The Hidden Causes of Perimenopause Exhaustion: Stress, Hormones, and Your Brain

[00:00:00] Jolene Brighten: a sorry having hot flashes i was like i'm not white not this i'm doing out of whack and i'll do a small dose like point zero two five of est extra patch and it was last month that i was like i keep getting really hot and i don't know what's going on i was like i'm just putting an a extra patch like just in case i turned out i was sick that's that

[00:00:19] Jolene Brighten: but i'm like this thing about being

[00:00:20] Jolene Brighten: in your forties is that you're

[00:00:21] Mariza Snyder: like like one the hell is it

[00:00:23] Jolene Brighten: isn't it because i was like five days out for my period i was like oh yeah this could be hot flashes could be declining estrogen yeah and i'm like i hate could be a fever day play for like the next ten years of like is it isn't it is it isn't it and so like it all starts compounding but you don't want that you wanna use hormones before and all

[00:00:42] Mariza Snyder: starts to come down yeah

[00:00:43] Jolene Brighten: like i

[00:00:44] Mariza Snyder: i hope i never experience a hot flash well we'll see what happens yeah i'm on point one because of migraines yeah but i don't know then i'm then experiencing post estrogen so i'm cutting the patch it's all kinds of things

[00:00:57] Jolene Brighten: the alright cool we good to go yeah alright i'll quit working for some reason but luckily i have that one cool we have so many backups of everything like running a podcast this style like everyone's like oh it's expensive for production i was like yeah and you should see like all of the memory because we keep every episode and then like like memory cards we go through like i'll just like back upon backup recorders thing on i have you over for that because yeah because i knowing myself i would just order twenty of things he's like you don't need that much alright we going alright perfect what are your top three strategies for not let me try say it this differently what are your top three non negotiable strategies for future proofing your life

[00:01:54] Mariza Snyder: i love this question julian okay so number one is going to be deciding deciding that you deserve to thrive deciding that you get to step into the second half of your life feeling amazing that would be number one so i think mindset has gotta be the cornerstone of everything that we do in this in this time in our lives or we can just get sucked into our symptoms and into not feeling like ourselves so that would be number one number two i would say moving like your life depends on it you know many of us i was talking to my mom actually yesterday because she's here with me and i was saying you the average american clocked less than four thousand steps a day and that sedentary lifestyle drives inflammation and ox stress and and glucose der regulation it just isn't good for our body so if we wanna feel more alive just build in movement micro movement whether that's squats every hour or it's walking around the block or it is you know doing some some jumping jacks just move your body in a meaningful way and ideally do it outside in nature if you can and then number three would be focus on balancing your blood sugar as much as possible with your food and i would say that starts in the first thing in the morning with a like i would say protein fiber healthy fat rich breakfast but do your best to balance your blood sugar with what you're consuming we wanna stay away from added sugar obviously refined carbohydrates but i would say those are the things that i would recommend for future proofing your health

[00:03:21] Jolene Brighten: mh i love that you take this perspective of like move like your life to on it because i wake up every day and this is my mindset is like how not to die how not to die when i'm like i really don't wanna work out because not happens i'm like but i really don't wanna die that sucks too and i'm like i don't feel like doing the asana like i don't wanna overheat how not to die mindset i think it's so powerful but you brought up something that nobody is talking about so we hear all the time lift heavy lift heavy lift heavy non exercise activity thermo genesis neat tell people about that because i think when you look at the research yes we need to lift heavy yes we need to do all these things but the neat movement is really the key to longevity

[00:04:08] Mariza Snyder: it is and i think that's what we see in the blue zone research when we take a look they're not in the gyms they're not lifting heavy they're just moving constantly they are physically active and so what neat means is it's walking further from like getting to the store parking further from the store or walking to the store or walking to the mailbox or taking your bike somewhere just bringing in movement doing chores around your house standing when you're folding laundry so you can do what just think about whatever you're doing in your life whether it is folding laundry or it is you know clean the kitchen just be adding movement but especially if you're sitting because there are days where you and i are probably doing podcasts or we're in

[00:04:48] Jolene Brighten: writing books

[00:04:49] Mariza Snyder: right i when i track my steps on my whoop i'm always looking writing books and hours can go by and i'll look and i have five thousand steps and it's like two o'clock in the afternoon and i'm like this is not this i'm not this not what i'm doing i need it i'm always clocking somewhere between ten and twelve thousand and so i will get up even if i have to move a meeting a little bit even if i have five minutes ten minutes i grab my shoes i go outside and i walk for the amount of time i've got and then get back in the seat you know doing the work that i

[00:05:20] Jolene Brighten: to do but i would

[00:05:21] Mariza Snyder: say that is probably the key ticket the research is clear that the more that we're moving throughout the day not just the twenty minutes or thirty minutes of heavy lifting or resistance training it doesn't have to be lifting heavy it just needs to be that you are elicit some level of resistance and your muscles right i think doctor van wright says not lifting those man be pam pink weights or purple weights but i'm a big proponent of moving as much as possible and this is a women listening to this which they are and your moms like especially moms to young children like be out with them

[00:05:51] Jolene Brighten: mh

[00:05:52] Mariza Snyder: that's what i do i'm usually i was with kingston as much as i can be

[00:05:54] Jolene Brighten: yeah i do on the weekends chalk obstacle courses words it's like hop from this you know hop we stop bugs we you know hop over the fire i draw all of these things and my kids think it's like oh wow you made this whole thing for us and i'm like yeah mama's is not getting no osteoporosis is actually a sneaky way that i'm too for wanting this and that is something that i think is such a barrier as people are like they i have to go to the gym if i wanna be healthy i have to do all of these things and it's like yes and there is all of this day to day activity and i love that you highlight the need activity in your book because when we look at brain health right that is phenomenal where they show that in aging populations it's those who are doing chores who are gardening who are you know going for a walk to the grocery store like you said all the things you just talked about has a significant impact on the prevention of dementia which we know women primarily get so i just really wanna appreciate you for that because you you know we see everybody talking about perry menopause and it's just strength training and i'm like where's the mobility where's the need where's all that and you did that so well in your book now your book is all about peri menopause so i wanna go back because there's a myth at perry menopause is this new phenomenon what do you say to that

[00:07:19] Mariza Snyder: i i i giggle i laugh i i honestly when i started my practice in two thousand and eight i most of my my patients were women in peri menopause and menopause and we weren't even recognizing it i remember patients would come in at the time and they were being siloed to psychiatrists or they being siloed to their cardiologist and we were not putting together the pieces that women were going through this profound transition leading into menopause so i'm grateful that it's having a moment but no women have have been going through this in the whole time i do feel like the amount of stress that we're dealing with today is probably ex some of these symptoms and maybe even starting us a little bit earlier than we used to you know the cdc says that perry menopause starts at forty seven years old and i think a lot of the lives for so many women

[00:08:09] Jolene Brighten: oh my goodness

[00:08:09] Mariza Snyder: well i think the only that's that's late perry menopause i think the way that we were identifying perry menopause was that you were skipping periods at that point like make send me a sign make it impossible for me to miss oh your skipping periods then you must be on the cusp of menopause yeah was all just kind of packaged as this menopause experience where women who still had their period were being told that oh this is just this is suffering this is how this is being a woman

[00:08:36] Jolene Brighten: women suffer this is literally the story of our entire lives right you get periods they're painful you have headaches with it you have pms that's just how it is you go through childbirth worth pregnancy is hard having a baby's hard postpartum heart that's just the way it is it doesn't have to be that way and we're gonna talk about solutions and the stress component but something that was interesting in your book i think you said that the first documentation of menopause was like three hundred fifty bc

[00:09:02] Mariza Snyder: mh

[00:09:03] Jolene Brighten: that's crazy yeah that's i had no idea that it went that far back but i think that it's important for women to understand that perry menopause is not a new phenomenon it's more than just skipping periods too let's talk about when does peri menopause actually start and what does it look like

[00:09:20] Mariza Snyder: yeah let's start with menopause because that gives us a really great benchmark of what that is so average menopause is usually fifty one years old but natural menopause is defined anywhere between forty five years old and fifty five years old and then perry menopause is the transition leading so before menopause and we know the peri menopause can last anywhere from four to ten years and i joke i'm like that's not a transition that's a career right and so if if if natural menopause can be forty five years old which i am that's that's me right now and we extrapolate ten years prior to that ic for some women it can be as early as our mid to late thirties now i will say that women have come into my office when they've really began to notice that it becomes more than just the ex of the daily pain points of everyday life is usually around forty one forty two then that's when things start to start to slip that's when women start to feel like they're they don't feel like themselves anymore usually that's usually that benchmark moment of of early forties but most likely they've been experienced some level of low progesterone or some level of peri symptoms maybe years prior they just didn't know but then you step into your early forties you're just like what it's happening to me

