Dear Menopause
Are you experiencing changes to your physical, mental and emotional health you find hard to explain?
Have you tried talking to your doctor/partner/employer/best friend and been left feeling unsupported?
In this weekly show, host Sonya Lovell interviews a range of experts and shares the stories of everyday people to help you understand what the hell is going on, why and where you can find support, empowerment and most importantly, a like-minded community.
Dear Menopause
120: Your Brain During Menopause with Dr Jen Hacker Pearson
Your brain is undergoing a massive renovation during menopause, and Neuroscientist Dr Jennifer Hacker Pearson is here to help you understand the how and why.
With nearly three decades studying neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change itself, Dr Jen offers revolutionary insights into why perimenopause affects every woman differently and how you can harness this transformation.
When estrogen levels fluctuate during perimenopause, your brain essentially panics. There are estrogen receptors throughout your neural networks, and as this crucial hormone decreases, your brain must create "workarounds" by changing its structure, function, and connectivity. This rewiring explains everything from mood swings to cognitive changes, but it also presents a golden opportunity for personal growth.
"Menopause is actually a gift," Dr Jen explains, challenging society's often negative perspective. Rather than viewing it as decline, she frames it as a developmental transition, a chance to become your truest, most authentic self. The extensive neural reorganisation happening during this time creates ideal conditions for consciously shaping who you want to be in your post-menopausal years.
Dr Jen shares practical tools for directing this transformation, recommending meditation to reduce neuroinflammation (which increases as estrogen decreases) and journaling to understand how past experiences have shaped your brain. She also discusses fascinating research on how previous hormonal experiences like pregnancy might better prepare women for menopause, and explains why declining estrogen levels may contribute to women's higher risk of Alzheimer's disease.
Download Dr Jen's free 5-minute meditation designed specifically for women in perimenopause, and discover why embracing this transition rather than fighting it could be the key to thriving through midlife and beyond.
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Welcome to the Dear Menopause podcast. I'm Sonya Lovell, your host Now. I've been bringing you conversations with amazing menopause experts for over two years now. If you have missed any of those conversations, now's the time to go back and listen, and you can always share them with anyone you think needs to hear them. This way, more people can find these amazing conversations. Welcome to this week's Dear Menopause episode. Today, I am joined by one of my favorite type of guests, Dr Jennifer Hacker. Pearson is a neuroscientist, psychotherapist and women's mental health wellbeing specialist, so she wears lots of hats. Jen, welcome to Dear Menopause. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. I know I'm happy to have you here. We have been talking about having this episode recorded since about September last year, and it's taken us until now May to actually have this conversation, so I'm beside myself that we are going to dive into some really juicy topics. Jen, before we do that, how about you give everyone just a little overview of who you are and what you do?
Dr Jen:Sure, I'm an actual mother, I have three children, but I have a science baby called neuroplasticity. And neuroplasticity, as we will talk about today, is the ability of the brain to change itself, and I've been studying that for almost three decades now, so it's been a really long time, and I'm fascinated about how the brain changes itself and how we can influence that as well. So I did my PhD in that in well a while ago. And then I, in my forties, I actually did a psychotherapy degree because I really enjoyed the neuroscience and the kind of the measurable things of what we can see in a woman's brain.
Dr Jen:But also I was curious about the things that we can't measure. And I always like to say yet, because I do think that we'll get there at one stage because we're such multifaceted beings. We're not just, you know, stick an electrode in something, measure something, and therefore that's what makes you you. So I got very curious about the holistic, the person, the woman, the one that is going through menopause. So I did a psychotherapy degree and then, during COVID, I trained as a meditation teacher, because I think that just the three together is very good, like you've got the knowledge, the scientific knowledge, and you know the psychotherapy knowledge and then the kind of practical application of it all to support yourself through menopause. So that's me in a nutshell.
Sonya:So you are amazing. Now, obviously, we're here to talk about the brain. We're here to talk about the female brain in particular, and one of the things that I know you are really passionate about is the developmental transition that women go through as they enter menopause, but also its potential correlation with what we see in the brain during other transitional times as well. So, like puberty and adolescence and pregnancy, is that a good place for us to kind of start to talk about your passion project there? Sure, absolutely yeah.
Dr Jen:So you know, we know a lot about puberty and pregnancy and that developmental transition.
