Menopause, Unscripted.

The Lab You Didn't Know You Needed || Episode 23

• Heidi Gastler X Stray Kat Studio • Season 1 • Episode 23

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From conquering her first hot flashes at age 44 to perfecting a handstand at 69, Jeanne Peters is redefining what it means to age well. In this episode of Menopause Unscripted, Dr. Heidi talks with Jeanne, an accomplished registered dietitian of 45 years, triathlete, and active aging advocate, about navigating hormonal changes with confidence and strength.

Read About Eating For Menopause: Tips From Jeanne: https://www.heydrheidi.com/post/eating-for-menopause-with-jeanne-peters-rd

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Menopause Unscripted is a women’s health podcast hosted by Dr. Heidi, the creator of Hey Dr. Heidi. Each episode delivers expert insights, real-life stories, and evidence-based information to help women navigate perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause with confidence.
This podcast covers topics such as menopause symptoms, hormone replacement therapy, pelvic health, sleep changes, intimacy and relationships, osteoporosis prevention, brain fog, mood shifts, and healthy aging. With a focus on science-backed advice and approachable conversation, Menopause Unscripted offers clarity, support, and practical tips for every stage of midlife.

Whether you are experiencing early menopause symptoms or seeking resources for post-menopausal health, Menopause Unscripted is your trusted source for reliable information and open conversation.

Want to be on the show?
Think you’d be a great guest or know someone with an important story to share? Email us at connect@heydrheidi.com.

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SPEAKER_00

Thanks for joining me on Menopause Unscripted. Remember, the change is just another beginning. Welcome back to another week of Menopause Unscripted. I'm Dr. Heidi, and this is my good friend Jeannie Peters, who is a registered dietitian and someone who I work with clinically all the time is part of my team practice around patients who need additional support with their healing and their nutrition. Thank you so much for being back.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks, Heidi. This is going to be a good session. I'm looking forward to sharing this information. I think a lot of women are going to benefit.

SPEAKER_00

Definitely. So something you were telling me about your last week. Yes. What is this report you've been seeing kind of over and over again in clinic?

SPEAKER_01

Well, last week I saw four women, all in different ages, uh, with low ferritin, but the predominant thing they were experiencing was just this deep fatigue. So, you know, one of them was a student, you know, a D1 volleyball player. Uh, the oldest one was like 50. And uh yeah, that really kind of set me thinking, you know what? Women need to know uh more about ferritin and why that matters.

SPEAKER_00

Sure. And can I ask like the these women, were they having any sort of abnormal uterine bleeding, abnormal periods, all of them across the board?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, actually, the uh the volleyball player is one that was having very heavy periods. I mean, she's 19, and then the oldest one is uh still in perimenopause, so she's still having you know the classic kind of intermittent periods, but when she does, sometimes it's six days and she's getting the heavy blood clots, and then so you know, there's there's the range age-wise, um, but that predominant feeling was just deep fatigue.

SPEAKER_00

And you mentioned you know that she's in having like the the hormonal stuff, the 50-year-old. Right. With um with these women, are you seeing or are they reporting to you that this is like cyclic and has to do with their cycles? Oh, it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01

Some the the volleyball player was thinking, oh my gosh, it's probably related to the fact that I'm playing volleyball and I'm on a heavy schedule and I'm under a lot of stress because of school. So that's you know, maybe the stress piece. But all of these women are juggling jobs, children, you know, many of them are working out, and they're just looking at the fatigue as a piece, but it's not like they connected the dots between heavy breeding and the fatigue. Right. And or that, you know, that they might be anemic. That just wasn't even a consideration. One of them is actually more of a not vegan, but more vegetarian. Okay. So that would be one issue that you know maybe women aren't aware of. But I think the other thing that was classic for all of them was just hair loss. Okay. Interesting. Hair loss, you know, which we now know, ferritin, which is one of the markers for iron metabolism. It's your iron storage, it's stored in your liver. Hair loss can be a big issue. Um, the stress factor, you know, just feeling like a restless leg syndrome. Sure. You know, women just feeling like, why do I feel like my legs are so crawly in the middle of the night? Uh, so those are all classic symptoms that these women had, but we didn't necessarily verify it until we checked their ferritin. Got it.

