The Manage Her

Functional Medicine for Women: Nurse Mel (Melanie Mancil) | Ep 66

• Aimee Rickabus • Season 2 • Episode 66

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You're doing everything "right" and you're still exhausted - and your labs came back "normal." This conversation is for you.

In this episode, Aimee Rickabus talks with Melanie Mancil - "Nurse Mel," RN, BSN, functional medicine specialist and founder of Twelve28 - about functional medicine for women and what conventional care keeps missing.

Mel shares:
- The health mystery that took her from RN to functional medicine
- Why "normal" lab ranges fail so many women
- Hormones and perimenopause: why there's no one-size-fits-all
- How stress and cortisol drive the burnout cycle
- The honest truth about GLP-1s and peptides - powerful tools, not finish lines

Whether you're a busy mom, a founder, or just tired of being patted on the head at the doctor, this conversation will help you trust your own body again.

A note: Melanie speaks from clinical experience. Nothing here is medical advice; peptide, hormone, and prescription therapies should only be used with a qualified, licensed provider.

CONNECT WITH MELANIE:
Instagram: @melaniemancil
Website: https://twelve28rx.com/

CONNECT WITH THE MANAGE HER(R):
Website: https://www.themanageher.com
Instagram: @themanageher

———

The Manage Her® Podcast — hosted by Aimee Rickabus. Honest conversations on leadership, financial empowerment, motherhood, wellness, and career reinvention for ambitious women.

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Aimee:

Today's guest is someone who sits at the intersection of functional medicine, women's health, modern wellness, and the future of healthcare itself. I'm joined by Melanie Mansell, also known as Nurse Mel, functional medicine specialist, entrepreneur, educator, and the founder of Twelve28. Melanie's journey into functional medicine began after years in traditional healthcare, where she started asking bigger questions about why so many people, especially women, are exhausted, inflamed, hormonally dysregulated, and struggling despite doing all the right things. Over the years, she's evolved from a registered nurse into a highly sought-after functional medicine expert, helping patients navigate metabolic health, peptides, hormones, longevity, inflammation, and personalized wellness protocols. What I really appreciate about Mel's perspective is that she combines clinical knowledge with real-world practicality. She understands that women today are not just managing their own health. They're often managing the health of the entire household while balancing careers, caregiving, stress, aging parents, children, and information overload. In this conversation, we discuss the future of women's health, functional medicine and peptides, the rise of AI in healthcare, why women are burning out, how technology may finally help reduce invisible labor, the truth about metabolic dysfunction, and why trust matters more than ever in modern medicine. We also get into some fascinating conversations around telehealth, hormones, perimenopause, nervous system overload, and how personalized medicine is rapidly changing the way people approach wellness. This episode is part of our special June series, Manage Your Health Month, where we're exploring what happens when women stop putting themselves last and start reclaiming their energy, longevity, and wellbeing. So please welcome Melanie Mansell, Nurse Mel, to the Manager podcast. Hi, Mel. Thank you for being here today. Oh

Mel:

my gosh, thank you for having me.

Aimee:

Mel, for people meeting you for the first time, how do you describe what you do today?

Mel:

Ooh. so I have a wellness center in Malibu in Beverly Hills, and we do all the things. uh, the aesthetic stuff. Botox, all the lasers, all the plasma pen, all those things. But that's not really where my passion is. My, my passion is in food and toxins and weight loss because I just see the impact that brings to people and their life and their quality of life. So that's really where I have niched down to. But we have- I

Aimee:

love that.

Mel:

We have all kinds of things. We have, Pilates, EMS, the electrical muscular stimulation. I feel like that kinda all goes in with it. So we have a lot of tools.

Aimee:

That's awesome, Mel. And I know 'cause you celebrated on your Instagram, but how old are you?'Cause you look good.

Mel:

Well, thanks. I'm 56, almost 57.

Aimee:

Gorgeous.

Mel:

You too. You look like you're about 30.

Aimee:

Oh, I'm 47, so you know, it's a preservation game at this point,

Mel:

You know what? I- we don't look like The Golden Girls. The Golden Girls were my age. Can you believe that?

Aimee:

It's… I think about how my grandmother looked in her 60s, and, we definitely, there's a different standard for aging. of course, we're in California, where the stan- the standard for aging is just don't do it.

Mel:

Well, there's only so much you can really get away with though, in, in aging. I don't know what's happening. I just feel like the genetics are rolling over. I don't know. It's, but we're looking a lot different than our they're our last generations. We really are. We really are, and it's kind of amazing, 'cause I actually, my youngest child is three years old. So for me, staying l- young looking means I can still hang out at the park, and the younger moms will still talk to me, like they're gonna identify with me, 'cause I don't wanna look like I'm pushing 50 with a three-year-old at all.

Aimee:

Right. I have a group of friends that are about 10 years older, then I have a group of friends that are about 10 years younger. It's really funny. Yes.

Mel:

Yeah, I've always had… I love my older friends, 'cause they are wise and amazing women, and then I have younger friends, 'cause they always keep me kinda like on the cutting edge of what's going on- Yeah music, fashion, all of those things.

Aimee:

Yeah. True.

Mel:

Yeah. You can learn from all of

Aimee:

them. Absolutely. So you started out as an RN and then evolved into functional medicine. What led you down that path? Tell us.

Mel:

oh gosh, probably when I was in nursing school, pretty soon afterwards I developed just chronic insomnia. I went from doctor to doctor. All they wanted to do was give me a pill. Nobody could figure out why I couldn't sleep, but it was a real problem. I started learning myself. My husband, he's a doctor, at the time said, "You're so intuitive about medical stuff. What do you think it is?" And I said,"Well, my brain feels inflamed." And he's like, "What?" Nobody was talking about inflammation 30 years ago. Nobody was talking about the brain either. And I was like, "Yeah, that's what it feels like." So I started doing research on BPAs, and microplastics, and metals, and none of that was being spoken about. It wasn't on the internet. We didn't really have the internet. It was before Facebook. It was before Instagram. It was before all these things. So I just went down that path of things that I wasn't taught in nursing school and things my husband wasn't taught in medical school, and I figured out I had mercury poisoning. So it just- Wow took me down this whole rabbit hole. And my husband was blown away by what I was learning that he went back to functional medicine school, and I just went right along with him. So I just went to all the conferences. W- I read all the studies. I'm just, I just geek out on all of it still to this day. Yeah, that's how it started.

Aimee:

That's amazing. I love it. I, for women, it usually starts with something that impacts us personally, either us personally or our kids, and that's how we usually get started down the path that we go down. I feel like it's the common commonality of all of my guests. So you mentioned your husband was initially skeptical of functional medicine- Yeah before eventually embracing it. What shifted for him?

Mel:

Well, I found a functional medicine doctor back then, and I came home and was telling him all these things that she was saying, and I go, "Why don't you just come with me?" "Come with me." So he did, and we just w- we drew things out on the paper that you put the patient on, and we're drawing diagrams and all these things, and he's "I'm so mad that I was not taught this in medical school." And you're not. And, it's becoming more popular now, but this was not a thing back then. B- we're still way behind in medical school as far as having the whole person seen. We still are m- making our doctors piecemeal. They're ophthalmologists, they're dermatologists, they're cardiologists. They're not whole person, and we are a whole person. They're not taught to get to the bottom of the problem, and then this doctor needs to talk to that doctor, and it's very disconnected, and, hopefully that's changing. But that's kinda where we're at.

