Ep 43 | Struggling with Symptoms You Can’t Explain: What Most Women Don’t Know About Menopause with Adele Johnston

Menopause has a reputation for being “just hot flashes,” but that story leaves out the parts that can shake your confidence, your focus, your relationships, and your sense of self. 

This week on The ROCKSTAR Mom podcast we have, Adele Johnston, a leading perimenopause and menopause expert with a master’s in psychology, a nutrition background, and deep experience supporting women through hormone change. She shares her own early onset perimenopause journey and what it took to finally get answers, which is a powerful reminder that you know your body best.

We break menopause down in a way that actually makes sense: the four phases of the reproductive journey, why perimenopause can last years, and the practical “12 consecutive months with no period” marker that helps you understand where you are. 

We also talk about solutions. Adele shares how she thinks about hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and menopause hormone therapy, when it can help, and how to approach it if you cannot or do not want to use hormones.

If this conversation helps you feel seen, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review so more women can find real answers and real options.

You can learn more about Adele Johnston here:

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/the.menopausecoach/

Website : https://adelejohnstoncoaching.com/

Podcast : https://themenopausecoach.transistor.fm/

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Transcript

Welcome And What To Expect

SPEAKER_01 2:12

You are listening to the Rockstar Mom, a podcast for high achievers who are ready to get off of autopilot and live a life with more intention, peace of mind, and happiness. This is a space to expand, dig deep, get clear, and take action towards living your most authentic, aligned life. I'm Megan Caldwell. As a mom of three, two-time burnout survivor and empowerment coach and speaker, I've cracked the code on what it actually takes to thrive at work and home. Ditch perfectionism and people pleasing, get your schedule under control, and live with more ease. So you've got more time and energy to do the things you love without the mom guilt. It's time to get out of your head and into action. Now is the time to live your most rockstar life. Let's go. Welcome back to the Rockstar Mom, my friend. If you are new here, welcome. I am so glad that you are here. If you have been around for a little bit, you know that I love to not only deliver content and value and tips and tricks on how I support women in terms of their holistic wellness, but I also love bringing in guest experts who are just so passionate about helping women like you live their best lives. And so today I am sharing an interview that I had recorded for the Rockstar Mom Summit season three, which happened earlier this year. And it was just so good that I wanted to share it with the world. And on in this interview, you're gonna hear me speaking with Adele Johnson. And Adele Johnson is a menopause expert. It was so fascinating and just really enlightening to have this conversation with Adele. And we talk about literally all things menopause and what this means, both in terms of in your body, but also the hidden ways that menopause impacts your mind, your energy, your identity. We get into the things that most of us as women were never taught about this transition and why this time in your life really matters more than you actually think that it does. We talk about the psychology behind it and how the female brain is impacted. And there's just so much goodness in this. So I hope that you enjoy this episode. And if you do, please share with a friend or leave a review, as that helps us reach more listeners. All right, my friends, enjoy this conversation that I had with Adele Johnston.

Meet Menopause Coach Adele Johnston

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Welcome back, my friends, to the Rockstar Mom. I have such a special guest for us today where we are going to be diving in and talking about all things menopause, the big M word. I've got Adele Johnston here, and Adele is the menopause coach. She's a leading perimenopause and menopause expert. She's got a master in psychology. She's a nutritionist with a special interest and qualifications in both positive psychology and advanced trauma-informed breath work. She founded the Menopause Coach, which is based in Scotland, but they operate globally and really specializes in supporting women and through women's health. And in particular, as we're going to be diving in, that perimenopausal menopause transition. And I know she's got a great story to share in terms of how it brought her into this work. She is also a former bodybuilder, a busy mom to twin girls, and a former corporate high flyer who ended up leaving her career due to early onset of perimenopause in her mid-30s, which nearly destroyed her marriage, her sense of self. And again, led her to quitting that job and leaving really good salary and benefits. So lots of real life experience we're going to be hearing today, alongside kind of her expertise in this space. She combines a lot of her personal experience as well as her expertise in nutrition, hormones, women's health. And I'm just really excited, Adele, to dive into this conversation. Thank you so much for being here on The Rockstar Mom.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Well, thank you for having me. It's always such an honor to have these conversations. So thank you. I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Yes. And one thing that I love we're going to dive into today is just bringing to light this big M word menopause and perimenopause, which I think for so many of our listeners, they're either in the thick of it or getting ready to experience it. And so I think just getting raw and real about what it is, what we can do, how it affects us is just going to be so powerful and empowering to our listeners. Before

