Brain Changes in Women Over 40 (and how to navigate them)

decided okay I'm going to do a a whole podcast on hear all my hacks and it seems as if you all loved that so thank you for sharing it um and again as always thank you for your beautiful reviews and because of that I'm back with another solo episode and this one is actually straight out of my new book the next book that I am writing and it's about the brain changes that happened to women over 40 Dr Mindy here your body is in a War Z different parts of the brain get activated depending upon how stressed you are when you look at it from that inflammatory it's interesting I mean that has some Merit to it for sure and you can't control everything and what about the a woman who is not pregnant but [Music] she's okay resetters I am bringing you another solo episode I just want to start off by thanking you all we've had so much so many positive messages about my solo episodes specifically if you haven't heard the one where I talked about why you're struggling to lose weight I saw so many people who are reading fast like a girl that were watching my YouTube videos and they had questions about what do they do when they get stuck that I decided okay I'm going to do a a whole podcast on hear all my hacks and it seems as if you all loved that so thank you for sharing it um and again as always thank you for your beautiful reviews and because of that I'm back with another solo episode and this one is actually straight out of my new book the next book that I am writing and it's about the brain changes that happened to women over 40 and to give you some context I realized that there's all different ages listening to this podcast but to give you some context my my personal menopause story really started at 40 I had one goal when I turned 40 I wanted to be in the best shape of my life I wanted to fit into a very specific pair of skinny jeans I had a number on the scale I wanted and so going into my 40s in the most fit version of me was a huge goal that I was shooting for and I accomplished it I hit 40 and I loved the body I was living in by 43 within that three-year period everything fell apart and I did not change one thing I was still doing the same Fitness routine the same eating routine everything was the same but in that three-year period something had shifted in my body that all of a sudden had my body feeling much so much more different and I wrote about this in the menopause reset and you know the biggest thing that I started to notice was I I couldn't sleep um I was getting in night sweats I was gaining weight for no particular reason I was really edgy and irritable it was very easy to to um upset me and I could just see of sort of watching myself from the outside in and thinking this isn't me I I don't know what I did different and I decided at that moment that I'm I'm not scared to go ask for help even with everything that I know about hormones I felt like you know sometimes we can become very blind to our own healing path it's hard to to walk a healing path by yourself and we so often need somebody there walking it along with us and so I I reached out to friends to try to understand my per menopausal journey and I was met with very different responses um some people said yep welcome to Perry menopause it's brutal and you know buck up it's going to be a tough ride um my older sister told me I should probably start to think about getting on anti-depressants now um I had um friends who were five and six years older than me that told me um you know just painted the hor horror story of how much worse it was going to get and so here I was at 43 thinking I don't I don't accept that path I'm not going to take that path and so I went to uh a friend of mine who's an OB um very well-respected OB I I live in Northern California she lived in my town our kids went to the same school together and I asked her you know what what could I do for these per menopausal symptoms that were showing up and her response to me was Mindy I I have a practice full of patients of women like this and my medical textbooks have failed me I don't know what to do I want you tell me what you're doing like she wanted to learn from me and I walked away from that moment and that was the moment at 43 that I decided my menopause symptoms were my in my hands that I had to find the solution that I wasn't going to find it in the love in in great friends I wasn't even going to find it in my OB nobody seemed to understand what to do so I went deeply into the research to figure it out and what I discovered is that there were five lifestyle changes that needed to happen and I write about those Lifestyle Changes in the menopause reset it's a very quick and easy book meant to be get any woman in the darkest moment of her par menopausal years get her up and going um so you can the the the topic of this video is not the these five lifestyle changes but you can go read that in in the book and I still stand by those five lifestyle changes I think that they are are profound um and you know just to touch on them I will tell you that fasting is one of them varying your fast varing varing your Foods as one of them repairing your microbiome detoxing and slowing down the rushing woman um those were the five that I really leaned into and I explain it in in much detail in the metapa reset and those when I applied those five uh Lifestyle Changes to my everyday life The Hot Flashes went away the weight dropped um my mental Clarity came back I was able to hold on to information um and I was sleeping better it it I could just feel the old version