667. Why Perimenopause Exposes Everything Your Body Can No Longer Carry

0:00So I think there's two gifts of Perry, Menopause. One is the gift we did not ask for, but that we need, which is because this transition comes in and adds this workload. I think that it really slips us into this discomfort, and I think it's that discomfort that makes us edgy enough to change. I just want to say thank you. The fact that you're here means that you have trusted me with something so valuable these days, your time, and I do not take that lightly at all. So if you're listening because you're exhausted, you're gaining weight for no reason, losing your hair, getting really frustrated, or you've been told that everything looks normal. When you know deep down, something isn't right. I want you to know that I see you. I've been where you are, and that's exactly why I created this podcast. My mission is super simple. To give you the information, the hope, and the tools that I wish someone had given me years ago.

1:01So my goal is you get to stop wondering what's wrong with your body, and finally start getting your life back. So if these episodes have helped you add all, would you do me one small favor? Take it just a few seconds to follow the show, the little button in the upper corner, and then leave a review. Every follow and every review helps this podcast reach another person who's lying there awake at night wondering why they don't even recognize themselves anymore when they look in the mirror. Wondering what's happened to this amazing, energized, full-of-life person they used to be? You're helping them, and not only that, when you follow the show, you'll be notified about the hottest episodes everyone is listening to and everyone's downloading, along with any bonus episodes I drop throughout the month. Think of it as your insider pass. So thank you for letting me be part of your journey, and thank you for your time. Now let's get into today's episode.

2:01Fyroid and hormone health really do rely on a good functioning gut. So your gut bacteria actually helps to regulate estrogen, and it determines whether your body absorbs nutrients or not. Up to 80% of your immune system lives there too. So if your gut is off, then your hormones, your energy, your thyroid conversion, and your immune system are off as well. That is why I take a probiotic every day, but not just any probiotic. I don't just pop one that I got at Costco, because most probiotics will die in your stomach acid before they even reach your gut. That is why the only probiotic that I feel comfortable using literally every day is just thrive, because it's spore-based, and it's clinically proven to arrive 100% alive, making it up to a thousand times more effective than all the other probiotics out there.

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4:05Partners.justthrivehealth.jshthrive.com Then put that forward slash in there. Then you got to pop in the code again to check out. Dr. Amy for 20% off at checkout. Try it out. Take it. If you're using a cheap probiotic, get rid of it, throw it in the trash, replace it with just thrive. If you're over 40, which many of you are, and managing a thyroid or hormone issue, you know this feeling. You're doing everything right, but your energy is low. Your strength might be slipping at the gym. The scale definitely won't move. And you hit just this wall. You just can't push through. So that was me. And what finally changed wasn't another energy drink. It was starting essential amino acids.

5:06So here's the simple version. These are nine building blocks that your body can't make on its own. They're what protein breaks down into, except your body absorbs them almost instantly. So no heavy digestion required. They go straight to work, feeding your muscle, building your muscles, supporting your metabolism. And that's what we all need. So since I started taking them every day, sometimes two, three times a day, I've noticed better energy, faster recovery, muscle building, yes, at the age of 52, alongside my hormones, way more consistency in my workouts. And I genuinely feel leaner and stronger. I really do. I have more muscle now than I had in my 20s, when I was competing in bodybuilding competitions. More muscle now, because I'm feeding it the right way. So even on rest days, especially when I'm eating maybe a little bit less,

6:06I still take them to stay on track. The brand I choose and have been using now for four years is Keon. They're a sugar free non GMO vegan, easy to digest. And they taste amazing. That's why I put them in my water all day long. So if you're trying to lose fat without losing muscle, if you're on a GLP, you better, you had better be taking these every single day. So you want to go to get Keon.com forward slash thyroid for 20% off. That's GT K I O N dot com forward slash T H Y R O I D forward slash thyroid for 20% off. Get them. Nango, get the berry. They're just all good. They're all good. You will love it.

7:07Brie, I'm so excited to have you on today because like we were talking about off air, I just feel like I haven't given enough love and time and attention to my perimenopausal ladies. Now, all y'all out there listening, you know, I love you. You know, you fall right into the category when we're talking about thyroid optimization, when we're talking about progesterone, we're talking about testosterone. And then you're like, well, do I really do estrogen? Because you're all talking about these menopausal ladies that need estrogen. I don't know that I need that yet. Do I really need testosterone? I'm not quite sure yet. When do I bring in progesterone? I don't know. You're all talking about this for these 50 year old. But I'm only 35 and my cycle sucks and PMS sucks. And they talk about this PMDD. Yeah, I got that too. I mean, I got every PM problem that there is. But nobody's talking about that. So that's why I brought Bria on today. That's why I brought you on today, Bria, because you are the period whisperer.

