The MenoPositivity Revolution w/ Sally Mueller & Dr. Ekta Kapoor

particle on an asteroid flying through space, so exactly. Yeah, just aspect or aspects. Welcome to go Ask Allie. I'm Ellie Wentworth and this season I'm just digging into everything, everything I can get my hands on. I'm peeling back the layers and getting dirty. Speaking of getting dirty, you know, in my mom's day, the word menopause, like masturbation, was a dark and dirty word. And now I think we're starting to become a lot more evolved and women are

talking more about menopause and women's reproductive health. And we'll be talking about menopause, perimenopause, vaginas, dry vaginas, all kinds of vaginas you know. I had my ovaries taken out a few years ago because I had this enormous cyst the size of a small pink grapefruit, and I was a little nervous about it, as anyone would be, and the surgery went fine, but afterwards I was thrown into menopause.

I don't think women are ever really educated about what happens to them, because I came out of my surgery fog only to be incredibly weepy, cloudy headed. I was a bitch. And it turns out I was in full blown menopause and just didn't know it, and so I had to do a real deep dive to understand just what was happening to me. And I think that there's a lot of confusion about and a pause, which is why we should be talking about it a lot more,

starting right now with my two amazing guests. Sally Mueller. She's a founder and CEO of woman Nous. After working over two decades in retail marketing and brand innovation, she transferred her expertise to create woman Nous in order to change the conversation around menopause through innovative products. I'm gonna give you a quick spoiler alert, there's a vibrator the size of a lipstick. Continue. Womanness also provides much needed advice and support from an inspired community of women who

exude meno positivity. I love that word, a dynamic, joyful outlook that embraces women throughout their lives. Also joining me is Dr Ekta Kapoor. She is a Board certified endochronologist, a menopause specialist, and is the associate director of Mayo Clinic Center to Women's Health in Minnesota. She has a strong research focus in menopause and hormone therapy and is recognized as an institutional and national expert and leader in menopause.

Dr Kapor speaks at national meetings and has published extensively in the field. She also serves on the editorial board of the journal Menopause from the North American Menopause Society. I mean, we should have a drinking game. Every time I say menopause, you have to take a drink. And I want to thank my gust for being here, especially Dr Kapoor, who joined us even in the midst of

a COVID contamination. And she's talking to us through two masks, Welcome ECTA and Sally, I'm I'm actually very excited about having this conversation with you for a number of reasons. One is I don't think we as women talk about it enough. And certainly I was speaking earlier about how when I was younger with my mother, I don't think my mother ever talked about it, certainly not with her friends. And I feel like, right now that's all I talk about with my friends. It used to be when when

we were younger, it was we talked about sex. Now we're talking about menopause. We're constantly checking in with each other, Harry, feeling what your symptoms, you know it's and a lot of it is us just not knowing where we should know. We should know everything about it, and I shouldn't be calling my friends and saying, is this happening? I mean, it's sort of like COVID, It's like, are these the right symptoms? So first actor, explain to us the perimenopause face,

going into the menopause face, and what's happening to our bodies. Well, thank you for that great question. Ali. I want to start off by congratulating you that you are having these conversations with your friends, So kudos, Thank you, I am glad you ladies are talking amongst yourselves, because this is a recurring theme. I heard it from my patients every time we do some sort of a research study where

we survey participants asking what they know about menopause. This is sort of a universal response that I get that women don't know enough about it and no one talks about it period. Even in twenty two, that remains an issue. So I am glad you are speaking to your friends and learning that way. Granted it is less than ideal, but it's it's a start time because my friends are not very educated on it, so they probably aren't the

people I should be talking to. Yes, I agree with that. Well, that's a great first step though, because you know, again, research has shown us that people who are investigating about things, people who are talking about things are more likely to do something about changing it or fixing it. If you don't discuss it, it doesn't exist, right, and nothing is ever going to change. That's exactly right. So having that

