Ep. 67 Perimenopause is NOT a Disease: The Natural Path is Possible

Hey friend,

If you’ve ever felt like perimenopause is stealing your energy, your sleep, or even your sense of self—you are not alone.

Most women are told the only way forward is prescriptions or hormone replacement therapy. But here’s the truth: menopause is not a disease. It’s a biological transition every woman is designed to go through.

In this week’s episode, I’m breaking down how to navigate perimenopause naturally—so you can stop just surviving and start thriving again.

Inside the episode, you’ll learn:

👉 Why perimenopause isn’t a “deficiency” and what your symptoms are really telling you

👉 The truth about estrogen dominance, night sweats, and mood swings

👉 How cortisol and blood sugar hijack your hormones—and what to do about it

👉 The role your gut and liver play in clearing hormones (and why sluggish detox = worse symptoms)

👉 Lifestyle shifts that make the biggest difference—sleep, strength training, connection, and joy

🎧 Listen now: Episode 67 – Perimenopause Without Prescriptions: How to Support Your Body Naturally

Your symptoms aren’t random. They’re signals. And when you support your body the way it was designed, you don’t just get relief—you get your life back.

In health & hormone harmony,

Tracy Erin

Registered Nurse + Integrative Health Practitioner

Balance your hormones. Elevate your life.

✨ Before you go…

If your hormones feel out of control and you don’t know where to start, I’d love to invite you into The Balanced Hormone Solution—my 90-day reset that helps women restore energy, mood, and metabolism without prescriptions or endless guesswork.

You don’t have to go through this alone. Let’s map your way back to feeling like yourself again. 💖

Transcript

0:01

What if I told you perimenopause doesn't have to feel like the end of who you are, but instead the invitation to step into your most vibrant, powerful season. Yet today we're talking about how to go through perimenopause naturally without prescriptions, without guesswork, and without losing yourself in the process.

Speaker 5: 0:33

Welcome to the Balance Hormone Solution Podcast. If you're a woman 35 plus feeling exhausted, struggling to lose weight, and wondering where your libido went, this is for you. I am Tracy Aaron, a functional medicine practitioner who helps women balance their hormones naturally. Without prescriptions, guesswork, or trending Nonsense.'cause here's the truth, your symptoms aren't random. They're signals. And if you know how to listen, you can fix the root cause and start feeling like yourself again. If you're ready for real solutions, let's get to it.

