Is It Hormones or Your Nervous System That Are Causing Perimenopause Chaos?

What if I told you that the question itself – hormones or nervous system – is missing the point entirely? 

A recent post by Dr. Bradley Campbell sparked something in me that I had to address, because it touches on one of the most important conversations we're not having about perimenopause. The conversation about how everything in your body is interconnected, and why the either/or approach to women's health is keeping us stuck. 

If you're navigating perimenopause and feeling like you're caught between conflicting advice – hormone therapy versus lifestyle changes, medical intervention versus natural approaches, your symptoms being "all in your head" versus them being completely out of your control – this episode will help you find your way through the noise. 

I'm sharing my clinical experience working with hundreds of women, my own personal journey with hormonal shifts, and what I've learned about the delicate dance between our hormones, nervous system, and the choices we make every single day. 

What we'll explore together: 

Dr. Bradley Campbell's Post (01:11)
The controversial perspective that started this conversation and why it matters for every woman in perimenopause 

Clinical Experience (02:22)
What I've witnessed in practice – the real stories of women whose lives transformed when we addressed the whole picture, not just isolated symptoms 

Empowerment and Responsibility (05:02)
The difference between taking responsibility for your health and being blamed for your symptoms – and why this distinction changes everything 

Truth Behind Hormonal Symptoms (06:50)
Your body is always giving you signals – what your symptoms are actually telling you and why dismissing them (or over-medicalizing them) both miss the mark 

Personal Resilience and Lifestyle Choices (17:18)
How building resilience isn't about perfection – it's about partnering with your body through sustainable, compassionate choices 

Stress and Women's Health (18:41)
The invisible load that's wreaking havoc on your hormones and why addressing stress isn't just about bubble baths and meditation 

Hormone Therapy vs. Lifestyle Management (32:40)
Why this isn't an either/or conversation – it's about finding what works for YOUR unique body and circumstances 

Here's what I want you to know: It's all connected. Your hormones don't exist in isolation from your nervous system, your stress levels, your sleep, your relationships, or your daily choices. And neither do you. 

You deserve more than being caught between extremes. You deserve nuanced, compassionate care that sees all of you – and that starts with understanding how beautifully complex your body truly is. 

Ready to dive deeper into your own hormone and nervous system connection?
Visit Ciarafoy.com or connect with me on Instagram @ciarafoyinc – I'm here to support your journey toward feeling empowered by your body, not defeated by it. 