conversation very important. So now to answer your question, Perry, you know, as the name suggests, Perry means around, So Perry, menopause is that period around menopause? So the years leading in to menopause and then one year after menopause. Usually a woman is sort of having those irregular periods leading up to menopause for three to four years, but it can be longer than that. So then the obvious question is what is menopause? So menopause is that permanent cessation,

stopping of ovarian function. So two things come with it, right, they're kind of obvious. One is loss of fertility. When we are in menopause, can't have babies anymore, but we can during perimenopause, right, absolutely can't. That's again a myth that you know, the fertility is absent in that period, but you can. And the second, which actually for a woman's health is more important, is loss of those ovarian hormones, most importantly estrogen, which has long term consequences, and that's

why our health changes significantly after menopause. But then the question is why make a big deal about perimenopause, Why does it even matter? Well, it matters for several reasons. Number one, a lot of women will experience very prominent symptoms of menopause during this phase, so the notorious hot fascist, night sweats, sleeping problems, mood problems, memory problems, which you know commonly women referred to as the brain fog state.

Those are oftentimes most prominent during perimenopause, and for a lot of patients, for a lot of women, they get better with passing time. The second thing, Ali, is that this is a time when a woman's health is changing in very very significant ways. Her heart health, her weight is changing, where she carries her body fat is changing. So a lot of the times I hear my patients telling me that the fact is shifting to the belly area, and no one likes that. Right, it's not just a

cosmetic concern. Not only do we not like it, we can't get rid of it. Why can't we get rid of it? Why? Actor? I had answers for you. It's purely an effect of lack of estrogen. And you know it's not just the cosmetic piece, Ali, it's the long term consequences of having that belly fat. It increases your

riscon diabetes, I've got pressure, heart disease, et cetera. So Perryman of pauses that critical window, if you will, where women really need to be educated about these changes and these steps they should be taking for preventing and fixing so attention to lifestyle matters more than ever. Maintaining that normal weight and really really striving for it matters more

than ever. That's why as physicians we look at it as a critical window of opportunity for counseling patients and telling them what lies ahead of them and what they can do to prevent those things from happening. Now, how does estrogen affect our body? Because a lot of times when we go to our doctors, you know, our doctors just say like, oh, you'r estrogen as well, let me let me give you the But I don't even know why I'm taking it. I don't know what it's doing.

So tell me a little bit about that. Except for the fact that somebody once said it will make your hair shiny again, you know. Yeah, of course that matters to us, that it makes our skin better, it makes our hair better. But there are so many other bigger things that estudent does for us. Let me start off by giving you the example of the woman who goes

through early menopause premature menopause. So you know, premature menopause ALI is when a woman goes through menopause prior to the age of forty years and that could be for any reason. She may have had chemotherapy that knocked out her ovaries, she may have had radiation which damaged the ovaries, or somebody took both her ovaries out. But anyhow, for one reason that the other, she loses her estudent prematurely

prior to the age of forty. Now, very well conducted research has shown us that that such women are at a higher risk for a host of medical conditions. It's a very long list. Alley har disease, diabetes, dementia, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. So that just tells you what a wonderful hormone estrogen is. A lot of bad things happen when a woman loses her estudent prematurely before she's supposed to naturally at menopause at about the age

of fifty or fifty one. Now the question arises, Okay, what about the woman who goes through natural menopause, so you know her ovarach stop functioning at the age of fifty or fifty one, how does the lack of estrogen affect her? Well, there too, we see a lot of important health changes. To give you one example, heart disease, the risk of heart disease in a woman prior to menopause is very low, much lower than that of a man. After menopause, that risk goes up so significantly that we

even leave men behind. The risk for heart disease goes up substantially, to the point that heart disease is the number one killer for women in this country. Similarly, again, diabetes, high blood pressure, dementia, osteoporosis. So a lot of important health changes happen, some of which are preventable, some not so preventable. But then again, you know, it's good to know what lies ahead of you, what the road will bring to you, so you can take your best steps

to prevent things from happening. My problem is that women just enter menopause not knowing what it will bring, leave alone how to take care of those issues. I mean, they don't even know. I have had physicians sitting in my office then they come in as patients. They're having very blatant symptoms of menopause, and they're wondering why this is happening. Can you imagine. It's interesting because when you're a teenage girl and you have cramps or you're crying,

