24. Is it PCOS, Perimenopause, Menopause or Prolactinoma? How do we know the difference?

Discover the hidden intricacies of women’s hormonal health as I take you on a journey through the maze of PCOS, perimenopause, and menopause.

Armed with my experience from the front lines of a weight loss clinic, I’ll guide you through the often misunderstood symptoms of PCOS and how they can intertwine with the hormonal shifts during perimenopause.

We'll also tackle the critical issue of prolactinoma, highlighting the red flags that should not be ignored. This isn’t just a foray into the changes of life; it’s a roadmap to understanding the challenges and empowering women to recognize when it's time to seek professional guidance.

In our candid conversation, we pivot to the transformative power of lifestyle choices on hormonal balance. I’ll share the bitter truth about added sugars, their deceptive names on food labels, and the severe health complications they can cause.

Then, we'll talk about nurturing your gut with probiotics and the profound influence of sleep and stress management on hormones like ghrelin and cortisol. Tune in for practical advice and strategies to help you navigate the complex waters of hormonal health, ensuring you can embrace each stage of life with confidence and vitality.

Let's achieve our health and wellness goals together!

*****

Interested in 1:1 coaching with me, or would you like to be informed the next time I host my 10:21 Weight loss Bootcamp?

Follow me on Eventbrite to stay up to date!

*****

Can't get enough of the Thriving through Menopause Podcast? Listen to this episode and more on:
Amazon
Spotify
Audible
And wherever you listen to your podcasts!

***
Just in case you missed it:

Join my10:21 Day Weight Loss Boot Camp, to be apart of our vibrant community and kickstart your journey!

See you there!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, hello my friends, welcome, welcome to my channel and welcome to my live video for today.

Speaker 1: 0:09

I am actually coming to you from my office and we will be talking about PCOS, perimenopause and menopause. I did get a question from one of my viewers asking me to talk about prolactin, if actually PCOS can cause prolactin. So I'm here in my weight loss clinic. This is my background. This is a very important topic.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Pcos is because did you know that up to 20% of females in America between the ages of 14 and 55 suffer from PCOS? That's really a very important topic, and we noticed that PCOS is usually diagnosed in the younger years. And so what happens when you start getting into menopause? Now you have some of these symptoms that are overlapping and we don't even know what's what, or you may not even know what's happening. Bottom line if you start experiencing some symptoms, please, please. This is a good time to go to your physician and get yourself checked. So today I have my show notes here. Bear with me. I like to reference them so that we don't miss anything out. Polycystic ovarian syndrome is the topic of the day, and we'll be talking about what to expect when you're younger you start with polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Speaker 1: 1:35

You've got all the symptoms already and you start getting older and you transition into perimenopause and menopause. In addition to that, what happens if you get diagnosed with prolactinoma, which is another disease that is characterized by hormonal imbalances, but actually we'll talk about also? What do you expect when you get other symptoms and you may have something as serious as a prolactinoma? That's another question that I received. And, lastly, what can we do about it? That's really the thing that I want to know and I want to share with you.

Speaker 2: 2:17

Welcome to the Thriving Through Menopause podcast. Dr Inaka Yembe, your host, is dedicated to helping you navigate the transformative journey of menopause and perimenopause, particularly focused on achieving menopausal weight loss and reducing belly fat. As a post-menopausal physician herself who has helped thousands of women experiencing the significant life stage, she understands the unique challenges you face. Listen in as we explore a wide range of topics aimed at supporting you in your health and wellness journey. Hopefully, the practical tips and strategies offered potentially help you adopt an empowering approach towards menopausal weight loss and belly fat reduction. And now here's your host, dr Inaka Yembe.

Speaker 1: 3:01

So these conditions? Pcos is one that is characterized by hormonal imbalances. You get quite a few symptoms. What is the cause of PCOS? We really don't know. We feel that genetics may play a part and your lifestyle plays a huge part. So the typical PCOS female comes into the clinic. They tell us we are gaining weight, I'm starting to have some facial hair, I'm getting bald now I'm bald, you know, just by choice. But the PCOS female is having menstrual irregularities. That's one of the big ones. The second thing that they complain about is infertility. I'm married, I'm trying to have a baby. It's not happening. Now I have this facial hair, this chin hair, these whiskers that come up. I don't know what's happening. Then you gain weight in your midsection. Don't know what's happening.