8:09And I want to give that love to our pairing, that appausal crew, because they deserve time, love, and attention as well. And realistically, this is where it all starts in these years, right? This is when it seems to culminate. And I think there's a reason for that that really like sets us off. So thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. And I'm a super fan girl. I was telling you before. And I'm just going to shamelessly plug your book right now, because I, Dr. Amy was on my podcast, and I grabbed her book right away. I listened to the audio, and I was like, oh, it just was the most validating filling in the gaps as a functional practitioner in ways that I didn't understand. So I really think if you haven't, if you haven't already read it, go and read it. Oh my gosh, I love you for that. I didn't even pay her to say that on air, by the way. I did not. We're not. We're not at all. Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. So yeah, we had such a great time on your show. And immediately, like after we get off, like you have to, you have to come on the

9:12Thyroid Fixer Podcast because your energy, your knowledge in this area is just off the chart. So, I mean, sounds like you kind of had same pain to purpose story that a lot of us do in this case. I mean, use spent years of fitness and nutrition. You knew how to change your body. What began happening in your late 30s that made you realize that the strategies that had always worked for you before just weren't working now? Yeah, I think that it's very similar, as you said, to a lot of people where, and I was only 37 when I think what I like to think of as my whispers started to scream at me was really something that happened. And it began as this low grade fatigue that all of a sudden had me, you know, napping in the afternoon or like increasing some caffeine or even reaching for the sugar in the afternoon just to get through that day or pick my kids up from school or falling asleep in bed with them after reading books at like 730 at night. And then it escalated into, for the first time in my life anxiety, I had never struggled

10:16with that before into some digestive issues, certainly into wonky periods, into what I like to call undeserved weight gain, where nothing changes, but your weight changes. You're like, well, I don't understand. I don't deserve this. And really culminated in waking up, starting to wake up every night between 2 and 4 am in massive night sweats. And probably somewhere along there before then I should have gone to have a checkup or so, but it took me to that point where I was like, oh, I just couldn't even function anymore. I was like, between the anxiety and starting to almost feel depressed for the first time in my life, I was like, how can I help other people when I can't help my kids? And I went to the doctor who was really wonderful and did all the conventional labs and asked all the questions and then looked me in the face and told me I was a picture of health. And that was like, I was like, okay, you know, when you're like, don't cry, don't cry, keep it to the car. And that was sort of the beginning of like, okay, I am not ready to wave a white aging flag.

11:16I see that there are women older than me surviving and thriving. There's something I'm missing here and not really pivoted me into functional testing, more deeply understanding the female body, which I believe for everyone listening as a woman, I think women's health is like Latin. Nobody speaks it. Some people are just thinking as for people like you who are teaching it. I'm trying to teach it. And yet it is the root of all language. That's what it feels like. It's like, it is the basis of everyone's life on this planet. And yet nobody knows what they're talking about. So it's not our fault, but it was in this kind of more deep understanding and learning this language that I recognized. Oh, I'd missed a lot of pieces of the puzzle and nobody was even given me the picture to look at on the box kind of thing. Yeah, so that was how I got there. And then the rest of the beginning was just this kind of unraveling of habits that weren't serving me and really learning how to listen to these whispers before they became screams,

12:17which always seemed to smack us in the face around Perry, Manipause. Oh, exactly. So all right, here you are. You're going in with all the symptoms that everyone of my listeners has. And what were you offered? I'm just curious, were you offered birth control, were you offered anti-depressants? What were you given by conventional medicine? Because when you're talking about the language, I don't think conventional medicine speaks any of that language. Like they didn't even get that book in school on the language of women's health. So what exactly were you offered by conventional medicine? I mean, I was offered lexapro. So I was offered an SSR. Oh, there you go. She was pretty wouldn't not being super pushy about it, but that's what I was offered. And I was like, no, not doing that. I'm like, I've never been depressed in my life. This is new. Like I'm determined to get through this. And then mostly just a perspective that this is part of life. That's what I was offered.

13:17And again, I do have a mad respect for my, she was really quite good considering I think the trainings that she was given. I have heard horror stories from my clients of what they have been told, including, oh, you have a low libido, read an erotic novel, which still blows me away to this day. But yeah, that's what was recommended to me to like bridge the gap, maybe just to bridge the gap. Oh, and some sleeping pills. Yes. I was all there you go. Yeah. So then what did you do ultimately to fix you because you weren't getting the help in the conventional system? So what was your next step when you left that office? Yeah. I remember sitting after like crying in my car and thinking, okay, what do we do when we're feeling so overwhelmed? And I was like, I got to take things back to what I am calling now the kindergarten basics in my health. So we're out here all the time. Like we're overloaded by social media now by all these like bio hacks and tips and all these things to do. And I was crushing out a pretty intense workout, 45 to 60 minutes, 66 days a week.

