorities. That's menopause. And if we all understood that she was going there, we know it with teenagers. If you're out with a couple friends and they're like, oh, the teenager is acting up, the teenage girl, everybody's like, oh, yeah, did she go into puberty? Oh, wow, that's a lot. But we don't give that same grace to menopausal women. We are changing and reprioritizing and everybody who can enter into that experience with us with love and compassion and understanding is going to watch a woman stand in her greatest brilliance ever. I can't help but to think about, you know, these metaphors that are all kind of coming together, you know, a very tragic, actual, real life fire upended your life. And here we are talking about this major life transformation that women will go through perimenopause into menopause. And that feels like an upending, you know, it feels like an emotional fire. It feels like your entire world is going upside down. And yet your message that I'm hearing for you today as we wind down is that just like in an actual fire where you have this, you know, nature always comes back. Obviously, in the situation of L.A. and the fires here, there's so many politics and other things. Put that all aside, right? Just think of a wildfire out in the forest. Nature comes back stronger than ever. New trees start blooming. Life starts forming. Our soil gets richer. and now it's a different and a better version of the next continuation that's there. I'm hearing that that's a huge part of the message you're sharing today is that this life period that feels just scary and confusing and I got so much value from being a particular way and maybe I don't want to be that way before, but it was kind of working for me before, but it wasn't working for me before and it's so complicated in so many aspects, but nonetheless, I want to show up differently and I need different things now and I need to let the people around me know that as scary as that time period can be, especially because so many women feel like they're navigating it alone, that there's something really beautiful on the other end of it. You got it. And that was the whole purpose of Age Like a Girl is let's not miss the transformational moment. Let's not try to get so obsessed with the right test or the right medication that we forget that this is a natural biological process in which a woman is supposed to transform. That is the opportunity being given to her. So how can we as a culture support every woman going through this process in that way and cheer her on? As opposed to scaring her that she'll lose her job, as opposed to putting into her brain that she's not worthy because she has gray hair or she has a wrinkle. This should be a celebration of a new woman rising. Well, if there's anybody to give that reminder, it's you, Mindy, and you did. Thank you. With the book, Aged Like a Girl, it's out. People can pick it up. We have the link in the show notes. These conversations are always incredibly powerful. Thank you for talking about the things that people aren't talking about. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having it with me. The only reason to write a book for me is to open up a cultural conversation. I don't need it for ego. I'm not looking at it as my main moneymaker. Like, I just want the world to have a different conversation around menopause. This is the part I'm not sure if I ever told you that when Fast Like a Girl came out, I had a big YouTube channel and we were looking for big podcasts to get on. And you gave me the first break. I'll never forget it. It came out December 27th and it was like December 6th. I flew down here and I got on your podcast. Yeah. And then that interview did really well on YouTube. and then what happened was, you know, who picked it up next was Rangan. Yeah, Rangan asked me, can I connect you guys? And I connect you guys. Yeah. And so then Rangan, I went on there, that conversation went really well. And so Tom Bilyeu picked me up and then that conversation went really well. And then Stephen Bartlett showed up. Yeah. I think it's really interesting for Fast Like a Girl that it was like four men that accelerated that. And you were the initiator. So I just want to say thank you. Yeah. And I think, you know, well, I appreciate it. I'm always happy to be that initiator. And, you know, when I look at you, you're also somebody in your life that is always connecting people. Hey, you should meet this person or you connect on that. And so many of the things that may not work for us at one stage in life, which is part of what we've been talking about in this menopause conversation. And I think about my mom and I think about my sister. She's going into perimenopause. My older sister and my wife will eventually go through those, you know, stages of life. And the human side of it is that let's drop team man, team woman. If you're a woman and you have a great relationship with your brother or your dad or other stuff, you understand that we're team humanity. Yeah, I like that. And even if there's toxic patriarchy, toxic matriarchy, which is the thing as well too. Yeah, great. Right. Even if those things that are out there, there is team human, which is the vast majority of human beings want to support each other, want to look after each other, want to help their family. And what I was getting to earlier is that, you know, you're such a big connector and also a big part of I imagine your identity. And not that this has gone away, has been like, hey, I want to help people because also there was people that helped me in my