Early Perimenopause And Self Advocacy

SPEAKER_01 6:25

we dive into kind of the meat of this, though, I would love for you to share a little bit of your story in terms of what brought you into this work and what keeps you so lit up and passionate about serving women in this space.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny when you hear someone read back your kind of bio to you, you're like, wow, that's a lot.

unknown 6:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

But yeah, for me, so yeah, I mean, as you explained, I went into very early menopause. I was actually 33 when I remember my first probably inkling that this wasn't right, that something wasn't right in my body. And having visited my GP for many, many times over the course of a good couple of years, by the age of 35, I knew that what I was facing was some trouble with my hormones. But again, then we come up against the issue that that's not really a thing when it comes to women's health and the medical treatment, right? So in the UK here alone, I found that I was up against quite a lot of challenges. By 37, so bearing in mind I went through this from 33 to 37, really pushing to get some help, losing who I was through symptoms, nearly losing my marriage as a result of it, not really having a great relationship with my twin daughters at that time, or even with myself. But by 37, I then got the phone call when I was waiting to pick up my twins from primary school. And I'd arrived at the school a little bit earlier, and the phone flashed up in the car and it said doctors, and I thought, okay, this could be good news, it could be we don't know what's going on with you, or it could be really bad news. Who knows? So answered it, and within a few minutes, the the female doctor had said, We agree with you. Now bearing in mind I'd gone through years of these checks and tests. I went through private checks and tests, and eventually to hear the doctors say, We agree with you, that it is actually very early menopause that you are experiencing. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about menopause, so there's not much I can do for you, but I can prescribe you some standard HRT if you would like that. And I just remember bursting into tears at that point because I was already working in women's health and menopause at that time supporting other women. So the reason I burst into tears was that validation that I wasn't actually going crazy, that something was, in fact, not right with me, and I knew that it was hormonal, but also because I knew at that moment that I had what 99.9% of women didn't have, and that was a solid knowledge and understanding of menopause and what it meant for me. So I cried for every one of us out there that would have taken that phone call and not known what to do. Luckily, I did. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Yeah, well, thank you so much for sharing kind of a glimpse of that. And I think one one big piece that I'm pulling from your story is just this power and this inner knowing that we as women often have but have been taught to suppress due to society norms and expectations, to what the medical system is telling us. And so I think to hear you say, I have this inkling, I know something is off, and to like stand firm and advocate for yourself for years to get confirmation, so then you can get the support that you need. And now here you are creating this ripple effect, just impacting thousands of women is just is just beautiful. So I just wanted to make sure our audience heard that just and and really invite them to know we all have that power within us. We at the end of the day, we know our bodies best. And yes, we can turn to traditional Western medicine, we can turn to Eastern practices, all these different things. But at the end of the day, we are the only one living the experience in our body. So to be able to take back our power and be able to self-advocate is just such a such a beautiful thing. So thank you for sharing that. Now, I know one of your big, big passions is really about making menopause mainstream. And I know I've seen as I enter this season myself a shift here in the US and that it is, it is being talked about more in there's documentaries, and there is just still so much misinformation and unknown. So when