Dr Jen:In puberty you go through adolescence and then in pregnancy you go through matricence Most people don't know that word and then in menopause we don't have a word.
Dr Jen:But there is this huge developmental transition that any woman who's in perimenopause or has been through menopause will tell you.
Dr Jen:Yes, it completely changed me as a person.
Dr Jen:And so, while we have some understanding of what's happening in the brain in children as they become adults and a little bit more in the brain as women become mothers, we don't really have that much information where we don't have that much neuroscience information about the menopausal brain at all, let's be honest but certainly not from a developmental perspective.
Dr Jen:So we can see that there are some correlations with what we can see, and one is in particular I'll just dive straight in to the default mode network, which is a network of brain regions that obviously work together and they give us this sense of self, our sort of self-referential thinking and being, and it is activated when our mind is at rest During menopause.
Dr Jen:We can see that there is some changes in the structure and the function and the connectivity of that region or that network, and I think you know, with speculating that that is what is sort of showing us that feeling of who am I now and also the further on we go in the menopausal journey to go right, I'm not giving any more Fs and I'm going to be this person and you either like it or you don't like it, and that is kind of the development of who you're becoming. And my personal passion is guiding women and supporting them and educating them to go from where they are now, which for many women who are in the perimenopausal transition is not a good place. It's terrifying, and you think you're going to be like this forever and you don't know who the hell you are to creating a map, creating a plan of getting from there to where they want to go in the postmenopause, because it won't be horrible forever.
Sonya:Yeah, 100%. I think that's something we need to talk about more often, because I didn't experience perimenopause in the same way a lot of people did because of my induced menopause. Even though I was in my 40s, I hadn't experienced any perimenopause symptoms. Potentially I was going to be one of those lucky people that just kind of sailed on through. We'll never know, but I have heard anecdotally from so many women in their 40s that do kind of get really stuck in these weeds of is this? It Is this how I am now going to feel for the rest of my life, and that is really confronting and it's really challenging.
Sonya:And when you are on the other side and I have these amazing conversations with women like myself that are on the other side and you're like, no, it's great, it's amazing. Everything changes and shifts and you do grow into this new space. That is so wonderful, but it's really hard to tell someone when they're in the thick of it, in the weeds, that that's where they're heading to. But also it's so fascinating to understand that it is actually our brain rewiring. I've spoken to so many psychologists and psychiatrists about this transition that women go through, where it's like who am I, who do I want to be, is this it? To know that it's actually being driven by the brain, as opposed to some sort of existential crisis, is really cool.
Dr Jen:Well, the whole menopause is driven by the brain. The whole cessation of menses, you know the end of our period is all driven by the brain, because the menstrual cycle is driven by the brain. So the fact that we're now seeing that there are changes happening in the brain during perimenopause is sensational, because we can finally back up what women have known forever that there's something, you know something's changing and we have been told, I guess, previously that it's just in your head. You know there's nothing wrong with you. It's like let's not even go into the history of the hysteria and the uterus and all that sort of stuff, but you know that women just can't handle it and that we're emotional beings and that there's nothing actually happening and we should just suck it up. So it's fantastic that we can have both. We can have the experience and we can kind of start seeing the science to back it up.
Sonya:From my perspective, the most recent person that gets talked a lot about from this research and this breaking through into understanding the changes in the brain through perimenopause and menopause is Dr Lisa Moscone. Was there research and studies being done prior or is it just that she has broken through in this space?
Dr Jen:She's broken through in a certain aspect. There has been some people looking at it, but it is all very new. It's all really really very new. I think that one of her studies was one of the breakthrough ones, where she found the amyloid plaques. That was because she's originally an Alzheimer's researcher. I guess lots of science happens by accident, and I guess this was a little bit by accident as well. So no, it's all very new. We didn't even really start looking at women's brains until the 1990s. It's just madness.
Sonya:We get so frustrated when we look at inequality in healthcare and so many aspects of women's health. We get so frustrated that there's still this huge gap. But then if you kind of take a beat and step back and you do reflect on the fact that we've only been doing the studies on women specifically in all aspects of their health and physiology, since the 1990s that's not that long ago.
Dr Jen:No, I know and look, I'd like to give the world the benefit of the doubt that we just didn't know better and so it was just assumed that we could pretend that women are small men and we just give them a smaller dose, or whatever. It's probably the easier thing to say right now. But we know it's not true. Women are very complicated and very different, and we're driven by hormones, as we know, and so there's studies we just can't do on men.
