Biohacking Menopause: Interview with Gerontologist Zora Benhamou

In this week's episode we’re diving into the world of menopause, longevity and cutting-edge wellness with guest Zora Benhamou.

Zora is a gerontologist, menopause advocate, and biohacker. She’s the host of the Hack My Age podcast and has interviewed over 200 experts around the world on how to navigate menopause.

In this episode, we’ll be busting myths and hearing Zora’s top biohacks for thriving — not just surviving — this stage of life.

Whether you’re going through menopause, supporting someone who is, or just curious about ageing well — this one’s packed with insight.

Find out more about Zora and her work here: https://hackmyage.com/

And follow Zora on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/HackMyAge/

We have just 3 places left on our Retreat in Ibiza in October. Find out more here: https://themidlifementors.com/retreats/

The Midlife Male Handbook available now:
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Transcript

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The Midlife Mentors: Okay, it's interesting about there we are right. Let's go.

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The Midlife Mentors: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the midlife mentors with me James and me, Claire. We actually skipped a week last week. Sorry we were just a bit busy. I wanted to do it, listeners, but Claire was like, no, I can't be bothered. Such a lie, listeners. That is a lie. Basically, we had a very, very busy week, and when we got to the weekend we're like, oh, we need to do a podcast. But actually, let's just

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The Midlife Mentors: in our defense. We have been running one a week pretty much since 2019. So I'm sure they'll all let us off 200 plus episodes to go back to exactly exactly and just quickly what we've been up to. We've had some more bookings for our retreat in Ibiza in October, so excited for that which is really really exciting. It's not till October, and we've only got 6 places left, so that's really awesome again. Won't go into all the details of that.

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The Midlife Mentors: because we've shared it before. But the link will be in the show notes if you want to go and check out what we're doing on that retreat. And James has got a big bit of news. Actually, we've been running running a lot of workshops in the last couple of weeks for corporates. It just brings it home to us how much we love doing this

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The Midlife Mentors: speaking to an audience, and then Fielding the questions and really helping people make positive changes to their lives with the information we can give them. So so we love that we've got some more scheduled where we're appearing at a longevity rave

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The Midlife Mentors: Camden Palace. I can't use the new name. Coco sounds very fancy we're on a panel. It's basically a whole host of experts talking about longevity. And then there's a party afterwards. So so we're at that. Yeah. And yeah, it might be expect on that. And finally, because we have got a guest who's very patiently waiting as we share all of our news. But this is quite a big drum roll that James has been putting off

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The Midlife Mentors: for quite a long time. Well, yeah, I didn't want 2 things coming too close together. So obviously we had the release of the midlife male handbook which is going really well. I'm really thrilled about that which was obviously a work in my nonfiction work.

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The Midlife Mentors: But I've just released my novel, The Dark Hours. It's out with a publisher called Wild Wolf. Again I found a publisher for it.

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The Midlife Mentors: It's available now on Amazon. It's an atmospheric Noir thriller set in 19 thirties, Soho, London. But again we'll put the link in the show so you can check it out. Listen, but let's rock on. I don't normally read books like novels like that. I'm more of a self-help girl, but I did read, and it's fantastic.

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The Midlife Mentors: I would say that. But it's amazing. I didn't get bored, and normally I get really bored. But let's introduce our lovely, lovely guests, so we'll be talking more longevity. So we are welcoming Zora Benamu, who is a gerontologist. I can't wait to find out what that is and who hosts the hack, my age, podcast welcome, Zora.

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zora benhamou: Hey? Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited. This is right up my alley longevity.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, it is perfect. I'm not quite sure what to expect what we're doing at that weekend. But anyway, Zora, can you just like give us and the listeners a bit of an introduction to your background, how you came to focus on biohacking menopause and biohacking in general, and tell us what a gerontologist is.

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zora benhamou: I'm so glad you asked, because most people don't know what that is. They don't know what a biohacker is. They don't know what gerontologist is. So I've chosen these avenues that nobody understands. So gerontology. Well, people confuse it with a geriatric physician. So I'm not a doctor. Let's get clear on that, and a geriatric physician is treating

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zora benhamou: their patients who are 65, and older. And they're very important. And actually, we need more of them. But a gerontologist is somebody who studies aging and longevity. And although we do advocate for older adults, we study older adults. We need to look at the whole life course from birth until death, to understand why people are getting diseases, how they're aging, why, some are aging faster than others, and then we put this on to play. So there's there's

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zora benhamou: but we do look at things not only from a biological perspective, but a sociological and a psychological perspective. So kind of looking at the whole picture. And and I love that because it's not just about oh, the food you eat or the exercise there's just it's so much more encompassing. So that's what a gerontologist does, and the biohacking, I can tell you. But

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zora benhamou: after that, if you're ready.