of me come back online and at the time I started to discover those five changes I was even like my mid-40s I thought I was going into menopause I I had um I was spotting and I thought okay this is it I must be going into menopause but when I applied those five lifestyle changes I actually started getting a more natural rhythm with my cycle again so by the time I was 48 49 I was having the best periods of my life there was no PMS um there was no spotting there was no I mean it was it was like oh my God this is a nothing I could probably continue to do this for the rest of my life um and then around 52 I started to feel the cognitive changes that happened to my brain so my 52nd year um I saw a dramatic dip in how many periods I had I must have had about four periods and my 53rd year um I I I was my year that I actually had no cycle so I'm doing this recording uh it is October 9th I believe um my actual 54th birthday is coming up on Sunday and ironically it also happens to be my year without a cycle so I'm officially postmenopausal and um but but what was really interesting in those final per menopausal years and the transition year into postmenopausal is how much my mental state changed for the worse and that's what I really want to dive into because just like I went to go figure out what I need to do for hot flashes and sleep and weight loss I have been on a journey for the last two years diving into the science really getting clear what is happening mentally to women as we go through and transition into our postmenopausal years and this episode I'm going to explain it to you um again you are getting information straight out of a book I'm writing um we've been discussing this information in detail in my recar at Academy so if you want to play with this information more come join us over there until the book comes out for now I hope you find yourself in the information I'm about to reveal to you in the research that I have found and more importantly I hope that you see you have more options than just deciding to put on HRT you know a hormone replacement patch or to lean into bioidenticals I am not opposed just so we're clear I am not opposed to taking what we call an exogenous hormone I have done I have brought experts to you all here hoping that you all will find your own individual path with those but I have to say that there is not a one-size fits-all when it comes to hor hormone replacement therapy everybody has to find their own way and that is leaving us still in the dark of how do we nav navigate the vast amount of symptoms that are showing up I was recently in uh England uh on a book tour and one of the first places that I stopped was I was in London and I stopped at Amazon UK and this beautiful woman there has pulled together a menopausal support group for the women who are working at Amazon UK in this corporate high stress environment but are going through the hormonal changes that menopause per menopause offer us and she told me that one of her driving factors for creating this support group is that this from about our mid 40s until our early 50s is one of the more common times for women to leave the workplace that they can't handle the stress loads that they find it so overwhelming that their next choice is to get out and her concern is not only for that woman but her concern is for the companies that are losing money with this Mass Exodus of per menopause and menopausal women leaving because they don't understand what's going on with their brain and they are in a culture that doesn't understand what's they're going through and so what you're about to hear is what I explain to this group of women in Amazon UK the I call it our neurochemical armor it starts to shed and in that shedding of our neurochemical armor our brains are left raw and exposed and without the resources to be happy without the resources to think straight without the resources to hold on to new information without the resources to calm ourselves and we don't understand ourselves so we find ourselves often very reactionary overwhelming by stress lashing out at people around us struggling to perform at certain parts of our life and my hope with this podcast and this book that I'm now writing that will come out um hopefully next year um I hope you will see yourself and start to understand that there is so much more you can do than just lean in to a bioidentical or a hormone replacement now I'm if if those are working for you phenomenal but I want want to make sure because the our hormone replacement therapy isn't perfect for everybody we need a big toolbox for menopause we need a big one so my feeling is that you're going to want to make these five lifestyle changes that I spoke about but you're also going to want to talk bring in especially for cognitive um focus and Clarity and um enhancement of your brain you're going to want to bring in the tools that I'm going to give you you today so that was a very long way of just setting you up to understand what this is so here we go at around 40 I want you to remember that your ovaries start to go into retirement so your whole system your hormonal system is going to start to slow down that process is not overnight that takes about 10 years the most common age for a woman to go through menopause is somewhere in her early 50s between 52 and 55 is the best time because remember you want to go in late if you go into menopause early that also means you've lost estrogen and progesterone and so that affects your brain cognitively so at 40 your your ovaries stop releasing as many eggs which means means that you are