The MiDOViA Menopause Podcast: Real Talk on Hormones, Work, and Wellness for Midlife

Episode 056: Age Like A Girl

• April Haberman and Kim Hart • Season 1 • Episode 56

Share episode

What if menopause isn’t the end of something—but the beginning of your clearest, most powerful self? We sit down with Dr. Mindy Pelz—best-selling author of Age Like a Girl—to explore how declining estrogen rewires the brain and why that shift can upgrade focus, confidence, and purpose. Instead of treating symptoms like flaws, Mindy shows how depression, rage, anxiety, and brain fog are signals pointing to a life that needs new boundaries, better fuel, and deeper connection.

We unpack estrogen’s “girl gang” of neurochemicals—dopamine, serotonin, GABA, oxytocin, melatonin, BDNF—and what to do as they dip. Expect practical, doable tools: short daily fasts (13–15 hours) to feed your brain ketones and clear mental fog, novelty and learning to revive dopamine, sleep rhythms to support calm, and community that actually feels nourishing. Mindy shares her own story of stepping away to rebuild from a mental health crash, and how choosing herself ended people pleasing and restored her energy.

We also dig into the grandmother hypothesis and how post-reproductive women historically powered survival with leadership, stamina, and social cohesion. That evolutionary lens flips the script on ageism: a post-menopausal brain is built for focus and mentorship. One billion women are moving through this stage right now—imagine the cultural change if more of us claimed that power. You’ll leave with a new frame for symptoms, a plan for your next chapter, and permission to ask, without apology: What do I want?

If this conversation sparks something, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review. Tell us: what will you stop saying yes to so you can say yes to yourself?

Dr. Mindy Pelz is a New York Times bestselling author, visionary educator, and trailblazer in the field of women’s health and hormone science. With over two decades of experience, she’s built a global movement to help women understand the power of their bodies at every stage of life. Her bestselling books, including Fast Like a Girl, The Menopause Reset, and her newest release Eat Like a Girl, have helped millions of women use fasting, nutrition, and lifestyle shifts to balance hormones, boost energy, and take back control of their health.

Her upcoming book, Age Like a Girl, redefines what it means to grow older as a woman. Rooted in the latest science and rich in personal story, the book challenges outdated narratives about menopause and aging offering instead a roadmap for awakening. Dr. Mindy shows women how to use the neurochemical shifts of midlife as a launchpad for purpose, leadership, and bold reinvention.

Dr. Mindy’s Resetter Podcast consistently ranks among Apple’s top U.S. science shows, withguests ranging from LeAnn Rimes and Rachel Hollis to Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. Her YouTube channel has surpassed 110 million views, and her teachings have reached hundreds of thousands through workshops, online programs, and live events.

She holds a Doctorate of Chiropractic and a background in functional nutrition, and she brings both science and heart to everything she does. Based in San Jose, CA, she leads a team committed to helping women worldwide become the healthiest, most powerful version of themselves. Dr. Mindy believes this is not the time for women to get quieter, it’s the time to get stronger, clearer, and more connected to who they truly are. Aging isn’t a decline. It’s an evolution.

Website: https://www.drmindypelz.com/

MiDOViA 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, ra

SPEAKER_03:

Welcome to the Medovia Menopause Podcast, your trusted source for information about menopause and midlife. Join us each episode as we have great conversations with great people. Tune in and enjoy the show.

SPEAKER_02:

