Are you ready to embrace the transformative journey of menopause and reclaim your health? In this enlightening episode of Real Food Stories, host Heather Carey invites Jeannie Andrus, a certified personal trainer and health coach, to share her inspiring weight loss story and insights into menopause health. Jeannie opens up about her life before menopause, where she diligently followed societal expectations, only to be blindsided by the challenges of perimenopause at age 48, facing debilitating symptoms like hot flashes, depression, and a diminished libido.

Rather than succumbing to these hurdles, Jeannie embarked on a remarkable personal food journey, shedding 80 pounds and relocating to New Orleans to empower other women navigating their menopause experiences. This episode highlights the glaring lack of information and support for women during this pivotal life stage, emphasizing the necessity of viewing menopause not as a decline but as an incredible opportunity for personal growth and self-discovery.

Join Heather and Jeannie as they delve into the complexities of hormone therapy, the critical roles of stress management and sleep in alleviating symptoms, and the importance of individualized approaches to health. They discuss perimenopause nutrition and how making informed healthy lifestyle choices can significantly impact well-being during this transitional phase. Both women stress the need for self-care and compassion, encouraging listeners to embrace the changes and seek holistic solutions to thrive during menopause.

This episode is packed with valuable nutrition advice and healthy eating tips that can help you navigate the complexities of midlife changes. With a focus on mindful eating practices and the seven pillars of abundance, Jeannie shares her journey of overcoming food confusion and the myths surrounding weight loss and diet culture. You’ll learn how to nourish your body with real food, empowering your menopause journey and fostering a positive body image.

Whether you’re in the thick of perimenopause or simply seeking insights into women’s health and wellness, this episode promises to be a source of inspiration and practical advice. Tune in as Heather and Jeannie explore the intersection of food, culture, and health, reminding us all that we have the power to rewrite our stories, embrace our midlife bodies, and cultivate a joyful relationship with food.

Don’t miss this opportunity to transform your understanding of menopause and empower yourself with the tools to thrive. Listen now to Real Food Stories and start your journey towards a healthier, happier you!

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. Okay, hi everybody. Today I am with Jeannie Andrus and Jeannie spent the first 48 years of her life doing everything, quote, the right way. Good grades, college, marriage, career, baby, all of the things that we know about. Then at age 48, perimenopause clobbered her. Her symptoms were mean gene periods and hot flashes. She had depression, anger, low libido, which… literally took her out of the life that she had built for herself. Determined not to let this change destroy her, she began a journey to health, happiness, and a new purpose in life. She lost 80 pounds, moved from New England to New Orleans, and quit her corporate job to help other women struggling with menopause symptoms ditch their symptoms and delight in life again. After she realized how little information and support was available, she was determined to help Women understand and control the changes that they were going through. Jeannie is a certified personal trainer, health coach, and behavioral change specialist. And she is the author of five books on menopause, including I Just Want to Be Me Again, and Where Is My Wife and What Have You Done With Her? A Spouse’s Guide to Her Menopause. And she has been helping women navigate their menopause journey for well over a decade. So welcome to the show, Jeannie. I’m so glad that you’re here because I think we have a lot to talk about. Starting with…

Speaker #1
It’s a big topic.

Speaker #0
Yes, this is a gigantic topic and I have been talking about it quite a bit on my podcast. And I think just the fact that the whole subject is such a life-changing experience for every single woman on the planet. And we all experience perimenopause and menopause and it is so riddled. with confusion and just shrouded in secret. I know that was definitely my experience. And I think the experience for so many people that I speak, I talk to, so menopause, I think is just an especially an unbelievably vulnerable time for women and it can feel really lonely. So it sounds like that was your experience as well. And I know, like I said, this, that was definitely for me too. So we might have different perspectives. You know, we talked off air a little bit, and we might have a little different perspective on perimenopause and menopause. And I was intrigued with your belief that menopause is actually a gift. I think as a society, menopause gets a terrible rap. And I have to admit, I do not sing the praises of menopause very often. I believe, though, that many women have a lot of fear. wrapped around menopause, their fear of aging and shriveling up and losing our sex drives. And so let’s talk about this gift. I’m really intrigued with this.

