Perimenopause Symptoms, Stress & Root Cause Healing | Naturopath Kate Driver l EP39

Are your symptoms trying to tell you something? If you've been dealing with anxiety, fatigue, poor sleep, brain fog, or digestive issues in your 40s — this episode is for you.

In this episode of The Midlife Awakening, host Odilia sits down with Kate Driver — naturopath with over 25 years of clinical experience and founder of The PeriMenopause Practitioner. Kate has personally navigated perimenopause twice, overcoming nervous system dysregulation, histamine intolerance, thyroid dysfunction, and burnout. She now helps women around the world understand the root causes of their midlife symptoms — and heal naturally.

 🌐 Connect with Kate Driver:

Website: https://theperimenopausepractitioner.com/

Free Masterclass: https://kate-driver-naturopath.newzenler.com/f/the-midlife-fatigue-fix-5-day-workshop-may

Facebook Community (Perimenopause & Menopause Holistic Support): https://www.facebook.com/groups/1659127120790375

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@katedriver8874

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-driver-65a062bb/

Transcript

The Midlife Awakening (00:00)
Today's guest is Kate Driver, a naturopath with over 25 years of clinical experience specializing in women's health with a particular focus on perimenopause and menopause. Now aren't those the two buzzwords for midlife?

Kate helps women in their 40s and beyond get to the root causes of symptoms like fatigue, poor sleep, weight gain, digestive issues and brain fog.

And she uses a holistic natural approach that looks at the whole picture. What makes Kate's perspective truly unique is that she has personally navigated both perimenopause and menopause herself, combining her lived experience with deep clinical expertise. Kate specializes in naturopathy and live and dry blood analysis. And she believes wholeheartedly that midlife is not a breakdown, it is an awakening.

So have you ever felt like your body just changed overnight? Like the sleep suddenly disappeared, your anxiety crept in, and of course there is the brain fog that comes out of nowhere. And no one can really tell you why, but you know you don't feel like yourself. Now, if that sounds familiar, you're in exactly the right place. Welcome back to the Midlife Awakening podcast. I'm so glad that you're here today for this conversation because it could genuinely change the way that you see your own body.

I'm your host Odelia and today we're diving deep into one of the most misunderstood transitions in a woman's life. Perimenopuase and menopause. My guest today has spent over 25 years helping women understand what is actually happening in their bodies during midlife and more importantly what they can do about it naturally. We're talking about the root causes of symptoms like fatigue, anxiety, poor sleep, gut issues and brain fog.

The connections between your stress levels, nervous system, hormones and digestion that most doctors don't have the time to explain and why midlife isn't the beginning of the end, it's an opportunity to heal more deeply than ever before. This episode is packed with real practical insight from someone who has both lived this journey and guided hundreds of women through it. So let's get stuck in.

Odilia|The Midlife Awakening (02:11)
Welcome to the Midlife Awakening podcast. I'm your host, Odilia. This is a podcast about transformation for women who are waking up to who they really are while navigating everything that comes with midlife. And I want you to know I'm on this journey right alongside you.

This is the show where we explore everything from the spiritual tools that can help us in our daily practices to healing modalities that we can use to heal what we've been carrying for so long to the everyday midlife topics that a midlife woman faces like perimenopause, finances, career changes, and so much more. Each week we go deeper into what it means to heal, to awaken, and to finally become the most authentic version of yourself. I'm so glad that you found your way here.

speaker-1 (02:59)
Okay, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. It's so great to have you. So why don't we start with because I just, I'd love to start with your story. how did your own experience of perimenopause and menopause shape the way you now work with women?

speaker-0 (03:15)
Thanks, Adelia. And hello, everybody. Yes, I do have my own story. well, I've been a naturopath for over 26 years now, and I have worked with women in perimenopause and menopause for a long time. And when I went through perimenopause myself, which was my early 40s, I realised that there was a lot more of

things that are underlying why women get symptoms in perimenopause and menopause I would have been in my early 40s and at this stage I was going through a lot of personal stress and my body was being driven very hard. So I experienced lots of symptoms and my symptoms started with things like sleep issues and anxiety and

I realized that I was going through perimenopause and then I decided to start specializing in it because I came up with a system and realized that even though I'd been helping my clients for a long time and treated them successfully, there was a lot more to it than I even realized as a naturopath. I'd been a naturopath for a long time already then. And I started ⁓ getting my symptoms under control pretty quickly.

Because of that, not only just through naturopathic sort of supplements, but lifestyle changes, mindset changes even, and looking at the whole picture holistically. And then I went through like a second perimetropause in my mid-40s. I had another load of stress. I think there was ⁓ a lot of personal stress with a relationship breakdown and that sort of thing. And started to experience symptoms then and they were quite different.