Hello, everybody, and welcome back. April and I are thrilled today to welcome our guest, Dr. Mindy Pels. Dr. Mindy is a pioneering voice in women's health and one of the most trusted educators on hormonal readiness. She's a best-selling uh author, keynote speaker, and educator whose work bridges cutting-edge science with deeply personal storytelling. And her books, Fast Like a Girl, The Menopause Reset, and her newest that's coming out this week, Age Like a Girl, have become your go-to guides for women ready to reclaim their energy, their confidence, and their vitality. Through her YouTube channel and podcast, Dr. Mindy has reached millions of women around the world with her practical, compassionate approach to hormonal health and midlife transformation. And what sets her apart is how she connects the dots between neuroscience, lifestyle, and the emotional journey of womanhood, reminding us that the female body isn't broken. It's brilliantly designed. And in her newest book, Age Like a Girl, which I loved, reframes menopause as a time of reinvention, a neurochemical upgrade that rewires the brain for confidence, clarity, and renewed purpose. And so this is a conversation about much more than symptoms are slowing down. It's about an awakening. It's about coming home to yourself, to the woman you were always meant to be. Dr. Mindy, welcome to the show. We're thrilled to have you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, thank you. That was quite an intro. I really appreciate it. I'm like, wow, I don't know who wrote that, but thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. Girl bio for sure. Well, this book feels deeply personal. You called it the most authentic work yet. What made this one different from you for your previous books, like Fast Like a Girl? That was my intro, and I loved it to Dr. Bindy. But this is your most authentic work. How'd you get there?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's interesting because the menopause reset, when I wrote that book, I was in my early 40s, and it really probably should have been called the Perimenopause Reset. And that was a book that was born out of my YouTube audience asking me over and over again can you put in writing all the things you have discovered about balancing your hormones through lifestyle? And that was 13 years ago when I first started to put that book together. It was self-published, and then Hayhouse bought it and we re-republished it just about four years ago. And so that was a request from my audience. Fast Like a Girl came because I was so frustrated watching all these men stand up and say, this is how everybody should fast. And meanwhile, my YouTube channel was exploding with women whose hair was falling out, they were gaining weight, they were getting all these crazy symptoms because they were trying to fast the same way as men were because they were following these books. And I had come up with some really innovative thoughts around the fasting cycle and when to fast and when not to fast. And so that felt like a book that was clinical experience. I had watched it, I knew it worked so well because I'd watched all the people on my socials, I'd seen all the women in my clinic use this in and out sort of rhythm of fasting. So that was sort of like a clinical, more clinical book. So when I started researching this book 10 years ago, I wanted to answer the question what the purpose, what's the purpose of menopause? Because in my clinic, I had all these women coming in in their 40s that would sit with me and they would say, Um, you know, I have an amazing husband. My kids are killing it at school. Um, I live in a gorgeous home. My practice was in the middle of Silicon Valley. Um, and I'm miserable. I'm suicidal. There's nothing I can do that is going to make my life any better, and I'm concerned. And it was woman after woman after woman telling me this. This again, about 13 years ago. And so what I started to do was try to figure out what was the neurochemical shift that was happening to women as they went through menopause. And we weren't talking about HRT. Menopause back then was still like a, oh, don't say the M word. Right. Don't tell me you have, if you have a hot flash, just leave the room. I don't really want to know about it. Um, so we've gone in that time from a cultural hush to where we sit now, which in my opinion is cultural chaos. We have women all over the world being like, I don't care anymore. Like, I've got hot flashes, and you're just gonna sit here and watch me burn. Um, yes, I'm a bitch, yes, I'm depressed, yes, and and we're like owning our symptoms. Yeah, but the only solution that the cultural conversation is bringing to these symptoms at this particular moment is hormone replacement therapy. And it's not hormone replacement therapy, it isn't the answer. It's not like a magic bullet that you put a patch on and all of a sudden all your symptoms improve. There is a learning curve with it. You've got to have the right doctor, you have to decide do you like a pill or a patch or a troche or a pellet? Like there's so much to understand about it. So while the world has been focused on that, I've gone back to this idea of what's the purpose of menopause? And that was the book I wanted to write. I wanted to prove to women that this experience of going from a reproductive cycle into a non body that doesn't have a reproductive cycle, there is a reason for that. There is a reason that we are the species that lives, if we're lucky, over 40% of our life will be spent post-reproductively. That alone is crazy because every other mammal dies very, very quickly. The female will die when she's not when her reproductive system ends. And we live 42.5% of our life without a reproductive system. That is not by mistake, that is by design. So what I wanted to do was answer why were we left? Why do we have, you know, why do we thrive when we get to the other side of menopause? So now