Expert Advice: Using Cannabis to Find Menopause Relief

When women have good information, they make good choices. - Dr. Lauren Streicher

Discover the surprising benefits of cannabis for menopause symptoms and beyond. Listen in as Ellen Scanlon shares her insights on using CBD and THC to alleviate pain, improve sleep, and support overall well-being. But what happens when the legal market for cannabis doesn't provide the support women need? Tune in to find out.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Discover how cannabis benefits menopause symptoms for relief.
• Improve your sleep with the power of cannabis.
• Explore the benefits of low-dose cannabis beverages.
• Find out how CBD-infused lubes provide pain relief.
• Learn about menopause education and the role of cannabis.

My special guest is Ellen Scanlon

As the host of How to Do the Pot, you’ll find Ellen behind the mic, sharing stories about diverse, modern women and their varied experiences with cannabis, recommending the essential strains for women, and sharing the latest research on the mental and physical benefits of the cannabis plant. Her genuine interest in shedding light on important topics is evident in her thought-provoking series, "Menopause 101." But what makes this former investment professional and health advocate jump out of bed every morning is her overarching mission to empower women to make more informed choices about their health and well-being. Within Ellen’s vision of creating the best podcast for women, she offers a safe and welcoming space to learn more about cannabis. Having released over 200 episodes on everything from sleep to sex, as well as a popular newsletter that reaches tens of thousands of loyal readers, it’s clear that Ellen’s work is striking a chord with the many women curious about cannabis.

Resources:
How to do the Pot Podcast
https://dothepot.com/podcast-series/menopause-101/

Dr. Lauren Streicher Podcast
https://www.drstreicher.com/podcast

New York Times Article:
Menopause is Having a Moment

NAMS (North American Menopause Society)
https://menopause.org/

https://nationalmenopausefoundation.org/
WeSTAT Interview with Claire Gill, Founder of The National Menopause Foundation
lhttps://www.westatpod.com/episodes/episode/4af1867f/collaborating-with-menopause-and-feeling-at-the-top-of-your-game-with-national-menopause-foundation-founder-claire-gill

Transcript

0:00

This podcast was created to be a space for conversation. The topics will vary, but the conversation will always be honest, authentic, and sometimes even a little uncomfortable. My hope is that through these conversations we will build a community of people who might not always agree with each other, but will definitely feel less isolated and alone. You so I'm Jessica Kidwell and this is we should talk about that. Oh Westat, I have been looking so forward to bringing you this conversation. Ellen Scanlon is the host of how to do the Pot, which is now a signal award winning podcast in two categories, best how to and advice show and best conversation starter show. I first met Ellen when she was a guest on this show in 2022, and she helped me become more confident in my knowledge and usage of cannabis, aka the pot. As fellow female podcasters who are out here trying to give important information to as many people as possible, I've really appreciated how Ellen and I have been able to support each other's shows where we can. Ellen has promoted this show and even guided a few guests our way, and I have shared both her podcast and newsletter to more people than I can count. I know for a fact that quite a few Westat listeners have become serious fans and followers of Ellen's, maybe even more so than the show. That's okay, it's definitely worth it. It was one of Ellen's newsletters that led me to ask her to please come back and revisit the show. She has recently featured a series on how to do the pot called Menopause 101. I immediately started listening and then I emailed Ellen to say we should talk about this. So award winning Ellen Scanlon, welcome back to Westat. Oh, thanks Jess. It's great to be here. So, as I just said before, I hit record crap, I wish I had hit record sooner because we've already covered so much about what I want everyone else to be listening to, so I'll see if we can recapture it. The series so far four episodes have been released is titled Menopause 101. Can you just tell me what caused you to do this series and how long have you been working on it? Sure. Thank you so much for having me on and for talking about menopause, which over the course of probably the last six months, I feel like I bring up with strangers. It's kind of funny to reflect that, going from never talking about it to being a major conversation starter for me. Menopause 101 the series really started after I read a New York Times magazine article about menopause that you have probably read and many of your listeners have as well. And I think that I learned a lot from the article and found it really fascinating. And I couldn't believe how little I knew. And I'm 46, so it's not like this isn't going to be a reality for me and for every single woman. So that got me really intrigued, and I started just doing some research and trying to figure out what I could know. Maybe I didn't know things because I just wasn't paying attention. But it turns out that while menopause is having what they call a moment right now, right. Most people that I talked to did not know very much about it either. And then I started talking to women who were older than me, who had gone through