That was more around the thyroid and histamine issues and allergies and some nervous system symptoms. and it was around that time I thought, okay, I'm going to specialize in perimenopause and menopause because even though lot more is known about it now and everybody's talking about it back then there wasn't enough.

awareness around it even like, and women didn't even know really there was this thing called perimenopause. They just thought you went through menopause and that was it. Yeah. So I decided to write a program. I wrote a program about six or seven years ago and I took women through that live for a few years and started specializing in it ⁓ face to face, but also online with this program that I wrote for perimenopause or women and got really good, great success with that too. And I'm still so passionate about it and learning

Always learning, we're always learning as practitioners. ⁓ know, everybody learns every day and if you don't, then you're sort of not moving forward and helping your clients as much as you can. And now I'm post-menopausal. ⁓ I can, you know, talk about my journey and say, you know, there's another side. The other side is absolutely fine. And even my menopause was quite easy compared to perimenopause. Perimenopause is sometimes for women the harder time.

where everything, all the hormones are going a bit crazy.

speaker-1 (06:17)
Absolutely. Thank you for sharing your story. That's really great. And it's good to know that there are people who have come out on the other side that can share their own experience with us to help those of us that are starting off on this journey What would you say is even though there's this big awareness now around perimenopause and menopause, what would you say is still the biggest thing that we don't talk about enough during this transition?

speaker-0 (06:39)
I like to say that it's the great revealer ⁓ that perimenopause actually reveals where the imbalances are in your body. And that have been for such a long time that it's a recalibration and you know, everybody talks about being a transition or, or even, know, am I, my body's failing me and it's doing all these wrong things, but it's actually a time where your hormones are recalibrating, but they fluctuating as well. And everything

goes a bit out of balance, it is also a mindset shift that perimetropause is a natural transition and not something to be afraid of or be scared of or just assume that you have to have terrible symptoms because

a lot of women that are talking about it, saying a lot of negative things about their symptoms, and this is terrible, it's the worst time of your life, but it doesn't have to be. And you can, even if you are going through a hard stage, you can actually get the symptoms under control really quickly and easily, ⁓ and just understanding that the body is going through this big change, and your body is adjusting to it. It's really about...

Yeah, letting your body do what it has to do and adjust and not fighting against it.

speaker-1 (07:49)
And what would you say are some early signs that tend to get overlooked that could be early signs of perimenopause that women should be aware of?

speaker-0 (07:57)
Yeah, so some early signs I would say, because a lot of people think that's just hot flushes and your period changing. And I get that all the time with my clients that they say, I'm not sure if I've been perimenopausal, I've got these symptoms, but my periods fine. I would have to say it would be things like sleep, all of a sudden, their sleep issues they might not have had sleep issues, they might not be able to go to sleep.

They might feel wired and tired at nighttime. They might be waking up at quite a common time between two and four AM or two and three AM. And this can be a bit of a sign. Newly found exhaustion and fatigue. A lot of women do suffer through that. That was my second phase as well. And I just get loads of women with that, those sorts of symptoms and aren't really sure if that's to do with perimenopause. But the body, because it's recalibrating and the brain is affected by this change in the hormones and it can make you feel very tired.

and fuzzy in the head, like brain fog can be one of them. But then digestive issues like bloating or newly found diarrhea or constipation and a low tolerance to stress is a really common one. A lot of women start getting anxiety, but they also say, my God, I just wanna yell at everybody. ⁓ I'm so stressed all the time and I don't really know what's happening because I was never like that. So that's really.

a big one, stress intolerance or feeling overwhelmed all the time. there is, it's like the body hasn't got that buffer anymore because the progesterone has dropped quite dramatically, especially when there has been long-term stress. That was really one of the hormones that help buffer the stress that actually keeps us in more of that chilled out feeling sort of mode in that parasympathetic part of the nervous system that is called the rest and digest. So once that drops,

then everything feels a lot harder and a lot worse and overwhelming. And women tend to feel, yeah, more uptight and like everything is just harder. But then other symptoms can be, even if their periods haven't changed, that usually comes eventually some sort of shift in their menstrual cycle, but their PMS or premenstrual syndrome or premenstrual tension sort of symptoms can actually start showing up or even get worse. And some women actually like myself might start

getting headaches, I think I had a few headaches that I never had around my period before. So even things like that can be little subtle signs that things are changing. Yes, I would have to say they're probably the main ones that I've experienced with myself and my clients.

speaker-1 (10:25)
And we're talking about the phases. So is it normal for a woman to go through different phases, different phases in perimenopause?

speaker-0 (10:34)
It is because there's fluctuations in estrogen. So generally to begin with, there's estrogen surges and you tend to have high estrogen and a lot of the symptoms can feel a lot worse and a bit all over the place. Like one minute you can feel terrible, have this breast tenderness and headaches and migraines and heavy periods and things like endometriosis or fibroids might even start showing up in women in their 40s. ⁓

So that can be that estrogen sort of surge phase and you can still have estrogen dominance even if you don't show high estrogen on a blood test. And then the estrogen starts fluctuating but then you can get drops where it actually drops even further. So it can go up and down but then drop even more along with the progesterone. So the progesterone has probably started out being lower already but then when it drops even more

