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The Rejuvenating Health Podcast
Join Women's Health Nurse Practitioner, Lindsey VanSchoyck for a weekly dose of Precision Medicine as she addresses the hot-button topics specific to Women's Health, Fitness and Nutrition, interviews expert guests and hosts round table discussions with the team of dedicated functional health care specialists.
The Rejuvenating Health Podcast
E164 | Menopause Is Not One Size Fits All
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Standardized menopause protocols leave too many women exhausted, inflamed, and convinced they are the problem. We break down why symptoms can persist even with “normal labs” or HRT and what truly individualized menopause care looks like across hormones, metabolism, and the nervous system. On today's show, Laken and Lindsey discuss:
• why one size fits all menopause care falls short
• how hormone receptors and cellular response shape symptoms
• why menopause is more than low estrogen and impacts full-body metabolism
• the weight gain cycle: insulin resistance, muscle loss, cortisol, and undereating
• how evidence-based guidelines support individualized HRT decisions
• FDA-approved hormones vs compounded hormones and when each makes sense
• testosterone therapy for women: potential benefits, risks, and why dosing matters
• why nervous system regulation and stress patterns change hormone outcomes
• how coaching supports consistency, boundaries, sleep, and sustainable change
• building care around symptom patterns, labs, lifestyle, and personal goals
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Disclaimer And Welcome
SPEAKER_02Any 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.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to the Rejuvenating Health Podcast. I'm Lakin, and as always, I'm joined by Lindsay, our nurse practitioner for functional medicine. And today we are going to be talking about something that honestly needs way more attention in women's
Why Cookie Cutter Menopause Care Fails
SPEAKER_00health. And I think it's getting there. But the problem is that we are, I feel like we're standardizing menopause care because it's hot right now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it I'm we're kind of forcing it into that primary care bucket where you have an algorithm where it's like if your blood pressure's this, you prescribe this drug first and then this and this and this, and we're not really taking into account all the other things. So I recently saw this really good post and it was saying that menopause care was never meant to be one size fits all, and it's not. But unfortunately, like many clinicians if they go through a course, maybe they spend like five or six hours learning like an algorithm, and they're not they're approaching it as one size fits all. Like you have these symptoms, you fit in this bucket, we're gonna treat you like this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and we see that all the time. Like women are always coming to us saying, you know, like they've been told, well, that's just how aging goes, or you know, the famous your labs are normal, so there's nothing wrong with you. It's just a part of what happens, or like, you know, trying giving them like a standard dose of something as a recommendation instead of digging in further into what their symptoms are looking like, or you know, come back in six months and we'll check everything again, kind of thing. And they just keep getting pushed further and further down the line. But the whole time, while they're getting these generic responses, they're exhausted and gaining weight and not sleeping, and they're inflamed as hell, and then they feel they're completely disconnected from themselves and they don't feel like themselves anymore.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because the reality is we don't fit into this neat little box. Like we're super complex. Women are complex. You and I are not the same. Hormones are dynamic, your metabolism is dynamic, stress changes your physiology, trauma changes your physiology, sleep changes your physiology, what you put in your mouth, what you listen to, what you look on social media. So when medicine becomes too protocol driven, which is why standardized medicine is not, I don't really love it, without personalization, like women are falling through the cracks big time. And it's why they're not getting any relief when they're like, Well, I tried HRT and it didn't do anything for me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. So that's so today we're gonna dive into why standardized menopause care often fails, the science of hormonal individuality, why symptoms persist even when women are treated. We said like women will get HRT or you know, treatment and then they feel like it doesn't work or nothing happens, how your nervous system health changes outcomes, how that plays a role. And then the role of coaching as far as the sustainability of what kind of transformation you're looking for and what individualized care actually should look like.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So, I mean, one of the biggest problems with medicine in general is that it's built around averages, essentially. So average lab, I mean, this is what we talked about with lab values all the time. Like it's built around average lab ranges, average medication dosage, average symptoms, but hormones are so individualized.
