E142 | From Hormones To Habits: Making Sense Of 2026 Wellness Trends

Trends promise easy buttons, but your body runs on context, capacity, and consistent basics. We dive into the 2026 wellness landscape with a clear, practical lens: where hormones, protein, and strength training helped last year and where oversimplification led many women to feel worse. Our conversation reframes quick fixes into personalized patterns, unpacking how two people can share a diagnosis yet need completely different strategies based on stress, sleep, digestion, micronutrients, and metabolic health.

We get real about tech and wearables. HRV, sleep scores, CGMs, and temperature data can be powerful, but only when they inform curiosity rather than fuel comparison. You’ll hear how to compare you to you, read trends over time, and cross-check numbers against how you actually feel. We make the case for nervous system regulation as the gatekeeper of change, sharing accessible practices like breath work, guided stillness, and journaling, that make behavior shifts stick because your body finally feels safe enough to accept them.

Longevity takes center stage with a focus on healthspan. We break down why metabolic health anchors brain function, blood pressure, cancer risk, and hormone balance, and how to build a resilient foundation with protein and fiber forward meals, resistance training, daily movement, better sleep, stress skills, and real connection. Biohacks aren’t bad; they’re just the garnish, not the meal. Our approach stays steady: labs plus context, mindset plus metabolism, strategy plus sustainability. If you’re ready to play chess instead of checkers with your health, this is your roadmap.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Trends Whiplash Women

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed on the Rejuvenating Health Podcast are solely those of the speakers and are intended as such. Please consult your trusted healthcare practitioner for medical advice. Let's go, girls. Hey ladies, welcome back to Rejuvenating Health Podcast. I'm Lindy, you're a nurse practitioner, and as always, I am with Coach Lake.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Hello, ladies. What are we talking about today, Lady?

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Yeah, yeah. So every year, I feel like we did we mentioned this on our podcast last week. You said something about like protein and strength training were it for 2025 and you thought fiber was gonna be it for this year. I do think you're right. I was listening to a podcast the other day about that, but we're gonna talk about health trends because every year health trends change. If we're being honest, a lot of women feel like whiplash trying to keep up with it because it's like, what am I supposed to be doing this year?

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Yeah, because like one year, like we're going low fat because fat is bad. That's the enemy, or like carbs will be the enemy. That's been kind of, you know, that's a little old school, but luckily it's fading out now. And then it's like cortisol is the the no the villain in the narrative. And then we're focused only on insulin and we're doing the continued glucose monitors, and suddenly people feel like they are the issue because they're trying all these different things and nothing's working. But really, it's a matter of okay, what is at the what is the root thing that all of these things are trying to tease out? And can you give it enough consistency over a period of time that actually lets you know that it's not you? It's like, and it's not the thing, it's not a magic bullet. It's like how long are you giving it and allowing your body to acclimate?

2025 Recap: Hormones, Protein, Muscle

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yeah. So in 25, it was hormones everywhere hormone therapy, hormone therapy, hormone therapy. Um, and there was like a lot of great headway. Like the um black spock warning got taken off of estrogen, and everyone was rushing towards hormones and protein and muscle, and all of that stuff was great. I think it I like those are still good trends.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah, still that was my favorite thing about 2025 is that women started eating protein.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Yeah. But the problem is, is like now we're gonna get into a new year and new trends are happening, and they can either create awareness or create massive confusion. So trends are signals, not solutions, right? And so your physiology, the way our body works, does not change yearly. It it it changes because you get older, but it's not changing year to year, the basics, right? So the context is what matters, right? So 2026, I was doing a lot of research on like what are the trends gonna be for 26 and it's a lot about it's it's less about adding more and more about integrating things better.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yeah, kind of like how we always talk about meeting yourself where you are.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Yeah, yeah. So kind of recapping last year, we learned that hormones became really mainstream, um, which was great, but they got oversimplified. Wow. And people were putting hormones into unhealthy bodies and getting all kinds of crazy negative side effects, right? Like I don't know how many women I talked to that started on HRT and ended up feeling worse because they're your body, because hormones are outputs, right? They're not isolated problems. So thyroid, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, they all respond to energy availability, stress perception, sleep quality, inflammation, insulin. And so, yeah. So you don't just fix, fix hormones without fixing inputs into your HPA access, right? Yeah. Um, yeah. So I saw a lot, like I'm glad hormones were the topic, but they were very oversimplified.