Speaker 1: 3:56

So there are some specific hormonal changes that we know. The biggest one is increase in the male hormone level. All females have a little bit of the male hormones, but females with PCOS have a higher level of the male hormone. So your doctor will most likely do a blood test. Another thing that happens in addition to this increase in male hormone, now you start to suffer some other systemic changes, like increasing your blood pressure, increasing your low density LDL, which is part of the cholesterol fractions, then you are at higher risk of having a heart attack or a stroke. So now you have all these metabolic changes. Huge, huge problem with PCOS. It is a metabolic disorder. Another thing that happens in PCOS is that your inflammatory markers, specifically the CRP, goes up. Next thing, you know, you start to have joint pain, you start to hurt, you start to ache.

Speaker 1: 4:59

But you're younger now, you're between remember, the ages of 15 and 45 is when we diagnose these ladies, and then your doctor may do an ultrasound to check your ovaries, women with PCOS. They have quite a few cysts on their ovaries. So the criteria for diagnosis are many and they really depend on your clinical signs and your symptoms. They depend on your hormonal levels and then they depend also on what your doctors may see on an ultrasound. So we have these fancy names. They call it the Rotterdam criteria. It's just a fancy term there. If you have two out of three of these criteria, then you get a diagnosis.

Speaker 1: 5:41

But what may you feel and what may you experience are all of those things that we talked about. The biggest one really is infertility, menstrual irregularities, weight gain and then, because your male hormone level is a little higher. Now you're gaining weight in your midsection, so your waist circumference starts to get bigger and it does put you at higher risk of having problems. Another thing that happens when it comes to hormonal changes in PCOS is that your insulin level goes up. So now you have higher insulin levels and know you would not drop your blood sugar because you've gained weight now, and so you are insulin resistant. And that's where things may get a little bit more serious for you, because you can develop a disease like diabetes, which also puts you at risk of developing heart disease. So again, the signs and the symptoms of PCOS you can have hair changes. Male I mean females start developing male kind of hair, so hair on the chin, hair over here on the lips, then you get bald and then you may develop acne for some reason. That's another good reason to go to your doctor, especially if you're younger and your cycles get irregular and most likely you are someone who is overweight.

Speaker 1: 7:02

So the causes of PCOS like I said, we don't really know what causes it. What we know are these constellations of signs and symptoms that help us put together the diagnosis of PCOS. Now, as you start to get older, though, when you're getting into perimenopause, which typically starts at the age of 35, the hormonal levels once again change. Remember that you were in PCOS and you had higher levels of the male hormone, higher than other females. That puts you at risk of all these other things. And now you are getting older, into perimenopause and menopause, and that level of the estrogen starts to decline around the age of 35. When you get to your 50s then it really takes a nosedive there and those of us past the age of 50s, natural menopause is defined as no cycles. Lack of menstruation past the age of 45, 50. For one year. After 12 months, you've had no cycles. Lack of menstruation past the age of 45, 50 for one year. After 12 months you've had no cycles, you're in menopause.

Speaker 1: 8:10

Menopause comes with its own signs and symptoms Low estrogen levels. The studies actually show and actually I've got it here, a study to reference for you in case you want to look that up but studies actually show that estrogen is anti-inflammatory and so when these levels drop, then you start to experience symptoms of inflammation because your estrogen levels are declining. Remember, in PCOS you have higher levels of CRP, which is an inflammatory marker. That shows you've got more inflammation. Now you're getting into menopause, still more inflammation. So it seems that you're taking two hits and I'm going to tell you how you can fix that. A lot of things we can fix with lifestyle changes. So all is not lost. It just helps when you know why you're having these symptoms so you can change your lifestyle to help you.

Speaker 1: 9:03

Listen, my biggest thing is I can control how my body ages as I get older. I don't have to just give up and let my hormones take over me and then I am a product of hormonal changes. You have the ability to take control of your body and take control of these hormonal changes and signs and symptoms and metabolic disorders that can happen with getting older. Getting older is a natural process. I love it because I can control how I get there. That's under my control with diet and several lifestyle changes that we'll talk about towards the end. So getting back to the lady who was diagnosed with PCOS and now you're headed into perimenopause and menopauserogen declining and then you have more inflammation. We've talked about that.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Next thing, back to estrogen declining with menopause and perimenopause. It is changing the way your body holds fat and stores fat. Remember, in PCOS you have higher levels of the male hormone. Because of that. Your body is storing fat in the midsection, which makes it easier for you or puts you at risk of developing heart disease. Estrogen perimenopausal estrogen decline, is the same thing. Estrogen is dropping, so it's causing you to lose muscle mass. It's changing the distribution of your fat. Now you're no longer storing it in your legs and your thighs and your hips, you're also storing it in your midsection.