SPEAKER_00

Can you tell us other reasons why, like the main reasons why ferritin and like iron can be low and how that leads into anemia? Oh, I think it's such an important question.

SPEAKER_01

I really do, because ferritin is like your storage form. It's it's stored in your liver. And it's like, think of ferritin as like your bank account, you know, and then what's in your red blood cells, like what's being trapped, what how it's traveling would be your hematocrit and hemoglobin. And sometimes hematocrit and hemoglobin will look just fine on a CBC. It's not until you check your ferritin and find out a normal range is um 25 to like 100. You know, you have somebody who's 18 and maybe a doctor just dismisses it feeling like it's not that abnormal. It's not that abnormal. And yet we know that symptoms can start when somebody's as low as 35 or 40. So I know Doc and I like to see a ferritin level that's closer to 70, like the halfway point. Sure. Think of that as like the Goldilocks position. That's where you're gonna have enough stores so that your body's able to supply during the intermittent cycles that women may be having with their periods, where, you know, maybe one month they have a heavy, crazy period, lots of clots, changing their tampons several times, you know, maybe in an hour on the first or second day. Sure. And then maybe a month goes by where they don't have a period. But that intermittent can really take a toll on that veritin storage bank, that bank account.

SPEAKER_00

And you mentioned the fatigue and the crawling. And part of what I think immediately of that is that you're having low oxygenation of the body. Of course. And that is you're not having that ability to transport oxygen.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. So your iron storage and your iron carrying capacity, I mean, oxygen is absolutely critical. So you're gonna get like the brain fatigue. You're gonna get the brain fatigue, yes. Yeah, and that's a clo, those are classic symptoms. All of those I hear. Um, but again, women don't necessarily connect the dots that all this is connected to just my cycles. Because I think like I'm just stressed, I'm tired. I'm tired, yes. Particularly if you're a mother, you're working, you've got kids, you're, you know, you're doing all the things, right?

SPEAKER_00

Right. Or you're a younger student and you're in school and doing heavy athletics and over. Double workouts sometimes.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, for goodness sake, absolutely. You know, just not even connecting the dots. So I think it's really important for women who are out there who maybe have children, in which, you know, your kids are come reporting that they're feeling this fatigue to think about this as a marker to check your total iron and to check your ferritin. But also just for you, you know, as women, you know, who are still in that perimenopause region, it is not a common marker that a physician would think to go ahead and check.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and that's I mean, I that's something I see now more, now more with my paramenopausal women, but not all of them. And generally, it is that fatigue that they're reporting with combined with the heavy menstrual periods before someone is checking that ferritin level.

SPEAKER_01

Right. And their hematocrit and hemoglobin, again, a CBC might just show you're totally normal, so they're gonna dismiss it. So it's always when we have to dig deeper. And right now, you know, iron deficiency anemia is probably one of the most common symptoms that women in their 40s and 50s experience, and yet we don't necessarily test for it.

SPEAKER_00

Right. And we also like have to kind of look at the symptoms as like symptom set, right? Correct. That it isn't siloed, it's not in isolation. So you can have this abnormal bleeding, low ferritin, shortness of breath, shortness of breath, some brain fog, and maybe my neuropathy, my legs is worse. Yes, you know, and I always tell patients in the clinic like if your neuropathy is worse in any part of your extremity, I call nerves a vampiric. I mean, they don't have blood flow, but they need a ton of circulation and a ton of oxygenation, such as nerves. So we're not crawling, we're not having more neuropathy. And I see this a lot with my older folks too. Might be postmenopausal. Right. But women, we're having more poor circulation in our legs, their neuropathy is worse. Yes. Maybe we're not eating enough. Yes. We're definitely not eating five, you know, high fiber-rich foods. Right. You might be eating a lot more carbs and sweets.

SPEAKER_01

Correct. If you're thinking fatigue, you're not necessarily thinking, I need to have a hamburger. Right. You know, I need to get some iron into my body.

SPEAKER_00

Just don't think like that. Well, and the women who are saying, like, I don't like meat, but I'm cra I don't like red meat, especially. I don't like red meat, but I'm craving a hamburger, and I'm like, get your spirit in check.