The Four Phases Of Menopause

SPEAKER_01 10:35

you think about menopause, can you like break it down on the simplest terms for our listeners in terms of like, what is happening? Why is this happening? What can we expect? Kind of take us through a little bit of the journey and some things we can be looking for and what we can note as, I don't know, normal versus maybe not normal, and when we do want to reach out to practitioners, I just I'm so excited to to pick your brain here.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah, of course. So you're right. We all have this, I believe, misconception that we can show up to a GP and they will just make everything right and they will fix us. But the harsh reality in this is that you will not find anyone more qualified than yourself to appreciate and understand what feels right or not right for you and your body. So just you know, on that point, you're so right. I advocate for my own self, but I help other women to understand that that self-advocation is so important. It's like the empowerment of knowing that actually, well, that doesn't feel right for me as much as you're saying that things are normal. So you know your body better than any specialist, professor, consultant, whoever you want to call them, ever can. So listening to you is really, you know, your body and its cues are really important. But from a menopausal standpoint, one of the things that I learned very early on from this, not just from you know, take the academia to one side, but from a woman navigating this from a very young age, is that there was, this was like eight years ago, really negative connotations behind the word menopause. We're we're getting better, it's a it's a lot more talked about, it's a lot less taboo, but certainly there was this stigma that was attached to that word that not many people, men or women, would want to really open up and talk about. Right. But the one thing that we have to be very, very clear on is that if you are born female at birth, so with female reproductive organs, you will have a menopause journey. Now I say that with a little bit of a pause in there because there is no blueprint to this, there is no set time frame to this, everyone is different. Megan, you and I will have different journeys, although we have the same output at the end of that result, of the end of that journey is post-menopausal status, where our hormones have naturally then bottomed out. So we all reach post-menopause at some point if we're lucky enough to live through that. But we can experience different variations of whether that be through a hysterectomy for potentially endometriosis treatment or other reasons. We may have cancer treatments that again we are put on some estrogen blockers or some chemical or medical interventions that can cause earlier menopause. So I think when we understand that everyone's journey is unique to them, it's really important to see that it doesn't necessarily mean that when you hit a certain age, you are going to enter the first day of your menopause journey. We don't know when that could be. Okay. So if I may explain this as we've got four, four key phases to our reproductive journey. And when I educate this inside the academy, this is what I teach it by. It's the four phases. So the first phase of us as females is our pre-menopause phase. And this is when we have started our menstrual cycle. So our period has begun, and we're navigating through years of having our menstrual cycle each month. We're in our kind of fertile window. And then from that point, we will then naturally, if we are naturally progressing this and not having any medical interventions, go into what's called the second stage, which is perimenopause. And perimenopause is a stage in our journey where we start to have some changes to our hormones, our hormonal profile. Okay, and as women, females, we have three core hormones that play a real big role in our menopause transition and our journey, and that is estrogen, which I'm sure everyone listening will be familiar with. Yeah. One in particular. So estrogen, I want you to see this as being plural. Okay, there are estrogens, but estrogen is the plural form. So estradiol, which is one form of your estrogen, is the form of estrogen that we naturally lose through our menopause transition. And that form of estrogen is responsible for hundreds of functions around our body. From from the top of our head to the tips of our toes. So we start to lose that that hormone. It starts to decline, decrease. The second hormone is progesterone. And progesterone, as we know it, is predominantly there for making sure that the womb lining is healthy and that if we do choose to become pregnant or we do become pregnant, that actually it is there to help the fetus and the embryo grow into a beautiful baby. Okay. Okay. So progesterone is there for the protection and the protection of the womb and the growth of the fetus, and estrogen is hundreds of functions around the body. Okay. Okay. This is the simplest forms. And then we have testosterone. Okay, so as females, we have a good amount of testosterone, and through your menstrual cycle, you release all three of these hormones every month, which is why when we have a surge of motivation and confidence, we are most likely having an estrogen and testosterone spike within our month. And when we're having the opposite of that, and we think, oh my god, I just want to pull the doovie over my head and not re leave this house today, we are probably having a lower release of those hormones. We're in a drop. Okay, so a kind of lower form. So as women, we are very cyclical in how our hormones respond. Not like men who are very linear, they will have a spike of testosterone in the morning, and then throughout the day it drops.