Speaker 1: 10:41

So, before I continue, if you are a lady who has been diagnosed with PCOS, you want to take control of all these changes and signs and symptoms before you get into menopause, because unfortunately, they will get worse when you get into menopause. And no, pcos does not cause menopause. These are all hormonal changes, imbalances, that you can control. But when you're younger, please, if you have PCOS, good thing to change your lifestyle, very important to change your lifestyle so that when you get into menopause you're not dealing with the double whammy and if that makes any sense, if that makes any sense. So there's plenty of research that shows that these things that I'm talking about to you will work, and the article to reference to that shows one of those, the big one that really shows that the decline in estrogen increases the inflammatory markers. It was actually published in a study in Frontiers in Aging and Neuroscience. You can reference that journal. I mean, just go in there and Google it.

Speaker 1: 11:52

So can PCOS cause prolactin or prolactinoma? That was the next question that I actually received. And PCOS, like we've talked about, it's a separate entity. It's got several different hormonal imbalances. You get into menopause or perimenopause and then menopause. We've got several hormonal imbalances that we're dealing with Now. When it comes to prolactinoma, that is a whole separate entity of its own.

Speaker 1: 12:23

The signs and the symptoms depend also on the disease itself and on the tumor that's causing the prolactinoma. So let me explain what a prolactinoma is. A prolactinoma is a benign tumor. It sits in the pituitary gland. That's somewhere here at the base of our brain, and so when you start to get symptoms, you get symptoms based on two different things. You get symptoms based on the size of that benign tumor and you get symptoms based on the amount of hormone that that benign tumor is secreting. So the symptoms are divided into two and, yes, when I tell you the signs and the problems that the prolactinoma may cause, I can see how a female who already has PCOS and then you get the prolactinoma it gets awfully confusing when it comes to your signs and symptoms. So what are the signs and the symptoms of prolactin? And, by the way, what is this prolactin hormone that's secreted by this prolactinoma that's benign, that some people may have. Why may some people have and what causes it? Again, in medicine we don't know. What we know is when you come in and you start having some signs and symptoms, then they may guide us to do some tests that can give you a diagnosis. So what are the signs and symptoms?

Speaker 1: 13:49

Number one the prolactinoma produces a hormone called prolactin. When I say prolactin, you can already guess this is a lactation hormone. So breast, breast milk. The lady comes into the clinic and for some reason she's maybe 45. She's overweight. She's got breast milk coming out from one breast, all male. It's more common in women than men, yes, but a male can also have a milky discharge from the breast and then they can have symptoms like irregular cycles or some women stop having cycles altogether.

Speaker 1: 14:26

Remember, every hormone that we produce in our body follows what we call a biofeedback. Look, and the way I look at it is like I'm sitting here, I've got a remote control and when I press it, the channel changes. That's how our body works. So the brain controls most of the hormonal changes that go in our body. So you've got the brain that presses that remote control and it triggers some organ to do something. So the prolactinoma produces the hormone prolactin that simulates the breast to secrete milk. So that's one of the symptoms Milk is discharged from your breast for no reason. And because of that biofeedback loop some women's cycles get irregular and if you have PCOS it's confusing. You may think it's just your PCOS and then your cycles are irregular from.

Speaker 2: 15:13

PCOS. Now you've got a prolactinoma.

Speaker 1: 15:14

Your. Then your cycles are irregular from PCOS. Now you've got a prolactinoma, your cycles are more irregular and they stop altogether. You don't know if it's PCOS, you don't know if it's prolactinoma, we don't know what's what. This is a good time to go to your doctor.