Sonya:And it's a shame it took them that long to work it out. There's a lot of ground to make up, a lot of ground to make up. Yes, 100%, all right, so let's go back a little bit to what changes do we actually start seeing in our brain during perimenopause, so during perimenopause what happens?
Dr Jen:so, as I was saying, the brain initiates menopause and also the brain is what drives the menstrual cycle. So there's a signal that goes from the brain to the ovaries and it basically says get an egg ready for ovulation, and then it sends another, so it's sort of like feedback mechanism. Then it sends another signal down and one of them releases estrogen and the other one releases progesterone and then you release an egg and during perimenopause, when the eggs aren't there aren't as many eggs and they're not as good quality the brain really has to struggle to get that message down there, to get the egg release, and then the estrogen isn't quite as high, or it's really really high because it's pumping out so many other hormones to try and get this message across that it gets sent back into the brain and there's a bit of chaos. The brain is kind of like going what is going on? The brain's number one aim is to create homeostasis, which is internal balance, and so when there's these fluctuations of things and it doesn't just need to be hormones, but in this regard it's hormones it freaks out a little bit because it doesn't like it. So it needs to figure out what to do so, as there is less estrogen or fluctuations of estrogen, the brain starts to change itself in structure and function, which is the neuroplasticity that I was talking about, and connectivity to try and figure out.
Dr Jen:I call it a workaround of how to function with now less estrogen, to start with, because there are estrogen receptors all through the brain and what that tells us is where there's an estrogen receptor, there's estrogen required. So suddenly we don't have the estrogen and the brain is going. What do I do? My estrogen isn't there, what can I do? And so, therefore, I need to change myself in structure and function and connectivity to be able to do the things that I need to do to keep you alive Right, so cool. And to retain the homeostasis, to to keep it working, to keep it balanced. Yeah, so, so we've seen um that that they're the main things that we see, that there's like a, you know, change in gray meta volume and changing glucose metabolism, but it's basically just the brain going. Help, what do I do without this estradiol?
Sonya:yeah, wow, I guess there's two scenarios here that kind of play out in my head. The first one is the woman is in perimenopause, she's having all of these fluctuations. She goes and gets some hormone therapy, so the estrogen, the progesterone and sometimes the testosterone are kind of topped up and I would imagine that kind of evens everything out and the brain kind of goes okay, cool, thanks, guys. Back on board. And if you don't, then obviously the brain stays in this state of flux. So let's talk about not taking HRT to start with. So the body just naturally goes through these hormone fluctuations. The brain starts adapting and changing so to adapt to the new hormone levels that it's dealing with. Then what happens once there is that consistent drop, so actual menopause comes that one day in the calendar, and then what does things look like after that?
Dr Jen:So we see symptoms sometimes go into four to six years after post-menopause and women sort of feeling well, you know, I've had my last period, why do I still feel like this? But it can take time.
Sonya:I think there's sometimes an expectation that you get that one day in the calendar. Okay, I'm now post-menopausal. Everything should settle down, and we know that it doesn't. And that is the first time I've heard it explained that way as to why it can take that four to six years, even post-menopausally, to allow all those symptoms to settle back down naturally, yeah, just the brain needs to get used to it.
Dr Jen:When you think about for most women for me it certainly will be around about 35 odd years of a very predictable hormonal cycle every month, unless you get pregnant, of course, we will have a break to suddenly not have this and, like I said, there are estrogen receptors everywhere in the brain. It's not just like there's a little bit going on. We all go, oh, we'll make do with that. And through the body as well, that the brain needs to figure out okay, what can we do? And the estradiol, the one that we have during our fertile years, is the most potent estrogen there is, so it needs to figure out how to start using estrone, which is the most abundant one we have in menopause. So there's just a lot of change that is happening. And I mean, if you've ever seen any footage of a brain, it's such a complicated network of neurons and connections and pathways and you name it, that it just it takes time.
Sonya:Yeah, wow, it's so cool and I'm really feeling like we don't talk about this enough. Obviously, it is new information that's coming out, new research. There's still studies that need to happen to prove a lot of what I would imagine some may consider to still be anecdotal. But I feel like there's not enough emphasis in the public narrative or the education and awareness that runs publicly for women around perimenopause and menopause to understand that it's not, because I suppose you get the changes to your period so you think that that's that ovarian kind of function and you get maybe aches and pains. So you think there's the muscular stuff. We talk a lot about bone density, so there's the bones. We talk about heart health, but I don't think we're talking enough about the impacts on the brain 100% yeah.