[00:10:30] Jolene Brighten: yeah

[00:10:31] Mariza Snyder: yeah i don't feel like myself anymore

[00:10:33] Jolene Brighten: yeah it's interesting because sarah godfrey who have had on the podcast her and i were talking and she's like you know what women need to understand is this four to ten years this is an average average and she's like i've been in peri menopause for fifteen years and i'm like we have to talk about the fact that this can be much longer yes and the medicine isn't necessarily recognizing it so i wanna talk a little bit about what are the myths that you think need to be debunked or just go to bed and never be spoken about again when it comes to peri menopause

[00:11:08] Mariza Snyder: one that it is that it's just a moment in time like a moment of chaos that once women get into menopause we're good to go as if a low hormone state is gonna set us up to win i always say that what is happening in peri menopause this is the window of vulnerability but it's also the window of opportunity but a lot of the shifts you know you could not have symptoms and still be losing bone you could still be losing muscle you could still be becoming insulin resistant you could still have ox stress and inflammation in the brain and you may not notice and so i want women to know that it's not like this defining moment of like we go into menopause and we're good like this is a continuum it's we don't stop i don't know i don't know where this this whole like this okay we get through this chaos and we're good to go that's number one i wanna just dispel that myth that what we do in this transition is really going to define what happens in the second half of our life number two that that we that suffering is is is the past that yeah i just mind blowing to me that that's very much the narrative that it's just midlife we just suffer and that's okay it's not okay like women do not deserve to suffer needlessly especially when they are holding careers families households and life together like that's not okay and then the last month i wanna i wanna just dispel is that we are on this massive metabolic decline like yes body composition changes are happening yes we see an increase in insulin resistant but there's a lot that we can do to support our bodies mh we just need to know that we can do it

[00:12:43] Jolene Brighten: we're gonna talk about these positive aspects but i want to zone in on what you said this vulnerability

[00:12:50] Mariza Snyder: mh

[00:12:50] Jolene Brighten: you are in a stage of vulnerability what is making women vulnerable and what should they be aware of

[00:12:56] Mariza Snyder: yes what's making women vulnerable is that for thirty plus years give or take we had hormones that are rhythm cycling like clockwork your body your brain your bones your muscle your metabolism they are reliant on these immune mod whole body hormones and then out of the blue without permission they start to radically decline

[00:13:22] Jolene Brighten: without permission i love that who told you

[00:13:24] Mariza Snyder: you don't you could do that right we we we only have so many eggs in in you know in our o and at some point we start run out the o know it the brain knows it and hormones as a result begin to eradicate decline and and because these are immune system modulator because these are regulators of whether that's bone or muscle or the brain i think about estrogen being the master ceo of the brain and how this is a ceo who every single day of the week for years showed up at nine o'clock and went went home at six pm that's just an example and then all of a sudden in perry menopause estrogen shows up at two clocking afternoon doesn't go home till one am the next day doesn't show up at all you know when the brain's is just like what is happening right now why why are we der regulating why am i not getting the right energy that need why am i experiencing inflammation and so that's what the window of vulnerabilities is is that which we're driving metabolic changes we're driving changes in our body composition we're driving changes in our immune system our gut microbiome but most importantly our brain is massively reorganizing

[00:14:31] Jolene Brighten: mh i always like to say that your are going into retirement and if you've ever worked for the coworker who's going into retirement it's just like that you can't depend on them they don't care don't care about the work they don't care about the products yeah and they're like gonna come and go as they please because what you're gonna do fire them they're not

[00:14:48] Mariza Snyder: there out yeah and then then they do this over ten years

[00:14:52] Jolene Brighten: yeah i do this over ten years you frame peri menopause as a second puberty which i think is relatable for a lot of people but if somebody doesn't know what that means or they're not in perry menopause yet what does it actually mean to go through a second puberty

[00:15:08] Mariza Snyder: absolutely so let's let's take our first puberty you know usually it's around anywhere between let's say ten years audio i will i know what's happening earlier but let's say ten eleven i was eleven i was almost twelve years of the time and we know that these are when hormones are coming online to our reproductive years however it is still an erratic roller coaster as estrogen and estrogen and progesterone and testosterone all these hormones are coming online and a lot of i think a lot of us didn't realize that puberty is about six to eight years give or take it is a profound hormone shift and it is destabilizing right i think we remember the des stabilization of all of that at least our parents remember that for sure but now our second puberty is a d so we're leaving our reproductive years and we're experiencing that same roller coaster coming out of those years except that now we have children and now we have full on careers now we have to operate at a level of executive of executive functioning and we have households to run so it's a higher stakes game in this this time of our lives versus you know the anxiety of maybe losing a boyfriend or getting a boyfriend and and school grades so it's a little bit of a different situation and at the very least we got some level of education when it came to our first puberty i wouldn't say that we did an amazing job at that i remember just being told that now that i have a period i'm gonna suffer every month for about a week and that's just my plight as a woman

[00:16:31] Jolene Brighten: yeah and you know you brought up the point that we have kids there are some women who are simultaneously going through peri menopause and have a teen or a pre teen going through puberty and i think that is such a sticky place to be right because there's is not only all of these emotions that are riding high but there's this you know unpredictability to how you might feel how they might feel what happens when you're outside the house when they're outside the house and it's really you know what we see right now peri women in that sandwich generation of care taking usually elderly parents and children so we're definitely gonna get into the stress of all of this but you said something in your book that i think really will hit home with a lot of women and that is that peri menopause has honestly been the most experience of my life on every level can you say more about what peri has been light for you

[00:17:30] Mariza Snyder: it has been i would say it has felt so destabilizing and i think that is the other part of first puberty and second puberty is that the brain is massively reorganizing i think both both phases and postpartum two those are big neuro transitions mh but for me and and i don't know if it's because of i have a adverse child experience score of a six that i have trauma or that i had been running on stress for years but whatever it is or that my mom had severe rage in mood swings and she felt completely un and un unchanged but that's that's a lot of what peri menopause has been for me is the brain related symptoms have been so intense and as a mom who has a four and a half year old he's almost five he'll tell you he's almost five who i am gentle and kind to cool it is a a lot of needing to take breaks a lot i'm needing to go regulate myself a lot of hormones taking hormones and a lot of walks a lot of walks outside to just feel regulated in my body it it's not i would say that the mood changes are not as severe as they were in the beginning but i also know that you know i'm still in early parent menopause i who knows what's gonna happen

[00:18:50] Jolene Brighten: yeah i think you know what you hit on is something that isn't talked about enough right we talk about hot flash talk about vaginal actual dryness we talk about l changes we talk about skin changes right but the cognitive changes are not talked about enough and they are the most distressing because you go from you know for example you're running a company you're writing books you're raising a toddler and then you know the brain symptoms set in right so i actually experienced this when i was on lu on so for people listening you get no peri menopause you just go from like everything is great and my hormones are awesome too i have no hormones i'm in menopause within a matter of weeks and that christmas i accidentally bought multiple gifts because i couldn't even keep track of what i had actually purchased this why i should just buy stuff online check my cart then i would know but nice son like ended up opening these giant lego sets like two of them most expensive most expensive mistake but that is something that i'm like we don't talk about that we don't talk about the failings that happen at work are they failings i don't know but they feel like they're feeling new yeah and like the the financial burden of the mistakes and and the financial burden that not only perry h has on the individual but as a society as a whole you had said in your book medical expenses and lost work time cost