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The Midlife Mentors: I'm fascinated. How did you get into this? In the 1st place, what was your victory into it?

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zora benhamou: You're right, actually, because well, I'm from La. I told you it's in my La DNA to always be interested in health and wellness, and I was always curious, a very active person. But when my mother passed away at 57, I suddenly thought, Oh, I don't want to be fit just to look good in a bikini anymore. I just don't want to die early, so what can I do? And so

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zora benhamou: that's when I sort of went down the rabbit hole of deeper into longevity before it was even a thing.

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zora benhamou: And so then I

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zora benhamou: then meandered into the health coaching, because, you know, you become the friend that everybody wants to know about the things that you've read and learned.

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zora benhamou: and I got certified as a nutrition and sports coach. But I was really interested in biohacking when that was presented to me, because, as I was health coaching, I realized that gosh! Not everybody was responding to the same plan that I was making? And why was it working for the guys and not for the girls, and or just even the girls and certain girls, and not the others.

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zora benhamou: So that's when I discovered biohacking, which is the we usually refer to a biohacker as somebody who's doing these self experimentations. We understand we're all by individual. We love the science, we love the data, but we love to have this end of one experiment, and that means the only person that matters in the room. Is you right? A study that's done on thousands of people. It's end of

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zora benhamou: 2,000. But N of one means just you and I really like that, because it took a very personalized approach to health and wellness.

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zora benhamou: And then I loved the learning more about the technology and the devices and the science as well as the ancient wisdom, which is the basically, if you have this pyramid of biohacking which I always like it to to refer to. It's the things that we know in terms of the food and the diet and the exercise and the mindset and

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zora benhamou: brain health and community and sleep stress management. That's the foundation. We all kind of know what we need to do, but we don't do it. We all want to go to the middle tier, which are the supplements and the ice bathing and the Sauna use, and things that you probably don't need a doctor, for, although if you do have conditions. Obviously ask your doctor before you do these things. But then we have the top tier, and these are things that we need a doctor for. Usually it's maybe hormone

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zora benhamou: therapy or prp injections, and you know, just sort of next level. So so people tend to skip the base, and they want to go to the middle and the top.

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zora benhamou: But from my experience it doesn't really work, or it doesn't work as well if you don't have the base. And so I was fascinated by this, and I wanted a master's in biohacking, but it doesn't exist. It's like there's just no university is offering this program. But I discovered gerontology, which we had a very synergistic alignment with biohacking. It's just that they didn't know what biohacking was about, and of course they're more about the foundation. Biohackers don't know what gerontology.

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zora benhamou: I think they're all so so important. So I then moved on to get a master's in gerontology, and I absolutely loved it, and that's just bringing that to the masses. But most people, when I talk about longevity people don't really know what that is or what that means. But if you say aging.

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zora benhamou: they understand what that is. So we kind of, you know all the social media content and things that I'm producing is in that because we understand that. But when we want to take it next level, like longevity, like how we have a longer, healthier lifespan. So that's health span, then, you know, that's it's something that interests me very, very much, because it's not about the number of years you're living, but the number of years you're living in good health, full of vitality and free of disease.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, amazing. I've got a question that you have just inspired me to ask. There, it might be slightly off piece of my questions, but you were saying about the base. So people kind of want to go for that middle bit, and then the top, which we see all the time, and we're guilty of doing this as well, like the supplements and the ice bars and things like that. What would? What is the base in your world? What is that base that most people forget?

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zora benhamou: So the 1st thing that a lot of people go to naturally is nutrition, and I'm diet agnostic. I'm a nomad. I've been creating content all over the world. I've been an expat most of my life. I've seen many people thrive on many diets and live a long, healthy life, so for me. Nutrition is whatever works for you.

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zora benhamou: Now, when I'm working with Perimenopausal and menopausal women, we have sort of a blueprint we follow, and we just adjust, and we put in the biohacker into adjusting, because, honestly, it's not simple to say one diet fits all, and I think you you yourself know that then the second part is the movement, and when we say movement, I mean, it's exercise. And again.

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zora benhamou: I've seen different people thrive on different types of exercise, and if you study the blue zones and the people who are living, these are pockets of areas of the world where we have high concentrations of centenarians, where people living over the age of 100, they're not going to a gym.