it, and all they said was I had no idea what was happening. And it's only in retrospect that I see now that the reason I quit my job, the reason I was so unhappy for all those years, all of that, they really tie it back to undiagnosed and symptoms of menopause that they did not even know that they could find relief for. So that's really what got me started. I just felt like this was kind of perfect for me on my show. I love big, thorny topics that cannabis is really connected to, but that people may not know. And I also find that with women, sometimes you kind of have to be pushed to the edge. You talked about gutting it out earlier. Women are really good at gutting it out. And when you're gutting it out, there comes a certain point when maybe you just are like, okay, I'll do whatever it takes. I don't care. And that's when a lot of women find cannabis, and then they find that it really helps them. And there are all these great things that can come from that one moment that was driven by a really unhappy period of time. And I think with menopause, that is where a lot of women are, and they don't know if there's anything else. And then it's just incredible to me that cannabis is now becoming so popular among women that are trying to find relief. One in four women are trying cannabis to treat menopause symptoms. Wow, that is an incredible stat. It's not a surprising stat now that I have listened to all of the ways cannabis can support women as they are going through menopause. But that's a big stat. And it's funny because I consider, and I'm sure you consider your podcast a niche. It's for a certain type of listener, and then when we add on top of it the additional niche of people interested in menopause. It seems like it would be a small number, but I think what both you and I have discovered when we have done shows me on this one about menopause, you with this series, it's a big number. There's a lot of people interested in it, definitely. And I think also finding information in a discreet way is one of the things that podcasts can do so well. And it can really be intimidating, I think, to talk to your doctor, because as we talked about on the show, there are a lot of structural reasons why many OBGYNs don't have specialized training in menopause. Women don't really go see their ob after they're 50. And so that has trickled down to medical schools, where only a third of medical school's ObGYN family medicine practices include any information about menopause. And if they do, it's very limited. And when I first found that out, I was so frustrated. How could this be? I was so angry. And in talking to Dr. Stryker, who came on my show, it really is just women don't go to that doctor after a certain age, after they've finished having children. And so it's frustrating. But that doesn't mean that there aren't experts. The expert you think you need to go to just might not be the expert who actually will have the information that can help you. That is one of the things I want to make sure that I really push, is that your series is so informative on so many levels when it comes to menopause. It's not just about the way that cannabis can help. I feel like part of my role with this 50,000 foot podcast where I pick almost any topic that I am interested in learning about, and then I go out and seek experts or people who can speak to it much better than I can. That is, what I love about your series, is you have tapped into so many different knowledge experts and just kind of dig into menopause as a whole that it's so much more than menopause and cannabis. It is like a go to episode with all of the links and things that you have in the notes to help anyone. Even if someone listening right now is feeling so nervous about, oh, cannabis, I'm not sure how I feel about it. There's just so much information, and then maybe through the process of getting that information that can help alleviate some of the nerves that women have in general when it comes to cannabis. Well, thank you. When I started this research process, I found myself texting videos to friends and sending articles, and I really just wanted to share this information with any woman who had shared, because people ask me questions about cannabis all the time, and I'd gotten a few questions from friends about this. And so when I set about to make the series, this was for my friends. This is really just trying to help the people who I know who have questions, and I want this to be a universal series, regardless of where you stand on cannabis. And I think that cannabis is a tool, there are other tools. None of them get much press. So in some ways, we talk a little bit about this on the show, and estrogen and hormone therapy has a lot of controversy around it, a lot of misconceptions around it, and so many, many women are very afraid of it. And so in some ways, if that is an option, and then cannabis is an option, women are afraid of both and research both. It turns out using them together may actually be the best thing for symptoms. And this is all I love. That was the entourage. Exactly. In topics like this, where we're all trying to figure it out, I don't think just about cannabis. I think about weed a lot, but I think about a lot of other things, and I think I really brought that to this series. How do I think about big topics? It definitely comes across, and I cannot recommend the series enough. I love your podcast in general, and there is so much helpful information, but I found the overarching information about menopause to be so beneficial, and then it also, then