Hormones And The Female Work Cycle

unknown 16:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

And then again the next day, it's like a reset. It's like every 24 hours, men have this huge spike of testosterone, and then throughout the day it starts to go. Which is why when we talk about the whole Monday to Friday 9 to 5 corporate life, it was built around men and their hormones because of the spike and the drop throughout the day. They would go to sleep, it would reset, they would return again for their working day with high levels of hormones.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

I love Wemdel that you are bringing this up. I have heard this before, but I think it's so powerful to share with those, especially that haven't heard these, is just I think for so long we as women have been trying to fit ourselves in a box in a world that has been constructed for men. And so to actually like break it down on a physiological level to say like the way that our bodies, male versus female, operate is so significantly, significantly different. So, how do we now use that to our advantage, knowing that we as women, you know, are more cyclical, it's more on that 28-day or monthly basis versus day to day. And it it almost gives us, yeah, it almost gives ourselves permission and grace to really understand our bodies best rather than try to just really push through.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

So I love that you've broken this down. Yeah. And it's so relevant. And the reason I explain it this way is because when we understand the relevance of as women, and this is when our hormones are behaving, okay. This is like this is prepared. This is this is like phase one to phase two of our journey when things are actually behaving themselves as best they can, and we're on this like release window of every every month instead of every 24 hours, we're going every 28 to 30 days of a change in cycle. You may have some days in the month where you can do the whole Monday, Friday, 9 to 05. Right. And in other periods where you need more rest and you need more flow and you need more grace within a slower pace. But actually, when we enter into that second phase of perimenopause, when these hormones are starting to decline and drop, you have estrogen receptors all over your body as a woman in the brain, everywhere.

Head To Toe Symptoms And Anxiety

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Your skin, your bone, your muscle. So as we start to see that hormone drop, just visualizing in a glass vase or something, you can see the the fluid is dropping, it's it's it's lowering. Yeah. And as time goes on, we then have receptors in the body that are not being fed ultimately. Okay, and if they're not being fed, they're not being nurtured, and if they're not being nurtured, they're not performing. So we start to experience things like, and this is some of the symptoms, maybe a bit of mental fog or or brain fog, as we know the terminology as that umbrella form is forgetfulness, maybe we aren't as organized, a bit more kind of subdued in our motivation and our confidence. Just feel a bit, I don't know what I feel, I just don't feel great.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Yeah, and I hear that time and time again for women. And I think sometimes it could be noted to overwhelm or heighten stress, but like to actually hear that it is because of the shifts in hormones in your body and actually different pieces of your body not getting what they call it. Getting nurtured what you're doing. Yeah, not getting nurtured. I love that term to really have them function at their best. Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Yeah. So again, when we when we take back the the whole concept of menopause in itself, a lot of the terminology and a lot of the explanations that were given for this was well, it's just the end of your period. You're no longer gonna have a bleed. Okay, you're not gonna bleed anymore, you can't have babies anymore. It's like that's a celebration, right? And you're like, well, well, wait a minute. It's not as straightforward as that because we are beautifully complicated beings, women. Okay, it's the reason why we probably don't have that much um health studies in us because we are very complex to study. So, you know, it goes on, it's a lot more money and it's a lot more time to research women. But when we think about menopause, yes, that's right, we we will inevitably our reproductive organs, our ovaries, will cease to release eggs and we will go through a phase then when we can no longer reproduce. So it's the end of that fertility window, and that happens as we navigate through from perimenopause. Okay, one point to note on this is perimenopause can last around a decade, so 10 years or so. Wow. We're navigating going through the symptoms that start to show up. We talked about brain fog, but we can also have other things like loss of hair, changes to our eyesight, receding bleeding, sore gums, burning mouth, ringing in the ears. It literally goes from head to toe. And probably one of the biggest problematic symptoms that I hear a lot of women talk about are things like crippling anxiety out of nowhere, where you've maybe never had anxiety before, heart palpitations, so those little flutters in the chest out again out of nowhere. Yeah. And health anxiety, which again can be a real big scary one where all of a sudden we're feeling things or we're finding things maybe appear on our body that pre-menopause we would have thought, oh, I know where that came from, or it's just another new mole or another new freckle that's appeared. But actually, in health anxiety, we've developed cancer and we're dying young, and we cannot get out of that catastrophizing mind space. The psychological impact of those changes starts to become crippling.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Yeah. So let me pause there for a second. I think I think a couple things that you bring to light here and can be again, I I view this as just really empowering, and knowledge is power. And the more that we know and understand about women's bodies in quote general, as well as we connect it to our own specific lived experience, can just be can give us permission and give us power. One thing you said that I just want to kind of repeat back, I'm sure the audience heard it, is that perimenopause can actually last up to a decade. Yes. And I'm I'm curious for the woman that's brain maybe does go to like, oh shit, like, are you kidding me? Like, I need to be in this for how do you help women reframe that and kind of the psychology behind this of it being this, like, I might be experiencing some of these like not so great symptoms for a decade? What's kind of your reframe on that? How can you help women say, like, this is actually natural? And like, what's what's the beauty behind it, I guess?