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zora benhamou: But there are other things that they're doing in terms of their movement. And then the way we would recommend a 99 year old to move and exercise would be very different than a 52 year old person. So again, we have to keep things in perspective. And when we say, Oh, we got to do hiit, and we got to do strength, training, and all these are great, you know. We want to maintain muscle mass, but we have to

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zora benhamou: keep in mind who is your audience, and who are you recommending this to? And the game as we get older is let's not get injured right? We want to

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zora benhamou: do well and lift heavy. We've got to, but we just don't want to keep injuring ourselves. So we have to adjust.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah.

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zora benhamou: And then we've got the sleep component which I really am passionate about. I think it's such a foundation. I always think sleep is medicine, and we we deprive ourselves of that so much. And I think again, like you. You speak about this all the time, too, and anyone who's listening to the health and wellness circles, knows how important that is, and and we just seem to ignore it. And it's such a low hanging fruit. It's free. If we should just get ourselves organized and

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zora benhamou: get to bed and wake up at the same time and go to bed at the same time. Our body loves these rhythms, you have your Circadian rhythm, your natural sleep and wake cycles, and that that tells the rest of the body in terms of what does that. How does it want to? What is the circadian rhythm of every single cell, and every single tissue, and every organ of your body? They all have their own clock. So we, we have this, this rhythm that we would, we would try to achieve. But again, nobody really looks at that.

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zora benhamou: And then we have the stress component. And stress is something that again, I think the people that I've worked with it's the one that they don't want to do the most. It's like, let's just not do that because it's hard. It's hard work to manage stress. And it's not the stress. I mean stresses. We need stressors, especially in the biohacking community with left hormesis and having those small stressors for these great adaptations. But it's our perception of stress

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zora benhamou: that's hurting us. And it's that chronic elevated stress. That's the problem. So I don't like to demonize. I don't like to demonize anything. I don't like to demonize food or some kind of exercise, or we gotta adjust into our modern lifestyle. I think so. If we, if we demonize things and people seem to throw their hands up in the air and go. I can't do it. It's all or nothing, and I don't know how many people you know, with that all or nothing mentality.

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The Midlife Mentors: I just had this conversation just this morning, and they're like, Oh, I'm like, most of us have that kind of all or nothing mentality. But yeah, sorry.

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zora benhamou: Yeah, we need to hear from you, because, in fact, that's so rampant. And if we get it again, change perspective. So. But but stress of all the interviews that I've done, and we've done almost 300 podcast episodes. Now, whenever you speak to somebody who's whether they're selling a supplement or got some protocol, and and you ask them, well, you know what's the biggest driver of aging, or or the diseases that you're talking about.

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zora benhamou: and they wouldn't say their supplement or their magic peptide, they would say, it's the stress, all of that you're doing. You could be running the treadmill and eating broccoli and doing all this stuff. But if you're stressed.

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zora benhamou: that's gonna kill you much faster than than everything else. So it's really when you think about oh, my gosh! All the stress that happens when people try to be healthy like, we can take it a little too far, and we don't want to be stressed about that. We have enough stress in our lives that let's let's things, though. But it is such a big lever to pull, and it's the one that we are so resistant to the most.

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The Midlife Mentors: I have to just share something. I was actually talking to someone yesterday about wearables as well. So it's it's really, it's amazing. So I don't want to demonize anything, either. I love the fact that you don't like to demonize anything because we don't, either. It's like what works for you. But the the wearables absolutely brilliant because they're making people aware of how much they're moving or not moving. That's great. But we can get really stressed out by them

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The Midlife Mentors: as well. So really stressed. You know, I stopped wearing a wearable years ago because I was having a decent night's sleep waking up in the morning, looking down at my watch, my watch said you had a terrible night's sleep, Claire, and then it would make me really stressed. And then that would have an impact on the rest of my day. My mental health, how I exercised!

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The Midlife Mentors: So I just wanted to throw that kind of little tidbit in there because I thought, we do need to be careful about those stresses that seem kind of really insidious. But actually, yeah, a cause.

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zora benhamou: Absolutely.

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The Midlife Mentors: Ally.

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zora benhamou: Yeah, the moment it becomes a stress that that device is going in the in the closet. And the same thing scales. How many people stepped on a scale they gained a pound. They don't know if it's muscle or if it's fat, but they just freak out.

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The Midlife Mentors: The sad step we call it. It's the sad step.

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zora benhamou: The sad stuff.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yes.