I'm I'm coming to answer your question here, which is because I I want I want to sort of set up the mindset. So as I was going through this 10-year journey, um, I was able with my lifestyle and with some low levels of hormone replacement therapy, I was able to help the weight gain. I was able to help the insomnia. I was able to start the hot flashes were never much of a thing for me. Um, the dryness that a lot of women had, I never had any of that. But what really hit me was the mental symptoms. And somewhere in my early 50s, I started getting suicidal thoughts. I started having chronic depression. I started feeling the rage that a lot of women were experiencing. And when I realized that, I dove deeper into the research to go, okay, what is going on here? Because I too have an amazing husband. I too have an amazing life. Why is my brain stress intolerant? Why is my brain hyper-vigilant and has the looping thoughts? Why don't I care about things that I used to care about? And that's when I really discovered this neurochemical shift. Um, and the reason it's the most personal to me is because until I found the solution, I had pretty much a mental breakdown from all of the stress, from trying to perform for a culture that, you know, has told me you should look a certain way, you should act a certain way, you should be a certain way. And I broke. And when I finally broke, I actually isolated myself. I went into an Airbnb. I extracted myself from my my husband, from my family, from work, and I sat down and wrote this book as I was putting my own pieces together. Wow. Lots of women want to do that.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Lots of women want to take off.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you recommend that strategy? I totally recommend it.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I it is the best thing I did because what happened was the body anxiety got so so exhausting that I couldn't find my own energy. I couldn't figure out how to calm myself. And um, I started just noticing everybody was irritating me. And I thought, I gotta isolate myself so I can find my voice. I can find my energy. And it's little things. It was like, I want to decide when I want to eat dinner, not when when dinner's right for the family. Um, I want to decide even how do I want to dress? How do I want to think? Who do I want to hang out with? What shows do I want to watch? Like all of that was done through the lens of, well, what's my husband watching? What's my husband want to eat? What do my kids need? Um, I wanted to decide how how much do I want to work. But it was always like, no, what does the business need? What do my, what does my team need? Like I was a professional at putting everybody's needs ahead of my own, that I literally couldn't find my own voice. I had um my therapist said to me last year, yeah, it was last summer, right before I started to completely melt down. Um, she said to me, Mindy, you have time, you have money, your kids are launched, you create your life however you want. What do you want? And do you know I couldn't answer what do I want?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, doctor, you resonate with it all the time. We're health coaches, and you say to women, what do you want? And they've never taken the time to think about it. They I don't know what I want, right? Yeah. Um, wow. But you you had a great therapist because she told you to go, just go, Dr. Mindy. Take the time. You've got the money, you've got the time. How long, how long did you retreat? Just out of curiosity.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, uh, four months. Wow. So I it was originally supposed to be a two-month process, um, but then my neighborhood burned. And um I I had on the the actual, and I tell the story in the book, but um, what happened to me is at the end of 2024, I had lost a really good friend. He died at 52, and he was like a brother to me. And it really shook me because his lifestyle was impeccable. And I he literally laid down and had a heart attack and was out. And um, and he was he was like a he was just a rock in my life, and now he wasn't around. And my sister um came to me at the end, like on New Year's Day, it was New Year's Eve day, and said to me, Um, I feel like you are becoming more and more distant. And I want to know how to have a relationship with you. And I told her, I was like, you know what? I can't tell you how to have a relationship with you until I have a relationship with me. I don't have a personal relationship with me. So how can I tell you what it would look like to have a relationship with me through your lens? But what I really need is a big sister. I'm like, I'm breaking. This was before the fires. I'm breaking. Can you just be a big sister and guide me through my uh a mental breakdown that I'm having? And she was like, yep, sign me up. And then a week later, I was in the LA fires. And so I was supposed to be in LA for I was gonna take two months off, is what I was gonna do. And then the when the fires hit, I I I couldn't function. I I mean, and if you've ever had a trauma before, um I this sounds this is a little too graphic, but um I didn't shower for weeks. And it actually took my best friend to like pick me up and say, when's the last time you ate? When's the last time you showered? Um I couldn't remember passwords, my brain was completely crashing on me. So the only place I could go was to be alone. And when I was alone, I actually felt started to feel normal. So four months of that writing this book, and just I spent a lot of time in nature. I spent a lot of time meditating. Um, I spent a lot of time, I don't I didn't even watch TV, I just listened to music. Like I really tried to get to know who is in there, who is Mindy.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. That's so vulnerable. Yeah, being so vulnerable is so good. It's such a great example for other women.