Speaker 1: 15:27

Other signs and symptoms that you may have, though with prolactinoma remember it is a benign tumor Most of them are small. They sit in the base of the brain, right where the optic nerves the eyes are controlled by optic nerve, and so when it gets too big, you can start having some headaches, of course, because it's right there in the brain. Or you may start having some vision changes. Vision changes are serious. You start having double vision, you start having blurry vision, you start having headaches. These are not good signs and symptoms to ignore. Most of us are females, we are caregivers, we like to sit and take care of people, and so we have maybe a headache, or my vision is blurry or double and I say you know what? Let me lay down and wait until tomorrow, because I have to pick up little Johnny from school and watch him. Please don't ignore your symptoms. That may be serious.

Speaker 1: 16:17

Blurred vision is double, headaches is double. Of course, this one is a big deal. Some people very rarely may have a tumor that's big enough that can cause a seizure. So if you have some uncontrolled movements, of course this is the time to get up and go to the emergency room. Like I said, prolactinoma may affect men also. So men, you start to have problems like increasing the breast size. Of course. If a male has a milky discharge from the breast, definitely that's a good time to go to the doctor to get checked. If you start having problems with erectile dysfunction, go to the doctor to get checked. It could be one of many, many things. These are all good times to go to the doctor and get it checked.

Speaker 1: 17:08

We don't know the exact causes, again, of PCOS. We don't know the causes of prolactinoma, the cause of menopause and perimenopause. This is a natural, natural result of aging. Menopause and perimenopause are, we think, in medicine. Pcos and prolactinoma may have some genetic factors, but at the end of the day, we just don't know. Pcos, of course, is slightly different, because your behavior, the behavioral changes or your lifestyle may affect or put you at risk of developing PCOS. Of course. Now, what can you do about it? What?

Speaker 2: 17:53

can you do now that you've heard all?

Speaker 1: 17:55

this homo nal change is not a death sentence. Remember my my biggest passion is to help women.

Speaker 1: 18:02

I'm sitting here my weight loss clinic and I'm so excited everybody who came into the lost weight. It makes me so happy. It's a good thing. I've got men, women here in the high Louisiana. They come from everywhere and got a weight loss clinic and they get weighed and they sit down and we talk about how to eat, how much to eat, why, when. Why? Because food is therapy. Food is therapy. The way of what you eat is therapy. So that's what I'm going to talk about, because that's most important.

Speaker 1: 18:34

Remember PCOS and aging, estrogen decline in menopause and perimenopause. Number one is inflammation. So how do you take control of inflammation? Number one you want to start consuming anti-inflammatory foods. The foods that you eat can nourish your body, or should nourish your body. They can also treat your body.

Speaker 1: 19:02

I've seen quite a few people go out and purchase things to detox their bodies. So I'm going to stop here for just two minutes and tell you about detox. When we talk about detox, we're trying to take away something that we don't want in our bodies. I get it, and we're trying not to put certain things in our bodies. I get it. So, for example, if you were an alcoholic, you may go to a facility to detox, to stop drinking that's great, and maybe to stay long enough out of the alcohol so that the damages that you have caused in your body may start to heal themselves. Great. Now, detox is not purchasing a detox drink. It is not purchasing a detox tablet because, just thinking about it, our bodies were created by God with their own perfect detox systems your liver, your kidney and your skin that's the big one as well as your gastrointestinal systems. Those are huge detox things.

Speaker 1: 20:08

So when you want to detox, this is the best way to do it. Start to consume anti-inflammatory foods. It will automatically stop you from putting in things like fried foods and all those things that were damaging and clogging up the natural detox systems that you already had, and that's going to detox. You Don't purchase $100 things to add and overload your liver and cause it to go into overdrive and not it's not able to process these things that you put in there. Just eat natural foods, vegetables and things like that. All of a sudden, you're not consuming fried foods, you're not consuming alcoholic food things, and that detoxifies your bodies of the things that you've done. That's a natural detox. Okay, so let's talk about the inflammatory changes that happen with PCOS and with the natural aging when it comes to the female, who is getting older, and now you start to have all these joint aches and pains.