14:20And of course, this is always our answer as women to ourselves. Like we're like, oh, I feel like junk. So I'm going to eat less and move more. And that doesn't work in this stage of life. But I took it back to the kindergarten basics, Amy, where I was like, okay, I need to slow down to speed up. And we can go into what that actually looks like. But I think ultimately that is one of the biggest things is that we have gotten really far away from the kindergarten basics of our health, like the foundational pieces of like eating three consistent meals for your blood sugar regulation and prioritizing that. Of things like basic functional movement, you and I both have a love for fitness. We share that. It's like it was my background. But I think I had no business doing the workouts I was doing at that time when I didn't have the energy to be doing them. So slowing down to things like just focusing on my walking, focusing on restorative and functional movement like yoga or even gentle Pilates or mobility and stability work, things

15:22like that that had really gotten shoved to the wayside in my training. And just prioritizing those things before I do anything else. And I think a big missed piece that I had really lost was pleasure. And it's hard to have pleasure. Like a lot of the times I sit across from clients and I'm like, what do you do for fun? That doesn't involve your kids. Right. Right. Like, oh, well, we done like no, it can't include a responsibility. It has to be like pure fun. And most people don't remember what they do for fun. They don't know anymore. They haven't been on the vacation in a long time. So there's this daily routine that I think still had to happen for me. And what I think a lot of us run into and I'll just share this because I think it's important is it's really hard to have fun when you're really stressed. You can't take a joke, pretty hard to orgasm, right? No, it's good. So even if you have to like rupture out or focus on that stress management for a few minutes a day, which I think is so boring for high achieving women in their head, but is so critical

16:22to balancing the scales. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's a great point that I actually kind of want to hover there for a minute because so many women, let's just take the libido piece. That's huge. We know that that's huge. And yeah, kind of going back to your comment about the doctor that offered your client and erotic and that told her to renaurotic. Now, like come to F on dude, like come on, that had to have been a guy. But anyways, of course, of course, but what we're talking about libido, I don't think even women understand that concept that you just said that you cannot, I'll let you rephrase it, that you have to have joy in in order to have any kind of like pleasure. I'm not saying that right, but expand on that again because women won't understand the stress connection, the cortisol connection. How in the hell are you going to want sex or even orgasm if your mind is somewhere else ruminating about all the stressors and responsibilities that you have?

17:24Yeah. I think obviously there's very real aspects of libido, like hormones and viral, like real actual things that are a part of that being there. Right? If lubrication is not a problem, then I think we can even kind of scale it back to really a lot of libido comes down to capacity for women. You know, I think it's not the same as much as it is an actual stress release and brings its own wonderful forms of hormones when we orgasm in order to like be in a space to be warmed up for orgasm, we need to have time and capacity. And if our cup is full of sludge, it's not the same thing as just like we hear the saying of like, oh, pour into your cup, fill your cup. Well, great. But if your cup is full of sludge stress in other words, then it doesn't really matter what you're pouring into it. It's like dark and murky and not water. I want to swim in, you know, or drink for that matter. So we have to prioritize ways to release or pour out the sludge in order to actually have capacity for pleasure.

18:24So we can't really, you know, it's hard to orgasm even if you're stressed. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, 100%. And I just love that point because so many women, especially in parimenopause, they are experiencing heightened stress because you have the stress of like you did. Your body's running away from you. You're having these symptoms that all the doctors are dismissing. They're telling you that you're normal. You have no answers. You have no hope. And oh, by the way, you have all of the pressures of being in your 30s and 40s, maybe changing careers, raising a family, you know, balancing your parents. You might be becoming a caregiver while you're taking care of little ones at the same time. So there's a lot of stress and pressure. I would argue more in the parimenopause state than there is in the menopause state for women. Yeah. And that's not even to speak about. I think not to ever diminish what our mothers and grandmothers went through, but we can't deny that we are exposed to more stressors environmentally than we ever have before.

19:26Our food is not as nourishing as it used to be. So there's, you know, you and I probably, I sit in front of a computer a lot of the time talking to people that we also have stressors from social media coming at us. Like this is how we digest our content now. So there's more stressors than ever inside and out of us. But I really think menopause is defined by like 365 days without a period. And congratulations. You've achieved it. I actually think there's some really wonderful gifts of that. But parimenopause is a transition. And everyone understands like if you move houses, you change jobs, you get married, you get divorced, you have a child, all transitions require a greater energy demand and where's that energy supply coming from. So I think that's really why it feels almost more stressful and more uncomfortable in parimenopause because you're still having to keep pace while the body is doing more and sometimes over like 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Now you just use the term gift.