SPEAKER_01

That's what happened. I was just talking to my niece, and she's like, you know, I don't really keep meat in my like, I just don't have it in my pantry. But yeah, I've been craving meat. I've been, I just realized I need a burger.

SPEAKER_00

I feel like that's like such a big thing is if you're craving something, like what deficiency do you have?

SPEAKER_01

Yes. No, our body doesn't lie. I had to talk to a uh a vegan about this recently because she was just like, I just am dreaming about beef. And she was, she's actually got anemia, but she's got many. She's got, you know, iron deficiency as well as B12 and B6 or classic things that you would find in a vegan. So yeah, pay attention to those symptoms, you know, or those dreams, because oftentimes your body is giving yourself clues. Right. And we don't always, we're too busy. We've got too many distractions sometimes to hear them.

SPEAKER_00

So that's why we have this podcast, right? Yeah, absolutely. And my sister-in-law, I think it's a perfect example of this. During baby number three, she has her third pregnancy. She has been a vegetarian by choice her whole life. And I went over to visit them last June and she was pregnant, and then I visited them again in January, and she now is eating some meat. And she just told me, she said, My body was telling me I needed it, and I'm just listening to my body. And that type of intuitive eating, I think, is really a big deal. It's not all types of opportunity.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, but no, it's great when you can sort of reclaim your personal power because you're listening to what your body's telling you and you're getting the feedback in return, which is that I've got better energy.

SPEAKER_00

That's you know, that's a powerful connection to make. Absolutely. Like you started noticing that the physical things that were like holding you back are actually improving. Yes. So it's a good thing. Now, can I ask the patients that you saw? Were any of them dealing with things like endometriosis, adenomyiosis, fibroids, anything like that?

SPEAKER_01

That's a great qu no, not actually none of them were, but fibroids, yes. I mean, we have women in our practice who have had fibroids and they're bleeding. Yeah. So I think it's really wise again to just you just have to not only go ahead and have those women get that checked out with their OBGYN, but at the same time do blood work, right? You know, because we don't always know. You know, are you replacing the iron that you're losing each month, you know, that yeah, could be adding up where you're, you know, you're you're you're tapping into your stores, right? Those uh important ferritin stores.

SPEAKER_00

And I think about like, you know, we have like more kind of that abnormal uterine bleeding, that heavy bleeding, that is it due to something gynecological that needs a deeper dive. Yes. We don't want to just treat the symptom. We need to make sure we're figuring out where it's coming from. Correct. The other thing I think of, and this is outside my scope of practice, but is something that I refer out for, is if somebody's coming in and they're reporting that they're having blood in their stool, or they're reporting that they're having other kind of GI things. It's like, do we have a colitis? You know, do we have some sort of Crohn's or something else that could be causing like a slow leakage of blood in the genitals?

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. So funny you should say that. Yesterday I had a client and I'm thinking about this woman, she's 80, and she has hemorrhoids. Yeah. And they were bleeding. But what was interesting for her was that we were able to assess that part of it was because she was on so many supplements that act as blood thinners. What did that include? It was berberine, that was fish oils, she had uh CoQ10. Uh part of it was her fish oils because she was trying to treat her uh elevated lipids with these blood thinners, but at the same time she was bleeding. So when we looked at her, her ferritin was super low, and then her hematocrit and hemoglobin now are low as a result. So she stopped everything, and within, well, I just got her blood work back yesterday and everything was normal. Which that was probably about three months. Okay. So three months of being off the supplement. So just be aware that there's, you know, all of these things require us investigating a little deeper to figure out the true root cause.

SPEAKER_00

Sure. I mean, that's again those supplements, people don't think of them as like medications. So oftentimes because they're over the counter and it's a supplement, they don't report it into their doctors. Correct. And we can only do as much that we have the good information, which is why patient reporting is so important. And my own physicians are like, you can't over-report. Yes. And I tell people like, you can't over-report. Like, I want to know everything. Every little detail. Even if it doesn't seem connected.

SPEAKER_01

I think that that's that's what we're supposed to do is connect those dots. You know, even if it's outside of our scope, sometimes we see things in which I'm sure you then, you know, maybe connected with their physician or something just to bring up. And I'm like, yeah, you know this is. Did you know this? Yes. Those calls. And actually, though that's part of how a good medical system works. We work together as a team. Right. When you start looking at like how women, we don't want them to fall through the cracks.