Aimee:

Yeah. I hope so. I had an eye infection and an ear infection one day, and I had to choose which doctor I could go to, either…

Mel:

the eye doctor wouldn't look at my ear, the ear doctor wouldn't look at my eye. And I'm like, "You guys" Yeah."They're literally, two inches apart from each other." "And obviously this is connected." Yeah, that's the problem. your cardiologist needs to talk to your hormone person, It's all connected. We need to have, a central place to put all of our charts, that this doctor can pull that chart and see what's going on with something else.

Aimee:

Oh, we're s- we're close to getting there, but this has needed to happen for such a long time. My mom has a PhD in pharmacology, and it was one of the things that she talked about back, 40 years ago, was how, one doctor is prescribing one thing- Yep

Mel:

another doctor is prescribing another thing-… and they're not talking to each other, and the pharmacist is usually the only person who sees the whole picture as far as your pharmacopeia goes, right? And so your pharmacist is, this d- line of defense-… because they're, because of this- Disjointness

Aimee:

yeah, this- Disjointness … lack of communication, this, this separation between all of your different doctors. So yeah, we're getting there. I think AI can do this.

Mel:

there is a HIPAA issue, maybe you don't- Yeah … you don't want you, your doctor knowing about what's going on with this doctor, but, there's gotta be some kinda middle ground.

Aimee:

Absolutely. yeah, couldn't agree more. Well, it's v- it would really help, I guess if you wanted it to be. It'd be nice if you wanted your doctors to be able to communicate with each other easily, that there would be an AI that could facilitate that. I agree. Somebody out there will make it. So let's go. what were you seeing in traditional healthcare that made you realize that something was missing back 30 years ago?

Mel:

Oh, just what we just talked about, that, I was going doctor to doctor, and they just wanted to hand me a sleeping pill, and I f- that made me feel worse.

Aimee:

Oh, yes, absolutely.

Mel:

I know my mom was going through some fibromyalgia and arthritis, and they wanted to put her on, antidepressants, and being a pharmacologist she was pissed. Yeah. She's"I'm not depressed. I'm hurting." Yeah. But I, I think many women feel, yeah, we feel dismissed or rushed- Yeah … in conventional medicine.

Aimee:

why do you think that's happening?

Mel:

Because they don't… Well, first of all, we are lacking very much in women's studies. So they don't- Yes … teach doctors in medical school about women. there… some doctor ter- coined the term women aren't little men. So I think that is going to change. I would actually like to change it. I'm, I'm gonna have a meeting with somebody tomorrow about starting some kind of foundation to raise money for women's studies, and which studies to be the money go to. Hormones- Well- being the big-

Aimee:

I have an episode after us that will be with Dr. Mari Mitrani, who is actually focusing specifically on female medicine studies.

Mel:

She's an MD, a PhD, Chinese medicine doctor. She specializes in stem cells. She's in Miami. I will connect you guys, 'cause you guys- All right … should talk. Yes. She's brilliant. You're gonna love her. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Please connect us. I would love to talk to her.

Aimee:

Yes.

Mel:

And that's the other thing. Women have to get together, right? Because we're the ones that are gonna change it. Yes. Nobody's gonna change it for us except us. So-

Aimee:

That's exactly the conversation. That's exactly why I'm doing this month of the, on the podcast, because it's all about women having these conversations with each other, because we are it. We're- We're it … no one's gonna…

Mel:

We're it. We're it. Tag, you're it. I mean, I mean, look, we've been overlooked since women have been alive. Since we've been alive. W- the word hysterectomy comes from hysteria. it's all craziness. Women are finally rising up, and we own more houses than men, we're graduating from college more than men. Not to put men down, it's time that we get noticed and our needs are seen as unique women needs. So-

Aimee:

Yeah.

Mel:

And there's- One, it's a huge area of missed opportunity for us to understand better. Hormones, absolutely. Couldn't agree more. I think that we're just very at the beginning of it with the bioidentical hormones. It was like, Suzanne Somers was, like, the spokesperson for that back in the day. Mm-hmm. I think, I personally don't think we know enough about the bioidenticals,'cause we don't have those big studies like we had at the Women's Health Initiative back in 2001, because that would just scared everyone. But that was the biggest study we've had, and we haven't had a big one like that since. Well, we have a lot of observational mechanis- mechanistic studies, but I think that we need a big, large scale, better with all the bioidenticals. we don't have that.

Aimee:

That would be amazing. That's something we could power with, Dr.

Mel:

Mari. She's a research scientist. That's her specialty, and that's what she wants to do, and that's exactly the kind of work she wants to do. So the, there's a lot of synergy happening on this show, and, that's what the beauty of this whole thing is. But in your opinion, are you… Do you recommend hormones?

Aimee:

Do you use them? I'm perimenopausal.

Mel:

Here's what I think about that. So when I was perimenopausal, we weren't talking about menopause. I think that I spent many years of being in hormonal chaos, and I didn't even know it. I didn't even know it was happening. I didn't know it was going on. I think that you need to really educate yourself, because we are all so insanely different. I have women coming in all day long, and I hear all their hormone stories, and I hear all their bioidentical treatments. I hear about their pellets. I hear about it all, and everyone is so different. So you can't even take a blanket statement of, "Oh, you need one milligram of estradiol patch and 200 milligrams of micronized progesterone." It's just not gonna work for everyone. It's tough because you almost have to be your own physician with hormones at this point. If you're bleeding, breakthrough bleeding, that's not normal. You need to be, have a close relationship with your doctor and really be educated and really watch yourself. But at this point, my opinion, after everything I've read and every doctor I've talked to, I do think estrogen and progesterone are important, but I don't think we have the evidence for us to just be on these high doses for longevity and for feeling better. Now, does that mean for everybody? No. But for people that did not have symptoms and do not have symptoms, and who are strong and healthy like me, let's just take me, my bone density is perfect. My muscle mass is great. Everything is good. But even if it wasn't, I would not take estrogen just to strengthen my bones. That wouldn't be my first choice. It would be protein and bone Pounding exercise. That would be my first line of ex- my first line of bone health. So you just have to take everything into consideration, all your testing, your heart, your, your mom. What was your mom doing? You take all these things into account. Do you have clotting problems? there's risks to it. You just have to watch yourself and be your own advocate at this point.

Aimee:

Yeah, 'cause because we don't know enough about it right now. We need a real study.

Mel:

And frankly, th- the main doctors who are, the huge menopause doctors, they're not even on the same page. There's some that say you've got to get your doses super high, or you're not gonna get that bone benefit, or you're not gonna get the brain benefit. And then there's doctors who say you keep it as low as you can for as short amount of time you can to get you through the transition of symptoms, and then get off of it. Who do you listen to? you have to listen to yourself. You have to educate yourself at this point, unfortunately.

Aimee:

How interesting. So we're a couple years out. Even if we could power a study in 2027, we'd still be, we wouldn't know till 2028 or 2029. Even if we could get it powered right away

Mel:

really and truly, you need to watch these women over long periods of time and see did, was it, did it cause cancer? Was there an uptick in breast cancer? Was there an uptick in uterine cancer? What dose was that on? What was her family history? What time did she start the hormones? some people are saying it's gotta be within 10 years of the onset of menopause, and some people say,"Oh no, it's fine to start at 65. Get the benefits." It's kinda all over the place. We need to do better by us women.