Dr Jen:And talking about society and the perception of menopause in society and, as we were saying before, women, just that's when they go crazy and it's like, well, the brain goes crazy, it's, and it's literally crazy, it doesn't know what to do. And so I think bringing it back to the actual and, I think, tangible things, people like to see things is very important, because it is driven by the brain.
Sonya:Okay, I have much more respect for my brain now, but also it goes so far to explain why there are so many good days, bad days, ups, downs, this whole period caused by the brain trying to work out what the hell it's supposed to do now that you're no longer producing this dominant fuel.
Dr Jen:And it's also that the estrogen is the beginning of a catalyst of reactions, you know, so that the estrogen binds to the estrogen receptor here, which sends signals to all these other places to do all these things. So it's not just a matter of in that brain region, it won't work. It's like it's all interconnected, like really like a, like a web of, of, like an electrician's wiring where things are connected, and if that doesn't work, then this won't work and that won't work, and so it's all very, very connected, and I think that's the important part to remember.
Sonya:Okay, Now I'm going to ask you a question that is completely left afield, but it just popped into my brain while we were talking, so let's see where this takes us. There is some talk and, I believe, some research being done out of the Buck Institute in California about postponing menopause. So it's like do we actually even need menopause? Do we need to experience perimenopause and menopause and the 10 or so years of upheaval and chaos that can be created? And you may not have thought about this, but if you have, where do you sit in that prospect for the future? It's a big question.
Dr Jen:Look, I think you know we're always making advances in medicine and I think that's great for certain people to look at this sort of opportunity. I guess it's the same as with IVF or freezing your eggs for some people it works. Personally, for me, from what I've learned and from my research, for me, from what I've learned and from my research, I wouldn't want to do that, because I think that menopause is actually a gift, and it is this neural rewiring is where it starts to lead to a developmental change that actually offers us an opportunity to become the person that we really want to become, and obviously this is very kind of spiritual and not neuroscientific at all. But if you speak to women who have gone through the menopausal transition, the majority will tell you life on the other side is so much better. So you know, there are all lots of theories about why do we even go through menopause and survive? Because most species die after they stop reproducing. And then there's a theory that, well, actually we should be dying, but medicine's keeping us alive.
Dr Jen:Then there's the theory, the grandmother hypothesis, which is basically we just stay on earth to help our children look after their children. But I actually have a completely different theory, and I think that it is an invitation to become your truest, most authentic self and actually love life, enjoy life. You've done the children. If you had children, you've done the career, you've done the thing and actually just go. Who do I want to be? And live as that person? That's what I think. So why would you want to deny yourself that?
Sonya:Yeah, I love that. One of the thoughts that came into my mind when you were talking from a spiritual perspective. It's almost like a levelling up enlightenment, isn't it, if you kind of lean into some of the Buddhist theories. It's really interesting because when I first heard about the Buck Institute and that research and I was like, oh, that's really cool, that would be great to not have to go through all this upheaval. But now for me, eight years post-menopause, I agree with you, I have very much stepped into the power of somebody very different to who I was in my pre-menopausal years. And look, I also had a breast cancer diagnosis. That changes things significantly. But I do have so many conversations with women that are post-menopausal and have been for some time, that are absolutely living their best lives and do really appreciate the gift that can come with menopause.
Dr Jen:Yeah, absolutely, and I think you know. Then you need to start thinking about do we stop puberty? Do we get people to just go from child to do we just bombard them with hormones to skip puberty? But think of all the brain changes that you're skipping. Or pregnancy, you know it's. You have to go through the neural remodeling that is happening, through these three big developmental transitions, to get to the other side, and I just don't think that you can skip it and I think it's just no offense to the institute, but I think it's just a sign of the times where it's like too hard, let's just skip it, exactly, yeah.
Sonya:And it's almost like gamifying life, isn't it? It's a little bit like if we were sitting here playing a game, that you could have this option of take the red pill, take the blue pill. Do you want to have menopause, do you not? Do you want to have adolescence, do you not?
Dr Jen:I mean, we know from enough research that it is through the adversity that the growth happens as a person, aside from the brain. So I think, just personally, I wouldn't want to skip it. I wouldn't want to skip any of the hard stuff, because it's made me the person I am today and I just can't wait to see who I become.
