← The Rachel Hollis Podcast
The Rachel Hollis Podcast
962 | What Nobody Told You About Your Body After 40
00:43:37
Upgrade to the Ad Free Premium Podcast Experience - https://rachelhollis.supercast.com Get your copy of Rachel's Book Here: Audible, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Millon, Bookshop.org, or wherever books are sold! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices In this episode of The Rachel Hollis podcast, she opens up about her personal experience with perimenopause, hormone imbalances, and the physical and emotional changes she began experiencing in her late 30s, emphasizing how little women are taught about their bodies and hormonal health. She discusses symptoms such as mood swings, anxiety, fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, heavy periods, and depression, explaining how she initially mistook these changes for a mental health crisis before discovering through blood work that she had estrogen dominance. Throughout the episode, she encourages wo...
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Disinfecting wipes help clean everyday surfaces like remotes, tablets and smartphones. And the Power Toilet Bowl Cleaner disinfects both the toilet brush and the bowl for two in one disinfection. Don't just clean Lysol clean. Okay guys, fair warning. We're gonna talk about our bodies. And I say fair warning because in the mix of listeners of this podcast, there's always at least three dudes. And I love you and I love that you care about women and you're willing to listen to a woman talk for hours and hours. But in today's episode, there's a lot of uterus conversation, there's a lot of hormones, there's a lot of all the thanks. And if you are not someone who has experienced the joys of uterus stewardship, today's episode probably isn't for you, but for the rest of you. For the rest of us, I thought it would be interesting to talk about all the things that I never really knew were going to happen to my body. As I started to approach 40. These are things that my doctor never told me. These are things that the older women in my family never told me. These are the things that I wish to goodness someone had bothered to mention before. I got to my late 30s and started to think that something was seriously wrong with me. What was actually happening was that my body was changing and I needed more support in terms of nutrition and supplements and the way that I lived my life. I needed all of those things. But what I actually thought was happening was very different than what was really happening. And just in case that's you, I thought it would be important to do an entire podcast episode devoted to this topic. Today is not Medical advice. Obviously, I am not a doctor. Talk to your actual doctor. I'm just a chick, you know, from the Internet. Find specialists that can help you with exactly what you've got going on. Do your own research. But as your buddy, as a woman who has spent years in deep conversation with some of the best hormone doctors in the country, I've interviewed many of them here on the show, and many of them more than once. I've personally done an insane amount of research to figure out how to manage my hormones, and I've lived through years of not knowing what was going on in my body. I have a lot of information to share and I. I'd love to get into it. Also, I'm going to use the phrase after 40 in the title of this episode and in a lot of what I'm saying, but this is relevant to anyone in their 30s and beyond. If you're in your 20s, honestly, you can listen and maybe you're getting information for the future and just kind of understanding the things that a lot of us didn't have access to. But I'm really gearing today's episode to those of us who are over 30 and in particular late 30s, into your 40s and 50s, et cetera. Pull up a chair, get your heating pad if you need it, and let's dig in to explain to you my particular journey with hormones and my body and understanding how all the things worked. I think it's fair to start with the fact that I did not ever understand how all the things work. If you grew up in the public school system in the 80s and 90s like I did, you probably are equally woefully under informed about how our bodies work and what they do. Unless you are lucky enough to have a woman in your family who taught you. Maybe you had a matriarch, maybe your mother, your grandmother, your aunties. You had people who explained to you all of the things. I did not have that and sort of stacked on top of that lack of knowledge. I also grew up in a family that was very conservative evangelical Christian and had a lot of beliefs around women's bodies and what was appropriate, what was rude. Like, you just did not talk about kind of anything that was going on below your clavicle. Okay. It was like if it was happening in the lower part of your body, we're just not going to discuss it. I don't know if my mom just assumed that maybe my older sisters would tell me, but then she didn't tell them, so I, I don't really know how Anybody thought we were supposed to come by this information, but I came by this information out of dire necessity. I was in my late 30s, and I was going through a divorce at the time. And that is relevant