Speaker 1: 21:09

The way to do it, though, is to go with the anti-inflammatory foods. The biggest ones are the green leafy vegetables, and I have a short list here to tell you of things that you may include in your diet that will help you just reduce inflammation. Green leafy vegetables we've talked about that. The fatty fish are healthy. They've got essential fats. Everybody needs some fats in their diet, so things like salmon, tuna, mackerel, sardines all have omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential. Your body is a great homeostatic environment, so hormones have a basis of fat, a basic structure, biochemical structure of fat. You want to consume some natural fats or some healthy fats to help your body function normally, so you've got the fatty fish. You also have some healthy nuts, like almonds, really pecans. All the nuts are healthy. Be careful with nuts, because they are high in calories, so don't consume too many. Other things like fruits, berries, apples those are anti-inflammatory. They will help you. Other things, just like the seasonings that we do the turmeric I love. Marika got it here every single day. Lemon, lemon here, blended lemon, and I've got lemon, ginger, cucumber and ice, this. I sip on these things pretty much all the time, all the time that helps me, helps with inflammation. So consume this a lot more than I haven't named it I mean, but those are just a few. Consume anti-inflammatory foods. Those will help you.

Speaker 1: 22:50

Next, we've talked about two other hormonal changes with PCOS and with aging perimenopause and perimenopause. With PCOS, you have increased in insulin levels because you've gained weight. Now you're insulin resistant. Your body is storing belly fat and you're storing fat overall. With aging, whether or not you're overweight, this decline in estrogen causes a muscle mass to decline. It makes us get more insulin resistant as we get older, even if we're not overweight. So what do I do about this insulin resistance?

Speaker 1: 23:29

First things first, let's stop the added sugars. When I talk about added sugars, I'm not talking about sugars in fruit. I'm not talking about sugars in vegetables. Those are natural sugars. The food administration that gives us the guidelines. They say that a female should not consume more than six teaspoons of added sugars per day. Added sugars are things like sugar, fructose, maltose, maltose, dextrin. There are 76 different ways that the manufacturer has to put that food label on your container. There's a food label there and it tells you the ingredients, when you see things like maltose, maltose all of those are sugars. There are 76 different ways of calling those sugars. All those things. You shouldn't consume more than six teaspoons per day as a female. For a male not more than nine teaspoons.

Speaker 1: 24:22

I had a discussion with a patient today. She went and she's been buying I'm not going to say the chain, but they've got a healthy it says healthy smoothie. We looked at it. It's got 298 calories in that smoothie 290 calories, it's great. It's got 28 grams of protein it's awesome. But it's got 40 grams of added sugars. It's advertised for weight loss. Please take a second to look at the things that you're consuming, because my full-time job really is in the emergency room.

Speaker 1: 25:01

Most of the people that come with that heart attack on Monday morning it mostly happens on Monday morning heart attack. They're not overweight, but it's just the consequences of long-term end result of consuming things like added sugars. They go through your liver. Your liver is struggling to process them. Now you have a fatty liver. Now you have LDL low density lipoproteins that are released into your blood sugar. For years and years and years Now they're clogging up your arteries and then you've got tiny little blockages that are going on in your brain and your heart for years and years and years. And boom, you went to work. You set up at your desk, you tried to speak to somebody, then you got tired. Then you got tired and you felt there was something wrong and there's a heart attack. You come to the emergency room. That was a heart attack.

Speaker 1: 25:50

Okay, these things are an end result of a lifestyle. So it's very important these added sugars no more than six teaspoons per whole day For women, no more than nine teaspoons per one day For men very important. Get these added sugars out of your diet. We don't need them. Just eat natural. Back again to how our grandparents and great-grandparents used to eat, back to the natural things. So we've talked about how to eat more inflammatory foods and how to reduce the added sugars in order to balance our hormones, if you have PCOS, and if you're going into menopause or perimenopause Okay.

Speaker 1: 26:36

The next thing we'll talk about, though, is the gut, your bowel, and your gut health is don't have a good, healthy, bowel. I mean, it's just one of those things that can change your life, and that's a topic for another day. Right now, I'll just tell you stay with the natural foods. One thing that you may add add to your diet is a good probiotic. Talk to your doctor. They can prescribe it to you. Go to your health food store. You can eat probiotics. A probiotic, one probiotic per day will help you. Why? Because we have billions, billions of gut bacteria that are here, and they've got to stay in balance, too, for us to be healthy. Otherwise, we start to have bloating, we start to have digestion problems, we don't feel good, and you talk about trying to get healthy when you don't feel good. It's just hard. It just makes everything more difficult.