Aimee:

Yeah, we really do. Yeah, most women don't realize that the studies, the medical studies that have been done have primarily been done on men. So we don't have a lot of clinical data on women's health- Yeah … in the US, period.

Mel:

Or in the world, really.

Aimee:

They're doing studies outside of the US, which have actually been pretty helpful for us, but again, it's gonna fall on us. Whenever you want something done, give it to a woman. So this needs to be done. We need to take over this problem.

Mel:

Yeah. I would say if you really want it done, give it to a busy mom. Yeah. But we need to pass down to our daughters. My daughter's 27. She's going through crazy hormonal shifts, and I wanna make it to where when she's my age, she knows exactly how to get through it.

Aimee:

I have a 27-year-old daughter, too, and I've noticed that her hormones seem less stable than mine were at her age.

Mel:

Ab- have you noticed this? Oh my gosh. I had to put my daughter on my berberine-… because she has PCOS. Now they're renaming PCOS. I saw that recently, and I thought it's to be less confusing, but I think it might be more confusing. It's confusing, but it includes more. So we'll just use the same term since people are familiar with PCOS. But my daughter's periods and her hormones are crazy, and they have been for a while. But I put her on my berberine, and it helped her so much, and that's why they're renaming it, because they've included the metabolic piece of PCOS. And it's all tied in, your glucose, how you deal with, processing sugar. It's all related to our hormones, and it loops all back in on each other. So at least they're, you know- The conversations are starting, but what do you think that is? Do you think that's because they're just raised in a more toxic environment than we were? I don't know. I think it's the plastics exposure, actually, 'cause of the estrogens in the plastics. Yeah. That's, that's my theory. I was hypothe- hy- hypothesizing about that this morning in the kitchen.'Cause it's not just my 27-year-old daughter, it's also my 39-year-old nanny. She has really hard, hormonal-… swings and- Yeah … I'm like, "This is really interesting," 'cause I've got these two women in my life that I'm very close with, and I'm watching this k- unnatural hormonal… it doesn't seem natural to me. It seems like they're being poisoned by something. Well, two things. It's not really a hypothesis anymore. we're actually seeing male fish turn into women. The sperm counts of men are insanely declining on a chart like this. it's crazy what's going on. And also, you may just be recognizing hormones in people more now because it's on our minds more. maybe m- 15 years ago you would've looked at your nanny and said,"She's just a brat," But now we're… Now hormones are on our mind.

Aimee:

Yeah, totally. So I put her on, I gave her one of the supplements that I had seen online.

Mel:

It was like a b- desiccated beef organs that are primarily, ovary, uterus, a whole animal type product, and it really helps. It's helped both of the girls, actually. It's helped, has helped, my daughter and my nanny, which is surprising. It was worth a shot, It's food, so it's safe. But I thought, "Well, give it a shot." What that did it replace s- processed food in any way? Like, how did it… I don't understand the mechanism. It's just, a capsules. It's six capsules you take per day, and I think that, they use this in the male side as well, where the man will take, the testes and the, all of these other, hor- hormone producing organs. Very traditional, very old school, very, Native American style stuff going on there- Yeah … with that. before there was medicine. But then I, again, I look, my mom g- got started at 3M, and back then she'd say they'd just drop off, the train would pull up to the lab, up in Los Angeles, and just drop off a bunch of dead animal parts, and they would get the desiccated thyroid right from the pigs, basically, at the lab that she worked at when she was at 3M. And there's some, there's some medicine behind it. It's not standardized the way it would be in a pharmaceutical product, but- Right … I guess I can understand the science behind it. It's a little different in that they isolate that thing from the pig and grow it out in a lab. Kinda reminds me of the urine challenge that's going around right now. People think, people are drinking their urine thinking they're getting stem cells. They're getting absolutely no stem cells. You have to actually grow it out in a lab for you to be able to get stem cells from your urine. I don't know what's placebo in this world anymore and what isn't,

Aimee:

That's hilarious.

Mel:

it's working. you'd be better off, honestly this is gross, but they say menstrual blood actually has more stem cells than even cord blood and placenta, which is- Well, it has to be processed We don't want to influence people to go out there and drink baby blood No, no, no. Or their own. I was talking to Dr. Mari about that,'cause that's one of the studies that recently came back, and I thought, isn't that interesting, something that men have found so disgusting for so long is actually this very stem cell rich substance, women and women's bodies have always been like, "Ew," especially menstrual blood, "Ew" Yeah But like maybe not so ew, I don't know. Well, see, they used to think in the old times that they thought we lived longer because of our periods, and we were offloading iron, too much iron, and that men didn't have that, so. That, that makes sense, 'cause I have read studies on how toxic iron is for your body really, you know? That it, iron h- too high of iron in your diet kind of oxidizes everything inside your body. It basically makes you rusty It can So that makes sense. Yeah, it can.

Aimee:

Right? So one thing we talk a lot about on this show is invisible labor. How much do you think chronic stress and emotional overload are affecting women's health today?

Mel:

Oh, gosh. By invisible labor, what does that mean? Like scheduling things, and what is invisible labor exactly? So invisible labor in my world, I wrote a book on it, and it's basically all the things that we do that the husbands don't really notice. So get the appointments, the dentist appointments, cleaning out the closets, keeping the food in the pantry, meal planning, getting kids to sports activities, tutors, housekeepers, pool guys, gardeners, This- Paying bills is invisible? this is considered fairly invisible work, so if you're not getting paid for it in the patriarchy, it's fairly invis- invisible. if there's- Let me tell you something, women out there in the world. I raised my children through my marriage. Yes, I still worked, but it wasn't the type of work that I have to do now. Married for 25 years, got zero in the divorce, no alimony, no cash, no anything. you think that the courts are gonna protect you for raising your children because that's a job. No

Aimee:

No Unbelievable, Mel. That's ridiculous. How is there no 50/50 in that? That's horrible. So what are some of the biggest patterns you're seeing in women right now from a metabolic or h- hormonal perspective?

Mel:

Well, as you age, your ability to process GLP-1s, which I'm sure you've heard of, that's Ozempic and all the rest of them, that kind of decreases. So that's all related, and you start little by little gaining weight because that mechanism, you become insulin resistant, and you process glucose less efficiently, which, you don't have to eat a bag of sugar, but we're eating bags of sugar. the American diet… I have patients come in, and I make them write down what they eat for a week, and every time I see it, I have to psych myself up not to make a face and my jaw drop because it's unbelievable how people eat. it truly is. But everything starts with the diet, everything. You have to eat whole food from the earth. Stay away from processed, packaged food, sugar, alcohol, all of it. That's your baseline. And then you have to keep your stress down. Women are so stressed. That increases cortisol. Cortisol makes you eat the wrong things because you're stressed. You don't sleep well, and then it's a vicious circle. So I'm seeing a lot of that and having to, work with women on their stress levels and their sleep and taking time for themselves. Myself, I'm stressed, and I had a friend yesterday ask me to go to a sound bath

at 6:

30 last night, and I was like,"Oh my God, I don't have time for that. I have so much to do." And I was like, "No, stop." Go do it. So although my mind was racing during it, it was 30 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever it was, that I just tried to calm down and not be stressed. And we just have to do little things like that.

