#21: The Silent Drivers of Menopause: Going Beyond Managing Symptoms

Episode Overview

In this episode, we discuss the hidden cost of ignoring the signals your body is sending and why menopause can be a powerful wake up call rather than something to simply endure.

Knowledge Is Not Enough

Many women have listened to podcasts, read books, and gathered information about their health, yet knowledge alone does not create change.

Knowledge only becomes powerful when it is applied.

What will your life look like one year from now if you continue putting your health on hold?

Menopause: A New Chapter

Menopause is an invitation to reevaluate your health, your boundaries, your relationships, and how you manage stress.

Rather than viewing this season as a period of decline, consider it an opportunity to become stronger, wiser, and more intentional about your life and your health.

Are You Managing Symptoms or Solving the Problem?

Too often we focus on managing symptoms without understanding what is causing them.

Are you taking something to help you sleep without understanding why you cannot sleep?

Are you looking for more energy without understanding why you are exhausted?

We cannot continue playing the guessing game with our health. We must understand what is happening inside our bodies.

Three Important Markers Every Woman Should Understand

One of the most important things I encourage women to do is learn their numbers.

Blood Glucose

Blood glucose measures the amount of sugar in your bloodstream at a specific moment. As estrogen declines, blood sugar regulation often becomes more challenging, contributing to cravings, fatigue, brain fog, and weight gain.

Insulin

Insulin is the hormone that helps move glucose into your cells for energy. Elevated insulin levels can occur years before blood sugar levels become abnormal and are often linked to abdominal weight gain, increased hunger, energy crashes, and difficulty losing weight.

Inflammation

Inflammation often increases during perimenopause and menopause. Chronic inflammation has been associated with heart disease, cognitive decline, joint pain, fatigue, and other long term health concerns.

When glucose, insulin, and inflammation markers begin moving in the wrong direction together, they can reveal important clues about what may be driving many menopause related symptoms.

Becoming the Leader of Your Health

You have heard me say it before and I will say it again: You must become the leader of your health.

Think of yourself as the captain of a ship. To reach your destination, you need to understand how to navigate. The same is true for your health. Understanding what is happening inside your body allows you to make informed decisions that support your energy, vitality, and quality of life so you can achieve your health goals.

Final Thoughts

Menopause is not the end of your story. It is the beginning of a new chapter.

This is your opportunity to stop ignoring symptoms, start seeking answers, and take ownership of your health.

Your symptoms matter. Your health matters. And most importantly, you matter.

To learn more about our program visit our website at

https://www.happinessinyoucoach.com/menopause-elite-program/

Also, if you are a woman going through peri-menopause, menopause, or post menopause and would like to be a part of our mailing list to stay updated about programs, resources, and more, send a message to ksmith@happinessinyoucoach.com and type in the subject line, e-mail list.