Don't forget to leave a rate & review if this resonates – it helps other women find these conversations when they need them most. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Empowered Feminine Podcast. I'm your host, Kira Foy, mother, author, nutritionist, and women's health expert. I've designed this podcast to help you discover strategies to tame your hormonal chaos, balance stress, and become unstoppable. We'll explore all the things holistic health, success, mindset, motherhood, and creating rock solid boundaries. Each week, I'll inspire you to level up. Not by always doing more, but by being unapologetically you and stepping into your feminine power. As women, we can't always do, force, and push our way through life. That approach always leads to burnout. Join me on my mission to help high achievers like you do less, feel more, and become unstoppable. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Welcome back to the Empowered Feminine Podcast. I am your host, Curafoy. And I am coming to you today with so much energy and a little bit of tea. So this week there was a post made by a Dr. Bradley Campbell. He has well over uh half a million followers on Instagram. And I am going to tell you what he wrote, and then I am also going to tell you my experience clinically as well. So he wrote clinical pearl, perimenopause equals hormonally weak. If your adrenals and your thyroid are strong, you generally don't get perimenopause. Most people are toxic and inflamed and can't process hormones well, or used to being burnt out and hormonally exhausted. Okay. Here is a big one, guys. You know, I am somebody who always looks at shades of gray. It is not always one side or the other side. There is so much in between. And this is one of those times. So first and foremost, I am going to read to you what I actually wrote. I said, as a functional nutritionist, I help women address cortisol, blood sugar, and poor sleep because that's where the biggest improvements happen. Even when they're already on BHRT, I also educate them so they can advocate for hormones with their doctors. But brain fog and fatigue aren't always just low estrogen. Often it's high stress, disrupted sleep, and blood sugar crashes. Estradiol won't fix that. Both matter. And also let's stop taking it personally and start getting curious. P.S. I'm almost 49 and I've been practicing what I preach for 20 plus years. I've never skipped a cycle and have very few symptoms. Okay, so let's unravel this because even as I'm speaking, some of you maybe are a little bit annoyed with me. I hope that if you have been listening to this podcast, that you are somebody who understands that I see both sides of this. I am actually somebody who helps educate my clients on the benefits of biodetical hormone therapy, on the prevention mechanisms, on how that can help protect their bones and their heart and their brain and give them a better quality of life. And also, I don't think that what he is saying is entirely wrong. Okay. So, you know, again, um, I am somebody who's like, I can read a book and I can pick up the pearls and the stuff that doesn't resonate with me doesn't make me say, hey, that was a horrible book and I don't like the author. It makes me go, hey, I learned this and this was really helpful. And I can take this pearl and then move forward. So from that perspective, the interesting thing here that I found is that so many women got angry. They got really angry. We're talking hundreds of comments, lots of talk on social media about this and women being really angry. And here's the thing: so many of us want to point the finger at something outside of ourselves. We absolutely don't want to be told that something is in our control. And I've talked about this so many times. And the reason that I'm talking about it is not to point the finger at you and not to blame you, but to empower you because that is the name of this podcast. It is the empowered feminine. And if you don't take responsibility for your part, then you can't be empowered. Because, you know, to me, empowerment means the ability to create the life that you want. When you are empowered, you have knowledge that you can use, right? It means that there's something that you can do. And if we only point the finger at aging or hormones, and we don't take responsibility for our part in, you know, how we're feeling and the expression of maybe the stress that we're causing in our body, then we are just stuck being victims. And I have talked about this before. You know, a lot of people feel very uncomfortable with looking at their shadow side, right? Looking at, you know, where are we contributing to the difficulties in our lives? And this is not just with our diet or with health or with our weight. This is with everything. This is with our friendship. It's, you know, with our kids, it's with our relationships, it's with our business. We have to always look at what do we control? Because that's the only thing that you get to impact. Okay. So when I talk about empowering women, that is exactly what I mean. And so I want to dive in here and talk about the truth behind if you're having really severe perimenopausal symptoms and this is something that is just kicking you in the ass. What part of that is just genetics? What part of that is you're just getting older, it's age, what part of that is just perimenopause? And what part of that is how you are living your life and what can you do about it? And that's the most important thing. So many women in here were like, you're being so insensitive, you're a man, you know, you're being harsh, you're blaming it on us. You don't understand, you're not us, you're not in my body. Blah, blah, blah. And and what I want to say to that is I didn't see it that way. I didn't see it that way at all. As a practitioner who has been doing this work for 20 years