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Yeah, there are so many beautiful positives that can come out from this. So as we navigate those, for some women, it could be two years, we're all unique. For others, it could be 10 or 12, right? But actually, what it what it really means, if we get down to the kind of crux of what it means, your body is naturally taking a transition into the first phase, which was premenopause, into perimenopause. And from perimenopause, you typically move into postmenopause, which is the fourth phase. Okay. The third part of it being menopause. It's that umbrella term that we hear. But you Menopause in itself is typically only one day.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

I've heard this before. Break this down for people because I think the first time I heard this, Adele, I was like, what do you mean it's only one day? Because is it something like menopause really just signifies like when you are no longer fertile?

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Is that so it's like a moment in time versus

Menopause Is One Day Explained

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Yeah, but even at that though, there are still women in post-menopause that become pregnant. So there are still opportunities where the body, although you're not having a monthly bleed. So what we would typically say is if I was working with any woman at all and she said to me, Look, I don't know where I am in my menopause journey, okay? One of the very first questions I will ask her is it's okay, like we're gonna we're gonna find this out, okay? Yeah. So let me just in a very quick couple of moments figure out where you are in your cycle right now. How often are your monthly bleeds? And if she says to me, Oh, I've not bled in like two years, I I don't have a bleed, she's postmenopausal. It's as simple as that. Okay, it's like you're not having a monthly bleed, therefore you are if you've not bled for 12 consecutive months or more, then you are postmenopausal. Okay. So that the way that we would then look at this is if you are in perimenopause, you may be having sporadic bleeding. You may go a s a full six weeks bleeding and not have a break. You may go for three, four months and not bleed at all and then have a bleed. But what we're looking for is 12 consecutive months back to back where you've not had a period at all. No bleeding. Okay. And then the next day, after that 12 months plus one day, that one day is your okay, you've transitioned from perimenopause to menopause, and then the next day for the rest of your life, you are now postmenopausal. Okay. Okay, interesting. So yeah, right. So it's always uh, okay, where are you with your cycle? How many when was your last period? And if she says to me, I've not bled in a year or two years or three years, then typically I would then be saying, Okay, so we're postmenopausal then. Okay. Um if she says I've not bled in months, when was your last bleed from then? And we track it. Okay, because she's typically probably coming to the end of her petty menopause at that time. Okay.

unknown 28:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Yeah. Does that help? Does that answer that?

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And again, I think I I heard this just probably recently in the last year that menopause is just a single moment, a single day. And it's like, wait, what do you mean? Because especially like the way that which is why I'm so grateful for experts such as yourself who is bringing more light to this and talking about it in more depth, is for us to truly know and understand, like, menopause is not this thing that we are like, that we should be like fearing or like questioning. Or it's like, it's like, no, it's just a natural part of. So I love that you've broken down kind of these feelings.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

