Episode 50: Sleep, Stress, and Hormones: The Terrain Behind Women's Health

Most women know something is wrong long before a diagnosis ever arrives. In this episode of the Beljanski Cancer Talk Show, Maraya Brown explains how subtle symptoms, disrupted rhythms, stress, and hormonal imbalance shape women's health, and why listening to the body is the first step toward real healing.

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About the Guest:

Maraya Brown is a certified nurse-midwife and the CEO of Beyond Health International. Her work focuses on women's energy, hormonal health, libido, and nervous system regulation using a functional, root-cause approach.

With training in circadian and infradian rhythm alignment, stress physiology, and functional testing, Maraya supports women who experience fatigue, sleep disruption, hormonal imbalance, and chronic stress despite normal lab results. She is also the host of the Women's Vibrancy Code podcast, where she explores how rhythm, regulation, and self-advocacy shape women's health across every life stage.

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Social Handles:

Website: https://marayabrown.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_marayabrown

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7spqWVhxcBJ4oOJ66A3LLf

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-womens-vibrancy-

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Transcript

00:00 Understanding Women's Health Challenges

Maraya Brown (00:00): On average, it takes a woman four to six years for an accurate diagnosis. Often that same woman has seen four to five different providers before being believed.

Sylvie Beljanski (00:15): Welcome to the Beljanski Cancer Talk Show where integrative science and holistic healing come together. I am Sylvie Beljanski and in each episode we explore nutrition, lifestyle, mental health and research-backed approaches to support the whole person through cancer and chronic diseases. Hello, Maraya. I'm delighted to have you today on the Beljanski Cancer Talk Show. For the audience, let me introduce you.

Maraya Brown is a certified nurse midwife and she is a founder and CEO of Beyond Health International. She specializes in women's energy, hormonal health, libido and nervous system regulation using a functional and integrative medicine approach. With a background in conventional medicine and advanced training in root cause physiology, Maraya works with high performing women to restore vitality through circadian rhythm alignment, stress reduction, and personalized functional testing. She is the host of the Women's Vibrancy Code podcast and she's known for bridging science and embodiment to help women move from chronic stress and exhaustion into sustainable energy, safety, and desire. So, what a program. I love when you say the word desire with your French accent. I'm sure I botched that, but that's fun.

Sylvie Beljanski (01:49): So yes, I was delighted to have you on the podcast because I think women are very often dismissed in conventional care and having somebody like you who takes care of understanding what is specific about women, about their stress, about their understanding their vital signs is really really important. How do you recognize that in a woman that something is off, that her energy is not aligned where it should be and that she needs help?

Maraya Brown (02:22): Yeah, it's a great question, especially because modern oncology is exceptional at targeting disease, but it really often underestimates the environment the disease exists in. And I think many women go dismissed. And so I listen and I pay attention to how their body is speaking. And so for some it's subtle. They're waking up in the middle of the night. They're waking up in the morning feeling not well rested. They're drinking an extra cup of coffee in the day to keep going when underneath the surface they're depleted. They're noticing increased irritability or anxiety, changes in skin, changes in weight. Some are saying there's this undertone. Is it brain fog? Is it depression? I walk into a room and I don't remember why or I'm trying to place a word and it's not coming.

Strange aches and pains or little rashes and all of it—all of it is amazing messaging from the body for women to take seriously. And what I'm sad about is how many women go dismissed. They're told, "Oh, it's just part of aging. Everything is fine. Your labs look normal". But behind closed doors, if women really get quiet and really listen to the subtle and strong cues, they actually know. They know that inflammation is up. They know that their circadian rhythm is off. They know their own infradian rhythm in this 28-day cycle if a woman is still menstruating. And they're the ones that can point it out if something feels off. And so I just love advocating for women and helping them really trust themselves.