Sonya:Yeah, I love that so much. I completely agree with you. Thank you for that little sidetrack with me. So if we go back to what you were talking about, which was the upheaval to the brain, and it's driven from hormonal changes, so if someone is not taking hormone therapy therefore they're not getting that kind of external top-up of the hormones what else can be done to help manage and kind of help you navigate and negotiate that period of upheaval, to help the brain?
Dr Jen:So I think it's like menopause, a very individualized thing, so I can't say everyone should do this and it will work for everyone. But I think one of the most important aspects is like appreciating I know it sounds terrible because some people do really struggle but appreciating that you can experience menopause, that you're old enough, that you have lived long enough to be able to experience this and, taking a little bit of a perspective change on it, that, rather than some sort of failure of your brain or failure of your body or that you're now going into the abyss of ageing, it's actually a transformation and like we were talking about it being a renovation project for the brain, so that there's actually this beautiful invitation to be able to change yourself and to thrive into your older age. I think that is the first thing, because we do really have a very negative connotation with menopause in our western society very and aging like we're aging.
Dr Jen:We're such an anti-aging society exactly, and I think that that the fertility thing not that the majority of women won't want to have children towards the end of their fertile years anyway, but there's something about us not being fertile anymore that society has deemed less than pointless, undesirable, unattractive. I don't know what it is. It's silly. I think about what it means to you and not what it means to other people, and not what it means to society, and being grateful that you're still alive, because I know people and I'm sure you do too who never got to this point. So a little bit of a Pollyanna approach, I suppose the other thing is definitely get to know your brain, get to know yourself, get to know what is going on inside, so that you can understand like we were just saying that there is these changes happening and some of them are profound, like they're really really big changes that are happening, so that when you feel anxious or when you feel a little bit depressed, or when you feel you don't have enough energy, you can kind of understand why.
Sonya:Yeah, so it's like showing yourself a little bit of grace during those periods because you understand this renovation project is going on.
Dr Jen:And then learning learning about how you can use this changing brain, how you can actually help direct your changing brain to become the person that you want to be, so that you can use this changing brain, how you can actually help direct your changing brain to become the person that you want to be, so that you can look at the changes and the big upheaval and everything as an opportunity to go right. Okay, it's like I've got this mess in front of me. Let me tidy it up and in the process, I want to become this person or live this life, or be able to do these things, you know, to basically direct your postmenopausal years the way you want them.
Sonya:Take that a little bit further for me what tools do you recommend that women use to actually make the most of this window? I think you call it the golden window of opportunity, which I love so much. What tools do you actually other than obviously that education, awareness, ability to show yourself grace because your body is changing? What other tools do you have or do you recommend that women kind of lean into?
Dr Jen:I think it's really, really important to learn about yourself. So you need to have a little bit of a dig in your family history in yourself and be honest with yourself about your DNA, your psychosocial history, your neuropsychological history, your values and your beliefs, and also think about things that have happened in your life that have shaped your brain to this point in time. So that is not really a tool, it's more like a challenge, I suppose, to just dig a little bit, because when we look at helping to direct the brain, so the brain is in this very plastic state when it's in perimenopause, which means it's changing a lot, which means it is also easy for us to help change it. So it's like that's the window of opportunity so we're able to play a role in this. And when you want to do that, one of the main things that you want to create is conscious awareness, so that when something happens, your reaction to that is your choice and it's not just a reaction that comes from your DNA, your psychosocial history, all those things.
Dr Jen:So to create more space, the first thing I recommend for women and this is, I think, useful in menopause anyway, even if you don't want to delve into yourself is meditation, because meditation decreases stress and cortisol, it increases perception of life and it just it's so good. And it decreases neuroinflammation as well, which is one of the things that happens when estrogen decreases. So estrogen decreases, neuroinflammation goes up and suddenly we start seeing all these problems in the brain. So meditation is one of the first things I recommend to women Also, just to get comfortable with sitting and just seeing what thoughts come up. It's so simple.
Sonya:It is, isn't it? And meditation is one of those things that some people find really easy and some people find really hard. So if somebody is perhaps challenged by the thought of learning how to meditate and spending time meditating, what advice do you have to them?