left with less progesterone less estrogen and and in some cases you can lose testosterone but that's a that's a whole another discussion that we'll talk about at another time but when you are losing estrogen and progesterone because there are less eggs being released you are not just losing those hormones you are losing I'm going to count them right here 1 2 3 four five six six other neurochemicals and I'm going to go through these neurochemicals right now so not only are you losing estrogen and progesterone but you're losing these six other neurochemicals that kept your brain working right that is eight neurochemicals so if you do not feel like yourself anymore there is a neurochemical explanation eight neurochemicals that affected your moods affected your behavior that that that kept your memory in check eight of those this isn't just one eight of them are gone and there are things you can do to bring back these six neurochemicals that were stimulated by estrogen and progesterone and I'm going to walk you through those today but what I want you to see is this bigger picture of what is happening and why you don't experience it Joy why you can't think straight why you are having trouble sleeping why you're anxious all the time it is not your fault you have lost eight neurochemicals here's how this works there are three forms of estrogen so you have um estradiol estriol and estrone estradiol is the Diva she is the one that we need to celebrate that we need to to speak so highly of I do not know why estrogen seems to get a bad rap I wrote about this in um in fast like a girl I'm like why do estrogen get such a bad rap she's the queen well estra diol is the Diva she has been showing up for you over and over and over again she is the most powerful form of estrogen and she has allowed an egg to be released but if you listen to my interview with Dr Feliz gers a few weeks ago she mentions that every single organ system in our body has a receptor site for estradiol so think about this for a moment when you had a cycle what happened was around day eight or nine estral was peeking peeking peeking maybe around day 10 she hit her Peak which allowed an egg to be released but it wasn't like she just went away when she hit her Peak all of that estr went into all these receptor sites throughout your whole body and kept you cardiovascularly well kept your muscles and your joints in good shape helped your kidneys and your digestive system and your brain so when you lose estradiol you are losing a major stimulator of all of these organ systems now we could easily look and say well throw on a patch and now you're going to bring estradi back but at some point you're never getting the same amount of estral there's it does not biologically make sense for a 55y old woman to have the same estradi amount as a 25y old woman so even your patch over time the dosage has to go down and estradiol stimulated some wickedly powerful neurotransmitters the first is dopamine so when estradi all peaked when she was growing in your body from like day one to day 10 and then she Peaks during ovulation day 12 you if you had a cycle and if you are per menopausal and you still have a cycle pay close attention you're probably more motivated in the front half of your cycle um and uh you your your brain is probably much more focused because that's what dopamine does it gives you focus it gives you motivation and it gives you a desire to go and build a life for yourself to go and Chase a goal to go and work out that is dopamine it is the molecule of more but estradi didn't just secrete didn't just stimulate dopamine she also stimulated serotonin specifically the world famous receptor site that's getting a lot of attention right now in the Psychedelic world and it's the 5 ht2a receptor site for serotonin and estradi stimulated that so in this front half in this follicular phase or if you've been in ovulation if you've been uh following fast like a girl I call it the power phase one and manifestation phase you were getting a massive dose of dopamine and serotonin tonin that kept you happy those are our happiness hormones now it didn't just stop there she also stimulated a hormone called acetylcholine acetylcholine helps you hold on to information uh estrad also stimulated a a steroid called bdnf bdnf is like Miracle go grow for your brain and made it so that your brain could hold create new neuronal Pathways so you could learn new things bdnf is massively powerful to keep the brain sharp as the years go on and estral stimulated that and she also stimulated oxytocin this is the most recent thing that I found that is just blowing me away so check this out this is how we're really yet your body is designed when you had a cycle the days leading up to ovulation as estral went up so did oxytocin oxytocin followed estradi okay well what does oxytocin do for us oxytocin is our bonding hormone it makes us feel connected to people so happens when estrad goes away we start to feel disconnected this is a major thing that menopausal women are going through they just don't feel connected to their children to their to their jobs to their to their um friends like there's a disconnection it's one of the chapters I'm I'm writing about in this new book is ending the loneliness that happens to women as they go through menopause because as estrad goes away so does oxytocin so one sex hormone or as I love Dr gers says one life hormone made one two three four five different neurochemicals go away that kept you alert focused happy and motivated so if you're 48 years old and you're hearing this for the