Sylvie Beljanski (04:15): Yes. But I mean especially high performing women—they will blame overload of work. They will blame deadlines. They will blame themselves because they're trying to put too many things on their calendar. Or they will see an integrative doctor who will look at the hormones and say, "Well, maybe we can give you a little bit of this, a little bit more of testosterone or whatever." That's different from really understanding the hormonal balance of the person and the needs. It's a real choice between yourself and what is the most important to you. How does it start? I mean, you have a woman who is very stressed and she says she's very busy and how do you get her to a place where she will even be open to rest and to listen to herself?

Maraya Brown (05:10): Yeah, it's such a great question because in many societies it doesn't come naturally for women, particularly the women that I work with, right? We're really good at moving the goalposts. We're really good at serving. We're really good at doing. We're really good at being high performing. And on average, let's just talk about an autoimmune condition. Okay? On average, it takes a woman four to six years for an accurate diagnosis. Often, that same woman has seen four to five different providers before being believed.

Sylvie Beljanski (06:08): Excuse me, when you say a diagnosis, what kind of diagnosis are you referring to?

Maraya Brown (06:12): Yeah. So, an autoimmune condition such as Hashimoto's or Graves or Celiacs—there's a lot of different autoimmune conditions. So, that's just one example. So, what I'm pointing this out for is we have two things going on. One is: can a woman be in self-advocacy enough to listen even with a busy schedule? Listen, I'm a CEO. I'm a wife. I'm an active community member. And I have three young children that are 13, 11, and 8. I had a full ride scholarship at Yale University. I was in Fortune 50. Get it? And we all know what it's like to be able to be honest with ourselves and say, "Something's not right here. This amount of fatigue is not just because I'm working too hard. Something else is happening, right? These changes in my skin, these changes in my mood, these changes in my sleep".

Yes, the stress of overdoing is impacting it, but what else is going on here? So, we have that coupled with the degree to which women have to be in self-advocacy; the degree to which in mainstream medicine women are not taken seriously is a real thing. So now we're already overworked, we're already serving greatly, and now we have to continue to be in even more self-advocacy. So in my scenario, those women that come to me—first of all, they have to trust that I know what I'm talking about and I'm going to be there to hear them, hold them, and advocate for them.

Then when I order the tests that I order, often the data can't lie. Right? So it's one thing to say, "Oh yeah, I worked till 10:00 last night. Oh yeah, I spend a lot of time sitting at the computer. Oh yeah, I have high stress from work." Yes. And when a woman looks at her 24-hour cortisol curve and we can see that it's not rising in the morning and her body is not waking up preparing for the day—it's elevating through the night, so she's not actually getting restorative sleep—or it's flatlined because she's pushed her body too hard and now her adrenals are no longer doing anything. The data doesn't lie. So the quick answer is this same woman, when she actually gets quiet for a moment to listen into her body, she can't deny the fact that something is not right. And she tends to appreciate the data.

Sylvie Beljanski (08:52): So you are speaking of markers—what exactly kind of tests are you doing that differ from the standard lab tests that are often insufficient?

Maraya Brown (09:03): Yeah, one of my favorites is called the Dutch Plus test. It's nice because my clients are all over the world and so geography is not an issue and it's a kit that gets delivered to the front door. They collect through urine and saliva and on there I can look at their sex hormones, their estrogen, their progesterone, their testosterone. I can see their adrenals over a 24-hour period. I can see when their body is getting rid of these hormones, how is it doing it, which is something like methylation or looking at their detox pathways.

In the same test, I can look at something called their organic acids, which shows me markers of gut health, their melatonin levels, their dopamine levels, their inflammatory markers. Another one is a GI map, which once again is a kit that gets delivered to their front door. They collect their own stool. And I have a team dietician—she's flown all over the world to teach clinicians how to interpret this test. She's brilliant. And we can now look at gut dysbiosis. Oh my gosh, 90% of serotonin comes from the gut. 70% of our immune system comes from the gut. So, no wonder she's not absorbing the nutrients from the food that she's eating. No wonder she's more tired. No wonder she's feeling a baseline sadness or has high inflammation in the body and aches and pains and bloating and constipation and diarrhea.