because I was such an emotional wreck going through this divorce that I thought what was happening was completely normal and natural because I was experiencing the emotions of this massive breakup and trying to navigate, you know, grief with my children and my own personal grief, and what was I going to do? And what did the future look like? And it started as that. And I sort of wonder now, and I haven't done research on this, so maybe if someone is a hormone doctor, they're like, yeah, girl, obviously. But I do sort of wonder now if we experience big emotional catalysts in our 30s, if we start to experience those symptoms of perimenopause earlier than we expect to. The first thing that I did not totally grasp, and I have to say this because some of you may know, and I know I've said it on the show many times, but, like, this is huge. We were taught in TV shows and movies and everything I saw growing up that menopause. I'm using air quotes. First of all, menopause was something that happened to the women in tv and. And they looked like grandmas. They did not look like me in my late 30s, first of all. So menopause was this whole time period. And I thought that it would happen to, like, much, much, much older version of me, not late 30s me. That's first of all, the mythology about how old you might be when you experience hormone shifts. The other thing is that menopause is not what is happening when you see people having hot flashes in the movies, when you hear about mood swings, brain fog, can't sleep, loss of sex drive, all of these things. That is not menopause. That is perimenopause. Menopause is one day. One day menopause. I think the actual medical terminology is when you have not experienced your period for a full year, you are officially menopause. Like it happened. That's the day. No period for a year. All of the things that we see as symptoms, I.e. perimenopause. Peri, meaning before. Before menopause. So it's important that you have that correct terminology, because as you do your own research or you go talk to your doctor, you need to know what it is you're talking about. I was experiencing perimenopause a lot earlier than I anticipated that I would and a lot earlier than I saw my mom experience those Symptoms. My mom was much older when I saw her start to have the symptoms that I saw in my late 30s. And I do wonder, though I haven't done research to back this up, I do wonder if it's possible that we go through some big emotional situation, and I wonder if that stress unbalances your hormones and makes you start to experience those symptoms sooner. This is my own personal theory. Literally nothing to back it up. But that's what happened to me. I was experiencing all of these symptoms, which I thought were totally natural, going to therapy to. To get through the grief of this massive breakup. But then I really started to notice these very severe mood swings. My mood swings were like, I would be so fine one minute, and, like, you could snap your fingers, and the next second I would be so sad, crying, like, totally depressed. And then the next day I would wake up and I would be so angry. I'd be, like, filled with rage. And it was when they would swing back and forth so quickly that I was like, wait a minute. This is not normal emotions. And the fact that I can't track any. I wasn't. You know, like, you would have a thought, and that thought would make you mad or that thought would make you sad or whatever. There was no thought attached to it. I was just all of a sudden having these, like, wild emotional swings that I couldn't really make sense of. And that started me on a journey to understand what was going on. And I've told y' all before, when I first started experiencing those things, I thought that I was having a mental breakdown. And I don't use that term lightly. But you have to understand, I come from a family with really extreme. I'm talking personality disorders, schizophrenia, ocd, severe depression. Like, I've experienced this in family members my whole life. And I sort of thought, like, okay, wow, it's just. It's my turn now. And I really felt very unstable. And I felt like I was possibly broken. You know, broken in a way that didn't feel like maybe I'd be able to fix. So I started on this journey through the lens of mental health. I was like, I'm not going to live this way, and I'm not going to be this kind of mama to my kids, you know, because even if you're trying to protect them from stuff, your kids or your partner, they are going to experience those mood swings right along with you. Then you feel like crap because you've displayed this version of yourself that you hate, quite frankly, like, you don't want to be the Bitch. You don't want to be the angry mom. You don't want to be that per. You don't want to lash out at your partner. Like, that's not who we want to be. And then many, many, many women, because they don't want to have those feelings, they start to medicate the feelings with alcohol. They start to numb. They start to, okay, well, I'm gonna go read endless books. I'm gonna go read, like, a bunch of fantasy books so that I sort of take myself out of my life. And then on some deeper level, you're, like, disassociating from your life, because if you disassociate, then