Oversimplification And The Need For Context

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Yeah, it's like it's good that they got uh a spot on the stage, right? Because for the longest time it was they were just a non-factor. But like you said, when when we're trying to market anything to the masses, it's going to be oversimplified as an easy button. And that's where that personal, you know, agency for your health has to come into account of looking at, okay, if this were the case, if I could just inject hormones into myself and that would be the magic pill or the fix, wouldn't we have been doing this for much longer than just this past year as it became more trending, right? Yes, we would. The reason why it's more readily available now is because it's highly marketed now and it can be capitalized on, right? And if, like you said, if I'm expecting to be able to not change anything about my lifestyle and take a body that's already struggling and then put additional layers of hormones on top of what's happening, that's not going to regulate what's going on internally. And some other things that we saw were like protein and muscle, right? So like protein in a big way, I feel like this past year helped women to get away from the classic trend of under-eating. Not that we don't have women that still don't undereat, of course we do, but more than ever before, I feel like women are starting to understand that food is fuel and that we have to be eating more. And it's not, oh, eat less and move more. That's the that's the classic equation, right? We're realizing that doesn't work. And then muscle reframed weight loss as strength and not shrinkage. And this was huge, right? Now there's always gonna be toxic messaging around, you know, how skinny can you get and like trends online and things like that that are focused on ultra-thin bodies. But overall, we've seen a big uptick in the presence of women wanting to be strong and to uh focus on muscle health, right? And overall um longevity of strength, and that's huge. And many women increase protein without digestion support. So that's where we'll see things like, oh, I'm eating a lot more protein, but my stomach hurts, or I'm not handling it very well, or I don't feel like I'm not absorbing it. Yeah, yeah. Or they like trained harder because they added in again. This is where like the old idea of like adding in more things, they trained harder, but they did not increase their recovery appropriately to go with that training. So then they were underrecovered or potentially more prone to injury. And then maybe they ate more, but they stayed really stressed, right? So we can be doing other things, like we always talk about pulling these levers, but ultimately we have to create some balance. We have to create that homeostasis and we have to look at what is the lowest hanging fruit because everybody has things that are gonna be more, it's gonna move the doubt a little bit more for them personally.

Precision Health Over Diagnoses

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah, again, it got over simplified, right? Like just eat protein. Well, okay, you know, you have to have fiber with it and you have to be able to digest the protein. And you know, oh, just weight train, but you've never stepped foot in a gym before, so now you're hurt, right? Um so all those things were good, but they definitely got oversimplified. So this year what I see is taking those things that got a little bit oversimplified and really doing precision and personalized healthcare, right? And I this has been a trend for a while in some aspects, right? Like in five years ago, I went through a precision health fellowship through Wild Health and I learned all about precision medicine, but it was more like genetics and stuff like that. But I think that this year the biggest trend is gonna be moving away from diagnoses and more towards patterns, meaning you and I both get diagnosed with hypertension, but we don't so we have the same diagnosis, but we don't have the same physiology, right? Your hypertension is based on you sitting on the couch and eating Doritos, and my hypertension is based on my MTHFR gene where I have high homocysteine and it's causing inflammation in my arteries. Now I know you don't have high blood pressure and either do I, and you don't sit on the whatever, you know, right? Um like we but here's more of a realistic thing of probably what could be happening, right? Two women have low progesterone, right? You have low progesterone because you're in perimenopause, I have low progesterone because I'm living in fight or flight, cortisol steals my sex hormone. Yeah, right? So why do we have low progesterone? Is it our cortisol rhythm? Is it blood sugar stability? Is it because we're chronically under-eating and over exercising? Is it because we have a lot of trauma and nervous system tone? So we both have the same diagnosis, but there is a lot of underlying physiology where Which means they need to be treated differently. Yes. Yes. So that's why you can't just get lab work done. I I say this to people all the time. Like you can't I function health, whatever. It's great. You get lab work done and there's no interpretation to it. Like there's no conversation about why you have these numbers. You you can't just inter like labs without a conversation and context mean nothing. And this is what I'm talking about. I think that this year there's gonna be a lot more personalization and and context involved.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

For the ladies that may be new to us, can you explain what precision medicine is and how it differs from traditional Western medicine?