is able to niche down even more about the role that cannabis can play to help support women in and past menopause. I want to talk a little bit about Dr. Stryker. She plays a big role in this series. Can you tell me a little bit about her and how you found her and why anyone interested in this topic should also be following Dr. Stryker. I love Dr. Stryker. I love her. I found her because I was searching for cannabis and menopause podcasts, and I stumbled across her podcast and was so excited to hear this incredibly accomplished, experienced doctor. She's a professor at the Northwestern Medical School. She runs a menopause clinic there. She's been in private practice for years. If you're from Chicago or the Chicago area, she is definitely a local celebrity. She has regular segments on the news. She's just an amazing force, and she has one of my favorite mantras, which is when women have good information, they make good choices. And she really believes that women deserve to have great information and then make their own choices. She also just knows so much about menopause. And I interviewed her once and I had so many more questions and she was so nice and she let me interview her again, and we've been able to talk more. She's not seeing patients anymore because I definitely asked if she would be my doctor and she said that she wasn't seeing patients. And I also shared this on the show. Menopause.org is a website that has a tab called find a doctor. And you can go in and put your zip code and find a doctor with specialized training. And so that is what I did. I live in San Francisco. I have an appointment in January. It took a little while to get one because these doctors are full. But I'm incredibly, incredibly excited about it. And I really credit her with making me believe that there is a doctor who can really help me. And, oh, I should definitely see a doctor who can help me because I had kind of been running up against just some what felt like dead ends. Like, I don't think I'm going to get a lot of helpful information from the people that I am talking to. So Dr. Stryker is a force. She is such an advocate for women. I definitely say it to myself. I don't know, once a day when women have good information, they make good choices. It's so simple and so grounding. I can already tell that the show notes are going to be chock full of links for all of you to check out the series links as well as Dr. Stryker and then also menopause.org. I had the good fortune earlier. I want to say it was 2021. We interviewed the executive director of NAms, and to say that I've covered menopause and that I will continue to cover menopause would not be an understatement. So there is lots of information out there. It can be a little bit overwhelming once you kind of start, but you also sometimes don't start looking because it feels like we're not supposed to be talking about menopause. You and I talked a little bit before I hit record about this whole gen x thing. I mean, we're roughly the same age, you and I, and this concept of why in our 40s are we just getting familiar with this topic. We needed to know to be prepared much earlier on than this. And I think it's going to be much more common. And hopefully as my children age, it won't feel as overwhelming and there won't be a lack of knowledge on a healthcare provider standpoint. Like we're in the middle of maybe a sea change of where menopause stands culturally? I hope so. The most surprising thing that I think I learned is that menopause can start as early as your late thirty s. I really had no idea. And the symptoms, there are more than 30 symptoms of menopause. So what you're experiencing, it's not going to be hot flashes, necessarily, or something that is like sort of red light flashing. This is menopause. This is where you are. It's mood, it's sleep, it's losing interest in things that you had interest in. It's these very life important day to day things that suddenly just start to feel like maybe they're like dripping away a little bit. And the question that I think can be really good to ask but hard to answer is, is this midlife? Is this menopause? Is it all of the above? And I learned about that question from Dr. Stryker. And midlife is a complicated time. You're caregiving for aging parents, for young children, for know excelling in your career. There are just a lot of things going on that create more stress in talking to women. The common thread that I kept pulling out, especially for women that were older who were reflecting back, was, I really wish that I had known that menopause was a possibility because it was that gutting it out feeling that just keep doing it, that I don't feel like myself, but I guess I just have to keep going. And that is truly a health signal. And it's hard to discern that when you are operating on such a high level, on so many different levels. But I hope that that message comes across. These symptoms can be subtle, but they're mostly negative. If you start feeling worse, I think that you need to ask whether this could be perimenopause. I feel like sometimes when it comes to women and our health, there's a lot of whack a mole that happens, that something starts interrupting us enough to make us go seek help, because that's the very first thing is we don't usually prioritize ourselves. We're usually focusing on other people. So by the time something is interruptive enough to get you to go see a doctor, it's like you just get treated for that one thing and that there's not a huge amount of normalcy to peel it back to look at what maybe one