SPEAKER_03:

And you talked about the the wildfires in your opening story, and I appreciate that because you're sharing some of your personal self, and that was a moment of almost a literal and symbolic cleansing for you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Um, both that and isolating yourself and spending time getting to know Dr. Mindy. And I'm thinking about how you stopped in that moment of anxiety and trauma and really breakdown. Um and so many women that we talked to are in that same place, and it can feel like it's an ending. It can feel like, you know, my life is over because I can't, I really can't um climb out of this shit. So how do I get out? And and yet here you are as an example of someone that did. And I'm wondering, um, you write about menopause being an initiation rather than an ending. And I'm hoping that you can explain what you mean by that because I think this is a really important um piece here as we reframe menopause and how we look at menopause.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's this is the biggest thing I want to open up in the culture with this book is how do we start looking at menopause through the lens that it is actually a woman's get out of jail free card. And let me explain why. So when estrogen comes in, when we go through puberty, we start to get what we call a cross-referenced brain. Estrogen links our right hemisphere and our left hemisphere. And so every decision that we make, starting at puberty, we bring both hemispheres of our brain to that decision. The left hemisphere is the logical, it is the is the goal-setting brain. And the right hemisphere is creativity and it's emotional connection. So when we and and I love I love saying it this way, when we are drugged on estrogen, we are always thinking through the lens of relationships and making sure that our decisions are right for everybody. You mix that with a culture, a patriarchal culture that has taught women that if you are in order to be worthy, you need to be selfless. This was Carol Gilligan's work. I wrote about this in in I have a whole chapter on it. And what she did is she studied boys and girls in the 1980s, and she would ask a boy and a girl what they wanted to eat, and when they were nine, they would tell you exactly what they wanted to eat. She'd ask that same question to the same boy and the same girl at 11. The boy would tell you exactly what he wants to eat, but the girl would hesitate for a moment. By 13, when she had gone through puberty, the boy will tell you exactly what he wants to eat. And the girl will say, I don't know, what are you gonna eat? That's an example of a relational brain. We have been walking around. Whose problem do we need to fix? Who do we need to please? What do we need to look like? How do I get love? How do I be worthy from the world outside? And the world outside says, Oh, if you're a size two, if you're polite, if you don't have wrinkles, if you look a certain way, we will love you. When we go through menopause and we lose estrogen, we lose the ability to bring both of these hemispheres to all of our decisions, which it sounds horrible, but it's beautiful because now we can move to what we call more of a lateralized brain. And it's funny, I was on a I was with a bunch of friends this weekend, and I was telling this, they were asking me what the book was about, and I was sharing with this them. And this one of my friends was dating this man who's in his 80s, and he's over, he's listening to this, and he goes, Oh, so you get more of a male brain then. And I'm like, Yeah, we do. We are able to sit in a decision and see it through logic and focus on it without taking everybody's opinion into consideration. And we can move to the right hemisphere and we can sit on the couch with our girlfriend or you know, our friends, and have a deep emotional connection. We no longer make every decision through this relationship brain, which is why it appears as if we don't care. Right, right. But all we're doing is we have moved to a new brain, that brain can actually look out for ourselves a lot better. We don't, it's like it's like I've been telling people who've been interviewing me, I'm three years post-menopausal. I'm in love with this book. I can't wait to get it out there. If you would, if if you had interviewed me when I was perimenopausal, right now, when I'm talking to you, I'd be concerned. Am I meeting your audience's needs? Right now, I'm not thinking about your audience. No offense. Sorry, people listening. No, no offense taken. Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking about how to explain this so that women can start to wake up and and tell their truth and empower themselves. Whereas the younger version of me took everybody's opinion into consideration. You drop that, but what you're left with, right? Do you resonate with that?