Aimee:

I love that, yeah. Finding one little thing, saying yes to maybe just going to get a coffee with your girlfriend. We all feel like we're so busy, but we're not making time to cultivate the things that kind of calm us and regulate our nervous systems.

Mel:

Well, that's- Like going for a walk. Well, that's- Yeah … the thing, right? we're becoming more in the workplace, more, we're rising above in as far as our careers, but at a cost. There's a cost to that because we still do have our parents to take care of, our children to take care of. Maybe we have a husband, maybe we don't. We have friendships that we have to keep going. So it's a lot to balance. It's a lot to balance, and we get lost in that. Ourselves get lost in that. Our calmness gets lost in that.

Aimee:

Absolutely. The second book that I've been writing is about human potential, women, AI, and motherhood in this tech age, but one of the things I really discovered while I was there was making sure… Life is not a ladder. my parents taught me to climb, climb to the top. I got to the top and I was like,"I'm really lonely. I'm so lonely. Now what?" And now I've realized it's more like a garden, right? life is a garden, and you have to cultivate all of these different things in the different seasons that you're in. But, cultivating friendships, my father is 85, and I was working on my book and he said, honey, I'm 85 years old and I spent my whole life working and I never really thought about my friendships. I didn't tend to my friendships, and now I don't have any friends." And I was like, "Ooh." He's "Remember to put that in your book." I was like, "Okay, I'll make sure friends go in there, Dad."

Mel:

That's so interesting you're saying that because when we think about men or any man I've ever been with, they don't have friends. They don't have their nurturing friendships, and they always rely on the woman for their socialization. the woman will make the double dates, will get the parties going. So it's been a man disease not to have those close relationships with friends, and now I'm afraid that it's happening to us, too.

Aimee:

It absolutely is, 'cause, in a lot of ways, feminism 1.0 was women learning to imitate men.

Mel:

Like, how can we go out in the workplace and be good hard workers and rise to the top? And so we have been g- out of our authenticity and a little bit into that, acting like a man. And what do men do? They don't hang out with their buddies. They focus hard on their career. And so maybe as we enter feminism 2.0, as I like to call it- Oh, yeah women get re- back in touch with ourselves. We get back to having IRL friends. Because I read a study recently, if you have a girls' night out every three weeks- You will regulate your nervous system. Hmm. Just every 21 days, one girls' night out with your girlfriends. I love that. Me too. That's all. I need that. With all my kids, are you kidding me? We do need it. We need it. We- There's just something you can't get from anything else in life except your girlfriends, your good girlfriends.

Aimee:

Exactly. Yeah, there's something.

Mel:

Soul.

Aimee:

It- they really do. I'll come home after my we started a girls' club, some girls that I went to high school with in Laguna Beach, and, we started a girls' club about a year and a half ago.

Mel:

We get together every other Friday, and it feeds my soul. I come home, and I am a better human being. Yay. And I'm like," Okay, I'll take it." Awesome. And then you know on that standing date. I think that's really smart. It's so nice. One of my girlfriends got divorced, so she doesn't have her kids every other weekend, so we have this gorgeous house that's become, the moms', runaway-from-home club. It's amazing. It's like our clubhouse. I need to come. Yes, come on down. It's so fun and gorgeous, and it's just, it feed, it really does just feed your soul just to be with your girlfriends and just chew it up. my husband's "What do you guys even do?" I'm like, "We talk for, four hours." Yeah. No short conversation.

Aimee:

It's the best. That's what we need. So why are so many women exhausted when their lab work comes back normal? Ugh, this one bugs everybody.' Mel: Cause there is no normal. There is no normal. So the labs, they take information from the whole population, sick people, not sick people. This is a big problem, actually, and labs make mistakes. And so what I've always said is get your baseline labs when you're young and you feel your best because your numbers aren't gonna match other people's numbers, so that you can keep tracking your numbers over your lifespan. So when you start feeling bad and you can go, "Huh, my ferritin is off by 10 points from when I felt great" And you can say, "I need ferritin," and pinpoint what's good for you. So that's one thing. Your NAD decreases around 35. People don't know about that. You can't test it, so you just gotta assume that's getting low, and you do all you can to increase your NAD levels, 'cause that goes to ATP, which is what furnishes your mitochondria, which is energy. So- So what's your favorite form of NAD?

Mel:

how- So- … do you recommend we take this? So I actually have a formula that was formulated by the scientist that isolated a form of NAD 50 years ago, and I import that from South Africa. But it comes in a bullet casing, NAD, and it bypasses your stomach. Oral NAD gets destroyed in your stomach. That's why you don't see it very much, because it just is worthless. but mine comes in a bullet casing, goes into your intestines and gets absorbed. But I also… They also have resveratrol in there, astaxanthin, which is a very high antioxidant. They have the precursor to glutathione, because glutathione gets destroyed in your stomach as well, another great antioxidant. There's so much stuff in my NAD that helps drive the NAD actually into the cell, because NAD is a big molecule, and it's hard to get into the cell, so that's a problem. That's a problem with the injections, IVs, all of them, 'cause it's a big molecule. So I love my oral NAD, not to have a commercial for myself, but it's just-

Aimee:

I, I think it's awesome, Mel. Actually, if we can put a link for it on the website, go ahead and go to themanageher.com and we'll have a link for your NAD on our website. Okay. We'll pop it up there for you.

Mel:

Whoa, that'd be awesome. Thank you.

Aimee:

Absolutely.

Mel:

and then just to follow up on that, I know people are crazy about the IVs, and I used to… I was doing NAD IVs way before anybody was talking about NAD. But now I really like to switch people to 10 injections of 100 milligrams of NAD instead of sitting for a big bolus for four hours of 1,000 milligrams of NAD. Because when you take 100 milligrams over time, it kinda is just more steady and keeps your levels up, and it's just way more tolerable.

Aimee:

Oh, yeah, I did the NAD IVs with my integrative doctor. Gosh, must have been around 2019. It was for inflammation. I was just sick again. I get sick. It was, ooh, those IVs are gnarly. they really make you very nar- I was like, thought I was gonna toss my cookies. but thank God for Zofran,

Mel:

Kept me… Yeah. Yeah. IVs are no joke.

Aimee:

They're no joke. And for the girls who don't know what NAD is- Could you tell them?

Mel:

Well, it's a molecule that you already have-… in your body, and it really is responsible for thousands of reactions in your body. But it's just great for your brain. Now they're giving NAD IVs to Alzheimer's patients in hospitals, mainstream, which I thought- Wow was pretty interesting. But it's great for your myelin sheath of your brain. It's good for your eyesight. So it helps you repair your DNA, 'cause your DNA becomes not as effective as well, right? So it helps keep your DNA healthy, and it's for your mitochondria. you just need it for a lot of different things. So you need to try to keep it boosted if you can.

Aimee:

That's awesome. Good, that's such good advice for the girls. It's something they can do easily, and I love resveratrol, too. I had a product back, in 2012 that was a nutritional supplement for moms, and we put resveratrol in there because of the, we read studies, epigenetic studies, that it actually can make your offspring live longer, because of the way that it, it increases the length of the telomeres, which are determining the kind of biological age of a person.