Speaker #1
So people, I talk about this from an evolutionary standpoint. So humans were designed, all life is designed to replicate itself, to make more. And that means that humans are designed to have babies. And the majority of the bearing and rearing of babies in prehistoric times fell upon the woman. So she was pregnant a good deal of her time. She had infants and she was nursing a good deal of her time. She was probably nursing two to four years. And then the children were mobile, but they weren’t self-sufficient for probably another four to six years before they were really contributing members of the tribe, which meant that women, the women of the tribe, were mostly tied to this having children and raising them to independence, which meant that they needed each other. They needed each other to create a community. And it was a clique. It was a tribe. It’s not the same community that we create for ourselves, possibly after menopause. But it was a very. um tight-knit community and if you got expelled from that community you were on your own with these children or these children were left behind to fend for themselves in a tribe that might be hostile to them so women evolved to make nice to each other and to make nice to their men so the men came home and brought literally brought home the bacon you know, wild boar or deer or whatever they were bringing home. They were designed to stay in this community in order to raise these children. The way that happened, the way it works in humans is the hormones progesterone and estrogen. And I admit that I have not completely looked through the animal kingdom, but many others have these. hormones. But these hormones tell us, they literally trigger things in our emotions and brains to be these tribal, people-pleasing, go-along-to-get-along people. And then menopause hits. And menopause, the progesterone retreats and the estrogen retreats. And those areas of our brain that are designed to keep us from telling off the person next to us for being an idiot. I was working on Rage last night. I was on some stuff on Rage last night that came back out. But it’s about talking. The people around us don’t necessarily take our feelings into consideration. And all of a sudden, we wake up in our 40s and we say, wait a minute, for the last 30 years, all I’ve been doing is taking care of other people and meeting other people’s needs. And if I even got to deal with my stuff at all, it was just in little dribs and drabs. And that was wonderful because I had these wonderful kids and I have maybe this wonderful husband who’s now getting a little annoying. But we get to take ourselves, if you think of yourself. as having a circle in the middle of your life where all the most important things are. During our 20s and 30s and early 40s, the thing that’s missing from that circle is us.

Speaker #0
That’s a very good point.

Speaker #1
And we get to put ourselves in the middle of that circle. It doesn’t require throwing anything else out. There’s room enough in there for us. And we can take as much of that circle as we want. Now, okay, some of us have late-life babies, and that means that we’re still dealing with those child-rearing issues. And I’m not suggesting that you throw your kids out of that circle.

Speaker #0
Right.

Speaker #1
Or your husband or your job or your significant other of whatever. Your pets, you can keep all of those in there if you want, but you get to put your own needs, wants, passions, purposes into that circle. And it only happens because those hormones retreat and allow us to rethink who we are in this world.

Speaker #0
So I understand what you’re saying, right? Because as we get into our 40s and 50s, right? I mean, just naturally, our kids are older. They’re moving on. We’re empty nesters now. You know, every one of my friends, everyone around me in my circle are, you know, we’re all going through the same thing. Should we downsize our houses? Should we move? What should we do with the rest of our lives? I mean, I have to, I have to admit, though, I mean, you know, yeah, I guess I can see where, you know, like, that’s corresponding with then this like dip in estrogen and the dip in progesterone. And I’m just trying to equate, I mean, does the dip in estrogen all of a sudden make me question what on earth am I doing with the rest of my life? Because honestly, that, you know, I feel for myself, at least that hormone replacement therapy, you know, adding back in some hormones that we have naturally lost. has really saved my menopause experience because I had a couple of the very classic symptoms of menopause. I had hot flashes. night sweats and vaginal dryness, which were absolutely, you know, killing my sex drive, killing my sex life, keeping me up at night. And therefore I wasn’t sleeping. And so, you know, it’s, I felt that it was a necessary add in, you know, to add in back in some hormones. So I understand what you’re saying about this. time of our lives being an opportunity to reevaluate or to add us back into the equation. But does that have to do with?