Really it's through the adrenals that help buffer this change. And if the adrenal glands, which produce your stress hormones, if they're not functioning up to par or they're a bit dysfunctional and they're not producing the stress hormones at the right time, then they don't take over this fluctuation in hormones or the drop in hormones efficiently. So usually it would be later on that the adrenals start perhaps faltering a bit, but I find that women just enter this stage with these full-on symptoms.

that which can eventually get worse if they just ignore the nervous system and their stress levels and just push through and push harder and say, well, I've got to keep working. I've got to keep doing this. And that long-term stress can actually cause more issues,

speaker-1 (12:08)
was going to be my next question is what is the impact of long-term stress? Because I don't think we truly understand the impact that stress can have on our bodies. And I think especially in midlife that can sort of be amplified.

speaker-0 (12:19)
Yes, it can. So long term stress will just really put a big burden on those adrenal glands that are not meant to be switched on all the time and pumping out all these stress hormones. So long term stress means that we're in that fight or flight all the time. And that's called the sympathetic part of the nervous system. So you're in sympathetic mode. And we're not meant to be like that all the time. We're not meant to be feeling like we're being chased by a tiger. We're not meant to be in the stress mode, but people

are just so used to being like that nowadays that they're thinking it's normal. ⁓ So that long-term stress means that you've got high cortisol and when you have high cortisol and it stays high then the adrenal glands do get weaker and the thyroid gland eventually can start to be an issue. So the adrenals and the thyroid actually help regulate your nervous system. And...

it gets missed quite a lot that I see is that the thyroid doesn't get tested thoroughly by the women's GPs or they might not be aware that the adrenals need some support. But because the thyroid then starts to have to take up some of the slack that the adrenal glands can't cope with, then you can end up with something called subclinical hypothyroidism.

So long-term stress can affect the adrenals and it can eventually affect the thyroid. And then it lowers progesterone even more. So even though progesterone, we're not producing it as much from our ovaries once you're ovulating as much, you might skip ovulation and then eventually you don't ovulate at all anymore. But in perimenopause, when you're still ovulating, the progesterone will drop quite a lot more when you're under long-term stress. So the body will favor producing these stress hormones in the cortisol to keep us alive.

over producing this progesterone because these hormones are made from the same precursor hormone. So the progesterone will actually be really bottomed out. And I think that's probably partly where I started and I see a lot of women start. So that long-term stress really puts you in a bad state already with the low progesterone, which is, like I said, you're buffering and you're chilled out sort of hormone.

And then it can also cause insulin resistance long-term. So once you've had this high cortisol, you'll end up with that belly weight. You'll start pulling around, you know, the middle midriff weight that women dread and wonder why that's been happening, but that's usually long-term high cortisol. And that triggers the insulin to stay high. And the more you have high insulin, the more your body will become resistant to ⁓ utilizing your glucose and using that insulin to unlock glucose from your food. So you just store it and you'll put on weight, belly weight.

And then it can mean that your histamine can increase. So histamine is a hormone that has great applications in the body. So it's needed, but when we are under long-term stress and we've got lots of inflammation and we're constantly stressed, our body will naturally produce more histamine and some women become quite sensitive to this histamine. So therefore allergies and intolerances and all these.

strange and wonderful symptoms from anything from itchy skin to feeling like funny nervous system twitches and people sometimes get the burning mouth syndrome or it could cause sleep problems or anxiety. All of those things can actually pop up because of long-term stress. Yeah. So there's a lot, isn't there? There's a huge list. I could probably talk about it for half an hour really. Yeah.

speaker-1 (15:44)
And is this why nervous system regulation is so important is to manage those high stress levels to

speaker-0 (15:49)
Absolutely, isn't it? It's probably one of the things that we all need to be aware of first. So, so many people just saying, we've got to balance your hormones, take this for your hormones. And look, hormones are important, but the hormones are doing what they're meant to be doing, but there can be more out of balance because of this nervous system being so stressed for a long time. So yes, nervous system regulation is imperative and somehow finding a way that you can reduce stress levels.

the stress is always going to be there, isn't it? Like we have to be realistic. Nobody's going to say, can just get rid of my stress. That's not going to happen. And stress doesn't have to be feeling like you're busy all the time. It can be a stress from having too much ⁓ exposure to wifi or electromagnetic fields or chemicals. Maybe you're a hairdresser or you're a nail technician or something like that, that you get exposed to chemicals all the time or you're a cleaner. that can be a stress on the body as well.

All of that will affect the nervous system. So what I actually get women to look at is ⁓ working on lowering their stress somehow, wherever it's coming from, or it could even be eating junk food that can be a stress to the body. So look at all the different areas that the stress is coming from. And then we generally look at the the vagus nerve tone or vagal tone, you can call it the vagus nerve, but it's actually two nerves.

And this vagus nerve ⁓ starts at the base of your brain and it connects or innovates all of the organs in your body. So because long-term stress is going to affect this vagal nerve and cause poor vagal tone and then affect every organ or it can eventually come up with all these symptoms, then we want to address the nervous system and do some nervous system regulation sort of things that will help tone the vagal nerve as well.

should I talk about some of the things that you can do as well?

speaker-1 (17:41)
Let's

do that, yes.

speaker-0 (17:44)
Yeah, so it's sort of partly signaling that your body is safe. So firstly, what I wanted to say that I sometimes forget to say is that our body cannot heal or it can't go into that healing mode if you're trying to, get rid of a symptom or heal something that that's been happening for a long time, if you're in this fight and flight. So this is why the nervous system regulation is important and working on the vagal nerve.