20:28And you have said, we talked about this off air too. And you said that parimenopause is happening for us not to us that it is a gift. Now I'm just imagining the woman who's not slept in six months wanting to throw something at us right now. It's like zero. Don't throw anything. Why? Why? How do we turn this in our head to accept parimenopause as a gift? Tell us, Albria. So I think there's two gifts of parimenopause. One is the gift we did not ask for but that we need which is because this transition comes in and adds this workload. I think that it really slips us into this discomfort and I think it's that discomfort that makes us edgy enough to change. So I think it really highlights the shit that's not going well in our life and in our health that we have to begin to unravel because that I mean, I'm 45 this year. I mean, at 45, I still have, I intend to live close to 100. So I've got 55 years left of my life now is the time to fix it.

21:29So I think it's, it gives me shivers when I think about it. I know nobody wants it right now, but it is like your universal like grab you by the shoulders shake time to deal with it now. Mm-hmm. One gift. Yeah, you didn't, you didn't want it, but you need it. Right. And the other part of that I think, Amy, is that from puberty until parimenopause and menopause, we are hormonally hijacked every single month as women. Yes, it's in the name of procreation and putting like keeping the next generation alive, putting other people ahead of us. But when these hormones do drop, if we have taken advantage of our gift and if we have taken advantage of taking care of our health, what we get access to in our brain now that we're not being hijacked every single month is a consistency where we're not feeling like one type of person half the month and one type of person half the month. I think we actually get more confidence, more drive, more motivation. And we see that in the world of success. A lot of women reach peak success after menopause because of this.

22:35Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you there. And I would also say that going through that parimenopausal state, so we know in menopause and I've spoken about this so I can tell you as well, once you turn 50, your give a fucks just drop off. Like you have no more fuck bucks to spend. You really don't care really what people think anymore. You just, the things that you used to bother you just kind of don't anymore. In parimenopause, you're kind of still bothered. You're in that transition. I'm not giving a fuck, but you're not going there yet. So there are still fuck bucks. There's still some fuck bucks. So it's really, really difficult. And I want to acknowledge that that parimenopause is hard, but like Brea is saying, it doesn't necessarily have to be, you got to reframe how you look at it. So what do you do for your clients, for the women you're working with in parimenopause? What do you do to help them? And I know we have to unpack this whole concept of a health debt because that might tie into

23:38your answer. But what are we doing to help these poor ladies? Because now I have a whole new, like just a level of appreciation for my ladies in parimenopause because you got a lot tougher than the women over here that I'm in in menopause. What are we doing for them? So I think maybe I will explain health deck because it does kind of help me walk through why I do what I do and what those things are. Let's do it. Yeah. So I think so much in our body comes down to like energy supply and demand. And we can take some of the emotion out and make it look a little bit like a financial situation, which is where this concept of health debt comes from. When this energy supply to your body no longer meets the energy demand, this is what we call health debt. And health debt is a very scary place for the body. It's like a survival place. You talk about this, which I love. And I kind of think of it like, oh, we think I don't feel well. Like I said, and I want to go, I should work harder. But that's like getting thrown onto a deserted island and thinking the smartest next move

24:40is to go for a run on the beach. That's one of the smartest move, right? But this is what we've been told. We've been told, oh, you don't feel well. You should like exercise more and do better with your eating like eat fewer calories. But that just irritates a problem with the body that having this energy supply and demand debt. And as we know, when we are in debt, this is when the body beautifully designed to survive, does a few key things. First, it shuts down non-essential personnel. So in parry menopause, we start to see our reproductive hormones, which are not essential for life, get suppressed a lot faster. So I see a lot of women in practice who think they're kind of in those ages of 38 to 48 when they actually don't have a sex hormone production problem. They have a health debt problem. We have issues with the hydrinials and with the thyroid and with the gut and the whole system that's connected. And then secondly, the body starts to conserve. So that's where we really see that.