Speaker #1
I believe it does. I believe it does. And I don’t think that it’s, I don’t think it’s not going to happen. If you add in the hormones, I do believe that there are other ways to deal with many of those issues. I know vaginal dryness and vaginal atrophy are huge issues for women who want to retain an active sexual life. And certainly I do. But I also think that there’s other ways to manage some of that. There’s ways to support your body to make effective use of what your body can continue to produce. That said, there is no reason in the world for your symptoms if you can take hormones, and not everyone can, and not everyone should think that the herbals out there are not estrogenic because they are very much so. So I always want to make that point very clear because a lot of people don’t remember it. but If you need it, yes, do not be miserable, but also explore the ways to support your body and add in when you take down, for example, when you take down cortisol and you’re not as stressed, when you learn to manage your own stress levels, your adrenals get to make Thank you. the residual estrogen and progesterone that they can make. And it does, and it is enough for many women. Now, like I said, some women do need hormone therapy. Some, some women do need antidepressants. Some women need other drugs to manage other symptoms. And I would never say that if that is, is you, that that’s. wrong or evil. It’s just, there are ways to deal with it that are more natural. And so if you’re like me and you come in thinking, I don’t like taking pharmaceuticals, I don’t like taking synthetic hormones, and I don’t really, I’m not seeing the benefit from bioidenticals. They don’t work for everybody. There are ways to make… that work for you and to have a great experience whether or not you are on hormones or not so the

Speaker #0
one thing I don’t believe is gritting gritting your teeth and bearing it right yes I agree with you on that and I think that is not it this experience

Speaker #1
has so much to offer to you, but you need to support your body. And by the way, they’re not mutually exclusive. None of this is mutually exclusive, except possibly doctors who think that hysterectomies are the number one way to, and that used to be, but it’s not, thank God, it’s no longer the go-to treatment for menopause. But There are lots and lots of ways to get through various pieces of this. And the best mix for you is the best mix for you.

Speaker #0
So let’s talk about some of those various pieces, because I think that I know in my world, in my circle, you know, the women that I see, they want quick fixes. You know, I’m a nutritionist. So they’re looking for, you know, a lot of people come to me and say, like, I just want my body back. I look at food and I gain weight. I don’t know what happened to my body, but, and they. you know, and they want fast and quick. And a lot of women just want to lean back on old dieting behaviors. A lot of sometimes disordered eating kind of like springs back up because they are so confused. All of a sudden they’re like, you know, gaining weight and they don’t really understand it and how to go about it. And, you know, it takes, I think that during like this time. it takes a lot of slowing down, you know, a lot of just introspection, you know, you said looking at our stress levels and it takes some work. It takes just a little more flow. And so tell me how, you know, what you think. So if, so I think sometimes people think that hormones are like the quick fix. They don’t fix everything, right? They don’t, they’re not a miracle by any means.

Speaker #1
Number one, they don’t, they only fix progesterone and estrogen.

Speaker #0
Right.