Don’t forget to download and share this podcast with other woman. This allows woman that need support to find this podcast more easily.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to menopause Breakthrough, the podcast for professional women who want to reclaim their clarity, energy, and balance while navigating perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause. I'm your host, Katina Smith, your menopause and wellness coach, and I also am a certified functional nutrition practitioner where I use nutrition and lifestyle to support women in this stage of life. I know firsthand how challenging this season can be physically, mentally, and emotionally, and what it's like to feel stressed and maybe even a little burnt out. Here you'll find education, strategies, and encouragement to help you thrive at work, at home, and in life. So let's dive in. Hello my friends, and welcome back to the show. You know, today I want to really talk to you about what I'm seeing a lot of among women that I support that are going through menopause. And a lot of these um things are being missed when they go to the doctor or they're not connected to what women go through in terms of um perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause. So I just want to bring this to your attention today. Um, just the importance of really understanding um your labs, but especially these markers as it relates to um glucose, insulin, inflammation, as well as iron. Um just starting with um your blood glucose, um basically what this measures is the amount of um sugar that's circulating in your bloodstream at a specific moment. So um you your doctor might say um to you, um, before you come and get your blood work done, I need you to um, you know, not eat anything. Usually a lot of times it's about a 12-hour time period in which they don't want you to um have anything to eat, maybe just drink water. So um it's just really important though to understand you know what glucose does in the body because it is a fuel source for um the body, but you don't want to have too much or too little, it should be stable and regulated. But what happens with estrogen um declining, women tend to become less sensitive to insulin. So um, and I'll talk about insulin in a moment, but this can lead to things like uh increased belly fat. Um, women might have like more sugar cravings, brain fog, um, feel tired after eating. Uh and a lot of that can be corrected through nutrition um in terms of what you eat and how you eat, as well as when you eat. But also women tend to have a challenge with weight loss. Um, despite eating healthy, exercising, um, they just can't seem to lose weight. And during this time, though, there's definitely a greater risk for pre-diabetes as well as type 2 diabetes. So that's why it's really important to understand these numbers. Um, even, you know, sometimes you might be told your your labs are normal, but these things work together. Um, the glucose, the insulin, and I'll I'll share that in a moment. But really um looking at it from a functional standpoint point or what is more optimal, you know, fasting glucose um usually range between about 75 to 90 if you're looking at it from a functional perspective, um, and what tends to be more optimal. Um and sometimes though, you know, when you look at it from, I guess, the traditional um clinical labs that are out there, usually they say less than 100 is optimal. But even if you're like close to 100, you know, that could be an indication that um there's things going on um with your um insulin uh that you might be close to being insulin resistant. So um that's why it's important to really understand not just what's happening with your blood glucose, but also, you know, what's really happening with insulin um in your body as well. Because the blood glucose is like a snapshot in time. It's you know what's happening at that moment. Um and they can basically change, you know, throughout the day, like from what you eat, if you've exercised, if you're under a lot of stress, if you're not sleeping, if you you're sick, or if you're on medication, just because you were fine, like you fell in the range that day when you had your labs done, um, it can change. So it is an indication um of what could be going on in your body, but you don't want to just look at that marker like isolated. Um, you really want to ask a practitioner to really explain how all of these things work together. Now, your A1C2 or um hemoglobin. And this is another marker that is important as well because it's looking at what's happened over like the last two to three months or so. Um, it basically reflects your average, average, um, excuse me, it reflects your average um blood sugar over the um past two to three months. So um there's a difference there. So it gives you more of a long, longer term picture of you know what's going on with your blood sugar, and normal is considered about 5.7. Um, and then they consider you pre-diabetes, um pre-diabetes, um, between 5.7 and I think it's 6.4 and above that, um you are considered to be a diabetic. But with the insulin, where insulin comes in, and basically insulin, it's a hormone and it's produced by our pancreas. And basically it helps to move glucose from the bloodstream into your cells, and it gives you energy. Um, so insulin, I will say, is probably one of the earliest indicators that there could be some sort of metabolic dysfunction in your body. So um you can have, you know, your insulin or your body, I should say, can keep your blood sugar normal for years, um, and it's producing increasing amounts of insulin. So you may not really know really what's going on if you just keep looking at things isolated. So your glucose may look normal while your insulin is already elevated. That's why it's important to ask if you can also get your insulin check. Often I find where um doctors won't do that. Um, they'll just do like A1C. Um, actually, I was told that too by my doctor that I saw. They didn't want to measure my insulin because they were like, well, you know, they work together. And I said, you know, I understand that, but it's still a separate number. Um, but again, going back to what's happening with estrogen, it can make cells again less responsive. So um we really want our ranges to be optimal, you know. Fasting, um, let's say insulin between two to eight when you look at it from a functional perspective. Um, but ideal is about three to six. But sometimes you might find where um your your glucose might be normal, but your insulin might be high. So this could be a sign of like early insulin resistance, and your body is just working a lot harder to control your blood sugar. And then you can have high glucose and high insulin, and this can mean you know, you have significant insulin resistance. And then when you tend to have high glucose and low insulin, it could be something going on, you know, with your um pancreas, like you have pancreatic dysfunction. So again, you don't want to just look at things isolated, you want to look at the whole picture and talk about you know, in inflammation in the body, because again, with the changes in estrogen, women tend to um have more inflammation in the body. Um, and you really want to, you know, inflammation, I will say, is normal, a certain amount of it, but you don't want too much um inflammation in the body. And when you have chronic inflammation, it can lead to things like um increasing your risk for cancer, um, joint pain. Um, people tend to have things like osteoporosis, heart disease, stroke, or even like cognitive decline. Um, all of these things could be the result of inflammation. So again, knowing your inflammation markers are really important. And often clients uh have the HS CRP, which is uh high high sensitivity C reactive protein marker. And this actually is useful for determining um what's happening um in terms of inflammation in the body. Um, and it can really assess like what's associated more so with cardiovascular risk and so forth. So, really a good um range for that in terms of looking at it from a functional perspective is less than one. Um, so again, know what's happening with inflammation in the body. Um, your homocysteine um is basically another marker, and it's actually an amino acid and it's a link to inflammation and your cardiovascular health. And when it's elevated, it can indicate deficiencies and things like your B vitamins and increase risk for cardiovascular um disease or um health. So from a functional perspective, it should be about six to eight. And then finally, um ferritin often um this is not looked at, but ferritin is important because um it does reflect iron storage, but it can also rise um during inflammation. So basically high ferritin can sometimes indicate inflammation rather than excess iron. So um those are just markers that I have seen that are often not considered when women are going through menopause. So again, it's really important to understand again the your blood glucose, your insulin, um, your high sensitivity C CRP and homocysteine, um, as well as ferritin. Um so if you go to your doctor, um which is require um see if you can get these labs. If not, um I do work with physicians where I can get um approval for um these types of labs if you're not able to get those labs. But again, know your numbers. Um, I'm seeing now, you know, of course, with things like social media and so forth, people are like, oh, you don't need all those labs and so forth. These are just some of the basic labs that are not super expensive that can really give an indication of what's going on. You don't want to keep playing that guessing game of just taking stuff, taking drugs, taking supplements, and putting things in your body blindly without really knowing what's going on in your body. So that is all, my friends, for this episode. I look forward to talking to you soon on the next episode where I will be talking about again the importance of becoming the leader of your health. I want to dive just a little bit deeper into what this could look like for you so that you can live healthy and have a good quality of life. Thank you for listening to Mentipod's Breakthrough. If this episode resonated with you, don't forget to hit the follow button so you never miss a new conversation. Share it with a friend, colleague, or anyone who could benefit from support during this season of life. You can connect with me, access more resources, great tips, and coaching support, and learn about our menopause program for women by visiting www.happinessinnucoach.com dash menopause dash elite dash program forward slash. Remember, you don't have to just survive menopause. You can thrive through it. And you are not alone in this season of life.