So if your vagal nerve is what we call poor tone or at a balance, it means that you're stuck in that fight or flight. And the vagal nerve's job is to keep us in this rest and digest mode, this parasympathetic mode. So what we can do is deep breathing. And so many people do this probably already, but deep breathing, do that box breathing where you breathe in slowly for five, out slowly for, or you hold for five, out slowly for five, hold for five, in for five. And you sort of do that around the edge of a box. Or you could just do slow breathing.

whatever suits you, slower than normal. Grounding, I love grounding, putting your feet or your hands on the soil, the earth, the grass, the sea, in water, go down the beach for a walk, just go out in nature. That's very grounding ⁓ and that's helping our nervous system. Meditation, we all know the benefits of meditation. So all of these are gonna help, but then particularly for the vagal nerve, I absolutely love the gargling. So I get...

people to, and I've been doing this for years myself as well, but people to gargle the water they have in the drinking in the morning. And ⁓ particularly for women that don't have regular bowel movements or their digestive systems changed, or they feel like their bowels are sluggish now, they're going through this stage, it's actually really good to gargle warm water. Two big glasses of warm water in the morning, tip your head back and just get each sip you have, gargle as much as you can.

until you have to swallow and take a breath and take the next sip. And try and do that for somewhere between three and five minutes. I've been doing it for a long time. think it's got, could be even close to 10 years now, I've lost track. But I started doing it and I did notice my anxiety and the fact that I could just get into that rest and digest more easily instead of staying in, like we can all react to things, but if we can get back out of that stress response and reactive response quickly into just feeling relaxed again.

then that's a sign that the vagal nerve is getting better. So ⁓ if we can do this gargling, that actually was what I noticed that helped me a lot and the grounding along with that. So I love gargling. You can do loud singing and humming and chanting, anything that stimulates that vagal nerve at the back of your throat. It's really good. Some people use a spoon and do some gagging, but that's probably not the most fun thing for most people. ⁓ And then there's actually some devices you can get to stimulate the vagal nerve and some little exercises you can do in the ears.

which I am not usually teaching, but yeah, there's probably a lot of information about that out there. But yeah, so really working on the vagal nerve is one of the biggest ones and just telling yourself when you're feeling stressed and that you realize that you're always feeling like you're on edge and you've got to do something all the time, just say to your body, okay, stop, I shouldn't be feeling like this. And it's a matter of rewiring your brain to think a bit differently. You're allowed to relax, you're allowed to.

Let go. Let go once in a while. Yeah, it's really important for all of us, isn't it?

speaker-1 (21:03)
Absolutely. And I think with society today and what women have to do on a daily basis, it's insane. And we don't give ourselves we don't give ourselves the opportunity to rest, but we should. And this is all the more reason to if it's going to help us with our perimenopause symptoms. I know that I've just recently started adding chanting to my meditation and I noticed a big difference. So I'm Yeah, so I'm going to continue with that. And now especially and I'm going to try the gargling,

speaker-0 (21:30)
Great idea. Yeah. So chanting. Yeah that sounds great. How do you do it with your meditation? Do you do it at the same time?

speaker-1 (21:36)
I

just repeat O.

speaker-0 (21:40)
Yep.

speaker-1 (21:41)
I just keep repeating that and I noticed that the vibration is very calming and it actually centers my meditation more. It stops my brain from wandering because I'm focused on the actual chance. So I'm quite enjoying that. So I'm going to carry on with that.

speaker-0 (21:57)
Fantastic, that's great. ⁓ thanks for sharing that too. That's really good. Yeah, chanting is actually really good. I like doing the om or just humming. And sometimes if I'm driving or down the beach and there's not many people around, I tend to do that as loud as I can. you have to try it ladies. It's actually really, you can really, like you said, feel centered and relaxed.

speaker-1 (22:16)
Yeah, I was really surprised. First, I felt a little bit uncomfortable doing it, but as I got into it, I gave it a few minutes, got a few minutes into it. Then I started to feel like I was getting more centered, coming back to myself and my brain wasn't wandering as much. So that was, it was a really good experience. And so I've been doing it since then.

speaker-0 (22:35)
Wow, that's great. ⁓ good.

speaker-1 (22:38)
So let's talk a little bit about the gut-brain-hormone connection.

speaker-0 (22:42)
Yeah, so then as I mentioned before, the vagal nerve, it connects to all of the organs all the way down to your gut. your gut or your gut bacteria with a microbiome, which is the balance of the bacteria in your digestive system, that can send messages up the vagal nerve to the brain and the brain can send messages down the vagal nerve to the gut. So it's a two way stream. So your vagal nerve really tells us that we're feeling safe and

when we need to digest food, when we're in that relaxed state that it's okay to digest food. So when you're in that rest and digest, we produce stomach acid and pancreatic and liver enzymes, and then we digest our food. But if we're in that fight and flight, then we don't digest our food properly. And this is where a lot of women go through perimenopause and menopause with digestive issues because they're stuck in that fight or flight and they're getting these issues because they're not really in that rested state to digest their food.

