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Class is in session. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Unlearn 16 classes in session. I'm here all by myself in my shoe slash closet. You can't see it right now because you're just facing the same old wall. That's not the point of this podcast. The point of this podcast is actually going to be kind of off the cuff, you know, completely different from how scripted I normally am. Listen, I'm 49, and what I've realized I would say in this past maybe year, maybe two, is that I'm 49. What I mean by that is the wheels are starting to come off the cart just a little bit, right? Like, I dislocated my pinky. It's been a problem for now a month. You know, I. My. My body. Doesn't the bottom of my feet hurt because I've walked around too much in the day. I haven't injured anything. They're just sore. It's like. It's like I turned 49 and the bottom of my feet went, we've had enough. We've seen everything we need to see. And Joanna, you know, my shoulder, unenjoyable. My right shoulder, Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I used to be able to throw a ball. Now I can get about five key throws in. And then I have to take a knee and get some ice. Now all of these things, I've been for more tests, guys. I, you know, you go for the mammogram, the coloss, the. The colonoscopy, the. The ultrasounds, the MRIs. I've been for all of it, all right? Blood tests, thyroid tests. And what I want to talk about today is specific for women because, guys, I can only speak from where I freaking stand. And you know where I stand right now. And I know some of you are already saying it because you've heard me complain about it 750,000 times. I'm standing on the edge of perimenopause, right on the cusp, right toes dangling. I might be hanging from. You know, in the cartoon, when you watch, like, Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, and all of a sudden somebody's hanging from a dandelion off a cliff. I feel. I feel like I'm hanging on to that dandelion, but not from my right hand because this finger's broken, and I cannot from this hand because this, My ring finger, arthritis. So my teeth. I'm hanging on by my teeth. I'm not even going to talk about the dentist. And so as I'm entering into this era of My life, funnily enough, I've never felt more me. I've never felt more empowered. I've never felt like I've worked into my own voice or my own style or my own whatever beautiful relationship, my fa. Listen, work. All these things are, like, lovely. And it's like at this particular moment, my body is shutting it all down. And a big reason it's shutting it all down. Yes, I eat like garbage. Let's not talk about that. No, I do not exercise. That could also be it. However, I'm also hitting perimenopause. So in perimenopause, women's bodies. And I'm going to talk from the completely uneducated point of view that I have right now. But this is just the beginning. Just so you know, today is the beginning of this journey because I. To hell with all of it. I'm not into it. Let me tell you how I feel. Let me tell you how I'm going to fix it. And I'm going to take you guys on with me, whether it's on TikTok, whether it's on Instagram, Blue sky, maybe I'll put something on Twitter. I don't know. Those boys don't even understand what menopause is, so who knows? I'm definitely going to continue it on here. So with perimenopause, you know, your hormones start to go haywire, and at the very end of the day, your body is drained of estrogen. Now, quite a few years ago, there were all these estrogen replacement hormone therapies, yada, yada, yada. And then everybody said, they're horrible for you. They're going to give you cancer. And everybody's like, oh, my God. So we don't want that, right? So whatever goes with perimenopause, most of the time, we as women, we don't talk about it. Our doctor doesn't bring it up. And if we bring up that we're feeling any sort of certain way, their answer to us is, well, that's 49. You know what? Screw 49. I'm not into it. And I know that there are different sort of natural and sometimes chemical ways to not feel 49. Let's go over some of the perimetopause things. Brain fog. Perimenopause. I lifted my left arm, my left arm as I was driving up to sit on my windowsill with my window undone, because that's what the cool kids do. And as I got about halfway, I pulled something in my bicep insertion area, and it Was injured for months. It ached, I couldn't move it. It wasn't frozen shoulder. But frozen shoulder is a huge, huge ramification of perimenopause. But what it was was when estrogen's being leached out of my system en masse. Apparently your tendons and your ligaments get dry and, and brittle and they just start to snap like, like little tiny twigs all over your body causing you injury. Left, right and freaking center right. Everything hurts. Perimenopause, obviously, the brain fog, the memory loss. I've been losing words, which is really frustrating to me because all I do is run my mouth right. You get heat flashes, fine. I mean, I can handle the sweating. It doesn't really bother me. Your weight fluctuates very, very oddly. You don't react the same to food anymore. I sometimes feel a level of uncontrollable rage for no apparent reason. All of these things that are going into what perimenopause is and the kinds of things that you feel when you're going through, we're supposed to just deal with it and move on. I'm not