1:12

Welcome to the Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast. I am your host, Tracy Aaron, a functional medicine women's hormone health specialist, a registered nurse, and your hormone BFFI help women 35 plus balance their hormones naturally so they can finally get their energy. Confidence and vibrancy back. So if you are ready for some practical solutions mixed in with science and a whole lot of hope, then you are in the right place. Today we're gonna talk all about perimenopause, and I'm just going to warn you right now, I could be stepping on some of your toes. There is a lot of noise out there right now when it comes to perimenopause and menopause. There's some big names that are on the scene. People have written books and Instagram is full of people who are encouraging, no, demanding that we cannot age properly without a prescription. And today I wanna talk about that. And to be honest with you, I want to talk against that. Now, here's the truth. I get it. Perimenopause can feel like chaos. Right. We have been living our childbearing years with a steady stream. Now. They have been changing, but we've been having a steady stream of hormones rushing through our bodies day after day, week after week, month after month, and we get to a certain point in time when our ovaries began to get tired. They shut down. They're ready for retirement as they should, right? They've been doing a beautiful job the majority of their lives, and here they are. They're done. Now what? Well, we begin to decrease in progesterone and estrogen stays a little high for a while until we cross over to the menopause post-menopausal years, and we enter into more of a masculine picture of a steady state of estrogen and progesterone for the rest of our lives as opposed to the up and down that we had been experiencing through the child buried years. Now this transition. Can feel like mood swings out of nowhere. We can get night sweats, hot flashes, belly flat, belly fat that wasn't there last year. No matter what you eat, brain fog, that makes you forget what you walked into the room for. Somebody's name, what you had on your calendar, where you put your keys. Right now. Most women are conditioned to believe that this is the moment or the season where their body begins to break down or. We are told that the only solution is medication prescriptions or hormone replacement therapy, but here is the truth. If you get nothing else from this message today, here's what I want you to know. Menopause and perimenopause is not a disease. It's a biological transition. Every woman is designed to go through so you're not broken. This is designed to happen, and furthermore, we are beautifully and perfectly designed, so it's just really hard for me to get behind, especially from a Christian perspective, to get behind the idea that our later years as women with a lower hormone load is faulty, is broken, is a disease, is something that needs to be fixed. I can't help but think over and over and over. If we were meant to have high estrogen and progesterone through the rest of our lives, then God would've made us that way, but he didn't. We are done with our childbearing years when we're coming into menopause. And furthermore, menopause truly is just one point in time. Menopause is clinically defined as 12 months without a period. So you have a menopause date that you can write down 12 months, no period. This is menopause. Everything after that is post menopause, this entire transition. That we could just call Aging is natural and normal, and it's true, it's not without symptoms, but the bumpier your ride, the more the invitation exists for you to look deep into your life and see. All of the reasons that could be contributing to the symptoms you're experiencing. Now, what do I mean by that? Perimenopause is a time for reflection more than anything else. It's a time for us to look back at our twenties and thirties at how we lived our lives and. Based on how we answer that question can determine how smoothly we make this transition through perimenopause, into mepo, into menopause, and over to the other side. So if we have, we have to get honest with ourselves, we really need to take a good look and reflect on how we've lived our lives up to this point. Right. Have we been undereating living a stressed out lifestyle? Over exercising. Do we have unresolved trauma, constantly living in fight or flight? Maybe we've spent years restricting carbs and minerals or staying in a relationship or job that ultimately drains us. If we reframe this season of life that your body is not trying to betray you, it's literally saying instead, it's time to change how you've been living with this mental reframe. Menopause can be your moment where your physiology forces you to take a deep look of how you've been living and rewrite your future. Doesn't that sound empowering? You are not broken and need pharmaceuticals to get through this stage of life. You just need some self-awareness, some reflection, and a solid plan moving through it. Now, most of my clients come to me, age 35 plus. They're in this perimenopause period. We don't know when menopause is going to hit for various women. We used to think that it had to do with our mother's age, but you know, we've got a lot going on now. We've got a generation coming off of decades of birth control use that's really impacted what age we're going to go into menopause. Some women don't even notice if they've gone through menopause, if they've been on the birth control pill through their forties. Eventually get off of it. Without testing to see where their FSH or follicle stimulating hormone is. They simply don't even know if they're in menopause or not. Or on the other side is what I mean. So a lot of women come to me in this age range though, and they say the same thing. This is what this season is all about. I just don't feel like myself anymore. I feel like I'm disappearing. Right. So one client, you know, she had, she had told a lot of my clients, they're told their only options. You can go on birth control, you can do antidepressants or hormone replacement therapy. Now, most of my clients, when they're told this, they feel trapped. They feel completely powerless. They're not interested in another prescription. They just want their lives back. But what women are not told in this stage is that perimenopause is not a deficiency disease. Our hormones naturally are meant to shift with age, and because we're no longer meant to sup, okay? So what happens here is that we are no longer having enough hormones to support a pregnancy, but we have enough hormones to support the biological processes of life. Right. Does that make sense? So we have less than we had before, but