If they have that long-term stress, that gut microbiome, because the vagus nerve will actually keep you in that fight and flight, that gut microbiome will be changed, that will be altered. And we know now that about, I'm not sure of the percentage, but let's say it's roughly about 70 % of your serotonin and dopamine are made through some of the gut bacteria or intestinal bacteria. So if we're not...

having a good balance of that gut bacteria, we're not producing enough serotonin and dopamine, then that's going to affect how we feel. Mood wise, it's going to affect our sleep. Serotonin is the precursor to our melatonin, which is our sleep hormone. Dopamine can help us feel motivated and enthusiastic. So when women aren't feeling great, they're not sleeping and then just feel unenthusiastic and lack motivation, it can be to do with the gut bacteria. And then so yeah, that will act, these hormones act on the brain, even though some of them

some of them are produced in the gut. And then when the brain is feeling stressed and you're feeling anxious or angry, that will directly send messages down through the vagal nerve into the gut microbiome and that can cause intestinal permeability, inflammation in the gut. Like I said, poor digestion, it can alter the gut microbiome and the gut microbiome also. Some of it can actually help ⁓ increase things like

adrenaline cortisol and increase anxiety. So there are some probiotics that I use with my clients that actually can help through that gut microbiome changes just to help reduce anxiety by helping change the type of microbiome. And then there's a subset of bacteria called the estrobolome that actually control or help balance and metabolize your estrogen balance. So that sort of, even though, I estrogen does work on the brain.

We know it can actually, you have far too much of it, can make you feel irritable. And if you have not enough of it when you've menopause or post-menopause, it can give you a brain fog and make you feel irritable as well. Like you can't concentrate and your memory's not great anymore. So the balance in the estrogen actually is really affected by the gut microbiome as well. Yeah, so it's a bit of a two-based trait. So the gut, just we all have to be aware that the gut...

actually really influences our mood. And our mood can influence our gut. So if you're staying angry or upset about something for too long, ⁓ then it's going to give you digestive issues. And lot of women very well know that when they have irritable bowel syndrome, or even that the fact that people say, you get butterflies in your stomach when you're feeling nervous, that's a sign there's that gut brain connection. Yeah.

speaker-1 (26:25)
And do you do testing for your clients so that you can look at the different levels of what's in the gut microbiome? just to understand what do we do as, like if you feel like you've been really irritable and you suspecting after listening to this conversation that maybe there's something a bit off with my gut microbiome, what are your next steps?

speaker-0 (26:43)
Yes, well, if I'm working with clients online, definitely I would tell them to get a microbiome test, do you know what, usually I'm pretty, I look at the root cause and so everything that I connect together, I can usually work out what we need to do without them going off and getting expensive tests.

and this is the thing in my clinic, I see women face to face, I do live and drive blood analysis where I can actually see in the blood straight away. It's like live on the screen ⁓ what is happening. So I don't necessarily have to send them off for these sort of tests. So I can tell if there's dysbiosis or if that person's got candida overgrowth or parasites or if they've got magnesium deficiency, all of that sort of thing.

And so that's why I don't use it there usually. But if I work with women online, I usually start with them without doing the microbiome testing. But by all means, if anybody's listening and you want to go off and do your own thing, then yes, if you did get a microbiome test, that's fantastic. I personally in Australia, I don't know whether this is available in other countries. ⁓ I usually get women to get a CDSA test, which is through Neutropath in Australia, which is a complete

digestive and stool analysis. And it just gives you a few more markers than the microbiome testing, but that can be helpful. And I usually only go down that road when women are actually having really severe digestive issues or allergies to foods because histamine was, it's probably something we'll probably talk about anyways, that histamine ⁓ increases. So when that happens and women aren't really sure,

what's going on if they're a parasite or you know, what's really driving it, then we can actually go down that road and get them to get a microbiome test or a CDSA test for sure. Yeah, so it just depends. I try not to get women to spend too much money to begin with on testing because most cases, I'll have to say perhaps about 80 % of cases I can help women without them having to do that.

speaker-1 (28:46)
so the reason why I wanted to do the show is because there are a lot of women that potentially don't want to go on to HRT as a personal choice, or they can't go on HRT because of medical histories or diagnosis is that they might have recently received and the HRT then puts them at risk. What kind of supplements should they be looking at as a bare minimum to help them through perimenopause?

speaker-0 (29:12)
Well, before I look at supplements, I usually look at what we've talked about already and it's gonna be personal for each person, isn't it? Personal, personalized for each woman, I should say, that's a better way putting it. Yeah, it is. ⁓ And I think it's good to, before you sort of jump into supplements to actually look at, I'd actually look at all the foundations first, okay. Firstly, what are you being exposed to? How much stress are you being exposed to? How safe do you feel in your own body?

