The MiDOViA Menopause Podcast

Episode 036: Navigating Menopause in the Workplace

• April Haberman and Kim Hart • Season 1 • Episode 36

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Menopause is not just a personal journey for women; it profoundly shapes their professional lives too. In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Mache, a distinguished expert in women's health, as he uncovers the transformational effects of menopause in the workplace. We delve into how menopause can affect productivity and organizational dynamics, with statistics revealing that nearly 10% of women may leave their jobs due to its symptoms.

Dr. Mache emphasizes that menopause starts earlier than most realize and that the associated challenges can significantly hinder career advancement for many women. He discusses how a lack of understanding and support in workplaces often leads to presenteeism—employees are there physically but not mentally engaged, leading to a loss of productivity, increased stress, and even changes in career paths.

This eye-opening conversation explores solutions and insights, highlighting the importance of advocacy and awareness. Dr. Mache encourages both women and organizations to engage in discussions about menopause openly, breaking the taboo surrounding it. He advocates for actionable strategies to transform workplace culture, ensuring women not only survive but thrive during this significant life transition.

Join us as we unpack the connection between menopause and workplace wellness, and discover how awareness and understanding can lead to healthier outcomes for all. Don't miss out on these essential discussions—your health and career are worth prioritizing! Tune in today, and let’s keep the conversation going. Subscribe for more insights and share your thoughts with us!

Dr. Mache Seibel is a nationally renowned women’s wellness and menopause expert. When his wife entered early menopause after surgery—just months after a flawed study linked estrogen to breast cancer—he was determined to uncover the truth.

A former leading fertility expert, Dr. Mache shifted his focus to estrogen and menopause. He’s passionate about helping professional women take back control of their health, work, and relationships. His philosophy: care for the SUM of you, not just SOME of you™.

His books, The Estrogen Window and The Estrogen Fix, explore the best timing for estrogen therapy to reduce disease risk and ease symptoms. His latest, Working Through Menopause, addresses menopause’s impact on women, businesses, and the bottom line—and what to do about it.

Website: https://drmache.com

Coaching: MenopauseCoaching.com

Magazine: https://drmache.com/resources

LINKS:

Website: https://www.midovia.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mymidovia
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/midovia
Email Us: info@midovia.com

MiDOViA is dedicated to changing the narrative about menopause by educating, raising awareness & supporting women in this stage of life, both at home and in the workplace. Visit midovia.com to learn more.

The information, including but not limited to, text, graphics, images & other material contained on this website are for informational purposes only. No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. 


April Haberman:

Welcome to the MiDOViA Menopause Podcast Business Edition, your trusted source for insights on menopause and midlife in the workplace. Each episode features meaningful conversations with inspiring guests. Tune in and enjoy the show.

Kim Hart:

Hello, welcome everybody. We're excited today to have Dr Mache. He is a world-renowned women's health and menopause treatment expert and a sought-after speaker and consultant and a coach. There's a lot going on there, dr Mache. We're excited to break that down. We were excited to have Dr Mache on our show because he wrote a book called Working Through Menopause the Impact on Women, businesses and the Bottom Line, which is a fantastic read and supports the MiDOViA business so well. So welcome, Dr Mache.

Dr. Mache:

Pleasure to be joining you, kim, in April and pleased to be here.

Kim Hart:

Oh, thanks. So why don't you tell our audience a little bit about who you are and how you got to this place where you're talking about menopause in the workplace?

Dr. Mache:

Well, I began my career as I am a gynecologist and a reproductive endocrinologist. I actually began my career as an infertility specialist. I did some of the first in vitro fertilizations in the United States, developed the timing of ovulation and some of the things that ultrasounds that you now get for follicle sizes. I did a lot of that original work. I even helped monkeys get pregnant at the zoo. But in 2002, only six months after the Women's Health Initiative, my wife had surgery that threw her into early menopause, and that was only six months after the Women's Health Initiative came out saying that estrogen could be increasing the risk of breast cancer, heart disease and so forth. That's subsequently been disputed and it's well demonstrated in my books, the Estrogen Window and the Estrogen Fix. But nevertheless the damage was done and doctors were not interested in really treating her at that point in time, and so as she transitioned into menopause, I also transitioned into menopause.

