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Coming up next on Passion Struck.
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So rather than being punitive and saying, God, I am broken.
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This stupid body is not doing what I want.
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Instead being more of an agent for change for yourself.
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So what does the symptom mean and what can I do about it?
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That s within my control.
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Welcome to Passion Struck.
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Hi, I m your host, Jon R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world s most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.
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Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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If you re new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.
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We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
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Now, let s go out there and become Passion Struck.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Episode 439 of Passion Struck, consistently ranked the number one alternative health podcast.
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A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn and discover new ways to live better, be better and to make a meaningful impact in the world.
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If you re new to the show, thank you so much for being here.
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Or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that.
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We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans  favorite episodes that we organize in a convenient playlist to give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show.
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Just go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs.
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or Spotify to get started.
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If you re not aware, throughout 2024, we are conducting a weekly challenge to help inspire you to become PassionStruck and flex your courage muscles.
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We release a new challenge every week in our newsletter, which goes out to over 30,000 people in our community.
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Just go to passionstruck.com to sign up.
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In case you missed it, last week, we had three great interviews.
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In the first, we dove into the world of high-performance coaching with Sean Foley, the renowned golf coach behind some of the biggest names in the sport.
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From his unique coaching philosophy to the mental strategies that can turn a struggling golfer into a champion, Sean shares insights you won t want to miss.
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I also interviewed Ethan Mollick, a Wharton professor, author of the groundbreaking book Cointelligence,
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living and working with AI, and the mind behind the popular One Useful Thing substack.
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Lastly, I interviewed Dr. Jeff Karp, a luminary in the realm of bio-inspired engineering, who is a distinguished professor at Harvard Medical School and MIT.
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His journey from a curious child grappling with learning deficiencies and ADHD to a titan in biotech innovation
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is testament to the transformative power of being lit, a state of heightened awareness and engagement with the world.
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Dr. Karp unveils the secrets of tapping into this dynamic state.
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I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews.
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And if you love today s episode or any of those others, we would appreciate you giving it a five star review and sharing it with your friends and families.
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I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners.
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Today, we are joined by the remarkable Dr. Stephanie Estima, who has navigated a fascinating journey from being a leading chiropractor to making the life-altering decision to close her highly successful practice.
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Dr. Stephanie has since dedicated her focus to metabolism, body composition,
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functional neurology, and specifically female physiology, transforming the lives of thousands of women through the Esteema Diet.
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In addition to her transformative work, Dr. Stephanie hosts the podcast, Better With Dr. Stephanie, where she continues to share her invaluable insights on health and wellbeing.
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In today s episode, we dive deep into Dr. Stephanie s transformative approach to health and wellness, as detailed in her book, The Betty Body, A Guide to Intuitive Eating, Balanced Hormones, and Transformative Sex.
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This isn t just a health manual,
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It s a radical call to action for women everywhere to embrace their unique physiological needs, debunking the one-size-fits-all approach to health that has dominated our understanding for too long.
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Dr. Stephanie enlightens female listeners how to transform their relationship with their menstrual cycle from one of dread to celebration, the critical importance of orgasms for female health, and the power of intuitive eating to honor our bodies through every stage of life.
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She tackles the hidden sexism in our daily routines and offers strategies for crafting a life that respects our biology, from building lean muscle to understanding the strategic role of fats and carbohydrates for our metabolic health.
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Whether you re looking to reshape your body, balance your hormones, or revolutionize your relationship with your health, this episode serves as the ultimate blueprint for achieving optimal feminine health.
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Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
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Now let that journey begin.
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I am absolutely thrilled to have my friend, Dr. Stephanie Estima on PassionStruck today.
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Welcome Dr. Stephanie.
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Oh, I m thrilled to be here.
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Thank you for having me.
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Stephanie, you and I are relatively new friends and we ended up meeting at Jim Quick s book launch in Miami, Florida a few months ago.
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How did you get to know Jim and what brought you to that event?
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Oh, wow.
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Well, Jim was first a friend of my husband s, Giovanni.
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They are both, as you know, Jim is a very big superhero aficionado and so is my husband.
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So they would geek out over Marvel movies and the newest DC thing or the latest drama or what have you.
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And then when I started getting to know Jim, of course, we also shared a passion for brain health and brain metabolism.
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So he would geek out with Gio on cartoons and comic books.
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And then whenever I had an opportunity to spend time with him, we would talk about brain health, brain metabolism, optimizing our minds as we age or just in the everyday practice of living.
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and had him on my show a bunch of times.
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I ve been on his podcast a bunch of times and just over many years have a mutual respect for each other s work and the contributions that we bring into the health space.
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Yeah, it s interesting because one of the things that Jim is known for is being the boy with the broken brain.
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And when I got to talk to him, I told him I could honestly relate to feeling that way.
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Because when I was four or five, I was playing a game of tag in my side yard in Bay Village, Ohio, when one of my friends ended up pushing me from behind.
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And with my momentum of running away from him, it ended up thrusting me in the air and I crashed headfirst through our basement window.
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which ultimately caused a traumatic brain injury, which resulted in having some vision impairments, speech impediment problems, cognitive dysfunction, migraines, and other long lasting symptoms.
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I can completely relate to his story, which made us immediately bond to each other.
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And I m so happy that you re sharing that because I think that it brings, whenever we share our stories, it also gives permission for other people to come forward with their stories and bring awareness.
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Like concussion is something severe concussion, like Jim and you have suffered is very hard to diagnose.
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It s often been missed.
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And then these symptoms can perseverate for years and years and years.
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So very happy for you to be sharing that story.
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I think it s an important one that people can learn from.
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Stephanie, thank you for saying that.
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And I ve tried to do a number of traumatic brain injury episodes because I ve experienced that one when I was a kid, but also some when I was playing division one sports and then also in combat situations.
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So thank you for bringing that up.
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It s remarkable that not only did you operate as a chiropractor for many years, but you were one of the top 1%
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of all chiropractors.
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And you did that for over 16 years, which is a testament to the success that you had in that field.
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And the decision to make a career pivot, which I ve had to do myself is such a profound step into the darkness that many of our listeners and also potential clinicians may be contemplating.
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Can you delve into the factors that drove you to making this decision?
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Oh, wow.
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Yeah.
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I would say that first, very proud to be a chiropractor.
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I always say that I grew up in chiropractic.
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I ve had just the absolute pleasure and blessing to be mentored by some of the smartest minds in what it means to promote health or salutogenesis.
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We may go down that path.