Hormone Receptors And Root Causes
SPEAKER_02And two women can have the exact same estrogen levels and feel completely different.
SPEAKER_00And so yeah, that's what I think that I think I want to sit with that for a second because as you said that I'm like, I don't think people realize that that it's not just about the levels, that it really is very, very nuanced to the individual because that's what confuses women when they try to compare themselves to their friends or when they're being told by their doctor, like, well, these are just, you know, this is this is range that you're looking at. But you know, one woman could feel amazing and menopause, and another one feels like she doesn't even recognize her body anymore. But like you said, the same levels of different hormones can feel very different to different people.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I have one woman, her testosterone's 50, and she's ready to pounce on her husband, and another woman it's 200, and she's like, I don't feel a thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean, here's the science piece like hormone receptors matter just as much as your hormone levels. So what actually gets to you on the cellular level matters a lot. That's what than what's floating around in your bloodstream. And you can technically have normal estrogen, progesterone, even thyroid levels, but your receptor sensibility sensitivity is just awful. It's awful because you're inflamed, you're insulin resistant, your cortisol is dysregulated, you're nutrient deficient, your gut is a mess, you're in exposed to toxins all over the place. So even though that hormone exists and it's at an adequate level in your bloodstream, your body is not responding appropriately to it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, which is why treating symptoms without root cause care doesn't work for the long-term approach.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it's often why, like with a lot of women that we work with, we make them do lifestyle changes before we ever put them on hormones. So that way we can make sure their receptors are able to take in those hormones and they don't have these wonky side effects. Like a woman may get hormone replacement, antidepressants, sleep medication, weight loss injections, but if her blood sugar is unstable, if her cortisol is elevated, if her muscle mass is low, her inflammation is high, her stress is unmanaged, like her body doesn't feel safe, and those symptoms are going to continue to exist.
SPEAKER_00Right, right.
Menopause As A Metabolic Shift
SPEAKER_00And I I think a lot of women just feel like they're focused on estrogen, like they assume menopause is just the low estrogen piece, but I want to talk about why it's way more than just estrogen.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's like way oversimplifying it because we see all the time like estrogen declines and then thyroid function declines. Menopause affects almost every organ system. It affects your insulin sensitivity, it affects your mitochondrial function, it affects your neurotransmitters in your brain, it affects your muscle protein synthesis, your thyroid conversion, the way that you sleep, your inflammatory pathways, the way that your bones turn over, your cardiovascular health. Like it is a full-body metabolic transition.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that makes sense why you know weight loss is one of the biggest things that women complain about during that season, but it becomes way harder and women, you know, essentially just blame themselves for it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's like they like, I didn't change anything, and I woke up and I have a tire around my abdomen.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02I mean, because when your estrogen declines and your progesterone declines and your testosterone declines, your muscle mass is naturally declining and your insulin sensitivity is worsening. And when that happens, when your muscles are going down and your blood sugars are going up, you're having higher blood sugars, which is causing you to gain weight. It's causing you to have that visceral fat around your organs that's in your belly. It's causing you to have lower metabolic flexibility, it's causing you to have more cravings, like worse recovery, so you don't feel like hitting your workouts the next day. And a lot of times these women will be like, I suddenly lost my willpower. And it's not that. It's like literally your whole metabolic system, your physiology changed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. And then they start under-eating. So, like, well, I have to, you know, I have to eat less. Which makes it kind of like the, and like you said, you know, the the hitch in the chain, because I think a lot of women will think, oh, well, my menopause symptoms are what's causing the the issue, as far as when we're talking about the weight. But it's not necessarily that. It's like the menopause symptoms are causing you to struggle with maintaining the lifestyle habits that are going to contribute to you losing the weight. And while those habits may need to adjust based on what you used to do and what you do now, because of your body responding differently. So it's not as simple as just put in less food.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because it actually makes it worse. Yeah. Like when you start undereating, your cortisol goes up, and then you're breaking down more muscle and your insulin's going up and your thyroid is conversion's dropping and you're getting more sleep. Like you're actually gaining weight by eating less. And your body becomes like even more stressed out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And we hear that all the time too. Like, I'm eating less and I just keep gaining more weight, or I can't seem to lose any weight no matter how little I eat. And it's like, well, yeah, that makes total sense because your body is stressed out and we need to like get it to a place of homeostasis again. But, you know, I think that there's confusion because women hear so many conflicting things about hormone therapy.