Speaker 1: 27:30

The next thing that you want to think about is I say this all the time. I say this all the time. If you are in my weight loss online bootcamp. You will know that I slept through the bootcamp and could not wake up. And that's not me. I'm not saying that to laugh, but our bodies need sleep, though.

Speaker 1: 27:54

It's so important for you to sleep seven to nine hours every day. Okay, I'm a shift worker also. I do work 48 hour shifts in the emergency room. That means I am not getting enough sleep for those 48 hours. I get it, but in my weight loss clinic, the biggest thing that I push for is for people not to try to be perfect. Once you are 80% accurate, you're good.

Speaker 1: 28:20

Life is never going to be 100% perfect. Never try to do anything perfect, because then we make a mistake. We can give up up. So when I say try to go to sleep at least seven to nine hours every day is not accurate, okay, it's not perfect is what I mean? You may sleep, say, six hours today, you may sleep nine hours today, but just try. Chronically sleeping for three hours or four hours even throws off another hormone called ghrelin, gh. Ghrelin is that hunger hormone, ghrelin for growl. You cannot ignore it because you don't sleep enough. For years and years and years you may have chronic elevations in your ghrelin level. So you're going to be that one person that wants to snack all the time, that one person that wakes up at night wants to chew a little something just because you have increased levels of ghrelin from not sleeping enough.

Speaker 1: 29:13

All right, next lifestyle change, I'm going to say, is another one that we don't like is stress. We want to try to intentionally dial down our stress levels in order to balance our hormones. Why is that? Okay, the body has its own defense mechanism, cortisol, that fight or flight hormone. If a gun fires, woohoo, I know how to run, I'm out the door. If somebody scares me, I run away.

Speaker 1: 29:42

All this, this fight or flight hormone, its end product, one of them, is called cortisol. Okay, it's meant to protect you. It's meant to come up when you're stressed, and then it goes down and then it comes up. That chronic stress, though, is what causes a problem, because your cortisol has receptors all over your body, in your brain, in your heart, in your blood vessels, in your arteries. So now you have chronic elevations of stress caused chronic elevations of cortisol.

Speaker 1: 30:18

First thing, you know you're anxious all the time. You know your little daughter may come, and now she's playing and she's causing all the sprinkles. The next thing, you know, you know you're screaming makes your stress level go up even higher. Listen, if you're a mom, one of the things that I coach my moms to do, especially when they come to my weight loss clinic and they talk about we've got four or five kids, I know where this is going always talk to your baby in its ear, hold this, this baby, and say when your child starts screaming, bring her in and start talking to her ear. It does two things. It number one, stops the baby from screaming. When you whisper to a child, a child by nature whispers back to you. If you scream at a child, a child by nature tries to scream back at you. You're the one that's stressed and you have the high levels of cortisol now. So we have a thing called bringing the babies into the mamas who are overstressed and trying to lose their weight and let's whisper to the babies and they whisper back at us and, first thing, we know everybody stops screaming, the mama feels so much better and your cortisol level starts to go down. That's one thing.

Speaker 1: 31:33

Number two positive affirmations we down ourselves so much. Oh, I don't like the way my arms look. Oh, I don't like my belly. Oh, I don't like my size. I don't like so many things about myself, and your brain starts to listen to you and starts acting out all these things.

Speaker 1: 31:49

When you're trying to lose weight, you want to have positive feedback to yourself. It will help you to continue your journey, because weight loss is not easy and PCOS we are already overweight estrogen. We have a higher probability of becoming overweight just by the change in that hormone. So last thing we need is elevations in our cortisol levels by stress, trying to work on your stress, positive affirmations, meditation or even speaking to a counselor prayer helps or just spending what I call the hour of power every single morning. That's one thing I teach in my online bootcamp. It's so important.

Speaker 1: 32:35

Very first thing, when you wake up in the morning, you want to control your day by sitting here and just spending 5, 10, 15 minutes with yourself, thinking about your goals, thinking about yourself, giving yourself some positive feedback and all the compliments that you may not get, that you're giving them to other people. Give them to yourself first. It'll help you to step into your day with courage and strength and you are armed. So when you're driving down the road and somebody cuts in front of you, you're not that screaming mess and you don't run into the office so angry and irritated that those three donuts that were sitting there get into your body by mistake. No, you went out, you were happy, you were smiling, you were dancing and moving your body and you got to work. Happy, positive affirmations help you, though. They help with your stress. They help dial down that cortisol level, and dialing down that cortisol level, which is the belly fat storage hormone, will help you get rid of some of this belly fat Very important.