what sort of chemicals are you being exposed to? What's your diet like? ⁓ How are you sleeping? So I try and improve people's sleep and the circadian rhythm, their vagus nerve or nervous system health, get their stress levels down. And then I would look at say, ⁓ diet and nutrition. And when I say diet, I don't mean going on a restrictive diet, but little changes or things that you can add if you don't wanna.

start with steps like, my God, I'm gonna have to do this whole change to my diet, then what foods can we add? So I try and get women to actually add lots more phytochemical rich foods, which all your brightly colored fruits and vegetables, which can help reduce inflammation. And there's some phytoestrogenic foods as well. So that's usually where I start. And then when we're talking about supplements, if there's just some basic ones that probably a lot of women get onto, it depends what

what sort of issues they've got. But say if it's digestion, I would have to say about 50 % of my patients or more have histamine intolerance sort of issues and perhaps thyroid and adrenal issues. So we can tell that if the histamine issue is anything from itchy skin to hives to anxiety to sleep to diarrhea or food allergies or environmental allergies that have popped up than they had before, then we'd still look at the gut.

I would look at probiotics and prebiotics and your diet and even what we could use ⁓ naturally to help improve that gut microbiome. So probably I would start with most people, particularly when they have these sort of symptoms with the gut and then the nervous system, even though we talked about some practical things you can do. Magnesium is probably one of the biggest ones I would say that everybody needs. ⁓ And every now and then you do get people that... ⁓

that might have a sensitive gut towards it. They might get like looser stools or get a bit of upset, but that's, it's very not, not very common. would say perhaps one in over a hundred people that I see, but that can just tell us that your gut needs working on first. So probably start with the gut, then try and add some magnesium. I like magnesium glycinate because it lowers body temperature. So for those women that are getting hot flushes, that can not only be a bit of a histamine and a cortisol issue that which we need to address, but

It also is the brain trying to work with these hormones that are recalibrating and reacting differently to temperature changes. there's, yeah, glycine, which is an amino acid that's with magnesium, which is now in a supplement called magnesium glycinate, can actually lower that body temperature. That's why I like that one, because it can help you sleep better at night time, cool the body down a bit. And yeah, it's very well absorbed and very well tolerated.

Oxide and citrate are usually the ones that people use to help with pulling. They both help pull more water into the stools. Oxide is very poorly absorbed. don't generally recommend oxide. It's usually in the cheap and nasty pharmaceutical company. ⁓

supplements. So try and avoid those. But if you're safe, you are really constipated and you need some help and you don't want to go down the laxatives and that sort of thing, then yes, I would probably go citrate first. I mean, you can take oxide, but just be aware that it's not going to be absorbed into the cells of your body. yeah, magnesium has ⁓ so many roles in the body that it's involved in over 300 processes. So if you're taking oxide, then you're not going to really help with any of that. You're just going to help with the

bowel movements. Citrate is as well absorbed as the glycinate. So you can use that for bowel movements. I don't use that as much unless somebody is quite constipated. Yeah, it can be quite helpful for balancing the pH of your blood or of your body. you know, usually the citrates, sometimes they use carbonate, but they're not very well absorbed either. Yeah, so there are different types. I don't know a lot of people use 3 and 8.

and amino acid chelate as well. But I personally, I use it more glycinate than anything. Yeah.

speaker-0 (34:01)
so what I'm hearing from what you're saying is that before we start with worrying about supplements or anything like that, we need to work on our nervous system regulation and potentially our gut. But nervous system regulation being the most important.

speaker-1 (34:20)
I think so reducing stress levels and working on the vagal nerve and just calming the system down and not pushing through, especially when you feel stressed. And as we were sort of talking about before that, you know, we sort of don't let our bodies rest or say that, you know, it's okay, we're allowed to, we're not meant to be pushing ourselves all the time. Women are just too busy. But you know, the other thing I also look at is the circadian rhythm ⁓ and that making that women sure that women get

daylight as much as they can, especially in the morning, just to set your circadian rhythm. So our body has a balance of when you release the cortisol and when you release the melatonin for sleep. So cortisol and melatonin should be in a certain balance. And if people are staying inside too much in artificial light and being exposed to all the blue light from devices, then this is one of the biggest issues too in our environment that's actually causing an imbalance. ⁓

particularly with sleep and I do look into sleep a lot with women and it affects every part of your health, but this exposure to all this electromagnetic radiation and artificial light that we're exposed to in blue light is really important to look at too. So that would be another foundation I would look at that, ⁓ okay, you can take supplements, but if you're getting exposed, you're sort of waking up in the dark, you're going to work in the dark, you're sitting inside, you're not getting out at all.