SPEAKER_00

No, and for so many they do that it's important to have people that are advocating. Absolutely. So getting good patient reporting, having good advocating, having people work together is all so important. That's why you all have to have a great team.

SPEAKER_01

You have to find your team, you know, because when you've got a good team, you've got other people that are looking out for you.

SPEAKER_00

When if you don't have one, the providers that you're working with should help you to create one. Create one. Yes. That's what I think. That's what I'm like, I that's wholeheartedly like what I make kind of the core principle of my practice here. Yes. But another thing, and this is something I've seen in the past, was this profile, but it came from like the actual medication side versus the supplement side. And I had a patient, this is years ago, who she was in chronic pain, and she had this in her medicine cabinet, just this lineup of medications. And she came in and I asked her, I said, Are you on any prescription medications? No. Are you on any non-prescription? She's like, Oh yeah, whole load. And I was like, What are you taking? She's like, I have no idea. She's like, but they're lined up on my shelf of my medicine cabinet. She said, I start at one end, and if that doesn't help, then I just march my way down the other end. Oh. And I was like, Can you bring them into your next session and leave them out for me? Because this was Tylenol and a leave and neproxen. Oh, ibuprofen. Oh, and so we have both the generics and the name brands. Oh my goodness. And so this woman had been doing this for months. Of course. Months. And just marched across. And I happened to work in the same building as her surgeon. And I went over to his office and I was like, I I need you. Yes. He looked at this and he goes, You've been taking all of this? Yeah. And she was having all sorts of GI issues. She was having all sorts of things like anemia and all these other side effects. But because they weren't prescriptions, she hadn't reported it. Got it. And he said, you know, you never reported this. She's like, you didn't ask. Wow. And so the right questions weren't getting asked. And like I said, this was years ago. This is probably a good, like 15 years ago at this point. But I still find that these questions, like we have to ask direct questions to clinicians.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no, those NSAIDs, you know, it's amazing that she didn't end up with a GI believe. Well, she probably was bleeding. She was bleeding. And she was anemic, which was part of like this whole profile. Right. You know, I like distance. You don't have to have horrible stomach pain to necessarily be having those symptoms when you're bleeding. Because it's that slow leak.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yeah. Good point. But that was something like, you know, we're talking this profile in these patients who might be having this. It's like we might be having it because we're having cycle changes. We might be having it because of cycle or of uh over stress or just normal cycles, but stress, heavy bleeding. We might have it because of oversupplementation or incorrect or incorrect medications or some sort of undiagnosed condition.

SPEAKER_01

You start putting two or three of those together, you know, you really are more at risk. And if you never ever, you know, your hemoglobin, hemoglobin and hematocrit still are maybe at the low end of normal, it'll get dismissed. Oh yeah. Because it's like running through those blubs, those labs, and they typically a physician who's got like 15 minutes to be with you is just gonna look through them real quickly. They're not gonna look to see, are you in the Goldilocks position or are you on the low end of normal consistently for three months in a row?

SPEAKER_00

And people don't realize either that each lab has its own normal range. Yes. Even if it says you're normal and you've got that green next to your thing saying it's it's okay, that may not be your normal and it might read different than like a different lab where they're calibrated differently. And I think that's something so few patients are aware of.

SPEAKER_01

I think it's a really powerful point because like for ferritin, you know, that range is like 25 to like 100. So, you know, that's different than let's say a range that like is a TSH where it might be, you know, one 1.123. Right. You know, when you have such a long think in terms, if you want to be in the ideal range, you want to be somewhere at least in the middle or maybe a little bit above the middle. So just keep that in mind when you're looking at your blood work, because I think that really helps you also to be like, you know, having another set of eyes on your own blood work. I really teach all my patients get copies of your blood work, put it in a three-ring binder, treat your health like you're a college student. You know, you're gonna go ahead and have all of your data there so that you can go back and see where to what where was I like a year ago.