HRT Confusion And Evidence Based Guidelines
SPEAKER_00And, you know, one provider will say hormones are dangerous, and another will say, you know, every woman needs them, they're really, really important. And you should start them in perimenopause before you even get there to offset it. And another one will say, like, you know, FDA-approved products should never or should should be the only ones that are used. And and women don't know what to believe. And I feel like now more than ever, because it's becoming more marketable, there's even more overwhelm as far as the amount of information that's out there and all of these things that are, you know, being sold to women all the time. And that's that's not helping the situation.
SPEAKER_02No, and it's from one extreme to the other. Like it's one extreme, like you don't need hormone therapy at all, to the other extreme of like some of the craziest protocols I've ever seen, and some of the like wonkiest hormones I've ever seen out there. Like believing that you have to like have pellets inserted to have your hormones, or like it's wild. Some of the stuff that's like way over the top is out there just as well. So it's not just like under treatment.
SPEAKER_00Or even like we'll we'll have women that are like, Yeah, my um, they just put me back on birth control.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like it's my perimenopause symptoms, like, no. Yeah, it is all over the place, like all over the place, which why there needs to be some, which is why you actually need to be using like evidence-based menopause medicine. Like you do need to be using evidence-based care. And one of the biggest organizations guiding menopause care is the NAMS, so the North American Menopause Society, or now it's just called the Menopause Society. But these the guidelines they use are considered one of the gold standards for evidence-based menopause treatment. And what's important is that even their recommendations end of like emphasize individualized care, not blanket treatment, not one size fits all. Now, I will say I don't agree with everything that they say, and I go a little bit outside of some of their recommendations because like testosterone is not FDA approved. So they're not gonna come out there and say that. But what they do actually say is that hormone and therapy can be incredibly beneficial for women, especially when it's started in that appropriate window, which is like within 10 years post-menopause, and when your symptoms start to happen in perimenopause. And hormone therapy, it's gonna help reduce those hot flashes, improve your sleep, improve your mood, protect against bone loss, improve quality of life, improve vaginal and urinary symptoms. And for many healthy women under the age of 60 or within 10 years of menopause, like the onset, like the of the onset of it, like the benefits of starting HRT way outweigh the risks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and this is vastly different than historically, there was a lot of fear messaging, right, around uh the women's health initiative study years ago that was talking about how it was going to be causing cancer in women. And I think a lot of people are, you know, still hold on to that. Like there's a lot of um women that are still very afraid of that. And there's a lot of practitioners, unfortunately, that are still afraid of it as well, which doesn't help the situation either. But that's largely been disproven.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that study is way flawed. Like they've even came back and said that it's not accurate.
SPEAKER_00But that doesn't get as widely like publicized.
SPEAKER_02Like the recall. Like, so what happened was like many of the participants were older, like way outside of 60, 10 year window. They started hormones long after menopause and they used the synthetic progestine. So they used like oral estrogen and synthetic progestin because the route matters and patient selection matters. And so now we understand menopause medicine with much more nuance, like a lot of that stuff has been retracted.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah.
FDA Approved Options Vs Compounded Care
SPEAKER_00Let's talk about FDA approved versus non-FDA approved options because we mentioned this previously. And I think women ask about this a lot of like, what's the difference between FDA-approved hormones and non-FDA treatments?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it's an important conversation to have. Like FDA approved hormone therapy is gonna be like your estrogen patches that good god are on a shortage everywhere, which is ridiculous. Oral progesterone, which is again on a shortage. Like finally, women are like, give me estrogen and progesterone. We're like, mm, sorry, we're on a shortage now.