or you you know, scream at your mom. We all know what's happening. It's like, oh, we just menstruated. I know what this is. But you get into the menopause phase and suddenly it's it's no one knows what's going on. It's a whole unchartered terran But sally something that I hear all the time from my women friends, Women that had really healthy sex lives are suddenly saying, it's really

painful to have sex. My vagina is dry. So talk to me a little about that, because that seems to be one of the glaring issues because when you're significant other and you are fooling around, it's it's painful. And that scares women more than any statistics I know. And it's it just happens. It seems like it happens overnight. You know from my own personal experience, it really does

happen quickly. And again, the drop of estrogen, I mean, your skin changes all over your body, not just your facial skin, every ounce of skin on your body, even your vaginal skin. And a lot of women don't understand that vaginal dryness that sets in is related to menopause. They just think maybe they're getting older, they're they're just

not capable anymore of having sex. And um, that was my actually, my own personal experience around vaginal dryness was the impetus behind starting woman As because I had that symptom. And I actually met with one of Dr Kapoor's colleagues

at the Mayo Clinic. She was very helpful and making me not feel like I was doing something wrong or I was alone, and she recommended some products, but many products that were sounding like they were created by men, or they weren't modern and their approach and probably not holistic or you know, safe exactly, not made with clean formulations for the most part. And that was a big aha moment for me, if why isn't someone tackling this space?

And then once I started really digging into it, I realized, my my, gosh, there's fifty million women going through to pause in the US alone, and these are women like all of us, that are living much longer. And it's it's funny because I was doing a little bit of research before and you know, back in the day when you reached menopause, it was like, oh, well, now there's

complete atrophy sexually, like it's over. In fact, the word spinster used to be used not only for an unmarried woman, but a spinster was also a slang word for somebody who was no longer able to reproduce. So you know, that's I think a huge narrative that needs to be broken to that at a certain age, when you hit menopause,

then you're kind of irrelevance sexually. Yeah, and it's even so much more than the sex piece of it, right, I think there's been so much stigma around menopause, and once you hit menopause, you're not giving society anything because you can't reproduce anymore. It's the sexual piece, it's the productivity piece. Women are an invisible They are at this stage the most productive. We are the most creative, We

are the most wise. We have so much to get back, and I really think it's a revolution that's starting and it's it's incredible. I mean, I think there's just so much conversation right now about this woman and how much she is valuable to society. You know, may I just minipuate what you just said, Sally, because I think that's a very powerful statement and we cannot really overstate that because to your point, also, Ali that with the increase

in life expectancy. Women are spending one third of their lives in menopause. Can you imagine that's that's a huge chunk of their lives. And exactly as Sally said, this is the time when they are the wisest, they are financially in a stable situation life wise, many of us are in a more stable situation most productive. So gone are the times when we should be going menopause as that phase in a woman's life when we can consider

her gone, maybe we can consider her insignificance. I think it is the phase when a woman can be very productive as long as her health issues and symptoms that are in her way are taken care of. Again, to Sally's point about vaginal dryness, women do not often put two and two together that this is because of menopause. And they come to our clinics feeling guilty, that is

the word. They come and feeling guilty that they are doing something wrong and this is just in their heads, if you will so again, that's why there is so much power in educating women, because when they leave our offices, they'll leave empowered that Okay, this is not in my head and not making this up. And they've been told so many times to their faces by their provider's friends, family members. How these symptoms can be ignored such a

wrong messaging out there. Yeah, I mean I would say certainly the exterior stuff, you know, makes women feel Oh, I'm old, I'm aging, I'm again irrelevant. But the sexual aspect I find fascinating because I've had friends say to me, oh, I guess I'm just not into him anymore. You know, my vagina is so dry, or in my case, I've been married for twenty years, still very very hot for my husband, and I started to feel like, well, wait

a second, how did I end up? Why am I not as vibrant as he is, you know, sexually when we've always been incredibly compatible and I still, you know, my heart still skips a beat when he comes in the room. You know, why is this happening? And so I feel like women with no education about it assume they're not into them. They've shut down. And I've known marriages that have kind of fallen apart because they really

hadn't focused on this piece of it. And it's time for a short break and we're back, okay, So let's go through the things that will help all of us women. First of all, what can I do to prepare for it? Are there certain things I can do to make that sort of path into menopause a little bit easier for myself? Yeah?