first time I want to reach out and give you a hug because I want you to realize that it is not your fault that you feel disconnected it is is not your fault that you're struggling to hold on to information it is not your fault that you can't read a book like you used to read a book and hold on to that information that is a neurochemical shift that happened and I want to give you the solution for it but first I want you to know that I see you I hear you and and we're going to walk this journey together because so many women are feeling so lonely and so out of it in these years because of this neurochemical loss this is a large large reason why women kill themselves the most common time for a woman to commit suicide is 45 to 55 because she lost all of these happiness neurochemicals with the exit of one sex hormone that we need to scream from the the rooftops if that is new to you please share this episode out this is what I'm trying to get out to the world now progesterone progesterone also influenced some of these happiness neurochemicals but had a major influence on Gaba and Gaba is what calms you it is what is keeps your your nervous system in in a more um relaxed state so if you think about it I can only use myself as an example on this one like I just noticed that I started to react to stress much differently um when in my late 40s it was just easy to to get me to flare up and I think it was because I lost all the the yummy neurotransmitters that kept me happy but I also lost Gaba Gaba that kept me calm so and I and many of you are experiencing the same thing so that means we also have to really discuss this differently with those around who are closest to us and and um i' I mentioned this on if anybody listened to Steven Bartlett's um interview the diary of the CEO when he brought me on to talk about hormones and fasting um you know he asked how my husband and I talk about hormones and I said I at the end of a long day I will say like I'm neurochemically depleted that was such a big day I need to reboot my neurochemicals I need to take some time to myself to bring these neurochemicals back online that is a much easier thing to say to the people you love than to say to lash out and blame everything at them so I think it's really important that we take ownership over this moment and we need to have some solutions so with that in mind here's what I want to walk through I'm going to go through each one of these neurochemicals and I'm going to talk about what science is saying that we can do to bring these neurochemicals back online and um again in the book I'm writing I have all the the studies will be cited I have lists we're going to put together a huge list so you can see very clearly if you're missing certain qualities in your life what your options are this is literally the first time I've publicly gone through this in this much detail so until the book comes out this is a really good start for you all to work on dopamine dopamine think of it it's the molecule of more but it's what drives you to a goal so I've heard a lot of women say they don't feel like working out anymore once they go through per menopause yeah their dopamine goes down so their motivation to work out may be less um some of them the motivation to work out relationship problems might be less so there there's a lot of places that dopamine shows up for us um we also can get like I can tell you that I have found over the years over um my my per menopausal years that I've just become more and more and more of a dopamine junkie because I'm my body's not making as much of it so I have to go searching for it it's like addicted to go search for for it so it'll search for it in buying things you know it'll search for it in eating food it'll search for it in new experiences I just came back from four weeks in Europe and I am in the process of resetting my dopamine system because it was so exciting so many things going on that I was like I gotta I gotta reset this system and resetting your dopamine system is no fun it's been last couple days have been a little brutal but I know that they're really going to help uh help me be able to get small Joys out of life when you're dopamine saturated nothing brings you Joy the trick with dopamine is that you want to create M momentum you don't need motivation with your life or your goals you need momentum this means you want to create small little wins so if you are trying to lose weight and it feels like a daunting task and you're in your per menopausal years we need dopamine to get you to the gym so maybe but maybe you can't get to the gym or maybe you can't get out and walk um or for for or go work out for like an hour so just allow yourself to go on a five minute walk just put your sneakers on go on a five minute walk and when you come back in high five yourself and and and acknowledge that you made it out the door with your sneakers on your feet and you got out and you went and did something good for you even if it's 5 minutes so if you're struggling with a task chunk it down stop trying to take it on in this big totality because you don't have as much dopamine you got to create new dopamine hits for yourself the other thing to remember is that dopamine loves novelty so switch things up you might have to switch up your routine where maybe you're fasting in the morning maybe all of a sudden you fast in the evening maybe you are driving a certain way to work every day now it's time to drive a different way maybe you need a a new gym to go to you got to go find dopamine will love it if you can go into new experiences so go