SPEAKER_00

And following those trends. Yes. So let's go in from outside of like what can be causing anemia and ferritin reduction. And let's talk about what the symptoms are, and we should not talk about few symptoms, but what are the symptoms you would classically see with low ferritin bordering on anemia or with anemia? What are the symptoms that you would kind of expect someone to complain about? Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_01

I think shortness of breath, okay, hair loss, yeah. Uh, you know, the the restless leg, the deep fatigue. Uh you brought it up, brain, you know, your brain fog. Brain fog. Brittle nails.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah. And it means that sure. That kind of goes along with like the hair. Yes, yes, yes. I would expect too that my skin would be more dry and flaky, potentially if we're talking about like circulation, yeah. Yeah, because I, you know, you see these patients who come in and their skin has those changes, and a lot of it is that circulatory change that then when the circulation improves, like just even be like after a surgery, right? Yeah. You know, it's like you've got some edema on the knee, the circulation looks worse underneath. Correct. And like it's like might be like a situation and a and like a local anemia, but you still see those skin change. It's flaky, it's dry, you know. Good point. Good point. But I was fine. That the brain fog we already talked about, the itching skin, crawling skin, right? The neuros neuropathies.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Okay. I I think probably the big biggest one for me is just fatigue and actually just a feeling of stress or like even cognitive, you know, a lot of women just feel like I'm just not thinking. So beyond brain fog, I'm just not thinking as clearly. Right. And let's just state that, you know, women with higher levels of ferritin just have better cognitive function. Absolutely. So I think that would be one that yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I'm just thinking, like, I'm kind of sorry. Like my brain.

SPEAKER_01

I love the way you're thinking.

SPEAKER_00

My brain like balanced the head a little bit because I was reading something the other day about the differences, like kind of cardinal differences between someone who is experiencing like perimenopausal-related mental fatigue and cognitive changes and brain fog as opposed to early onset also. Also, yes. Because that like is such a concern is like people come in here and they're like, I think I'm getting dementia. Is it really dementia? And you know, if this is the case and you're getting that brain fog and just kind of like the lack of neuronal firing, you know, that's gonna be the things where like, I don't know where my keys are. Yes. Right? A little bit of name forgetfulness. I have word finding difficulty sometimes, like, I can't find that word, and it's like overfloating over here.

SPEAKER_01

Something like it's really, you know where it is and you know how to grab it, but you just can't pull it out of your files.

SPEAKER_00

And those are like that's like the brain fog and the fatigue with the brain and whatnot, as opposed to the Alzheimer's stuff, which is like someone you know really well, you can't remember their name, or like your your nuclear family, you can't remember names, or you don't know, kind of orient yourself to date, place, time, year, that sort of thing. Like those, I think, are the more cardinal like dementia type things.

SPEAKER_01

Correct. There's actually, I mean, Doc and I do a CNS vital signs test. It was developed by two neurologists, and it's really uh geared towards looking at classic tests that would check five different regions of your brain motor coordination, executive function, uh, double tasking, uh um motor control. So like finger. So there's like uh I think there's 11 different tests, takes like 20 minutes. Because it tests the different regions of the brain. Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's cool. So it's actually, again, a great way for women who are feeling like something's off. I mean, I just had a woman who worked uh for SpaceX and was just feeling like my brain is not firing. And sure enough, when we did the test, sure enough, her her she had stopped exercising for some physical reasons, and she was definitely having three regions of her brain that were definitely showing some signs of uh she didn't score as well as she would have expected.

SPEAKER_00

In her case, what what what what was that profile in the presentation? Like the three things that she scored.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, she had it was for her, it was verbal, uh it was verbal reason, it was reason, it was executive function, excuse me. It was uh verbal and it was motor coordination, those three. And it's a lot of that is very much related to doing anything in which we cross over the midline. So think of your brain, you know, when you're crossing over the midline, let's say if you were doing ballroom dancing, or if you were doing something in which you were constantly doing playing racquetball or anything in which pickleball, right? So those would be places where you would strengthen that, and she had not been exercising for six months. So we gave her the test, we gave her a prescription for things that she could do. We're gonna have a retest in three months, just so that she can see that she's making some progress with re getting those activities back that she had like neglected. We saw that a lot in COVID during COVID. A lot of people who we tested didn't do so well just simply. Because we weren't exercising, you know, we were indoors and we weren't doing things.