and, you know, more specifically dealing with perimenopause for the last 10, while I was in my 40s, I will be 49 in uh just over a month. I can tell you that there is a lot of truth to what he's saying. And that doesn't mean that we're not going through a perimenopause stage, that if you, you know, take care of your adrenals and your thyroid, that, you know, nothing is going on in the background. That would be scientifically untrue. And I do not think that that's what he meant. And again, that's why I have the knowledge and I can also look at it and be, you know, read between the lines and go, oh, okay, I understand what he's saying. Because I am somebody who's 49. And despite having a lot of stress, despite being a single mom, despite having my own business, despite, you know, building a house across the country in a pandemic, despite scaling my business, despite being in a family law battle for four years, and all of the stress that that took on top of building a community, I can tell you that there is so much power that you can take from this. And it's actually great news. It's so unfortunate that women look at it and they're like, oh, but like, I'm gonna fight for, you know, I'm gonna fight for my victimhood. Let's just put it that way. And that might sound harsh to some of you, but what I see in that post is like, oh, wait a second, tell me more. Can we be curious? Tell me more about this thyroid and adrenal issue. Tell me more about my nervous system. Tell me more about how stress impacts insulin and cortisol. And those hormones are, I know you've heard me talk about this before, it's top-down. They impact your sex hormones. Tell me more about how I can be responsible for how I feel and I can turn this around and not always be relying on something outside of me. So, you know, the the last thing that you ever want to be in your life is a victim. And that doesn't mean that there's not going to be shitty fucking things that happen to you that were not under your control. I get that. You know, I am somebody who has been through some of those things. I was raped when I was 39. That's a perfect example. But it's all about our perspective and what we what we do about it. So this is a great opportunity to have this discussion, to ask yourself, you know, if I am having these early symptoms, if I am really suffering, you know, is the holy grail and my only option just to take hormones, or are there other options? And so what I would say to you is that it's not one or the other. It actually has to be both. You know, um, if you were not taking good care of yourself, if you were not getting good sleep, if you were not eating whole foods, if you're not balancing your blood sugar, if you're not being responsible for your boundaries and stress, then even if you were taking hormones, you were not gonna clear up all those symptoms. You know, we have studies that show, for example, that, you know, taking biodentical hormone therapy or just HRT does not help women lose weight. And a lot of women are under the impression that, you know, if somebody takes um hormones that that gives them a leg up, that they look a certain way because they've taken hormones almost like they're cheating, like it's a cheat code. And that's not the case at all. In fact, I see in practice women, you know, feel more bloated when they start taking hormones. They might retain water, they might um, you know, again, put on some weight. And again, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily body fat, but that can happen depending on what kind of hormone you're taking. And is it causing more inflammation? And that's a whole other discussion to go into because you know, even with my own journey in that, I have um seen the impacts of taking the wrong hormones. So, but the truth is that even if you were taking those things, if you are not healthy, if you're not a healthy host, if you don't have good um, you know, good terrain, a good microbiome, that your gut health is not working properly, you are still going to have problems taking the hormones the same as you did in your 30s, and maybe you were having tons of PMS, and maybe your cycles weren't right, and maybe you were also struggling with your weight, right? I see tons of women in my practice and even some in perimenopause who are estrogen dominant, and that means it's hard to lose weight. So, you know, um taking estradiol or taking hormones doesn't necessarily make you lose weight. So we know this across the board because you can be a healthy woman in her 20s with great hormones and still have issues there. You can have anxiety, you can have depression, you can have gut health issues, you can have cancer, you can have massive amounts of PMS, you can have migraines, you can have all those things. And those are all things that I have helped women with in my practice. So, you know, in order for us to be, you know, good hosts for those hormones, in order for our hormone receptors to be good, we ourselves have to be healthy. And that means that we have to take responsibility. Just like there is no magic pill in the pharmaceutical world that is going to protect you, protect you from cancer, diabetes, obesity, um, you know, heart disease, Alzheimer's, like none of those things. It just doesn't exist. We have things that manage symptoms, that manage the symptoms of disease that can prolong life, but we don't have magic pills that just erase things. The only thing that does that are the things that are under your responsibility, the things that you actually control. And so instead of looking at it like somebody saying, like, hey, if you control for your adrenals, A, your stress and your thyroid also connected to stress, which is also connected to your, your, um, I mean, so many things, your metabolism, but your energy levels, it's going to impact your sleep. It's going to impact um even your