SPEAKER_03:

100%. Oh, 100%. Because I've had people say, Oh, you you're selfish. No, I'm not selfish. I've just stopped caring about what other people think and taking care of everyone else. That's not selfish. It's self care. That's right. It's not selfish, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So if so if you go back to The beginning story when I isolated myself for four months, a lot of people ask me, like, what did your husband say? And I'm like, honestly, at that point, I didn't care. I knew that for my survival and to bring back a vibrant person back to the marriage, I had to get to know myself. I had to unwind the people pleasing and the codependency. And with the post-menopausal brain I had, that became so much easier. And when we looked, two statistics started this book. The first one was that the most common time for a woman to kill herself is the decade between 45 and 55. Yeah. That was staggering. Yeah. So we have to, we we can't just say, oh, she didn't get HRT. And so that's why she did it. I think what happens is women wake up in that decade and they look around and they go, Oh my God, this is the life I created. I don't want to live this life anymore. How do I let these people know that I don't want to do this life anymore? Which is why we need to show that menopause is initiating you into a new version of yourself. Because that same woman who was going to kill herself, if she understood it was your her brain was rewiring and she's looking at her life very differently, then what she would do is go, okay, I need to be a new version of me, a more authentic version of me. And then she could go down that path and that process, as opposed to, I'm going crazy. I don't want to be married anymore. I don't want to be living in this house anymore, which was a big thing. I didn't want to live in my house anymore. I was like, I can't be in this house here anymore, this family home that has so many good memories. I'm like, I don't want to be here anymore. The we need to open this conversation up so women stop killing themselves because that is a natural transition through this moment.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like there's like urgency in your voice around this too. Like, yeah, we we can't mess around. We need to let everybody know that this is going on and that you can figure out who you are and you can spend time on this, and it is okay to have that. That thank you.

SPEAKER_03:

There is urgent granted, right? Permission granted. Yeah, that's great. I mean, there's we need permission, but sometimes we think we do.

SPEAKER_00:

Good point. Good point. How many times, like we my friend group? Um, I I've even as as a strong, powerful woman, uh, as as recent as six months ago, I said something to one of my friends. I said, Well, yeah, my husband's gonna let me do that. And she goes, Excuse me? He's gonna let you know, yeah. He's gonna let you. And I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe I just said that. Like, if we truly, I I another quote I have in the book is that menopause is a mirror. It's a mirror to show you what you like about yourself and what you don't like about yourself. And what we're doing, the urgency that I really want to point out is that right now we're saying you're suffering because of you didn't get the right doctor. But we need to bring into the conversation maybe the rage is because you're tired of people pleasing. Maybe the irritability is because you have said yes when you really meant to say no and you're resentful. Maybe you can't sleep because your sympathetic nervous system is so on overload from all the fixing, all the all the pleasing, all the things you've been trying to do to for everyone else so that you can feel worthy. What I think menopause is, is it's a time for us to feel worthy just because we fall in love with ourselves and we stand up and say our truth and we speak what we finally wanted to say, but we kept quiet because once estrogen came in, we started to really think about relationships in in like I don't want to hurt that person. Right. You don't think that when you go into post-menopausal and years, and I want women to say, I don't want to hurt me. Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow, it's that's powerful. Yeah, it's so interesting. It's so because I even talking to my 77-year-old old mother, letting her know she is okay for her to make the decisions that she wants to make. Yeah, that's just like we need to like empower each other to be able to do that when we're ready to.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh my gosh, you bring up such a good point. My 86-year-old mom, my my 89-year-old dad had spinal surgery this summer. And so I needed to make sure my mom was okay. They've been they've been married for 60 years, like they're both still thriving. And so my mom started to rely on her girlfriends to drive her to go visit my dad. And she was so happy. And I said to her, Mom, I've never seen you like be with your girlfriends so much, and you're so lit up. Why don't you do that more often? And she's like, Well, I can't leave your father at home by himself. Oh, I've heard that too. I'm like, of course you can. Of course you can. Wow. So if you stop and you look at it through this lens where we have been behaving and been performing in a certain way because the culture told us we would be good and we would be worthy if we do that. What I'm hoping people women do is they pick up this book and they finally go, Okay, wait, what do I want? What am I doing for me now? That's the initiation is what are you doing for you now?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And that makes your books armor, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And it put puts your book on a different plane to other menopause books. I just have to say, because that's you talk more about that than any other pieces of menopause. And I think it's it's a really good place for women to hear and get permission that it's okay.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Thank you. I think um, so I I want to shift because I know that myself, um, being my little Enneagram one. Oh, I think you're saying your Enneagram. Are you Enneagram seven? You're seven. Okay. Yeah. My daughter's seven. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Excellent. Okay, but we can go back to your oneness. That's okay.

SPEAKER_03:

Your one gets us to the airport. Wait, we like ones, yeah. Keep us on track, organized. Um, and speaking of ones, I love lists, right? So, okay, we have this information, we know this. How do we move from this place of where we are, this chaos, um, to shedding the armor? How do we help women move through the grief and the loss and the anger to this place of coming home?