even, you know, I am going to talk about it. Forget that. I am going to talk about what happens when you hit perimenopause and what happens to your menstrual cycle. Guys, I lived a fairly blessed life. Meaning I get my period. It was an inconvenience. It was fine. I didn't take medication. I know there's lots and lots of people who do, but I lived pretty, you know, it was contained, not horrible pain, not, not incredibly strong period flow. Like it was contained. I, it was like last year, maybe going on a year and a half that when I get my period, I feel like I might hemorrhage to death. I swear to God, it is so horrible and so mind numbingly painful that if I don't take Advil every four hours, I think I might die. Sleep. Who sleeps anymore, right? I wake up easily every two hours and I am wide awake thinking about what I did in 1987. It, it doesn't really matter. I used to think I couldn't sleep because there was anxiety, but I don't think it's anxiety anymore. It literally, I wake up wide awake, not stressed. You know, I have rewatched House so many times that I'm pretty sure I could be a doctor at this particular point. But the sleep problems are significant because the sleep problems then only add to all of the other issues that you're having when you're having brain fog or when you're having, like, any sort of, you know, focus problems, none of this. You talk about your metabolism, you talk about your thyroid. You talk about all of the different things that are going on in your body. You go in to talk to your doctor about it, or as I have, you go in and they'll say, well, we'll test your thyroid. And they'll say crap. Like, well, this is just normal for being 49. That's what I have to say to that. Normal for 49. I don't want to be normal for 49, Doctor. I want to feel like I'm 35. Make it so. Jean Luc Picard. I know you can do it, right? Vanessa's been telling me forever. Joanna, just come to California. Go get tested by my endocrinologist. Because an endocrinologist is actually the individual, not your family doctor. Endocrinologist is actually going to know all of the variant levels in your body. They're going to be able to prescribe healthy and natural compounds that you can take in order to give your body the things it needs as you get older so you're not drained of all of these hormones. Some people are like, well, Joanna, that's just nature. Why is it not nature for men? Are you joking me? Mr. Hair Replacement Therapy. Mr. Testosterone Replacement Therapy. Mr. Viagra on every street corner. What about all those things? What? What about all of those things and the horrific side effects of all those things? No, men shouldn't have to go through that. Well, why the hell am I. Why am I. Skin changes, right? I get these patches on my neck, and, I mean, most of the point, I can live through that. That's not the biggest. That's not the biggest issue in the, you know, in the ramifications of all of the different things that I'm going through. Headaches, sure. Not being able to concentrate. Absolutely. All of these things that we have and we are told by our medical professionals, you know what? This is just how you're supposed to feel. Well, I'm not interested in it. Truly, I'm not interested. I don't think in this day and age, with all of the medical advancements that we have, since when is anybody just aging? Grace, stop it. To each his own. I'm not getting Botox. I'm not getting plastic surgery. I'm not giving butt lifts or whatever else that people want to get. And you know what? If you want to get them, have at it. All I'm trying to figure out is how to feel okay. And if there is a medical combination of hormone therapy that can make me feel like I am 35. Why isn't this being researched? Why isn't this being pushed? Why aren't we advocating for this? I'll tell you why. Because women aren't running the medical system, that's why. Side note, why are so many women getting their gallbladders out? I don't know if I've heard of any men getting their gallbladders out, but you know how many women have got their gallbladders out? It's like we get all of these symptoms or we get all of these things. Nobody talks about the why. Nobody talks about the lack of estrogen and the lack of progesterone and the lack of. Nobody talks about the why. For us, it's just, well, honey, since honestly, here's what I think it is, I honestly believe that there has been this assumption that there has been this, this undercurrent of since you can't have kids anymore, everything else we're not going to worry about everything else gets to go by the wayside because you are no longer reproducing. I am done as of today, right now, Mark my words. This is coming out Tuesday morning at 7am as of right now, I'm done. I am going to find the top medical professionals that give a crap about a woman's body and a woman's health and how a woman ages and feels okay and how she can access things to make her insides and. And her the way that she feels match her brain. Because I'm telling you right now, maybe this is the case if somebody at 49, 50 years old, by the way, when we really step into our own, when we really become aware and confident. The same is true for men, by the by, when we step into our own and we're faced with this huge hormone variant shift that causes damage left, right and center, both emotionally, mentally, physically, all of those things. And now we have to handle that. So instead of stepping into the prime