SPEAKER_00 9:55

So precision and personalizes it it it's literally pertaining to you, your body, your lifestyle, your habits, your lab work, your physiology, sometimes your genetics, even right? Like we're not taking you and picking you out of a uh scientific study, and like it is personalized to you, which standard medicine doesn't do. Standard medicine, you are taught your blood pressure is 130 and your blood pressure is 140 over 90. You go on this med, right automatically.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

This is your formula, like X plus Y equals Z always.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Your TSH is over four, you're going on levatheroxin. We're not gonna worry about your micronutrients or your cortisol or anything like that. You're going on levo. I'm not gonna talk to you about T3, which is probably what you really need, but you know, it's not personalized.

Patterns, Root Causes, And Labs With Context

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Yeah, and this is where people will really struggle, right? Because they want certainty, but bodies don't work off of just metrics alone. So when they go to the doctor and they like it feels much better to say, oh, well, because you have this marker, I'm gonna put you on this medicine, it's gonna fix this symptom, right? And so that feels really good in that moment. But then when you realize that, oh, what I'm taking isn't actually fixing the root cause of the symptoms that are displaying themselves. And now I feel, you know, disheartened or overwhelmed because I don't know what to do anymore, that's where it's not working in your favor. So personalization requires, you know, honesty about your capacity of what's going on in your life. That's why we talk about stress management all the time, willingness to slow down. All right, so that way you can actually be aware of the changes that are happening in your body, letting go of comparison. This one is huge. If I, again, same circumstance, right? Or example that you gave. If we both have low progesterone, but I'm comparing myself to you, and it's for two different reasons, it's not gonna serve me. It's only gonna make me feel worse about my situation because why is what Lindsay's doing for her not working for me when I'm trying it? Because I have a completely different issue. But without identifying what that root cause is, I won't know that. I'm only gonna see symptomatic things that are popping up and all the effort that I'm putting in and that's not working or it's not changing anything. And so behavior change fails when plans exceed nervous system safety, right? We have to make sure that we're in a place where we can even handle adding new things into the plate. And really, we should look at what we can take away in order to accommodate different habits or lifestyle changes or things that we need to add in order to get the outcome that we want. And, you know, a perfect plan that you can't execute is worse than a simple plan that you can sustain. It's like always go for the simplicity. I always say, you know, what would it look like if it were easy? Because that makes it doable. And then we can collect the evidence that says that we can keep going or build that momentum.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

So here's the issue I see with this trend. I think it's the most amazing trend. This is how it should be. This is not a click button and a quick fix trend. This is a like truly healing, taking the time. We're talking about months, years of working on something rather than I'm gonna give you this blood pressure medication, and tomorrow you're gonna wake up and your blood pressure is gonna be normal.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Yeah, it's not sexy, it's not appealing. Yeah. Yeah. That is what I would love. I would love for the new trend to be slow and steady as opposed to quick dopamine hits and easy buttons and looking for the smoking gun. That would that would be amazing. I don't know that we're gonna get there because I get that it's not appealing to human nature, but that would be where I would love to go.