Dr. Mache:

Into menopause, I also transitioned into menopause, and I moved my practice and focus from the reproductive arena to the post-reproductive arena and have spent the last 20 some odd years focused on helping women feel better and live better. I spent 25 years on the Harvard faculty. I was a division chief and head of the fellowship program and ran the laboratories and things like that. But now I'm primarily focused on coaching and working with women who are business and professional women or women executives, who are really struggling with their midlife challenges and they want to take back control of their lives, their work and their relationships, because midlife and the symptoms that can come with it impact all of those areas. And I do that through menopausecoachingcom.

April Haberman:

Yeah, it's wonderful, and we often find that people do change their careers, you know, based on their personal experiences. And and we could probably do an entire podcast on surgical menopause, I'm sure, I'm sure we could we get a lot of questions about that as well. But I'm curious you know you work with executive women. You work in the menopause space, post-menopause space, right now. Your book highlights the economic impacts of menopause on businesses, and so I'd love for you to share a few of the key statistics and findings to that respect as well.

Dr. Mache:

Well, let me just say one thing. You say I changed careers, but I really didn't change careers as such, because I believe that life and health are a continuum. And so I used to do you might say sperm to term, but now I'm doing like womb to term. And so basically, I see that we go before reproduction, reproduction, then we do transitioning out of reproduction, which is perimenopause, and then we have menopause, which is post reproduction and the years beyond. And so I see what I'm doing is just continuing the ongoing life sequence or life journey that women travel through.

Dr. Mache:

And so I see many of the women who were having trouble getting pregnant actually were struggling with entering perimenopause and they are not recognizing it because they feel they're too young. But in fact, 5% to 10% of women are already in menopause before age 45 and 1% before age 40. So the symptoms begin about 5 to 10 years before that. So you could well be in your 30s and have symptoms that feel really weird to you and it could be a sign that you're in perimenopause. In terms of statistics, menopause will affect every woman if she lives long enough, and while the majority of women you know the mean age that a woman lived men too, for that matter, the lifespan in 1900 was 48 years, so menopause didn't happen for a lot of women. Today, the mean age is somewhere around 83 years, with mean age of menopause being roughly 51, with a typical span of 45 to 55. And, as I said, five to 10% of women will be in menopause before that.

Dr. Mache:

So, and women are a very big part of the workforce they're half of the workforce and half of them are either in perimenopause or menopause. So symptoms are like you know, 10% of women have dropped out because of menopause. They've just left work. One in four are not pursuing leadership positions that they could be. They just feel that they're not in charge of their bodies and their minds the way they want to be and they don't have the capacity or feel too taxed by it at this point because they're struggling with so many other things combined with they're taking care of kids off, and then they're taking care of parents, et cetera. And then we have two out of five that, because of that, end up getting a new job. They just move on. Maybe they take something less taxing or, you know, closer to home or what have you?

Dr. Mache:

And you know, 25% have thought about leaving their job and almost 40% feel that menopause is impacting their presenteeism, their ability to actually show up and be there. I mean, it's hard to focus if you're having hot flashes, if your brain is foggy, if your mood swings are happening, if you're bleeding through your slacks or you're, you know, soiling the chair with heavy bleeding from perimenopause, or you have to go to the bladder issues and sensitive bladder. You have to run to the bathroom all the time. These are life affecting situations, you know conditions. So those are some of the statistics and they're impacting women and their desire to stay at work, be happy at work, be maximally productive at work and rise up through the chain of the work ladder to the top of the rung if that's their ambition, or to perform at their best at whatever they happen to work at.

April Haberman:

Right.

Kim Hart:

Yeah.

April Haberman:

Hey friends, I'm excited to share a significant milestone that you may have heard mentioned. Medovia has launched the first ever menopause friendly US accreditation program. This program sets a comprehensive standard overseen by a third party panel of experts, ensuring air quotes here that menopause friendly is more than just a term. It reflects a real commitment to meaningful, sustainable workplace changes. It's important to us that the menopause friendly logo is meaningful and marks a high standard within the menopause space. We hope you'll join us on the journey to becoming menopause friendly as a leading pioneer in the States. You can find more information at menopausefriendlyuscom. So there's seems to be all. That being said, thank you for those statistics. It is a challenge for people in the workplace that are going through menopause, and yet in the US, less than 15% of organizations have any type of menopause support programming in place. Even beyond benefits and medical care, there's no support for menopause in the workplace. So can you share with us in your experience what some of those misconceptions that employers have about menopause in the workplace, and maybe even employees as well?