sex drive. Your adrenal and your thyroid hormone is largely under your control. There's so much that you can do. But it makes me so sad when I see all these women getting so freaking angry because we want to let ourselves off the hook. Like, right? Um, it's not my fault, it's my hormones. And I've never seen that to be true. I am telling you the God's honest truth. You know, like in the very first like couple years of my practice, um, a woman, Sarah, she's mentioned in my book. So if you've read my book, you've heard this story. She was in her 20s. She was a nurse. She was doing shift work. She was obese. Um, and she was told by her doctor and also by the dietitian at the hospital that she would always be overweight and obese because she had had thyroid cancer at a young age. She had her thyroid removed. And because of all those circumstances around being a nurse and doing shift work and how that puts you at greater risk for obesity. And in three months, she lost 30 pounds with me. And she went on to lose, like, I don't want to quote it wrong, but I think like at least another 30 or 40 pounds after working with me because of the information that she learned. And so there's many people in that circumstance, and a lot of the women that maybe were, you know, complaining and angry on this post, and I can see both sides, okay? I can, that would have been like, well, I don't have a thyroid, so I guess there's nothing I can do. Well, I do work shift work, while I do have a stressful life, so I guess there's nothing I can do. My doctor told me there's nothing I could do. The dietitian told me there's nothing I could do. But that client of mine chose not to accept that. And she chose to take things into her own hands, right? And there was other underlying issues going on. And she still turned that around. And so that, my friends, is my point is that, you know, whether you think that you have a higher risk of diabetes or obesity or cancer or heart disease, because somebody in your family does, I'm here to tell you that the study of epigenetics, even in just the last 10 to 20 years, shows that the truth is the majority of those of those diseases, the like the root cause is lifestyle based. Right. So that's not to say that you can't have a genetic component, but epigenetics shows that it's your lifestyle that turns on or off that gene. So just because you have the gene doesn't mean that that gene is going to be expressed. It's what you choose each and every day of your life. It's your habits that are going to show up and put you at risk or not. It's not this, like, I'm putting my hands up in the air and you know, there's nothing I can do about it. So I'm just gonna like live my life, you know, get drunk every weekend, blah, blah, blah, eat whatever the fuck I want because I have no control. That is just not true. But there are so many people that actually do believe that, sadly. Um, so let's talk about thyroid and adrenals. And let's also talk about the fact that women are under more stress, probably in their 40s than any other decade, and that is true. And let's talk about the fact that women have more autoimmune disease than men. And let's talk about the fact that, you know, uh the whole feminist um, I don't even know what you want to call it. Sometimes I want to call it propaganda because although I appreciate, you know, being able to be a strong woman and to be able to be a business owner and own my own house and vote and all these great things, it really put tons of stress on women because we just took on a whole other persona and uh and a job when we still carry, for the most part, the majority of women carry the biggest burden at home and with child rearing. And so there is a fuck ton of stress for women. And none of nobody is denying any of that. And, you know, I've felt that myself. I've been home alone with babies while my husband was out, and it was um horrifying. It was isolating, it was just really hard. I have been a single mom, you know, doing my best to build businesses, brick and mortar businesses. I have, you know, just again, like I'm not gonna go through the whole thing, but I've I've also been through a lot. I've I've had burnout. Um, I learned a lot about my adrenals at that time. And all of those things are things I bring to practice because they're things that I experienced and things that I have now have a deep knowledge on. The same as one of the things that brought me to nutrition, holistic nutrition, was gut health issues, gut health issues. So burnout, gut health issues, hormones, anti-aging, all of those things are things that, you know, like I walk my talk. And so it is true. Women are a more resilient, we are way stronger from a sex perspective than men. That is just a proven fact biologically. In fact, if you were to give birth to twins early, and you one of them was a girl and one of them was a boy, the girl would have a 60% higher risk of survival, sorry, higher chance of survival. So just like let that sink in. Studies have shown that if men are abused or sexually assaulted when they're younger, they have a much greater risk of suicide um when they're older as do women who went through the same experience. We are incredibly resilient, incredibly. And there's so much that we can do, right? So I'm not um brushing those things aside. I'm not brushing aside the Things that are really hard. I'm not, I would never ever want to diminish somebody's experience, but I am also never going to get on side with somebody feeling like their hands are tied behind their back, that there's nothing that they can do, that they're hard done by, that they're a victim, and that things are just the way that they are. I simply don't believe that. And so even with all of the stress that I've gone through, because I understand all of this, because I have a very deep knowledge of the connection between