you don't have to be in it. Then you don't have to potentially hurt the people who are around you. Like, it gets heavy and it gets dark. And these are conversations that we are not having as a community. Like, we're not telling our friends. Like, oh, yeah, I scrolled Instagram for four hours last night because I didn't want to interact with anyone, because I knew if I had to interact, I was going to be a bitch. Right? Like, these are the things that we don't want to say. And you also probably don't want to go to a doctor and have to tell them that you're experiencing these things. But because I thought that it was something much more dangerous, I started down the path of trying to figure out what was going on with me and my brain and, you know, what was happening. And in doing so, I had blood work done. And that blood work revealed a hormone imbalance. There are more than one way that your hormones can be imbalanced. And based on how you are unbalanced, you will experience stuff symptoms because of what's going on. So for me personally, I had, and still to some degree have estrogen dominance, meaning there is more estrogen in my body than there is progesterone to balance it out. This could happen because you have an overproduction of estrogen. And it can also happen because your progesterone is so low that, by proxy, the estrogen, there's way too much of it. But either way, estrogen dominance was rock in my world. And when I heard that term and I looked up the symptoms of estrogen dominance, I had every single one of those symptoms except for one. Let me tell you what they are just in case any of you might be experiencing these. And I totally know what you feel like. One of the signs of estrogen dominance is significant changes in your period. I had very heavy periods where I would bleed through tampons. I would wear period panties and tampons, and it would just be. It was like carry in my underwear. Like, there was nothing I could do to control it. It was so much blood, which, by the way, I have always. My whole life, it runs in my family. I have low blood pressure and I have anemia. And so I've always sort of lived with these two things and learned to manage them. But then I was experiencing these periods where I'm losing so much blood that my anemia was completely whacked out, which ended up creating feelings of depression later on in my cycle. It was so jacked up, you guys. But significant menstrual changes. So for me, that was heavy periods, but also for some women, that looks like shorter periods, lighter periods, or it could be really severe cramps. The second thing that people experience was rapid weight gain. So I remember at that time period particularly, like, my stomach, my waist, I was so bloated, but I hadn't changed my diet. This has got to be one of the most frustrating things that you experience in your late 30s, in your 40s. Going into perimenopause is like. It's like one of the number one thing Every single hormone doctor who came on the pod and talked about this all talked about how many women have come into their office and said, I am gaining weight and I haven't done anything differently. It's so freaking frustrating. Okay, don't tell anybody, but we're trying to buy a new house. All right? We're trying to buy a new house. And not only are we trying to buy a new house, but we are buying a house that's like, essentially my dream house. And it is my dream house because there is more fabulous outdoor space than even, like, I don't even pay attention to what's going on in the house because the outdoors is so much fun. If you love being outside in the spring and the summer, just like I do, we're going to do a whole makeover on Wayfair. Okay? Wayfair is the place to get all the things you need for every part of your house. 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Plus Spectrum Business even offers 100% US based customer support. 24. 7 Visit spectrum.combusiness to learn more restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Another symptom is increased tenderness in your breasts. Like they get bigger, they can swell. It's almost like you're going through puberty again. But yeah, so that's a piece of it. The big one for me was mood and energy. So increased anxiety, increased depression, increased irritability and extreme fatigue. And unfortunately I had every single one of those. I started getting anxiety again when I hadn't had it in years. I had crazy brain fog. I would sit down to write and I like, I literally could not put sentences together. It was so wild. Severe pms, water retention and bloating. Again, that's like those things that are going on with your stomach. I I want to just like add this little caveat here because one of the pieces of misinformation that women have been served over and over and over is that PMS symptoms are normal. And they are not. You are not supposed to have severe cramps. You are not supposed to be sick to your stomach. You are not. All of the things that we have been told are normal in the week leading up to our period. If you are experiencing them severely, you need to talk to your doctor. That is not normal. Severe PMS is often a sign of something is not okay. And I don't mean like oh my gosh, the world's ending, but