[00:20:14] Mariza Snyder: us employers twenty six billion twenty six billion b

[00:20:18] Jolene Brighten: yeah what's going on

[00:20:19] Mariza Snyder: and that's not even that's the money that's the revenue and i mean the money matters but i think about these women who have built these careers who have built put themselves in positions have been in the corporate world or even just in businesses like us who all of a sudden wonder am i am i even gonna finish the book and i finish the book am i going to be able to go get on a podcast again you know is my the my ability to pull words from thin air is it even gonna work or happen for me am i gonna get promoted what's gonna happen in that presentation i mean that feeling we're we're so quick to blame women and to tell women and it is their fault and i think it's important that we know that the brain related symptoms it's gonna be the most predominant and that it isn't your fault you're not broken it's just we your brain is trying to recalibrate with the fact that it is losing it's most critical hormones and as a as a result we see that that decline in energy we see energy we see a decline in white matter in gray matter and that there are things that we can do about it but yes i would say that there was a good i would say six to nine months where i was nervous about a presentation or being in public like speaking on stage because i didn't know if i was gonna remember what i needed to

[00:21:34] Jolene Brighten: say mh i will share that on this podcast we've definitely had guests who are in perry menopause and they will be mid sentence and they'll say i completely forgot what we were talking about can we start over and i'm like absolutely and so

[00:21:47] Mariza Snyder: it's my greatest fear yeah i it has not happened yet i but it is my greatest fear

[00:21:51] Jolene Brighten: i have that i have that fear as well but i think why bring that up is because i mean you've been fine this whole podcast as i'm not saying it's you but we edit those things out and so people don't see that right and we don't show up in public and and if we're struggling that way so when you're experiencing these brain changes is often isolating because you think you're the only one experiencing this because the way social media is we edit it we cut it and we show up in a certain way if we're not feeling hot in our brain we don't wanna go out with friends right we don't wanna converse and certainly you know if you know your brain energy is being strained like you're gonna think different about when you speak on stages like for me i have always had like rituals and guarding my energy before i take a stage and yet i see a lot of women in perry menopause who i'm just watching them and i know what stage they're in and they're speaking less on stages and i'm like i know this struggle i know what's going on here

[00:22:52] Mariza Snyder: yeah now i see it i was actually just interviewing a dear friend of ours a colleague who i won't say because she was a very vulnerable conversation but it was that moment where her sleep was so bad her mood was so intense and she could not remember anything she thought i mean it's amazing to me how we can be in this profession for so long and still feel like we're experiencing early dementia mh and and but no it's peri pause and still think i'm not gonna recover from this yeah i'm not i don't think i'm gonna have to shift how i do work i'm gonna have to shift how i'm showing up and that breaks my heart that we don't have the level of support that we don't feel like we have the level of support that we need to navigate this profound transition mh and that we we think that we're gonna have to shift the way that we are doing our careers and unfortunately millions of women because they don't have the support that they need that's exactly what happens

[00:23:47] Jolene Brighten: yeah we've talked about the cognitive changes the brain struggles the lags if you will what do you think are some of the other disruptive symptoms of peri women are not warned about

[00:24:00] Mariza Snyder: i would say the lack of stress resilience there is nothing like heading into this phase knowing that you could have a million tabs open and handle them that you're a great multitask that you are high functioning and you could navigate okay you need to order your kids shoes at like nine o'clock in the night because they lost them for their soccer game the next day and you can have the presentation ready and you can make sure everything that is you're needed for lunches the next day and okay you've got these podcasts that you're preparing whatever it is like you have this level of high functioning and you have capacity but then all of a sudden it's like you wake up one day and your ability to manage all of these things just flutter they just flutter away mh or your ability to handle i i think i was reading a stat and i i say this only because i am a mom to a young child but i that an average mom with a young child gets pellet p with about four to five hundred questions a day and sometimes it's multiple all at the same time you got you know i know you have a little young one to

[00:24:59] Jolene Brighten: your child in school is yes yes yes and i don't blame teachers i blame admin and i think about this all the time it's hell for me it's hell for every period that i talked to you and it's held for the teachers as well we've got a top down issue that is seriously about to break i tell my husband all the time the worst part of being a parent is school is like i'm so afraid i'm gonna mess it up for them all the time because i got no less than a dozen emails before school started and then the day before school started they're the friday before i was told like oh you need to have all of these things come monday and i'm like but how it's saturday like

[00:25:35] Mariza Snyder: no totally yeah exactly why i just it's just the amount that's coming at us and what's destabilizing about it is you were able to handle it and then all of a sudden you're not and then you're snapping at your family or snapping at your partner and you don't you don't have the same capacity there's a a grieving process i think when we step in and we realize we don't we're not thinking the way that we used to we don't have the resilience the way that we used to and we noticed our men mental energy isn't what it used to be there is a a reconciliation i always call perry menopause i call it the reckoning because you really have to reconcile what is happening and you have to do you have to come to terms with the fact that you have have to be more a little bit more intentional you got effort a little bit more and not to this i don't want women to feel like oh my gosh i now i have to over effort i don't want i don't want you to feel that way i just mean in the sense that things are requiring more intention

[00:26:33] Jolene Brighten: mh

[00:26:34] Mariza Snyder: you know you i gone are the days where you could just get so much sleep or you could you could just have a stacked day and you're like i got this no you have to be more protective of your energy you have to be more protective of your time and of your mental bandwidth but i think that's the thing that we're not talking about enough is how we are expected to keep it altogether and we are holding on by a thread

[00:26:55] Jolene Brighten: mh and that morning that you talked about yeah i mean it's it's real when you start clocking you know where you're at in terms of being midlife and realizing that like you are taken down to menopause and then you know

[00:27:10] Mariza Snyder: and the post menopause

[00:27:11] Jolene Brighten: post menopause and there's only so much time left yeah i think that not to be like oh doom stay about it but it's that you but it's recognizing there's only so much time left you have things you wanna to accomplish with this time and yet physiological the body's not onboard for that that's hard it's a hard place to be

[00:27:30] Mariza Snyder: as you know and in the brain too the brain's not on board i mean anything think again when you are you know i think woman listening the show i know that they're high functioning i know that they are they've got big dreams and they've got aspirations and they are they're are the glue that holds it all together and when you feel like your glue is melting into the ground you're like how am i going to get through this yeah and if that's where and yeah i mean i'm i'm i guys mentioned i'm forty six this week and happy birthday thank you and hopefully i live to ninety one i'm not trying to live a long time i wanna live a quality time yeah that's my intention but let's i mean i i'm gonna wage your a guess that i'm halfway through my life at this point and i think the question that comes up the like ex existential question is is this it mh is this is this all you know is this do i want to keep stepping into the second half of my life doing what i'm doing living the way that i've been living being in the relationships that i've been in you know i think this is where we take stock and we become more discerning about our boundaries about what we're a full body yes or a full body no to about the relationships that are just draining us or keeping us alive and and helping us to thrive that feel safe like this is where we we that's why i call it the record of the reckoning is that if whatever got you here isn't what you love like you've been to just note that this is the moment where you get to decide like am i i taught willing to tolerate this moving forward is this a relationship i'm willing to have i mean there's there's a reason why divorce is happening i've i think forty five is like the magic divorce number mh because women aren't just like no

[00:29:08] Jolene Brighten: i got six months to forty five someone tell my husband been no kidding literally in the other room right now probably being like what

[00:29:17] Mariza Snyder: watching us on the screen but no i mean it's it's you know all of this everything's up for review

[00:29:23] Jolene Brighten: yeah full body yes full body now that sounds like a tool that women could be leveraging to get what they want out of life but also make sure they're moving congruent with what their desires are what their goals are can you say more about that

[00:29:37] Mariza Snyder: yeah i would say anything any decision that's coming to you i think one of the best one of the things that we've been taught is to not trust ourselves it's not trust our intuition because there's so much power in that and i think if you haven't been taught to trust yourself now's is the time i think that the body has a a great way especially in perry menopause of really telling us what's up like whether you wanna deal with it or not it is up for review and one of the best ways that i check in is if there's there's something that's coming an opportunity or you know a crucial conversation whatever it may be and if i feel contraction like every i feel inward like that's probably a full body no and if you're not sure and tell that person or tell the opportunity like hey can i have a day a day to think about it before you say yes i don't know about you but i was for a long time i was very much a yes person i i i and then i was like oh i i didn't actually i don't know how i signed up for this obligation i never wanted to do yeah and now i'm like okay so this i be i can be more discerning i get to decide but if you are struggling with that if you've always been a people please if you've always been someone who is said yes and now you're finding yourself at a tipping point where you don't have capacity take a moment and check with your body check with your intuition go get like check it against what is a full body yes or no for you and if there's contraction versus expansion then that's your answer