stress and your thyroid, your adrenals and your thyroid. You can't support your adrenals if you're not also supporting your thyroid. Those two things are intrinsically connected. Okay. When you are go, go, go all the time, your body is going to try to slow you down by slowing down the function of your thyroid. Why? Because that's supposed to make you tired. Like if you don't have good thyroid function, you're tired, you're moody, you're cold, things are miserable. It's because that fire, that metabolism has been slowed, right? And that's very much connected to how much stress. So remember that everything that you feel and the symptoms that you feel are your body trying to do its best by you. Okay. It's like if you're not going to slow down, man, you're going to burn up. So we're going to slow you down, right? Your body is saying that. So, but we get the idea as women when we're in our 20s and 30s that, you know, we can just get away with a lot. I mean, there's no other, there's no other way to look at it. We just think that we can get away with a lot. There's so many women that are like, oh, I don't need to think about what I eat and I can, you know, drink and do whatever, and I still feel great, and I still, you know, maintain my weight. And then they hit 30 and they start, you know, losing muscle mass. And then the stress compounds and things get worse. And by the time they get into maybe their late 30s or in 40s, they're like, holy shit, my body's betraying me. But that is not the case. It's just that she can't keep up with all the abuse. So that is why our 40s is absolutely fucking fabulous because your body is really giving you the red flag. It's like, no, no, no, no, sorry. Um, this is not how it's going to keep going. We can't keep up at this pace. And she wants you to survive. She's not working against you. She does not want to make you miserable and all the hot flashes and the mood swings. And, you know, there's all the reports of how many women are, you know, asking for a divorce because of their hormones and you know, how that's impacting their relationships. And I'm not saying that that's not true, but I am saying that there is something we can do about it. So because I have all of that knowledge, even when I have had all of these really difficult things in my life, you know, and I have the proof to back it up. So I'm not sitting here telling you that I'm a perfect person, but what I am telling you is that knowledge is power and that if I can do it, you can do it. So during COVID, the majority of people, you know, ate whatever they wanted, ordered in, kind of treated it like vacation. A lot of people were drinking at noon. I mean, I remember watching Instagram accounts where there were some um pretty famous models who were joking around about pouring, you know, rose in their cereal in the morning. And I don't know if that was such a joke. I mean, the truth is that whenever somebody's joking, there's some truth to it. So all of that was happening. And it was a very, very stressful time for me. Very stressful. Both from a co-parenting perspective, from a perspective of like I really understood what was going on from the beginning. I could really foresee the damage, the mental health issues with children. Um, you know, that is a whole other story. But yeah, I mean, now we have, we now we know how it played out and we know how detrimental it was, and we know a lot of the BS. And I I knew that because I'd been in this industry in holistic nutrition and kind of understood all of that for a really long time. So it was very hard place to be mentally. And so what did I do? I kept my schedule. I went to bed on time, I got up at the same time, I did my workouts, or I walked outside, or I ran outside and I listened to podcasts and I kept myself busy and I took care of myself. You know, and it's not lucky. I've always had to take care of myself. And I remember somebody messaging me on Instagram one day about maybe a story that I post, and she said, you know, like independence, the way that you talk about it is actually a trauma response. She was not wrong. She was absolutely not wrong. It is a trauma response for me. Um, I've, you know, really been that person who've had to have my own back. And so I learned to take care of myself. And as much as that is hard, and obviously there was trauma that led to that, I am super grateful that I have that perspective and that when things are really difficult, you know, that perspective, the experience coupled with my knowledge on these things has me go in the direction of when life is really hard, I'm gonna double down on the things I need to do to protect my body so that I can get through this. So I say all of that to you because in the last 15 minutes, what I'm talking about is stress and all of the things that we don't control, and how many of us want to hang our hat on that? And you can get mad at me for saying this, and that is totally okay. And also, I hope you get mad, and I hope that a little bit of it sinks in, and you think, man, fuck, what if she's right? And what can I do? And what steps can I take? And what is that missing piece? And maybe I can get curious, and maybe I can turn things around, and maybe I could feel awesome, and maybe just put a little maybe in your life, just sprinkle a little maybe in your life, because that is where all ideas and breakthroughs and transformations stem from. It's just like a maybe, right? Like the little engine that could. Because despite all of the stress, if you get enough sleep, if you move your body, if you fuel yourselves, you can get through it. I am almost 49. And while there is definitely a genetic connection, like you will go through menopause, you know, fairly close to when your mother went through menopause, right? If it was natural, for example, it wasn't like induced by hysterectomy or