I mean like you probably are carrying too much stress or you need some supplementation that will help to support your system. Or maybe you're not getting enough sleep. But severe PMS symptoms are not normal. Please do not accept them as a part of life. They're not normal. The other things are like you get migraines, you get headaches when you have estrogen dominance. Insomnia is a big one. And this was the only symptom I did not have on the list was decreased libido. You are not as interested in sex. And the reason I didn't know, I mean, that probably was going on, but remember I told you I was going through a divorce. The last thing I was interested in was a penis. I was very much in my hating men era. I wanted no part of any. I was. The idea of being attracted to a man at that point was like, I'm about to live the rest of my life on a commune with a bunch of my friends and we are never going to look at a man again. That was sort of my energy. So if I did have decreased libido, I didn't know. But those are the symptoms of estrogen dominance. Okay, now here's the flip side of that. Progesterone dominance, much less common, but also is a thing and presents some of these same symptoms, but also things like acne breakouts or persistent headaches, is a sign that your progesterone is higher than estrogen. Feeling lightheaded or physically unwell, like dizziness, is a thing. A lot of the things I've described, though, can also show up in your hormones going in the other direction. And the only way to be sure is to have your blood work done and to work with a doctor who knows about this stuff. When I interviewed Dr. Taz here on the show, I've interviewed her a couple times. If you're not familiar with her, she is one of the most respected integrative medicine doctors in the country. She's written a ton of books about it. Her whole thing is women's organization hormones. What I remember about the first podcast I did with her was her explaining to me how much training she got in medical school for female hormones. So essentially she explained to me that in medical school they were trained about pregnancy and they were trained about fertility. But she did not have a single class on perimenopause, nothing on menopause, and nothing on understanding the level of hormones and how they fluctuate and vary. Essentially, they are not training doctors to know this information. So if you go see a doctor who doesn't specialize in this, let's say you're not talking to someone who does hormones or functional medicine or obstetrics and gynecology. Let's say you just like go talk to your regular doctor. And maybe that regular doctor is awesome, but he's a dude and he didn't learn about in medical school. What do you think are the odds that you're going to get the information that you need? What do you think the odds are that if you do actually have your labs done? Because I remember years ago having a podcast about this. And a young gal called in and left a message on the hotline and said that she had asked her doctor about having lab work done. He told her she didn't need it done because she was too young and she was in her late 30s at the time. And I was so pissed because I was like, dude, if you can afford it, go have your labs done. Who cares what your doctor thinks? Like, this is your body. You have to advocate for yourself, and you need to know what's going on. At the very least, Sorry, I'm getting passionate, I'm raising my voice. But y', all, at the very least, you can look at your lab work. If you're working with a doctor who understands functional medicine, which is like, how do all the parts of your body work together? How to sleep affect your hormones, stress, water. Like, all the things, at the very least, they could be like, wow, you're really low on vitamin B. And you're like, whoa, I didn't even know. And they're like, yeah, add a complex B vitamin to your day. Your energy is going to go through the roof. Your moods are going to be more balanced. Like, it ends up being really simple things. Or they'll be like, hey, addiction. More leafy greens to your diet. And you're like, check, check, check, check. Got it. It's not some big crazy change that you need to have, but if you are working with a doctor who doesn't understand this stuff, they're going to tell you that you're fine. You're not supposed to be tired all the time. You're not supposed to be pissed off all the time. You're not supposed to feel hopeless. You're not supposed to just, like, go through life constantly feeling like you're trying to keep your head above water. Yes, sometimes life punches us in the stomach. Sometimes life is hard. Some of you are working three jobs, taking care of those babies, doing what needs to get done. That is what is happening. That is real freaking life. But the emotional bits and pieces that are stacking on your back and making you feel like there's no way you can get through this stuff. It's probably things that can be made better by just a few small tweaks. I cannot explain to you how often the way you feel is your hormones. It's not really the way you feel. It's what your body is feeling at this moment and then what that translates to you in terms of feeling. So if anyone has had a doctor tell them that, oh, it's probably just anxiety, or you're you know, you're just a little depressed or you're too young to worry about your hormones. It sounds to me like they're dismissing you and you need to find someone who is listening to what you have to say and it also might not be their fault. That's not an excuse. I'm not like excusing doctors who sort of ignore what their patients are saying. But if you were never taught these things, how are you supposed to know? And it's not our job to educate some random doctor who doesn't know how our bodies work, but it is our job to advocate for ourselves themselves. So find doctors who specialize in women's sex hormones. I am a huge believer in integrative and functional medicine as a practice and ask questions. Do your research. Push back. 