Redefining Wellness in the Perimenopause Years with Dr. Eva's Insights
Dec 30, 2023Season 1Episode 18
Dietrich L Horsey
Unlock the mysteries of perimenopause and embrace the power of self-care with Dr. Eva's expert guidance. This heartfelt conversation illuminates the intricacies of women's health after 40, providing an arsenal of personalized strategies to combat the stress and hormonal flux of this life phase. Delving into the importance of a nutrient-rich diet and the wonders of meditation, we uncover how to cultivate both physical and psychological resilience. Dr. Eva shares her wisdom on using biofeedback tools to monitor and manage sleep, mood, and hormonal changes, ensuring you're equipped to thrive during these transformative years.
Navigate the interplay of nutrition, hormones, and physical activity with ease as we explore the profound impact of gut health on mood regulation. Dr. Eva discusses the benefits of a plant-based diet and fermented foods in balancing the microbiome, alongside a look at hormone replacement and natural alternatives. She also connects the dots between movement, brain function, and mental health, highlighting exercise as a non-negotiable component of well-being. As the conversation turns to sleep, learn practical tips for creating a sanctuary for slumber and the positive effects of pre-sleep routines. This episode is your invitation to rekindle passion projects, forge meaningful social connections, and master the art of self-awareness during a season of significant change.
Unlock the mysteries of perimenopause and embrace the power of self-care with Dr. Eva's expert guidance. This heartfelt conversation illuminates the intricacies of women's health after 40, providing an arsenal of personalized strategies to combat the stress and hormonal flux of this life phase. Delving into the importance of a nutrient-rich diet and the wonders of meditation, we uncover how to cultivate both physical and psychological resilience. Dr. Eva shares her wisdom on using biofeedback tools to monitor and manage sleep, mood, and hormonal changes, ensuring you're equipped to thrive during these transformative years.
Navigate the interplay of nutrition, hormones, and physical activity with ease as we explore the profound impact of gut health on mood regulation. Dr. Eva discusses the benefits of a plant-based diet and fermented foods in balancing the microbiome, alongside a look at hormone replacement and natural alternatives. She also connects the dots between movement, brain function, and mental health, highlighting exercise as a non-negotiable component of well-being. As the conversation turns to sleep, learn practical tips for creating a sanctuary for slumber and the positive effects of pre-sleep routines. This episode is your invitation to rekindle passion projects, forge meaningful social connections, and master the art of self-awareness during a season of significant change.
John A paid yes, and she's a world renowned, I would say that, and she wrote a few books and I'm going to basically have a conversation with her. That's a kind of candid conversation about women 40 plus and how, hopefully, we can provide information about how to help those women get in better shape, feel better and get better rest and nutrition. So I'm going to cover all those topics today on the podcast For no further ado. Dr Eva, welcome, thank you. So to start off, you know this channel is all by 40 plus women.
Speaker 1:
Moms are the kind of stuff in women who basically don't know business and stuff like that. And I see a lot of clients like that who either don't make enough time for themselves, they, you know your payment apposal, that whole thing. So I like to get into those topics to kind of see if you can provide some information or some tips you have for those women, particularly 40 plus, and payment appals will start there first. So, based on that, when did this usually occur for most women? When the apposal kind of defects, the payment apposal, when does that actually start?
Speaker 2:
most of the time, Look, I mean it's going to be different for everybody.
Speaker 1:
Sure.
Speaker 2:
I think the the peri-manipause for me didn't happen until my 50s. Some people it might happen in their 40s and it really depends on many different things, especially your stress levels, your genetics, right, the family history of you know how, what happened to your mom and her mom before that, and it's going to be really dependent on lifestyle and other behaviors that you partake in. So it menopause will happen to everybody, right?
Speaker 2:
Right, it's not going to happen. It does happen for everybody. How it happens for everybody is going to be different, and whether or not you'll have symptoms as a result of it is is like it's a huge variable, right, there is no sort of written rule for anyone. I find that those you can breeze through it with minimal, none, with no symptoms when you take care of yourself and the way that your body needs Now everybody. Having said that, everybody needs different things.