Behavior Change And Nervous System Safety

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Yeah, agreed. The next biggest trend is is tech. And I think that this is awesome. Um for people that are doing the right things, right? Like tech and wearables do not matter if you're eating Doritos watching Netflix all day. Like it does, it doesn't matter, right? But wearables are everywhere. Tech is everywhere. You can learn so much about your body now, and it gives us unprecedented access to our physiology. Like, what's your HRV doing, your sleep, your glucose, your temperature? Matt and I literally got a bed and it tracks my sleep. I'm like, how does my bed track my sleep? If Matt starts snoring, the bed sits up. It's creepy. How does the bed know that he's snoring? Like tech is wild. It is wild, right? And it's awesome to know, you know, what is your HRV doing? Because that reflects like your autonomic balance. You might be laying in bed for eight hours, but what is your sleep doing? Like, how much deep sleep are you getting? Because that really tells you like if you're not getting any deep sleep, no wonder you're waking up fatigued the next morning. We do CGMs with our clients, right? Like they're great, but without context and identifying, like, oh, I'm eating this and this pattern, and it's spiking my blood sugar and all of that type of stuff. It's not super useful, right? And sometimes we can we can tie this stuff to failure, right? So I've been wearing a whoop for like six years, and my HRV sucks. And I get a lot of clients who are like, my HRB is only 40. What am I doing wrong? I'm like, who cares? It's your HRV compared to your HRV over time. Like, this is where wearables can become an issue in the comparison trap.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah, it's like the starts to become almost like, you know, like disordered eating. It's like a form of disordered thinking because I'm constantly checking all the time. Like, oh, what is this number, right? It becomes a little bit obsessive. And it's like data should inform curiosity, not control. It shouldn't be, oh, I'm trying to manipulate things to make sure that I stay within this range because this is what my device tells me that it should be. Like your metrics should be compared to your metrics, and you should be looking at trends and like body awareness is what's really important, not the numbers or the, you know, the things on the other side, the output. And so if you have chronic vigilance, that's going to increase your sympathetic tone, right? Meaning, can I be aware of the data and understand what it's telling me, but also be more in tune with my body and go by feel. So if I wake up in the morning and my aura ring says that I got shitty sleep, but I feel well rested, it's like, okay, well, I'm gonna go with how I actually feel as opposed to what this number's telling me. Because it could have, it could be off.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Yeah. Or I'm right.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

And then can I look at sleep trends over time?

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Yeah, or you're like, you're like, oh, my body feels wrecked today. But oh, I'm 98% on my recovery. That means I better push it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Right. No, like be intuitive, listen to yourself, right? And so like look at it as a feedback loop that's available to you. And don't make it mean something about you if you don't get the numbers that you're looking for, or if your numbers compared to somebody else's are, you know, quote unquote less ideal. That's not that's not what we're looking for. It's just hopefully tracking trends over time to give you more information that allows you to have more discernment in the way that you interact day to day. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Um, trend number three is like right up your alley, um, and focusing on recovery and nervous system and longevity, right? So uh there's a lot more awareness becoming, I mean, breath work and tapping and mindset work and stress, like we saw that a lot last year, I feel like, but I feel like next year it's gonna be even more because cortisol was our number one word used last year, but that chronic stress has a lot of issues, right? So you literally cannot biohack your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. I don't care what you try to do. You there like I you can't out-supplement, out-biohack, out whatever your nervous system.

Tech And Wearables: Helpful Or Harmful

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Yeah, and awareness is key in this, right? So, and sometimes it's very difficult to understand these things in our own because we you have to be able to be aware and recognize patterns. And again, that goes back to slowing down to be able to see the writing that's on the wall. So understanding why rest may feel unsafe for you, right? If you're somebody that has a hard time just being still and you feel the need to go, go, go all the time because it feels safe or more comfortable for you to be constantly achieving, constantly checking boxes. It would be worth trying to put in an intentional practice of taking some time that you are not being stimulated and being with yourself in your own thoughts to even just see what comes up, right? If your identity is tied to productivity, that's coming from somewhere and it's not gonna serve you. You're constantly gonna be putting yourself in that flight or flight response to be able to feed that need to feel valuable or to feel worthy, right? And you're gonna have a fear of losing progress. It's going to feel unsafe at first until you start to get reps in that direction of okay, how can I titrate this? How can I start to look at what type of rest feels safe for me? What allows and how long can I do it? And then can I increase my threshold over time, right? This is why things like guided meditation are really beneficial or journaling is hugely beneficial because when else do you actually get to have a conversation with yourself and your own thoughts? Right. And then see it displayed on the page so you can go back and reference it later. That's why journaling is so important. And so if you can focus on regulating before you try to optimize your body, it will only benefit you long term and you'll be able to actually know that you're pulling the right levers because you're going to be more in tune with what's going on internally. And then you have to match your intensity with that season of life, like we've talked about numerous times. What is your current capacity right now? Not what is it on your best day, not what is it when you feel on top of the world and everything's going accordingly, right? What is it for right? Now, with everything that you have on your plate, and can something come off in order to accommodate something that you're trying to add? And don't just chase the symptoms. Don't say, like, well, you know, I'm feeling this issue coming up. So now I'm going to chase the quickest fad that's going to give me the fastest relief for that thing. More than likely, it's coming from something else that's much more deeply rooted and it's attached to something that you're holding on to, more than likely, a story that you're telling yourself about yourself, right? And then how can we get in tune with that to discover where that's manifesting a physical symptom and what is attached to it so that we can fully process it and get you to a place where you can feel safe in your own body and start to regulate your own nervous system.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Yeah, it's gonna be a big one. And then the last trend is not gonna be for everyone, right? But if you're listening to our podcast, you're some you somewhat care about your health, right? Like you're aware of it, right? And so prevention and longevity and proactive and big picture medicine is and we kind of talked about that a little bit with the precision stuff, but I really think that this year people are gonna stop asking what's wrong and start asking what's coming if I don't change, which is what we should be doing, right? Instead of what's uh what's wrong with me, I have diabetes. What's gonna happen if I don't change my behaviors? I'm gonna get diabetes, right? So your metabolic health is literally the foundation of everything. I I've tried to explain, I don't know how I can explain this anymore, right? Your brain health is tied to insulin and inflammation, your cancer diagnosis is tied to insulin resistance and inflammation. Your high blood pressure is tied to insulin resistance and inflammation, right? All of these diseases, conditions are tied to your metabolic health, to glucose, right? And yeah, hormones matter, and perimenopause is a window in time, and menopause is a it's important, right? And those things happen, but they're not a crisis. And there are so many things that you can do to be proactive and focus on longevity. And again, you can't biohack your way to longevity. You have to do the basics, right? Yeah, you have to do the lifestyle stuff.