Dr. Mache:

menopause in the workplace, and maybe even employees as well. Well, from the woman's side, it's often a taboo topic because we have a situation where many times menopause is considered being older. And I've just told you menopause is not about age. Menopause is about transition, but people equate it with age. There is ageism in our country, so women don't want to be perceived as looking old or being old. Why would they look at any ad on television and see that only recently we have somebody that's not 25 talking about anything, and we have only recently begun to hear the word menopause come out of someone's mouth. Prior to that it was taboo, just like, at one point, erectile dysfunction was something nobody talked about. But now it comes on with primetime television, as casual as you would be talking about something that is a siding for your house or anything else.

Dr. Mache:

It's remarkable how much it's permeated. So it's, first of all, it's taboo, but many times there's a misperception that it's just a little inconvenient thing. It's number one. It's natural. Okay, death is natural. That doesn't make it pleasant. Menopause is natural. Number two you feel a little warm. What's the big deal? Not understanding that hot flashes can have actually negative impact on a woman's health, sleep and other things that are now being uncovered? The third is that there's not that much advocacy for women, and this is just something that women feel they have to tough it out, and so they go to work with their symptoms and we didn't talk about it. But I will just set it up, which is the way my book sets up, and let me say that I did the book together with my wife, sharon Seibel. The two of us co-wrote the book together.

Dr. Mache:

But the whole thing really came crushing down with the Women's Health Initiative, the so-called WHI, which happened in 2002, which I mentioned. Prior to that time, at least 50% of women were on hormone therapy and they typically got it sometime after menopause. You know, as you have your symptoms coming around midlife and doctors would give out the hormones and women's symptoms were abated. I mean, they dealt with it and they weren't symptomatic at work, it was addressing their issues. After the Women's Health Initiative, that number dropped to under 5% and if you look at the most recent data that's been published, within the last year, the number of women on hormone therapy is down from what it was two, three or four years ago. So it's now got 3.8% and 3.9%.

Dr. Mache:

And then you say okay, say okay, well, they got other stuff. Yeah, they do, as a result of estrogen being thrown away by millions of women. That's when we got into the whole bioidentical thing, which is basically available not only in compounding pharmacies, but the same stuff's available in regular prescription pharmacies. But be that as it may, even if we take into account all of that and even if we take in all the other over-the-counter treatments and all the other alternatives to estrogen that are prescription-based and there are some good ones but we're still dealing with only another quarter of women that are taking anything. 70% of women 5% are on estrogen, to make numbers easy and 25% on something else. So you've got 70% of women sucking it up. They have nothing right.

Dr. Mache:

They're toughing it out they go with all of these symptoms and people say live with it, deal with it. It's, you know it be just the right thing to do for the women. It's also affecting the business, because the women are not able to be as productive and they're not able to be as present and they're not able to be as focused as they would be if they were simply treating their symptoms. And yet it's not happening. And so this window of perimenopause most of the symptoms come in perimenopause, approaching menopause, and then in the one or two years after. So it's about three to five year window when symptoms are worse, and that could be all mitigated. I mean, there is no. No one needs to tough it out, figure it out. No one needs.

Dr. Mache:

There are treatments for almost everything, safe and effective treatments, and if you want hormones, that's good. It goes to every cell in your body. It affects all of your symptoms. It will address them. If you don't want hormones because you can't or won't take them, that's also good. There are other options for you to consider. But doing nothing is the biggest mistake you can possibly make, because there's no need to tough it out and that will improve the things that I always talk about with women, midlife women is your life, your work and your relationships.

April Haberman:

Yeah, yeah Well, and you bring up so many important points here, it just lights me on fire over here.

Kim Hart:

Well, we're all on fire about it, which?