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Act now and save up to 40% at 1-800-flowers.com sxm. That's 1-800-flowers. Com sxm. It's also super important that we have a true understanding of how severe the feelings caused by extreme fluctuating hormones can be for us. I a few years ago was reading a lot around this subject and there was this one little throwaway line that I just found so insane, which is the rate of suicidal ideology that increases in women in the few days leading up to their period. Now let me just break this into some pieces because I want you to sit with this for a second. Suicide awareness and prevention is something that is wildly important to me, I lost my brother by suicide. And I know a lot more around the subject than I want to know. When I heard that the rates of suicide and thinking about suicide dramatically increased along with a rise in hormones as it gets closer to your period, but that I had never heard that in my entire life, I was livid. Honestly, in any health class in your entire life, did you ever have a teacher say to you, hey, just so you know, it is very possible to get seriously depressed in the window right before your period. Like, hey, guys, just so you know, your progesterone is going to crash and your estrogen is falling, and that is going to make you feel severely depressed. And just so you know, if you start to feel like that, understand what's going on. It's a hormone pattern. Ask for help, get some guidance, but just know that those feelings might show up. Did anyone ever say that to you? Because nobody ever said that to me. And when we experience severe swings with our mental health, and I'm talking like, I have been severely depressed, I have been mildly depressed, I have had postpartum depression. If you've ever experienced, like real mental health stuff, you know that when you're in feels very real and it feels like there is no way out, that is just freaking real, okay? But if you understood that, you would be more susceptible to those feelings and those thoughts because of what is going on hormonally and on specific days of your cycle, don't you think that that information would be powerful for women? But nobody is talking about is so dangerous. And frankly, if this was happening to men in any capacity, this information would be plastered on the side of the subway and on buses. It's so stupid how little we know about women's bodies and how they work. But the broader point to all of this is if you are experiencing a day or a week or a month or maybe you were inside of a spirit season right now, where you feel like your personality has been hijacked, where you feel dark in a way that does not match your circumstances, where your world looks different to you than it normally does and you can't explain why, something is going on and you need to talk to your doctor about it. And if you have a uterus or have ever had a uterus and you are over 35, babe, it's a very strong chance it might be your hormones. Very, very strong chance. You're like, okay, girl, we get it. Sorry, I get so fired up around this subject because I just don't understand why we don't have this information, I really don't. I think it's better now than it has ever been before. But I also understand that I'm a nerd. And when I find something that I want to heal in myself, I get really geeked out and I research and I read a ton of books and watch documentaries. Like, I have so much information. I don't think that the average woman going around trying to live her life, trying to take care of her family, trying to pursue her dreams, like, I don't know that the average woman has enough information about how her cycle works or how her hormones work. And if she did, she would be able to take better care of herself. So when I found out all this information, when I found out that my hormones were unbalanced, like I've said before, I went to a female doctor who specialized in women's sex hormones and did integrated and functional medicine. That's really important for me, all those things working together. And I got on my first supplementation stack to support what was going on in my hormones. And I still today take really similar to what I did back then because they've worked so well for me. And I went off of some things. Like, every once in a while, I try and cycle out supplements as my own weird kind of experiment, but I'll kind of cycle out of supplements to see if my body still needs them. And when it