SPEAKER_00But so your estrogen patches are that's because it's not something that's you know curing erectile dysfunction. Because if it was, it would be in surplus and they would never run out.
SPEAKER_02Right. So your oral estrogen, your estrogen patches, your oral progesterone, your vaginal estrogen, certain topical estrogen products. Like these all have standardized dosing and safety data. But there are also like a lot of therapies frequently used in functional and integrative medicine that aren't FDA approved. And probably the biggest one of this is testosterone. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I feel like testosterone is finally getting talked about more, but it's still, you know, it's still fringe.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and honestly, like it can be super life-changing for women when used appropriately. Like testosterone affects your muscle mass, your motivation, your libido, like your confidence, your energy, your cognition, your recovery, your bone health. Like it's kind of your get crap done hormone. And women produce testosterone too, just like men. You reduce you produce some from your ovaries and some from your adrenal system. And it declines with age. Like, obviously, your ovaries start declining, so it's gonna start declining with age.
SPEAKER_00So, why isn't testosterone FDA approved for women?
SPEAKER_02I think it will be. I think the reason why it's not is because there's no end product that's designed for women. Like men have testosterone insipionate, it's 200 milligrams per ml or an injection. That's really hard to dose for women, or they have like androgel. And again, really hard to dose for women because women need about the tenth of the dosage that men need. But that doesn't mean that it's not unsafe. It means that the drug companies, like the approval hasn't occurred for that indication. So many providers use testosterone off-label from compounding pharmacies, and off-label prescribing is actually like super common in medicine. Like, if you think about it, like medicines used for erectile dysfunction were originally used for blood pressure. Yeah, like it's not uncommon to use off-label medications for things. Like your Prozac, the Paxel that you're getting prescribed for hot flashes isn't meant for hot flashes, it's meant for anxiety and depression.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. Well, I'll I feel like you know, compounding pharmacies have gotten a bad rap since the whole like peptide craze. But if we think about it historically, that's how that's how it used to be for all pharmaceuticals. Like originally, if you needed something, it would be compounded for you specifically based on what you needed when you went to go to your doctor. When you go to the pharmacist and the pharmacist would actually compound something for you based on your symptoms. Now, over time, because of you know, capitalism and these big pharma companies coming in and being able to standardize a lot of this stuff, it does make it a lot more convenient because then you have things that are more readily available and it's much faster. But then it becomes this scenario where it's like, oh, like, you know, the the pharmacy brand or the name brand or like these specific brands of medication and then the stuff coming from a compound pharmacy. And it doesn't mean that they're less than.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I mean, sexual dysfunction in women is like a is a real thing too. Yeah. Like according to NAMS and the International Society of Women, sexual health, like the strongest evidence for hyposexual disorder in women or HSDD is testosterone. So there's other drugs out there that are really expensive, but the thing that works the most for low libido, reduced sexual desire, distressed around low desire, it like motivation, energy, body composition, strength, cognition, like it's testosterone.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but this is also where personalization matters like a lot because not every not every woman needs testosterone. And the dose is really important.