No one gets to skip it. Okay. This is the thing. If someone I've heard this and it happens quite a lot with kind of older generations that will say, Oh, I didn't have that menopause thing. I skipped that. Yeah. It's like rather than correct, I'm just like, that's okay. But it's no one skips it. We don't get to skip through it, okay. But some women will actually have a menopause journey that is so straightforward. Okay, they don't really notice any signs or symptoms, and they're just like, Look, I just stopped having a period, but nothing else really changed. And it's like, I love that for you. Like, that is the dream, okay. But what we do need to be mindful of is because we're losing those three beautiful hormones that are responsible for more than just helping us to have children, they're responsible for head-to-toe functions in the body, yeah. All of our organs, all of our cells, all of our happiness, you know, even libido and sex drive and all the things that help us to have fun in life as well, not just not just sexual activities, but other things, right? The joy and the mo the momentum that we feel with motivation in life, we are starting to lose the core hormones that give us that. So as we navigate through perimenopause, many women are actually at the height of their careers at that point. They're typically, I was very early, but they're typically women who are in their mid to late forties, into their 50s or 60s. So between our 40s to our 60s, we're navigating this stage of perimenopause into postmenopausal stage. Now, I actually just recorded an episode on my own podcast about this by saying we're really pushing ourselves to be the best we can be, achieve as much as we can achieve with a bit of a disparity in the whole male linear hormones versus female cyclical hormones, and then we retire. And all of a sudden, right? We've gone through all of these decades of trying to really push and work to the best of abilities that we can to climb that glass that career ladder, that glass ceiling and smash through it. And then we retire and we are postmenopausal, and then all of a sudden it's like now my hormones are linear.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Now, now my hormones are linear and not cyclical because I'm not fluctuating anymore because they've bottomed out.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Yeah. It's cruel. That's so true and so cruel. I'm curious. You you said something, Adele, that you know, the best case scenario or the one that maybe most women wish for is that you kind of go through these phases and don't notice too much, aside from like, oh, now I am postmenopausal and no longer have my have my period, right? That's more the exception. Yeah. That's more the exception. Yeah. So what do you what are your best tips or what can we do? I guess, I guess my question is to ease some of the symptoms and transitions that are happening in perimenopause. Um, I'm wondering if you can speak to both HRT as well as like some of the other things to make it so it's not this. Again, I think there's a lot of talk of this in the world that I am in professionally and personally, is that it's like, ugh, this dread or like the hot flashes and these symptoms is what can we actually do to allow ourselves to feel best as we move through these phases? Because that's what I'm about here on The Rockstar Mom is how do we live a life where we feel like a rock star, not where we're just feeling like we're in depletion and our body is like taking over us, right? It's like so. Can you talk to us a little bit about those that do experience kind of more of those heightened symptoms, knowing that symptoms are gonna look different for every single woman?

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Yeah, they're gonna look and feel different. You're right for everyone. And and actually, this is

HRT Choices And What It Does

SPEAKER_00 33:01

a big part of why I went and done my master's in psychology. I'm still an active researcher at Sterling University here in Scotland as well, and we're doing a big piece of research on them the female brain, which is incredible. Oh, very good. And menopause, right? And the transition and the change. But what we're ultimately experiencing here, when the reduction in estradiol in particular starts to happen, okay, the other two hormones play a big role in this as well. But estradiol in particular, as this is starting to drop, things like you mentioned hot flushes, you know, or hot flashes and the sweats that we can have, the brain's ability to regulate temperature starts to really change. Okay, so where the signaling, if we think of it this way, where the signaling used to have everything it needed, it got nourished with as much estrogen as it needed, it's now trying to figure out new connections and pathways. And it's almost like the communication line gets broken between the body and the brain to some extent. So the brain is literally going, Well, I don't know if she needs to be warmer or cooler, so I'm just gonna make it all happen and we're just gonna be able to do that. Oh my gosh, super. I'm sure somebody can relate to that, yeah. Right? Yeah, and it's just like all of a sudden you're sat and you're fine, and the next minute you're like, I am literally burning on fire from inside out right now, and I cannot speak to anyone, I cannot do anything, I just need to strip off and make myself as naked as is appropriately possible in this public setting. Cool down every wherever you are. And a lot of the time we will bring a bit of like comedy into this, right? And uh especially for those ladies who are maybe in corporate settings, someone hands you a fan and they're like, go cool down, right? But it's about actually appreciating that this is nothing to be embarrassed about. So when we start to have symptoms like this, you have not caused anything, you have not done anything wrong. Your body is simply saying, I don't know what the F is happening right now. I'm trying my best, but I've got communication pathways that are no longer there for me. I've got parts of these hormones that I used to rely on to help me be optimal that I no longer have. So it's like trying to operate in a business setting without part of your like central operations team.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