Speaker 1:
Right.
Speaker 2:
However, everybody does need the same category of things, right? So the body needs time to recover, it needs a lot of love, it needs nutrient rich food, it needs movement, it needs time for meditation and relaxation and it needs you to take care of yourself from a psychospiritual standpoint. So those are sort of the categories, and then within those categories it's going to be variable for everybody.
Speaker 1:
Got it so. So give me some, I guess, your famous or tips that you can provide that one when you start to notice these things start to happen. What are some of the things you can do to, I guess, assist or make it, make it easier or better? We'll be some of those things in terms of one, I guess nutrition.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, well, first of all, you want to start looking at you know, building your self awareness routine.
Speaker 2:
Right, sure, you can get an over ring or some type of biofeedback gadget like loop that's going to tell you what how well you're sleeping or whether or not, what your mood is, or whatever that is and using that to start, or start gauging yourself, like what is affecting my sleep, what is affecting my mood, what is affecting my hot flashes, what is affecting my digestion, what is affecting my weight?
Speaker 2:
Right, and start keeping a log of how you're affected by different things. Like you might find that you know I ate a lot of sugar yesterday and today I'm really irritable, or I had More stimulants yesterday and I'm having a hard time sleeping, and now I'm I'm two pounds heavier today. So you want to start looking at patterns that are relevant to, like I said, there's patterns that are generally true for everybody, like lack of sleep is going to lead to weight gain and Higher cortisol levels and more inflammation, which is then going to affect everything else and it's going to completely set your hormones out of whack. So it's understanding yourself and understanding what causes your body more stress than otherwise and, by virtue of it being stress, it's going to offset your hormones and that's going to make your symptoms worse, so it's starting to pay attention. Nutrition in general is something that, whether it's mental or physical health it probably 80% of our problems can be solved by appropriate nutrition. Now I mean appropriate again, because not everybody can eat the same things right.
Speaker 2:
Generally, though, a plant-based diet, plant-based diets are good for everybody, for the most part, right. So we're nature, we came from nature. We are nature and our body wants nature and our bodies. So putting things in our body there aren't from nature, it's going to cause stress because it's foreign, and there's going to be a stress response, which means there's going to be inflammation, there's going to be a slowing down of digestion and there's going to be a a negative effect on the bacteria that live in the gut, which is going to cause dysbiosis. Just cause means imbalance, okay, which leads to all kinds of problems and that, because of the gut brain connection which is so strong it's going to cut, affect your mood and your hormones and everything else right, and and your metabolism.
Speaker 2:
So the things that get Offset when we go through menopause is our drop in estrogen, and so that's gonna. We're going to lose a lot of safety mechanisms that normally save our hearts and our minds. We lose body fat. We lose a lot of different things that we need to figure out how to stay elevated with. So so that is going to happen through a lot of the self-care and, again, a lot of that is going to be Nutrition, making sure that microbiome, that gut bacteria, is flourishing with your plant-based diets or fermented foods. You might look into like helping your metabolism metabolism flourish better, which you could be doing intermittent fasting or what we call car cycling, which is letting your body metabolize Carbs versus fats in a way that is beneficial to. That is more like our ancestors did, versus how we live our lives now in the western world and sort of Getting your body to acclimate to the way it's supposed to be a nature.
Speaker 1:
So okay, so in terms of so. So what a lot of things I see too is the bloating right from the imbalance is definitely about. So Are there ways to address that? And it's kind of a two-point question what are your thoughts on when it comes to hormone replacement and stuff like that?
Speaker 2:
Again, it's all variable per person and I think in some people hormone replacement is really apt and necessary and other people it's not so there are certain ways of replacing hormones that you can do naturally through Yam extract and that sort of thing for different parts of the body that might need it.
Speaker 1:
So just one second. What is that term used when we call it Yam? What's that?
Speaker 2:
Well, Yam is what we eat, the Yam.
Speaker 1:
Oh, yam okay, I guess.