SPEAKER_02It can have crazy side effects for some women. Like they can lose their hair, they can grow a beard. Like some women feel amazing with it, some women feel nothing. And I tell women like this with this all the time. Like, because sometimes I'll prescribe testosterone and they're like, oh my god, like they think it's a miracle pill, and it's not. Like, it's not a miracle drug, just like a GLP one is not a miracle drug. Like, you have to have everything in balance. So some women feel amazing with estrogen support, some women feel amazing with improved sleep, with better nutrition, with resistance training, with nervous system regulation. Others need testosterone therapy. Like this is why you can't have a cookie cutter protocol.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. But that's also why it's worth like pulling all the levers of the things that are much more easily accessible and within your control and that are sustainable long term and not, you know, impacting your body internally, potentially, or doesn't have, you know, a side effects associated with it or potential side effects before you go into something like TRT.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's this is where responsible medicine really matters. Like testosterone is not more is better. Like too much testosterone can be bad, like acne. Literally, your hair is falling out, you're growing a beard, you're aggressive, and lipid changes. So monitoring really matters. Labs matter, symptoms matter, dosing matters.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And when we look at what we talked about before, as far as marketing goes, social media can make this a little bit dangerous because I think we have, you know, a big community of quote-unquote biohackers that are chasing optimization in the name of health, but it's not necessarily true health.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, hormone, you always want to do the lowest effective dose when it comes to hormones. Like we should never be optimizing for hormone excess. Like the goal is physiological support, not these crazy super physiological levels. That being said, 200 might be normal for you. So don't freak out if you're at two if you're at 200 of testosterone. But again, it's personalized. It's what's normal for you.
SPEAKER_00Right. Like you may be at that level and not be having negative symptoms, but someone else may be at a lower level and having, you know, terrible symptoms. Exactly. It's very nuanced. I want to come back to the compounded hormones as an option.
Testosterone Benefits Risks And Monitoring
SPEAKER_00So, like what about those is really beneficial? And I feel like women hear about those constantly, but what are what are some things that you would advise when it comes to compounded hormones?
SPEAKER_02So they absolutely have a role in individualized care. What you need to understand is they're not FDA-approved products, which means here's what it means the dosing consistency can vary. The quality really depends on the compounding pharmacy. And the long-term like safety data is more limited. So it's not that that doesn't mean compounded hormones are automatically bad. Like we use them a lot. There are situations when they're super clinically useful, like allergy concerns. Like if you're allergic to peanuts, then you need a compounded progesterone. Like if the standard 100 milligrams of progesterone is too high for you, then you need a compounded one at 50. Or if you're still waking up in the middle of the night, you need an extended release progesterone. But you deserve to have a conversation with a provider. My stance is let's always use insurance FDA-approved meds first. Like if we can get your insurance to cover and it's working, let's go that route. But if that's not working, then yeah, let's go. We can try a compounded med. I don't ever prescribe compounded meds all put together, meaning I'm never going to prescribe you a cream that's estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone put together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because then you don't know what's working, what levels are being impacted.
SPEAKER_02Like they need to be separate.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I think the the biggest issue is that women just need options. I think what's frustrating is that most women feel like there's only two extremes when they're they're looking for options. And it's like either, you know, hormones are poison and don't put them in your body, and you know, you're gonna have a all these terrible symptoms associated with it, or you know, every symptom that you could possibly think of means that you need more hormones.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and like if you're working with a good provider, good medicine lives in nuance. Some women thrive with lifestyle interventions alone. Some need hormone replacement, some benefit from testosterone support, some need like metabolic restoration and thyroid optimization and nervous system regulation and nutrition changes first. Like this is why individualized care matters so much.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and this is where coaching becomes huge because hormones alone, like you said, are not going to fix lifestyle dysfunction. And even if we were to introduce hormones into the mix, if we do have lifestyle habit dysfunction in place, then the hormones are only gonna go so far or not be effective at all.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, you put estrogen in a super insulin resistant overweight body, you're asking it to convert to estrone, which is bad estrogen, which can cause inflammation. It can cause irregular cell growth, like it can cause bleeding. Like that's where you start to get the symptoms and the negative stuff. I can't out prescribe chronic stress or You not prioritizing your sleep or you eating McDonald's every day and you not moving, like and you stressed out. Like hormones can support your physiology and they can make you feel better to where maybe you do want to go to the gym. But like coaching helps create the environment where healing can actually happen.