Mel:

Well, here's a little advance for you. There's something called epitalon. That's an- Ooh, yes… actual peptide that also is It's so cool. I've done two cycles. Oh, yeah? I know. Does it make you feel any different? Not yet, but I'm guess I'm glad to know that I'm lengthening my telomeres. I'd actually love to do the test and see what my biological age is,'cause I, and then compare, 'Cause I've been doing a lot of biohacking in the last year or so, that I would say the epitalon is very interesting. Because when your, when the ends of your telomeres are longer, it's actually easier for your DNA to, when you're RNA, to make a c- a healthy, good copy.'Cause what we're really seeing in d- in disease oftentimes is that your RNA basically made a bad photocopy of this cell or this- the DNA that was existing. And so if you lengthen your telomeres, you often get healthier cell replication-… as well, which is, part of aging, part of health. Aging well.

Aimee:

Yes. Yeah, I promised my 16-year-old that I would live to be 130, so let's see.

Mel:

well, If I get to, if I get to, 100 and… I think if I could get to 105, that would be pretty cool. Well, I- As long as I'm happy… I gotta make sure my money me run out of money by then. I have an evergreen company, so as long as the kids keep running it and it keeps getting contracts, we'll be fine. Well, that's smart. I don't know. Yeah. When I go busy, my shit goes down.

Aimee:

We're hearing more conversations around men- perimenopause and hormone shifts. What do you wish more women understood about that stage of life?

Mel:

That's a hard question. I think it's just what we were saying before. You have to… It's almost you know how all the news channels are now biased to either Democrat or Republican, right?

Aimee:

Yes.

Mel:

Well, now it's almost like you have to follow lots of different doctors, because they all have different opinions, and you have to pick and choose what you, what pertains to you. And you just have to be on top of it at this point and be your own advocate. And watch your own symptoms. I had, breast tenderness, and I knew my estrogen was getting too high, but most women may not know that. you just have to get familiar with your body and what you're feeling, even if you need to have a diary tracking symptoms or if something's improving even, or if not. And if it's not doing you any good and it's doing you more harm, then you have to pay attention to those things.

Aimee:

Yeah, I started, my, the main symptom that I got about a year ago was insomnia, and I think it was just realizing my progesterone level was probably lower than it ever had been. especially since I had a baby just a few years ago.

Mel:

your progesterone levels are so high when you're pregnant. So I think maybe in comparison, my body went, "Whoa, what's happening here?" It's a lot. You're flooded with all kinds of hormones when you're pregnant for nine months, and then it just goes whoosh. It's wild. It really is. And here, have a newborn baby, and your hormones are all messed up, too. Great.

Aimee:

Motherhood. Motherhood. For those new moms though, too, let's… Those new moms who are experiencing those fluctuations in hormones too, do you have any advice for them, for our young moms?

Mel:

I don't. it's across the board. Hormones are hormones, and every stage of our life, it's chaotic at each stage. They're writing more and more books on this. I just got one from the body that has, looks over OBGYNs. I'm hoping to get a, just a very unbiased opinion through that book. But there'll just be more and more education coming out, and you just have to look at the timeframe that you're at and figure out what you're experiencing. there's so many women that don't get diagnosed with endometriosis. there's just so many things that get overlooked. Y- so honestly you just have to watch your own body and learn.

Aimee:

Yeah, totally. write down your symptoms. Keep a track of them, 'cause then you can bring that in with your d- y- when you go to see a doctor, you can bring it with you.

Mel:

'Cause you, when you, when… Otherwise, you might forget. Sometimes you'll go into the doctor- Yeah… and you're nervous, and you're rushed. That's right. And he says, "What's the pr- what's the matter?" And you're like, "I'm fine." And they'll condescend you. I've been condescended by many doctors."Oh, you're fine." Pat me on the head. And I'm like, "Well, I'm really not fine. I'm not fine." your labs will look normal, which by the way, you can't really go on for your horm- hormones. You have to go by symptoms. So yep, I, we definitely need more information around this topic for women.

Aimee:

I love it, and let's make it happen. Let's get a rou- I'm with you on that. So a- any way I can help you get that done, I'm, I would love to help you fundraise for that, whatever I can do.

Mel:

Let's do it.

Aimee:

Let's do it. Let's do it. So peptides are huge. We talked about a few of them, the epithalamin, the GLP-1s. a lot of excitement around those GLP-1 treatments right now. What concerns you most about how people are approaching them? Any concerns?

Mel:

Well, like I said, I've been using the GLP-1s. I was an early person to be using them. So to watch the evolution of peptides and the GLP-1s has been- Crazy. So there is such a big black market going on for peptides, and what people don't realize is that it's coming from China. It's not being processed by a pharmacy which has hoods and sterility, and they're very regulated, sterile. So people are getting it from China. I had men call me saying,"I started a peptide lab. Can you teach me about them?" I was like,"What are you talking about?" He's "Yeah, I'm just in my garage making them." One of these guys has one of the biggest black market companies there is now, and I'm like, "This is not good." Anyway, they get something in it called LPS, lipopolysaccharide. It's an inflammatory thing.

Aimee:

So you're telling me about these LPS?

Mel:

Yeah. Okay. I need to know about this. this is not good, and this is the first I'm hearing of it. Oh, really? Yeah. LPS, lipopolysaccharide. It's what gets into the black market peptides, and it's a big inflammatory thing that you do not want in your body.

Aimee:

Is it like a-

Mel:

You absolutely don't… is it like a mycoplasma? It's a bacteria. Ew. It's an endotoxin. Yeah. Gross. you just don't know what you're getting. so sometimes people will think they're getting BPC 157 and it's actually a GHK-Cu, or they think they're getting 10 milligrams and it's actually 20 milligrams. And people, are getting hurt. So that's why Bobby Kennedy and all the people in the government are… They're going to put, 11 or 12 peptides in July in a different category so that pharmacies can make it freely. They're trying to get away, they're trying to do away with the black market because too many people are getting hurt from it. So that's a good thing.

Aimee:

That's awesome. do you know which ones they're choosing?

Mel:

Yeah, but I can't rattle it off on the top of my head. No worries. I'll put a list in here, 'cause I think that's really interesting. I'm glad that they're gonna allow…'Cause compounding pharmacies are highly prepared to make these kinds of compounds, and they could do it safely, and they could do it with the flow hoods, and they could do it sterile. And I grew up in a compounding pharmacy, and when… And so that would be a fabulous thing for compounding pharmacies to be able to make for people safely. You should educate your audience on compounding pharmacies because they're v- villainized by big pharma, and we all started out as compounding pharmacies. The CVSs of the world is a new thing, and it doesn't make it better.

Aimee:

very new. So I worked in a family-owned pharmacy from the time I was 16 years old.