So we can go to this data to look at root cause and then we have something to work with. But I don't believe women are just statistics. Yes, we want to look at the data. We also want to listen to that woman. What is your monthly cycle like? What does your 24-hour typical day look like? What are you experiencing in your body? How is your mood? How is your fulfillment? How is your libido? How are your relationships? All of it is relevant.

Sylvie Beljanski (10:55): And how long on average does it take for women to get better when they start to follow your advice?

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11:08 The Importance of Self-Advocacy in Healthcare

Maraya Brown (12:03): Yeah. Um, you know, I think it depends on what they're struggling with. My preference for most women—within a couple months there's a marked change. You know, they're feeling more rested. They have more energy. They're struggling with less of the gut stuff. Their sleep is better. They're feeling more hormonally regulated. Maybe there's less bloating and just kind of feeling inflamed. And so we can move the big stuff out of the way.

And then we get to start looking at: all right, what happens next now that you're not so exhausted and now that you're sleeping better, now we get to look at what do you actually desire? And where are your boundaries and what does your community look like and your vision casting look like? So, depending on how women work with me, it starts with a minimum of three months—that's what I call the Women's Vibrancy Accelerator Trifecta where we're looking specifically at hormones, adrenals, and thyroid. And just taking a swift and simple targeted approach with diet, supplementation, and lifestyle change, and then helping her be in self-advocacy to go back to her prescriber and maybe make some shifts or some additions.

And then for the women that have big transformation, I have a year-long program. And that's the women that say that year changed the trajectory of the rest of my life. But I think a minimum of two months, which is why I have that three-month program because then we also have the month to ensure it lands and it integrates and she has a place to continue to ask her questions.

14:19 Integrative Approaches to Cancer Care

Sylvie Beljanski (14:19): And this is the Beljanski Cancer Talk Show. So we have a lot of people in our audience who are concerned with cancer. Why? I mean very often hormones, sleep, stress are not the things doctors are speaking about. I mean the first thing is "Oh my god we are going to cut and then we are going to give you chemotherapy" and so on. They are absolutely not looking at the fundamentals of the person and definitely not addressing the root cause. How are you helping more specifically people suffering from cancer?

Maraya Brown (15:02): Yeah. Um, I love this question because cancer care tends to focus on cells while sleep and hormones and stress shape the terrain those cells live in. Okay. So if we focus on sleep, the IARC classifies night shift work as probably carcinogenic. Showing that circadian disruption is biologically meaningful, not just a comfort issue. So yes, it's dismissed, but a woman's sleep is relevant and important. Melatonin isn't just about sleep. It's a circadian signaling hormone. It tells the body when to repair and rest and regulate immune activity. And of course, we need immune activity in order to heal, right? Chronic stress—it's shaping woman's physiology. It's going to alter cortisol rhythms. It's going to impair sleep. It's going to increase inflammation, reduce immune efficiency. And so, this isn't just fluff, right? Just because we have a diagnosis doesn't mean that we're in crisis mode. We still have to address the foundation.

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Maraya Brown (17:35): And I've worked with women that did everything right medically and yet no one asked if they were sleeping or how long they'd been living in survival mode. When we address those pieces—not as replacement but as foundations—everything else landed differently. Right.

Sylvie Beljanski (17:58): I love the way you look at the fundamental as the fundamental and not the accessory. I mean most people would say, "Well you are anxious because you have cancer, so therefore you do not sleep." But in fact, the fact that people do not sleep and have anxiety is a terrain for getting the disease in the first place. It is actually addressing the cause and I absolutely love this approach.

19:11 Navigating Hormonal Health and Cancer

Sylvie Beljanski (19:11): Does this integrative functional testing—how does it work with conventional oncology? Is there kind of pushback from doctors? Do they say don't take any hormone or don't stop anything that we are giving you?