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The Midlife Mentors: I just want you to, because actually, what you were just saying there about stress is so so true. It's the thing that you can't see. It's the thing that you can't really measure, isn't it? And people are like, Oh, it's you know. I want those quick fixes. I want to be able to do my diet. I want to be able to do the exercise. I can kind of get something from that. But if I have to start looking at my stress. It's quite arbitrary, and I don't know what that looks like, so I'll just forget about it. But you're right. It's the it's the common denominator that's going to kill you faster than any of the other stuff.

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zora benhamou: Have you ever worn the continuous glucose monitor to measure your blood sugar levels.

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The Midlife Mentors: Hi.

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zora benhamou: So this is a very interesting experiment. Again, I think if it stresses you out, it's only a 2 week experiment. So if you don't want to do it. You just chuck it. But it's very interesting. Because I used to walk. Actually, I'm walking my community. I used to do a lot of other group sessions of trying to teach people how to use a Cgm monitor. And actually, my membership group. The women there are like, let's do. Once. I haven't done one in a while, but they're really interesting experiments, because

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zora benhamou: what you do is you slap on this this thing, that size of a of a coin in the back of your arm. There's a little needle there. I swear it doesn't hurt. It's like a little

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zora benhamou: pinch for a second, and then it actually sees your blood. Sugars rise and fall. So you will be able to. Most people think, okay, well, let's see how I react to rice or to this cookie. Or let's see what happens when I eat these foods, and you can see it rise and fall. And

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zora benhamou: and so you will see how to impact an exercise has on it as well. Some people will do fasting, and what they're looking for is a nice, not these, you know. Many, many of these peaks, but just sort of a nice study of blood sugar levels. And then

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zora benhamou: what people don't realize is that you will have spikes and surges of your blood sugar when you are stressed.

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zora benhamou: even when you're in a fasted state, even when you ate perfectly whatever healthy quote unquote, whatever that means to you. It's it's amazing to see how the blood sugar rises, and then that just means your insulin is going trying trying to drive into the pull out the blood sugar, put it in the muscle and the liver, and the rest gets stored as fat, so people may not realize that there's a lot of damage being done with the stress, and you will see it, and you will measure it

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zora benhamou: with a continuous, glucose monitor. And I think it's quite amazing. And again, I don't want to scare people because there are rises and falls that are normal, and that's great. But but it can give you a little insight into what you think is healthy, and it's not, or what you think is not healthy for you, and actually is. So

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zora benhamou: it's a great experiment to do as a couple or with people you live with, because you may eat exactly the same thing or have a similar lifestyle, and you go well, why are you reacting differently than me? And that's just I think it's 1 of the coolest experiments.

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The Midlife Mentors: Which comes back to that whole. Everyone's different everyone. Everyone is different. There's no kind of like set thing for every single person that works.

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zora benhamou: Exactly exactly. And then the last bit of this foundation that a lot of people don't talk enough about is community purpose in life. What are you here for? In Japanese we have something called ikigai, and.

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The Midlife Mentors: I see.

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zora benhamou: Reason why you wake up in the morning. So those are really important. And if you look at the there's a very famous. There's the Harvard study of adult development, and it's 1 of the longest longitudinal studies on adults. And it started in 1938 with Harvard students originally and only men, and then eventually, they went into other subsets and women, and then they looked at their offspring, and after

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zora benhamou: 70 years or so of data, and in the beginning. Of course, they were just doing blood draws and questionnaires, and then Mris, and then genes. And they could do a lot of lot of technology. And then they concluded they looked at people who died who survived, and they concluded that if you want to live a longer, happier life.

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zora benhamou: more than food more than diet, more than your cholesterol levels, or, more than anything else, smoking exercise. What was most important was strong, healthy relationships that helped us be happier, longer, and.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah.

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zora benhamou: It's unbelievable. And you think well, why, we, especially as we get older.

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zora benhamou: we may tend not everyone but tend to isolate ourselves. Maybe you can't hear so well. So you don't want to go with your friends, or maybe you're everyone lives far away now, and you become lonely, and you don't go out anymore, and these are damaging, and loneliness kills. And this is very different than than being alone. Loneliness meaning, you may have tons of people around you, but you feel lonely. That's like smoking 17 cigarettes a day in terms of the damage it does on the body. So it's it's.

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The Midlife Mentors: Massively increases your mortality risk. It's a really high indicator of mortality, isn't it?

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zora benhamou: Yeah. So nurture your networking.

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The Midlife Mentors: It's heartbreaking, isn't it? And actually, here's the way the society is set up now for us actually to isolate ourselves even more. That's the sad thing. Obviously, we had Covid. We saw what happens to people's mental health, to their physical well-being as well.