SPEAKER_00Let's talk about why the personalization matters so much when it comes to dosing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Like there is no perfect universal hormone dose. Like there are like starting standard doses I'll put people on. But it's depending on their labs because women metabolize hormones differently based on your liver detox pathways. So you're looking at your liver enzymes, based on your genetics, based on your body composition. Like I'm going to look at your weight, based on your inflammatory markers, based on what you tell me about your gut health and gut microbiome, based on your thyroid conversion, based on having a conversation with you and I'm seeing if your stress is through the roof. Like some women are going to feel incredible on like really, really tiny doses, and others are going to need like a lot of support.
SPEAKER_00But that's why we have to analyze the symptom patterns. You have to know how they're responding.
SPEAKER_02And you have to know how they show up as symptoms. So like low progesterone is going to show up as anxiety, poor sleep, irritability, feeling a little bit wired at bedtime, panic sensations, whereas your low estrogen is going to show up hot flashes during the day, vaginal dryness, joint pain, brain fog, dry skin, and then that testosterone again is going to show up at that low motivation, low to be abedito, poor recovery, declining muscle. So, like, but women don't ever, they never present in textbooks ways like this. And when you look at lab reviews, you're also like, well, ferritin can cause brain fog and sluggish thyroid can cause this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like some of the symptoms are could not be hormonal at all. It could have nothing to do with your hormones. And then you could decide, oh, well, I need estrogen because I feel this way. So I'm just gonna go get some.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but in reality, like your ferritin is 12 and your T3 is two and your insulin's 26 and your cortisol is negative five, and your inflammation is through the roof. And when they're like, I need more hormones, but like really you need some metabolic support.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
Stress Nervous System And Coaching
SPEAKER_00But the other thing that gets constantly underestimated is how much the nervous system impacts menopausal symptoms and perimenopausal symptoms. Like women want to bypass this because it's like, oh, well, that's just something that is a part of life, but it's stress really affects your hormones, ladies, like a lot.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So okay. Cortisol steals your sex hormones. So it steals your testosterone and DHEA. It raises your blood sugar. It steals your progesterone so you can't sleep. It makes it so your thyroid doesn't convert. So it's affecting your sleep, your progesterone production. And like a lot of women entering perimenopause are burnt out. They're taking care of their aging parents, they're putting their kids off to college, they're in the height of their career, they've spent decades overfunctioning, caregiving, people pleasing, chronically under-eating, over-exercising, living in this survival mode, and then menopause hits and the body's like, peace.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like no, no more. Like pump the brakes. And menopause doesn't necessarily create all that dysfunction. Sometimes it just exposes the dysfunction that's more than likely been there for years and years and years. And like you said, it's just the straw that broke the camel's back.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, your body just loses resilience. And this is where coaching and support can really help because it can help you with your stress patterns and your sleep habits and your boundaries and your consistency and your self-talk and movement patterns. And like you can't heal in a constant physiological chaos.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And, you know, paired with that, not only the chronic stress, but there's an emotional side that's really important to address too, because most women often feel really dismissed during this stage of their life where they hold a lot of shame around it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like most women just want to be heard. Like research shows that that perceived like stress and not feeling heard is going to affect like inflammatory cytokines and cortisol and your autonomic nervous system. And feeling emotionally unsupported is just making it worse. It's making you physiologically stressed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And so many women have spent years like essentially gaslighting themselves because they've been gaslit into believing that these symptoms are either something that doesn't isn't real or it's not that big of a deal, or it's just part of the aging process, and they just have to deal with it.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, they're then they're thinking I'm lazy and I'm dramatic and this is normal. And they're like, bodies are literally like, help me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. And that's why, you know, that's why the whole picture approach is so important of looking at, okay, can we address lifestyle? Can we address mindset? Can we address the labs and like actually figure out what is it that we need to pull the levers on? It's probably a little bit of everything.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's not just the hormone levels.