[00:31:01] Jolene Brighten: yeah dopamine gets derailed in or derailed i should say dopamine gets derailed that's the phrase in peri menopause and i think that's what contributes to yes as well because you get a dopamine hat hit when you say yes so i c to a party i'm like yeah

[00:31:18] Mariza Snyder: now it doesn't happen our day

[00:31:20] Jolene Brighten: the party comes i'm like no

[00:31:21] Mariza Snyder: no well also you were in your follicular phase when you get

[00:31:25] Jolene Brighten: true it's so true i called the follicular trap because and estrogen riding high and everything's going well and then when estrogen like i'm a take a back backseat progesterone do your thing progesterone is like you stay home no bra sweatpants pants that's it

[00:31:39] Mariza Snyder: exactly yeah yeah

[00:31:40] Jolene Brighten: you brought up divorce rates highest in perry menopause i have my theories of why i think this happens i'd love to hear your theory yeah okay and we'll be good to hurt for her to answer right away yeah okay cool

[00:00:00] Jolene Brighten: time and be able to pick them out and just and all fine and now i'm like i will have a thought and it comes in and i forgot this thought and i'm like like where is everybody go what's the happening can be good yeah

[00:00:12] Mariza Snyder: okay it's not fair divorce

[00:00:15] Jolene Brighten: yeah so your theory on

[00:00:16] Mariza Snyder: divorce i my my two theories number one is that we do have that moment where we say is this is is it but i think number two is that we still live in a society where women are holding it together they are taking on the mental load they are taking on the emotional load and they get to a point where they don't wanna do it anymore they're they're tired of it and i would is it seventy percent of divorce is initiated by women

[00:00:42] Jolene Brighten: mh

[00:00:42] Mariza Snyder: and the reason for that is that we initiate everything we've probably initiated the marriage in the first place

[00:00:48] Jolene Brighten: oh my god true i think it's so way when you say that for women listening this is leadership women lead and women lead when it comes to the home when it comes to relationships when it comes to so many aspects of like that's where when i see that like when when people say like oh men like you should let your husband lead and like if that's your dynamic that's fine but biologically physiological speaking and based on soc physiological studies women women lead women are the leaders and it it's shown that when we do lead there's better outcomes because we consider everyone we don't just consider the end goal we don't consider our selfish like intentions of like we just want this thing we consider how the decision impacts everyone but you know as you bring your theory you know my theory in this is that exactly what you're saying point to men have been borrowing your brain they have been exploiting you and you know that might sound like a harsh word but when you are whether you're working or not but you're care taking taking care of a home is so much work so much executive function but there has been an exploitation of what your brain is capable of and now it's no longer capable of all of those things and you are you are going through a remodeling you're supposed to redirect your attention this is what biology dictates for you it is normal but often the male partner is like yeah i'm not gonna give you any lead leeway for that i expect you to do the same

[00:02:20] Mariza Snyder: they didn't understand the assignment

[00:02:21] Jolene Brighten: they did not understand the assignment but it is it is not there was a relationship dynamic issue that existed that women compensated for over and over now they don't have their hormonal allies to compensate and that relationship dynamic has to change and if the male partner is not willing to do that work then the relationship cannot continue and i wanna be very specific in those words because sometimes people take that as like oh we'll just because her hormones changed like that means that like she should divorce him no no relationship issues existed hormones no longer can compensate and try to basically manage that and put up with a lot of these things and so it's an opportunity for both partners to shift and change but unfortunately what we often see in the cases where women are initiating divorce his men said i wanted all to stay the same always always always you keep going you keep doing and i am not your hormones are just excuse i'm not trying to hear that

[00:03:20] Mariza Snyder: exactly what's going on i mean again if we are going through a profound neuro transition and that protective shield those hormones are flutter to the wayside and we don't have capacity yet your partner is expecting you to still operate at a capacity that you don't have no yeah there's a breaking point

[00:03:38] Jolene Brighten: yeah

[00:03:38] Mariza Snyder: where and and so this is a an opportunity for all of us to be better communicators in our relationship to ask for what we need and for partners to get educated mh for partners to understand what their with their with their partners with their female partners are going through so that they can support them so that they can take on some of that load yeah we right now that dynamic shift for a lot of relationships just isn't there

[00:04:04] Jolene Brighten: yeah and there's an intimacy level here that you both have to be willing to go into because i think about just this morning my so i think i adore i'm in this case yes day i'm supposed to be icing and elevating right now but it hurts so bad and i snapped at my husband and he's just like i can't handle that you are just being so short with me and i'm like well because i'm in like so much pain and i realized like there's a vulnerability there where i have to be like i'm i'm vulnerable i'm weak i'm in pain and yes i also shouldn't be interacting in this way and i think that's something where honestly it would be so great if like we just offered services right if if mental health services were more accessible for couples because you have to get vulnerable as a woman to be like these changes are happening and i'm not as capable and we don't wanna say that ever right but also for men to be able to have that vulnerability in the relationship as well and again it's a level of intimacy that's rarely modeled you're not gonna see this in the media and it's not taught

[00:05:10] Mariza Snyder: no it's not i one of the things that have happened to me in perry menopause is that my migraines have become more chronic

[00:05:17] Jolene Brighten: mh

[00:05:18] Mariza Snyder: and if you are a migraine software if you ever had a really bad headache you know that i mean it's to a point where it feels like someone completely scramble my brain

[00:05:27] Jolene Brighten: yeah

[00:05:27] Mariza Snyder: like my ability to function in terms of any level of executive functioning like i'm always just grateful that i can fold laundry i'm always just grateful that i can go maybe go to the grocery store like there are some things can do yeah but in terms of particularly being the level of parent that i wanna be to my beautiful preschool i don't always have capacity when i'm in that level of pain even with medication and so i'll i'll let my husband alex know immediately when i have a migraine because i'm usually the one doing the morning routine

[00:06:00] Jolene Brighten: mh

[00:06:00] Mariza Snyder: and if and i wake up with migraines like i know immediately at six am that i have one and i'll and usually alex will sleep in because he stayed up late which the whole another conversation

[00:06:11] Jolene Brighten: for phone another day

[00:06:12] Mariza Snyder: but i will go into the room because alex c sleeps with kingston and i will say hey i have a migraine it's a migraine day i need you to step up i need you to get up with me and help our son get get them ready for school and so yeah it's it's it's amazing how the level of communication that needs to exist when you're in pain or when you are not fully yeah your capacity and that can be very uncomfortable but for me i think as a as a mom might come through almost every decision like you talked about how every decision we're making is about the collective mh and so when i'm making decisions in the morning and i am in severe chronic pain i'm everything i'm running through my son and so i'm willing to have the more vulnerable conversation with my husband if it means that the quality of my son's life is better because i had the conversation

[00:07:01] Jolene Brighten: mh that's powerful you know you have brought up stress multiple times i don't think that this is talked about i feel like berry menopause like right now it's just like strengthening each protein take your hormones and i'm like there's this huge conversation when not kinda that you did this in your book you have an entire pillar which is cultivate more peace calm and emotional well being okay so this is absolutely a maker break you moment i think in life when it comes to peri menopause and stress can you explain what is going on for people because i think everything we've been talking about right they're stress but there's how we respond to stress why is it theory menopause it's harder to respond to stress and stress can get the best of us

[00:07:48] Mariza Snyder: yeah and i think we've been talking touching upon it a couple of times throughout this conversation amount that protective shield does neuro protective shield that we have had for decades all of a sudden begins to fa and the the hormone that we don't talk enough about estrogen is definitely she always seems to be getting her heyday yeah she is she is a major player here but progesterone is really what we begin to experience first she is declining first that pro gestation hormone in the lu phase of our cycle and so i always tell women that symptoms particularly in peri menopause at the beginning will be cyclical not for all of us some of us unfortunately may it just may all just be a hodgepodge of symptoms throughout your entire cycle but often it's usually in the lu phase i would say that my follicular phase i'm still doing okay lu phase i mean it's hit and miss yeah even with hormones and i think a big part of the reason why even with hr t even with moving my body even with all of the things eating my protein out the gate in the morning that if you are coming into peri menopause and you have a der regulated stress response system which who doesn't at this point in life that that amount of kind of der that hp access when you have the hormones that are not that are normally keeping that stable enough they begin to fall apart it's like that tipping point that we just can't seem to hold it together and so i would say it's a combination of you already probably are coming in to peri menopause with all the things that you are dealing with and then the hormones that were barely kinda keeping you at a flow or keeping you together begin to fa and it all just tips yeah i would say that is the big reason and the same reason why you're snapping at your partner it's the same reason why you are noticing mood changes you're having that set about of rage it's because we don't have the capacity to carry the amount of stress that we had been able to in the past