something. Um, you know, my mom went through menopause, she's not 100% sure, but because that was not something we talked about. And I also have a Catholic mother, so like there wasn't a lot we talked about. Um, but I don't know, sometime in her mid-50s, like maybe 53 to 55 or something, which is not that much longer than the average, because average is 47 to 52, but maybe a little bit longer. But I would not say that that is the only reason that I feel like I've had a great experience through perimetopause. I've gotten stronger every year since I turned 40. I have have become more resilient. I have, you know, like just expanded my life, business, um, health, resilience, all the things. And I still have a regular cycle. I have very, very little symptoms. Um, I've never had a hot flash. And again, not every, not all women get it, but I might get it at some point. I still ovulate every month. And this is an important thing because stress can stop us from ovulating. So if your stress is high, if your thyroid is off, those are all reasons, you know, why, for example, when I'm working with women in their 30s that they're having fertility problems because they're not ovulating all the time, because their body is protecting them or they're not eating enough. So their body is protecting them, they're not ovulating, their body is saying, hey, this is not a good time to get pregnant. Um, they're not producing enough progesterone. So that, you know, their uterine lining is um going to start shedding before a fertilized egg could even attach to it. All of those things have to do with stress. So whether you're in your 30s or whether you're in your 40s, it's it's not just a hormone thing. It is a nervous system thing. It is about your boundaries, it is about your lifestyle, it is about your nutrition, your sleep, and all the things. I just really wish that everyone understood this because your experience could be so much different. It really could. There are so many women that are suffering unnecessarily. And while we don't get to control everything, it's the same thing as like you don't want to get cancer, so you don't smoke, right? Because you know that's a high risk factor. If you were super stressed, then your chances are you're gonna have a pretty miserable experience. If you're not getting enough sleep, if you're not prioritizing yourself and your health, you're gonna have a more miserable experience. And that was really what that post was about. And I can promise you that there is a lot of truth in that. Because, you know, I don't ever just think, oh, I'm lucky. Because I know personally, you know, there's the things that I talk about on Instagram or here on my podcast. And then there's the real reality, right? So even though I'm very vulnerable and open with you guys, I'm not gonna go into the depths of what I experienced, which was pretty deep. When I talk about, oh yeah, I was, you know, I was uh oh yeah, raped at 39. I'm not going into and explaining the depths of that and what happened and what that led to and what the you know the criminal trial was like and all of those things. So there's a lot of things that I share and there's a lot of things that I keep. And so, like if you knew, trust me, you'd be like, oh fuck, if she could make it through that, because she has an early bedtime, and obviously it's not just that, then you would be like, Oh yeah, I I can I can do this, I can turn it around. So um, and this is what I do in my practice, right? Is that the experiences that you have, the weight gain, the brain fog. So, for example, the brain fog is a really good one because I think, I think more than anything, the brain fog is the thing that scares women the most and is the most disruptive. And that I've talked about with friends of mine. And, you know, and even for myself and for many of my clients, that is the scary thing. And I hear about it with women in their 30s, and it can be really scary. And we have to remember that like dementia and Alzheimer's are basically type three diabetes. And so a lot of the things that I'm dealing with in my practice are the things that are going to make those risk factors greater. If you were somebody who is, you know, struggling with insulin resistance, um, you're having a hard time, you have a good amount of weight to lose, you're having a hard time losing weight, you have high A1C, um, there's metabolic disorder, those are the factors that put you at greater risk for dementia or Alzheimer's, because it really is sugar in the brain. So, but the other thing that I want you to know is that a lot of women have got the message that, you know, estradiol and a lack of estrogen also causes brain fog. And yes, that is true. However, you can take estradiol, and I've seen this in my practice with my clients, and you can take it for a while. And I, you know, I've clients who um will say, I've noticed nothing with respect to brain fog. And I can tell you the answer, and I tell them the answer, even though they might not really like it, which is well, but you're still going to bed at midnight, you're still burning the candle at both ends, you've lost weight, you're, you know, exercising, you've, you know, controlled some of those controllables, but some of the most important things that you can do is manage stress to support your thyroid, and also to manage your cortisol levels because really high cortisol levels impact your brain. Not only are they breaking down and catabolizing your muscle faster, which is one of the things that's, you know, increasing your risk of disease, but also increasing your waistline. Um, but the cortisol really impacts your brain and the energy capacity of your brain. So you can take estradiol, but if you still have a nervous system issue, you still have an HPA access, which is something we look at in the Dutch test, your 24-hour cortisol pattern. And, you