I mean I think, you know, it's really becoming educated about the symptoms and not every woman has the same menopause experience, right, And I think it's making sure you have a doctor lined up that is actually going to listen to you and give you good advice and information. You know, so many women say they don't even know where to go. They don't have like their O, B, G U, I N that delivered their child is not

the doctor that's going to help them in menopause. So it's super important to find that doctor support because you're ultimately going to need the right medical advice as well, even if you don't have severe symptoms. I still think having a doctor through this journey is super important. So Alie, you made a very nice statement when you said that, you know, when adolescents are having issues at home, we know that they are having hormonal changes because of their cycle.

How come we don't have something similar for menopausal I exactly feel that way. So I have been a big proponent of this concept that you know how in middle school and late elementary school girls get education about how their bodies are about to change, and that's part of their curriculum at school. I am an advocate and a proponent for menopause education. And we don't wait till a woman hits menopolis post menopozzle. We do it early on.

And the forum could be anything that these could be news letters, these could be companies like woman is who are holding parties for these younger women, or what have you podcasts, but the idea being that we can atch women at a younger age. And I was at one such party, you know that was hosted by Sally's company, and it was encouraging to see how many young women were there and they were willing to learn about menopause. I mean not putting it off like, well, this is

something for the future. I'm not going to be listening to this stuff. But they were very engaged. So I think women do want to learn about their health and what they can do. You know, we otherwise behave as such powerful individuals, We're making decisions for the family, and when it comes this time, things almost change and women start behaving a little helpless, and again that stems from

lack of knowledge and the ambivalence about menopause. Okay, I have symptoms, these could be due to menopause, but I wonder if we can even do anything about it. Why can't we teach that in middle school as well? If we're talking about full cycles of what happens with our human bodies, they should actually do the fal spectrum. Then absolutely, I would very much love that. That's my point that you know, when you're talking about this, it's time for

the meno talk. We've got to give that talk early on. Also need to know what the road ahead looks like. You know, every time we see a research study or we see a statistic that women are not being adequately treated for menopause symptoms, and that, by the way, is a theme where men are really really undertreated for their menopause symptoms. So, you know, I get asked this question a lot. Whom should we be educating? Should we be educating the providers that this is how they need to

be managing menopause symptoms? To that, my response always is that it will be much of an uphill task to educate providers. You know, a young woman is having both her ovaries taken out, she should be getting extensive counseling about what the landscape is going to be like, you know, let alone, I mean talking to her about management. But at least she deserves to know as to how her

life is about to change. So we we owe to our patients and we're not doing a good enough job of that and will sincerely hope for that to change in the coming years. So, you know, I think we will get better bang for the buck if we educate our women. If we educate our patients and empower them, just the way Sally said, so they can be going to their providers and saying, hey, I think I'm in perry menopause, our our and post menopausal. These are my symptoms. This is how I think I want to treat them.

How can you help me, rather than going to their providers with their ambivalence. We did a recent survey here at the clinic where they were all afraid of using hormone therapy and they did not know about other beneficial effects of hormone therapy. Most of them had the perception that menopause symptoms were something they were just supposed to

live with. So that's the message we want to bring so education, knowing your options and going to your provider ready to discuss what is it that you want, rather than rely on them to tell you what you should be doing. I have to say I talking to my girlfriends. That's exactly what we've all done. We've gone to our provider and gone, I don't know what do I do?