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We may not, but
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Chiropractic really is one of the first practices, health practices with practitioners who don t just bandaid things.
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We don t just, there s not a pill for every ill.
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There s a belief, philosophical premise that health starts from within, and it s up to us to unlock it through physical means, chemical means, and emotional means.
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Very proud to be a chiropractor.
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I remember the day I got my acceptance papers into the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College.
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It was like this big, thick envelope.
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And I was, even before I opened it, I was sort of dancing around.
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And so I opened up over the course of my career, opened up several clinics.
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I never worked for anybody else because I realized very early on in my entrepreneurial journey, I am completely unemployable.
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I do very poorly with direction and would often find myself wanting to do
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things my way.
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So I was in private practice.
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So I graduated class of 2003 and closed the clinic in April, 2019.
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So it was about a 16 year run in private practice.
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And it was wonderful.
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I had built the clinic of my dreams.
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I had a rehab center.
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I had an open adjusting area, had closed adjusting areas.
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I had
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rings and vibration plates and Swiss balls and like all the beautiful things that you could ever dream of in terms of a rehab center.
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We had people coming from, I practiced in Toronto, Canada.
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So we had people in the GTA or in the city proper, but then also a lot of people would travel from the outskirts to come and see me.
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And it was great.
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It was wonderful, wonderful patients.
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I built a wonderful team around me and.
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I will say that one of the things that, you know, I mentioned it briefly, some of the tenets of chiropractic philosophy is like, what s your physical movement look like?
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What s your chemical inputs look like?
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And what is your emotional and spiritual life look like?
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And so of course the chiropractic pieces falls under the physical movement, like rehab and proper mechanics and so forth.
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The other thing that we would do very often in the clinic is we would run nutrition programs.
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So teaching people how to cook at home or how we look at calories or what the composition of the calories are, et cetera.
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And I ve started this nutrition program in house.
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It was a ketogenic based nutrition program and really took off.
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And I had one of my patients sort of maybe I ll say she was very online savage.
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Like we need to put this into a course and we need to put this online.
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So we did that and it just blew up online.
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I guess it was just maybe at the beginning sort of arc of the ketogenic movement and did really, really well.
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And I started thinking about what it would look like to not have a clinic and to just be online.
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I was just flirting with the idea and I flirted with it for years.
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And I think coupled with, at least for me, and I don t know if this speaks that maybe other clinicians can relate to this, but
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when you ve been in practice for 16 years, you start to see the same patterns over and over again.
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You start to see the same resistance.
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You start to see the same things.
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And I remember there was this one patient and I, I remember after interacting with her, I said, okay, I really need to check myself here because
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She was trying to get pregnant, had done all the things that you might think like IVF and timing and her cycle and this and that.
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And I started working with her.
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I took a lot of training in pediatrics and prenatal care and pregnancy.
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And she came to me one day, maybe I can t remember how many months after she d been working with us, maybe three, four months, something like that.
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And she s like, you ll never guess what.
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And in my head, I m like, you re pregnant.
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You know, I didn t say anything, but I was like, what?
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Tell me.
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And she s like, I m pregnant.
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And my reaction, of course, to her, I said, that s wonderful.
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Like, I m so happy for you.
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This is great.
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But in my head, I was like, of course, you re pregnant.
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You know, of course, you re pregnant.
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We ve removed, you know, some of the mechanical biomechanics.
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We ve improved your diet.
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We ve improved your stress.
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Like, of course, you re pregnant.
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And I remember going home that night and I was like, oh no, like I am so, I felt sort of tired of practice.
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And when I felt like I wasn t excited anymore about a patient becoming pregnant, which is obviously one of the most joyous things that you could ever, you know, experience as a clinician to help facilitate or be a small part of that.
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I was like, all right, I got to check myself before I wreck myself.
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And so started the transition.
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I started working with a mentor of mine, Dr. Jeff Spencer, who actually would be a great guest on your show.
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If you haven t already had, do you know, Jeff, do you know, Dr. I do not.
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Oh,
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Okay, so very quick.
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I m going to pitch him for you for your show.
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You have to have him on.
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So he was in the 1972 Munich Olympics.
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He was a medalist.
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He later went on to be the chiropractor for Lance Armstrong.
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He is so amazing about
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delineating between a human, you know, the human mindset or the human condition and the difference between that and the champion mindset.
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So I ll make the introduction sort of offline, but he s actually the reason why I wanted to become a chiropractor and a sports chiropractor, because he was, I remember being a student, seeing him being on Lance Armstrong s team and just having so much admiration for him and the sport and
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Anyway, so I had him, I called on him because I said, listen, I want to close this clinic.
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But the, whenever you make a decision, closing a clinic, leaving a relationship, changing jobs, any life changing decision, the moment that you emotionally sort of admit that you want this change, and then the time between that admitting and when you can actually affect the change, it just seems like eternity.
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And I wanted to make sure that I closed the clinic with integrity so that when I look back on the way that we transitioned patients, the communication, the way we treated everybody, it would be something that I would be proud of because when I decided that I wanted to close the clinic, it was already well past the time that I had wanted to do it.
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So when I admitted it, it was like, all right, let s just do it.
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Let s just close the clinic, shut it down and move on.
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But of course you can t do that when you are a doctor and you have patients that you have to care for, you have a responsibility to them.
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So hired him to work on my mindset and to work on pacing and to get really comfortable with that tension, like being in that tension between the time that I ve admitted something and the time that I can actually affect the change.
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And so he walked me through that.
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We slowly dwindled, we ll say the clinic down.
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We ve had, we had, I can t remember how many thousands of patients we had on,
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file at the time, but making sure that all the patient files were transferred and everyone had a new chiropractor to go to.
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And everyone there was, we had all the files in order and all the things probably took three or four months to sort of do that properly.
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And then I took time off.
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So close the clinic, it was April, 2019.
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And I basically just grieved, even though I wanted it, I basically was almost grieving the death of part of me, part of my personality and act, you know, a really important time in my life.
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And I was known and I ve thrived.
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My identity was really baked into this idea that I was a healer and I helped people and I affected all these changes and people came and a lot of my satisfaction in my job came from that.
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And then all of a sudden it was gone.
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So grieved for several months, took the summer off.
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So through the summer, I didn t really do much and wanted to start a podcast.
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This is something that had been on my mind.
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for many years.
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I remember listening to Tim Ferriss.
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I remember actually walking with Giovanni, my husband, boyfriend at the time.
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And we were talking about, I can t remember who he had had on as a guest.
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Might ve been Dom D Agostino or some, some, it was a health guest, someone.