25:40You talk about this and explain it so beautifully in your book that like reverse T3, getting jacked up in the clients where all of a sudden the body is just totally stuck in conservation mode. And obviously there's more to it than that. But that's our health debt. And so what do we do when we need to get out of debt? Any financial expert is going to tell you, well, first we need to look at our highest expense debt, the demands on our body. So go to your credit cards and let's look at how many TV subscriptions that we don't really need. Let's look at the things that are costing the body energy that we can cut without too much pain, right? That is not a need. And so some of the first things I like to focus on with nutrition is obviously pulling out the inflammatory foods that we talk about a lot because not only do they not add nutritional value or energy supply, but they also cost the body energy in order to handle this inflammation that they create. So you're key things that we talk about, you know, too much alcohol, too much sugar. And I'm a big 80, 20 person myself. But I do think when we're trying to move the needle and how the closer you can go to all

26:42in for a few months, the faster you're going to get at a debt. That's what we want to look at it as. And then we want to really again, minimize any unnecessary energy expenditure through blood sugar swings. So then we focus on those like prioritizing your balance breakfast, your balance lunch, your balance dinner. So some really basic, again, kindergarten basics. Let's get us back to these basics in pulling ourselves out of debt. And like I mentioned with movement and everything, when you're in debt, you know, I really like to think about this, the credit card analogy because we're talking about, if you have credit card debt, you're paying 24% in interest. So working out, going to the gym when you are in energy debt like that is like deciding you think it's the right thing to invest on a 10% return investment when you've got a 24% accruing debt happening in the background. So this is where I think we really need to pull back on that fitness and focus on just the functional movement. Like if you're someone who walks every day all the time for your job, you might not even

27:45need to add in too much functional movement, but if you're a desk person like me, then we need to prioritize that movement in your life. So the first step of getting out of health that really is looking at what our lifestyle habits are where we can cut energy expenditure and then increase energy supply through our sleep habits, through our nutrition, through our pleasure and stress management. So those are your basics. You have to have the basics down pat before you add in hormones or any kind of BHRT. What is your take when do you bring in something like progesterone to maybe help her with that health debt of sleep? Like without progesterone, she's just not going to sleep or without progesterone, she's going to continue having these really heavy cycles and we know that's going to affect her iron stores, which will affect her fatigue and exhaustion and possibly other symptoms as well. When do you bring in BHRT? Yeah, it's a great question.

28:46And I will bring it in. I'm like you, I'm a big test don't guess person. So I will, I'm a big fan of running. I like a good Dutch test when it comes to looking at the hormones so we can see the hormone pathways. But that would be almost, I would bring it in almost immediately. If we have, if we're doing the things and the things aren't working, like if you're trying holding space for your sleep, but you just can't get there and we see that your hormone is low and that the pathways are clear, then I would bring it in as soon as they're comfortable with it personally because I think it's very hard to build health when you're not sleeping. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And how have you seen progesterone health with, because this again is something else I haven't really talked about on the show before, I just kind of throw it out there as a save. Yeah, progesterone will help with heavy cycles, but why can you explain the breakdown of why does that help with the PMS, PMDD, heavy cycles, irregular cycles in this perimenopause state? Yeah. So one, I think in perimenopause, what is common is that our progesterone starts to drop

29:50first. It also really feeds cortisol instead of us if we're in a stress state, which we already discussed, we're in perimenopause. And it has to be balanced with like almost like a teeter totter with your estradiol or with your estrogen. And I think a progesterone like our lets everybody get a long hormone. So you'll know, not only, you know, some people still can sleep okay, other people just want to kill everybody half of the month, which I appreciate. I get to be a little bit like that. It dies when my progesterone was a bit low. So it's really a critical piece in balancing out your estrogen. So keeping those hormones actually balanced. The obviously, of course, one understand, you know, is there more to the estradiol picture, more to the estrogen picture into why we're in balanced. But with regards to progesterone, it's a key component to keeping the estrogen balanced, which then keeps our period more regulated and normal with a normal healthy flow. So we don't have too much estrogen to progesterone, which is commonly what we will see if we're having very heavy periods.

30:51And then with our PCOS, which is now P-M-O-S, because it got renamed with that subset of ladies, I mean, you could see low progesterone as early as a woman's 20s. Are you, do you get clients of a very young age who might be experiencing that drop in progesterone early on and need all of the health that you're giving the paramedicosal ladies and working on their health debt? Do you bring that into a woman's 20s as well? So I primarily work with women over 35, but that is a very real thing. I have other practitioners I refer to for that. And yes, they do bring that in if it's the right piece, right? As I said, we want to, like, it's better that they're on some progesterone than a sleeping pill. So yeah, I've gone to bridge the gap. And then the work we always want to do is how are we supporting this so that, if, you know, especially if you're in your 20s, so that your own progesterone production is there if possible, so that we don't need to be on it forever at that stage.