And understanding countries like even where you are in the UK, you don't get a lot of sunlight compared to Australia where I am at the moment. You know, it can be light until 8.30 at nighttime. ⁓ And so you want to get outside in that daylight and without sunglasses too, because our retina needs to know that there's that ⁓ sunlight out there. You don't need to stare at the sun, but in the morning, if you can get up and get out in the sunlight for 10 minutes.

that will help your brain recognize that you need to release that cortisol and then that later on in the day you will release the melatonin. So that's part of it because the circadian rhythm actually affects all of your hormone balance too. So I love looking at that, but also keep making sure you're balancing your blood sugar levels that a lot of women miss this too. Like they might be drinking lots of coffee and their blood sugar levels all over the place. And as soon as your blood sugar levels are fluctuating and dropping and you might have a coffee and something sweet because you're

tired, then your blood sugar levels will plummet. And when that happens, you produce more cortisol because your body needs to do that to pull out some stored glucose to help you stay alive. That high cortisol is actually going to cause ⁓ more inflammation and more issues with all your symptoms and more insulin resistance. So we want to our cortisol balance, blood sugar levels balanced. And the easiest way to do that, and I know we talked about other foods before that are high in

chemicals, some nice colored fruits and vegetables that can help reduce inflammation. You can start with adding those to your diet, but to balance blood sugar levels, have protein every meal. That's really important. And, you know, I know a lot of people don't like eating breakfast, especially if they're doing intermittent fasting, but that's not for everybody. And particularly if there's high cortisol, as you said, a lot of women at this age, intermittent fasting might be making it worse for you.

because you have to produce more cortisol when you're not eating and that can make things worse. ⁓ So trying to eat a big breakfast with lots of protein, have some protein at lunch and dinner as well to help balance your blood sugar levels, that's really important as well as a foundational piece.

speaker-0 (37:57)
Yeah. And I've heard eating breakfast within half an hour of waking up is, is ideal. that.

speaker-1 (38:04)
It's ideal. just depends what that person is trying to do. But if yes, if you've got a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety in the morning, yes, I would probably do that, then sort of push through. Everybody's going to be different to what, but I would say within a few hours, especially if your adrenals needs some support, within the first two hours for sure. Women that do these sort of 16 hour fasts, some of them are good, but everybody's resilience is different. And I think

I have some patients that have got great stamina to get through that fast and that does them really well and they just love it, but others ⁓ would fall apart and they would just feel terrible and couldn't do it. And it's going to make them hangry. And it's sort of like they need a bit of a metabolic reset where they've, they just really don't have those stores to push through from not only the count release the glucose that they've stored in the body, but they can also not.

regulate their blood sugar levels properly and it comes down to the adrenals and the liver health as well. And I always, yeah, oh, there's so much we can talk about, but we always also talk about when we look at the gut health, we always have to talk about the liver when it comes to hormones too, liver and bile. So I also look at, you know, people getting some nice bit of foods into their diet too, to stimulate that bile flow because the bile...

is really important. And that's probably another ⁓ subject for another time, but I could talk about bile a lot as well. That bile will help you with, you know, not only the gut health, but you know, eliminating toxins and keeping inflammation low and helping with your thyroid balance. And a lot of people overlook it. And this is why one area that I'll sort of look into is really the liver and gallbladder at this age as well, because it has a huge influence on everything. Yeah.

speaker-0 (39:54)
Okay, well, that's really interesting. And I'm really glad that you brought up the intermitten fasting, because I know I'm a big fan of Dr. Mindy Peltz's book, Fast Like a Girl.

speaker-1 (40:04)
⁓ okay. And is that the one that does eat like a girl? Yeah. okay.

speaker-0 (40:09)
Yes.

So I really love how she breaks down your cycle and when you should be basically how your body reacts during your cycle to, know, when estrogen is high, this is what's happening in your body. love that. And, but it's also really important for people to understand what she's also said. And she hasn't said this in her book, but she does. If you follow her on YouTube and that's really important that if you're going through really stressful periods or you're very stressed, you really shouldn't be doing the early morning fasts. You should.

You should get that breakfast in first thing in the morning and then potentially fast from later on. So even though intermittent fasting has all its benefits, it's important to know that that stress element can change whether you should be fasting in the morning or not. So that sort of lines up really nicely with what you've just talked about, which is quite important, I think, for people to know and understand.

speaker-1 (41:03)
Yeah, absolutely. And then I suppose if they really do want to do fasting, they've got to work on their nervous system first and get them into that more grounded, like calmer state and then go for the fasting if that's what they were aiming to do if their bodies are under a lot of stress. So yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah, she's a fabulous woman. I only really sort of found her about six months ago and thought, wow, she's, I love her. She's so genuine as well and very straightforward. That's what I love.

speaker-0 (41:30)
Absolutely. No, she's really, really good. So if a woman feels really overwhelmed and stuck, the first thing that she needs to look at is her nervous system regulation and then also her circadian rhythms and trying to fix that.

speaker-1 (41:45)
So I will be looking at that. Yeah.

speaker-0 (41:47)
what reassurance would you most like women to hear about their bodies in midlife?

speaker-1 (41:51)
that your body's not working against you. It's not working against you. It's actually telling you something. It's communicating with you. So be kind to it and do ⁓ something about the symptoms that it's communicating to you. They're there for a reason and your body absolutely knows how to heal itself. All we have to do is give it the environment, the right resources and do the right thing. And ⁓ it's actually a recalibration.