root cause could be causing a lot of the whackamoles that these women are coming in seeking help for. Absolutely. And I think that just to talk a little bit about cannabis and how it is playing a role in supporting women's health and supporting some of these symptoms. I think that sleep really is such a critical part of functioning on so many levels. I have so many friends who wear the aura ring who have really dug deeply into what they're learning from it because they're learning so much from their sleep. It's changing their habits during the day. And so a lot of these trackers are keeping us all a little bit more aware of, oh, I feel bad today, and I looked at my data and I had a terrible night's sleep. Maybe that's the cause, maybe it's not that this waterfall of other things is actually going wrong. And for women who already might be struggling to get enough sleep, I know it takes 2 hours to get my child to bed and then often he shows up in my bed in the middle of the night. So things like that are just part of this time in women's lives. And trying to have something that you know, that you can depend on, I think, is where cannabis has come in. For me personally, CBD is what works the best for me. I have never had trouble falling asleep. I have trouble staying asleep. I wake up in the middle of the night and then I can't get back to sleep. And gosh, probably three plus years ago I started taking CBD nightly before bed and I don't have any sleep problems around my period, my sleep gets a little bit disrupted. And so I take a different sleep gummy that has a cannabinoid called CBN, which is showing a lot of promise in sort of having sedating effects. I only need that a few nights a month. And so my sleep is very, very regular. And truly, as I've been learning about this menopause series, I feel like this is the best gift that I could have given myself to, created a sleep routine that I already know works for me. And this is the sleep routine. Whether it's CBD for staying asleep or THC for helping you fall asleep, getting into a rhythm of good sleep can actually help with so many of the symptoms that are really affecting women during menopause and perimenopause. I think that women who have also had the experience of being mothers, it's frustrating because we know this. When you sleep train your child, you learn so fast how important sleep is and how many things throughout the day can be impacted. Fussiness, appetite, general malaise, all sorts of things we have learned once we've had that experience can be so impacted by whether or not there is a regular sleep pattern happening. And then boom, we forget that when it comes to ourselves and our own interrupted sleep patterns that start to happen later in life. And what starts to happen later in life is weight gain for women. And this is a, I think that if you think of sort of top of funnel things that really bother women, there may be lots of symptoms going on. But if you unexpectedly start gaining weight, it's really disconcerting. And what I learned is that there is a very strong connection between sleep, hot flashes and weight gain. And Dr. Stryker and other physicians talk about this, but when you look at the populations of men and women at the same age, women gain weight. Women have more issues with weight gain at the same age as men. And so they've been kind of backing into the research to try to figure out what is happening and the strongest ties right now. And the research is showing that getting less than 7 hours of sleep can really change your body. And also hot flashes. Hot flashes are keeping women awake. And those are the two things that change for women that do not change for men. And so it's a fascinating field of research that I hope we learn a lot more about. I know that I get a lot of questions about it, but just know that if that is something that you're experiencing unexpected weight gain, the first question to ask is, how are you sleeping? THC helps you fall asleep and CBD helps you stay asleep. Yes. So we also have a four part series on sleep, which if you're curious about, I highly recommend, and none of our shows are more than 30 minutes, so you really can kind of binge these on a long walk or maybe two. The sleep series has been incredibly popular, and I think that the takeaway from it is know whether you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. And from there, you can kind of take different paths. A lot of women, especially in this age group, tell me they have both and falling asleep and staying asleep. And so that is where THC, which is traditionally the intoxicating part of the plant, and CBD, which is non intoxicating, come together. This other cannabinoid, CBN, is also showing a lot of promise. I always try to give good information for women, and I do want to say that there is not a lot of great research about cannabis. So a lot of this is anecdotal. We are getting more. There's a Harvard study about cannabis and menopause that really focused in on sleep, but in general, falling asleep, you're going to need some THC. Staying asleep. You need CBD. Both of them together can help to really regulate your sleep. Patterns and bring you more restful sleep over long periods of time. And in the vein of being responsible purveyors of information, when someone starts down the path of wanting to use cannabis to maybe address some of these disruptive parts of their life, your advice is always to start out very slowly and. With a low dose. And by very slowly, I think the thing that really means is just don't take another