only because we are not meant to continue to build up our endometrial lining, receive an egg, build a baby, birth a baby, breastfeed all the things. That's not what this season of life is about. And yes, I understand as a mother of five, it can be a time of grieving, right? Grieving that that season of motherhood is now officially behind us. And there's a lot to be said for the emotional work that needs to go into. Healing through perimenopause and menopause years. But nonetheless, it is not a disease of deficiency. This hormone shift is meant to happen. Our bodies are brilliantly designed to adapt. What happens is that our adrenals and even our body fat begins to step in to help carry the hormonal load. So. Think about it this way, most menopausal women gain a little bit of weight. What if we thought about that weight gain as protective, right? Because it's going to carry us through the lower estrogen years. Now, if we can focus on root causes, things like blood, sugar, stress, gut health, then we can get our energy back. We can even get our cycles to smooth out, even if they're coming irregularly. Okay. And we can finally say, in truth, I finally got my life back. This is not only possible, this is what happens when I work with women in the balanced hormone solution, and that's because we work on the foundations. Before anybody considers hormone replacement therapy, it's very, very important to consider the foundations first. So number one, let's reframe perimenopause. It is not a deficiency disease. It's simply a transition that is normal and natural meant to happen. Hormones during this time period aren't just dropping to zero. We're simply producing less because our body is not designed to carry babies anymore. The season of pregnancy is now behind us. Also some symptoms like heavy cycles, breast tenderness, anxiety, night sweats. These are coming from estrogen dominance, not low estrogen. So this is a really interesting thing because when we go through perimenopause, a lot of women get on. Estrogen, but estrogen is not the first hormone to decline in the perimenopausal years. Progesterone is. So if progesterone is decreasing faster than estrogen, and estrogen is staying relatively high, why are we giving even more estrogen? Estrogen is beginning to decrease, and I think really the answer is, is because it decreases in waves. It has dips, peaks and valleys, and that unpredictable nature of estrogen decreasing over time can be quite uncomfortable if our foundations are not in place. But let's think critically about this. Is the solution truly to just add more estrogen? That's the question that I want to ask ourselves. Is this safe? For whom is this safe? And what doses is safe? And do the foundations actually matter? So for number two. We really need to be thinking about balancing stress and cortisol because cortisol, chronic stress. Right, and this cortisol pumping through our veins, that's what's robbing us of the progesterone that we need. And this can make our symptoms worse. So natural support, things like morning sunlight, evening wind down routines, breath work, prayer, journaling. These are all going to reroute cortisol into making. A maximum amount of progesterone for us. This is really, really key as we come into our perimenopausal years. Never before have we had a generation of stressed out women like we have now. We have the feminist movement, which has produced a lot of women who believe that they should live masculine lifestyles and work. Demanding nine to five jobs, and instead of nurturing our lives with maybe fulfillment and joy and purpose, we've pushed ourselves to the max. So when we get to this perimenopause time of life and progesterone is decreasing, naturally, cortisol is at, its all time high. So this. Combo is a recipe for a ton of symptoms during this time of life. Number three, we've got to get on top of mastering our blood sugar, and that's because insulin resistance is a hidden saboteur in perimenopause and that fluctuating blood sugar is going to. Contribute to things like mood swings, weight gain, cravings, low energy and fatigue, right? So we need to really be prioritizing those protein forward meals, minerals like magnesium, potassium, sodium resistance training. Re our muscle is the longevity, is the, uh, the organ of longevity, right? It is metabolically active. The more muscle we have, the longer. We can live, right? So we need to, uh, build more. We need to focus our, uh, away from our focus, take our focus away from cardio, move it towards resistance training and building muscle, which will also help our bones as we age, which is a concern. And one of the reasons why a lot of people get, uh, you know, subject to all this fear mongering, if you have to be on HRT or you're gonna die of osteoporosis, well what if we, you know. Actually prioritize resistance training, building muscle on our body that can help as well. Um, you know, something about the osteoporosis is our bones aren't built on estrogen alone. There's obviously other factors that go into this, so when we get into the mentality that it's this or this, then we really run the risk of seeing things in a narrow-minded way. It's very important to not look at anything from a root cause perspective as if it's. You know, the, um, golden ticket. If it's the magic pill, we take this one thing and it's gonna solve all of our problems because clearly it does not women on estrogen and hormone, other hormone replacement therapy still get brittle, brittle bones, still get osteoporosis, still suffer, right? So it's not solving every single problem, and that's what the foundations are for. So number four is we've got to support our liver and our gut. And that's because. Estrogen leaves the body through our liver and our gut. It gets metabolized and eliminated through our liver and our gut. So if they're sluggish, our estrogen that's in our body is gonna build up. That excess estrogen is going to contribute to more symptoms, right? So a lot of fiber in our diet. Things like cruciferous vegetables, bitter greens, hydration, probiotic rich foods like fer. Fermented foods, these are really going to help with our microbiome. Make sure that we have enough fiber moving through our diet. We're eliminating things properly. All of our enzymes are in check, and we're not creating a dysbiotic environment with too little good bacteria to, to many of the bad guys, which is going to ultimately contribute to hormone issues if our gut is dysfunctional. And lastly, we've got to look, take an honest look at ourselves about our lifestyle. We need. To reflect on how we've lived, look at our symptoms, look at the way that we have lived the last decade and a half. Have we been undereating