Mel:

My mom had her own pharmaceutical manufacturing company for a long time as well. But then I worked in a family-owned compounding pharmacy, and my mother worked in another compounding pharmacy, for quite some time. And basically, a compounding pharmacy is usually family-owned. it's usually not corporate, which is maybe why they're getting attacked. And for the longest time, this was what all pharmacies really were. If you needed a prescription, your doctor could call it in, and we could create something that was specifically to what your doctor wanted you to have. So if it was l- oftentimes back then, it was, like, estrogen, and things like that. We would mix up, estrogen creams based on what the doctor wanted specifically as far as dosage for the patient. I remember mixing up quite a lot of those. And my… One of the pharmacists that I worked with loved to teach me how to compound, and I absolutely… I've al- grew up, making experiments and potions and all that stuff. So I thought it was the, one of my favorite parts about working in the pharmacy. Was watching him compound these highly specialized, specific formulations from a doctor to a patient. And a lot of times you're just mixing, a powder with a solution, which I would think is exactly what you would be doing in a compounding pharmacy when we would… If we were making a peptide for a client, from a doctor to a client, we would basically take the powder, we would be able to get a standardized version of the powder. We would then add a clean bacteriostatic water to that powder, specifically with the, right amount of water for that specific solution. Then we would be able to label it for you so you'd know exactly what to, how to take it, when to take it, how much to take of it, and that would be on the bottle for you. And it's, I can see only benefits to all of the patients in this type of medicine. I w- had the very wonderful privilege of getting my very first compound pharmacy peptides. I was able to get a tirzepatide from a compound pharmacy through another practitioner who, actually we kicked this, this season, this series on Manage Your Health off with her. And she is actually able to get quite a few, not a lot yet, maybe there's about f- three or four peptides that she can get now. TA-1 we can get fr- from a pharmacy now. tirzepatide and, sermorelin, I think maybe those are the three for right now. And then as we evolve into July, there will be more that will be available, which is just awesome. I would rather pay more. we can do PT-141 now, which is an amazing peptide.

Aimee:

That's right.

Mel:

Tell us, please, for all of us ladies out here who are a certain age, please tell us about the, PT-141. it's FDA approved for women's hypodesire. So you know how men take Viagra? That's more of a vasculature thing, and this more works on your neurological desire cent- centers. Helps with libido, it helps with orgasms. It's saved lots of marriages. I highly recommend it. I- You take it 30 to 45 minutes before you want to be intimate

Aimee:

It is unbelievable, and it's not vas- acting on a vascular level, like all the men's pills all work for this vascular. But with women, it's interesting. Here we go with working on our brain, because…

Mel:

It makes your brain to be bold And we also have, oxytocin spray that helps with, connecting and bonding. That- All kinds of things… Aimee: awesome. And Mel, where do you sell these? Are you having… Do you have people, find you on your website, and then they can come and do a consult? How do we do this nowadays? Well, there's two ways. I really like to see people in my Malibu office, and then take care of people myself, but I also have a telehealth that's completely hands-off. I have doctors in every state, so that's also an option.

Aimee:

Awesome.

Mel:

So my telehealth is 1228RX, 12 the word, 28 the number, RX.com. And then to contact me, you go to my other website where all my supplements are, 12 the word, dash 28 the number, .com.

Aimee:

Awesome. Yeah, I hope that the girls reach out to you, 'cause you are a wealth of knowledge, and you've been in the GLP-1s forever. I think we didn't really talk about this on the show yet, but tell us how you got started in Malibu. you have an interesting history there with Hollywood.

Mel:

So I would get people ready for roles, actors ready for roles, like really have to do some extreme weight loss, and then get, put the weight back on safely. And your name gets passed around when you do extreme things like that. So I just became th- the lady to come to for weight loss. Plus, I do it different. I go off of the universal protocol because it's so aggressive, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. So I have to do it based on the patient. What they're doing each week is what happens with their dose the next week. And I just do so much diet education so that they retain their muscle, and they don't lose weight too fast and mess up their metabolism, and they're able to come off of the GLP-1. you always gotta keep that as the, in the back of your head that you've gonna come off of this, so you better change some habits, and you better keep your muscle along the way. So it's important to be cared for by someone. I have a lot of people that just say,"No, you're too expensive. I'm gonna, I s- I can buy it for $200 a month." What they don't understand is that they are going to have to stay on it for life at higher and higher doses. It gets costly, and I don't think that is should be the goal, is to stay on it. You need to do the work. It's a great tool, but it's just that. It's a tool. Powerful tool, but you have to do work.

Aimee:

Yes, 'cause otherwise it really can run your metabolism down and basically decrease your metabolism. So as soon as you go off of it, the weight will come right back on-… because you've lost your muscle.

Mel:

And more. Yes, and more. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So- It's, and people don't realize that. They just want that quick, knock my appetite out. Oh, I just lost five pounds. Give me more, more. I see it all day long- with people. And, people are stubborn, and they don't wanna eat better. They just wanna eat less crap. And really and truly, that's a recipe for disaster.

Aimee:

Yeah. It's so true. So true. Yeah, 'cause you do… And I think you're seeing that more than ever now. I think they really did this big sort of push with these drugs over the last two years, and now you're seeing the people who have lost, had the rapid l- weight loss, but now they're putting the weight back on, and their, can't get their insurance companies to pay for the drug any longer.

Mel:

And now their metabolism was actually damaged by the drug rather than repaired by it. Yeah. So we have this-… this infinite loop- Yep … cycle happening with, now they're putting the weight back on because it wasn't done properly. We're just gonna see an epidemic of sarcopenia and osteopenia and all these things because people aren't doing it the correct way. Again, in the right hands, it's wonderful. It's amazing. It can even help your metabolism. it can even push glucose into your muscle where it goes. You have to do it right. you have to know what you're doing, and people don't.

Aimee:

Even the doctors, it seems like, the MDs, there are a lot of MDs that are prescribing these and really aren't giving the people any specific eating protocols or w- workout protocols so they can help maintain their muscle. They're not doing any sort of, peptides to help, HGH production, like the sermorelin type of thing with it. so I, I do th- I worry about the long-term effects with people that are getting these drugs in a legitimate way from their doctors with their insurance companies, and they're still having bad results.

Mel:

Well, it's because they're just giving them the universal protocol and sending them on their way. It's not a good plan. It's very aggressive. It's an aggressive, it's an aggressive protocol. It's basically- I don't … starts with a low dose, and then basically you go double the dose, and there's no way to even adjust the dose for the patient, right?

Aimee:

Is that what's going on?

Mel:

that's correct. And, you flood your receptors with it, and you become desensitized to it, and you're just getting these big, huge doses. And one day it's just not gonna work. So I just always keep people as low, low as possible, and work on the diet. And if somebody plateaus, I say, "Well, w- you, you gotta stop doing X, Y, and Z."

Aimee:

Yeah. You're so right. I'm glad that there are people like you, and I know you're working on a book too, right?

Mel:

Yeah. Yay. Yeah. Very helpful, because I'm, I talk about all of this stuff. Half of it's medical, and how we got here, and why we're an obese nation. And, just more of, an education about the food system, how to have a clean kitchen, get all the toxins out of your kitchen, how to stop filling your life of microplastics and metals. And so I go into all that. And then the other half is just really easy, low-carb, high nutrient-dense food, recipes.

Aimee:

That's awesome, 'cause I think that's kinda what we're missing. If we had better recipes while we're on these diets too, we could-… we could learn, because our brains are getting rewired. we really r- we, GLP-1s rewire your brain, the neuroplasticity.