and find those new experiences to keep your motivation up okay second neurotransmitter that estra dial um stimulates is serotonin so when we hit a goal so let's use I recently bought a new car I love my new car it's the nicest car I've ever driven in my entire life and when I got in it the dopamine was just filling my brain it was like wow this is a dream come true and that dopamine lasted maybe a couple of weeks every time I got in I got another dopamine hit and what ended up happening was after a few weeks of driving it I didn't have that euphoric dopamine hit but I had that yummy serotonin hit that was like I love this it didn't feel like I need to go get more because dopamine always want you to go get more this is why like when you lose weight you know if you lose 10 pounds you have a momentary like woohoo and then you're like B maybe I need to go lose more that's dopamine but serotonin should come in and serotonin should say you did a good job let's enjoy this and serotonin is sort of that fulfilled happiness you get where you just are riding along feeling good and it doesn't feel like you need more it feels like you got enough and this feels wonderful that's serotonin so dopamine gets you to the goal serotonin Pats you on the back and says job well done enjoy this for a moment estral stimulated serotonin so one of the things that I noticed in my clinic for many years was how many women who had these amazing lives would come in to me and say my husband's incredible um I live in a gorgeous home I have everything I could ever want and I don't have any joy and I have no motivation to work out to get healthy to do anything so I'm lacking motivation and I'm joyless and there's nothing on paper that shows that I should be that well that's the combination of estradiol going away causing dopamine and serotonin to diminish so you I already talked about how you can bring dopamine back online how do you bring serotonin back online now this is where it gets really fun so the first place that you can start to raise uh serotonin is with fasting and this is really cool it's a study I didn't even put in the book and fast like a girl so you're getting it here for the first time it's actually going in the new book um and it showed that a 9h hour fast was enough to upregulate the five to stimulate serotonin by stimulating the 5 ht2a receptor site is what and and and I assume it's doing this through ketones the the study didn't say that but it stimulates this receptor site that up regulates serotonin and gives you an antidepressive effect so small doses of fasting it doesn't have to be a big dose it can be a small dose a 9-hour dose and you can have that anti-depressive effect that's huge this you know I get asked a lot like well what what's the number one thing that menopausal and per menopausal women should do and I and I still stick by fasting because not only is it going to help you with weight and and mental Clarity but it also helps with things like depression like we're seeing with the serotonin receptor now that's not your only tool the second tool that you have is exercise but not just any exercise if you want to get more serotonin intensity matters the higher the intensity exercise the more you're going to stimulate that receptor site that will upregulate serotonin so this is why I love short hit training style exercises I um we do in my reset Academy we do a um Saturday morning workout where we do 15 20 minutes of high-intensity workout followed by Community talk and it it's hitting all kinds of neurochemical um uh upswings this one morning in our Academy the workout gets serotonin the community talk gets oxytocin which I'll talk about in a moment and and giving my my Community new information stimulates neuroplasticity bdnf and acetyl choline so I know that this one Saturday morning is having this tremendous effect on you know everybody that sits there and listens but it's the high-intensity exercise that makes a big difference now something really interesting I experienced um when I was in abisa um I met these beautiful men that have a comp uh a a um company I guess you would call it called sanctum you can go look them up it's called we are sanctum if you're in Europe they're very popular in Europe and we're bringing them to the US because I fell in love with these men and I want their work to integrate with mine so we're working on a collaboration project right now but what we disc what happened is they were headphones that you put on your ears and one of the men Luke he led us through an exercise class that was like a mixture of a iics dance CrossFit yoga and he the music that he put in was very inspirational and he would bring in the in and out this incredible upbeat Musical music with really incredible positive affirmations and then he had a microphone and he was leading us through this workout that was like something I'd never seen and um and um helping us stay focused and motivated to get through the workout so he didn't realize it but he was hitting all the neurochemical explanations I kid do not I left I was exhausted when I walked into that workout I had been traveling for three weeks when I left I was at one of the happiest I'd ever been like in years and I know it's because it stimulated serotonin because it was such a high-intensity exercise so again stay tuned I'll be bringing these beautiful men to our community more but I say if you are down and out and you are perimenopausal and you have lost serotonin please look at doing short bursts of high-intensity exercise it will bring serotonin back online and then the third