[00:09:41] Jolene Brighten: mh may have you pause hey bryce

[00:09:44] Mariza Snyder: i don't know

[00:09:44] Jolene Brighten: if the dogs are barking yeah can you message her right now because we told her when we were filming today yeah is that next door yeah we have this neighbor she's like you're exaggerating my dogs are not that bad i'm like you've cost me so much money in post production editing like and if i have to go to the judge and get you find i will but she just neglect her dogs it's really sad

[00:10:08] Mariza Snyder: yeah well they're little too you can hear

[00:10:10] Jolene Brighten: there's a little one but there's a german shepherd and you talk really loud so i think you're gonna be easy we had one guest months ago who's talking really quiet but also her voice ended up being like the same pitch as the german shepherd so we could not get it out it was such a a mess it was a lot we had to buy like new software and we tried sending it to audio engineers they were like nope can't do it but you talk loud and very like it's not the same it's not a deep pitch like the german shepherd but we go through this all the time where she's like oh yeah it's fine and then she'll just like let them out only i think they stopped yeah

[00:10:49] Mariza Snyder: i think

[00:10:49] Jolene Brighten: we're good

[00:10:49] Mariza Snyder: okay kim okay stressful

[00:10:53] Jolene Brighten: yeah wait i already asked you that so

[00:10:57] Mariza Snyder: am my having to department him a possible moment

[00:10:59] Jolene Brighten: we'll just take a breath take get your water if you need

[00:11:01] Mariza Snyder: yeah oh man

[00:11:08] Jolene Brighten: now something else you brought up in the book is that by age forty five women are more likely than men to be overweight or obese which is a significant risk factor for diabetes so that is a stress in itself but we also know that and diabetic that's going to affect your brain function it's gonna affect your hormones overall certainly gonna affect your longevity can you talk to women what is going on there because i feel like it does dovetail into stress conversation as well

[00:11:36] Mariza Snyder: absolutely definitely i wish i wish this was operating in a silo mh yeah or none of this is operating in a silo also when we're experiencing extra stress we we know that that is going to c elevate insulin we know it's gonna c elevate glucose because your body honestly thinks that you were getting chased by something and you're not usually you're being chased by a deadline or a you know a harsh conversation conversation

[00:11:59] Jolene Brighten: i thought you said deadline deadline okay i got

[00:12:04] Mariza Snyder: oh man i nova deadline or you know or traffic or whatever it may be like even getting here today i remember i mapped the traffic on you know a couple days ago but with the rain and everything it was an extra twenty minutes and all of a sudden i was like oh my goodness i gotta go because you know it just you know all of a sudden we're just on these we're on these deadlines and so stress is it comes in many flavors it can come in the metabolic changes that we're experiencing it comes in the declining hormones and it and it comes in the everyday things that we're dealing with that that make life life but particularly with the metabolic changes i think a lot of us you know i in our twenties and our thirties we had some we had more capacity than we did yeah yeah we with with insulin again rhythm doing its job every single month we had more protection we had more metabolic protection we had more glucose and insulin protection but as those hormones began to decline and we have other hormones like cortisol der regulating we start to experience those body composition changes you know one of the things i was reading in the journal of hormones back a two thousand and nine article when we look at chronic stress we know that it c elevate not not only it c elevate over eating but it c elevate cortisol and insulin as a result we see those body composition changes we see the visceral belly fat that happens and that becomes this this crazy spiral where we drive more insulin resistance and we drive more inflammation and ox stress but i would say the real reason why women are seeing an increase in body weight or changes in body weight composition is due to the fact that we're not only dealing with stress but our hormones again are shifting it's all interconnected mh and but luckily i i don't want one to think oh gosh there's nothing i can do about this there's a lot that we can do about it and i think that first step is just giving ourselves extra grace and just knowing that we aren't broken we have we just need a new level of support

[00:13:58] Jolene Brighten: so that was gonna be my next question is what can you do about this you've got this chronic stress you've got this metabolic dis regulation where would you say is a good starting point

[00:14:06] Mariza Snyder: i love this question and yes isn't this the million dollar question i would say where i would start if i would book and my days i would i would be super i would say treat your sleep like it's a million dollar meeting but treat your morning like it's also a million dollar meeting like i think one of my favorite quotes is by louise hay that she says how you start your morning is how you live your day and how you live your day is how you live your life and if if the morning is chaos the rest of the day is gonna be chaos the the life is gonna be chaos but even even if you are not honoring your sleep routine i think booking your morning and your evening with things that are going to help you feel alive things that are gonna feel safe and that's going to send your brain safety signals i think that sets you up for a major win and then also if the morning is what's gonna set the tone for the rest of your day what are you putting in your body how are you fueling your future yourself like i always ask myself particularly i know you and i have both had brain injuries and i will tell you that since the brain injury my brain has been extra vulnerable that was just two years ago

[00:15:12] Jolene Brighten: mh

[00:15:12] Mariza Snyder: that this happened in ever since one i sleep will make or break me so even even just switching time zones if i'm not very consistent about my sleep consistency i will feel like hot garbage the next day so sleep is such a big part of that but also what am i putting into my future brain so every meal i have everything that i can consume and i always ask is this gonna fuel my future brain and that's usually it's gonna require protein lots of fiber and healthy fats like that's what's the cornerstone of what makes up my breakfast and most meals throughout my day so that my brain is actually functioning but as a result i'm fueling my metabolism i'm fueling cells at the same time

[00:15:53] Jolene Brighten: you have a preschool you're talking about protecting your mornings what do your mornings look like as a busy mom

[00:15:59] Mariza Snyder: getting up way before that child gets up that's what it looks like and so again that means going to bed early so my nighttime routine starts right after kingston goes to bed so kingston asleep at eight pm so that he gets his twelve hours or eleven hours of asleep right everything's reversed engineered around your kids so after kingston asleep my nighttime routine starts at eight thirty that means no tv that's no screens like i am really really adamant or very disciplined about my nighttime routine i take my supplements i have my book i've got my dim lighting i've got everything set up so that i am asleep like lights are off by ten and so that means i wake up like i my i have a sleep queue that kicks in around nine forty five nine fifty and i'm a sleep on i'm sleep by ten and then i wake up at six am so i have a wake queue at six i don't even need alarm clock anymore and my son doesn't usually wake up until about seven fifteen so have an hour and fifteen minutes that is of mine so that is either walking outside in nature or i'm at least grounding out in my backyard and getting sunlight on my eyes it's kind of right when the sun is rising i am moving my body in a meaningful way whether that's yoga personally for me it's walking like walking regulates my nervous system walking sun safety signals to my brain walking supports my blood sugar in the morning and it helps to wake me up so walking is usually like i would say if you're stressed walk if you wanna balance your blood sugar walk if you need a moment to yourself to listen to to a romantic fantasy book walk like that to me is the ticket to just vitality and a alive ness in the second half of our lives so that's what i do i just i make sure that i've got time where i am not in mom mode to take care of me

[00:17:42] Jolene Brighten: mh you brought of reading at night and that is one of the simplest hacks to drop sleep and we don't talk about it enough because there are studies that show that people who read before bed their cortisol all goes down so we're always like doing all these hacks and stuff but sometimes it can be as simple as reading to help relax you and i love that you went through this morning routine of like how do you get your sunshine how do you ground you talked about walks i don't know why the internet is on a they're on a let's hate walks and let's hate pal pilates thing right now i'm like first thing with pilates i don't wanna pee my pants okay so like yes love pilates but secondly i'm like walking if so much more than just like what's your calorie burn and what's your her rate out like yes that's that's all important in in a day depending on your goals but as you talked about starting with that parasympathetic activity can totally set the tone for the day and i love that louise hey quote that you brought up you know i wanna i wanna ask you only keep going in the stress conversation but i thought of this okay so you were talking about like the brain fog the losing words like filling like f am i gonna meet the deadline but you just wrote this book the peri menopause revolution in a year i know what it takes to write a book i've written i've written in a quarter in a year