Speaker #1
And. The truth is the slowdown, they’re not restoring you to your premenopausal levels. They’re restoring you to sort of a minimal level with most doctors. And by the way, most doctors will only prescribe for a limited period of time. And then a lot of them, unfortunately, just say, okay, it’s time to stop. I’m stopping writing your prescription. And if you do that, you just are right back into menopause all over again. It’s just five years later. We’re talking about hormones and insulin does not work as well without estrogen, nor does thyroid hormone, nor does, and then cortisol is modulated by estrogen. So it doesn’t affect us at nearly as much. So our anxiety levels are lower. So when we When our estrogen starts to be not sufficient, even in the presence of HRT, those things are changing. So our hormones don’t work as well without estrogen because that’s the way they’re designed. There’s an interaction between many of the primary hormones and estrogen, thyroid, insulin, cortisol, testosterone, serotonin, dopamine. and oxytocin, just to name a few of the important hormones and neurotransmitters that aren’t working as well. So even when we’re on this lower dosage of hormone replacement therapy, we’re finding that things have changed. Things aren’t working quite as well as they did once. And that’s, again, by design, women during their reproductive years are more Yeah. resilient in a lot of ways physically, so that because their bodies are doing all this bearing children, nursing children, raising children stuff, and if we don’t make it through, our children are at risk. And for biology, that’s not a good thing, that whole life trying to make itself more. So what happens is we need to slowly figure out what pieces have to get fixed and how to best fix that for an individual woman. And in my experience, it has never, ever, ever been exactly the same program for any two women because we have different histories and we have different genetics and we have different social worlds. So, you know, it’s one person needs to be a vegetarian. for philosophic or other reasons. Another person is a total carnivore. They don’t eat any plant-based things. And then there are people who are somewhere in the middle. So we have this wide range of needs for a variety of reasons. And so we need to find our own way through. The truth of the matter is there are no quick fixes to this. There are things that can make it better almost immediately. And the places that I find really change things quickly is being able to change stress and sleep. Sleep being probably the most important. And not sleeping affects about 90 to 95% of all women going through menopause.

Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, right. Sleep and stress are like the, I mean, I know that, right. We, we, we know that like we have to get our stress levels under control and everything. And so, I mean, I know that, you know, you talk from this anthropological perspective that, yeah, I, of course there’s this reason why our hormones dip and that we’re sort of, we’re done. We’re done then. We do have other things. Right. We’re working hard and everything. And I imagine that thousands of years ago, this is like either your time to start. rusting and, you know, and slowing down, but now today in our world, yeah.

Speaker #1
Being the wise woman.

Speaker #0
Yeah.

Speaker #1
Probably. Being the wise woman. They were probably the healers, the midwives, and possibly less social. They probably were off by themselves doing this healing thing, learning about the plants, learning about the world.

Speaker #0
Right. But now when we hear like. 30 or 50 is the new 30. And, you know, and we’re all still, you know, we’re all many, many women are still in their careers and they are afraid of aging and getting, you know, and just slow and afraid of slowing down. So the stress and the, and the sleep really, the stress ramps up, you know, in different ways.

Speaker #1
And menopause is no stress at all. Right.

Speaker #0
Right. Yeah. And then we’re going through menopause.

Speaker #1
Yeah. So those are two things that can be changed fairly quickly. And they do make a huge amount of difference in the way you lose weight, the way you feel every day, the way you think, how well you can think, because stress is a big factor in brain fog. But it’s a matter of finding what works. for you in particular. And the truth is you can be, you can decide at this time of your life that this is going to be the healthiest you ever are. And you can really make those choices to move into a very healthy, supportive way of dealing with yourself, whether or not you take the drugs or the hormones. So by the way, drugs and hormones will not make you glowing with health. They will make you symptom less or symptom free, but they cannot make you glow with health. That’s got to be exercise and nutrition and stress and knowing what’s right for you and your body.

Speaker #0
Yeah. Well, I mean, you can, you know, sometimes you see these ads for the medical spas and other… Health coaches, you know, people who are really promoting different hormone therapies and they promote it.

Speaker #1
Or even supplements.

Speaker #0
Yeah, or supplements, you know, to be more youthful and to be, and it’s right, and it’s just not the case. I mean, hormones can help some things and not all things for sure. You still have to do the inner work.

Speaker #1
And some of the outer work. So, for example, hormones will not help you lose weight. Just won’t.

Speaker #0
Right.

Speaker #1
You have to do something about it. And neither will probiotics or prebiotics or vitamin D or vitamin K2 or all those wonderful things that, yes, I do take on a fairly regular basis. But they don’t substitute for eating a diet that works for you and controls your weight at the level that you want it. want it to be. And it doesn’t substitute for going out and exercising and moving your body.