Speaker 1: 33:39

So, in order to counteract the hormonal changes that cause all the symptoms of PCOS, of perimenopause and menopause, and, yes, some of the prolactin which you would need, medical treatment by your doctor can tell you more about that if you have a prolactinoma. But some of these things that I talked about will help you. Eating anti-inflammatory foods that's number one. Lifestyle changes, sleeping more, decreasing these added sugars, taking a probiotic, eating high quality foods, sleeping well and decreasing your stress will help you. All right, I hope that helped you.

Speaker 1: 34:24

Last but not least, of course, you know I have to talk about exercise. There's this big deal about exercise, so let's break exercise down. I think we've just got a couple of minutes here. Exercise If you have never exercised before get up, walk. Walk is so important. Find any exercise that you can do long-term. There's nothing wrong with walking. I know that we in weight loss we talk about steady state walking may not be as efficient for weight loss, but the truth is, if you're going to do any exercise and walking is your thing, don't go and start learning how to do backflips and stop the walking. No, continue walking. Then you may learn one or two things to add to already what you have. That's what I mean when I say pick up some weight. Don't stop what you're doing. Take and add. We can only get better than ourselves with time. We're not in competition with anybody, so keep what you have and add to it. If you want to do some weights, add to your walking. If you want to start doing some push-ups, add that to your walking. Hey, listen, somebody just said her thing is dancing. Continue dancing.

Speaker 1: 35:43

If you know me and you've seen me in my bootcamp I'm always dancing. You've seen me in my bootcamp, I'm always dancing, always dancing. It helps my mood, it helps me feel better, it helps me move. Go dancing. Add one thing to it that may help you. Today I just learned to run against the wall, do a push-up and run on that wall. Am I going to do that all the time? No, it's just another thing that I may learn. Keep what you're doing and add to it. But exercise helps. Walking is the easiest thing. Don't need any equipment. You can go as you are. You can walk around your bedroom. You can walk anywhere With the walking. Get something, hold it in your hands. It adds resistance, increases your heart rate. It's just better. You want to tone your arms. Get something even heavier and hold it all the way and swing it. But exercise really helps. How much exercise? At least a hundred and fifty minutes per week. So what that boils into? At least 30 minutes per day and there's five days a week.

Speaker 1: 36:41

So see, yes, come on into boot camp. You need to come to my boot camp. It's only a dollar per day. So you really you want to try it? I have a live meal prep. I don't have my bootcamp, it's only a dollar per day. So you really you want to try it? I have a live meal prep.

Speaker 1: 36:51

I don't have my food here because it's sitting in the refrigerator. I have a live meal prep on my bootcamp every single Sunday to show you what I cook, how I cook it, what I'm going to eat for the week, Because I think I know that what you consume, what you eat and what you drink, is at least 75 to 80% of your weight. Let's see. Does hormonal replacement therapy cause weight gain? I will say no. What I know is that some hormones can cause some females to retain some fluid. Yes, especially sometimes. We go for this hormonal replacement and the bioidentical hormones, where the doctor typically will take your blood test levels and plug that in and it gives out a printout. So this is an individualized treatment. I am not pushing for people to take hormonal replacement, yes or no. I'm saying you decide if you want. So, answering your question here, hormonal replacement does not cause weight gain, but it can cause some fluid retention in some people, depending on the amount of hormones that you get, specifically on the male hormone part.

Speaker 1: 38:07

If you are a female, All right. We are at the end of our time together. Thank you so much for joining me in my office. I am so excited. Thank you, thank you and I will see you in the next video. All right, everyone. Thank you, Bye.

Speaker 2: 38:23

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Thriving Through Menopause. We hope you found valuable insights and practical advice to support your journey. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast, share it and review. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. Remember, menopause doesn't have to be a challenge. It can be an opportunity for growth, renewal and self-care. Connect with us on social media, where we share additional resources, tips and self-care. Connect with us on social media, where we share additional resources, tips and advice to help you along your path. Once again, thanks for listening in and we hope you'll join us again on the next episode of Thriving Through Menopause. Until then, you