April Haberman:

I love. You know menopause affects everyone. You know we always say it affects women directly, but it affects everyone. You just mentioned relationships. So you know we often find that partners, spouses, they may not be performing at work either at their peak performance. If you're sleeping next to someone that is having hot flashes and can't sleep, or heavy flooding, bleeding or, you know, fill in the blank, you're not sleeping either. And we know that sleep is important for our clarity and brain function and to be able to concentrate at work. So I think that menopause affects everyone in the workplace, not just those that are going through menopause. But I also think that it is presenteeism, absenteeism. There's data there, but not a lot of data. And we find that we come up against an obstacle in the workplace in folding in menopause in the workplace programs, because there isn't enough reporting. So it's kind of chicken and the egg right, like well, we have yeah the workplace is chicken.

April Haberman:

Yeah.

Dr. Mache:

That's the chicken part, right Right.

April Haberman:

Yeah, you just it. Um, yeah, so a lot of organizations we find are stuck like well, give me the data, give me the reporting so that I can take it to, um, you know, c-suite and get this approved. We don't have it in the budget, but we know that workplace programs are not that expensive, you know it. Expensive Compared to the cost of losing, compared to the cost of losing employees and replacing employees. It just takes retaining one person to pay for menopause in the workplace programs, right?

Dr. Mache:

So we're not talking about Her annual salary is what it takes to replace one person. Her annual salary is what it's going to take to replace that woman in the workplace in most instances. And you have a situation where if you had support from women, then you would have a more engaged workforce, you would have a more productive workforce, you would have a more present workforce. Presenteeism means I mean your body shows up, you're present. Presenteeism is okay. I'm here. Am I paying attention? Am I? Am I at my peak in terms of my productivity and ability?

Dr. Mache:

Menopause causes women to lose up to an hour a day in productivity. It's not like they're off fiddling and piddling and playing you know, video games or something like that. They can't focus. And if you're always having to read, you know rein in your thoughts and bring them back to where you are currently addressing, to what you're currently addressing. That adds up over time. If it's five minutes an hour where you're struggling, at the end of the day it's an hour lost. So that's what happens and the inability to understand that.

Dr. Mache:

I mean you're talking about the men.

Dr. Mache:

I mean, let's just say I mean half of the workforce is women, half of the workforce is men, more or less, and even in industries you wouldn't expect and in the police departments, in the fire departments, in other places.

Dr. Mache:

There are women working there in uniforms that are too hot for them, in situations where they're not being supported for just the basic kinds of considerations that would make their jobs easier, better, and if the workforce is happier, they're going to be more productive, they're going to be more likely to stay in their work.

Dr. Mache:

And I remember when I was doing the fertility work and I was advocating for coverage for infertility work and people, finally insurances, came around and got the idea hey, you know, maybe you know this, infertility does work, but it's too expensive. It turns out that if coverage was provided in workplaces for these kinds of issues for young women, when young women were looking for jobs, they went where the coverage and the support was there for them. They didn't want to go to a place where, if they got pregnant or needed help with IVF or some other thing, that it was a problem. It was a problem and it turned out it only ended up, on average, adding even IVF, which can be very expensive, much more than menopause, but that at its peak was about $7.30 a month to get that policy into the workplace.

Dr. Mache:

For that measly little bit, you could attract women to stay, and I believe this will happen as we get coverage and more awareness, because I'm not going to work at a place that doesn't support me at this point in my life and women are. More than 75% of women are working through menopause Right, and more and more women are working longer and longer. And also, if you think about this from a money point of view, midlife is when this the poop hits the fan in turn, starting to acquire diseases. Autoimmune diseases come up, other kinds of conditions come up. You have more problems with heart issues, with bone issues, bone loss, which is very bad in menopause. You lose about 30% of active bone in the transition of perimenopause.

Dr. Mache:

I mean it is a big time to be preventing things. And so if we addressed menopause at midlife, we would have much healthier women at end of life and throughout, and then your health span would get closer to your lifespan and then you'd be in a position to be much better protected from whatever happens. Because, let's face it, our brain is the software and our body is the hardware, and I don't know what kind of hardware you got in your house, but I bet it breaks after 50 years. So there's things breaking down and the more we prevent it, the more we repair it as little things go along. The more we invest in that bit of effort, the more we're going to have a healthier, productive workforce and lives. And don't forget women make probably 90% of the health care decisions for families and for every woman. You protect every woman that you have able to be at her peak. You are impacting the guy whose appointments for his prostate check the wife is making the partner is making.