Okay, what a good analogy for that. Yeah, it's like it's literally changing. Your brain is trying to do the best it can, but it's just almost like missing some of the pieces as the body transitions.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Completely. So it's trying its best, it's getting it wrong at points, you know. Bless it, it's trying hard. But then there are other parts to this where you mentioned about hormone replacement therapy or mermenopause hormone therapy as we know it. There are many women that will just say yes to that straight away, and they're like, I just know that when this starts happening, I'm going to bring hormones into my body. Now, as a disclaimer, I do and have and was one of those women that brought hormone therapy in to my body as quickly as possible because of how young I was, and knowing that the additional risks to not having those hormones so young were not ones I was going to play with later on in life. So because estrogen is so brain protective, so bone protective and heart protective, yeah. We need our bones for a lot more than just moving. Right. Yeah. It's hold us for the rest of our life. Yes. Right. Yeah. I want to be able to get on and off the toilet on my own and you know, do all the things. I think about this as Adele in her 40s is doing everything for Adele in her 50s. It's like the next decade of self is the action we take in this decade now. So hormone therapy is one option because what that is going to do for you if the symptoms are so severe, and even if they're not and they're just a little bit problematic for you and become a bit challenging, itchy skin, you know, all the things that can show up that are not normal for you, then you might want to consider some low dose trials of treatment and see how your body fares.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

All right. And then you might be someone who says, Well, I can't try hormones. Okay, there are some medical reasons that some women cannot. Or you just choose that it's not for you and you want to be more on a holistic therapy route, and that's absolutely your choice. Remember what we said at the start of the episode this is your body, right? It's your body, it's your choice. No one else is there to manage it for you. This is your body. Yeah, you know it best. So allowing yourself the opportunity of looking at well, what do you want and need for me in particular? I speak about this from a professional but also personal position. I bring a lot of holistic therapies into what I do, but I also then use hormones on top. Okay. And that's the thing. So the two can go hand in hand. Yes. Yes. So alternative therapies or complementary therapies such as I will resistance train twice per week.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

I love that you are calling this out resistance training, strength training, as a quote, therapy or as something that we can do that's not, if you will, like a true medical intervention, but these are more again more lifestyle things that we know are going to help regulate some of the hormones and help protect the muscle and the bone and all of these things. Yeah, what else comes into some of these quote alternative therapies that you speak of? You mentioned resistance training, walking.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Yeah. Walking, walking is a bit of one. I mean, with resistance training, with walking, with anything that stimulates the muscle, we've got to remember that muscle is so metabolically active, which means that it actually really supports with your energy consumption. So from a change in body composition point of view, I'm being very mindful, a lot of women will call it

Strength Training And Holistic Tools

SPEAKER_00 38:55

either fat gain or weight gain, but a change in your body composition that can really occur quite rapidly through the menopause transition because we start to maybe retain a bit more belly fat. Yeah and we're like, why is this not shifting? Everything's difficult. So actually stimulating your muscle, growing a bit more muscle and keeping what you have is not only advantageous for your movement later on in life, right, but it also will support with your energy consumption in the body because muscle being more metabolically active means that we will, we will, we will use our fuel. Okay. You will find that when you're resistance training, you maybe get a little bit hungrier. And that's because we're we're stimulating that muscle, we're growing that muscle, which is a good thing. It's really good. Not just for how you look in your bikini, but how you will move later in life. And function over time.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Yeah. And I love that I love that you bring this up. And I am such a stand for this. I have been an athlete my whole life. I came out of the fitness space, is that I think for especially women of our generation, there used to just be so much talk about getting your cardio in or doing more or burning so many calories. And it's like, nope, let's flip the perspective to just the power of strength training. One, as you said, for longevity, but also I know the women that I that I've worked with and women that do desire to lose weight, that is one of the, it has to be one of the key components and to to not just strength train, but strength train heavy. And so to work with a professional to really lift kind of some of those heavier weights because it's it's helping all the things, the muscles, the bones, your metabolism.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Yeah. And if you know that this is maybe something that you've resisted, the first step in all of this is recognizing that resistance. And I always call it the what do you now need to walk the path of least resistance? Is this hiring a personal trainer? Is this joining a class program that you can go to where you know that on a set date at a set time you're gonna go along and be instructed on what to do? So you are in charge of that decision, okay, and that is where actually I'm quite direct in how I work with any woman, but it's very much around you're making a choice regardless, but you need to be okay with the choice that you choose. Right. So we make the choice. Some of the other things, I mean, we can talk about things like uh supplementations, we've got lots of those opportunities available, right through to things like breath work practices, positive psychology tools like gratitudes and daily affirmations, because when we do that, we're actually really supporting the brain to rewire some connections. And we know that menopause is not just a bio like a biology impact, it's a biopsychosocial impact. So the biology, the psychology, and the physiology of who we are is changed in menopause.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Oh, I want to pause there for a second, Adele, because I think that that is so powerful for you to call out. Because when I even think of menopause, and I would say I'm pretty well educated in this space, just with the population that I work with and the work that I do, is I don't think there's enough talk about that. Oftentimes it's about the physical and the physiological symptoms, but to really call out and say it's actually, what did you say, biopsychosocial, where it's like it's a combination of these things and just the power of our mind in how we then again, I love the word that you said choose because life is just made up of thousands of choices daily, how we choose to then go about it. We know the research shows that the mindset that we have going into something is gonna directly impact our experience. So yes, yes, yes to that.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Yeah, it hugely will. Actually, I've not had a chance to read this properly yet, but there has been something put out by the Royal College of Psychiatrists just today, hot off the press, March 2026. Wow. It is a full PDF statement that they've made around menopause and mental health and the implications for clinical practice services and policy. So there's a huge document that's come out on all of this that they've done some really detailed research. It's like four to eight pages long on the impacts of mental health during menopause. So definitely one to go do a quick Google on and check that out.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

