S3 Ep 164 Unlocking Hormonal Harmony: Midlife & Menopause Insights

Unlocking Hormonal Harmony: Midlife & Menopause Insights with Addie B. aka Slayer

In this episode of the Me First Midlife Badassery Podcast, host Addie B., also known as her alter ego Slayer, delves into the topic of hormones, specifically menopause and perimenopause. She introduces the concept of the 'hormonal hierarchy' from Dr. Mindy Pelz, covering sex hormones, thyroid, insulin, cortisol, and oxytocin. Addie discusses how these hormones interplay and impact midlife women, sharing her journey of self-discovery and weight loss. She emphasizes the importance of lifestyle changes and provides practical tips for managing hormonal imbalances without incurring costs.

00:00 Introduction to Midlife Badassery
00:32 Hormones and Midlife
01:21 Personal Updates and Challenges
02:21 Dr. Mindy Pelz and Hormone Education
04:29 Understanding the Hormonal Hierarchy
07:56 Insulin Sensitivity and Resistance

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Transcript

What's up, witches and bitches? The episode some of you have been waiting for, all about hormones. And specifically, we're going to dive into menopause and perimenopause, but I think I'm breaking this up into episodes. So today, we're We're going to talk about the hormone hierarchy, why it matters and how this can affect your world greatly and understanding going through all these hormonal changes.

We are in midlife as badass women creating this next era. I don't know about you, but I want to step in. like with as much magic as possible. And to me, this is part of that journey. Just like with my weight loss journey, this impacts it so much. These hormones we're going to talk about today. So without further ado, well, maybe a little bit more ado, I should update you where I'm at right now.

I had a weight gain this week after going back to no BS last week. And just really, you guys, I'm running. on E and I'm running all over the place and it's of my own doing and creation doing yoga teacher training and working and I've got my commute and I pick Millie up a couple days a week and there's just a lot going on right now and that's all great.

I accept it. I choose it all. I'm choosing to be where I'm working. I'm choosing all of it and that being said, I'm still figuring out how to plan and manage it and these hormones we're going to talk about today. And all of this information goes into this quest I've been on of self discovery. One of the things I did this year, I was telling you last week about being in a year three in this year of curiosity, and I'm just trying everything on.

One of the things I did was go to Dr. Mindy Pelz. She is a doctor, obviously, That has left her practice to focus solely on coaching and guiding and leading women,  understanding their bodies, metabolical function, switching like, uh, hormone adaption, normalizing hormone conversation. So I went to one of our webinars and I rarely. 

I shouldn't say rarely, I've done a lot of courses because I love to learn. I'm a lifelong learner. You get me in a webinar and I'm probably doing it and I go and I do it and I do the work, right? So with this one, she was offering a coaching certificate and it was in regards to, it's called fast like a girl's coach certification.

What it turned out to be was a PhD in hormone education.  Basically, and understanding our body's glucose response, insulin, all of this, that does play such a key role in our weight loss quest. And so combining this with the mindset tools with no BS with the path I'm on right now, I, I just, I see it all like coming together and it's, it's starting to click into place, but we're not at clickety click yet.

We call it the click when you've been doing the work and then all of a sudden you're like, Oh my God, this is so easy. So I am.  not so patiently waiting for the click over here, but in the same breath, having fun learning so much this year and growing and sharing with you guys. So what we're going to talk about today is, um, one of the basic principles that Dr.

Mindy shared with us in this coaching program. And I want to make sure that I relay to you and hopefully leave you today with some tools in place to  if you're missing these things in your life, there's easy things you can do. They don't cost money. They don't cost anything for you to do these things to help yourself.

And um, so let's just jump in. She calls this the hormonal hierarchy. So picture this like a little pyramid or coming up or four blocks on top of each other. And at the bottom block are your sex hormones and your thyroid. These are the things historically we tried it. fix with medication.  You know, we have the patches and the creams and thyroid medication.

That's where we typically try to solve things that happen to us women at these times in life, when we have all these hormones crashing, right? And then the next layer above that is insulin. And the layer above that is cortisol, which we all know is the stress hormone. And on top of that is oxytocin. And we all, everyone's favorite hormone, right?

That's the feel good. Oh my God. I'm so happy. And you know, you're talking to your girl, that feeling you get when you're talking to your girlfriends, or maybe when you have sex, or you get a massage, or Petting your, your cat or your dog even gives you, releases oxytocin. So the concept of the hormonal hierarchy, and this is science and is out there and proven, I'm just going to cite Dr.

Mindy because she's always done her work and you can go look at all her, where she's done her research and all of that. But so basically, um, The lower hormones, the lower to appear on this, the lower deck on this, the sex hormones in your, the thyroid cannot be satisfied if the upper three aren't. So if those upper three are out of balance or any, or one of them, they all feed into each other.

So if your oxytocin is low, your cortisol is really high, your insulin is out of whack, you're insulin resistant, maybe then you're going to struggle with these other sex hormones even more than you normally would. And this is why lifestyle as you come into perimenopause and menopause is so important.

And I am going to talk more specifically about perimenopause and all of that next week. This week I just really want us to understand the hormones and how we can just start right here looking at oxytocin, cortisol, and insulin in support of what's going, what's going on as you go through menopause. That we'll talk specifically about that more next week.

And remember. I love you. I'm not a doctor, but I am here to share with you what I've learned from one. So I'm doing my best to relay the information and she's, she, Dr. Minnie said she's called upon herself to create hormonal literacy in the world. And the reason why we aren't literate is because it is so confusing.

So I'm going to try to keep this short. as simple as possible and leave you with some tips and tricks to take with you today as I'm going to this week. And I'm going to share that throughout too. So let's go ahead and start with the sex hormones. We're going to break down more on when we get into menopause.

Those are your estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, right? Those are the big one, the big sex hormones, right? But there are also 10 other  Neurotransmitters that affect us as well. These are things like dopamine, serotonin, those  that are transmitted by the brain that are affected by all of this by your sex hormones releasing and decreasing and menopause, our insulin, our stress level and the oxytocin.

So understanding insulin and this is why I headed off on the path of getting a continuous glucose monitor because with everything I've done in my seeking of food and to just be free in my body. with food, understanding when glucose is released and what foods release it has been something that I've just kind of like I knew when I had my biome test and when. 

I was eating to my superfoods and eating really cleanly. I could feel the difference in my body. I knew I was insulin, insulin sensitive. So let's define that real quick. So insulin sensitive and insulin resistance. So insulin sensitive means you are burning glucose as your body has intended for you to burn it and not store necessarily storing it as fat, right?

And not that you can't be insulin sensitive and still store things as fat. You can, we're meant to be that way. But being insulin resistant means that you are not able to, or I shouldn't say not able it is much harder for you get to get to the space where you are burning glucose And i'm going to kind of try to explain that to you Why that happens really quick and we're not talking like diabetes is when You just can't process it, right?

And you're needing insulin to aid and aid and assist. But what happens for most of us, and this is why last week I went and I have a keto mojo, which is this cool little meter tracker you can get that you can test your blood sugar and your ketones. So I had this continuous glucose monitor, but that was only testing my