SPEAKER_00

And that's an interesting thing. I was in um vision therapy during that time, and the amount of people who were having a difficult time doing cross-frain tasks was very interesting because that was something that was like that particular thing was really happening a lot to people that had experienced COVID. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So I so yeah, it's so yeah, we were talking about connecting the dots on just the, you know, the fact that people might be feeling that they're having some cognitive cognitive issues, but there are ways to test for that. And um, you know, just to know for sure. So just another reminder that testing matters. Don't guess, test, just find out if there's ways in which you fall into that category. Yeah. See if you have an advocate. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

I feel like that helps a lot with the self-empowerment and anxiety, too. Reclaim your personal power. Food is medicine. Yes. And we're just talking about intentional eating. So when people have these deficiencies that you're seeing in clinic, what are some things that you really recommend that they may do for certain symptoms?

SPEAKER_01

It's a great question. And I think, you know, when it comes to somebody who's maybe got the low ferritin, I mean, nothing is more powerful than getting iron into your diet. But iron varies. So you've got heme iron, which is found in really more the animal foods. So think of, you know, beef, bison, uh, lamb, uh, elk, venison, all of those are going to be rich, rich sources of iron. And then you've got your plant sources, which often you just your body just doesn't absorb it as well as it does with with the red meats. Okay. Um, so just be aware of that. But you know, if we have vegetarians or vegans, you know, your lentils, your beans are gonna be good sources, but you could always amplify that because you can put things into those soups or into those ingredients that help the absorption of the iron that's found in those plant foods. So that would be anything that contains vitamin C, things that are acidic. So think of like, you know, lemon juice or lime juice or tomatoes or uh canned tomatoes or something like that would help to support, you know, getting more of that iron into your body. Likewise, even with people who are really low and are, you know, comfortable with eating like the red meats, having something like vitamin C rich foods. So like think of a steak maybe with, or a hamburger with like a tomato, you know, or you know, maybe adding lemon juice uh when you're uh even just marinating your meats. Okay. That would help to go ahead and improve the absorption so you're getting more. Maybe get two grams of you know, of iron, let's say in a four-ounce venison patty. Okay, that's a pretty good amount. Yeah. And if you added the vitamin C to that, so we add like the tomato, you're gonna go ahead and probably get more of that, like maybe 90% of that gets absorbed. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

You know what you made me think of? No. I mean, we're both from northern cold states. We're both from Minnesota. Yeah. Very Minnesota proud. Really am. And you know, we make soups and stews and chilies. Chilies! Oh my gosh, of course. And there, of course, there's a lot of debate about whether beans do or do not belong in chili. But what you're making me think of is like you've got the tomatoes, you've got the red meat, you've got the beans. Yes. So we like that sounds like it's almost like peppers.

SPEAKER_01

You could put some of your peppers in there. I mean, it's a really great food for fiber, for iron, and actually for all of the minerals. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But I'm just thinking about how like iron rich sounds like the perfect dish for this comforting iron ridge.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my god, we ate plenty of chili when I was growing up. In fact, it was usually like a Wednesday night meal. My mom had like certain things during the week that she would make every single week. A little bit of cheese. If you lived in Minnesota, you always had a little cheese on top.

SPEAKER_00

And sour cream. And sour cream, yeah. Dairy, dairy, dairy. Maybe like a little spritz of like scallions if you're getting like little fancy.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, maybe a little bit of peppers and a little scallions.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'm just gonna give like if you get a little fancy, there's like that little spritz of green on top, it's like the only green thing on the table. But yeah. It counts, it counts. It counts, it's green. That's how I feel about like honestly, cilantro when I get street tacos. It's like you get like a street taco, and I'm like, okay, you know, I've got my corn, like my corn tortilla, and then I've got my like meat, and then I'm like, I need something green. And I'm like, cilantro. It's like literally like it's like a salad.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, it's absolutely. If you throw in a good salsa, no, you've got you've got your fiber. You've got your salad right there on top of your meat.

SPEAKER_00

It's a California version, like there's some lime juice.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we didn't have very many Mexican restaurants when I was in uh Minnesota.