it can be a really liberating time and it can actually be a really good chance to get your health to the best stage in your life that your health has ever been because your body is screaming at you saying, come on, you've got these symptoms. And so many people that sort of, ⁓ yeah, fight against it and get upset. ⁓ And the, know, things like HRT might help some women or even some herbs for your hormones, but it's really looking at the underlying

root drivers, the causes that are actually causing all these symptoms to begin with, because we're not really meant to get these symptoms as extremely as we do. So it's understanding that, that you can get to those root cause and you can have, you know, a fabulous rest of your life without these symptoms. If you just go through that instead of, know, we don't want to treat it like medically, like just covering up a symptom. We want to treat the causes of why these symptoms are happening.

And your body, like if we do get into that rest and digest stage and work on your vagal nerve, it does actually know how to heal itself and it will heal itself. Yeah, so that's probably the main things. You have to trust your body.

speaker-0 (43:31)
I love that. love that. I really do love that. And so I'm going to ask you the last question and this is what I ask all my guests. So what would you tell your younger self if she was sitting right next to you right now?

speaker-1 (43:46)
How young? You choose. Any age. okay. Well, I'd probably say my, okay. If I was in my early thirties that perimenopause is coming up. right. And get your stress levels lower before you go through perimenopause. And I've always looked after myself, but I probably have let stress and a bit of a emotional roller coaster life with my personal life. So

Yeah, probably. Yeah. Work on the stress levels and, have, ⁓ I don't know what it's called. Emotional, not emotional resilience, but, ⁓ not, don't be reactive to things. Nowadays. I don't react with, you know, people generally are reactive to everything there around them have, have self calibration and self, ⁓ assurance that, you know, it comes from inside, I suppose. So I've been on a huge spiritual journey and I wish I started in my thirties. So probably say to my younger self,

Get on your spiritual journey earlier and get your stress levels lower and be kinder to yourself. Don't always push through and keep away from stressful, toxic people. I'd probably say that too because that can have a big influence.

speaker-0 (45:01)
Yeah, absolutely. Especially as you, you sort of go towards midlife, that becomes a very big topic, I think, because you just don't have that buffer like we talked about, you don't have that buffer anymore.

speaker-1 (45:13)
No, but I think people become more discerning too as you age. So we sort of say, ⁓ these friends or these people don't serve me anymore. We put up with things when we're younger. But I wish I started that journey earlier and didn't put up with certain things or people or circumstances in my life. Yeah, so it's becoming more assertive. I wish I was more assertive when I was younger. Yeah, I am now. That's amazing. That's great.

speaker-0 (45:36)
⁓

Yeah, that's beautiful.

Kate, thank you so much for joining us today. So where can our listeners find you if they want to work with you?

speaker-1 (45:49)
Oh, thank you. Yes. So I have a website, the perimenopausepractitioner.com and I'm assuming you'll be sharing some of the links and I would love you to join my free Facebook group. And this is where it's called the, it's called PMS, but I'm changing the name soon. So just look out for me under Kate Driver under Facebook, but it's perimenopause and menopause support. It's holistic and root cause support.

And so I go through all of these sort of things that we're talking about today in the group and I help nurture women there that need some help and teach and empower. And I do regular Facebook lives where I teach something and can get people to jump on to ask questions. And I'll soon be doing some challenges as well. So in the group is probably going to cover a lot, but on my website there is information, my YouTube videos and my blogs.

And also the link to my Facebook group, if you can't find me, is on my website page also. But I'd love to see you in my Facebook group. Come and join us and join in with the conversation. And yeah, I'd love to see there and help you with your journey. That'd be great.

speaker-0 (47:05)
Thank you so much. And I'll put the links of everything in the show notes. If anybody wants to find it, find Kate and work with her. Thank you so much, Kate. This has been a great conversation. I'm so glad we got to do it because it's such an important topic, I think, for anyone who is on this journey with us.

speaker-1 (47:20)
It is, it? Thank you. Thank you everybody for listening and thanks Adelia for having me. It's been great. Thank you.

The Midlife Awakening (47:25)
What a conversation. Because that message that your body is not working against you, it is communicating with you. I think that is something that every woman in midlife needs to hear. And if this episode helped you see your midlife journey a little differently, please leave us a review. It genuinely helps more women find this show. Share it, save it, send it to someone in your circle who's going through it. And if you want to connect with Kate, her website is theperimenopausepractitioner.com.

that's the best place to start. You'll find her free resources, her YouTube channel, her latest blogs and the link to her Facebook group where she does regular live Q &A's and teachings. She's also running a free midlife fatigue fix workshop on May 18th. I'll pop everything on the show notes so that you can find her easily. You know where to go ladies. Thank you so much to Kate for being so generous with her knowledge and her story today and thank you for listening and being a part of this community. Until next week.

Keep trusting your body, keep asking the deeper questions and keep awakening. Take care of yourselves, take care of your heart and remember it's never too late to begin again. Bye for now.