And you know, one friend is put on some hormone thing where every few hours he does these drops, and then another one is getting a shot, and you know, somebody, everybody has been given these different things. But we don't walk into the office with the education and the power, you know, we do it with everything else. We say I'd like a C section, I'd like a vaginal birth. We don't walk in and talk about menopause like it's our right exactly. And that's because of the cultural messaging

that we have got right, the mixed messaging. This is something that is to be kept under the wraps. This is something that no one can do anything about. These are insignificant symptoms. Let's talk about real medical issues. So these are the messages that patients have heard over and over again, so they're almost embarrassed to bring them up. Leave alone discussions about sexual function, which you know are taboo for most patients, even in this day and age.

So I think that has to be the universal messaging to patients. And Sally and her team are doing a great job, and many others are, you know, reaching out to the masses and telling them that it's time to talk about it, just the way you are alive with your friends. So Sally, tell me, how are you messaging the idea of all of us talking and educating ourselves about menopause. I mean, just the way we're modernizing menopause. You know the language we use. We don't believe in

the pause. So we really at woman asked. I mean, we really want to encourage and step up women and give them the support. And a lot of it is back to the education providing the information. We're really trying to hit the topics that we think women are most needed to be informed about premature menopause. HR Team manop Pause one on one. So we have a blog on

our site where we're housing all that information. We're also tapping in experts like Dr Kapoor and several others, whether it's around sleep or sexual wellness, different areas of menopause. That our top of mind for women um in community. We have a private Facebook group that we started called the after Party because the after party is more fun than the actual party, and that's a safe place where women can interact with each other, ask questions. You know,

our experts will answer questions as well. So we're just trying to create a platform for women to connect with other women because, as you said at the beginning, Alley, you know, my mom never went through menopause, wink wink. You know, we can't go to our moms and ask for advice, so we have to really leverage our friend group and you know other women. Yeah, I was going to say for my mother it was grin and Barrett, you know what I mean, like, don't talk about don't

do anything about it exactly. And I have two teenage daughters, and before I went through menopause, I made jokes about it, you know, I'd say like, you know, well your menopausele mom. And now I'm like, oh, I have to I need to change how I message it too, because I have you know, these young girls at some point we'll go through it. And also I also was it was very important to me that they see me going to doctors

and taking control of it. So um, and so do you think the messaging is first sort of changing how we look at menopause? Absolutely? So much of it is even the imagery the women that we show in our in our advertising, I mean, that need to be reinvented. So we've really showed like women in their forties and fifties and sixties that look awesome and sexy and vibrant from all walks of life. And um, the voice of of our brand is really cool and modern. This woman

is cool, she's you know, women going through menopause. Now, we're like the first generation that was on the Internet and on social media, on Facebook. So we are pioneers. We're pioneering this. We're the generation that's really going to change the conversation. And I have so many younger employees on my team that are so excited about what we're doing. They want to look forward to aging. They want to

know they can go through menopause smoothly. The younger generation wants to look up to all of us to set an example because they wanted to change too. We'll be right back, great, let's get back to it. So, Sally, how do you feel about hormone therapy for women are the different estrogen and even disasterone therapies that are available. Now, do you support it? Um? Both Dr Kapor and I support it, and woman As believes that HRT can be

a very good option. Our products are estrogen free and that's because we wanted to be safe for all women, because if a woman has gone through breast cancer, she can't probably be taking estrogen, and so our products are all very very clean formulations. But we are proponents of HRT because it can be such a healthy alternative. And I'll let Dr Kapora talk a little bit more about HRT. So hormone therapy, now, I am a believable in estrogen.

It is the best thing for the right patient. So what I mean by that is, and this is sort of my consistent messaging to patients. My default mode is to use hormone therapy for patients who are having symptoms for menopause. I'm looking for reasons to put women on hormone therapy. It is the most effective treatment for menopause

symptoms meaning hot flashes, night sweats, sleeping problems. Sleep is a big topic with my friends and what happens is you get into this bad cycle of insomnia where there's not anything particularly stressful, like the normal sort of COVID life stuff, and you know, the next thing you know, your doctor is giving us an X because you can't sleep, and then you're addicted tosign. I mean like you can really go down a bunch of dark roads if you're

not handling this in the right way. Sleep is very interesting because it can be impacted after menopause via multiple mechanisms. So it could be because a woman is having night sweats. Loops are from sleeping. Women often have mood problems around peri menopause that could be impacting their sleep. And independent of these, lack of estrogent directly impact sleep. So can you imagine there are so many hits on sleep you to menopause, and this is all the very common complaints.