[00:19:01] Mariza Snyder: i wrote three months

[00:19:02] Jolene Brighten: well that's the thing right okay so if a book comes out in the area we wrote it in three months so on the pill wrote it in three months is this normal wrote it over a two year period of time i felt like thought was kinda painful my next book writing it in four months so how did you do that how did you do that with this peri menopause i know women wanna know

[00:19:22] Mariza Snyder: who that's such a great question i i wanna go back to even the proposal because i was a year out for my brain injury and i remember i had been wanting to write this book so bad it was in my heart and it was in my soul and finally i remember it was december twenty twenty four no twenty three and i was like i think my brain is ready i i think i can do this yeah and so i wrote the proposal i signed the book deal last august we this is literally like september second today and they were like we needed by the end of the year mh and so i started at the end of september and i i you know i will say this isn't my first rodeo so that thank goodness for that but i had already had an outline i was ready and i i have a great team that was able to do a lot of the other things that mh you know i didn't need to be involved in but i i carved out probably two to three hours a day writing this book i took a lot of walks i did a lot of resets and then the thing i was you know i've a lot of people have been asking me like i'm sure you get this too where people wanna be an author and they're like do you even do it and i was really grateful my husband alex gave me i got to take two writing weekends so i left a house no mind you i was down the street because god forbid i'd be gone away from my son very long but i i i i got a hotel room down the street from the house about a five minute drive because i needed my favorite coffee and matcha shops that i love and i worked from friday morning until sunday afternoon and i i i remember getting i think five total chapters done in those two writing weekends

[00:20:57] Jolene Brighten: mh

[00:20:57] Mariza Snyder: and i would say that i'm not sure if i would've have finished the book without those writing weekends but yeah a lot of a lot of breaks a lot of you know having a good outline and a lot of walking a lot of walking in them in between writing that was how i got the book done

[00:21:13] Jolene Brighten: i also walk while you're sitting in the room with treadmill at my desk right now where if i get stuck i have to walk or if it's time to review a chapter i have to walk but you brought up something that i think people neglect and it's so important for productivity but also mental health and that is rituals you were like i to be by my matcha shop i have to be by these places there's something that as you were saying people will ask like how do you do it as a writer you you gotta know your rituals and like what is like home for your brain what your brain is like we love this this makes us happy it's like little bits of like joy or delight that you get in your day and i think that people start to neglect rituals and especially women start to think that rituals are kind of frivolous not necessary how important do you think rituals are to overall health

[00:22:01] Mariza Snyder: i think they're they are one hundred percent necessary if we wanna get through this transition and we wanna feel good i think it's important there's two mantra that i say to myself a lot because i always we could ago we feel so far as to say that maybe i create problems to solve problems and so there's something that i say and that is nothing is wrong nothing is wrong because i think we're always constantly trying to solve problems mh and then there's no time for feeling good there's no time for a like tending to yourself there's no time for just doing something that that feels good and then the other mantra is it feels good to feel good and i remember when i heard that mantra for the first time i think it may be a gabby bernstein mantra and i remember i i it really messed with me i was like wait we get to feel good like i get to feel joy like i don't know about that like i feel like again that must be frivolous like why dwight i don't have time for that i don't have bandwidth for that but like you you can't afford not to like you we gotta create joy i always think about like what's the whole point of all of this you know and it's doing the things that we love with the people that we love doing things that fill our cup create we're sending the brain safety signals that everything is okay so that we're not in a constant state of vigilance and hyper awareness and again solving problems and i think our bodies deserve it our bodies need it if we are going to have vitality into our fifty sixties and beyond

[00:23:26] Jolene Brighten: what you just touched on people who have high ace scores adverse childhood events or trauma i want to rewind and listen to that again because these are the people that have the hardest time thinking that they just get to feel good for feeling good sake these are the people that think that exactly like and it's not like you just decided this it is something that is part of the trauma response to think you have to earn joy that you have to earn these things and so that's a message i want you know what literally everybody rewind and listened to that again please i wanna talk about progesterone that you brought up earlier because without that it's pretty easy to fly off the handle to have rage moments but people pleasing goes out the door what can people do if they get triggered in the moment and they fill that right this is coming like the three five seven days before your period and peri deposit starts to become more unpredictable for loss of progesterone what are your tips to not allow little life stress sometimes big life stress to completely override our nervous system

[00:24:28] Mariza Snyder: i love this question number one track your cycle please track your cycle the more data that you have on yourself the more that you know yourself that you know your normal if you know that on day twenty one it's about to get un unchanged be ready for day twenty one like know on day nineteen communicate with people let them know that the day twenty one's coming right so be ready for that look at your schedule in advance if you know that you're gonna have more rage you're gonna have more irr ability mind you you know be talking to have the conversation around hormone replacement therapy be thinking about that but i will say that i'm am still on hr t and day twenty one rolls around for me and some months are better than others and i carve out more alone time i carve out time with friends so my recommendation is if you know you are going to like work isn't gonna shift family obligations aren't going to change what what can you carve out for yourself can you carve out five minutes of loan time ten minutes of loan time twenty minutes of loan time also know your triggers like you said is it going to be you know kind of the end of a day situation for you where you're trying to figure out dinner how can you set yourself up on days where i have migraines we have an amazing organic beautiful taco restaurant where i'm not cooking yeah like on those days we're gonna

[00:25:50] Jolene Brighten: i don't need a migraine to order tacos but if yeah

[00:25:53] Mariza Snyder: you you go off i just mean like what can how can i simplify my life yeah yeah you know how can i make it easier where there's some things i can't change julie right i can't i have i'm always gonna still be the mom you know there's gonna be some parts of of my life and my day that that i'm gonna have to be involved in but how can i make it easier for me in some ways mh also after dinner you know especially if the family's watching something i'll ask you know ask your partner can i just go for a walk can i have a minute before i need to clean the kitchen or do the do the nighttime routine whatever it may be can i just go and have five minutes like the sun is setting right now right at the end of dinner

[00:26:29] Jolene Brighten: and and

[00:26:29] Mariza Snyder: so i'm like hey can i go and watch the sunset for five minutes and then i'll be back and i'll be more resourced i also know when i start to spiral i will i will be i'll start to be more reactive i'll notice that i'm talking faster i am again i'm i'm problem solving too quick so i know my triggers and at that point it's time for me to shift my state and the thing that will shift your state the quickest for some it's gonna be movement maybe you just need to go into another room and do some squats or do some yoga moves maybe you just need to be outside for a second and walk around the block or maybe it's breath work just know the thing that's gonna move the needle for you that's gonna help you to shift your state and then also connect with somebody whether it's a a best on a two minute voice memo or it's your partner whatever that may have have connection i always find that what makes me feel the safest is knowing that people have my back and that people understand what i'm going through so that would be it's a one know your trigger shift your state it's often know your senses and then connect with somebody that feels safe

[00:27:36] Jolene Brighten: mh this community piece of health is so important but can you talk about why community is so important for peri women and especially those who have nervous system disco regulation they're filling at the mercy of stress most days

[00:27:50] Mariza Snyder: oh yeah i mean i would say that isolation we know that isolation alone and there's there's no more of an isolating time then when your body is changing without permission and you have been taught to blame yourself

[00:28:04] Jolene Brighten: oh yeah

[00:28:04] Mariza Snyder: and so a lot of us will think gosh like i i no one understands what i'm going through i'm embarrassed to talk about it i'm embarrassed to talk about the leakage i'm embarrassed to talk about the rage i'm embarrassed to talk about the fact that i don't feel like myself anymore i think society expects us to just keep it all together and so we end up going inward we end up isolating because we think that no one understands what we're going through and i will say it on the days that i have migraines even though i know millions of other women are having migraines across the world eighty percent of migraines sufferers are women

[00:28:37] Jolene Brighten: yeah

[00:28:37] Mariza Snyder: that it's still like it feels like no one understands what i'm going through like to no one no one can understand this migraine right now and yeah it's so easy to wanna go inward but that's the last thing we need to do because we know that that isolation isn't protecting our brain it's not protecting our cardiovascular health it's not protecting our peace like there's nothing peaceful about suffering and silence and so if there's ever a time where i know we wanna lean out from relationships in connection i just want you to know that leaning in is going to be the safer move that leaning in is going is gonna be the thing that's gonna protect you and it's gonna help your brain feel more safe insight and you just feel more safe inside of yourself whether that is a animal or a friend or a family member like please lean into relationships in this transition because it's what's gonna get you through it i mean ten be friend the research is clear like that is what we need to leverage this peri impossible journey