Mel:

But if we learned a new way to cook, new methods, it could really be great. I think your book's just gonna be fabulous Well, you change your microbiome, you change your dopamine, you change your palate. It's all connected. your gut sends messages to your brain,"Give me more sugar. Give me more sugar." So y- yeah, you gotta… And it, but it takes a while. It takes a while to, to make your microbiome turn over into microbiome that isn't fed by sugar, for an example. So yeah, I, I've had people to lose 10 pounds just by watching my Instagram. so I hope it helps people.

Aimee:

I love that- But get-… you're out there helping women.

Mel:

It's so important. Somebody's gotta do it. You're just doing such great work. We're so proud of you. Oh, thank you. That book's more work than I thought. It's taking me longer than I want, but thank you. Oh, we'll get you some help on that one too. I've got the girl for you. Oh.

Aimee:

Do you think women o- are overmedicated and undersupported?

Mel:

Overmedicated with, like antidepressants?

Aimee:

Antidepressants, sleeping pills, anti-anxiety meds. Oh, yeah.

Mel:

Oh, of course. Of course they are. men are too, honestly, but, especially women. I think that we are, talked down to by a lot of doctors."Here's a pill. Go away." So it's like that with antibiotics. It's like that with a lot of things. Yeah, of course. We're overmedicated as a society.

Aimee:

Oh, couldn't agree more. And what's one thing happening in women's healthcare right now that deeply concerns you?

Mel:

The overselling of hormones. I think it's being oversold. Let's be beautiful. Get beautiful skin with estrogen. I don't like it when we start, going for the beauty sell. That bothers me a lot. I f- I feel like there's a lot of that going on. The monetization of women's hormones is bothering me.

Aimee:

I think that's very wise. Is modern healthcare treating symptoms instead of root causes?

Mel:

No, but I think it's getting better. I think we're getting better. I think there's a lot of education going on online right now, so the patients are learning more about the whole body so that they can t- in turn put pressure on the doctor to learn these things as well, or they're gonna fall behind. Everything you learn in medical school is either wrong or obsolete five years after you come out of school. doctors are busy, and you really just gotta keep up with the information and the studies, and it's all coming at us breakneck speed. Science is moving. it's, it takes a village. It takes the patient knowing their own self and what's going on, and it takes the doctor to keep up with it all. It's a lot.

Aimee:

Couldn't agree more. What's one wellness trend you think people are getting completely wrong?

Mel:

Oh my gosh. It feels like there's one every week. I don't know why I have the urine thing on my mind, 'cause that was last week. I think people are really taking peptides too lightly, and people wanna stack millions of peptides all at once. I don't think you should do that. I think you should get with somebody responsible, do one at a time so you know what is doing what. Because I have people that, that'll come in, they'll go, "Oh, yeah, I'm on this stack and this stack." And I was like, "What are you…" Here's an example. I had a very thin man come in, and I said, "Oh my gosh, you're so thin." He gives me a laundry list of all the peptides he's on. He's on Retrutide. And it's oh my gosh, why are you on Retrutide? And he said, "Because I told the doctor my energy was low." And I said, "Retrutide is not for energy. If anything, it's gonna, it's gonna zap your energy." So he took that out of the list. I just think people are taking peptides recklessly. that's probably the biggest one. I'm not a big fan of the pellet for hormones. I don't think there's one size fits all. You can't control it. Collagen is crazy. The… People go crazy over collagen. Just eat your protein, people.

Aimee:

Like, how much protein do you eat a day? what's your goal?

Mel:

So I don't believe in restrictive counting of anything. If you eat well like I do, I focus on protein, whole food protein. I cook it well. I don't put a lot of sauce on it. I just keep everything very simple, and I try to eat lots of colors of vegetables. I focus on my fiber and my protein. I don't count calories. I don't count pro- protein. I just know what my body needs and- Honestly, I s- had to stop working out for a year, and my muscle mass is exactly the same, and I attribute that to my diet and the amount of protein I eat. But if I'm hungry and, people just have all these rules, "Oh, you can't eat within this window." I don't believe in all that. I think sometimes people don't get enough nutrition in because of all these things, and it, you can't eat with- this amount of time before bed. Well, okay, yeah, you might have a sugar spike and it might disrupt your sleep, but I know if I haven't eaten enough and I'm starving, I can't sleep. So I just think everybody needs to take everything with, a little bit more thought and not get so caught up in what's trending. And anytime anybody says an absolute"You absolutely have to eat within this window. You absolutely need a gram of protein per ideal body weight," there, there just aren't these absolutes. We don't have the science to back any of it. If anybody says, "Oh, you have to be a vegetarian. You have to be a carnivore," no. you need a variety of all of it. It all does something different. So I just don't think you need to be crazy about any of it.

Aimee:

I agree. What about microbiome? What do you think for microbiome support? what's your go-to? Are you using foods? Are you using supplements? how are you supporting your microbiome?

Mel:

Well, fermented foods are great for your microbiome. We actually don't even understand, the microbiome fully. people say, "Well, you need 1,000 of this bacillum," or, whatever. I think there's a lot of low quality supplements and probiotics on the market. There's some people that think that they have to be cold shipped, and they're, they die, and they're not really doing anything. And then, you can probably mess up your microbiome in a lot of ways. So I just think you need to… And I'm looking this to m- myself as well, because people don't get enough fiber, and the right kind of fiber. So I may make something down the line for this, but, you just really need to feed yourself good fiber and eat a lot of different kinds of vegetables and fruits. And fermented things, like I said, are a good prebiotic. and stay away from sugar. you don't wanna feed the microbiome that loves sugar.

Aimee:

Exactly, 'cause you don't wanna grow all your yeast out. I feel like they, we've had such a problem with yeast for the last 40 or 50 years 'cause the American diet is so heavy in sugar.

Mel:

Yeah. Yeah, it's terrible. It's in everything. They sneak it into everything. I know. So you'll eat more of it. That's why you need to eat, that's why you need to eat food from the earth that is not messed with by people trying to make money. And buy it loose. Don't buy it pre-chopped in packages, You just gotta keep things as close to natural as you can. That's the big key.

Aimee:

Yeah, and you grew up in Texas, right? So it was probably easier in Texas, where you probably had farms. No, none of that?

Mel:

No. Just the opposite. I was raised on Cap'n Crunch and foil TV dinners. Oh, wow. So you've come a long way, 'cause it's always interesting to see, the women who come into this wellness space. it's either one way or the other. their moms were either, an Ayurvedic doctor who was, like, hardcore, or they grew up and, had absolutely no nutritional, system in the house. So that's interesting. I never would guess. You're so gorgeous. It- Oh my gosh. Well, we didn't know any better back then. We, the '90s we thought y- you'd be thin as long as you'd eat, didn't eat fat, so we would just eat frozen Lean Cuisines all day just to keep o- no fat in our diet. We've just learned so much more. So it's not even the fault of our parents, it's the fault of we didn't know any better. Science didn't know any better. So now we do, and I'm sure we'll keep building on what we know now. we do need to build on it. them just changing the food pyramid for the first time, So we just keep evolving and doing the best we can as we get the information in.