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The Midlife Mentors: But we're in this world where we're on our mobile phones where we can kind of put a shell around us where we can just be. Yeah, in that own little world. And we know that relationships are becoming fractured even within the family. People aren't feeling as close to their immediate family because we have

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The Midlife Mentors: the devices right at our fingertips. So yeah, I mean, that's I always find that so fascinating, even though I know consciously what you've just said. I always, when it's said like that as well.

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The Midlife Mentors: It's it's crazy, isn't it? We can do all of these other things. But relationships. This is what human beings are supposed to be about. We're about relationships, community connection.

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zora benhamou: We're social beings, absolutely. And we, you know, of course, we do like to be alone sometimes. But there's there's yeah. It's the social social aspect, and a lot of people who think about

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zora benhamou: the blue zones or well, the Blue Zones. People are drinking alcohol right? They'll have a glass of wine, or Oh, but wine is bad, or people say, Oh, it's the resveratrol that's keeping us alive. And personally, again, I don't have any data proving this, but I think it's it's not the wine, it's it's the connection and the social

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zora benhamou: social play that they're having. It's really really important. So I think that is keeping them longer, living longer, healthier, happier. It's not that they need resveratrol from their red wine.

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The Midlife Mentors: Absolutely well. You've obviously lived in Spain for a lot of many years, and so have we. And you see that you know they've got. It's that it's so beautiful to see, and it always stands out to us when you've got all the family. I just love seeing it when you've got all the families there. Italy, Spain, Portugal, they're all just there enjoying it, and they're sinking some bottles of wine, and they're, you know, perfectly happy and healthy and well.

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The Midlife Mentors: yeah, and they're breaking all the rules like they go to bed after.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah.

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zora benhamou: And the grandparents and the babies are walking around in the summertime at midnight

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zora benhamou: bed and eating late and doing like how? How are you.

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The Midlife Mentors: I know I know exactly so to us Northern Europeans. It's very confusing, isn't it?

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zora benhamou: Yeah. So you just kind of think, well, wait a second. And they're not any, you know, more unhealthy than anyone else. And in fact, they're probably doing a lot better than other cultures. It depends on who you're comparing them to. But obviously it's there's something there, and we have to look at. Well, there's plenty of things to look at, plenty of factors, but I think that social

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zora benhamou: factor is really important. And and you think about, if you remember when you were living in Spain, and you know, when you talk to the locals, they they don't.

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zora benhamou: They don't really like to have their family leaving like it's everybody stays home like you. Don't go look for work in the big city, and not everybody. But you'll see. I get very fascinated when I speak to friends or just locals, and they've just been there forever, and they haven't moved. And they're like, no way. My kids are not going anywhere. And it's and that's again a personal choice. However, you do. I have done differently with my kids, but

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zora benhamou: but I think that has something to do with it in terms of everybody being there for each other.

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The Midlife Mentors: Absolutely, absolutely. And the term biohacking gets thrown around a lot. And when we're talking about biohacking menopause, what's that really mean? And how is it different from maybe a traditional approach?

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The Midlife Mentors: Maybe expand on that? What your go-to biohacks for some of the most common symptoms? Would you say.

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zora benhamou: Oh, yeah, there's well, there are 103 symptoms of menopause. We can't go through all.

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The Midlife Mentors: It's crazy, isn't it? My favorite one was so far was itchy ears.

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zora benhamou: Yes! Oh.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yes. What was that about? Yeah.

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zora benhamou: Itchy ears is the loss of estrogen. So estrogen is hydrating. It's an anti-inflammatory. And so that's why we notice itchy skin, dry skin, itchy ears, dry ears, itchy vagina, all of it is drying up, and what's drying out on the outside is drying up on the inside, and that's that's it's there's a lot of hormones that are at play, but the one you

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zora benhamou: gets blamed the most is estrogen. And so this is this is really one of. And again, not everyone's going to have itchy ears or or dry skin, but it there tend to be there tend to be a lot out there, and so I think that's the culprit is

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zora benhamou: is estrogen, and there's a lot of things that happen when you lose your estrogen. And I just got back from this Menopause Conference in Valencia. And it's just like study after study after study. What happens to a woman when her estrogen and progesterone go away a little bit talking about testosterone, and hardly at all, which I think is hopefully that will change in the future. But yeah.

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The Midlife Mentors: It's.

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zora benhamou: Diseases of aging. Everything increases. Our risk just increases when we lose our hormones. So it's yeah, it's very, very evident.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, and what kind of biohacking?