thing we have for for serotonin is something newly emerging and um more and more people learning about it and it's micro doing psilocybin so psilocybin is a mushroom it has it's it's a psychoactive mushroom when you micro do it you do not get the psychoactive piece you only get the stimulation of the 5ht to a receptor site and so it upregulates serotonin and gives you a level of Happiness not an over-the-top happiness a very um just contented lovely feeling and there is great research out on micro doing psilocybin um there's another uh uh I guess you would call it a psychedelic that many are using or are experiencing as Pedro also has great research without the psychedelics piece of it so um in the new book I will be talking about what the science is saying there but it's pretty profound its ability to increase serotonin so that's dopamine and serotonin then if we go into acetylcholine and bdnf estradiol stimulates acetylcholine and bdnf which is um neurochemicals that help us hold on to memory and so if we don't have estradi stimulating these neurochemicals then we've got to find other ways to create neuro what we call neuroplasticity so neuroplasticity is creating new neural Connections in your brain um I like to call these new connections baby neurons that they're like little baby neurons in your brain that are ready for you to train them how to think they're ready for you to hold on to information so that you can do amazing things in life I'm I'm a lifelong learner and so I love learning and when I started to lose estradiol losing acetylcholine and bdnf and I couldn't hold on to information as well that bummed me out so I had to go find new ways to create these new neuronal connections to regrow my baby neurons so that they could start to grab on to new information so here's here's what I found and and there's a ton of research that I'm again putting out in the book but here are some of the things that I found um we're back at exercise hit training high intensity will increase bdnf which is brain fertilizer for the brain so now you're increasing your ability to hold on to new information and you're increasing serotonin from one 15 20 minute hit training workout high-intensity workout which is amazing right so weightlifting when you break down muscle what you're doing is you create a metabolite that goes up into the brain and it stimulates bdnf so we've talked a lot hopefully you've if you've been following me or you've um in any capacity I talk about this a lot is the importance of building muscle so when we build muscle remember weightlifting what you do is you break muscle down and the intelligence the body goes in and builds it back up stronger which is amazing it's in that breakdown that a metabolite gets formed that also makes your brain stronger and lets you hold on to information a really great way to absorb information is to listen to a podcast like this um while you're working out if you want to hold on to this information if this is like you know you're trying to take notes go back and listen to this again while you're walking or while you're working out especially if you're doing a high-intensity or a weight training because you're going to get all that bdnf so that you can hold on to the information more so high intensity training um learning something new so the the science that I'm found has been on learning a new language um and that language what happens think about this from your brain survival perspective that when you start to force your brain to learn a new skill the brain is so smart that what it will do is create new neuronal Pathways so that it can take that information in and hold on to that skill which is why whenever we learn something new it feels very awkward because there's not a neural connect neural network to to hold on to it so that makes sense so we have to as we go through menopause and per menopause and into those postmenopausal years we have to put ourselves in new environments where we're forced to learn new skills we also benefit from learning something new like a new language I can tell you at 53 I have a goal next year I am learning Spanish and um I've already got it set up the tutor the place I know what I'm doing when the New Year hits that is on my top priority um a it's time to learn Spanish I live in California and I I you you know it's time to learn another language I can't believe I've gone 53 years without that but B I'm doing it to increase neuroplasticity in my brain so I also noticed when I was traveling especially in another country how you know you you're trying to figure everything out from the currency is different to the language is different to you walk into the hotel rooms things are different the way the ordering off menus is different all of that is so good for creating new neuronal n works the worst thing you can do as you go through menopause is keep doing the same thing being in the same environment hanging out with the same people um talking about the same things listening to the same news channels stop it you need to experience new environments you need to get around new people you need to learn new skills it forces that neuroplasticity and if you don't now we're looking at dementia and Alzheimer's you have to go make neuroplastic changes in your brain can't emphasize that enough um we also know that there's two other ways to increase neuroplasticity um sleep is one so when you go to sleep at night what happens is something called neuronal pruning where neurons that no longer serve you are pruned away and new neuron neuron networks are coming together to help