SPEAKER_00

No, I didn't either, except for I did work at a Don Pablo's. I'm not sure if that really classifies it's really Tex-Mex, but you know, I did work at a Don Pablo's first stint when I was in college.

SPEAKER_01

I don't remember Don Pablo's anymore.

SPEAKER_00

I will remind you, it is like quite the like 1990s, like late 90s, early 2000s experience. If I use it, you'll know it. Okay. All righty. So I know you brought some show and tell items for us. So let's talk about some of the things you brought as demonstrations for high iron-rich foods.

SPEAKER_01

All right, so I'm, you know, I'm gonna go ahead and start off with like what I think is the number one food, if you can find it. So this is Pasteurese venison. All right. So I want you just to look at that color. So if you look at that color versus, let's say, I think I've got some ground beef here. Ground beef. Venison is just a perfect example of just such a nutrient-rich food. It's got manganese, it's got iron, it's got um copper. It just has all these nutrients in it. So nutrient dense is going to help people feel a sense of um improvement in their energy, right away, just because it's so nutrient-dense, you're gonna feel better. So, venison is great. You're, I find this in the freezer section of you know, many of more of your natural stores, like of Whole Foods or Sprouts, or you could get this online. You can get this through a subscription, this brand first light. Uh, Butcher Box, my husband and I have a subscription to Butcher Box, and we get ground beef. That's probably something that you could find at any store. But I think again, let's see, if we looked at a four-ounce patty, uh women would be getting two milligrams of iron. You know, you would be getting 2.2 with the venison, two milligrams with this. So just know that, you know, your chili or a burger or you know, some dish in which you're using some ground beef would be a great way. And then I just have one other brand that I like to show people because this is force of nature, and they make an ancestral blend that contains not only the uh the bison, excuse me, this is beef, but they've got the beef hearts and the beef liver. Sounds crazy, but liver is a fabulous source of ferritin. So I'm assuming you kind of with it all ground in there, doesn't it? You don't taste it. Yeah. It's just great. It's just, and I the way that we make this at our home is I'll just saute this up, you know, maybe with some onions and I'll throw in some uh marinara sauce. Okay. And then maybe two packages of frozen veggies. So it might be a package of, you know, peppers, colorful peppers, and then maybe a package of some greens, you know, some type of greens, and just mix it all together so you've got the vegetables. You're not gonna taste the liver. But liver is amazing, and most women are just gonna go, ugh. We take the liver pills, but I won't take, you know, but think of food as medicine, so you're getting so much better absorption when you have all those ingredients going in there. So that's the plus there.

SPEAKER_00

Again, back in the soda, I just think of liver and onions and just kind of. Oh, I know, I know, I know. We did that too.

SPEAKER_01

Mom always made liver and onions. It was like this one. I just want to remind you that if eggs, you know, eggs are a really good source of iron, it's the yolk. Yeah. So, you know, three scrambled eggs, two scrambled eggs, I mean, a hard-boiled egg, I mean, that's gonna give you, again, like a milligram of iron. So, you know, it's always nice if you can get the pasture raised, but that's not necessary, you know, just getting an egg can make a huge difference. Now, this is I I like this brand, phylos. I mean, these are lentils, black beans, but any beans, you know, and again, think in terms of if you were to add anything that's acidic, that's gonna help just improve the absorption. So, yeah, your tomatoes, your fruit juices, your white. You're gonna go ahead and put your greens in there and you're gonna get a little bit, but you're not gonna get a lot of iron out of greens compared to what you get out of the meats.

SPEAKER_00

I love collard greens and beans. Yes. So it may not be the iron, but you're probably getting it like the other. Oh, yeah, but you would come on.