Dr Jen:there, okay. So meditation is not about switching off your mind. It's not about anything other than just sitting and noticing hearing raindrops on a window or listening to your breath. It doesn't have to be, and if your mind wanders, you bring it back. So it's not so much about clearing your mind.
Dr Jen:I think meditation again has had this terrible connotation put on it that you have to be in lotus position and you've got to free your mind and you need to be clear and not have any bad thoughts or whatever it is that people think. And it's not that at all. It's just about being consciously aware. And so I actually created a five-minute meditation that every listener is welcome to download, thank you. I created it for myself because everyone is busy and I get that, and it doesn't need to be a 45-minute process where you sit cross-legged on the floor with your bums hurting and your knees hurting and you're like when is this over? It's meant to be a little nurturing gift to your brain. So I made this five-minute one for myself because I was like I don't have time, I don't even have 20 minutes in the morning before the kids get up. I'm happy to share it. They're welcome to download it. We can put the link in the show notes if you'd like.
Sonya:Yeah, absolutely 100%. Thank you, and I love that it's just five minutes and, like you said, it can be really hard to find 20 minutes or 30 minutes in your day when we're all focused on how much protein we're eating and how much exercise we're getting and running around looking after children and parents and blah, blah blah. So I love that five minutes. And is there a next step on from that where you talked about getting to know yourself? Getting to know, obviously, the thoughts that you're having that crop up during meditation, but also understanding what it is that you want to be in the future? Is there a journaling side to that as well that you would recommend is useful to actually really kind of unpack? I know that's something that helps me a lot.
Dr Jen:Yeah, definitely, you can start journaling with it.
Dr Jen:I'm actually just writing about it in my new book. So my new book is basically all about that journey from where you are into the post-menopause and navigating the rough seas of menopause, because it is pretty rough for a lot of people. I think journaling is a really good place to start and I think, rather than putting so much pressure on ourselves, going right, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to delve into myself. Just start maybe a note section in your phone, because a lot of stuff comes to me when I'm in the shower or places where I have nothing, and then put a bullet point and then you're walking the dog and something else and you go bullet point and things might come up. Oh, there was that time when I was eight when my uncle was meant to pick me up and he didn't come and I felt do you know what stuff will come up? And I think just to have the openness and the curiosity for it to come up and to write it down, because all of that has shaped your brain.
Sonya:Every single action, experience, thought, feeling that you have had has shaped your brain, which is why perimenopause will be different for every woman because all our brains are different at that point in time when perimenopause begins, and throughout yeah, that's a really good reminder, because we do talk about how everybody's perimenopause experience is going to be different, but I don't think we've talked enough about why that actually is, because I think at our basic level we go well, we're all humans, we're all women, and we forget that it's actually the stuff we don't see that is playing a big part in that.
Dr Jen:Yeah, and from my perspective, what I teach is very much about recognising what shapes your brain. Obviously, when you're in perimenopause, whether you have young children or ageing parents or a job that you like, there's a lot of other factors as well, but when it comes to the brain, it is about those things that make you you.
Sonya:They make you you, and there is a lot of research coming out now too, on the fact that and this will tie into what you've just said that women who've experienced trauma particularly earlier in their lives, women that were susceptible to PMDD, postnatal depression, things like that will likely go on to have a rougher time in perimenopause.
Dr Jen:Yeah, yeah, that's right. I certainly know from a postnatal depression perspective, women who have experienced postnatal depression will have a high chance of experiencing menopausal depression again during perimenopause. We also have found in research that women who have never had a child tend to have more severe perimenopause symptoms. And I find that really interesting because when I think about how the brain rewires and reshapes itself during those three key phases, if you miss that one, if you've had one child, I would be curious to know for someone who's had seven children is it easier for them during perimenopause? I don't know, there's no research that I know of, but I do know that women who have never had a child, who have never had that experience in that developmental transition presence where the brain changes itself radically radically because you've got your nine months, you're growing a baby and then suddenly you deliver the baby and your estrogen just plummets. So it's radical and they've never had that and then they struggle more during perimenopause. I'm very, very curious about that.
Sonya:That's really interesting when you lay it out. Through those three different transformational phases that we go through, it does make sense that if you missed one of those, for whatever reason, that you are going to experience something different through the following transition.
Dr Jen:Yeah, because it's all to do with change, like I was saying to you, the things that make you you and how your brain has changed to the point of when you come into perimenopause. And even if you've never had that radical shift in hormones where the brain is just like, oh my God, we're going to do something very quickly, does it affect your perimenopausal changes?