came to these supplements, I absolutely still take them. So all these years later, I still take many of the supplements that I took back in the day. And that for me, I'll tell you what mine are. But I really cannot stress this enough that if you're working to get supplements correct, you must work with a doctor and you must have your labs done. Because my supplementation is based on getting labs done. So, like having a bunch of blood drawn and then a doctor looking at my levels and then seeing what was low, and then we would test. Okay, well, we're gonna get on this supplement. Okay, your levels came up. How are you feeling? So it's been years of trial and error to get to where I am now, but I still, every single day, take Vitex. Vitex is also known as chaste tree berry. It's like the most common supplementation to support women's health. You can get it over the counter. It's. It's an herb. It's. Yeah. So I take that every single day. I take B complex every single day. B is really big for hormone support. It's good for mood swings, it's good for energy. So I take this complex. And then I also, during certain weeks of my cycle, like, I'm doing it right now, I also supplement with an additional B12. That's just me personally. I've tested things to see what will help with my energy. So I. Lots of bees for me. And then I do seeds and oil cycling. I don't know if the seeds are as helpful. They just like. I really like them and it feels good in my system. But essentially, during two weeks of my cycle, I have a supplement like omega threes and a certain kind of seed. And then the other part of my cycle, I have evening primrose oil and a different kind. So it's like you can look up seeds in oil cycling. It's really popular. And again, I don't totally know if the seed part is important, but I like it. So I keep doing it. And then I'm just really conscious of what's going on with my system, making sure that I have things that support it. I will tell you right now, this is the simplest thing in the world. Your hormones and your periods are going to increase in awfulness with your stress. Just sit with it for a second. The more stressed out you are, the worse your PMS will be, the worse your periods will be, and the worse your hormone mood swings will be. Or your symptoms of perimenopause will increase with your stress period. This is so crazy, you guys. You've heard me talk about. If you listen to the pod, you know, for years, I've talked about having really severe bleeding during my period. And, oh, there's another supplement I forgot. I started about a year ago, something called Dim Detox, which is one of the things that the doctor noticed in my last round of labs was that I'm not detoxing all of the hormones that I need to every single month, which is what leads to really heavy periods. Because essentially your body is not, like, releasing all of the blood that it should, so it just, like, keeps building up, which is why your periods are so heavy. So she put me on this thing called Dem Detox, which, as far as I can tell, is like cruciferous vegetables. So, like broccoli and cauliflower. Smells terrible, this pill, but I take it every night. And I've noticed a real improvement in how heavy my periods are, I think because of that. And then, y'. All. I also have noticed a huge calming down of my period since I moved to the Hudson Valley. So I was in the heart of Los Angeles and I moved into the country, and it's not Called Upstate New York. Everyone in upstate New York gets mad when I say that, but, like, a couple hours north of New York City, but I live in the country. There's no traffic, there's no smog, there's no honking horns. I was dying today. Like, I used to live in a place in LA where every five seconds you heard sirens. There were helicopters flying over. It's just part of living in la. You heard it all the time, all day long, every single day. Today, the local sheriff was out directing traffic because the local gardening society was having a big plant sale. We've just experienced, allegedly, our last frost day, which is a huge thing around here. And they were like, plant sale. Which apparently people look forward to all year. I had no idea I was driving the kids to school this morning. I look over and I'm like, oh, the plant sales today. I'm gonna check that out. I come back two hours later when this thing is open 10:00am I'm like, I'm gonna go buy plants. There's a hundred people in line. I have never seen so many people unironically wearing overalls. I was like, I'm home. I'm surrounded by gardening lesbians. Like, I. I have found it. I found Mecca. It's here. It's now. But I'm like, how hilarious is it that the local authorities, like, the sheriff is here because he's directing traffic because the traffic around the plant sale is too exciting. This is a weekday, you guys. The life I'm living out in the country, very different than what was happening in the city. And I'm telling you right now, I'm sleeping better, my periods are lighter. So many things have improved with my hormones moving to the country. And I know not everybody can choose to do that, but in terms of an experimentation of how stress affects mood hormones, how much blood you're losing, what's happening to your period, I am