over exercising? Where's their unresolved stress and trauma? This is a wake up call. It's time to really look at things deeply and clearly right now. And the thing is that supplements can help and even hormone replacement therapy can help. There's no argument there. Can it? Provide symptom relief a hundred percent. The question is at what cost and it in the natural healing world, what we believe is you cannot supplement your way out of a lifestyle problem. You've heard it before. You cannot out exercise a bad diet. This is no different. We've got to maintain prioritizing things like sleep strength training. And oxytocin rich activities that are going to bring down that stress level, right? The connection, the laughter, the intimacy. It's time to begin prioritizing pleasure and joy, meaningful activities, rather than running around stressed all the time, feeling late, anxious, et cetera. It's time to rebuild our lives. If we will listen to this invitation and rebuild properly, then. We can set ourself on a path for success through the perimenopause and menopause years so that we can experience fewer and quite possibly no symptoms at all. So I want you to know more than anything that you have options. I'm telling you, you cannot be on Instagram for more than two seconds without somebody shouting at you that you need hormone replacement therapy. If there's a certain song that was from your childhood, or if you wore a certain pair of shoes or. If this lip gloss was familiar to you, right, we are being shouted at from the rooftops that we simply cannot survive. Something I want you to consider too is we have to wonder why. Why is hormone replacement now more than ever so popular? It's time to look at the deeper questions. It's time to look at. What is being sold? Am I being served or is this really, is this, is this really helping me live a fruitful and healthy life? Or is this making me more dependent on medication month after month after month? I am not saying I wanna be clear that I don't recommend, um, or that I don't, uh, think that anybody could benefit from hormone replacement therapy at certain times in their lives. I've seen it help. I do think that it can be a really great symptom relief from time to time, but does everyone need to be on it? No. And the message coming to me, at least from what I am reading and seeing and inundated in, is that we simply cannot survive well or age well. That whole science of longevity that we cannot age well without a really great. Support from things like GLP ones and peptides and hormone replacement therapy, all these exogenous things that we're putting in our body, and we have to be clear, they all have a physiological effect on our body. Okay, so the main thing right now is I just want to ask the questions. I just want to be a place for you to come to and recognize that. Maybe hormone replacement therapy is right and best for you, but not until you've spent a minimum of six months to maybe what would be even best would be a year building up your foundation so that you can make sure you can handle hormones before you just dump them into the system. Right? And it's time to think critically about them as well. Anytime you turn on the tv, internet, social media, et cetera, and you are. Constantly being told that you cannot do something that is a natural process without a pharmaceutical product. It is time to ask ourselves why, who is benefiting from this? Is this best for women's health? Or is this a huge marketing ploy? The thing is, is that, um, hormone replacement therapy is a huge, huge financial industry. And, uh, I think it was like it's expected to reach somewhere around like 37 billion by 2030, we've got to start asking questions. Who is benefiting from this? Is it us? Or is this being repackaged? Remember when we were younger and we were all told that we needed to get on the pill and it would so solve all of our problems? That was additional hormones. What if this is something similar? It's time to really keep our eyes wide open. Yes, there are fantastic. Practitioners out there, and I'm going to interview one, um, on Friday, and we'll hear all about how she uses HRT in her practice and to that patient's benefit. There's, there's no question whether or not it can help, but is it right for everybody? Is it right for every woman? And more than anything, what I want you to know is that your body was designed. To survive declining hormones until we reach the point where we are on the other side, post-menopausal and subsisting on just a biological necessary amount. That is by design, that was intelligent, that was on purpose. So we don't have to fear that we're not going to make it through this phase of life without prescriptions. Without endless doctor's appointments every three months and having monthly bills that are gonna cover all of these things. Also, the way that you lived your life up until this point is going to determine. How many symptoms, if any, you even experience to begin with. So it's really a personal time of reflection more than anything. So before you run out and you get on HRT, I hope that you educate yourself, that you really begin to ask some deeper questions around who is benefiting from this? Is this truly what I need? Can I accomplish what I desire from another? Way, and have I supported my body in all the ways that I need to support it before I start on a prescription. Okay, so know this, that your body is intelligently designed. Perimenopause is not a disease to treat. It's simply a transition, a natural transition in your life that is calling for support. So when you listen to your body and you nurture it naturally, you're not just going to survive this​season. Everybody makes it out to some death sentence, but you can rise through it. All right, so if this episode resonated with you and you're ready for a personalized roadmap to reset those foundations, I would love to invite you to join me inside the balanced hormone solution. That's my 90 day reset. We help you restore that energy, mood, metabolism, naturally without prescriptions, without endless guesswork, no extreme diets'cause healing is not just possible. We should expect it. When we do it right. Okay. I will see you in the next episode.

Speaker 9: 24:26

That's it for today's episode of the Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast. If this resonated, don't just listen. Do something about it. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you know another woman who's tired of feeling like a stranger in her own body. Send her this way for more support. Check out the show notes. I've got resources to help you get started. Just remember, your body isn't broken, you just need the right tools. See you next time.