Dr. Mache:

you're protecting the kids from going in to see what happens if their ear is infected or whatever the issue is. So you're impacting the country, one family at a time, and eventually it will hit a tipping point, but we have to be proactive and be aware.

Kim Hart:

That's such a great example on the impact on the family. I don't think people think about that from a healthcare decision perspective. I know at my house it's me but because I know I've sold benefits before. But in generally speaking, if I look at all my friends, they're the ones.

April Haberman:

It's me right. It's me right In our house too. So I think it's an excellent point. Yeah, yeah.

Kim Hart:

So what should organizations be doing, how can they support women during this time, and what you know, what are some of the best ones that you've run into are doing to help support women during their menopause years?

Dr. Mache:

Well, in my book I put a process visual that really talks to this, and the first thing is we have to have awareness.

Dr. Mache:

We have to have, have awareness. We have to have. Menopause happens. You know there's menopause awareness. You know month there's menopause, there is a world menopause day. Make it part of what the company is able to talk about. Menopause cannot get stuck in your throat. Not get stuck in your throat, you have to be able to utter it, to talk about it comfortably, comfortably.

Dr. Mache:

Once you begin to get awareness, then you can begin to create advocacy. There may be one person that's the designated advocate that can go and try to be and help, you know, help promote this kind of thing. And at some point, when you, you know you first you have to, when in any process with that, in change, you have to first think about something and then you have to be able to become. You know it's like in your mind and then you have to be able to speak it out loud and that's what the advocacy does. And then, once you get to that point, you can begin to have acceptance. You have awareness, advocacy, and then you get acceptance. And when you have acceptance, then you can take action and it is that action that leads to transformation. It has to be transformation. Now you can do all this incrementally and that is the reality that the world we live in, but awareness, advocacy, acceptance, take action, transformation, and it has to go incrementally and there has to be these progression of steps.

Kim Hart:

I love that visual, by the way. Maybe we can include that in the show notes, because I was looking at that again last night in your book. Just as for any change, I think that it's a really great way to think about. You can't skip steps right. You can't expect information and transformation to happen. You have to work hard to get to that transformation.

Dr. Mache:

I have a saying that's my own it goes, the slower I go, the faster I get there, and I believe that you've got to go steady and straight ahead and not get impatient, because if you do, that's when things trip and fall.

Kim Hart:

Well, I agree with you, except when I'm lifting weights I try and go as quickly as I can so I can get it over with.

Dr. Mache:

You must eat spinach with one of the you know, chug it down or something. Yeah, exactly. Don't you swallow home yeah.

Kim Hart:

Well, what advice would you give to women in your coaching business and otherwise? On menopause symptoms while trying to maintain their careers, and who you know, especially those in the senior level positions who really are at the height of their career important to realize.

Dr. Mache:

no person is an island. It's very lonely at the top and people really do need someone to bounce things off of, someone who is able to hear what they're saying and to be able to mirror it back to them in a way that actually is helpful for them to see how they could actually change things. Because if you're always, you know we get tapes in our head.

Dr. Mache:

We think you know, it is what it is and isn't. I'm just gonna, I'm just here, I'm dealing with this and that, and it is what it is and I'm stuck here. No, that is not true. There are paths and solutions and ways to address things that will free women up to be their optimum selves, and I think that women have all the ability to do anything they want. They're always talking about the glass ceiling. I think there is a glass ceiling, but I also think there's a silent ceiling, but I also think there's a silent ceiling. There's an estrogen ceiling.

April Haberman:

And.

Dr. Mache:

I mean that not in any pejorative way. What I mean is that when estrogen gets lower, it has a biologic effect and whether you treat it with hormones or many alternatives to hormones that are available, you will find that you are functioning at a whole different level If you're not having all the symptoms, if you don't have to run to the bathroom, you don't have to worry about if you're going to soil your chair, which is legal. Cases have happened with women being dismissed for a chair dismissed for a chair for God. And then there is if you have the ability to focus the ability. I've had situations where a woman was telling me that she was working so hard to get a report in and she worked so long and hard to finish it, and then I said how did it go? She said she forgot to turn it in you know, it's like these kinds of things are just shattering.