know, um, when you have an adrenal and an HPA access issue, you typically also have thyroid issues. Those things are also going to kill your energy, gonna kill your sleep, going to kill your uh capacity and energy in your brain. So I just wanted to get on here and give you that little rant. And when Ozempa came out a couple of years ago, and people actually, the Toronto Star, I'm quoted in a Toronto Star is a big newspaper in Toronto, in Canada, uh, which is the largest city in Canada. Um, and I was quoted in a Toronto Star article, and they called me and they're like, you know, are you worried about your practice? Because now we have a pill for weight loss. And this was in 2023, and I was like, oh my gosh, no, I've never been busier. And it has never impacted my business. Um, A, because it doesn't work for everybody, B, there's a lot of side effects. C, it's not going to help women's hormones. Um, you know, and in fact, it's it creates an issue where women are actually aging rapidly. Um, because when you lose weight that quickly and you lose not just muscle mass, but also um, you know, just healthy tissue, right? We now know that the size of hearts and brains and bone density and all of those things is impacted that way. Um, that is just accelerated aging. So, but that I know that there is never a pill that is ever going to save us. It's not BHRT, although I strongly advocate for it. You know, I was just on a call with a client who I've worked for over the years, and you know, there's a risk of heart disease in her family. And I talked to her about BHRT, and I gave her the research papers, and I suggested she, you know, speak to her family doctor, and she went to a specialist and she went in. And in her case, she took the estradiol and she actually has had better cognitive function, and she's like, oh my God, it was like taking the veil off. But like that client would never have started BHRT if it wasn't for me helping her to understand how it could really help her and prevent disease in the future. And there's zero benefit for me doing that, right? Like I don't prescribe, I'm not connected to anybody to prescribe. It's really just I want women to be as healthy and well resourced. Um, and for us just to continue to thrive and to know what those options are. And so that's, you know, why I help to educate women. But I never live in a world of scarcity where I think that something is going to, you know, replace me. And that's the smallest tiny bit of this whole thing because the truth is nothing replaces your lifestyle and your habits every day. No supplement can trump them, no pharmaceutical can trump them, right? If you have diabetes and you take diabetes medication, it doesn't get rid of the diabetes. It can manage symptoms, but it doesn't get rid of the diabetes or the side effects. So I just hope that everybody listening to this hears me. And I hope that it excites you, that there are possibilities that maybe you haven't thought about, that it's not one or the other. It's an and I will definitely be taking biodegle hormones and I continue to support my health. And it is not about if I am lucky or if I have a stress-free life or any of those things that controls my experience. Because I know that even during the most extressful times, if I take proper care of my body and sleep is a huge, huge, huge one because that's when your body detoxifies. Like your brain will build up, like, let's just say, like, it just builds up gunk from your regular body functions. This is not you being exposed to a bunch of toxins. It's just a product of being alive and being human. And when it clears those things is when you are sleeping. So research has shown that you can deal with just about any amount of stress if you are getting enough sleep. And then when you put good exercise on top of that, and when you put, you know, a good mindset on top of that, and when you put um getting sunshine and lots of healthy food and whole foods, and I've been, you know, organics and like very little plastics and all of those kind of things for 20 years, it all adds up. And so no matter where you're starting from, my message to you is don't be a victim. Don't point the finger outside of yourself. Don't say, I gotta wait for the timing to be right or when I'm not stressed, or you know, when I my kids are gone, or all of these things. You've got to be responsible for you right now and start getting excited about what is possible when you take the reins in your life and when you create the vision. Sorry about the dog. When you create the vision of your future. So if you want to thrive through perimenopause, if you want to be stronger and healthier through menopause, it's all under your control. I totally believe that. And I am here to partner with you, I'm here to teach you. Uh, reach out to me either by email. You can go to my Instagram page at Curafoy Inc. There is an application page in there, and I am releasing a brand new masterclass that is going really deep on a viral Instagram reel that I had all about protein. So this one is called Beyond Protein, and I'm going to link it in the show notes. Um, it is free for all of you who show up live. And if you can't show up live, there is a very small fee to get the recording, and you'll get a worksheet with that as well, like a summary of the actual masterclass to review. And the reason I do that is so that you have some skin in the game, is so that you don't just like, you know, sign up. And then not do anything. You don't show up or you don't listen to the recording because that is the most important part. Taking action, making it a priority, making yourself a priority, getting curious about what you don't know and about what you can start to plug into your life to feel incredible. Because I'm not keeping any secrets here. I'm telling you that it is all possible and it is up to you.