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zora benhamou: For the for the itchy ears.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah. Yeah. Well, personally for me, I would love to know if you've got any biohacking tips for my itchy ears, which has died off a little bit honestly, the last few days I was like my shoulder. It's just the craziest thing, isn't it? Like my nowhere else on my body? Just my shoulders. Even in the middle of the night, I was like, Oh, my goodness! But yeah, any kind of like biohacking tips and strategies that you have for women that might be going through some of the maybe some

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The Midlife Mentors: of the most I was about to say popular. That's not the word definitely not popular, but like the most common experiences of those symptoms, are there any biohacking tips and strategies? Yeah.

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zora benhamou: Yeah. The shoulder joint pain that you just described without any injury is part of. They call it the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause.

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zora benhamou: And there's research coming out now, showing that our muscles and our bones there's a lot of playing parts here are affected by the loss of estrogen, and, like I mentioned before. Estrogen is a hydrator. Estrogen is a lubricant. Estrogen is an anti-inflammatory. So when you think about your joints, you need fluid in there, right, you need. If there's inflammation, you need

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zora benhamou: to tame the inflammation. And so estrogen is. If that's for me personally, the loss of estrogen, then I would say, let's bring it back in quite simple. Now again, I always as much as I love hormones. I always say you can't out hormone a bad diet and lifestyle.

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The Midlife Mentors: We speak to people like, oh, I've gone on Hrt, but it just doesn't seem to be really making a difference. Then you talk to them. It's like they're still drinking a bottle of wine. And I sat on the sofa ordering takeaways. And you're like, no judgment. I try not to be. But yeah, it's not a magic pill, ladies. It's not a magic pill.

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zora benhamou: Isn't, and you could be doing more damage by not paying attention to that alcohol that you're drinking because estrogen, whether it's your own, or whether it's exogenous meaning you're putting it on from a cream or something, then that has to be detoxified by the liver. Right? There's different types of estrogens, and they have to go through the system like everything else

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zora benhamou: when you drink a glass of wine that also has to be detoxified in the liver. So what happens? Your body prioritizes the alcohol, so we'll have to take the alcohol and process it. Meanwhile you've got toxic estrogen sitting in your body, circulating, waiting its turn. So you're always compromising by having a glass of wine, and I'm saying I want to scare people and all that. But if you're drinking heavily

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zora benhamou: Italy.

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zora benhamou: I don't think you should be on hormones, because that's gonna have to take a backseat, and you may not even feel the effects, because it's just not doing what it needs to do, you're preventing it from from doing its job. So please, yeah.

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The Midlife Mentors: Really love that you said that actually, because that is, that's also our truth as well. This is our truth. It's not the truth. But you know, like what you're saying, there is, you know, if you're taking hormones, you're drinking all that alcohol like you said. It's it's kind of really negatively impacting what you're trying to to help with that that hormone supplementation. So yeah, thanks for saying that.

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zora benhamou: Yeah, no, it's absolutely true. And that being said, when you think about a woman who's there's a spectrum when it comes to menopause symptoms. There are women who feel 0 doesn't mean nothing's happening under the hood, and your body is still going through menopause, even though you don't feel anything. You don't feel your bones getting brittle. You don't feel your arteries getting full of plaque. So

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zora benhamou: that's 1 end of the spectrum. I'm fine. I feel nothing, and then you have the other end of the woman who's getting every single hot flash, every single symptom multiple times a day, fast and furious. And she's just a hot mess, and it's about 25% on each end. And then the rest of us are somewhere in the middle. Okay? So we have to think about the women who are really suffering, who are really feeling all these symptoms, and to tell her to go and do that foundation

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zora benhamou: is nearly impossible because she's not sleeping at night. She's got night sweats like crazy. She's again. Maybe stress all this creates even more stress in her life. And again, it's not just the hormones it is. You're less resilient to some of the stressors in life when you don't have these hormones. So it's a spiral out of control, so she may need a little bit of help support through supplementation of some hormones

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zora benhamou: in order to get her to the gym in order to get her to start cooking healthily, and ordered because she's got a good night's sleep. So when people say I've lost weight because of estrogen. Well, I don't know. Maybe it's it's anabolic. It helps things grow. Maybe it's help with that. But at the same time you've been now going to the gym, thanks to that estrogen. So there's a secondary effect that that may be happening, and not necessarily the hormone itself.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yes, it's like that whole craving when you're so tired, and when your quarters are always high, and you're not sleeping well. And all of these sorts of things. We know that we crave comfort, food, we crave sugar, high energy, food. So actually, if we can, even some of that out. And you are getting a better night's sleep, and you don't. You know there's there's just a little bit more balance in your life.