you in what you learned that day um if you haven't listened to my episode that I did with Dr John laurance we talk about the blue spot and the blue spot is this part of the brain that he discovered that is gathers all the information from the day and when we go to sleep at night it transfers that information to the hippocampus which is the middle part of the brain that stores long-term memory and access it's like a library it'll access memories from the past so in order to make room in the hippocampus when we sleep the hippocampus has to prune back some of the memories it may not you know may not be at you may not be accessing May no longer be useful for you neurons that aren't keep keeping information traveling across them but then it also allows for the information from the blue spot to come in and store what it learned that day into the hippocampus for long-term memory so if you think about what an amazing day to improve learning and to improve neuroplasticity and brain power for a woman over 40 it would look like a good night's sleep you wake up in the morning you do a hit training in the morning in a fasted State maybe you even lift some weights and then you work on learning new pieces of information throughout that day um and then at night you get a good night's sleep so that information could be downloaded into long-term memory it's that simple but we have to be intentional about it if we're losing our memory so want to point that out okay and then the last neurotransmitter that um estradiol is stimulating is called oxytocin it's my favorite neurotransmitter and it's what connects us and you know and I again full transparency I one of my promises to all of you is that I'll always show up the most authentic person of you know that I can be I'm not going to put on any face for anybody and um one of the things I've noticed as I've gone through menopause is just feeling less connected to people I love and I I realized that it's an oxytocin thing that I'm lost oxytocin because estradi has been down but that doesn't mean I don't need oxytocin oxytocin is what bonds us so there's a lot of ways that we can get oxytocin um getting out for a hike in nature nature will bring down cortisol breathing in the the air from nature can increase oxytocin um smiling so I really you know I like to smile I like to laugh um I like to play and I have to constantly remind myself to not take life too seriously to to smile at people at the grocery store to smile at people as I'm going along my life because not only am I giving them oxytocin but I'm also giving myself oxytocin so that that look on our faces when we smile is so important this is one of the reasons why I'm it breaks my heart with all the plastic surgery and um that people have been doing and the fillers and chemicals that people have been putting in their faces that you can't tell when they're smiling and that's not doesn't do them any good or us any good we need to be able to see human emotion on a face that's how oxytocin is going going to be released um another incredible way of getting oxytocin is touch so I've shared this before if my kids are around they're always getting a hug from me and I always tell them it's for my oxytocin benefit um so I am a touchy person I hug people all the time and um I used to think it of it as a way to connect to people but now I realize it's how I get my oxytocin which I love um I ALS o have been leaning more into modalities of touch like massages um I mean I I any I I was at this at the six senses Spa in abisa and um I got the most exotic massage I could with singing bowls and all kinds of strange vibrational like sounds and crystals put on me because all I could think was like this is going to be really good it's going to help with oxytocin so if you have the resources to go and get a massage I highly recommended a chiropractic adjustment um anything where touch is involved in a in a safe way and please this is this is about safety first but loving touch can increase oxytocin for sure and then the last thing about oxytocin that I want to say before I go on to Progesterone is that Community matters now Community matters all the time but Community really matters to the menopausal woman last night I was watching the Netflix series on the blue zones if you haven't watched it go watch it and the first one that he profiled was the women in okanawa and they have a phrase called Moi and Moi is that they are do life in a community and that means they share resources they share financial resources they share where their living resources food resources they do everything thing in a community and they do it with joy and care and friendship and they're thought of as Elders of the community now I can tell you that alone is probably why they live so long because they have purpose they are respected and they are united and that's what we have to do as women going through menopause is we have to come together and we have to create this moai I'm I got to figure out how we do it in my resar Academy because I really feel like Community is so important coming out of the pandemic but it's ridiculously important for the menopausal woman so if you're feeling Alone come join us in our Academy and and and let's work together to really create create Community I also will tell you I'll let a little secret out that I will be doing my first uh one-day live conference in March uh it's going to be done with Hay House at the it's called the I can do it event and I'm doing a fast like a girl one day workshop the day before join my email list stay tuned for that and that's a way