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And I said, you know, I would love to have the same conversation with that guest, but bring a female perspective to it.
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But I was still in practice podcasting, as you know, it takes a lot of time, effort, energy preparation.
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I just didn t have the bandwidth with running a clinic.
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So started flirting with the idea that I might.
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Now follow that dream and open up and start the podcast.
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And so I did later that year.
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So it was, I think it was the last couple of days of September into October where we launched our first episode.
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So close the clinic April, 2019, and then call it September, October of 2019.
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We started the better podcast.
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Yeah.
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And I love the podcast and thank you for having me on it to help.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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You were on, you were a recent guest and we had a lot of great feedback from it.
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Actually.
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We had a lot of women who really resonated with your messaging as well.
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Cause I think certainly your podcast is for men and women.
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My podcast tends to skew more female, but I really appreciated your perspective on what it means to live a life that is passion struck and what are some of the components of that really resonated with my audience.
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Well, thank you for that.
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And I m glad you brought up Dom because he s a personal friend of mine actually lives right up the road for me.
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And he and I are preparing to do something big that I ve just been trying to find camera crews to help us pull it off, but I can t wait to do it.
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Cause he s remarkable.
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I agree.
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I m going to ask you a couple more questions about this.
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I have often talked about this feeling of quiet desperation that Henry David Thoreau talks about from Walden.
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I was wondering, did you ever feel that when you were in this process of deciding what to do with the clinic, meaning you maybe were feeling emotionally numb, you just felt like you were going through the motions and you were stuck and you didn t know how to get out of it?
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100%.
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Yeah.
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And that s really the tension that I was describing because I was that quiet, desperate.
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I, what I wanted to do was I just wanted to stop practicing and it wasn t for like, my patients were wonderful.
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You know, the money was wonderful.
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Like everything was wonderful, but I w I just felt like,
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there was more for me in the online space and being more of a thought leader and a teacher and a woman s health educator versus being limited by my geography.
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Because even though we were a very successful clinic, we did very well, as I mentioned, but I m still going to be limited by geography.
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My reach is going to be mainly Canadian.
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And even then, it s going to be mainly in the province of Ontario.
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So and as much as I love and I m proud of where I come from and who I am, definitely.
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filed a calling to be serving more women on a global scale.
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So there was absolutely a desperation to close the clinic.
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And that s precisely why I hired Dr. Jeff, because he really helped me override those instincts because my primal instinct is like, I want to be out of here.
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I want to be done.
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I m finished.
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I want to do other things.
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And I had to really override that with my frontal lobe, right?
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It had to override it with,
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empathy and thinking about the future and planning the exit strategy, if you will, for these patients and making sure that all of that was really done in a way that I would be very proud of and with the integrity and excellence that I would bring to the care and the delivery of those patients.
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So yes, absolutely.
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There was, I mean, I m, I m giving you a longer answer here, but there was absolutely a quiet desperation.
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And I really did feel at the time that I needed
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And I think all coaches will say this, like the best coaches, all the best teachers all have teachers themselves, right?
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That you have to always remain humble and remain a student.
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And I felt in that moment that I also needed someone, I needed a counselor, if you will, someone who could help inform my decisions to make sure that I was making decisions that were aligned with my best self and something that I would be very proud of rather than just
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doing my instinct, like my sort of primitive impulse, which is like, let s close the clinic now and be done with it and actually get to the things that I m really passionate about doing.
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Yeah.
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So I just want to explore this a little bit more because the change you made is not an easy one to make it.
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I had to make a similar one and it s interesting talking to you about this because although I was in a corporate career and you were in a medical career, I think I felt many of the same things transpiring myself.
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I had started out as a management consulting consultant doing strategy consultant.
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and then had spent time in both the largest of large companies, Fortune 50s, down to medium-sized companies and startups.
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And what was amazing to me is I d walk into these companies and it s like 80% of the stuff you see, it s the exact same things that are broken.
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It s just on a different scale.
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And it s interesting because it s almost, you saw the same thing with your patients.
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You keep running into the same thing again and again.
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You don t ever want to be at the place where someone comes in.
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And this is why this pregnant, this particular patient, I was like, Oh God, that s such a bad reaction because she was so excited.
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And I was like, I ve seen this a thousand times.
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And I was so uninspired by it.
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I was unexcited.
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I was, you know, I was almost indifferent to it.
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And that was really a cue or a clue for me that I had to kind of explore a little further and say, OK, like, what is going on here?
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Am I just am I burnt out because I know that that happens or am I just not really excited about practice anymore?
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And I think that I came to the conclusion that even though I loved my patients, I loved the life that I had built for myself.
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I had almost climbed up, I had sort of ascended the ladder, if you will, the proverbial ladder.
2
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And I felt like there were other ladders that I wanted to climb.
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Like I felt I had exhausted my capacity and my potential and my value as a practicing physician, wanted to find other ways to make an impact.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I want to ask two questions from that point, because I think a lot of people might find themselves in this point of knowing they need to make the change.
2
SPEAKER_01
But what you did was almost a complete self-reinvention, recreating this new person you wanted to be for the world.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m sure at this point, you didn t really have a social following.
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SPEAKER_01
You really hadn t put yourself out there outside of Toronto.
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What were some of the initial actions you took to set yourself on this new path?
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And a second part of this is, did you encounter skeptics or individuals who dismissed your ambitions as being unrealistic?
2
SPEAKER_00
Good questions.
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Well, the first action I did, like I said, was I grieved.
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I cried a lot.
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I stayed in bed a lot.
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It was like a, I would have qualified for dysthymia or, you know, sort of a subset of depression.
2
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everything, there was less color.
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SPEAKER_00
The birds, the birds song was less vibrant for me.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was always in sort of a low mood and really it was almost the entire summer.
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I was just kind of down because I felt like a part of me had died and I sort of laugh and I bring that up as a first action step because I do think that it is very important
2
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that whenever there is a big change, that you acknowledge that there s been a loss, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, if you are going through a divorce or you are going through a career change, or your children are now adults and they re growing, they re leaving the house, you know, these are all monumental and can be cataclysmic events in your life.
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And what I think society would have us
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Well, maybe not society, but I ll say that the tendency for the individual is not to feel like they are burdening anyone else.
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So we tend to harbor these feelings.
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We tend to not talk about them at all, that I never felt sad, that I just left my marriage and I just knew it was the right thing.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s like anybody who s ever gone through a divorce knows how emotionally traumatic that might be, or
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grieving the children leaving the home.