Maraya Brown (19:28): Sure. Absolutely. I mean, we've got a few things going on. One is only one-third of physicians will graduate from med school having taken one nutrition class. And that one nutrition class is generally like, "What's the food pyramid and what's a carbohydrate?" Right? Medical school is predominantly focused on pharmacological approaches. Then the functional medicine approach sometimes can be confronting because it is a different, more foundational approach. I also happen to believe that prayer works and that magic happens every day. That's not conventional, but I see it happen over and over again where there are profound changes. So generally I see myself coming in in conjunction.

Okay. So one tangible example: I can go back to that Dutch Plus test that I mentioned. When I'm looking at the results, I can look at a woman's three kinds of estrogen—her estriol, her estrone, and her estradiol—and also look at the enzymes and pathways that her body gets rid of that estrogen through. Our liver is working every day. We're exposed to things, we're making things, and then our body is metabolizing them and excreting them. And along the journey of excretion, it goes through certain steps. Okay? So, if a woman is sending her estrogen down what's called the 2-OH or 4-OH or 16-OH pathway, that tells us a lot about her predisposition towards things like estrogen-dependent cancer.

And so sometimes what I can do is I can look at that and go, "Oh, let's help support your methylation. Let's support your detoxification pathways." And we can bring in things like glutathione or oregano oil or DIM and it's going to support that same woman's body more effectively get rid of the estrogen. So, it's not just targeting the fact that there might be an estrogen-dependent cancer, but we're also looking at: as your body's producing it, let's make sure it gets out in a more healthy way.

Same with gut microbiome. We want the foundation to be solid. We want her to absorb the nutrients from the food that she's eating. We want her immune system to be strong. We want her nervous system to be solid. Right? Because what we know is that when a woman is in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, we have an amygdala, which is our reptilian brain. It's smart and it serves us well. But when we are in a stress response, whether it's real, imagined, or anticipated, cortisol spikes.

But what happens in that context is: if I'm being chased by a wilderbeast, my immune system is shut off, my digestion is shut off, my hormone production is shut off, and my clarity of thought is shut off. Not important in the context of survival. A woman is either in stress or bless. So add on a cancer diagnosis—of course, that adds stress, not just because of the time and energy and appointments and fear and finances and the amount of things that she's going through, right? So now we get to look at addressing that and at the same time, what is going on at the foundational level?

How do we help support her core sense of safety so that when she goes into fight, flight, freeze, fawn, it's efficient and it's done in the right timing and the right way so that her body can stay in what I call "bless" more often than not. And when she's in bless and feeling safe and feeling grounded and her foundational well-being is cared for—her blood sugars are steady, she's sleeping well, inflammatory markers are going down—now her body is actually able to turn digestion back on, turn immune system back on, turn healthy hormone production back on so that the terrain is set up for actual health to become the consequence, right? So it can be in synergy.

The other thing that I want to add: there was a very large study in 2000 that was stopped overnight. Before that point, the majority of women through menopause were put on hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Okay. So this study of tens of thousands of women—average age was 65—they were trying to see if there is a chance of increased stroke. They stopped it overnight back in 2000 and all women were taken off of HRT. Now we fast forward 25 years. People are going back and looking at the data differently going, "Okay, wait a minute. What form of estrogen was being given? What form of progesterone was being given? Okay, what was the average age? How were we actually looking at the data?" and they're reversing a lot of the claims and saying, "Wait a minute, there isn't necessarily increased risk of stroke except the fact that these women were starting HRT at age 65".

Wait a minute, there's not actually increased chance of breast cancer. It's actually showing a reduction. But the challenge is we now have a 20 to 25-year gap where every healthcare provider that went to medical school during that period of time was not taught about hormone replacement therapy. There's still an underlying fear that it causes cancer or stroke. You just put a woman on an SSRI for her hot flashes. And so now we're having to, as women, be in even more self-advocacy to find the providers that are putting in the extra time and energy to educate themselves around this.