31:53Yep, that totally makes sense. That makes sense. So okay, so a woman is listening right now. She recognizes that she is in significant health debt. Now that we brought it to her attention, she's like, oh, shit. Yeah, I guess I am. What does she do? Like, let's say it the first week, because we know these ladies, they don't want a big one on 25-step protocol. They don't want like a four month plan. What are the first few withdrawal she should stop doing and the first few deposits she should make? Yeah. This can get very individual depending on lifestyle and the demands and the things that you are doing. But for most of the women that I work with, they're often doing the things and the things aren't working. So they are working out every single day. And as much as I absolutely believe that putting on lean muscle is our gold standard for aging well. I do think that one of the quickest wins you can have is pull, take a break from your workouts. Again, I would be getting out like getting outside, getting in your seven to 10,000 steps

32:55and hitting like a yoga mat or mobility work. If yoga, the idea of yoga makes you squeamish, which it does for I feel like a lot of type a women. They're like, oh, yoga. But we're doing some mobility or nervous system work two to three times a week. I think that's a huge win for people. And then secondly, I think we need to prioritize again, as long as we're getting in your three meals, a big believer in like in 30 grams of protein at breakfast. And again, these are blanket statements and we have to pay attention and tweak. I know you always tell people like, you got to listen to your own body. And I think that's important. But if you need a starting point, please try to eat 30 grams of protein within two hours of waking up. It will shock you what it does for the rest of your day in terms of energy stability. And then I think hydration and minerals are so important. I think they're very underutilized as a quick win, making sure that you're getting minerals, your trace minerals in most of your water all day long because we know we burn through minerals when the body is stressed.

33:57And we know that every aspect of our body needs those minerals, especially our thyroid. And finally, I would say having that bedtime routine where we're winding down, we're not watching like one of the things I found so funny is when I was struggling with some of my issues I ran one of my own duchess and I could see my cortisol pattern elevate at night. And it was because I was watching the walking dead at the time. Which was my stress. Oh, I guess I really shouldn't do that at night. So giving yourself that bedtime routine like our child, but if you are doing these things already for like, yeah, I've already got these things down and you're still having symptoms of health debt, right, where you're having these heavy periods or you're not pooping every day or you're having bloating issues or you can't lose weight. These are all signs that the body is in health debt. If that's happening and you're doing the things then it is time, I think, to look under the hood and really look at a full functional lab workup. Yeah, yeah, because that really is, I mean, you see so many women in that area of our life

35:04that I talk about in the book called Thyropause. I mean, that's what we're seeing Thyropause in parimenopause and this is where thyroid issues show up. That's what I love about you is that you're blending this very logical advice, although especially as women, we do need it broken down and we need to understand why we can't watch the walking dead when we're winding down with our Netflix time, right? We need to understand how it impacts our and when we understand it, then we are more likely to do it. But I think that just what you just said, sometimes you need to look under the hood, you need to look a little bit further and test a little bit further because you could be dealing with something like a thyroid condition or maybe your testosterone is tanking earlier than what we anticipated or a low-register on and all of that. So that's what I love is that you're blending everything together. Yeah, thank you. I mean, a full thyroid panel is something I will always run, but I think what we get into when we understand that no one's system of the body is individual and operates on its

36:09own, that they're all connected, hormones, immune, digestion, detoxification, energy production, nervous system, oxidative stress, when we understand that they're all connected and that one going off means they're all going to have issues. It helps us, I think, not only have a place to see where everything, with the whole picture of where all the kinks and the energy supply hose to the body, where's our lowest hanging fruit? Why is this happening? And what is our blueprint? Because we don't have all the time in the day to be spending on ourselves. So what is the shortest path to getting where we want to go while getting relief at the same time? So I think it gives us, like, I find functional labs validating for people. I find them, helps them stay very compliant and it reduces phomo. Like, and supplement graveyards that I like to call it. It's like a reduced supplement graveyard where we're just going to buy random supplements off of Instagram because we think it might match our symptom and then it sits in one of

37:09the graveyards in our closet in our house. So I think it's the most direct thing for women who really want answers. So true. I absolutely love that. I love that. I'm always looking to save my people money, like throwing up these public service announcements, like, please don't do a thyroid healing masterclass and think you're going to dance on the son and heal your thyroid. I think it's not going to happen. So it's the same thing. It's the same thing. Don't do a supplement graveyard. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I have a few questions that these aren't rapid fire and that you need to give a one word answer. But they're just a list that I really want to run through and pick your brain on because these are top of mind for my ladies out there. Specifically for a paramedic husband and a pausal ladies were pulling you in as well because these are all just beneficial. And remember that Bria is a functional diagnosing nutritionist. Like she knows labs, she knows, FDA's are so much more than health coaches, so much more than nutritionists.