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I mean, some people might say, yay, my home is my birds have flown the nest.
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But there s also a grieving that takes place in terms of a loss of a role of being the caregiver, the primary caregiver.
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So that was the first thing I did.
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And I actually let myself sit in it for a while I gave myself permission
2
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to grieve the loss of that identity for myself.
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And then as I ll call that, like the, even though it was summertime, it was like my winter, you know, there was like a creative void.
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Everything felt dead for me.
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I didn t want to do anything.
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I didn t want to go out.
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I didn t know what to do with myself.
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SPEAKER_00
And then slowly as I processed that part of my identity, I started thinking about what follows winter is spring.
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I started like thinking about and planting some of the seeds of what I would like to be doing.
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SPEAKER_00
And one of those things, as I mentioned, was the podcast.
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SPEAKER_00
The other thing that I have always wanted to do and ended up following through on it was write a book.
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And so these are things that are extraordinary time commitments that just weren t possible with running a clinic.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the first action item was the grieving.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then as I allowed myself to sort of work through and metabolize all of those feelings over several weeks, it was starting to think about and create, plant the creative seeds of, okay, what s next, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So what s now and what s next.
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So now I have the freedom of time.
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And what do I actually want to be creating with this time?
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And the first thing I did was the podcast, as I mentioned, and then I published my book in 21.
2
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So that would have been two years later.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it took, you know, 18 months or so to write the book and reference the book.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you know, you just published
2
SPEAKER_00
a passion struck, you know what it s like to do, to bring a book into the world.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s like an 18 to 24 month process.
2
SPEAKER_00
So wrote the book in about 18 months, the editing, the promo, all that stuff came out in February, 2021.
2
SPEAKER_00
And yeah, so that was the first part of your question.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then the second part was, did anybody get in my way or were there any naysayers?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I would say, I mean, I m trying to recall, I am fairly good at keeping a, I have always known that there are going to be people who are cheering for you, who are really cheering for you.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there s other people who are going to be saying that they re cheering for you, but they re, you know, they re just sort of leaning in whenever there s some juicy gossip or something like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I ve always been relatively good at keeping a relatively tight inner circle.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I didn t have anybody telling me necessarily that, you know, my head was in the clouds or you re just dreaming or you should never, you know, if anything, the, the, the person who was getting in my way was probably me, you know, my own self-doubt, like, who am I to start?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, do, does the world really need another podcast?
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SPEAKER_00
Like, do we really, and this was, I was saying this in 2019, it s even more,
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SPEAKER_00
you know, apparent now in 2024, but at the time I was like, do we really need another podcast?
2
SPEAKER_00
It was like 700,000 of them.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, what am I going to uniquely, you know, sort of bring to the table?
2
SPEAKER_00
So there wasn t any other individual probably other than myself kind of questioning the value that I could bring.
2
SPEAKER_00
And could I actually move the needle with any of the endeavors that I was dreaming about?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I ended up deciding that, yes, I do have something unique to say.
2
SPEAKER_00
I do think that I have a unique position.
2
SPEAKER_00
Am I the first person to ever talk about menstrual cycles for women?
2
SPEAKER_00
No.
2
SPEAKER_00
Will I be the last?
2
SPEAKER_00
No.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I think that when we can see a similar idea filtered through different individuals and their own lived experiences, I think we have the opportunity to learn from them, which is why I love that you shared your story of brain injury, because
2
SPEAKER_00
Someone might not go through a basement window and have speech impediments following, but they can reflect on their own experience and find commonalities and similarities in those experiences to help them relate to themselves better and to their world around them.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And something I thought I found interesting about your background is I ve been friends with a gentleman named Mark Benioff for 25 years now.
2
SPEAKER_01
And Mark was a senior executive at Oracle.
2
SPEAKER_01
Many people thought he would eventually replace Larry Ellison, but he also felt this apathy or indifference to what he was doing.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so he ended up taking a long vacation in Hawaii.
2
SPEAKER_01
And while he was there,
3
SPEAKER_00
this calling that he wanted to solve this new thing he discovered, cloud computing.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I understand if I have the timing right that when you were taking this period of time off, you went to Italy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, I did.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I took my kids to Italy.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so the, I ve talked about this in the book for my whole life.
3
SPEAKER_01
I struggled with not my whole life, but all the years that I ve been menstruating, I ve struggled with it.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the week before lots of PMS, lots of moodiness, lots of water retention, cramping.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then of course the week of bleed week has always traditionally been very difficult for me.
3
SPEAKER_01
usually on very heavy medication for several days.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s interesting, your friend Mark Benioff.
3
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So I took my kids to Italy that summer.
3
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So that summer of grieving, if you will, went, took the kids for vacation and we were there for about three weeks.
3
SPEAKER_01
And lots of, as you do in Italy, lots of walking, lots of sightseeing, lots of gelato, lots of pizza, all the things.
3
SPEAKER_01
And while I was there, we were there for three weeks.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had my cycle, my period the last week that we were there.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it was wonderful.
3
SPEAKER_01
There was no cramping, there was no PMS, I didn t need to take medication.
3
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, I joke about this in the book and I say, you know, you could make the argument that everything is better in Italy, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like the food s better, you know, the weather s better, the language is beautiful.
3
SPEAKER_01
But
3
SPEAKER_01
the constant is that my body, you know, it s still my body, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So my body in the environment in Toronto, Canada, running the clinic and the stress that may be that, that ensues versus being in a place where I m getting lots of natural sunlight, lots of low grade activity all day long, enjoying time with my family.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I really, I mean, and again, when I came back to Toronto, I said, okay, so it s the same body, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s,
3
SPEAKER_01
my body in Toronto is the same body that that travel to got on the plane and was in Italy.
3
SPEAKER_01
So what were some of the circumstances that brought about this change?
3
SPEAKER_01
And so I wanted to when I came back to Toronto, and sort of figuring out, you know, what I was going to be doing, how could I continue to have that kind of experience, and so started changing the way that I eat and started changing the way that I train and started
3
SPEAKER_01
really doubling down on stress management.
3
SPEAKER_01
So all of these different things started the process for me of developing the framework that I eventually wrote a book on, which is that women are the tagline, if you will, of the book is like, women are not small men.
3
SPEAKER_01
We, you know, we re not little men with like pesky hormones.
3
SPEAKER_01
We do function on a different rhythm.