the little guinea pig, and I am telling you, it is crazy how different it is not living in a city where there's more stress. Another way to think of that is what you are experiencing during your period is the direct result. It is directly connected to how you took care of yourself in the three weeks before your period. Three weeks before your period, guys. You know what? To even get to that point, I think that there has to be a shift in accepting that your body is meant to function in this beautiful cycle, and I am not. I dream of being a hippie and, like, maybe living on a commune, but I really am not that person that's like, oh, my God, the beauty of the period. We're gonna free bleed. Like, I am not that girl, you guys. But I have learned to accept that my body is doing exactly what it is meant to do. Our body is a miracle. This is a gift. Look, let's just look at. Statistically, women live longer than men. Statistically, look it up. It's just the truth. We live longer than men. What is the one thing we are doing? There's many things, but, like, what is the most obvious thing that we are doing that they are not doing? Bleeding. They've tested menstrual blood and it has heavy metals in it, it has microplastics in it, it has toxins in it. Once a month, your body is getting rid of crap that should not be in your body. Our period is a gift. It's why it freaks me out so bad when people are like, oh, I went on that pill. I haven't had my period in like six years. I'm like, oh my God. There is no way that shutting off a function of your body for, for like no medical reason, you're just like, oh, I didn't want to have my period anymore. There is no way that that's good for you. Your body is meant to bleed once a month. It really is. And if every single time your body does exactly what it's supposed to do, you get pissed off at it, what do you think that that does energetically to your body, to yourself? Instead of going like, yeah, okay, I'm going into, you know, I'm gonna start here. I'm gonna do my thing. This is what's supposed to happen. And in order for that to happen in a way that is the least disruptive to you, you've gotta take care of yourself in the weeks leading up to it. So for me, the biggest changes to learning to manage my hormones and feel better in all of this, it's not a one stop thing. It's a lifestyle change. And I know that that is annoying to hear because it would be so much easier to have a magic fix. And frankly, a lot of doctors and a lot of pharmaceuticals have tried to sell us special magic pills or patches or coils or different things that are meant to, quote, fix what our body is doing. The things that have made the most dramatic difference for me, they're not sexy, right? Protein and healthy fats and leafy greens, because having blood sugar that's stabilized is really good for hormones being stabilized. Getting fiber, right? Getting those leafy greens because your gut is really important to Processing and getting stuff out of your system. If your gut's not working, all your hormones aren't clearing, and that's when things get backed up and create the real problems. Like, I've been talking about, like, being real about how you can support your body, how can you get enough sleep? Are you doing therapy? This sounds like, counterintuitive, right? Because you're like, wait, we're talking about what's going on in our body? And now you want me to go see a therapist as well? Yeah, because the unresolved trauma in you is causing stress. All of those things are affecting. Everything is playing together. Your body is like this beautiful orchestra, and it has all these different parts and pieces. You know, you got the wind instruments and percussion and the strings. And, like, all of these things are supposed to hum together. They're supposed to work together. But if one part of your orchestra is damaged, or maybe you're putting too much pressure on it, or it's having to work overtime to make up for the other part of your orchestra that's underperforming, forming. It's just all gonna sound terrible. If you're listening to this conversation and you're recognizing some symptoms. I hope what you're taking away from it is, number one, you're going to find a doctor who specializes in women's sex hormones. Ideally someone who does integrated medicine, functional medicine, who can really work with you, who doesn't just want to put you on meds. I know a lot of women whose lives have been changed for the better because of hrt. I love that. But I always think, whenever we can, we should start with, are there things that we can do that are a little bit easier for our body to add in before we go to something extreme? But again, I'm just a chick, you know, from the Internet. So talk to your doctor. Maybe your doctor's like, no, man, you go on this hrt, it's going to change your whole life right now. Cool. Go do it. But you don't know what you don't know right now. You are guessing. So you need to understand what's missing, what you might need supplements for, how you can make this process better. That's number one. We gotta get those labs done, and we gotta work with a doctor who knows what's up. Number two. Track your cycle. Track your cycle. Track your cycle. I cannot express to you how