SPEAKER_00:

It's such a good question. Um, so first let's talk about the armor. One of the things that I discovered in all my research is that we're not just losing estrogen and progesterone when we go through this process. But actually, estrogen, one part of estrogen called estradiol, stimulated and facilitated over what from what I my research, over 12 neurochemicals. So whenever estrogen was around, we had dopamine, serotonin, GABA, oxytocin, glutamate, BDNF, melatonin, like estro estradiol was a was the diva of all hormones. So when we lose estrogen, and even if you're taking hormone replacement therapy, you still have the let the you have the lowest amount of estrogen you've ever had in your life. And these neurochemicals start to wane. Now, what's interesting about that is I think of it like an armor, where when estrogen was around, it was almost like we had a neurochemical buffer where somebody would ask us, hey, do you want to, you know, sign up? Like, you want to work in your kids' classroom today? And we're like, sure, that would make me feel good. And then all of a sudden, dopamine goes down and serotonin goes down, and we're not motivated to do that. And so there's this raw version of you. So the first thing I want to say is if you're thinking different and you're in this process, and the things you cared about before, and you you stop caring about, or if you have a lot of rage, or you have a lot of irritability, or you have a lot of depression, and I'll talk about what each one of those means here in a moment, that is a sign that you are ready to change. So that is not a flaw in your makeup. That is a gift that says, okay, what are you depressed about? Are you depressed because you don't love your life? Well, then what can we do to put things into it that you love? What is anxiety? What are you fearful of? Are you like a lot of women are worried, what am I gonna do once my kids leave the house? What who am I then? Yeah, that's where anxiety can come in. I think rage, I think rage is so many women that are like, I'm so tired of taking care of everybody else that I just can't do it anymore. Um, Julie Gottman, I spent a day with her. Julie Gottman. Yeah, she's awesome. And she talks about how ah, nice. She talks about how resentment is a sign that you've been saying yes when you really wanted to say no. So these are really important because when depression shows up, you can be you could what I'm hoping women will say is, okay, so I'm depressed. Um, well, I know that I've lost some dopamine, so my motivation's down. I don't have as much estrogen. So what can I do today to bring dopamine back? Well, dopamine loves novelty. So do something new, change up your routine. And then you I'm not talking about blowing up your whole life. I'm just saying when these symptoms show up, instead of going to Instagram and seeing people say, Well, you didn't get the right doctor and you don't have the right uh HRT, what if you look at your life and say, I need to change my routine? I need to bring back the novelty, I need to break the routine, I need to learn something new. That's what, and then all of a sudden your moods go up. Oxytocin is a really interesting neurochemical that estrogen stimulated. And um, women have more oxytocin receptor sites in our amygdala, which is the fight or flight center of our brain. So when when we lose estrogen, we actually miss out on a stress response that we used to look, we used to lean into, which is called the tend and befriend stress response. We all know this. You had a stressful day, you you call your bestie and you're like, hey, I'm gonna verbally pro that's because you're getting oxytocin and it calms your stress response. Well, when you go through menopause, you your oxytocin system has been dialed down. So you no longer can do superficial relationships. So all of a sudden, you need a deeper connection from your husband. You need your bestie more than ever before, which is why you see people like Jane Fonda who have said, you know, I wouldn't even exist without my girlfriends as I age. We definitely need that girlfriend time. So the initiation is really an inquiry where you ask yourself when these symptoms come up, what in my life is no longer working? And can I start to let go of some of those behaviors and lean into others? You call it pause, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, you have to pause, people. You have to breathe breathe. You have to pause. You have to pause.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, exactly. Pause and listen. Yeah. And um, you use the term estrogen girl gang to talk about these um dopamine, serotonin, GABA, et cetera. And I just loved that. I was just like, this is this is like we could sit around for hours talking about how fun this is and what a great opportunity menopause is for leadership, for transformation. You know, can you comment on what how what happens to women when they get to really listen to themselves and show up differently?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So the girl gang, I just, you know, the first time I I really learned hormones, I was like, these can these long names don't mean anything. Like we need to redefine this. I actually told a friend of mine who's a hormone expert, and she goes, Yeah, they should be, we should make them like nail polish names. Oh, and Opie. Opie has the best nail polish.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, there we go. Yeah, let's do Opie. Okay. Okay, well, whatever.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so I I will have to investigate the OP names. But I decided to call uh it Estrogen's girl gang. And what I did in part two of the book is I wanted women to go, okay, I'm my moods are off. Okay, here are the members of the girl gang that might be a little vulnerable right now. And here are the here's the lifestyle tools I can use to bring back these uh neurochemicals. And then we have one on memory, and we have one on connection and exercise and sleep. So that part two is really about women going in and going, yes, I have this symptom. Okay, here are these, here's the neurochemical change, and here's the lifestyle that I can bring back in. And I think we don't give lifestyle enough credit. So let's use dopamine as an example. A lot of women get flat in their beh in their moods. And I don't know if you two experienced that, but it's like just blah. It's like, I don't know, food doesn't excite me. Yeah. Well, that's because as estrogen went down, so did dopamine. Well, we already talked about how dopamine loves novelty, so do something new. But if you actually commit to like a new activity that you're learning, so I don't know if you've seen on Instagram right now, there's a lot of um talk about grandmother hobbies. Well, we want to talk about grandmother hypothesis. Yeah, we can we can talk about that. But so my sister's a knitter, and uh she has knit herself so many sweaters that she keeps having to buy more armoirs in her house to put them in. But I'll tell you, when she's first learned to knit, you saw her moods just totally brighten up. And when she's knitting, she's actually a more enjoyable person to be around because knitting stimulates dopamine. So learning something new and doing something, the thing about dopamine that's so interesting is dopamine is the molecule of more, it's not the molecule of enough. So it'll just keep bringing you to like, let's keep doing this, let's keep doing this. So, we as women, we get dopamine sometimes by helping people.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And then we help somebody and we go, oh, that was really fun. Let me go help another person and let me help another person. But when we go through menopause, our dopamine system goes down and we need to find new ways to stimulate it. And one of the recommendations I have is find a new hobby, find something new that's just for you. That um I started surfing four months ago. I'm in Santa Cruz, California, and I a friend said a 52-year-old uh post-menopausal woman said, Hey, come surf with me. And I was horrible at it when I started. Surfing is an incredibly hard sport. But you know what? I every day went out there, I was in nature, I was learning something. I got oxytocin from the people that were hanging out out there. Everybody was really supportive. And I would come out of the water so happy. And my husband looked at me and like, I've never seen you so happy. And I would say, I didn't even catch a wave today. I suck at this sport. But you know what? I'm not doing it for any outcome. I don't care. I just want to keep learning something new. And can I tell you that when you commit to learning something new, you bring dopamine back. So the first part that I really want to emphasize on this girl gang is you have the ability to bring these members back quickly. And that's what I wanted to show, as opposed to what happens when you walk into your doctor's office and they say, Oh, you're depressed, you need an antidepressant. No, you need to reorganize your life so you're doing something fun just for you. Yeah, it's the beginner mindset, right? It's the beginner mindset.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Be excited. I um when I turned 50, I decided I was gonna do 50 new things at 50. Oh, I love that. And so I did it and I documented it on Facebook and I told everybody that I was doing, and it was everything from you know, float tank to oh gosh, a new restaurant to you know, a new different style of clothes. Like just it was crazy. Doesn't matter, yeah, but it was fun, and so then my friend who's 20 years older than me, she's like, Well, what am I doing at 80? Because what are you doing at 60? Yeah, because we've got 60 coming.