gummy, wait, don't smoke a whole joint, just take it slowly. And one of the great things about buying weed from legal dispensaries is there's a ton of information about what you're buying and what dose you're getting. And so I would say THC is the intoxicating part of the plant. I really don't recommend starting with anything higher than five milligrams of THC in any edible. I would say cut it in half. One or two milligrams, actually is really great for a lot of people, especially if it includes CBD. And that's a very kind of, like, good guardrail way to start your experience with cannabis. You are not going to feel terribly intoxicated. I think what you'll feel probably is relaxed, you might feel, depending on what you're taking. But one to two milligrams of THC is just a very small amount. I mean, alcohol and cannabis are not great when you try to compare them. But I would say one to two milligrams of cannabis is for sure on the one drink range. And one drink is quite disruptive to your sleep, whereas a low dose of cannabis can be quite helpful for your sleep. And it's really interesting with sleep, one of the things that people talk about sometimes is a cannabis tolerance. And if you're a consistent consumer, a heavy consumer, sometimes you need a little bit more over time. That is kind of one thing that we do know that exists. What we've been learning is that with sleep, your brain kind of responds in the same way. But when you start consuming THC and it helps to put you to sleep, your brain kind of relaxes because it's like, oh, this is the sleepy thing that helps me. And so it actually will help you to fall asleep faster, to kind of train your body that this is what's going to help you get rest. It's part of your sleep routine. Exactly. Now, when you talk about the legal markets and how, one of the benefits of the legal market is that we can go in and get information about exactly what we're ingesting, one of the things that a listener reached out when people knew that you were coming back on the show and talked about is how is the legal market doing, in your opinion so far, on catering to women and being able to help women feel more comfortable in their dispensary experience? I think it's state by state. When I started the show, there were eleven legal states, and now there are 24. So it's been a rapid, rapid pace of change. And within that we have an emerging industry. And so all of the sort of fits and starts and challenges and capital issues and tax issues and regulation issues that are definitely causing some issues in what would kind of feel more like a normal sort of go to market strategy, if you will, like, oh, people like weed, we should get this out for them and make it happen. So there are reasons why it's complicated regulation being a really big one. We have a series on our show called the first time I bought legal weed, where women send in their story and just talk about it. And I started this series on the show because I know that taking that leap from never having gone to buy legal weed to buying it is just a very memorable experience. And you kind of have to work up your courage sometimes to get there. I wish that I could say that there is a great dispensary that I recommend that every woman go to. I think that you really have to try them out. If you can, grab a friend, if you can't do some online research. One of the things that I really try and do with my show is make it super practical. And so if there are specific questions that you really want to have answered, first of all, reach out. We're happy to answer them for you or to try and create a show about it. If I hear a question from more than three people, that is sort of the snap for me. Like, I need to do a show about it. And so there are a lot of dispensaries that are trying to cater to what we call sort of this emerging consumer, someone who has not been a consistent consumer prior to legalization. And depending on the states that you go to, if you come to California, I've got a lot of great recommendations for you. There's some in New York, but in the states that are legalizing a little bit more slowly, Virginia is still kind of working out its distribution model. You definitely can have kind of an awkward conversation with someone who really can't relate to your issues. What I would say, though, about dispensary employees, bud tenders, the retail staff there. They love cannabis, and that's why they are there you can really feel that in these sort of early employees at a lot of these places. So it's not that they don't want to help you, it's just that they probably have never thought of this before. It's almost like, if you're going into Sephora, that's kind of what I'm like. That would be the gold standard for cannabis dispensaries, where there's a mix of help, but also you can get what you want. You can also do the research on your own. And if you go and you look at the dispensary menus and you see that they don't have any serums for sex, maybe look for the next one, because that's probably what you want. And you may not need to have a really in depth conversation with anyone at the dispensary if what you know that you need is a serum for sex. And if you know, you can kind of, like, walk with purpose in there and be like, hey, that's what I'm here for, and I'm coming in, and I'm coming out. You can avoid that sort of chitchat, if you will. That might awkward not make you feel that great. By doing some research in advance looking, I mean, Covid really changed the dispensary experience, where almost everything is online. So that's a huge help. I know it's tricky. I really wish that I could go with a lot of people. I wish you could come with me. Is what I wish. I wish we could clone you and have you be able to come with everybody or that we could franchise you. We could just put your knowledge in other people. And Ellen Scanlon franchises across the US as cannabis spreads legally across the whole us, hopefully. I'm writing these notes down good. But I think it's really hard. What I would say is what you're doing is legal. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you as a person over 21 walking into a cannabis dispensary. The fastest growing group of cannabis consumers are over 65. So one of the fun things that I like to do when I go to a dispensary is just sort of check out the people around me. It is such a beautiful cross section of people, and really everyone is coming in to try and solve a problem that they have heard that cannabis might help with. And I just think that is such a brave thing to try to do when you've just gotten to a point where I know this might not be your first step, but cannabis is helping a lot of people. And I think it's growing by word of mouth, but there's just more access, and so more people can try it and say, oh, that actually worked. And so I really, really hope that listening to my shows, listening to this shows just help you feel confident that this is coming. A few years from now, this is going to be a very different experience. So if anything, go now, because five years from now, you can tell all your friends about that early cannabis dispensary that you went to. That's right, because it'll be so passe in five years, hopefully. Fingers crossed. I think that your point earlier about podcasts being a great, discrete way for people to get information in a way that feels less vulnerable is extremely important. And I think your podcast is a gold standard for that. I think it feels overwhelming to go into a dispensary. I'm going to admit I still, even with all of my knowledge and living in a state where it's legal, I haven't gone yet. I have not gone to a dispensary yet, because I still feel it's not embarrassed about the walking in and having a neighbor see me go in there. That might have been it, maybe two years ago, but now I don't want to seem uninformed or dumb to the bud tender or the retail person working. And I love what you said earlier about anyone who's working there loves cannabis and probably loves being able to tell people about it. The person at Sephora loves giving advice on product. The sommelier at a restaurant loves wine and wants to educate you. So I'm going to take that with me, Ellen, and see if between now and the next time I talk to you, if I can apply to be one of the stories on the first time I bought legal weed. Oh, for sure, I would love that. And one other thing that has happened in the cannabis industry is incredibly exciting, and that is the rise of hemp derived THC products. And these are products it started with cannabis beverages that are low dose beverages that actually ship to 40 states. And this is a super exciting change in the industry. I love a cannabis beverage. They're really low dose. The ones that are shipping two milligrams of THC, four milligrams of CBD, maybe five milligrams would be the maximum of THC, and you feel the effects in 15 minutes. So that solves for one of the problems with edibles, which can be not feeling it for one to 2 hours, and then taking another and then getting too high and not enjoying the experience with these cannabis beverages. You feel the effects in 15 minutes, you can try a half of a can, see how you feel, and if you like it, you can have the other half. If you like it, you can have another can later. And these are really, really great entry points, I think, for a lot of newer consumers because it's just a sparkling water and a lot of them taste really great. But it's something you can do at home. It's something that, it feels very familiar. There's sort of a ritual around drinking already. And so I do want to mention that because there are brands like Happy Happi and can C-A-N-N that have started to advertise with me because they're so excited to reach this national market. So you can use the promo code, do the pot, and you can get a little discount, and you can try these cannabis beverages, and they are really terrific. I just did a white elephant on Saturday with friends I've been doing this with for ten years. And over the years I would usually bring one weed gift and one something else. And this year I was like, I'm just bringing all cannabis beverages and they were still the most stolen, I bet. I do feel like I would be remiss, considering how the brand of this show is, to talk about uncomfortable things. I want to, just before I let you go, talk about what you learned about weed, menopause and sex, and how helpful cannabis is with things like pain and dryness. Absolutely. I mean, after sleep, sex is how cannabis is supporting so many women who are in perimenopause and in menopause. And I think that weed lubes, our weed serums are really popular with all women that I talk to. That's another gift that gets a lot of people really like it. A lot of steals at the Wyatt. Elephant, but these are serums that the ones that ship nationwide have CBD in them. And so if you have any pain with sex, CBD really reduces inflammation. And so that is going to help a lot things like suppositories. Also, there's a company in California called hello again, and it was founded by two women who would speak during my menopause series and