Speaker #0
Exactly. Right.

Speaker #1
So basically, the holistic health plan that I work with is going to enhance a woman’s life, no matter what else she does. But there are some, I think we started this conversation with what treatment options are out there. And I think of them as being seven options. And the first we’ve already talked about a little bit, and that’s the grit your teeth and bear it. And I don’t recommend that as more than a temporary solution for some symptoms.

Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, I know a lot of women who do grit their teeth and bear it because they can’t figure out because you know like you had said that you had symptoms that were not on. the spectrum of known symptoms, right? I mean, you had anxiety, I mean, other…

Speaker #1
I had anger and depression. And I wound up going to a therapist for the depression and the anger. And because I happened to be going to a 28-year-old woman, she had no clue, no idea to tell me this is menopause and you need to do something. about the underlying physical changes that you’re going through. My doctor didn’t tell me. She should have. She should have known. She should have guessed. But she thought I knew. And the problem is we hit this age and we don’t know. And nobody tells us. And nobody. diagnosis us and half the time the doctor that you’re going to is quote old school and they don’t think that it’s truly perimenopause until your your periods start getting truly wonky so if your periods are nice and regular like mine were an old school doctor won’t think to tell you and a new school doctor you know somebody who who knows what’s going on may think you already understand it because obviously you got told somewhere along the line, but we didn’t.

Speaker #0
Exactly. No one gives you the sex education manual for losing your period. We get the manual, we get sex education when we’re in fifth grade, tell you what happens when you’re getting your period, but nobody tells you what happens when you are losing your period, especially perimenopause.

Speaker #1
Nobody says to 40-year-old women, hey, the classroom is open. Let’s go see the little Disney movie. By the way, that little movie that you saw when you were in fifth grade was produced by Disney. But nobody drags you into a classroom and says, this is what’s going to happen. This is what you need to watch for. These are the signs. And this is what you can do about it. So we do wind up going to doctors and getting treatments for things that aren’t necessarily what’s really going on. I think you and I may have had a discussion about heart palpitations, which is a common symptom.

Speaker #0
Yes.

Speaker #1
And it happens often before we are losing our periods or having such weird periods that we know something. Something is going on. So we have this heart palpitation. We have this fluttering in our chest or these irregular beats. And they’re scary as hell. And you go running to the emergency room and you see a resident who hasn’t had a class in menopause and certainly doesn’t know that 48-year-old women have this happen to them frequently. And, okay, it’s not necessarily 48. Could be 46. Could be 51. But they send us through this battery of tests. They scare the bejesus out of us. And then at the end, we go to a cardiologist who says, well, I don’t know what’s going on. You look fine to me.

Speaker #0
Yeah. Here,

Speaker #1
take this cholesterol medication.

Speaker #0
Yeah.

Speaker #1
And then they put us on a bunch of drugs.

Speaker #0
Right.

Speaker #1
So knowing that it’s possibly perimenopause means that you get to go to your doctor and you say. First of all, you don’t have to go in the middle of the night. Yay.

Speaker #0
Right.

Speaker #1
If you think that this is probably perimenopause and you’ve kind of gotten a warning and you don’t feel any other symptoms of a heart attack, then you say, I’m calling my primary in the morning and getting a referral to a cardiologist. I’ll go to the cardiologist. He can do the tests. And when he says, I don’t see anything, then you can say. good, this is perimenopause. And all of a sudden you relax. You don’t have to feel like all of a sudden here you are at the age of 48 dying.

Speaker #0
Yeah. No, that was my experience too. When I was in my probably mid to early forties, even I was having heart palpitations and I called my doctor and they went into like a three alarm panic there, you know, all of a sudden, because I could be having a heart attack, but you know, and I thought, and I didn’t know that this could be a perimenopausal symptom. And I went through all the tests.It’s all nothing. We’re the ultra monitor, the whole thing. Everything was inconclusive.