SPEAKER_00:

I I think that's a great idea. And that's probably really you probably had a lot of happiness that year. I did. And then we went into COVID, so whatever. Oh, bummer. That's a whole that's a whole other conversation.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that is a whole other conversation.

SPEAKER_00:

But but I want to point something out that it's not complicated. And this is what I tried to bring forward with Fast Like a Girl, losing weight was not complicated. We just had to change the timing of people's food, and then all of a sudden they started to drop weight. That's what I'm saying here in Age Like a Girl. When you're depressed, when you're anxious, when you can't think straight, like the brain fog, then let's go revisit these members of the girl gang and look at where there are holes in your lifestyle that aren't bringing these neurochemicals into play.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And some of the we're big fans of lifestyle medicine, if you want to call it that. But um can you just quick punch what are some of the other lifestyle habits or areas, if we, if we will, that we could go to? Exercise, obviously, nutrition. What else would you say?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, there's a lot of really fun ones that I put in there. So, of course, I got to go to the one that's the most near and dear to my heart, which is when a woman after 40, when she goes through menopause, so this applies to 70-year-olds and 80-year-olds, your brain becomes less efficient at using glucose. So eating to fuel your brain becomes less efficient. And if you are, if you are uh eating a highly processed diet, you are damaging your brain even more because too much refined flours, too many refined sugars, and you are elevating glucose, and your brain doesn't know what to do with that. This is why they call Alzheimer's Alzheimer's diabetes type 3, because the brain is just swimming in glucose and it can't use it. And so, what that feels like to a 43 year old or a 45 year old going through the process is brain fog. The antidote to brain fog. Brain fog is use a different fuel source. And that fuel source is called a ketone. And you don't have to go into long fasts, but if you start to fast as little as 13, 14, 15 hours every day, you're going to give your brain a dose of ketones. And your brain fog will go immediately. I'm talking days, like a day to a couple of days, the brain fog will be gone. Because you now have given your brain the fuel source it per it it wants as it ages. It doesn't want glucose, it can't use glucose, it needs a ketone.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And ketones are free. You can make them for free. It doesn't cost anything. Doesn't cost anything. So that would be that would be one example of just switch the your timing of your food and let's get you off the junk food. And you're going to watch your brain come back online. Now let's let's juxtapose that to a woman that goes into her doctor's office and says, I'm depressed, I'm irritable, and I have brain fog, I can't focus. And then the doctor is now down medication paths, trying to find the right medication that could take months to figure out, because you know, even antidepressants aren't the magic cure that they used to think they were. Whereas you can start fasting 13 to 15 hours every day, get a ketone, and within two days your brain comes back online. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. And 13 to 15 hours is not a lot. It sounds like a lot, but if you really do the math in your 24-hour day, most of that's sleep. That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Um, we have a million questions for you, and we're and we're short on time. But one of the things that we alluded to earlier, and the thing we really wanted to talk to you about, was the grandmother hypothesis. You are a huge fan of the grandmother hypothesis and its evolution of women and how women are prepared to um be the wisdom and be helping each other during that time. Break that down for us. Tell us more. I know this comes from Lisa Muscone's work, so let's give Dr. Muscone the um the acknowledgement that deserves there. But um, you're really a strong advocate for this, and I'd love to hear your point of view on it.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think evolutionary biology helps us understand how our bodies work. I mean, look at fasting. That was an evolutionary hack that once people figured out, uh oh, wait, I lose weight when I when I have an eating window and a fasting window, or I can actually bring my brain back online when I don't eat. And all of a sudden you start to see that there's some evolutionary mechanisms inside our body that work for us that we don't use in the modern world. So I had already had a history of going back and looking at evolutionary biology. So when I wanted to answer what's the purpose of menopause, I started thinking, well, what did they do back in the primal days? Now, we have to first acknowledge that they didn't live as long as we lived. But what I stumbled upon was this thing called the grandmother hypothesis. And the grandmother hypothesis states that when a woman in the primal days stopped having her period, she was actually moved to a place of leadership within the tribe. Because they knew back then that she got renewed energy because she wasn't putting so much energy towards reproduction, which is mind-blowing when you think about it. It's like, oh my God, I didn't even realize how much energy it took to release an egg every month. But when what the grandmother hypothesis says is that when your reproductive system stops, the energy it took your body to re keep releasing an egg every single month is given back to you. And it's used for three areas. Fitness is one, which is crazy because how many women are like, oh, I'm I'm I'm getting older now, I can't work out the you know anymore. Um, cognition is the other, and social connection is the third. And and and then let me put this through the lens of the grandmother hypothesis. So, what happened in the primal days was when a woman was moved to this leadership position, she would go out and gather with the other grandmothers every single morning, from the research I can find and from talking to actually Kristen Hawks was one of the anthropologists that's a big champion of the grandmother hypothesis. These women every single day would go on a seven-hour trek to forage for food. The men would go out for days trying to get a big animal kill. They only came back with an animal kill 3% of the time, which means one day out of 30. We would not be sitting here with odds like that. So the grandmother, what she did when she didn't have her reproductive system, she joined the other grandmothers, and seven hours every day they went out and searched for tubers. Uh, tubers are like um sun uh sweet potatoes, sunchokes, hickama, turnips, potatoes. And they were they you had she had to go and walk for miles to find these tubers. And then she would squat and dig in the ground and grab the tubers, put them on her back, and then comes back to the to the um tribe and the clan, and she feeds the fertile mom, the pregnant mom, or the nursing mom, and the little children that couldn't go out into the and and hunt for an animal. So she had a leadership position in within the culture. And they believe we are sitting here right now because of the post-menopausal women woman. We would not have evolved as a species if we didn't have this backup plan for food. Okay, so now let's take the grandmother hypothesis and let's put it next to what happens to us today as we age. Today, as we age, probably uh I think we're changing this, but we're so scared of aging that we're freezing our faces, we are dying our hair, we are plastic surgery is through the roof because women are terrified to age. Okay, why are we terrified to age? Because our culture tends to toss us aside. An aging woman isn't considered necessary, isn't considered useful in our culture. But in the primal days, we brought the food home when the men were gone. So, why I wanted to bring this forward is that when I looked at that and I and I squared it with Lisa Muscone's work on the brain changes that were happening, this lateralized brain, the cross-reference brain we talked about earlier, I realized all of a sudden that a woman's the best time of her life is post-reproductive. And our brains were meant to be leaders. And I I I'm gonna even, I mean, I'm gonna even go as deep to say that I think they they they want us to fear aging because if they actually let post-menopausal women embrace their power, we would take over the world. Like that's what, like, seriously, that's why I had to do an appendix to men. It's why I had to do an appendix to um corporations, because the the best brain a woman has is the post-menopausal brain. It is built for leadership, it is built for focus, it is built for social connection, and that is not what's getting out there in the zeitgeist.

SPEAKER_03:

And that's when they're shoving them aside. That's right. And pushing them out. That's right.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm telling you right now, we're putting that quote of you speaking that on every social media site for a very long time to come. That is true. Really true. Yeah, and um, and feels like there's a purpose, right? Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and that's what I'm trying to bring forward is there's a purpose for all of this. So do the inquiry, figure out why you're depressed and the rage, do the lifestyle tools, take HRT if you're thinking about it, but buck up because where you're going, we need you. We need you to stand up and tell your truth. We need you to lead us out of a mess that the world is in right now. A billion women in menopause right now could change the conversation that's going on in our culture, could change the misogyny and the fascism that's happening across the world. But if long as they keep us timid and scared of becoming invisible, we don't step into our power. Menopause is the moment you get to finally step into the most powerful version of you. And that is what I'm trying to wake up in women by understanding the process. And it feels good. It feels good. Yeah, amazing.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it is. I was gonna ask you what's one thing you want people to take away from your book, but I think you just said it right there.