Dr. Mache:

And then what do you end up with? A self-esteem issue because you don't have it anymore. You have it, but you, you know everything needs to be nurtured. We have to nurture the nurturer and have to go to the people at the top and the ones who are above others and ones who are making decisions, and help them with estrogen. I will say that estrogen is interesting in that there are estrogen receptors in almost every cell in the body.

Dr. Mache:

And if you take hormone therapy and I'm not advocating for it and I don't get anything for anybody taking medicine, I'm saying if you take it, then you have basically taken something that if you're having brain fog, it's going to affect it, if you're having hot flashes, it's going to affect it, if you're having difficulty with your bladder, it's going to affect it, et cetera, et cetera. But if you don't take hormone therapy, you have to divide your life into two things. You have noisy symptoms like hot flashes. Divide your life into two things. You have noisy symptoms like hot flashes, which you damn sure know you got. You have silent symptoms, like bone loss, which you will not know you have unless you get a bone density or you fall and break a bone to find it out, or heart disease or other things, disease or other things. So estrogen is dealing with all of those things.

Dr. Mache:

But my concept of menopause is you have to take care of the some of you and not some of you. The only way to do that is to work with people who can help you identify noisy and silent help you realize taking care of the sum of you and then turn that into a more I call holistic approach, w-h-o-l-e holistic, because that is the secret to having a much happier, productive, positive menopause transition, which is inevitable. Yeah, you may not have hot flashes. You may be one in the one of the one in five women who don't, or whatever the number is. It's about 20, 15, 20 don't have hot flashes, but you know that doesn't mean nothing's happened to you.

Dr. Mache:

I mean right yeah, just maybe silently, but you have to be aware of all this stuff. If you're not aware, then, as I said, the things you could have been taking preventively are going to come forward 10 years behind.

Kim Hart:

I love that.

April Haberman:

I love that too, you talk about.

Kim Hart:

The first stage of transition is awareness right. And that's just what you're saying, yeah, yeah.

April Haberman:

Can I ask a question? Because we often hear from women oh, I've already been through that, I don't need to worry about that, Right, I've reached menopause, so therefore I don't need to worry about that, right, I've reached menopause, so therefore I don't have to worry about it anymore. And oftentimes they're senior level executives. And if you had a senior level executive woman sitting in front of you right now who is experiencing still menopause symptoms and who's looking ahead at that post menopausal stage with some of those silent symptoms, what would you say to her?

Dr. Mache:

Well, you're either not in menopause, approaching menopause, or in menopause. You don't go out of menopause. Menopause does ease up to aging and these two things are going on simultaneously. The fact that you are partially correct if you are a woman who has been dealing with terrible hot flashes and you are able to wait, tough it out for three, five, seven years For some women it'll be more than 10 years but if you are one of those women, you will eventually emerge on the other side and you'll stop having those hot flashes or at least it'll be reduced sufficiently where they're not really bothering you anymore. So right, you get through that. But your bone loss, your atherosclerosis or artery hardening, other components of your health are ongoing and they can be intervened upon and slowed down, because as you treat menopause, you're also treating aging.

April Haberman:

Yeah.

Dr. Mache:

And it doesn't have to be hormones. I don't want to get stuck on hormones here. I mean, I'm very much authority on hormone therapy, but you got to live in the real world. 95% of women aren't on hormones. So why focus on hormones unless they want them and want to take them safely and most effectively and know more about it? On the other hand, doing nothing is a huge mistake. Feeling that you've got this, you're gone through this, is really simply simplistic and naive thinking, and I have learned as a patient and as a provider. People know a lot in silos, you know, but when you need something out of what people know, they don't know. And then you have to realize that in medicine, the most recent surveys which came out just months ago, was only three of 10 doctors that are OBGYNs in training get any information, any training in menopause, and that can be as little as two hours per year.

Dr. Mache:

That's a shame.

April Haberman:

Yeah.

Dr. Mache:

Now you have the primary care. They get half of that. Maybe 15% of them get training in menopause. So you have the vast majority of caregivers who are not knowledgeable in menopause giving advice. I don't care if they're men or they're women. Right Training is the training and it ends up undermining the general health of women. And then you have women who now have been told they don't need to have pap smears anymore. You know, you've had two in a row and you're 50 or whatever you are, and you don't have to come back. Okay, maybe they don't need a pap smear. There's more to them than their cervix.