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The Midlife Mentors: Then actually, you might be craving. We don't know but you might be craving less sugary, high energy food. And that's actually it's exactly what we're saying. And and it's totally right. I think sometimes it's very what I sometimes see is

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The Midlife Mentors: women being shamed at that end, I suppose, of the spectrum that 25% that you mentioned where they're like, I literally, I don't have the motivation. I can't get going. I can't even get up and go for a walk around the block. It's just feels too difficult. But you know what you're saying. There is that hormone supplementation is just that little edge, that little push that will just get them going a bit.

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zora benhamou: Yeah, if that's the if that's the root cause, right?

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, yeah.

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zora benhamou: The root cause then oh, my gosh! It's like life changing, I've heard

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zora benhamou: like, Oh, my God! I can move my shoulder now.

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The Midlife Mentors: Hi.

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zora benhamou: Change anything, and then they're about to. Then they go to the gym, and they do more shoulder exercises, or they continue on the path. But if that was the root cause, then wow!

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zora benhamou: It's amazing how quickly that can be. And but in my experience, when I have meetings with communities of women who are on hormones or doctors, and they're listening to them. How they're treating their patients. They say in general, it's about 25% of the women who get on hormone therapy get it right the 1st time it's like, don't need to see that person for the next year.

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zora benhamou: Wow! What about the other 75% who need tweaking, or who say this doesn't work, or it's making me feel worse, or my symptoms are not. And that's because you haven't figured out your formula right? It's a personalization. And that's why, in my opinion, doctors don't want to deal with women menopause. Because

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zora benhamou: who wants to deal with that. We know what's going to happen. If I give her an antidepressant or a sleeping pill. It's the same for everybody, and she's going to be happy, and it's tough to work through a woman to try to get self titrate or to get her in the right dosage or the formula. You maybe change the delivery method. There's just so much out there. I get it. And then to get the extra training, it's expensive, and it's time consuming

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zora benhamou: who wants to do that. But unfortunately, that's just the way it is, and hasn't been. Menopause isn't isn't part of much of the curriculum in medical schools, but I hope it's it's going to change.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, something we hear over and over that a lot of doctors just don't have enough awareness of it. Currently, Zora, this has been fascinating. We could talk for hours about this. But I know listeners are going to find out more. Where can people find out more about you, your podcast and your work.

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zora benhamou: Okay. But for that I feel like I didn't give you the biohacks for the for the menopause.

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The Midlife Mentors: Oh, okay, give us a buy hat.

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zora benhamou: Yeah, yeah, I mean, like.

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The Midlife Mentors: Guys doesn't really, you know. But I do. I'm I'm absolutely interested in some biohacks. Please.

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zora benhamou: Yes, yeah. I mean, aside from hormones. Okay, let's just say, aside from that, I think in terms of the hot flashes, this is something that's that's I think many women are experiencing it. About 80% of women are seeing some kind of a hot flash or night sweat in some level. And if if you don't want to do hormones, there's there's some supplements out there that that

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zora benhamou: that can be effective. Again, the research is showing that Hrt. Is across the board the most effective. But it's not for everybody. And so if you want to play around, there's supplements. There are studies that show

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zora benhamou: fabulous results with Pycnogenol, for example, is one type of supplement and other results show studies showing it doesn't do anything at all. So again, this is your own little biohacking experiment is to try to get some of these supplements. I think some of the other supplements that are also very often thrown around in maybe menopause

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zora benhamou: bottles of supplements. Then is Ashwagandha, Rhodiola.

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zora benhamou: black cohosh again. These are things again. Play around with them. Maybe they'll work. Maybe not. But it's quite it's simple and easy to do. The other thing is stress. Again, I go back to stress. I meet many women who say stress is a trigger for a hot flash.

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zora benhamou: So again, anything to reduce the stress. And that can be just journaling at night before you go to bed or not hanging around that toxic person that's triggering you. These are things newcom. I don't know. If you know nucomm, it's this neuro acoustic software that I have it in my phone. I just absolutely love it.

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The Midlife Mentors: How can I do that?

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zora benhamou: It's in the biohacking, like all the biohackers use it, but I've been using it for for about 2 years now. I've been recommending it, and it works fabulously. So you just listen to them. It's not binaural beats. It's it's a software that's programmed to get your brain into a meditative state, and I I used to call it meditation made easy. And because I felt like, you know, when you have the brain that just you know, most of us have monkey brains, and it's hard to bring it back in

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zora benhamou: kind of does it for you. It's quite amazing.

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The Midlife Mentors: Fridays.