SPEAKER_00:

Don't disappear. Please don't disappear. We need you, please don't disappear. And we don't need you to be like anybody else. We need the authentic version, the unique version of you. So I share a story in the book that um I wasn't my sister, it was brilliant and had photographic memory, and it my mom was a math teacher, and it consumed my mom's energy trying to figure out where uh what schools she should go to. Um, I'm a very out-of-the-box creative thinker. Um, in the 1970s, we didn't know what to do with out-of-the-box creative thinkers. I would have been probably diagnosed as neurodivergent, which is a is a is a term that's coming up more often. But instead, I was thought of as dumb. I was thought of as less intelligent than my sister. When I went through menopause, I started realizing that one of the special skills that I have is pattern recognition. I can see across many different types of people, I can see the through line. I think this is how I came up with age like a girl. I'm like, there's a purpose. Okay, let me look at the grandmother hypothesis, let me look at neuroscience, let me look at societal messaging, let me look, I brought in the teachings of a mystic, and let's see what the through line was. So I took back my own belief about who I was, and I stand very proudly saying, I consider myself brilliant now. And I say that with with humble but with humble, a humble spirit. Um, but you're talking to a woman who was told that she was not as smart as her sister. She wasn't killing it at school. Well, you give me a multiple choice question and you only gave me four answers. And there's like uh 10 more answers that wasn't listed there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. Right? And it's a shame that you had to be, you know, this old to realize that you're not that you are smart. And and when other people look at you just like other people look at other people, like, what are you even talking about? How do you know why would you ever hear them? I know like right, right.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's why, you know, this is the you know, I this is why I'm being as authentic as I can, um, because I want women to see themselves, like yours might not be your intellect. Maybe you think you weren't beautiful, and then all of a sudden you realize that one of the most beautiful things in a woman is confidence. And when you are confident, you're beautiful, and maybe you come into that awareness, or maybe something was taken away from you as a little girl. Like one of the reasons surfing became really important for me is that when I was in the seventh grade, I grew up in Malibu, and I went out surfing one day, and a boy I liked that was in my classroom turned to me. This is the 1970s, and said, Mindy, what are you doing out here? Girls don't surf. And so at 56, I'm taking back all the messaging, all the things people told me I couldn't do or who I was or who I wasn't, and I'm gathering those back, and I'm standing in the most authentic version of me. And that's what I want every woman to do because that's the initiation. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03:

Exactly. Yeah. And your gosh, I wish with your book, and we're gonna, we're gonna obviously um have this podcast on um everywhere, but I wish that there was just sound bites that went along with your book because I can sense your energy and your enthusiasm, and it's absolutely contagious. Um, I I gathered that energy in reading through the book, but having you on it has just been an absolute joy. Because I really can sense your passion and your energy and your confidence, and it is beautiful.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I I will tell you one cool thing that we're working on because um, you know, the reason that I wrote this book is to open this conversation up, uh, you know, and so that we can all step into it. So stay tuned because we're working on a conversation deck where you could get together with your girlfriends, you could get together with your husband, and you could pull out a card and you could start to ask each other questions and have conversations. Like we started practicing the other day. I did this with my best friend, and the the question was if we traded bodies, what's the first thing you would do if you had my body? Well, my my best friend is is tall. And I'm like, oh my God, if I had your body, I would start putting everything on a top shelf. So, but but I'm trying to keep the conversation. I say this to just say, I'm trying to keep the conversation going. So, you know, my dream is when people get the book is share it, talk about it. This is for all of us. So I appreciate the comment, the compliments, and this is this is for all of us to step into this initiation and do it our way, our individual way.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And and it's a tool. So again, I love that I can take something away from that and keep that conversation going. Okay, we ask all of our guests this question. So we'll ask you, what is the best piece of advice you've ever received?

SPEAKER_00:

So when I was first in practice, um, my father had taught me that you're worthy if you work hard. And so I was working literally seven days a week seeing patients. I saw Monday, Monday through Saturday, seven in the morning to seven at night.

unknown:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

And I and I had a rocking practice and it was full, and I was in my late 20s. It was very exciting. And then I had a mentor pull me aside and he told me two things. One, he said, and this was back in the um 90s, he said, you would never ask Michael Jordan, if if people remember Michael Jordan, uh, you would never we had never asked Michael Jordan to play an NBA playoff game for 10 hours. You've got to take rest. You have to recover. You can't work at that. And the second thing he told me, and probably the thing that hit me the hardest, is that he said, you will never work a day in your life if you put yourself constantly in service and you serve a mission, you help people, you think about how to bring forward a message that will change the lives of many. And that one mentor, he's still a good friend. And um, it was the most impactful thing that I learned is rest and make sure that your work is something that's changing the cultural conversation, changing the lives of millions. And I don't think you have to have it be career-wise. I think for the women that maybe don't have a career, it could be that you make a decision that you're gonna be kind to every single person that you meet. Every time you go, I was just traveling this weekend, and when I went past the TSA people, I was like, thank you for being here. I know you're not getting paid. Now, I could have easily like just left that, but I wanted to make sure that I was constantly in gratitude, having gratitude for those people. So a servant's heart, it it works.

SPEAKER_03:

I love that. It's making the world a better place when you exit than when you came. That's right. Make it a better place. Yeah. Thank you. Um Dr.

SPEAKER_00:

Mindy, where can we find you? Uh, I'm kind of everywhere. Um, I would tell you that my my passion project is my YouTube channel. So um a lot of my new information and new ways of describing it is going to be out on is always on my YouTube channel. Um, I have a podcast too called the Resetter Podcast. Um, I'm trying to bring on people of all different backgrounds there so that we can um have again, everybody can make their own decision about what they think around their health. Um and then, you know, like the book is everywhere, and you can go to my website, but YouTube is really where I put my heart and soul.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, perfect. We'll put that in show notes. And until we meet again, everyone, go find joy in the journey. Thanks, Dr. McGee. Thank you. Thank you. 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. Medovia is out to change the narrative. Learn more at Medovia.com. That's M-I-D-O-V-IA.com.

Head Shot

April Haberman

Co-host
Head Shot

Kim Hart

Co-host