Sylvie Beljanski (25:55): Yet there is also a lot of noise about bioidentical hormones and the difference with conventional hormones. Do you use them very differently?

Maraya Brown (26:06): Yeah, it's a good question. I'm still on the fence. So, there are some experts that I listen to and appreciate and they say bioidentical hormones are the way to go—only go to a compounding pharmacy—because they're derived from food sources predominantly soy and they theoretically mimic the actual hormones in our body more closely. And there is good quality progesterone that you can pick up at CVS or Rite Aid or whatever pharmacy you go to. Not progestin, but actual progesterone. There is good quality estradiol, not the kind that's coming from pregnant horse urine, but actual good quality estradiol.

For me right now at 48, I have not crossed over the other side of menopause yet. I've tried both. What I find for myself is I really enjoy oral estradiol that I pick up at a mainstream pharmacy. It's very inexpensive and it's easy. But for me personally, I've tried the oral progesterone and I like how it feels better in my body when I do the bioidentical progesterone. They're both oral. And I've tried a couple different testosterones. And so I think once again this is not a one-size-fits-all approach. We as women are unique. We're a Rubik's cube, a beautiful puzzle.

I think every woman deserves to be heard and taken seriously and try something out and then pay attention to her body. How do you feel? How's your mood? How's your quality of sleep? How's your sense of stress? Is it moving the needle for you? So there's also Quicksilver Scientific which has an over-the-counter option that's liposomal with serums with estradiol, estriol, and progesterone to put on your skin. I have clients that use that and they find profound changes in their mood, their sleep, and their libido. Great. I have other clients, they don't want to take any medication. They want to address it all with nutrition and supplementation and lifestyle and it works awesome.

So, I don't have a feeling of it has to be this way or that. I am not a fan of progestins. I'd prefer that a woman takes progesterone even if she doesn't have a uterus and I'd prefer a woman's not using estrogen that's derived from pregnant horse urine. But other than that, we all get to find our way. My preference is that women have providers that are there taking them seriously, listening to their experience and helping to craft a really personalized approach. It's why I also bring in trauma release specialists and mindset coaching because it's all relevant.

30:06 Empowering Older Women in Health

Sylvie Beljanski (30:06): Absolutely. I love that it's not just one approach but it is enlarged to everything that works together. I would like also to ask about older women. A lot of women are still on the "go, go, go" period of their life when they are going through menopause and time is catching up with them later. When they are 65, 70—that's when they finally start the time catching up with them. What do you suggest for those women? Do you dismiss them?

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Maraya Brown (31:46): Yeah, it's a really good question because I live in the US and there is a cultural undertone where many of the women that I speak to that are 60 and over feel a bit dismissed, a bit unseen in our society. I think that woman—her vitality is just as important. To go belly up to "this is just part of aging"—no, thank you. And so a woman in her 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s deserves to feel vibrant and strong and confident in every decade.

Now, for that woman 65 and older that wants to just get started on hormone replacement therapy, it is a little bit touchy. There is some data showing some increased risk of stroke. So, we have to use some discernment. But with every age, our self-advocacy—our internal work of not just what we do, but who we be as we do—is powerful. It's never too late to start. I mean, we know that sarcopenia is the number one cause of death, meaning muscle wasting. As estrogen drops, our ability to maintain muscle tone changes. So now our strength changes, which means we have an increased chance of falling. You get my drift.

So for that woman: coming in and giving her foundational support for cellular vitality, for movement that works for her, to surround her and embrace her with a community of women that believe in her and are cheering her on. The women in their 60s and 70s that have hired me since I've been online since 2019—there's always a moment they drop into tears. And they say, "I wish I would have known this before and I'm so grateful that I do now". Because they're stepping into this embodied, grounded, confident version of themselves that's in self-advocacy. I don't believe women need to be fixed; I believe they need to be supported in remembering how their bodies work.