helpful this is. Whether you make a note in your phone or you track it in your journal, literally, just start writing down which day of your cycle you're on. The first day that you bleed is day one of your cycle. Day one, day two, day three. Literally jot down in your phone. Day three. How are you feeling? What's going on in your body? Oh, I was having cramps. I had a headache. I felt really hungry today. I didn't feel hungry today. I had insomnia. My sex drive is gone. I feel a little bit low. I feel great. Like, track everything and do this for about three months. And the wildest thing happens. You start to see the patterns. You're like, oh, dude, this is exactly how I felt on the 11th of last month. And then you go back another month, you're like, oh, my gosh, this is exactly how I felt on day 12 of that month. And you realize the same times every month, the same feelings show up in your life, only they're not feelings, they're horrible hormones. And that makes it so much easier to take advantage of the times of your cycle where you feel on fire, where you're energized, where you're outgoing, you're, like, ready to take on the world. You can take advantage of those times and plan things around those times. And then you also know the times of your cycle where you're going to feel low, where your energy is gone. Or maybe you're ticked off and you're like, okay, nothing during this part of my cycle, because I know I'm not going to be able to show up. Well, if you have that information, you have so much power. And you also know when things are off track, your cycle, it is so stinking easy, and nobody is doing it. All right, guys, the thing I hope you are taking out of our conversation today is that if something feels off in your body, like, if you're experiencing mood swings, fatigue, brain fog, things that make you feel like you're losing yourself, you're having weight changes, your libido has completely gone south for the winter, or your periods are super brutal. Do not just accept that this is the way things are now. This is not just that you're aging. This is not just that you feel stress. This is information your body is communicating with you. And you deserve a doctor who knows how to listen. Get the blood work done. Track the cycle. Ask yourself, what's changed? Like, has something changed in the last quarter? Be a detective of your own health. The answers exist. I promise you, they do. And finding them fundamentally changed my life and continues to change my life, because I know now what to look for. The information is available to you, and it might take time and it might even take you needing to switch doctors to do some trial and error and some adjusting and some readjusting. But the information is out there and you can figure it out. I hope that this episode sparked something in you and made you curious, and that you'll consider sharing it with a friend. If you know a woman in your life who's struggling with the same stuff your daughter, your sister, your bestie, share this episode with them. And then maybe you two start a conversation and go on a research hunt for the perfect doctor to help you with all your things. I will be back later in the week with more conversations about the stuff that's going on in our lives as we continue to look out into the world and try and make things better. Until next time. As always, I love you and I'm rooting for you. The rachel hollis podcast is produced by me, rachel hollis. It's edited by andrew weller and jack noble. Fuel your fire with Peloton instructors Show up and experience our instructors breathing energy into your fitness. Need new workout buddies? Peloton Teams helps you find your crew and stay accountable with the support system. Don't just train, connect with others, crush the leaderboard and rediscover your momentum with the Cross Training series. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. I have been going to therapy on and off since I was a kid and I actually just got back from a week long trauma therapy retreat because I believe that therapy is something we do during any part of our life where we feel like we need some extra support. And it just so happens that May is Mental Health Awareness Month, which is a really good reminder to check in with yourself and see if you might need a little extra support. The things that I struggled with in my early 20s are very different than the things I struggle with at 43 and they are no less valid than they were back when I was younger. In fact, I would say they're even more important to get a handle on because as I get older I don't want to carry these things with me into my future. Having someone to listen to you, to understand, and to support you in accessing tools that you will need can make all the difference. Better Help is the world's largest online therapy platform. In fact, you can really quickly get matched with a therapist by taking a short questionnaire to identify your needs. And we love better help because if that therapist doesn't work for you, you can get matched with someone else really quickly. You don't have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone with you in therapy sign up to get 10% off. Betterhelp.com Rach that's B E t T e R h e l p.com Rachel.