So hormone therapy helps that hormone therapy helps move also cognition, all of these. So a woman who comes to my office is having very bothersome menopause symptoms and there is no reason why I couldn't use estrod and I can

speak that here in a minute. Then estrogen is might go to the reason why I particularly like to treat patients, even those who are having mild to moderate symptoms, are because of the long term benefits of hormone therapy for that young post menopausal woman, meaning a woman who is within ten years of natural menopause, younger than the age of sixty. I think the data are very convincing that hormone therapy reduces the risk of heart disease, and even

if it doesn't reduce, it does not increase it. For sure, it definitely reduces the risk of diabetes is substantially. It reduces the risk of high cholesterol, and again very very convincing data is Holy your breath, hormone therapy in that young patient reduces the risk of dying from all causes put together, all close mortality. No other intervention known to man does that for a woman that reducing her risk

of dying from any cause. Hormone therapy for that young patient prior to the age of sixty years has all these beneficial effects. So even if she's having some mild to moderate symptoms, my default is to try hormones for these very benefits. I'm a believer. But then the question arises, who is the patient who cannot be a hormone therapy, as Sally alluded to, breast cancer survivors more often than

not can't use it for them. Other estrogen sensitive cancers, undiagnosed vaginal bleeding, pre your stroke, previous heart attack, those would be conditioned. But as you can imagine, these patients in the community are a minority majority of them would qualify for hormone therapy, and therapy should absolutely be discussed. If someone's mom had breast cancer at seventy, that is not a reason why I would avoid hormone therapy for

a patient. But if she tells me two of her sisters have had breast cancer in their thirties or early forties, then I might stop and think. But then you know, even then it's not a hard stop. But a patient who's personally had breast cancer, then I will use non hormonal prescription options if the symptoms are severe, and those

usually belong to the category of antidepressants. So antidepressants used for hot flashes and knights that these are medications belonging to that class, but they are not for treating depression as such. So you know, this was like serendipitous discovery if you will, that women in the community who are using antidepressants, let's say for treatment of depression and anxiety.

They were reporting improvement in their hot flashes and night sweats, and then they did clinical trials and proved it that, yes, these medications are efficacious. So if we use medications in the class of anti depressants, it's not to treat depression, it is still to treat hot flashes and night sweats, for which these medications work. Because you know, the circuits in our brain are very complicated. The circuits with sort

of the neurotransmitters control mood. Some of those are shared ones with the ones that cause hot flashes, so it is a dual action if you will not targeting mood per se. So my messaging to patients is that they go to their provider empowered with this information, and then they say, I think I want to be your hormones. What do you think about something like that? You know, that's how the discussion should go, rather than I don't

know what I should do about my symptoms. You know, yeah, I agree, and and sally with your after parties and such. You've sort of created products to help women going through this particular time, but you've created a lot of different things and tell me why you created them, and and is this because the need from women was so loud in your ears? Absolutely, and the product that was out there was really relegated to the dusty bottom shelf at retailers, right,

I mean it was with not necessarily clean formulations. So the whole category needed to be modernized and created. That'd be we've really created a whole new category called menopausal Solutions. It's it's a combination of supplements. It's skincare because obviously your skin changes all over your body, and sexual wellness products. So those are really the three categories that we've addressed. But all the products are built around the symptoms that

you go through. Like one of our supplements is called metal Pause. It's all about night sweats and hot flashes. It's a really effective, clinically proven set of ingredients. It's funny, I you know, I wouldn't think to go to a store or go on the internet and buy products to deal with menopause. That's just my lack of education. Where we like to say kind of like the first line of defense, where the first brand that you can go to when you're thinking that you might be in peri menopause.