Speaker 2:
It has estrogenic properties. Got it okay, does it okay and there's like a chafe tree berry, which is an herb, and birdock root, which is another herb. So there's also natural ways that you can help your hormones through other natural ways.
Speaker 1:
Nice.
Speaker 2:
So and again, everybody's different in what they need and what their family history is and risk factors and things that they need to control their mood or their bones. So there's things that you can do naturally to improve, like bone density, versus taking a hormone. So some people again benefit, some people don't. There's looking at your brain functioning and memory and the things that we need that estrogen for that you started having brain bugs.
Speaker 2:
So sometimes people do well with brain, with doing hormone replacement therapy, and sometimes people do well with going on some chafe tree and Ginkgo and a bunch of other supplement or natural products that experts can help them with.
Speaker 1:
So do you have any resources? Because the Yam thing kind of got me. I never even heard that before.
Speaker 2:
So that's that most people use that for, like vaginal dryness and things like that.
Speaker 1:
Got it. So is that more of a on the NAPR path kind of internal medicine approach? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yes, I mean what medical people know about it and they can recommend it. There are some studies behind it. It's been around for a while, but that would be more down the line of the naturopath. Yeah. Got it or naturopathic type of.
Speaker 1:
Nice. So in terms of non-nutrition, but fitness, how's that playing to this whole thing? Or movement, I get.
Speaker 2:
you would call it movement fitness, how you wanna say Well, again, the way people want to remember that, the way your brain works, is that your body has senses and the senses then feedback to the brain through neurons, through a nervous system, nervous system, and then the brain sends out signals to activate an action that will then in response to your senses. So you get like a tingle in your bum from sitting for too long and it's gonna send messages to the brain that I've got tingling in my bum and then the brain is gonna send messages to the muscles to move so that your bum does an atrophy. There's a whole feedback system that's happening. So everything that's on the outside in your body has a corresponding brain cell that is dealing with it. So if you don't use it, you lose it. Yeah sure.
Speaker 2:
So if you're not using a certain muscle group, then those neurons that are affiliated with those muscle groups go to sleep.
Speaker 2:
So that's why we know that with exercise we can improve brain function and brain cognition, especially when we use different muscle groups. The other piece of this is that when you again, when you get older, you're losing muscle mass. So again we don't have that A, that feedback loop, but we also are losing strength and we're losing our ability to balance and be able to balance ourselves, which again is gonna affect our brain and our mood. So movement has so many benefits, aside from balance and flexibility and strength and muscle mass and bone mass, which we need to build as we get older, because we lose it as we get older. It also helps improve our neurotransmitter availability, like serotonin, dopamine, which help keep us happy, and the endorphins, which help improve our mood and help improve our focus and help improve our memory and help improve our cognition, which all are things that can fall down the wayside as we get older, especially when we're going through those changes like menopause, right, so I got a question.
Speaker 1:
so what routine do you use for Movement? Was your.
Speaker 2:
I have a very I have a very rigorous. I mean, I keep in mind that I travel a lot too, so when I'm home I Usually I'm moving every day. So let's put it that way, I walk everywhere. So I could walk anywhere from three miles to Eight miles a day because, I have to do my errands on foot.
Speaker 1:
Sure.
Speaker 2:
Oh, unless it's gross outside, and then I do crossfit or something like that. I do functional movement exercises, whether I'm using my own body weight or I'm using barbells or or, or rings or gymnastics or whatever that is. I'm oftentimes working out at home doing the same movements with my little kettle, bells and dumbbells, but I'm using functional movement, meaning I'm doing movements that my, our ancestors used to do when they walk through the wilderness, like squatting and deadlifting and, and you know, cleaning and jerking and things like that, and I'm also doing my cardiovascular work. So that happens at least five times a week. You know when I'm home, and then I'm moving all the time. When I'm not home, I try to do, like, my own body weight exercises for about at least 10, 15 minutes. Right is a week and again walking everywhere.
Speaker 1:
Sure.