Sylvie Beljanski (35:05): Yeah. That's nice.

Maraya Brown (35:08): Yeah. And it's not about eradicating disease. It's about restoring coherence. And coherence can be, you know, not just what's going in our mouth, but what words are we speaking? Not just what's going in our eyes, but through which mind's eye are we seeing the world? In our heart—who's the community that we keep and am I doing something that leaves me feeling inspired?

35:27 Resources for Women's Health Empowerment

Sylvie Beljanski (35:27): So do you have any ebook, book, seminar, or webinar you would like to share?

Maraya Brown (35:40): I love that you ask. I actually just received an offer from a very large publishing company and they are going to pay me to write a book. So just wait—in the next probably six months the book will be finished. In the meantime, resources that you can utilize that are totally free: one, my podcast, which is the Women's Vibrancy Code Podcast. Number two is my YouTube channel—just look up Maraya Brown. I also have a lot of free resources on my website. If you go to marayabrown.com in the free resources section, there is a resource for brain fog, more energy and vitality for women that travel a lot, and a resource guide for tracking our moon cycles.

Even once you've crossed over menopause and you're no longer bleeding, your sense of creativity, your inflammatory markers, your desire to socialize—all of that is rhythmic. Download that resource, print up three copies and just track it on your own for 3 months and then look back and pay attention to the patterns. And then if we do end up working together, you can bring that and that just adds to the overall information and data that we have to work with. If we know that the week before you bleed or the week before the full moon every month you have water retention and constipation—okay, great. Let's use that self-awareness and then preemptively bring in nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle support to make sure that we can still optimize even in this rhythmic nature that women exist in.

Sylvie Beljanski (38:15): Yeah. So many women are so busy, they completely lack this level of self-awareness and it's wonderful that you bring that to them.

Maraya Brown (38:34): Thank you. Especially for you in New York City, I imagine life is even busier. We all have our different versions of busy. You know, I live in a town with a population of 20,000 in southern Oregon. I don't ever have to deal with traffic. But I'm busy in my own way. I'm the CEO of a business, I have clients, the podcast, three young children, and a husband. Right. And so, we're all busy in our different ways. But that is still not an excuse to sacrifice ourselves. We get to prioritize our sleep without guilt; we get to understand the cycle-based needs. We get to ask better questions and really be in the place of self-advocacy.

I also read a statistic that for a woman going into her provider to ask for pain medication—I think it was something like women have to ask three additional times for their healthcare provider to take their pain seriously as compared to a man.

Sylvie Beljanski (39:48): Yeah. That it's all in your head and the symptoms are too fuzzy...

Maraya Brown (39:55): Or you're just emotional or you're just complaining. And you know, I think women, we do have to be in more self-advocacy. I love Luvvie Ajayi Jones—she wrote Professional Troublemaker. In there, she said, "Stop asking people for directions to places they haven't been". And so, I think sometimes we think we're in self-advocacy—we're there knocking on the door: I'm tired, I have pain—and we're not being taken seriously. But we also get to ask, "Wait a minute. Who am I asking these questions to?"

Sylvie Beljanski (40:48): Yeah. And generally the doctor is not always well-equipped to answer those questions.

Maraya Brown (40:53): Or maybe they've been educated in a certain terrain. And so we also get to be willing to go, "Okay, wait a minute. I'm going to go ask someone else".

Sylvie Beljanski (41:08): Yeah. And they have no time. They also are very often overworked. Maraya, thank you. Thank you very much for this conversation. It was very enlightening and I'm very grateful for all this information.

Sylvie Beljanski (41:33): Thank you for listening to the Beljanski Cancer Talk Show. If this conversation supported or inspired you, please follow the podcast, share it with someone who may benefit, and leave a review.