And it's interesting because we see about of our customers on our site are in their thirties and early forties. It's amazing. So that just shows you that there is a lot of interests, there's a need out there, and it spans many decades. It's young and it goes all the way post sixty into the seventies. So I can I can give them to my daughters, my sisters and my mom. It's great, absolutely, absolutely multigenerational well, which menopause

education should be. So there, So there you go. Absolutely. I've asked you so many questions, and I'm so glad to have this conversation with you guys, and I'm so glad that you're out in the world messaging about it. I'm so glad that my daughters are growing up in a culture where we are having these conversations. UM. So in my podcast, um, I basically squeeze the sponge of my guests. But you can now ask me a question about anything you want. So, Sally, do you want to start? Oh,

because I love to cook. I was just gonna ask Ali what your latest recipe is or what's your latest dish that you've been cooking. I love that. So this is the latest recipe that I'm sort of obsessed with. And a friend of mine, Jessica Seinfeld, has a cookbook called Um Food Swings and it's tacos. But the tacos are made with sweet potato, califlower, and jalapeno. That sounds good. You rose those together and then you have the pickled onions and the guacamole with it. But it's so good

and you don't miss the meat or the chicken. And my kids love it. They're really amazing. Sounds great. Well, thank you, Yes, Dr Kapor. Do you have a question for me? So all, you're such an accomplished woman, having done so many great things in life. Uh, do you have any regrets? Anything you feel like you would have done differently? Oh? My gosh, do I have any regrets?

I I don't have. I don't like to regret because I feel like I am where I am, which is a great place, and a husband I love, and children I love, and you know, I don't want for anything. I'm not sick. But I have two regrets. I think one is these are silly, but I wished I didn't go to acting school after college. I should have just gone right into the business because I've started to realize more and more that in the world, the art is

in the doing. So I learned so much more when I actually worked as an actor than when I was in expensive acting classes with people telling me how to do it. I think it's instinctual. Um. The other regret is I was asked to be part of Saturday Night Live and I said no. And I said no because I had been on another sketch comedy show for a few years and I just thought, like, enough sketch comedy. And you know, I always wonder what would have happened if, you know, maybe would have gone on and done all

these big comedic films. And my husband always says, yeah, but we probably wouldn't be married. So you know, that kind of stops the regret right there. Um, you can still go on the show. I can. I don't know. I'll have to see if Lord Michael's if the offer still stands twenty five years later. But it's hard to regret, you know, because life is such a crazy, bizarre, closing doors kind of thing that you know, he's probably right,

And I always say to him, you're probably right. I'd probably be married to Brad Pitt and that would suck, so yes it would. But that's an excellent question. I'm got me thinking about this question for a few hours now. Thank you both so much for doing this, and thank you and I think I think woman, this should be a sweatshirt we all wear all the time. So all things well, we have some great It's funny. I remember

the story as we were talking. A couple of years ago, my agent called me and said, would I be interested in hosting a panel to talk about post menopausal dr vagina cream um? And I hung up and I called my agent back and I said, why would I want to do that? Anyway? Of course, they paid me money, so I did it. And I was sitting with a bunch of well known guy to college just in New

York City, and they started talking about menopause. And my big lesson was, you know, putting my ego aside or my age is um that there was so much more information to be mined in this area. And and I ended up writing down a bunch of notes for myself that day, and I was really really glad I did it.

So check out Sally's amazing company womanness dot com and take a look at our show notes for many more sources and links to great stuff like Sally's afterparty group on Facebook and let's all go out there and spread meno positivity. Thank you for listening to Go Ask Alli. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast, and follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali Wentworth

and on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth. Now. If you want to ask me a question or suggested guests or a topic to dig into, I'd love to hear from you, and there's a bunch of ways to do it. You can call me or text me at three to three three six or six three five six, or you can email a voice memo right from your phone to Go Ask Gali podcast at gmail dot com. If you leave a question, you might hear it and go ask Alli. Go ask Alli is a production of Shonda land Audio

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