So, so, so important. And that's what I practice and preach in the work that I do with ambitious women is that we must take a multifaceted approach to our health and wellness. It really is holistic. It's mind, it's body, it's soul, it's getting to know ourselves best. And I just I love that you have brought light to such what can oftentimes feel like a heavy or a stressful topic to really giving women permission to take back their power to say you do have choice here. You can choose HRT or you can't. You can choose to strengthen it.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Try it and then structure it and change it.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

We are ever-evolving beings, and I just think that that is so beautiful, so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

It's nothing to fear. I think this is one of the biggest things I would say. It can be very, very challenging at times, don't get me wrong. And I I have one of my ladies at the moment that I support one-to-one, she's very senior, and she's been off on sick leave for the last three weeks because of just different symptoms and impacts of poorly absorbing her hormone therapy. So we're in a bit of a challenged position at the moment. So we do know that for some women, this journey will actually be really simple. For others, it will be some days are okay, other days are a little bit more difficult. And for others, it can be really, really challenging. But it's about understanding that sometimes we need to just afford ourselves the permission. Yeah, it's like giving yourself the permission slip to say, today I just need to rest. Today I have nothing to give anyone else. Today I'm the one who needs help. And actually asking for that can be the biggest challenge that as women we face because we've been almost indoctrinated into this role of being the caregivers, not the caregivers.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

And that's why I'm so glad that we are connected, Adele, because I both I know that we both just stand so much for women to step into that power and to take back their permission and to be able to truly tune in and listen to their bodies. And it doesn't mean that we can't be caregivers and do good work and serve others and be great moms, but it can no longer be at our expense. Well, Adele, I have so loved this conversation. And again, I am just so grateful that you have poured your life's work into this space to better all of us women. As we get ready to wrap up, do you have any final thoughts for our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 45:24

I would say take everything that you listen to and use discernment. There will be parts of this where you think this is so relevant to me, and other parts that you maybe listen to that are not. But it's recognizing that you are always in charge of the decisions that you make for your own menopausal journey, whether that be through navigating certain symptoms and finding a solution to that, or speaking out and actually asking for help. You're always, like we say, the choices are yours to choose. So know that you are empowered to do that and supported. That's the biggest thing. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Giving pe giving women back their power. Adele, thank you so, so much for being part of the Rockstar Mom. You are super welcome.

Final Advice And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_01 46:10

Thank you for having me. It's been an honor. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Rockstar Mom podcast. If today's episode resonated with you, here's how we can keep this momentum going. First, be sure to subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Next, I'd be so grateful if you took a moment to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback helps us reach even more women who are ready to live more intentional, fun-filled lives. Lastly, please share your insights on social media and be sure to tag me at Megan Caldwell PDX so we can connect and inspire other rock stars to live their best lives too. Again, I am so glad that you are here, and I'll see you next time.