[00:29:33] Jolene Brighten: for women that are listening to this right now and they're like well i don't feel like i have much of a community what are some tips to start cultivating community

[00:29:40] Mariza Snyder: i love that number one is decide that friendship is worth it just decide because you are it's gonna require a little bit of effort i think especially women in perry a lot of our friendships were probably maybe preschool moms or sp moms or you know just like we created community because we were within the same proximity but if if you're finding that all of those relationships are dis participating because kids are off to school or you're not in that group anymore begin thinking about who in your life can be upgraded to a friend maybe it's a colleague or maybe it's someone that you've seen at the coffee shop a couple of times and be okay with initiating i always say that i like to often when i when i'm getting a new friend i'm often court that friend so be the one who follows up be the one who sets the date be the one who brings the special little gift buys the matcha you know creates the experience and if you're still having a hard time with that and mean you can always connect to social networks lots of communities around perry menopause and menopause or even begin to join things that you love whether it's a pilates class or it's yoga class or it's a meetup up group maybe it's a hiking group you know i think of my mom you know she's training for another marathon right now at sixty four years old actually there was a marathon this weekend here in mexico's mexico city we saw it and she was so bummed was like oh my god i could've been running this marathon but she does hurt she runs not because she even loves running anymore although i think there's some level of loving it she does love but she does it because she loves the group she does it because she loves the women that's the reason why she has a running group that's the reason why she's running another marathon i'm like you know you can have the running group and maybe not run the marathon but yeah i mean just whatever hobby or thing that you love there are people who love it too that's another way to develop those friendships

[00:31:29] Jolene Brighten: yeah so i wish i would known when your mom was coming she love running so much there are running night clips oh so everybody gets together they run through the parks it ends in a fiesta and basically you're eating tacos and you're having like a disco dance party like it is people don't like there are people that still club here but in mexico city there's a big big focus on health and so everything is about health community and how do you party and celebrate like your movement had actually been working up to it with my physical therapist as i'm so mad i hurt my knee because i was like dang like i wanted to go to i didn't like running

[00:32:02] Mariza Snyder: i just wanna like i want the disco party in the taco

[00:32:05] Jolene Brighten: it's like yeah yeah yeah you guys meet them at the end if you like spray myself with a water bottle on face sweaty

[00:32:11] Mariza Snyder: they just you could just see the friend that's cheering them on right you think about giving the marathon runners oh my gosh i'm definitely not telling my mom that this is happening here because she would have wanted to go but like i i always think like if i had the ultimate hack that way would be walking or hiking with my friends after grabbing matcha like especially or even like we're i'm right next to the beach like a block away from the beach and so we go to our favorite little organic cafe we grab matcha we head down to the beach we walk barefoot foot so now i'm grounding i am talking with my friend usually talking about romantic fantasy e with one of my friends i've got my matcha and i am my my body and my brain safe mh so that's my favorite that's my favorite hack of all time

[00:32:52] Jolene Brighten: let me ask you in writing this book what are a few surprising underrated tips that you learned in the research that you're like the why weren't women told about this like were there any aha moments for you

[00:33:05] Mariza Snyder: mh i would say i think it's the moving all day as much as possible that the neat movement is so it's so critical i ever growing up thinking if i didn't do the big workout then i the walking wasn't what it needed to be like what i walking wasn't running walking wasn't spring training and so i was like oh my gosh i do you mean the bigger like the juices is worth the squeeze in terms of you know just moving and pun your day with movement mh so i think the the big takeaway from me in the book and in the research was that we need to build our life around movement

[00:33:38] Jolene Brighten: mh

[00:33:38] Mariza Snyder: i think that is so mission critical also i had no idea how important community and friendship was especially when you're going through this transition and everyone is telling you that something is wrong with you yeah like if when there's nothing more you know more gratifying or more relieving when your best friend also thinks she has dementia you know you're okay so we all have dementia we're gonna hope we're good it's because so often when you're when you think it's just you having these symptoms you're like oh my gosh it's all falling apart and then you have your friends you're like girl i can't i don't even i still haven't found my keys

[00:34:16] Jolene Brighten: to

[00:34:16] Mariza Snyder: you know you're just like oh or i oh yeah i absolutely sneeze in pete a little like you know so you're just you're like oh we're all all in this together so now i think that was i was like friendship is so mission critical and i would say the other thing that really i thought the research was really interested in was that being being out just being outside being in greens scape like gosh it's so it's so nurturing for the soul and it feels so good you wanna regulate yourself you wanna regulate your your immune system and your nervous system just be outside in nature like get into a park get into the grass go smell the roses like that that is so instantaneous for shifting your state

[00:34:57] Jolene Brighten: mh

[00:34:58] Mariza Snyder: it doesn't have to be complicated i think that's the other thing none of this needs to be complicated i know there's so many complicated protocols out there and so much of what you have to do and and no it just the it's simple it doesn't have to be complicated you just but makes time for you and be consistent

[00:35:14] Jolene Brighten: i i love all of that and i wanna say i purposely wanted to have a conversation about peri menopause that wasn't solely focused on hormone replacement therapy our menopause hormone therapy or whatever

[00:35:24] Mariza Snyder: whatever called pet it's honestly progesterone and estrogen testosterone

[00:35:28] Jolene Brighten: i i wanna say that i appreciate all the women putting their effort forward to try to get a better name for this but being in the endo endometriosis community watching what happens with pcos often as practitioners when we wanna rename things we've kinda lost the plot of what patients really want and what patients really want is just education and access and so i don't know where that'll actually go because i'm like that's a scan that's like a lot of and also what happens to os estrogen people which is like right most of the rest of the world outside you united did states using that so i'm like it's also i always have a problem when people are very like with the us we're the center of everything therefore we name we control everything where i'm like we have to be like we have to have a global movement for women i don't know what's it's gonna happen one that i'm not being critical i appreciate efforts but i also think like whenever we've seen pcos endo endometriosis other women's health conditions that we're fighting to get attention and correct treatment and just diagnosis for and then people start stepping in to change the name we see that efforts get diluted and change never really happens and i you look back and you're like wow ten years that actually set us back so we'll see i'm open to it but but here's

[00:36:39] Mariza Snyder: my agree with you and we're still failing women even or in the us or the uk where let's just hormone replacement therapy is a little bit more readily available i mean we're just failing women across the board you know we're we're far from giving women the level of access and education that they deserve

[00:36:53] Jolene Brighten: in mexico hr t is over the counter you just go to your pharmacist and talk about it and they'll hook you up oh that's awesome and now it's not cheap it's not cheap no it's but it is something that people will ask me like how do you feel about like what do you think this should be over the counter and women should have access to it and i'm like well there are countries doing that when you look at the countries that are doing that like there's some pretty good outcomes like the only thing in mexico you don't get over the counters or narcotics yes in antibiotics great you don't see people abusing medications so i think that it is something that i'm like oral estrogen that one's a little tricky like you know clock risk different factors with all of that but it is something where i'm like if doctors are going to gate gatekeeper labs gatekeeper these life bathing medications chronic disease preventing medications then we have to start to ask the question should we actually put the doctor between these things anymore i'm hey for that but don't know i honestly women

[00:37:53] Mariza Snyder: i was just having this conversation with two dear friends about just gate keeping laps just my gosh like women deserve to know what's going on with our bodies particularly at a time where it's going to change yeah you know what your labs look like in your early forties they are not gonna look the same in your late forties and then by the time we start to see these changes moving in an unfavorable direction we should've have been taking action at that point way before that and so i agree with you and what's interesting even if you'd say doctors are prescribing the medication progesterone or est you're still having to figure it out it's your body you know i i can't tell you how many times i have changed my dosage and then i'm also changing my dosage at the house like i'm experimenting in my own right so mh i mean women are just trying to feel better we're just trying to get back to a place of equilibrium i'm constantly messing with my estrogen dosage you know even i'm i'm i'm i'm cutting my badge i'll just say it you know because you know in order like have even when i have a great provider that i had a doctor that i love and admire i love her but even just getting in front of her she slammed you know and so i'm constantly playing with it myself and so i i love that that's accessible here because women are just trying to figure it out they have to take it home and figure it out even if a doctor is guessing at a dosage