3
SPEAKER_01
We do have, you know, certain hormones run on circadian, like daily rhythms, but for women, there s also monthly rhythms, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Our reproductive cycle is by far the most obvious sort of differentiator between men and women.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I talk about sort of the hormonal shifts and changes.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that was born that really, that started from my trip in Italy, because I knew that if I could feel so awesome and get my period in Italy and not feel like I d been knocked over by a truck, I could also do that in North America.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like that s not, maybe it s an Italy thing, you know, maybe there s a part of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s just Italy is fabulous and it s amazing, but also I can also recreate those conditions in my everyday life in Toronto and make it just as wonderful.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think it s an interesting experience.
3
SPEAKER_01
Thank you for having the conversation and not turning green because some men are like, Oh no, she s talking about that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So thank you for that.
3
SPEAKER_01
I appreciate your, I feel sort of safe to express that with you.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve lived in Spain for three years and I just found over there in Southern Europe, the way that you eat is just completely different.
3
SPEAKER_00
Never did I go to a supermarket and buy a week long list of groceries.
3
SPEAKER_00
You got everything fresh the same day.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I ve been to Italy probably 20 times.
3
SPEAKER_00
And one of my favorite areas of the country is Puglia, which is kind of the heel.
3
SPEAKER_00
And similar to you, when you re down there, it s just like time is on a different dimension in the way that they live their lives.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think over here in North America, so many of us live to work.
3
SPEAKER_00
And over there, I was constantly told by my Spanish friends, we work to live.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there s a huge difference.
3
SPEAKER_01
And even some of the things that we had to hear to hear versus they re like Italians and Spanish and the Portuguese notoriously eat really late at night, you know, and they re also, they do so well, they age beautifully.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I mean, there s many different reasons for it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I have many theories, but you were going to ask me a question and I interrupted you.
3
SPEAKER_01
What were you, what were you going to say?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, I was just saying during this trip to Italy, you began to realize the impact of menstrual cycles on productivity, mood and health.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you re talking to many of your female patients about their challenges with weight loss drive.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the name of your book is The Betty Body.
3
SPEAKER_00
But in addition to that, I just wanted to call out your presence on Medium, because if I have it right, your stories have been viewed now 4 million plus times, which is pretty impressive.
3
SPEAKER_00
So where I wanted to go with this is maybe a little bit more in depth into your book.
3
SPEAKER_00
So one of the things that you embrace is the importance of understanding the body s cyclical nature through all stages of life, including the often misunderstood transitions into perimenopause and menopause.
3
SPEAKER_00
How has recognizing and respecting these hormonal ebbs and flows influenced your own personal journey, especially when you wrote the book and now?
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, wow.
3
SPEAKER_01
The biggest thing I would say in my research, in developing some of the protocols that I have is, and this might sound really funny, but forgiveness.
3
SPEAKER_01
Allowing, forgiving myself and giving myself grace and permission to not always be hunting and achieving and pounding the pavement and hustling.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because I m just not built like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And this for me really shows up and I ll say in the vein of transparency and truth still I still struggle with it, but I m much better at it today than I was, you know, five years ago or even 10 years ago but there s
3
SPEAKER_01
I m in my cycle when I m at the gym and I just, I could be perfectly, I could sleep perfectly.
3
SPEAKER_01
I could be perfectly fueled.
3
SPEAKER_01
All the conditions are perfect for having a great workout.
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And I don t.
3
SPEAKER_01
And part of it, oftentimes it s like, where am I in my cycling?
3
SPEAKER_01
And oh yeah, I m day 25.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s why, that s why, that s why, you know?
3
SPEAKER_01
And it just gives me, it explains things for me when I would otherwise jump to blaming myself.
3
SPEAKER_01
when I would otherwise jump to the inner voice that would say, why can t you just fricking do the squat that you were doing?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like just do the thing that you, the workout that you did last time, like just punch it out and stop being such a ninny and just get it done.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so understanding the ebbs and flows, the energy shift, the mood shift, even sleep and affect the way that our sleep changes over the course of the cycle, which I talk a lot about in the book.
3
SPEAKER_01
has given me almost like a roadmap to understand when I don t feel like working out.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, do I always feel terrible on day 25 of my cycle?
3
SPEAKER_01
No, but when I do, it gives me the grace and the permission to say, okay, maybe this is just what it is this month.
3
SPEAKER_01
And there s a, maybe a softness is what I m trying to get at.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a softness that has developed from understanding how I can t always be, you know, pedal to the metal going, going, going all 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 29 and a half days a month, you know.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I know we ll have men listening to this.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I want to jump back into a question for men, which would be if your partner is going through this period, a lot of times we want to avoid the person because we think they re going crazy or something else.
3
SPEAKER_00
How can we be more supportive and empathetic to our partners?
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I love this.
3
SPEAKER_01
So for the three men that are still listening, because they ve been talking about my period, I ll say this.
3
SPEAKER_01
My work is, I said, it skews for women, but it s also for the men who love them, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
There s nothing more powerful and dare I say sexy than a man who understands his woman s cycle and who knows how to respond to her.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I would say
3
SPEAKER_01
both of you learning together what some of the changes might look like and have the flexibility of thought and the flexibility in your approach to know that, Hey, maybe, you know, you both, you were going to do something together and maybe she s now not in the mood for it, or she s tired or whatever, understanding that it s not.
3
SPEAKER_01
her being lazy or her going crazy, that there are, and certainly in perimenopause, we know that there are neurological changes that are happening in the brain.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like there s a pruning that s, that s happening in, for a woman s life.
3
SPEAKER_01
She dedicates a lot of her neural resources to caregiving, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Raising her children.
3
SPEAKER_01
So through pregnancy, we ve all heard of baby brain, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So you give birth to the baby and then all you can think about is the child, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So
3
SPEAKER_01
that part of that is a neurological, it s a survival mechanism to benefit the baby so that the mom is tuning into the emotional and physical needs of the child.
3
SPEAKER_01
In perimenopause, most of us have passed our fertile, or we are hopefully past our reproductive sort of window and the body recognizes that and starts pruning.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you start to see things like brain fog, forgetfulness, forgetting words, constant confusion.
3
SPEAKER_01
It almost can look in some cases,
4
SPEAKER_00
it can actually look a little bit like a post-concussion syndrome, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So we get consonant confusion.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re like, what s that word again?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s that retrieval because there s a redistribution of priorities in the female brain through her forties and fifties and beyond.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we have neurological changes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Obviously we have changes in body composition, hormones are declining.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it can be rough for a woman.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think that if you have a man who understands it, supports and nourishes her and makes her feel safe, you know, that she is free to be whoever she wants.