Kim Hart:

What about the rest of the?

Dr. Mache:

women. What about, you know? What about the rest of the women? What about checking on their cholesterol, checking on their bladders, checking on their heart function, their blood pressures, all the things that need to be looked at, plus other things, their bone health? I mean, if you're a 50-year-old woman and you're healthy, you're just as likely to die from a complication of osteoporosis or thinning of the bones as you are from heart disease. So I mean breast cancer, excuse me, you're just as likely to die from a complication of osteoporosis as you are from breast cancer. So everybody's got a pink ribbon and a mammogram. That's wonderful, knock, knock on that. But that ain't it. You're more than two breasts. You have the rest of you, the sum of you.

Dr. Mache:

And so these reasons, I think that any woman would benefit from talking to somebody who W-H-O-L-E holistic. Holistic, because in only doing that are you considering things? And there are many things. Once you feel better, once you're functioning better, you're going to be more effective personally, professionally and in relationships. And, yes, after a while you get used to the new threshold of how you live. You now have come to this new state of OK, I'm not really. I'm doing okay, I'm used to this, I know I can deal Fine, but why would you want to be suboptimum?

Dr. Mache:

Why would you want to be not optimized for your health, for your well-being, for your happiness, for your effectiveness?

Kim Hart:

I 100% agree. I love this. We could talk forever.

April Haberman:

I know I'm like, oh my gosh, we're gonna have to have you back because there's so much that we can unpack here. And I do agree with you and I think that we, we don't know what we don't know and we get used to feeling lousy sometimes and we don't even realize what good feels like anymore until we get that help. And then it's a hindsight we're looking back in the rearview mirror going, oh my gosh, why didn't I do this? Do this earlier, Right Should have, would have.

Kim Hart:

Yes absolutely Well, dr Mache.

Dr. Mache:

Where can our listeners learn more about your work and the resources that you've worked so hard on, that you've worked so hard on. Well, they can come to my website, drmachecom, d-r-m-a-c-h-ecom, and I have tons of resources. And also, together, my wife and I do the Hot Years magazine and it's at hotyearsmagcom. But I would like to give all of your listeners a free copy of the magazine.

Kim Hart:

I think it's so nice interesting and useful.

Dr. Mache:

It has videos, it has exercise videos, it has all kinds of stuff in it and so they can use that as a resource and if they're interested they can subscribe. But I think that it's important to get the information you need and make sure it's accurate.

Dr. Mache:

There's a lot of not only misunderstandings but myth understandings out there that are simply wrong and get cut and pasted and perpetuated, that are doing harm to women instead of optimizing them. So those are, drmachecom. If you're interested in working together at some point or want to discuss it, you can reach me at menopausecoachingcom.

Kim Hart:

Excellent, fabulous. Well, I told you that we ask the all of our guests. The final question is what is the best piece of advice you've ever received or given?

Dr. Mache:

Well, I'd like to think there's been a lot of those. Yeah, I'd say you had some in this podcast but I would say the biggest thing I would say is don't tough it out. Figure it out, because there is a path for each person. It has to be individualized, but if you figure it out you will not have to tough it out.

April Haberman:

I love the simplicity but the depth of that. So, gosh, thank you for that. I'm writing that one down, kim. Well, thank you so much, dr Mesh, for coming on the show, for sharing your knowledge. We'll definitely have you back. Listeners will put the information on the magazine subscription in show notes, as well as all of your contact information. And until we meet again, everyone go find joy in the journey. Thanks, dr Baish. Thank you for listening to the Medovia menopause podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please give it a thumbs up, subscribe for future episodes, leave a review and share this episode with a friend. There are more than 50 million women in the US who are navigating the menopause transition. The situation is compounded by the presence of stigma, shame and secrecy surrounding menopause, posing significant challenges and disruptions in women's personal and professional spheres. Medovia is out to change the narrative. Learn more at medoviacom. That's M-I-D-O-V-I-A dot com.

People on this episode

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April Haberman

Co-host
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Kim Hart

Co-host