Sonya:Yeah, there's so much research. If we could fund research for everything that I decide should be studied, we'd have some fascinating information by the end of it all, wouldn't we?
Dr Jen:Yeah, another thing I'm really fascinated about, and I talk about a lot, is the overlap of postpartum and perimenopause, so when you have huge brain changes in postpartum and coming into motherhood but you're like in your early, mid, late forties, really interesting.
Dr Jen:I am one of those women that, well, I have my kids in my thirties, my early thirties, but I have friends that have had kids into their 40s and then they are literally just bouncing straight from post-pregnancy and postpartum into perimenopause and there's no kind of gap between it, and I can't wait for the research to come out on it, because what the brain is doing, it's adapting itself to become a mother, to get attuned to the baby's cry, to become selfless because you're trying to keep this baby alive, but at the same time, it's going through the perimenopausal transition, where you're becoming a little bit more selfish. Well, exactly, so what is happening? And is the chaos more extreme? And no wonder women feel so confused.
Sonya:Oh, my goodness, there's so much to unpack in this topic, isn't there? This is fascinating, absolutely fascinating. I want to finish up by taking you back to something we talked about right at the very beginning of our conversation. That is something that comes up a lot, and it is related to the work that Dr Lisa Moscone is doing, obviously as well, and that is the links to Alzheimer's and the menopausal change.
Dr Jen:So can you talk us through what you know about that? So with the decline in estrogen or with the fluctuation in estrogen, people who have a risk of Alzheimer's disease they've got this APO gene, aleph-4, will have a greater amyloid deposits due to the estrogen. So the estrogen removes them. The estrogen removes it as part of its function, of what it needs to do. So as the estrogen goes down, the deposits stay up, and so women are at risk of Alzheimer's disease post-menopause because of that.
Sonya:Okay, so you mentioned that that was like a plaque earlier. Is that right? So the estrogen kind of was like a plaque earlier, is that right?
Dr Jen:So the estrogen kind of acts like a flossing agent. It's not just that one, there's also tau and all sorts of other things. That estrogen cleans the brain. I guess it's like a flossing agent, a toothbrush, whatever you want to call it. It helps clean the brain and it lowers the neuroinflammation and everything. Neuroinflammation is another marker as well.
Dr Jen:Yeah, so that would go on to explain why we see women being twice as likely to be diagnosed with alzheimer's as men, into old age that's what this, that's what the research is suggest suggesting, and because we do know that women are twice as likely as men, we almost have to look at menopause because men don't go through it. So, yeah, it's really fascinating and I'm really looking forward to more research in that space.
Sonya:That was something I wanted to make sure that we talked about, because it is something that is spoken about a lot more. I'm hoping that a part of that research that's being done is the benefits of taking hormone therapy. So if you do keep those estrogen levels even a little bit higher post-menopausal, that creates some protective factors for the brain yeah, lisa musconi is doing research into that and it looks like that.
Dr Jen:Estrogen supplementation certainly, but you probably probably progesterone as well, because it's also very, very important for the brain progesterone that it supports women who are more at risk of al's disease.
Sonya:One of the downsides of research and studies is it takes a long time for us to get to the point where the evidence is presented and released and then any changes are made as a result of that. But it's exciting that that research is being done.
Dr Jen:Yeah, unfortunately getting the research done is one of the harder parts as well, because there's a big fight always for money, for funding, and so even just getting it done is difficult and then, like you said, by the time it gets done and then it gets published and it gets released, it takes a long time. So I'm quite happy to go with anecdotal research sometimes at this stage. If it supports women, then great.
Sonya:I think that's an amazing note to finish up on. Jen. Was there anything else that you wanted to share before we finish up?
Dr Jen:Yeah, well, look, I just think that it's so important for women to think of menopause as a developmental transition. It's not a failing, it's not an ending. It is a beautiful beginning for you. And please start meditating. Even if you don't download my meditation, go to on YouTube. You can get lots of free things.
Sonya:Start meditating, start, you know, training your brain and and exercising your brain to thrive through perimenopause and into your older, older life Amazing, and I'm excited for your next book, which I know you are working hard on at the moment. Jen, thank you so much for your time today.
Dr Jen:Thank you so much for having me. It's been wonderful.
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