4
SPEAKER_00
And maybe this is like a bridging psychological, maybe discussion or, or a societal or relational discussion.
4
SPEAKER_00
But if a woman feels safe in her home with her partner,
4
SPEAKER_00
and maybe he doesn t jump to the, let me try and fix it, you know, kind of attitude.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think that there can be a beautiful harmony between men and women at any point in their relationship.
4
SPEAKER_00
And if you haven t seen the video, it s not about the nail.
4
SPEAKER_00
Have you seen this video?
4
SPEAKER_01
I have not.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh my goodness.
4
SPEAKER_00
So if you can put it in the show notes as a compendium for what I m about to say, so I won t spoil it for you, but it s basically a man and a woman are having a discussion about a problem and she has a nail in her head and like, there s like literally a nail in her head and she s like, oh, and there s like achiness and
4
SPEAKER_00
it s snagging all my sweaters and it feels awful.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, well, why don t you just take out the nail?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like he, so he jumps to trying to fix the problem.
4
SPEAKER_00
And she s like, Oh, I just, you re always trying to fix things.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, I just want to talk about how I feel, you know?
4
SPEAKER_00
And so it s a really funny banter between like how men approach problems, which is like, let me jump in and fix it.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we don t have this problem anymore.
4
SPEAKER_00
and women who tend to want to marinate in our feelings a little bit.
4
SPEAKER_00
We want to tell you how the nail feels in our head and it feels achy and it s snagging on my sweaters and I can t hug people without, you know, it s just, it s so funny.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I think that it s a really clever video on how men and women can relationally be a little different to each other.
4
SPEAKER_00
So if you can, and then at the end of the video, he s like, okay, tell me how it feels, you know?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s just really, really funny, but it s a really nice explanation about how men and women can better understand each other.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like women want to talk about our feelings first.
4
SPEAKER_00
We want to feel understood and heard.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then, and only then are we kind of ready to solve the problem, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
like I want to talk to you about how I feel.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then once I know that you understood how I feel, then I m ready to talk about solutions.
4
SPEAKER_00
Whereas men typically like, all right, here s a problem.
4
SPEAKER_00
I see here s solution a, B and C. So which, and I think both are beautiful.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then we just have to understand how to sort of talk to each other a little differently or understand our tendencies a little bit better.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I want to ask another question that I think will be served for all audiences.
4
SPEAKER_01
You touched on this a little bit with what you were just saying with the nail representation, but sometimes I think we get symptoms that are impacting us and we view them as things that are happening to us instead of for us.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is one of the things you ve really explored that if you start looking at symptoms are happening for you, it creates a significant shift in mindset from nurturing rather than punishing your body.
4
SPEAKER_01
Can you talk a little bit about that philosophy?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for bringing this up.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think when we think about any symptom, whether you re male or female, irrespective of age,
4
SPEAKER_00
Symptoms are your body s language, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So in the way you and I are communicating right now, we re communicating in the language of English and we are moving our mouths and making certain sounds and the vocal cords are contracted.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we can communicate, you and I communicate verbally.
4
SPEAKER_00
Your body doesn t have, your pancreas doesn t have a mouth, you know, your liver doesn t have a mouth.
4
SPEAKER_00
So your body is going to try and talk to you, if you will, through the language of symptoms when there s something off.
4
SPEAKER_00
Now, of course, that s not true.
4
SPEAKER_00
I do want to say that that s not true in all cases, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So one of the things we know is like being 16 years as a, like pain can be nonspecific pain can refer.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you can have pain in the shoulder, but it can actually mean something is viscerally, you know, something s going on with an organ.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it s not always a perfect nature.
4
SPEAKER_00
Has not derived the mechanism to sort of a hundred percent, be able to communicate perfectly in all things.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_00
Another example would be cancer.
4
SPEAKER_00
Cancer is pretty silent in most cases.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_00
But when you are experiencing a symptom like many of them that I ve described in perimenopause, the brain fog, the energy, the water retention, the body composition changes, these are just ways that your body is trying to talk to you.
4
SPEAKER_00
So rather than, as you said, being punitive and saying, God, like what is wrong?
4
SPEAKER_00
I am broken.
4
SPEAKER_00
This stupid body is not doing what I want.
4
SPEAKER_00
instead being more of an agent for change for yourself.
4
SPEAKER_00
So what does the symptom mean and what can I do about it?
4
SPEAKER_00
That s within my control.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s going to be some things that you cannot do, but there are going to be, I can assure you specifically with metabolism and body composition and aging, there are several things that are within your control.
4
SPEAKER_00
There are many levers that you can pull resistance training, nutrition, stress management, relational health, emotional health.
4
SPEAKER_00
These are all things that are well within your control.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so when we start to look at symptoms as acting in a, it s your body s way of like sending you a text and saying, hey girl, or hey guy, something s a little bit off.
4
SPEAKER_00
I just need you to pay a little bit more attention to me.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think that that s a better way to look at symptoms rather than my body s falling apart.
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I am, you know, I am disintegrating every like I ve turned 40 and now all I m doing is I m disintegrating into a pile of a mess.
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I think that that s a better way to look at it and also gives you agency because now you can say, what s the problem and what am I going to do about it?
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Maybe the do about it is I m going to go on hormone replacement therapy, or maybe the do about it, if you re a man, maybe I need testosterone replacement therapy, or maybe I need to get myself a gym membership, or maybe I need to download a breathwork app, something, right?
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So the symptom is often your body trying to let you know that homeostasis, like that balance, that you are out of balance.
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It doesn t mean that you are out of balance forever.
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It just means that you re out of balance right now.
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So what are some of the action items that you can do to bring you back to that state where things are in balance?
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One of the things that I love that you talk about, and you ve touched upon it a couple of times now is that during the menstrual cycle,
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women can change the way that they re viewing it to become a reflective period, as you put it, for stress management and life adjustments, which is pretty revolutionary.
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How has this practice of introspection and adjustment impacted women who you have worked with?
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And what are some things that a listener could do today to put this into practice for themselves?
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Yeah.
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The number one thing I hear from the women that have either been in my, they ve been patients of mine, they ve been private clients of mine, et cetera, is that nobody ever told them about, I have women that are like mid forties, like deep in perimenopause and no one ever told them about their cycle and how they can feel different.
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So I would say that the number one thing, if you are a woman or you are a man who loves a woman who s still cycling, or she s in perimenopause or kind of around that menopause transition is for her to track her cycle, however erratic it might be.
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It s just a data point.
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It s just a baseline.
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If you ve never done it before, you just need some data.