Practical Foundations And Personalized Goals
SPEAKER_00So when we look at like individualized care, what should menopause care actually look like?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So I mean, you're looking at the symptoms matter the most. Then the lifestyle, the stress load, then you can look at labs, body composition, sleep, nutrition, movement, gut health, inflammation, like all of those things. But you also have to look at the woman's goals.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. Yeah, because you know, not every woman wants the same outcome, just like not every woman is gonna have the same response to levels. Like you have to be, you have to take an approach that's also nuanced when it comes to that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like maybe you want better energy and I want better libido. Someone else wants weight loss, another wants blind clarity, another wants longevity and disease prevention. Like those treatments are all different based on her goals.
SPEAKER_00Right. And one treatment may address more than one of those at a time, but it has to be what are we prioritizing in the approach here? What are you know, what are we attacking first?
SPEAKER_02You can't throw the kitchen sink it. Like then you don't know what's working. Like you kind of it's kind of a step-by-step process. And this is where like lifestyle medicine also is so powerful because evidence consistently shows that like a lot of these symptoms can be fixed with lifestyle medicine. And so resistance training, we know pulls glucose into your muscles and helps with insulin sensitivity. We know that eating adequate protein, 30 to 40 grams three times a day, is gonna help preserve your lean muscle mass. We know that sleeping seven to nine hours a night is gonna help with your hormone signaling. We know that going outside and getting morning sunlight and doing some breath work is gonna improve your cortisol regulation. We know that eating three meals a day and not drinking wine every night is gonna improve your blood sugar and inflammation. And so you have to have the foundations in place.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's where coaching will help these women to implement those things consistently so that way they can actually see some of that shift. Because if not, if we keep doing this like up-down situation of like, oh, I'm gonna try this thing, and then oh, I, you know, I fell off or I self-sabotage or whatever it is, I go back to those old patterns that we talked about in our previous episode, then it's not gonna benefit you. And then you're gonna, you know, again, reinforce the idea that nothing works. This doesn't work for me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, what we've talked about this before, but women don't know, like they don't fail because they don't know enough. Like information's not transformation. They fail because they're overwhelmed and exhausted and unsupported and dysregulated and consistent. And that's where like coaching really bridges that gap between knowledge and implementation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
Key Takeaways And Closing Requests
SPEAKER_00So if there's one thing for women to take away from this episode, I really hope that you recognize that it's not an issue. Like the issue doesn't necessarily lie with you or your body itself. It's you know, standard protocols did not work for you, and that's okay. There is another option.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and menopause is not the end of your life. Like you the I'm starting to go through perimenopause now, and I hope I live to be like a hundred. Like it's my life's just beginning.
SPEAKER_00Like it's a transition that requires personalized care and metabolic support and nervous system healing and muscle preservation and inflammation reduction and a sustainable individualized plan for each deserve care that is made for you, that addresses you and the the things that you want out of your life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and like you need to realize that individualized care isn't perfection because it's gonna be wrong a few times.
SPEAKER_00Like Yeah, there's gonna be lots of trial and error. I think that's another thing that women get really frustrated about of like, well, you know, I'm doing the thing and it's not working, and then we want to try this again. But ladies, there's a lot that happens on the inside of your body, and we have to we have to again test one variable at a time and make sure that it's being done correctly. If not, then you you don't know what's working and what's not.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's a lot of trial and error, and especially in perimenopause when things are constantly changing. Like you're gonna have to make changes and work with someone that can help you make those changes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. So if this episode resonated with you, if this is a level of support that you think would be beneficial for you, or someone that you know, please share it with another woman that's maybe feeling a little unseen in her health journey. Because I know there's a lot of you ladies out there, and you know, we're here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So if you're looking for personalized support, labs, hormone optimization, lifestyle medicine, you can connect with us at Urgent Name Health.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And please like and subscribe, rate and review all the things. We appreciate you guys. Make sure that you're subscribed so you get the notifications for the latest episodes. And thanks for hanging out with us today. And see you next time.