of, we're also having to juggle all of that stuff. Men don't have to do it. I wonder why they become the powerhouses they are at 50, 55, 60 years old. I'm done with all of it as of today. And anybody knows anybody, you tell them to reach out to me. I want this posted everywhere because I'm also done with people not talking about it. It's ridiculous. Women not demanding. I've heard that your thyroid has different gauges. Like, so you have your thyroid, then you have your T4 and your T5 or something like that. And those levels need to be checked and doctors won't even do it because they're like, well, it doesn't really matter because you're getting older. Fix it, fix it. Now. I do understand it's not necessarily covered. I'm not thinking that we are going to block aging for everybody. That doesn't, I get that in a, in a, in a socialized Medicare kind of system, a medicine system like Canada, but it doesn't matter. That system doesn't cover any drugs. I need extra coverage for that and I'll pay for it. Fine. But don't you dare tell me what I can and can't have access to or how I should and shouldn't feel when you're hanging out those little blue pills like they're going out of style. Dr. Whatever. I am exhausted and obviously I am all of these things because I'm 49. All of you guys. It was very self serving. Joanna, you're 49. All of a sudden you care. Yeah, well that's how it works. All of a sudden you get actual experience and yeah, that's how it works. So I started this platform talking about education and politics. I'm still talking about it. And by the by, if we all had a full education on this and the political system wasn' so incredibly patriarchal, this problem would have been fixed a long time ago. They all go hand in hand, folks. They all go hand in hand. But if you think I'm not going to use what I got and the access I have and the big huge mouth I have to speak about this particular issue to hopefully empower, educate and change that system, you're dead wrong. Absolutely wrong. So I want to find the best doctor, I want to find the best clinics. Now I do live in Ontario. I'm not flying half over God's green earth. But I do want the best of the best and I will go to any one of those places I can possibly go and make sure that people understand what they have access to, what they could have access to and what they should demand acts access to as a basic medical. Right. Not. Oh well, she's just getting older. You're just gonna have to live with it, hun. While all the men in the world don't have to live with anything. If it was even, I might not have as much problem with it. Right. If all these men couldn't pop Viagra left, right and center so they can cheat on their spouse at 60 years old and bear children to the nanny. Arnold, maybe, possibly. I wouldn't have so much anger in me, but I do because we're working overtime to feel like, to make sure men feel like men and to make sure that the way they feel and that the access to healthcare that they can gain access to makes them feel good, makes them feel empowered, makes them feel strong, both mentally and physically. I just want the same for everybody else. Could there be side effects? Of course. Side effects of everything. Actually. I had this medical professional one time, we were talking about my mom and all the stuff that she's gone through and we're trying to decide on what kind of medication she should be on, what dosage. And this doctor said something to me that I'll never forget because we said, well, we want her to take this pill, but we're worried about the side effects. He goes, I'm going to stop you right there. I want you to think of medication this way. All medication has effects. Not side effects, just effects. Meaning it might have positive effects, it might have negative effects for you, but the idea of it being a side effect makes no sense because the medication itself, it's not directed. And a lot of medication, by the way, that you're using for, for example, migraines is an anti seizure medication. Wait, wait, you get prescribed if you have migraines, an actual anti seizure medication that really works well on migraines. So technically you're buying that medication for the quote, unquote side effect you didn't want it to have in the first place. You didn't think it was going to happen. Medication has effects. So do I think that when I talk about hormone replacement therapy and all of the options that I may have, which I don't even know because nobody's ever educated and talked about to me, all I'm going to have to go actively search it. Sure I can go on the Internet, but God knows where that's going to lead me. So all of these effects that medication is going to have, I get to be the judge of that as well as my health care provider. Right? Isn't that what we're doing? We're deciding effects? How does this work? What does this look like? How does it impact my life? Do I get greater benefits than I get negative consequence or negative effects? All medication has effects. You have to decide, do the effects you get, are they more positive? Do they help your life on the whole, are you getting something better out of taking it? And if the answer is yes and you want to pay for it, why the hell are doctors standing in our way of getting it? You know what I think, I don't think they know. I'm gonna go, yeah, I'm gonna. I think especially female doctors have been told, well, that's just what happens. We're not gonna study that. You're