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You need to understand
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How often you re cycling, if you re still regular, how long is it?
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What s your flow like when you do get your period?
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Can you, do you know, can you feel when you re ovulating?
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Do you have any spotting or like, there s so many different things that you information that you can begin to accumulate so that when you now go to your primary healthcare provider, you can
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arm them with the same information.
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Like so many women, we only have about the medical system is flawed.
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I have many colleagues who are medical doctors, love and respect them and revere their profession.
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And the way that it s set up is not for like, they don t have 45 minutes to sit and chat with you.
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They have like, you have maybe 10.
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So you have to be able to present them with the information in a succinct way.
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You need to be able to say, listen,
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For the past couple of years, my cycle has been 29 and a half days on the dot.
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And over the last several months, now it s at 26.
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And this is how my length has changed.
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My bleed week has changed, but you can, you need to be able to give them that information because that s also going to color in their understanding of what s happening for you as well.
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So that would be the number one feedback that I ve received from women is the data is so powerful.
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it informs their own.
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And I mentioned it briefly before that it s the data has given me permission to have a little bit more grace with myself and have a little bit more forgiveness with myself.
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And it can also help inform your healthcare, right?
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So you can bring this data to your primary healthcare provider and talk to them about some of the things that are happening.
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And that s going to, you are now going to by default, get better care, hopefully, because now your primary has more information to deal with.
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So that s the number one.
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one thing I would say, and I detail this a lot in the Betty body.
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So for listeners who are wanting more details, certainly you can pick up the book for more information, but over the course of the cycle, and this is part of your original question, usually in the second half of the cycle.
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So the luteal phase, so after the woman ovulates and particularly in the sort of mid third and into the fourth week,
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we tend to be, women can be more sensitive in that week.
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So I will joke, I will make a joke and I ll say, you know, every four weeks, my husband s chewing bothers me.
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And it s like, I m just more sensitive.
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I m like, I ll look over at him.
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I m like, do you always chew this loud?
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And every four weeks, it s like, it s a predictable pattern, just my sensitivity to sound, to noise.
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I m much more of a sensitive person.
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And of course, as soon as I get my period, I m like, Oh, that it wasn t his chewing.
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It was just where I was in my cycle.
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So, and hang my head, you know?
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So I say that as a joke, but also if you find yourself in that fourth week ruminating on, maybe it s not as simple as your husband s chewing is bothering you.
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Maybe there is an issue in your relationship
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that it continues to exist despite having conversations or despite trying to address it.
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This is another way that your body is telling you in the next cycle of your life, this piece, this particular piece, you should try to work on it and try to resolve it.
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So that might be a call that you re not having with your mother.
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That could be something that your friend said or continues to say to you that hurts your feelings.
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It could be something going on with your child, et cetera, et cetera.
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Right.
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So that time that it s like the middle of the third week to sort of the middle of the fourth week, we are a little bit more
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and I ll say exquisitely sensitive to stressors and unresolved items.
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So it s a beautiful time rather than, you know, rolling our eyes and being like, Oh, it s that time of month again, actually to quiet the mind a little bit and to listen to what are some of the things that are coming up so that you can begin to address them in the next cycle, literally, or in, you know, in the coming months.
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Well, thank you for that, Stephanie.
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And I m going to switch gears on you a little bit.
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Last year, I got to interview a dear friend of mine, Emily Morse.
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And I have to tell you, as I was approaching this interview, and for the listener who doesn t know who she is, she hosts the most popular sex podcast called Sex with Emily.
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And she s probably one of the
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longest-standing podcasters that I know.
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I think she s been doing it almost 20 years now.
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Last year, she was inducted into the podcast hall of fame.
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20 years.
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Oh my gosh.
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Good for you, Dr. Emily.
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That s amazing.
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And she talks about the health benefits that come with sex.
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And it s something that you explore in the book as well.
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Can you give maybe the listeners some idea of the importance for female health and wellbeing of having a good sex life?
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Sure.
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Yeah.
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I would say that it s a cornerstone to health and wellbeing for women in the same way that it is for men.
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So when we are connected with our partners, we release, and particularly if you are able to experience an orgasm when you are having sex with your partner,
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you re going to release.
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And even if you don t, you ll release oxytocin, which is really important, but it s the love hormone, right?
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It s the bonding hormone.
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It s the same hormone that mothers experience when they re breastfeeding their children or when they have children.
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So we feel bonded and we feel safe with our partners.
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Oxytocin does a myriad of other beautiful things in the brain, drives up dopamine, drives up serotonin, which we all, and those things also decline with age, but dopamine very famously is involved in sort of the pursuit of things and the pursuit of success.
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Serotonin is in the pleasure of receiving.
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That s what we feel after we ve had a nice meal.
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We sort of feel warm and fuzzy.
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That s part of that serotonin.
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So oxytocin of course is driven up.
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Our hormones actually are very, there s a balancing effect.
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So if you are someone who deals with PMS, as we ve been describing, having regular sex with your partner and particularly orgasmic sex is going to help.
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It has a balancing effect on your hormones.
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So your, and specifically your reproductive hormones, so your estrogen and your progesterone and your testosterone.
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for mood, great for skin.
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You know, you have that sort of post glow, that post coitus glow, if you will.
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And everything is just, I wrote an article on this on Medium, around how an orgasm for a woman lights up her brain, almost like a Christmas tree, you can actually see the brain light up.
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And so there s more activation, there s more blood flow, it s great for your heart, all of these different sort of health benefits.
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And I will just say with heart health,
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women don t pay nearly enough attention to it.
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It s the number one killer for women.
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We always think about breast cancer as the thing that we re most scared of.
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And of course that is a scary disease, but that it pales in comparison to the amount of deaths that we see from cardiovascular disease in women.
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So, you know, doing things that are great for the heart, sex would be one of them.
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And, you know, things like resistance exercise training and cardio and all that,
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but certainly the benefits of having a sexual relationship with your partner is going to impart.
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I don t even think that we know the full extent of it because I think that it s whenever we re thinking about health, we think about, okay, what s the diet look like?
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What s the calories look like?
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What s the fitness and the movement look like?
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What s the stress management.
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Those are things of course, our main pillars of health, but we don t actually talk about sex.
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And even in practice, it was only after I had developed a significant amount of rapport with my patients where they might say, you know, doc, you know, I was telling you that I came in for like pelvic pain.
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Well, it was really because I couldn t do a certain position with my partner because my hips would hurt too much or whatever.
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But now, you know, you ve helped me resolve that.
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So people don t want to talk about it because there s a lot of shame.