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zora benhamou: Yeah.

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The Midlife Mentors: I mean, I will let you know how I get on with that.

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zora benhamou: It's try it, try it. There's a 7 day free trial. So that's what I'm that's new. I'm so happy to have that because I'd recommend it, and they make people, you know, buy a month or something, but try that. But I've also been using it. I just had a total hip replacement. I actually had 2 crazily enough. It's a whole. Other podcast that we can talk about.

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The Midlife Mentors: Oh, my goodness, the recovery! And and when I was.

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zora benhamou: When I was doing the before the surgery. I was stressed and naturally so, and I started to feel anxiety, and I don't get anxiety, but I recognized it right away because of my work, and every single woman describing this, and it's a horrible feeling, like a squeezing of the chest. I was waking up at 2 am. With my mind racing. Is this going to hurt? Will my body be traumatized for the rest of my life? What if I wake up in the middle of the surgery, do I need

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zora benhamou: therapy for the rest of my life if I go to wake up so? A lot of crazy thoughts in your head. And I started to do the newcom, and I did it because I remember the women in my community were telling me. It helps them with anxiety, and it worked like a charm. The day

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zora benhamou: woke up. I woke up. I didn't. I slept through the night, woke up, and just felt like, bring it on. I was shocked. I was shocked. So I'm a big fan of that for for stress and stress management. Ice bathing, hey? You know, if you're hot, there are studies showing it reduces hot flashes by 50%.

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zora benhamou: Yeah, it does. And I want to stress as well that

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zora benhamou: a lot of women out there are saying. You know what the hot flashes are not so bad, or you know, I'll just plug right through it, and I don't recommend that because there's this study called the Study of Women Women's Health across the Nation, and they found out that the women who have more hot flashes earlier on during menopause. They have a higher risk of heart disease.

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zora benhamou: thyroid issues, diabetes and insulin resistance, dementia, incontinence, vaginal atrophy utis

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zora benhamou: the list goes on. So don't just go. I'm going to push right through it, I would say. Why don't you figure that out and then lower your risk of all of these diseases, of aging.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, yeah, we're massive fans of cold water plunging. But again, like not to. I mean, this will be I might have to get you back for a whole thing around this. But obviously there's research coming out now about the kind of temperature that women should be like. There's a difference between the temperature that men should be going in and women should be going in. But that's a whole other. I just interrupted you, then are there any other kind of like tips before we wrap up to to share with our listeners around some biohacking.

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zora benhamou: I would say, if for biohacking menopause

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zora benhamou: become your best advocate yourself, you're self advocating. Don't take no for an answer. If you're still suffering.

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The Midlife Mentors: Amazing.

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zora benhamou: There is so much out there, and unfortunately women are being dismissed too much by their doctor saying, Oh, it's in your head, or it's not that big of a deal welcome to your new normal. This is aging. I'm sorry I would refuse to accept that for any man or woman, but honestly, because menopause is having a moment, it's getting a movement. Some people roll their eyes. But do your homework

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zora benhamou: read up on hormones whether it's your own hormones or exogenous hormones. Understand what's happening in menopause and go armed

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zora benhamou: with your data, with your research, with even a list of your symptoms to your doctor, and then insist on getting help. And honestly, you don't need to suffer, and I think that's the biggest thing, and it's just once you once you get a little help from your doctor, and even if you don't get a help from your doctor, you become a biohacker. Get that biohacker hat on. Start experimenting with all that you find out there, whether it's supplements, or the ice bath or Sauna use, or

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zora benhamou: going outside and seeing the sun and setting the circadian rhythm and exercise, and you'll you'll find a way and again be trying every diet around the world. But your body will tell you what it likes and what it needs, and and you'll you'll just, you know, figure it out if you need help. You just get in touch with me.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yes, I was going to say such lovely advice to finish on actually, thank you so much where I know people are going to want to go. Oh, my goodness! How can I get in touch with Zora? So how can our listeners? What's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

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zora benhamou: So hackmyage.com is the website. You can find all my social media there. But all my social media is is hack my age on Tiktok and Instagram and Facebook. And we just hit 100,000 in Facebook and any day now in Instagram. And we're having a giveaway.

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The Midlife Mentors: We will, and it's been. It's really has been talking to you for ages. Maybe we'll get you back at some point if you're willing to do so. But thank you so much again for those really incredible insights. I've learned a lot myself. So yeah, thank you for being here.

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zora benhamou: Thank you so much for having me.

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The Midlife Mentors: I'm Zora.

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The Midlife Mentors: that's it.