journey as a tennis player. as you getting into your career. And so you are definitely a pay it forward type of person. And like all things, there can be times where our identity is running the show at the detriment of ourself. Very true. In different sort of schools of thought, they sometimes call it like our golden handcuffs. Yeah. They're the things that worked for us for such a long period of time, but left unchecked, can start working against us. Well said. And so even though there might be a sense of upset or the feelings of how other people are provoking it, I feel like life is the most beautiful. And we realize like you might find yourself in a place where a relationship no longer works for you and you're transitioning on. Okay, great. And a powerful question is also too, it's like, how was I complicit in also creating that? With compassion. Oh, exactly. Not blame. Yep. Not anything. Like I was the person, I'm just making this up. I was the person that wanted to be there for everybody. Right. So yes, I, in a way kind of took advantage of myself and other people were taking advantage of me, but I liked it because it was a huge part of my identity. You got it. And there's a certain point in time where the body says, Hey, listen, I've been telling you for a while, this isn't working a little bit. I'm going to give you some really strong signals or sometimes life, God, the universe, whatever you believe in will throw some adversity there. And you realize like, this isn't sustainable that's there. And it's a beautiful thing to come to a place and say, you know what? I can still take action. Maybe there's some things that don't work for me. Maybe there's some friends that aren't, you know, the stage of where of life is or a relationship or projects or priorities. And, you know, largely I was doing the best that I could. And so were the people around me, Right. Right. They were doing the best they could. Yeah. That doesn't mean you have to keep on putting up with it. That's right. But they were doing the best they could because now you're letting that energy go of like everybody else. Right. I'm prioritizing myself. Bingo. Well, there's a challenge with that if that keeps on going for long enough as well, too. Yeah. Right. And instead and and it's like stages of grief. You kind of have to go through your different levels of grief to actually fully go through the healing process. So I'm sure there's stages of that in everything, but especially what you're talking about here with menopause. But the feeling of like the wisdom that so, you know, if you watch like movies like Avatar, anything that shows like the epitome of the matriarch in a tribe who's so wise and understands, you know, you had to kind of go through these rites of passages to get there. Yeah. And when you stopped fighting against it and you actually understood that this was the design of the whole thing. And and that also means that you can change your circumstances right now. Now there's a there's a there's like a Mother Earth type energy where you understand that it's like, great, this is what happened. And now this is what we can create into what happened. And there's a male version of that as well, too. Yeah. The male elder, the understanding, the compassion for people around there. So that's a big smorgasbord to say of just the forgiveness that I hope that anybody can give to themselves in any stage that even if things didn't go the way you didn't want to, you were doing the best you can. And now if you're not carrying that weight along with you, now it's a question of like, what do I need? What do you need now? If you weren't blaming everybody else or yourself for how things went, what do you need now? And let's give that attention and love. Those, that's so beautiful. You summed it up. You summed it. I mean, you got it. That's where the menopause conversation needs to go. What does it doesn't work anymore? And what do you need now? Yeah. What do you need now? And if you want to be an ally to anybody inside of the space, you can ask them, hey, what do you need now? What do you need now? I can ask my mom, my sisters, anybody. And obviously we can even ask people that are not in that stage of life of menopause. Right. We can ask people and say, what do you need right now? How can I better show up for you? Those little short statements of compassion are so important. It's very reminiscent of when I just said, I'm not okay. And then all of a sudden, all these women are like, I'm not okay. And I actually then went to my parents and I told them the next day I got back up to San Jose. I was like, I went and visited them. I'm like, I need to tell you I'm not okay. And I'm going to go find okay. and I called my kids and I'm like, hey, I'm back in San Jose, but I'm not okay, but I'm going to find okay. So I just want to say that when we go, I love the team humanity. That was my favorite part of what you just said. If we can look at others and be like, what do you need? What do you want to let go of? Who do you want to become? How can I help you be okay? it it it that simple act will change the experience that so many humans are having right now on the planet absolutely absolutely mindy thank you for being back on the podcast thank you drew i appreciate you hi everyone drew here two quick things number one thank you so much for listening to this podcast if you haven't already subscribe just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy to digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. 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