offer their wonderful perspectives. And they've created a company that has cannabis suppositories. And the suppositories help with hot flashes, they help with sleep, they help with sort of just mood and anxiety. And another word that I definitely didn't think I would say a lot, but now I do suppositories. I have endometriosis, and one in ten women also have it. And I have extremely, extremely painful monthly symptoms. And the thing that works the best for me for pain is a suppository of CBD. It's just in coconut oil. It's kind of like a monostat. That's what it looks like. Once you've done it once or twice, you really don't think anymore about it, because it works so well for me. It really, really helps with pain. And Dr. Stryker talks a lot about the placement. So if you're using a suppository for pain, it needs to be in kind of the upper third quadrant, if you're using it for sex in the lower quadrant. And that can really help with a lot of the painful symptoms that come with, kind of decrease the thinning of the vaginal walls, which is just a structural thing that happens as women age. And so there are a lot of structural things that cannabis topically can really, really help with. There's so much excellent information in the series specific to menopause, and there's so much great information in the podcast in general, when it comes to cannabis, I cannot recommend it enough to everyone. Even if you think cannabis is not for you, or you're still feeling nervous about the drugs and doing the pot, the information that you give is just helpful, no matter where anyone is in their pot journey. And it. I don't know, I just don't understand why, with the discrete ability to listen to information, why not literally every single person would not be listening to how to do the pot. So, I mean, as you know, I'm a fan, and I'm so grateful to you for the work that you do and for this incredible menopause series. Thank you so much. That makes me feel great, and it definitely keeps pushing me into awkward conversations, because I just want everyone to know I feel the same way. I do not want anyone to suffer from menopause symptoms for a day longer than they have to, if they can get relief. And one of the takeaways that I learned about menopause in general, which I thought was really fascinating, I think so many women think that this is a short period of time, and that we only have to think about perimenopause and menopause for maybe a ten year window max, and then it's behind you. And Dr. Stryker made such a great point about menopause means we have stopped producing estrogen. So no longer having estrogen in our body for the rest of our lives has long lasting effects that I don't think we fully understand yet. But every organ in our bodies have estrogen receptors. And so there are so many ways that lack of estrogen can impact us. 510 15 2030 years post menopause what. I learned through this series is that a lot of the reason that I think that some of these symptoms have been dismissed over the years or minimized is because they were considered quality of life issues. And what we now know is these are length of life issues. They have real implications. This is a real health issue. So please take it seriously. Ten years is a long time to be suffering from something, yes, but even. Longer if you want to live well past your menopausal age. It's even more than ten years that we need to be aware that this lack of estrogen can be impacting us in so many more ways than just the quality of our life. Absolutely. Please menopause.org. Find a doctor, find a specialist. And if you have questions about cannabis, absolutely. Listen to the, you know, InStyle magazine is doing an article about know it's hitting women's magazines because really, one in four women are finding relief with cannabis, which is an incredible stat. And I will be linking to your show so that everyone can also start listening if they are not already, to how to do the pot. Ellen, thank you so much for today, and I hope to talk to you many more times in the future. Oh, thank you for having me. Hey, can you wait a second? I have a favor to ask you. Can you open up your podcast app and make sure you're following the show? That means every time a new episode comes out, you'll already have it waiting for you. And I've asked this before, but I'm going to ask again. Will you please leave a review of. The show on Apple Podcasts? I read every single one, and I'd love to read what you think. Okay, that's it. I'll let you go now. We should talk about that is hosted and produced by me, Jessica Kidwell. The audio engineering is done by Jarrett Nicolai at Mixtape Studios in Alexandria, Virginia. The theme song, be where you are, is courtesy of Astra via Graphic design is by Kevin Adkins. Do you have a topic I should talk about? Let me know. Submit your idea on my website, ww westatpod.com. There's a form right on the main page for you to get in touch with me. And if you don't have a topic but you want to let me know what you thought of the show, you can send me a message on any of my social links, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn threads, that platform formerly known as Twitter on all of these, you can find me at Westat Pod. You may even hear your comments on a future show. And finally, there is no we without your participation. I really couldn't do this podcast without your support, so thank you for being here. Be where you are, be where you are, be where you are, be where you are, be where you are, be where you are I should love my constellation, love to