Aimee:

Yeah. I'm very happy to see some of the work that's being done right now when it comes to food, especially, the food pyramid. That's pretty cool. the peptide thing, that's pretty cool, and the stem si- st- it looks like the stem cells are moving in the right direction in the US for health, and I think that's pretty cool, too, 'cause man, we had a real slowdown with the Bush administration back in the early 2000s when they kinda put a stop on the research for stem cells, 'cause I think that really, you know, pa- beyond peptides, I think stem cells are gonna be the next thing once it opens up widely.

Mel:

It'd be great. Exosomes are a little bit safer than stem cells, but yet less effective. But, that kinda fits in the category of the gray peptides, right?'Cause it's not regulated. So there's no standardized regulation of that, which we need, because, you don't wanna be getting DNA that you don't want and things that you don't want. these are not completely benign things. I've known people to get really ill from going down out of the US and getting stem cells in their spine and then, and, bad things happen. we have to be cautious with these things. I think that they do have a lot of Promise, but I, yeah, I wish our government would let us do it the right way.

Aimee:

Yeah, I think that's the one thing where we're really all asking for is please let us do the, do these things the right way. We really wanna do the peptides. We wanna do them the right way. either we're allowed to do these things on the white market, or they're d- or always in all things, there develops a black market, a gray market. You think of abortion, and it was that way too, was it wasn't that people weren't gonna do it. My mother always said, "It wasn't that people weren't getting abortions, people just weren't getting safe abortions."

Mel:

Well, we rolled that clock back. Like, okay, are we back? There's that woman thing again.

Aimee:

I mean, we have to, as women, I think as we rise, as women rise with their, um, not just our education, not just our status, but also, you know, women are getting a huge wealth transfer right now. It's like the largest wealth transfer in the history of humanity, and it's trillions of dollars that are coming into the pockets of the Gen Xers and the mil- millennial women for, that they're inheriting basically from their parents who are, passing over.

Mel:

And so it's interesting to me what's gonna happen when women have education, status, power, and the desire to change things politically once they have the money to do so. Yeah. We need more women in office, too. Yes.

Aimee:

I was… I reached out to Bobby Kennedy, Gary Brecka, Marla Maples. I'm like, can you get more women in these health roles?

Mel:

I don't understand. I don't understand how Gary Brecka and all the people that don't even have a degree, they get in these positions. I don't know how it happens.

Aimee:

Yeah, we do need more women, for sure. I have a friend of mine, actually, my midwife is working on maternal care with HHS right now for their p- Really?

Mel:

Yes, she is. I'm so proud of her. so- Yay … there are women there. I do have quite a few friends. I have a lot of friends that are working in the food system right now with this, administration at w- as well, some that are very- Good … very disappointed in the Farm Bill with the glyphosate, being allowed to stay in the food supply for the next, what is it, five years. It's a five-year phase-out, which is a long time, especially with the le- the levels- Well- … that have been allowed. You, you gotta think of how that's gonna go down, though. Yeah. what is 80… I think something like 80% of our food has glyphosate.

Aimee:

Yeah.

Mel:

So it's gonna take time. It's gonna take time to switch over to l- to lasers to kill the bugs and all those thing- That, it just takes time. but at least it's happening.

Aimee:

Yes, it is, and it's, and it's everybody, every mom that I know, we all wish it could happen tomorrow because we all have small children, and it's so hard raising small children in a food system like this. And so it's, you know- It's expensive … it's hard.

Mel:

It's expensive. Yes. It's expensive because you can buy organic, but it's expensive.

Aimee:

Yeah, but it's, as my grandfather always said, you can put it in food bills or you can put it in medical bills. The choice is yours.

Mel:

Well, we have those lobbies. Exa- Those lobbyists. I know. That's one of the things, you know, Carrie Molus in his book, he talks about the fact that the only people that are unrepresented in Washington, DC are the taxpayers 'cause we're the only people who don't have lobbyists. Everybody else has lobbyists. We don't have any.

Aimee:

What… There's so much change that needs to happen. There is so much change. Either we need to start our own lobby as taxpayers, have our own lobby, or we need to just, outright get rid of that whole system. I don't even know how that got started in the first place. It's such a conflict of interest.

Mel:

It really is. It really is. It really is.

Aimee:

Yeah, and I mean- It just is … these companies already have so much influence anyway because now they're multi-billion dollar multinational corporations that are basically creating the policies that are in their own favor, And- it's been happening for such a long time, but we've never seen the volume of capital that these kinds of companies have h- have nowadays. they have more money than they've ever had before. So it's… I, as women, I love to have these kinds of conversations where we actually get to talk about, what would real change look like? what do we really care about? What are we really willing to do to make sure that-… that these things get better?'Cause we're, I already have grandkids, and I'm gonna have a lot more. Gosh.

Mel:

I can't believe you have grandkids. I do. Wow. That's fun.

Aimee:

But yeah. Oh my gosh, Mel, this conversation was fascinating because it really highlighted how interconnected women's health has become with stress, technology, hormones, emotional labor, and the pace of modern life. Why… What I appreciate so much about your approach is that it's not just about treating symptoms, it's about helping people understand their bodies more deeply and giving them the tools to become active participants in their own wellness. And honestly I think so many women listening need to hear that because women

today are carrying an incredible amount:

careers, caregiving, households, emotional labor, family health, and often their own burnout quietly in the background. This episode is such an important reminder that health is not selfish, energy is not selfish, restoration is not selfish. It's foundational. So thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your experience, your honesty, and your wisdom. And to everyone listening, if today's episode resonated with you, please share it with another woman who may need this conversation, and make sure to follow Melanie Mansell and learn more about her work at 12, spelled out, 28, the numbers, Wellness. And you go ahead and give yourself a … Go ahead and give us a plug for your websites again.

Mel:

Yeah, that's, that wasn't quite it. Well, my Instagram is my name, @melaniemansell. A- and my website, my telehealth is 12, the word, 28, the number, rx.com. And then my supplement website is 12, the word, dash, 28, the number, .com. Love that. It's a mouth-… Aimee: It is. But it's good. I'm glad the girls can get it. It'll be in the transcript, and we'll make … We'll put some links up on our website for you, too, 'cause I think y- you're a tremendous resource to our community, and I'd love to support you, and I know that you'll support us right back, so I appreciate that. it. Thank you. And as always, please subscribe, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and share this episode on social media. Thank you for joining us at The Manager… Oh, thank you for joining us for Manage Your Health Month on The Manager Podcast. And remember, you can't sustainably manage everyone else if you never learn to manage your own health, energy, and wellbeing.

Aimee:

We'll see you next time on The Manager Podcast. Love that. Thank you, Mel. Yeah. I would … Thank you. Thanks. I just love your energy. You're welcome. You're amazing. Oh, my G. You're welcome. You are amazing.

Mel:

No, you.

Aimee:

I do. I really wanna hook you up with Shayna and Cindy, my, my publisher- Yes … my, the women who helped me midwife my book. And they'll … They just helped my friends, s- who, which one was it? Katie, Pritchett, Dr. Katie Pritchett, with her book, and she's out- What?… basically they got her all the way through to get her a beautiful transcript that she could take out to other publishers, basically go peddle for herself.

Mel:

Nice. Amazing. And I think that's what- Thank you … you need to do 'cause you already you have the name, you have the … You've got the knowledge, you've got all these things. So we get you a beautiful manuscript to take in, you're gonna just be in… It's gon- would be so good for you.

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Aimee Rickabus

Host