[00:39:09] Jolene Brighten: yeah it's something that i think doctors are going to have to either adapt rapidly or they're gonna find themselves in a really uncomfortable place in society because for too long doctors have gate kept labs they have gabe kept they've have gate kept so much and thank you gay kept the knowledge

[00:39:28] Mariza Snyder: that that they didn't even have

[00:39:29] Jolene Brighten: that's exactly what what's was gonna say is they would keep the knowledge of like what is true what true form consent all of that because they're like i have to get a woman to do what i want and so no matter that causes and taking choice away from her but when i'm seeing more and i'm not necessarily advocating for this but women are going on chat gp putting in their symptoms they're getting the lab report they're go they're going and getting they're they're getting the list of labs they're going and getting their blood drawn then they're putting those results in there and they're proceeding and they have completely circumvent their doctor and i want people to know that ai has great utility but it there it doesn't know what to ask you it doesn't know it only knows what you put in so if you have a family history of something if you need and it's not gonna know these things like that there's a necessary role for the doctor but when doctors make women feel like trash every time they see them gas light them i mean nothing that i'm saying isn't well documented in the research the doctors have absolutely violated their oath in not doing harm because they absolutely have in women's medicine and when we consider something like hr t you know i was go match when i saw it was a mary claire haven who was like i just started prescribing hr t like a couple years ago and i was never trained in this and i was like i was trained in this and i was fortunate that in my women's health rotations that my attending was going through pairing then menopause so she was like y'all better

[00:41:00] Mariza Snyder: know how to manage this this

[00:41:01] Jolene Brighten: and i'm like but i was just blown away to hear that in g they're not trained at up but they're out there like they're g colleges who are like i'm a hormone expert but when you ask them they can prescribe the pill and that's where that's it or sop

[00:41:15] Mariza Snyder: yeah i mean it's a surgical residency you think about g oncology it's really what it is and no none of them are getting i think now in the we're up to thirty percent of re g g residences are getting a level of men care not perry care just maybe men care and that's up from twenty one percent about five years ago but we still have such a long way to go and i think that's the other issue where gate keeping information that we don't even know yeah and that's that's the biggest problem is that doctors feel it's a liability mh to prescribe to give women in what they need and so i'm not surprised that women are going outside i mean we we are a place at least in the the us and and in europe where we're stepping into a time of not only bio ability but we can order our own lab him that that's what people are doing women are doing

[00:42:04] Jolene Brighten: yeah

[00:42:04] Mariza Snyder: because it's that or they suffer

[00:42:06] Jolene Brighten: i have to tell you what we met we met like ten years ago i think and at the time like you know i was prescribing hr t and i would get the nas emails letters like from doctors who were like you're gonna kill your patient like this is like the worst thing you could be doing and oh that i gave progesterone if you didn't have a uterus and i'm like well she needs sleep

[00:42:30] Mariza Snyder: anxiety just mood dealing stress

[00:42:33] Jolene Brighten: the hate that i got and people like i mean it was if there were just so much it was like a witch hunt for like any of us who were prescribing hr t and now it's like things are starting to turn we see more acceptance but those people with that mindset

[00:42:49] Mariza Snyder: they're still out there

[00:42:50] Jolene Brighten: they have a fixed mindset and so for anyone listening if you meet someone like that get a second opinion you know i was just actually telling my this today because she was like are you gonna have to have surgery on your knee and i was like anyone who tells me i'm gonna have i need surgery my knee i'm gonna have three more people i meet with before i commit to something that big so it's not that you keep seeing people because you don't like the answer that you're getting you just need to confirm that it's right for you and when it comes to a doctor saying no hr t they're working off women's health initiative information you need to confirm is that true for you because you know sometimes your doctor they're working off the information they have but it's not updated information

[00:43:31] Mariza Snyder: yeah i always say that it's not necessarily it's not malice well i don't know with women's health who knows if it's or not there but i would say it's just that they just they don't they don't know what they don't know yeah they only know what they know and if they're not willing to step outside of what they've learned or lack of learning then there's a that big stop gap there's that big knowledge gap that is existing and so if you are going to your doctor i always say ask a point complaint do you take care of limiting and peri menopause do you feel confident with peri care are you prescribing hormone replacement therapy to your patients you know and if they're if they don't have an answer or they're not sure or they're kind of you know kind of stepping around it it's time for you to get a second opinion and find someone that this is where they're well versed in this they're working with women just like you with symptoms just like you and they they've got the nuance take taking care they know how to manage this

[00:44:20] Jolene Brighten: mh

[00:44:21] Mariza Snyder: you and yes unfortunately i know that those doctors are few and far between but they're out there and it's worth it's your health your vitality your alive the second half of your life you deserve to feel good and you deserve support

[00:44:35] Jolene Brighten: yeah and you know as you say all of that they've there's been doctors out there for a long time doctor tara i will link to her episode you know i talked about how like you've been prescribing more than a dozen years the hate i got she's like try doing it twenty five years she's like you have no idea how like people would would try to contact my board and say like i was doing bad things and like i'm just trying to help women live their best life so the whole reason i actually started down this rabbit hole of at hr is that you're using hr t yep but you're doing all of this nutrition lifestyle means so much more what percent do you feel like hr t is contributing to you filling your best compared to all of the other things that you're doing in your life

[00:45:19] Mariza Snyder: i would say somewhere between between ten and twenty percent mh ten and twenty percent i would say the number one thing that helps me is walking

[00:45:30] Jolene Brighten: this like over the pat i

[00:45:32] Mariza Snyder: and this is gonna be you

[00:45:33] Jolene Brighten: being like walking walking you walk

[00:45:34] Mariza Snyder: you walking walking like if i haven't if i haven't reiterated this a thousand times no i i i actually asked myself this the other day as i was putting on my estrogen patch i'm like what percentage of of my health and vitality is based on hr t and i was like you know it's gotta be i would say max twenty percent now twenty percent it's a lot it's still i think it's worthwhile but it's it's the lifestyle strategy it's sleep it's movement and it's a alone time it's it's you know and and an alone time meaning i am voice memo my best days when i'm alone so it's it's not being a mom in that moment or a partner i would say those are the things that are moving and also obviously eating to support my body and keeping inflammation down those are gonna be major players but i would still say lifestyle and allowing my body to be a good healthy host for hormones is probably the bigger lever that i'm healing

[00:46:29] Jolene Brighten: yeah i think that's so powerful for women to hear because hr t is having its moment it needs its moment rightly so but what's getting left out of the conversation is that there's this promise that hr is your solution for everything and not enough empowerment that women have the tools every day to step towards health and that i mean twenty percent not insignificant but when you consider what the eighty percent is that doesn't need a doctor's prescription that is all the things you can be doing on your own

[00:46:57] Mariza Snyder: yeah and i think that's the reason why although hr t is a pillar in this book in the perry pause revolution the other pillars are movement are stress reduction are sleep and circadian rhythm optimization are balancing your blood glucose all of those are the pillars that i really feel are moving at the needle in terms of women's cellular energy because the biggest complaint outside of the brain related changes which are profound is gonna be the energy and cellular energy i mean that is the quality of what you think what you feel and what you do and so a lot of the pillars in this book are based around the quality of your cellular energy and for me that is the through line for how to feel alive in your body and how to navigate the second half of your life h hr t is a cherry on top now i will say that can estrogen get you in the gym yes if you have lacked the motivation if you have been feeling flat and lacking that confidence and you bring hr t in and it's the light bulb movement for you to actually finally move the needle in doing the lifestyle then amen to that and so i always joke that hr t isn't going to lift the weights for you it's not gonna walk you outside but it could give you a little bit of that boost to actually do those actions so it's a yes and like i would never i it breaks my heart when i hear that doctors and providers are gate keeping hr t because women aren't doing the lifestyle but what if they're not doing the lifestyle because they just feel flat they feel depressed they feel un motivated and if a little bit of testosterone or a little bit of estrogen can change the game so that they're actually doing the things to feel more alive in their body than i am a full body yes to that

[00:48:36] Jolene Brighten: this has been a phenomenal conversation thank you so much for one overcome peri menopause writing in this book for everybody and taken the time to sit with us today

[00:48:45] Mariza Snyder: yeah to overcoming peri pause thank you

[00:48:49] Jolene Brighten: awesome awesome alright so we could take a quick stretch break and then the the circles membership thing it's gonna be basically like a a fourteen day hot flash and sleep reset we're gonna talk about rich rituals foods all that yeah and so basically it's just gonna