Speaker #1
Yeah. No shower for however long. Yeah. It’s awful.

Speaker #0
Yeah. And no one mentioned perimenopause to me. No one. I didn’t even know, really know what the word perimenopause was back then because not a single gynecologist, no one was even mentioning it to me.

Speaker #1
No. And no one does mention it. I, my first symptom happened at the age of 43. I remember it distinctly. I was… my allergies changed. So I had had bee allergies and skin allergies most of my life. Well, in my early 40s, those kind of got went down. But what I got was instead was seasonal allergies, you know, pollens and grasses.

Speaker #0
Yeah.

Speaker #1
And I remember distinctly driving through northern New England on the day that the pine pollen rains. It literally turns the… the air a yellowish green i know i live in new england so i know exactly what you’re talking it’s beautiful but if you have seasonal seasonal allergies and you don’t have benadryl in your car you start sneezing and you sneeze and you sneeze and you sneeze and you almost go off the road and you finally find it and exit you buy two benadryl and i swear i they were nine dollars for two benadryl because they were that little packet that you buy next yeah at the gas station Thank you. And I had to just sit in my car until I stopped sneezing about a half an hour later. And I didn’t have anybody with me. So it was a pretty dangerous thing. I can laugh about it now. And I know what it was now. But I talked to a gynecologist probably three months ago online, just chatting, happened to run into her in a group. And someone asked if allergies. changing allergies were a symptom of perimenopause. And she says, I swear they aren’t. And when I questioned her on it, she says, isn’t Dr. Google wonderful? And it’s like, no, my body is wonderful. My body told me.

Speaker #0
Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s such a great point. I mean, just get the differing of opinions from different gynecologists alone. I mean, I’ve had lots of different opinions. And…

Speaker #1
And if you go out looking for symptoms of menopause, because they have a huge thousand page website that is all interconnected, there is a herbal supplement out there. I’m not going to name it because I’m not a huge fan, but there’s an herbal supplement out there that has a website that has put out the quote 34 symptoms of menopause. And now everybody believes that’s a definitive list coming from some medical god on high.

Speaker #0
Yeah, I’ve talked about that. I know that 34 symptoms of menopause. I mean, I think it’s a good start.

Speaker #1
My list in my book is over 100. And it includes the things that happen because insulin isn’t working well. thyroid isn’t working as well, because those are related to how your progesterone and estrogen have dropped and created these thyroid issues or insulin issues or the cortisol issue. So they are symptoms of our changing bodies as we go through menopause.

Speaker #0
Yeah. Not necessarily just because of the dip in estrogen and progesterone, but because of like a roundabout. Wait, do you have that list? Could we link that in?

Speaker #1
I can link a copy of that in the show notes. Yes. Someone can download. And it is not the list from the book, which has a little bit of explanation about each of them. But it is just a straight list by sort of body system category. Things like, you know, things like dry skin and brittle nails are all lumped together.

Speaker #0
things like that. Okay. That would be great. Yes.

Speaker #1
And so, you know, what we talked about, gritting your teeth. So the important thing there is to recognize that what’s happening is perimenopause and that you can do something about it. Then there’s the HRT that you’ve talked about. There’s a lot of holistic treatments. There’s a lot of herbs that do do well for for perimenopause and menopause symptoms. And alternative medicine treatments like acupuncture, acupressure. There’s a great treatment for acupressure. acupressure treatment down in the lower leg, there’s a point that your acupressurist or acupuncturist can tell you about. Reiki and alternative energy methods can help a lot. Hypnosis can help a lot. I incorporate those things in my work with my clients because they can help. They can help us deal with it. They can help us rethink it. They can help us. just manage it. So there are those. The problem with herbals is that most of the herbals that you see are estrogenic. So that if you have an issue with estrogen, and that can include the risk for breast cancer and also fibroids or also cervical cancer and other… uterine cancers can be exacerbated by estrogen. So you may not, it may not be the best treatment to be in an estrogenic state.