not gonna get paid to study that. We're not gonna give you grants to study that. Albeit right back to the fact that politics and education are intricately, intricately linked into our healthcare system, into women's health, women's empowerment and women's struggles on this planet. All of those things are tied in why we need to actually understand the entire system in order to find the benefits. We need to serve our lives in a better way. So today, today is the last day of me not knowing crap. Today is the last day of me listening to people and going, oh, well, I'm just going to take what I get. I'm just going to be okay with whatever it is I am saddled with. Because guess what? That's just my age. Forget that. It ties into everything because everything that goes through a woman's body and the way that we deal with everything is completely different than men, for the most part, right? A lot of women, if they're experiencing a heart attack, you guys know, they don't experience in their chest very often. It's not that chest tightness, the pain in your left arm. You know what, women get a backache or indigestion, but a lot of the time it hurts their back. And you know what women do? They go, must be perimenopause. Must just be me getting older. Must just be that I'm carrying a little bit more weight. Must just be that my feet have decided to stop working because they've been walked on for too long and they're done with it. Must just be. Must just be you're just getting older, hun. It's just the way we feel and we don't challenge that. Are we okay? We've been manipulated and brainwashed into thinking this is just how we're supposed to live out the rest of our lives. No, thank you. I'm not into it. I'm just not that into it. A lot of the times you'll see bouts of anxiety and depression kicking in. That's not because your mental health is a problem. That's not because you're not taking care of yourself. That's not because you're just losing it. That's because you're having these huge hormone shifts that nobody's acknowledging and nobody's helping you negotiate your way through. What I'm not into it. And I'm not doing it. We look at these women, we call them. We, you know, we call them out for all the things they're going through. Well, it's just because they're getting old. It's just because they're getting old and we ignore it. And worse, we refuse to either a study the means at which we could minimize its impact or, or soften the impacts and the effects on women, or we don't study it at all because the people in charge of our grants are predominantly men. And men don't really care about the effects of menopause because when menopause hits a woman, guess what? She becomes less fertile. Can't have kids. Who cares? This is it, guys. I think this might be the crux of a feminist argument that. No, I know, I said feminism. It's like a four letter word nowadays. The crux of a feminist argument that nobody's really contempl when we're young, and I mean this, as humans, we're worried about a lot of dumb crap. We're trying to figure out who we are, what the hell that means. We're trying to establish relationships, break patterns that we've grown up with. Sometimes we're having kids, we're growing careers, we're displacing all of who we are into the other things that we are doing or we are becoming. And as it winds up and we hit 45 and 50 and every man has a midlife crisis and buys a Porsche, women step into menopause and society as a whole goes done, you're just going to have to deal with it. No, I think that it's about damn time we take control of what we can control. We figure out what types of healthy, maybe natural medicinal interventions we need to take in order to mitigate the harmful effects of a lack of estrogen in our body. And watch how powerful we can really become. Watch the superheroes that we will step into not allowing this hormonal reality and control factor diminish our capacity to focus our intellectual, our emotional, our physical drives, ensuring that our brains are as tuned up as they ever were. Because now we know who we are. We know what we want, we know where we want to go. And to hell with anybody that's getting in our way. Maybe this is the time. I couldn't have done any of this at 25, 30, 35. Stop it. Stop it. I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to speak with such passion and such somewhat knowledge and somewhat wisdom. I didn't have it then. I have it now. I'll be damned. I'll be damned if I let something that I can control and I can mitigate get in the way of all of the amazing things I'm going to accomplish in the next 30 years. I won't do it. So this is a call out to all medical professionals. Anybody who's an expert, call me. You email me 3p o m e s gmail dot com. I'm going to put it in the bio, I'm going to put it in the link or whatever. You email me. We will talk. I will have you on my podcast. I will fly out to meet you. I will get all of the tests done. I will tell everybody all of my results. I will share all of these secrets and all of these arguments, both good, bad and the ugly, and I'll go through it. Open. Completely and utterly open. We will put it in the political sphere, we will put it in the educational sphere, and God help me, we will put it in the health service sphere where it belongs and where we deserve to be taken care of. And on that note, I have some calls to make. So I will see you next week. Same bat time, same bat channel. Dismissed.