38:10Like they have gone through the functional medicine training. So this is why I want to kind of pick your brain and really get into the nitty gritty of what you do with your clients as well and what your belief system is. Fasting. Are you against fasting or against using fasting in a depleted body? Like it was in a head debt. Yes. I think fasting and health that is a terrible idea. I think that it can be a fun biohacking thing if you want to test it on yourself when you're not in health debt. But what we do know is that it is hard on the female hormones. I'm a much bigger fan of like timed eating. So we were eating and then we're not eating and then we're eating. Then we're not eating. So the body has time in between. But the reality is like if you eat breakfast at 8 and dinner at 6, you're getting a 14 hour fast at night. That's enough. That's enough if you read the fasting books. Mm-hmm. Very true. Very true. How much protein do midlife women typically need or parametriple ladies to bigly need? Yeah.

39:10I mean, I think everyone, you have to figure this out a little bit for yourself. But like if you start working towards 100 grams, you will know, like I don't think we should eat if we're not hungry. I don't really like that idea. But I think that you have to eat, I think you'll know this. If you start with 20 to 30 grams in a meal and see how long that along with the other macros you're eating keeps you full and satisfied. Your meals should keep you full and satisfied for four to five hours. So I think we need to start there, understand our baseline of what that is and recognize that when we start weightlifting and training, that might change. And we have to just listen. And if you're starting to pay attention to your body and notice like, oh, how long do that meal keep me satisfied for? Once you start lifting again, you might notice that metabolism revving your hungerier. So we eat a little bit more and we start with some protein. I wish I could give it a blanket, but if you need something to start with, I'm like work towards that 100 grams girl and don't force yourself. Okay.

40:10I was going to ask if you have a low end, like come on, don't go below XYZ. What would that be? I would say don't go below 60. Yeah. Yeah. That's where you're getting into like danger, danger zone of affecting your heart, your muscles, all of that. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So what is metabolic typing and how do you determine whether a woman functions better with more protein, more fat or more carbohydrates? Yes. I love metabolic typing. So metabolic typing for me was how I finally started to understand why some women could eat a more ketogenic diet and look amazing and like lose weight and feel shredded while others like look nauseous and sick. And also why some people can be glowy and doy being plant based and other people look like very unwell and they're underfed. Yeah. So really metabolic typing is the idea that our genetics or genetic cells have a rate that they turn food into fuel. And if you are a slow type, then that means if we want to have a good fire engine of

41:14a metabolism, then we want to give our slow burning cells faster burning fuel and faster burning fuel is usually lighter, leaner, low-puring proteins. So you're chicken breast, you're lighter fish, you're lean turkey, you're plant based proteins, lower fat because that's a slower burning fuel and probably a higher complex carbohydrate diet. So you might find you do better on that 20 grams, on that 60 grams for the day, that 60 grams of protein or 60 to 70 grams of protein depending on your muscle capacity and your fitness level. Whereas if you are a fast metabolic type, then that means your cells turn food into energy very quickly. So we want to feed it slower burning fuel to have that nice steady rich fire that's going. And slower burning fuel is going to be more of that ketogenic concept of higher purine meat. So your organ needs, your red needs, things like that, your more dense meats, your dark chicken and higher fat content and lighter carbohydrates, like primarily fiber-filled vegetables

42:18we'll be looking at less starchy carbs. And you know this, Amy, I think by again paying attention. So I do not love tracking food. I find it really annoying. Yeah. And I think the really important thing to do once a year, four a month, I think we need to do it for a month as women if you're cycling. So in pariamenapause because our needs change throughout the month. Again, diphtophenapause, we're not going to have to deal with that anymore. It's going to be the same needs all month long. But for now, if we just pay attention and I'm not into tracking calories, I'm more into tracking, what did you eat and how did it make you feel one to two hours later? Your food should give you nice, steady, clean energy from breakfast to lunch, from lunch to dinner and from dinner to breakfast the next day. And so I think that's how it's by testing a little bit on yourself. You can take a metabolic typing test, but at the end of the day, you're still going to have to pay attention to what your body says to you.

43:18So you can almost skip that test, although it is a really cool test. And just have some stake at breakfast and see how it makes you feel versus. One of your days, yeah. Yeah, I love that. Okay, strength training now. What is the minimum effective dose of strength training? How often should women be adding in this strength training component and possibly moving away from more cardio and more hit training? Yeah. I think if you want to make changes to your body, minimum is two times a week, always. I don't think we need to be doing more than four days a week unless you're trying to win a body competition here. And I think that again, at the end of the day, you need to listen to your body. If you go into the gym and you're achy and you're tight, then what you need is not more contraction. What you need is more elongation. So we need to pay attention and ask our body. You know, our most important relationship is the one we have with ourselves. I think, and if you know how to treat your body, then it's going to make the rest of your

44:20life easier. And the only way we build trust is through communication. So listen to her, set a plan and be flexible with that plan, you know, especially in parimenopause, because again, as we shipped into that loodial phase, that PMS shark week is people call it, we know our metabolism kicks out like upwards of burning 250 to 350 additional calories per day, which is explains a lot. Nobody taught that to us, but that explains like what happens when you're burning more energy, you're hungrier. So if you're not eating more, you're going to have more cravings. Well, there's our cravings. If you're not eating more, you're going to be cranky. Well, there's our crankiness and our PMS and you're going to be more tired. So it starts to become really logical when you understand like, oh, I'm burning more calories. I either need to eat more or fall prey into the cliche of what it means to be a PMS woman. Yes, yes, exactly. Okay. And two last questions that I have to pick your brain on. The most overrated parimenopause strategy.