Speaker #0
Exactly. Right.

Speaker #1
So, you know, that’s from the herbals. Let’s see. The HRT is probably the third one. Pharmaceuticals. So pharmaceuticals are generally, they use antidepressants for hot flashes and It’s an off-label use of antidepressants.

Speaker #0
That’s right.

Speaker #1
And it does work, but many of those antidepressants are addictive. And they can be bears to get off of. And when you get off of them, it is possible and likely that the hot flashes will come back. So again. Short-term treatment for a big problem, yes. Long-term, don’t we want to do something that’s more healthy? Talk therapy. Talk therapy has been a long-term treatment. That’s why they call it hysterical. It’s related to that old name for the uterus, the Greek name, I believe it is. And there’s a real… benefit to talk therapy in midlife because what I see is that a lot of our trauma comes back at us because we now have this more open space for us. So things that happen to us as children or happen to us as young adults or even as midlife adults that are traumatic can come back.

Speaker #0
Yeah, I think on my end too, you know, just as a nutritionist, I see that I mentioned this before, that some disordered eating can kind of start to rear its ugly head again and come to the surface. And I agree with you that it is an opportunity, right? Now that we’re not outputting to our kids and we’re not, you know, like we’re in that.

Speaker #1
We have the space.

Speaker #0
We have the space and it is a gift. You know, it really, it really is a gift to have the time and the space to focus inward and focus in our, on ourselves. So I think, right, there’s like these two spectrums. It’s like, we’re in and bear it and tough it out and not do anything. And, you know, just, and no, not know anything. Then there’s like thinking that hormone replacement therapy is like the savior. And then there’s all this other stuff that’s in between. There’s all of these tools, like in your toolbox. therapy, Reiki, acupuncture, you know, there’s a whole, and everyone is really very individual.

Speaker #1
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker #0
So I think that overall, you know, what we’ve talked about, and I think when I first came into, you know, speaking with you is I was prepared to talk about, you know, like the benefits of hormones, but really having this conversation about the gift of menopause has been very, very enlightening, just even for me. And just as a reminder that it is a good opportunity to focus in on ourselves and care for ourselves and be compassionate with us. And I think that is incredibly important at this age of life.

Speaker #1
And I think one thing that we sort of haven’t touched on, although it’s an obvious conclusion sometimes, is that this is happening to us at the age of 50. we aren’t old and we have decades left.

Speaker #0
Yes, we do.

Speaker #1
So isn’t it time to take care of yourself to promote your wellness to its fullest so that when you’re 83 or 85, you’re still doing amazing things.

Speaker #0
Absolutely. Great point. Great, really great things to think about. Jeannie, thank you so much for this incredible conversation. And just tell me, how can people find you? Do you coach one-on-one?

Speaker #1
I coach one-on-one. I do coach one-on-one. And I do believe that women, for the most part, do need a unique, tailored-to-them plan. I also have a class that’s, it’s a four-week class that is about learning the basics, this information that we’ve talked about. And I really hope that women will send their younger friends, women in their early 40s, who need to understand this coming in.

Speaker #0
Absolutely.

Speaker #1
To this class. And I also have my own podcast, Menopause Matters, and a TV show also of the same name, which is currently on Phoenix TV, F-E-N-I-X, tv.f, and is going out towards some more widespread distribution. And I do have the books. So there’s all kinds of ways to reach out to me, but the best place to start is my website. menopause.guru.

Speaker #0
Okay. Well, I will link all of those in the show notes. So everyone can have very quick access to finding you and those 100 symptoms of menopause that we talked about.

Speaker #1
And I will put that out there so that people can get that to you, get that right off of the show notes.

Speaker #0
Okay. Well, great. Jeannie, thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation and Can’t wait to share it with my listeners.

Speaker #1
Thank you so much for having me, Heather. It’s been a blast.

Speaker #0
Great. Have a great day.

Speaker #1
You too.

Speaker #0
And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get the word out on real eating. our real bodies and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.