Speaker 2:
I get in at least At least an hour a day, every day doing something something right, nice, yeah, very nice. So, and I do, chigong, which is my form of meditation, that's, which is like Tai Chi or other people might do yoga or things like that which is a movement, stretching, mindfulness movement, which has similar benefits for your brain and your focus and your mood and it also, you know, helps with mobility and relaxation.
Speaker 1:
Nice, nice. So it's in most times. So now I guess the other part of this question is when it's time to, because sleep seem to be a very big issue for a lot of people. I mean almost everyone. I've spoken to mostly women, though that find had the hardest time going to sleep, and my thing is that you know to kind of set the stage for going to sleep, like you know, find the right music to go to sleep to, or just set yourself up so you have a certain routine To go to sleep.
Speaker 2:
Yep.
Speaker 1:
What would be your suggestion when it comes to that?
Speaker 2:
Well, there is, first of all, there's a whole sleep hygiene that I recommend right sleep hygiene is really looking at your sleep habits.
Speaker 2:
The one major thing is you want to go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time, no matter where you are, what you're doing, and really get into that habit. We want to get that circadian rhythm regulated, you know, figure out where your sleep window is Right. So I have a sleep window where it's the best time for me to go to sleep, where I feel the best. When I do that, if I don't go to sleep in that window, I don't feel so great the next day and also I may not fall asleep as well. So there's a period when I'm the most tired which is the best time for me to go to sleep. After that, have like a second wind. So that's one.
Speaker 2:
Two is remove all stimulants from your room. No TV, no computers, no iPhone, nothing, because all those things are gonna keep you awake and they're gonna affect your sleep quality. Your bedroom should be only used for sleep and sex, if you're lucky, right. Other than that, if you were to work in your room or anything in that nature, it activates your brain and activates your thoughts. So that's one. So avoiding stimulants Removing, you know, and you have also not having stimulants before going to bed. So a couple hours before going to bed, no coffee. You know, alcohol, things like that are actually stimulants. Anything with caffeine.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:
So herbal herbal tea is fine right.
Speaker 2:
Right, just be wary that if you're, somebody would gets up a lot to pee, that you might want to have your fluids earlier in the day, or rather than the end of the day. Right, not depending on how that affects you so doing you want that couple hours of going before going to bed to be your downtime. That's just when we turn off from the world, not turn on so again, news or Crime shows or whatever that is, that remind us how scary the world can be. Not a good idea. Right, want to do things that help you go into a place of peace and relaxation, because if you go to bed Listening to the news or watching some crime thing or your brain thinks you're being chased by a lion and it's not gonna.
Speaker 2:
You're not gonna have deep sleep. So things that help you go into a place of relaxation and peace. So meditating before bed, taking a nice bath, a candlelit bath, reading some, you know, spiritual literature, let's say or something or something that opens your heart, eases your mind, you know.
Speaker 2:
So anything that sort of brings us down so sort of into that state of peace and relaxation prior to going to bed. So you want to make sure that you're eating fairly early. You don't want to eat close to bed, because then your body is trying to digest rather than sleep, which is the opposite. So in sleep we want our digestive system not to be working right.
Speaker 2:
So you know doing, you know kind of considering things like that of a meal and you're in the evening. That's higher in fat and protein, low in carbohydrates is also gonna support you to sleep better as well.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I noticed that if I have a meal especially high in carbs too close to bedtime, that's when the monsters come out For me, stimulating oh yeah, I mean, though you could probably be have like a sugar or food coma, but you know the.
Speaker 2:
Then the question is the quality of sleep. Usually you'll feel pretty groggy when you wake up in the morning.
Speaker 1:
Sure, so you mentioned before, did you have certain kind of meditation music? What is that that you mentioned, that we talked earlier.
Speaker 2:
Oh, well, I I mean I do a meditation before going to bed. I mean I personally have created many CDs, many Relaxation meditation CDs that people can utilize before going to bed and their visualizations that help us feel safe and loved and, essentially, help you go down.
Speaker 1:
Is it guided meditation?