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And it s also very difficult to just talk to your doctor or whatever about it, but just know if you read my book or their Emily Morse would be another great resource.
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Some of the benefits of having sex are going to impact your brain.
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They re going to impact your metabolism, your heart health, your overall physiology.
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I mean, it s just like, I m sure, you know, once you, when you finish like a really good
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resistance training workout, your mother, Teresa, like the world is brighter.
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You re like, you ll give to someone wants to, it s going to come up and ask you for money.
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You re probably going to, you just feel so good after a great training session.
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The same is true after a really great romp with your partner, right?
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Like everything is better.
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Everything is more colorful.
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The lights are brighter, colors are more vivid.
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And I think that we do need to be paying more attention
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to the sexual health of our women.
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And I would argue that orgasm in particular is more important for women.
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I don t want to say more, but I ll say, let me take that back.
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I ll say that for women, it s as many orgasms as you can get.
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Like the more orgasms that you re having, the better off you re going to be.
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And that may be the same or different for men.
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I don t know, but I ll say that for women, there s no downside to having more.
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Okay, and then the last thing I wanted to explore with you was the interplay between hormonal health and mental wellbeing.
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And how can women address this connection to improve their overall quality of life?
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Yeah, I would say that they re very intimately connected.
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We typically see a lot in the perimenopausal and menopausal years.
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While we don t necessarily see a change in metabolism, we do see these declining sex hormones, right?
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So we see declining levels of estradiol and testosterone and progesterone.
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And this can all affect our mental health and well-being.
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So for example, I remember many, a couple of years ago now, I had a private client that I was working with and she runs a very successful business.
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And she was saying that she used to walk into a meeting with her team.
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She would just make the decision.
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They would come to her with problems.
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She d be able to say, this is the problem.
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This is how we re going to solve it.
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Very commanding, very decisive individual.
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And then she started going through, you know, perimenopause and menopause.
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And all of a sudden she sort of felt like a mouse.
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She felt anxious.
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She didn t feel like she could make good decisions, her risk, her tolerance for risk.
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started changing.
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She wasn t sure if she was doing the right thing.
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She just felt like she wasn t herself.
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And part of that is declining testosterone.
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So obviously testosterone is like famous in men.
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And we talk about it in terms of libido and muscle mass, but there are receptors in the brain for testosterone, just like there are receptors in the brain for estrogen.
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And
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confidence and risk tolerance in part are influenced, you know, it s personality driven and to one extent, but it s also influenced by testosterone.
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And so as a woman, we see declining levels over time of our testosterone.
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If we re not being strategic about resistance training and meals and things like that, and maybe even hormonal replacement therapy,
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And that can really affect our outlook on life.
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We can feel scared.
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We can feel more anxious.
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The same is true with estrogen.
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We have receptors for estrogen all over the body, including the brain.
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And so you can feel as your estrogen levels are declining, you can start to feel more moody.
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You can feel more sad.
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You can feel again, like there s that sort of overlap with anxiety and you can start to feel just not yourself.
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And part of that is the neurological pruning that I was touching on before, but it s also in part due to the declining levels of estradiol that we have as a natural consequence of aging.
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So I think thinking about our mental health impairment and so many women, and I ll also say this, many women will go to their doctors saying, I feel sad.
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I feel depressed.
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I feel anxious.
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And perimenopause is still this sort of state where most providers don t know what to do.
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So they ll walk out with a prescription for an antidepressant or an anti-oxalytic, which is like an anti-anxiety medication, when maybe what they actually needed was some hormone therapy.
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Like maybe they needed to replace the lost estrogen or the lost testosterone or the lost progesterone that they ve been experiencing.
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So
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I think that it s, and certainly I m not trying to undermine if anybody s on an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication.
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I m not saying that that s not the right thing for you.
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What I am asking you to consider is that it might not be a mental issue.
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It might be that you are now in a hormone-deprived environment.
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You are in an estrogen-deprived and or testosterone-deprived environment, and that might be a better solution potentially for you.
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Or it might go, it might be something that goes alongside with an antidepressant, but just know that your hormones, there are hormone receptors all over the body, including the brain, and they absolutely affect your mental health and your outlook on life.
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Well, Dr. Stephanie, thank you so much for that.
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And for everything that you ve discussed here today, we ve talked about your podcast.
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We ve talked about the book.
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If someone wants to learn more about you, where s the best place for all things, Stephanie.
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Oh, thank you.
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So generous of you.
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Thank you.
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So I would say the free options would be the podcast.
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So the podcast is called better with Dr. Stephanie, which is just my philosophy on life.
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I don t think we need to be the best.
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I just think we just want to try to be better.
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So better with Dr. Stephanie, another free way to sort of interact with me is a newsletter.
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I have a newsletter that I send out every week.
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It s called the mini pause.
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So little play on the word menopause.
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So it s basically a weekly roundup of the best science and action items for women who are 40 plus.
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So newsletter, podcast, and I guess the other place would be Instagram.
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I try to be as active as I can on Instagram.
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I don t always, but I try to post at least a couple of times a week there.
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So you can see some content that I put out there as well.
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Okay.
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Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us.
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It was such an honor to have you.
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And it was great seeing you again.
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It was wonderful seeing you too.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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It was a delight.
6
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I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Stephanie and I wanted to thank Stephanie for joining us on today s program.
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Links to all things.
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Dr. Stephanie will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com videos are on YouTube at both our main channel, John or miles and our clips channel at passion struck clips.
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Go there and join over 250,000 other subscribers, advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place.
6
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at passionstruck.com slash deals.
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Please support those who support the show.
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If you want to catch daily doses of passion struck inspiration, then go and join me on all the social media platforms at John R. Miles.
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And if you want our weekly dose of inspiration, you can sign up for our newsletter, live intentionally at passionstruck.com.
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You re about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast interview that I did with Michael Norton, a renowned Harvard Business School professor and co-author of the new book, Happy Money, The Science of Smarter Spending.
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And in this interview, you can discover how our spending choices can bring us joy and satisfaction and learn practical insights on how to transform your financial habits.
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When we do invest ourselves in making things, we do come to value them more highly.
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And I think a similar logic happens with rituals as well, which is it s not that things that are built for us aren t great.
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They can be fantastic.
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I don t know how to build a car, so I need to buy a car that s already made.
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But we can also do things ourselves on the fly.
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And those rituals, I think, are interesting also when we put ourselves into them, literally invest ourselves into them.
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They can have a different special meaning for us.
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that can be really valuable.