SPEAKER_01

But you're still getting some amazing nutrients. So all greens are gonna have some minerals. That's what gives collards their structure. Okay. So collards, think of collards as a much when you feel structure in a plant, you're usually getting more minerals. Okay. Versus, let's say, lettuce, which gets limp after a while. So just think in terms of your Swiss chard, you know, your collard greens would be great. Okay. So you're looking at ways that you can just add in a variety so that you're not relying just on red meat, just simply because you know, for a lot of people that's not necessarily their food.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and that could also be great for like accessibility, you know, because not everyone has the accessibility to high-quality animal proteins, right? But they have accessibility ability to dried beans and greens, like that might create like a better accessibility thing if you don't have the ability to get like an ancestral blend food, which is exactly. Don't feel that way.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, you know, honestly, just you if you went to Ralph's or Bond's or wherever you might go shopping, whatever red meat is available right there that's it fits in your budget, just even small portions of that consumed maybe a couple times in a week can really help you to raise your ferritin levels pretty quickly. Particularly if you're the type that you don't want to take a pill because maybe you've tried iron pills, and honestly, some of the brands are so bad that people feel nauseated or it makes them constipated. Yeah. So I think, you know, looking for a food-based brand, um, I always look for something in which it will say like easy iron. So slow iron. Slow iron. So that like this one is Ferrochel, and Ferrochel is a brand name that actually supports slow, easy iron absorption. It's iron bisglycinate. Okay. So it actually has a little bit of a protein added to it to help improve the absorption. Um, but this one would give you, let's see, 25 milligrams for one capsule. Taking this with something with vitamin C will help. Okay. So if you had, you know, you know, something with lemon juice and water, that's going to help improve the food would really help. Yeah. And if you're somebody who's more prone to being nauseated, taking it with food is just going to make a difference. No, that definitely helps. You can kind of buffer it out a little bit in your stomach. So think in terms, and then you want to probably, if you're somebody who maybe is a heavy coffee drinker, you know, maybe you're somebody who's consuming, you know, two glasses of wine and I mean, think about those because that's going to help, that's going to actually decrease, you know, how well your iron gets absorbed. So you just need to do it at a different time of day. Correct. Yeah. So you wouldn't want to take your iron with your coffee because it's just, yeah. So yeah, this is, you know, these are the things that you want to do. And I've had women who, you know, you can buy, you can get Ferrishaw from your pharmacist, and maybe it's going to be$10 for like a month or two months supply. So it's not a cheap, it's not an expensive supplement. But we've seen women who are able to raise their levels from, let's say, 10 to 25, you know, in less than a month.

SPEAKER_00

And so when you have that and you have those women that increase it, then what are the main improvements you're seeing? Like what are the things that they're they're reporting? I'm assuming less fatigue. Sleeping better, you know.

SPEAKER_01

You probably aren't going to see your hair. You may see your hair, you may stop, stop losing your hairs, but it's going to take about a month to change the follicles. So you might not see your hair improve for like three to five months. But for sure, sleeping better, maybe less shortness of breath. You know, you're walking up a slight set of stairs and you actually feel like I've got a little bit more capacity. Sure. Um, anything less anxiety. Cognitive mood changes what I was going to ask about. Yeah, feeling less anxious. So I think, you know, those would be um, so I think, you know, and you may actually find you don't feel so depleted during your period, the week of your period, if you're really making a point of being intentional about eating something with iron rich during that period of time. So you're losing blood, you're trying to regain that what you're losing.

SPEAKER_00

And so would you recommend it kind of like with a cycle, like as someone's going through a cycle, like as we're kind of get dropping down there, we're starting to bleed to really kind of replenish it.

SPEAKER_01

Day 14 to 28, that's your rebuilding time. Think of this as your food as medicine strategy to get your body back on track. And I think, you know, Heidi, that just helps women feel like they're reclaiming their own personal power. Yeah. You know, so if you think like you're, you know, you're taking a supplement, but you're also working with food, you know, it's just, you just feel like you're you're more in charge of your life. You're more in charge of your health. You're more like the CEO of your own symptoms.

SPEAKER_00

I think that's a perfect place to set this off. Yeah. So I think that's a perfect place to wrap this up because that's so important. It's like real, you know, reclamation of our body and making sure that we have ownership and onus over ourselves. Correct. So, well, thank you so much for this and sharing your knowledge.

SPEAKER_01

I love it. This was a great, this was a great opportunity just to share. I think.

SPEAKER_00

Now I have to end with the boring stuff. While I am a doctor, I am not your doctor. This podcast is for entertainment and educational purposes only. If something in today's episode resonated with you, please bring this to your own healthcare team and self-advocate. You always are promoting that. I cannot wait for you to join me on next week's episode of Metopause Unscripted for another hot topic.