Speaker 2:
or guided meditation. Created a guided, but there are many, many Meditations. I one of the. A wonderful meditation for going to sleep is called yoga needra, which is you know many experts do. You can find it on YouTube Anywhere which is a yogic kind of practice that tells each part of the body to relax and go to sleep. The meditations that I create for people, again, they're using love and using light and using nature to help us feel. Enough going to place the safety and down regulations that we can Ease down into relaxation and peace right nice.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I'd usually use the Tibetan bowls, cut like the. I guess the rest pretty healthy, the vibration of it, mm-hmm, nice deep sleep that's. That's one of my, my go-tos.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and there's like listening to binaural beats. There's a lot of different things that can aid with sleep and, again, everybody's different. There are certain voices or or sounds that irritate people or stimulate people and but that those same sounds will Allow for relaxation and sleep in another person. So you know, it's kind of experimenting and finding the things that works for you.
Speaker 1:
Nice. So do you have any suggestions for the artist like you know something you would recommend as far as like when it comes to these things and topics of menopause, nutrition, fitness, stuff like that?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, look, first of all, I would recommend paying attention to your body and keep your log. First and foremost, keep blog. You know when I do this, you know this is how I feel. So you have a log of activities and you have a log of height and feelings, how you feel physically and emotionally, and also your level of energy. You know we want to start addressing like, is my energy from adrenaline or is my energy like this core energy that I feel really strong and fit and alive? And so we want to look at mood.
Speaker 2:
We want to look at all those things and then we look at each one of these categories. You know we put in what you ate that day and you put in the exercise you did that day and you put in the amount of sleep you've got that day or how you felt when you got. You woke up in the morning. That's a really good telltale sign of how well we sleep. You look at you know what you did socially, how much fun you had. You look at you know when you got you started getting involved in your passion projects and things that you really love and care about.
Speaker 2:
You know that's the category. So time spent with time spent doing things that you love, time spent working. So we start looking at your stress levels, at our mood, at our emotions and our thoughts, our belief systems, and we look at our physical symptoms. So you start finding your own pattern. Then you start implementing that infrastructure of looking at and making sure that you're spending time with people you love, making sure that you're connected to things that you love, making sure that you're spending time out in nature, making sure that you are putting nutrient rich food into your body only or, for the most part, most of the time, making sure that you're moving your body. That is meaning to you and something that you're willing to stick to. So, looking at that and looking at what changes, Sure sure, awesome.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I knew you. I knew you'd be the perfect person for the puttapagin. She knows almost everything. I think some of the questions I was going to ask you already answered my question. I'm going to ask where am I now? So awesome, yeah. So how can folks find you, dr Iba?
Speaker 2:
You can find me on my website, which has more information you possibly need, but it's drcellhubcom and I'm all over the social media, so I will actually start writing again for Mind by the Green soon. So you can mind by the green dot com has several of my articles, but I'll be writing more for them, and all those articles are also on my blog and my website and I'm always posting really interesting things on social media. So, whether it's LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or all, those different all those handles you can.
Speaker 2:
You can certainly just put in my last name. I'm the only one Awesome, and you'll find me. Cool, yeah, there's lots of stuff on the website. Like I said, there's there's online material, online programs, ebooks, down meditation downloads. Yeah there's, you know, all different kinds of things going on in there.
Speaker 1:
Awesome, yeah, I mean. Yeah, I went through some of your stuff. That's where I found the one about the this, somebody for solid or something like that. Like that's some way off. I'm like I didn't think about it back in 2003, about you know being loud and all that kind of stuff, and I was like you know I was loud.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, I've been doing this for a long time. So there's, I've got a lot of material.
Speaker 1:
Nice, well, thanks. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for your info. I'm sure everybody can benefit from it.
Speaker 2:
I'm happy to help.
Speaker 1:
You do it again. I would love to do it again sometime later in the new year, but this is just going to sign off now. But this is a good fit. Methods that like blueprint. Dr Eva, again thank you very much for showing up. Thanks for the information and hope we can do it again. And happy new year to you.