Recovery, Stress, And Regulation First

SPEAKER_01 22:38

The biohacking practices that you see that are, you know, like exciting and like, ooh, like this looks like cutting edge stuff. That's all, those are like the time, like the the 0.1% of changes that you can make on top of. It's like the cherry on the Sunday, right? After I've set a good foundation of changing all the lifestyle habits that are gonna get me feeling better. Then I can look into, you know, vagus nerve stimulation and uh red light therapy and like the things that are like cold exposure, like, yes, those things can help, but they're only gonna make a very small difference. And they will only make a bigger difference if they're layered on top of a foundation that's very solid and solidly rooted in your health. And when we talk about longevity, we're not talking about just living longer. Like we want health span. There's no point in living longer if you're just exhausted and immobile for longer, right? Like this is we need to be able to do the shit that we want to do for as long as we possibly can do it. And if that's the goal, then how can I take a bigger picture approach? Can I play chess and not checkers? Right? Can I look at what are the things that I'm doing now? Like one of the things that we talked about when I was working on goals work with clients is like, okay, what's like if I'm 85 years old, what's something that 85-year-old me will be really thankful that I did every day now? And what's something that they're really gonna wish that I would I would have changed?

unknown 23:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Like we're talking about long down the road. And I'm looking at like, what's 105-year-old me gonna be wishing that I would have changed?

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Well, there's a huge difference between health span and lifespan. And if you don't know what the two are, lifespan is how many years that you're alive. Health span is how many years are you alive and functioning and living a life that is worth living, right? So quantity versus quality. Right. So what does that mean for us at rejuvenating health? Well, we've been around for five years, and I can honestly say that we don't really go after trends very much. Like we're very much basics um and go by your physiology. Um so nothing's really changing for us besides that we truly believe that we're already doing personalized healthcare here, right? Like we're already paying attention to the labs and using the context with it. We're already focusing on the mindset work and the stress response, right? And like labs and lifestyle, strategy and sustainability. Like that's nothing new for us.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Yeah, so it's like how can we look at not chasing the next fancy thing that's being advertised on your scroll, right? But like look at okay, all of these things are coming from somewhere that's probably rooted in one of these foundational changes, right? It just is marketed in a way that feels faster and sexier, and it's not gonna be the answer, right? The answer hasn't changed. Human physiology has not changed that much over the last, I don't know how many decades, right? Like it's still the simple stuff that moves the dial. It's just the way that it's packaged and put a bow on it.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

And we're just telling you how it is.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Yeah. So 2026, it's not about doing more, more crazy things, right? It's about doing what actually works and what your actually your body can receive and what actually your body needs. Yeah, not Lakin's, not mine, what your body needs, right? And that's the kind of healthcare provider that you want to be looking for and working with. For sure. So, like and subscribe, give us a five-star review. If this was helpful, share it with a friend, and we will see you ladies next week.