that we're going to bring Community together and start to build what what I I'll have to probably think of a different phrase but to think of um this Moi how do we create Moi for all of us I will be talking more about that at that conference so come to that come hug me H and let's let's um together figure out what community will look like for all of us okay last thing I want to say is progesterone so progesterone starts going down around 35 and the more stressed you are the quicker progesterone will tank so and progesterone calms you progesterone um helps you sleep so you know of all the bioidentical I've experimented with I can tell you that progesterone's been the most lovely it's the one that can help me sleep a little bit more but if I take too much I can get really depressed so again there's a fine line that you got to find your pattern but knowing that it stimulates Gaba we have a lot we can do to stimul stimulate Gaba on our own so the first is breath work all kinds of breath work so 478 breathing box breathing um my new favorite app is called other ship and I list do breath work in the morning I do breath work at night I love breath work it it is definitely Gaba producing um we also know that movement forward just a walk in nature will bring cortisol down and stimulate Gaba so that it will calm you something to the brain when we go out for a walk in nature and we scan the Horizon right to left and left to right we actually are telling our brains hey there's no threat you can relax and that stimulates it's Gaba there's you can relax now we're running away from the threat and Gaba will come on and calm think of like dopamine as the Exciter is like look at what we can do oh my gosh there's so much so many great things out there and Gaba is the one that's like hey we got to calm down and relax so that's kind of how the two of those work together um there's also great research about yoga and because it combines breathing and com combines movement and that not only brings cortisol down but it also stimulates oxytocin and it stimulates Gaba and then if you do it in in in a community you're getting even more oxytocin I've I've was so busy this summer I lost um my my weekly yoga class and I went back to the community yesterday and I was just euphoric you know hours after that because of being in community with people I love doing yoga breathing I could feel my body coming back online so we have to go find those resources again in the book I will map it all out for you but hopefully what I what I hope you just saw was these these six neurotransmitters bdnf is not really a neurotransmitter but we're going to throw it in there these six neurotransmitters were all stimulated by estradi and progesterone and when you lose estradi and you lose progesterone if you are not intentional about your daily habits you will lose these six and then you will mentally struggle so leave me a review find me on on socials let me know if this was helpful these are just the beginning they are just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do to bring back these neurochemicals in your life they are literally that important but what if we are not aware of it if we don't understand what's going on with us we either blame ourselves or we blame people around us and it's simply a lifestyle change and stay tuned in my reset Academy if you want to come join us over there I'm about to do a 30-day um mood reset with that group I will in the new book put a a um a 30-day program in there so it'll be very applicable for you but until then here's the research I got I've got 75% of the book written so here's the beginning of what I what I want to share with with you all um you can start working these principles right now um if that was a lot and you're like oh my gosh what the heck did she just say go back and listen to this while you're walking or you're working out and see if it sticks a little bit more so with that I just want you to know um I'm hearing you and I really want you to know I I look at your comments I see what the needs are and I'm responding with videos and podcasts and books trying to help us all navigate what it's like to women live in a in a female body whether it's 25 or 65 our hormones make a difference and knowing how to build a lifestyle to match the changes in our hormones is lifes saving it is life saving and if if you resonate with that again share this episode out so we can all all have this is the discussion we should have at ladies night out not the bitching about everything going on in our life it should be this discussion this is what I'm feeling here's what I'm doing let's come together and share how it's working for everybody who's going through this hormonal loss because we're all if you're over 40 you're going through it it's how it works so from the bottom of my heart I hope that helps and I'm sending you all big love and hugs and know that I'm cheering you on and don't worry there'll be more information where that came from so I'm just was so excited to share this with you and I hope you have a beautiful day

Channel: The Resetter Podcast

Views: 10,680

Keywords: dr mindy pelz fasting and hormones, dr mindy pelz fasting and menopause, dr mindy pelz 36 hour fast, dr mindy pelz intermittent fasting, dr mindy pelz fasting for weight loss, dr mindy pelz constipation, dr mindy pelz menopause, dr mindy pelz autophagy, dr mindy pelz perimenopause, dr mindy pelz fasting, dr mindy pelz carnivore diet, dr mindy pelz 24 hour fast

Id: e2opD22A3LI

Length: 54min 6sec (3246 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 30 2023