45:22Give me that and then give me the most underrated. Okay. I think the most underrated one will start there is, oh, God, these are really hard. Amy. I did not mean for this to feel like school, but I know I know there's not a lot of getting into the controversy. Well, okay, do you want to go? You want to go into I was going to ask you about peptides too. So maybe over hyped peptides. Yeah. I thin. Yeah, we can talk about peptides real quick. So I think again, time and place, time and place for things, but I think that the problem is that people are again, doing things without testing. Like there are real situations where, you know, if insulin resistance is your issue and you're doing all of the other things, it might make sense for you to use a peptide in the dosing that your body biologically understands. But why are we buying them from an I do use peptides in my practice, but I don't think you should be buying them from your sister's mother's aunt online.

46:25I think that you should know what your blood sugar and insulin resistant and inflammation markers. And I think you need to know what's going on in your gut before you slow it down. So there's, I just think let's be smart about this. I know we all want things yesterday, but these are tools that are like could potentially be the icing on your cupcake or just you eating icing and getting gut rock. Like let's, you may use them for what they're meant to be. I literally just, I have a program called total thyroid fix. We run it a couple of times a year. I did a training with them, like one of our live meetings right before I came all with you. And I did not know that you said this. I literally just said this an hour ago. Like I was talking about peptides. I'm like, you guys peptides, whether we're GLPs, we see what I said, they're like the sprinkles. No, they're like the icing on the cupcake. You need the cake. You can't have a cupcake without the cake. Then you're just going to have icing. Well, I just don't have a cupcake. I literally just had that because you're right. You need to have that foundation piece before you start adding on peptides.

47:28Yeah. And then it can be a very fun biohacking thing that yields some really cool results for you. But again, you have to have the base in order for it to be icing and sprinkles on top. You got to do it. You want to avoid it. And best case scenario, if you don't need the peptide and you use the peptide, you won't get any results. So now you just spent a lot of money and stuck something in your body and you don't get any result. It's not going to fix a poorly converting thyroid. It's just not, it's not going to do it. It's not going to fix low hormones, those types of things. So we have to fix those things first and worst case scenario is that you feel horrible. And you should not, this is a really important message. PEPIs should only make you feel better. There should never be a time where they're not making you feel better. So if you are on one and it's not making you feel better, it's time to go off of that and do something else. Yes. Exactly. And there's the mic job moment right there. And there it is. Oh, bring it. This has been so much fun. I mean, we go on and on and on and talk Pyramidiposal day long.

48:30This has been perfect for my Pyramidiposal ladies to take and digest. Now, what if they want to find you and work with you? Can you tell us where we can find you and tell us about your clinic? Yeah. Absolutely. So I love to work primarily with people one on one. That's my favorite thing. But I do offer a lot of my coursework inside of a community called Midlife Mojo. But that's way is to either come hang out on Instagram at Bria underscore period underscore whisper or go to Bria the period whisperer.com. And the one thing I will say is Amy is going to be is on my podcast, which I am so excited about that episode will be coming out soon. Come and check out the period with spur podcast and support how awesome she is. Oh, thanks, girl. And we'll put all the links down the show notes too. So thank you all for listening. Share this with your girlfriend that's going through paramedicol. I see my menopausal ladies can hear this as well because this is a shareable episode. This is practical. Practical tips. Take a ways that you need to do even before you add on the B.H.R.T.

49:33and before you add on the peptides, you need to do Bria's health, debt, advice, follow her, listen to her, work with her, all the things and share this episode with a friend. And thank you once again for listening. The information shared on the Thiratfixer podcast is intended solely for informational and educational purposes. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, always consult with your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, treatment or before making changes to your healthcare regimen, including medications, supplements or other therapies. Use of the information provided in this podcast does not establish a doctor patient or client provider relationship between you and the host or between you and any other healthcare professionals featured on the show. Any medical opinions or statements made by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or affiliated parties. Statements regarding dietary supplements or health related products mentioned in this podcast have not been evaluated by the FDA.

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