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Hello, hello. Welcome back. Today's subject is for everyone. This is truly a topic that everybody needs to pay attention to if you are a female. Because the truth is all of us are going to go through perimenopause menopause and post menopause.
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We may be at different stages of that. Maybe it's a few years away, maybe it's a lot of years away. Maybe you're already in perimenopause, maybe you've already gone through menopause. Either way, I think the things that we're going to talk about on how to prepare for it and how to manage it are really important. If there's one thing I've learned in this journey called life, I should say motherhood or womanhood, at least for me, speaking from my own experience, is the more I know ahead of time, the better.
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And the more educated I am in the midst of it, the better. The worst is when you look back and you say, I wish I would have known to do insert whatever you want to say. When I had the twins, after I had the twins, I said so many times, I wish someone had taught me how to use my core before I had the twins. I wish I had researched diaphragm breathing, which we call 360 breathing now, or diastes or the pelvic floor, or so many things that I wish I had studied and learned before, which would have made the outcome so much easier. So whether you are at this stage now, it's a little ways away, it doesn't matter because the more you know ahead of time or in, it is going to be better than looking back and wishing you had known.
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So this stage of womanhood is so important for us to learn about, no matter what stage of womanhood we are in right now. And that's why I want to cover some of these things I want you to know ahead of time because the truth is I'm learning. I am not in these stages yet, but I'm learning myself so that when they come, I don't want to be caught off guard as much. I want to know, I want to feel prepared. Because as I mentioned, I wish so badly I had understood the core before I had the baby.
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I wish I knew so much more about what happened postpartum before I got there because it would have helped me handle it a little bit better or know how to reach out and get help or just what to be aware of. So today I'm going to give you six things for you to think about, to help you prepare, to help you manage perimenopause menopause. It's not a disease. There's nothing wrong with you. It's just a part of a stage of life for the female reproductive system and how our bodies work.
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And if you find this episode helpful, which I know you're going to, because it's for all of us, don't forget to share it with your friends. Your family on social media so that we can help others feel more equipped with this stage of life. And don't forget, as always, to write a review. If you love listening to the podcast, if you feel like it has helped you, and honestly, even if you hate it, let me know because I'm all ears for all the options. Today I want to give a shout out to Andrea Allen , and it's titled So Enthusiastic and Informative.
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After following Andrea on Instagram and listening to her podcast, I decided to do her coaching program too. It's been life changing for my fitness and nutrition perspective. I love her enthusiasm. You can tell how truly excited she is to share her knowledge and insight. I know how often she backs things up with research and her experience as a trainer.
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Thank you so much. No, thank you, Andrea. What a great name for writing a review. And I am so happy that you found the podcast helpful and that you've loved my coaching program, where I do teach about workouts and nutrition. It makes such a difference when we can see health as a whole, rather than zoning in on these tiny little pieces, and then we feel lost in the health and fitness industry, which is what I'm trying to promote on the podcast with my coaching, with all the things I do.
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All right, now, as we get into today's episode, something that you can think about now is as I'm giving you these tips of things to be aware of, you can think about tiny things in your own life that might be very easily adjusted to help you better set yourself up for this situation. And something that I've actually recently added to my life, which I feel like has helped me with vitamins and minerals and getting a little bit more of a variety of good foods, is AG One by athletic greens. I mentioned before that I saw my neighbor drinking it one day, and I was like, what are you drinking over there? And she was like, oh, I'm drinking AG one. I really like it because as a busy mom, she's like, I just feel like I don't always have time to sit down and have this great whole food meal with lots of vitamins and minerals.
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And this just helps me make sure I get it first thing in the morning. And then I go on my way and I try to still eat all my meals, but I know I'm getting some solid vitamins and minerals, so I look them up. It's made with 75 high quality vitamins and minerals and whole food sourced ingredients that deliver benefits that help mood, immune system, sleep, which we're going to talk about today. A lot of these things as well. Sustained energy and so much more.
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Ironically, I have fell in love with it for the same reason my neighbor did, because it's easy. I get up, it's delivered straight to my house every month. I don't have to think about it. I know I'm getting some high quality nutritional benefits for it and I know it's going to help support my immune system, which is huge, especially if you have little kids coming into your house all the time who like dirty hands picking things up at school. Like, we want to have the best immune systems we can possibly have.
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So the more we can do to support it, the better. So if you want to take ownership of your health, today is a great time to start. Athletic Greens is giving you one year supply of vitamin D and five travel packs with your first purchase. So go to athletic greens. Comsimple that's athleticgreens.
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Comsimple, and check it out. I promise it will just make it a little easier for you to get some of the vitamins and minerals that honestly your body is just going to benefit from and sometimes it's hard to fit it all in. Let's get into today's episode on how we can prepare for and manage perimenopause and menopause. My name is Andrea Allen and I am a mother of four girls under seven, a wifey, two a mountain man, a personal trainer, and a nutrition coach. I love all things in women's health and fitness, but let's face it, the fitness industry is complicated and it's not built for the everyday mom.
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There's so much conflicting information and you're busy and you don't have time to figure it out. I hate feeling confused and overwhelmed. So I have made it my mission to simplify health and fitness while creating a welcoming, realistic and empowering home for like minded women. I'm happy you're here and I hope you stay a while.
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Okay, so I'm going to be honest as I start this and admit it wasn't even that long ago when I thought perimenopause was pre menopause and a doctor actually corrected me. They were like, no, it's actually not pre menopause. And I was like, well it should be caused that because it's right before menopause, but it's actually not called that. What we're going to be talking about today is perimenopause, which is the stage before you go through menopause. And then there's post minnopause.
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As we age, your ovaries start producing varying amounts, diminishing amounts of estrogen and progesterone. That's kind of what helps balance a lot of the female hormones. Both of these hormones play a vital role in regulating your menstrual cycle. They're super crucial for and they even spike and dip in different times of the month and then as you drop the egg and that helps promote that menstrual cycle. They're also in charge of a ton of bodily processes and it starts to shift and those start to drop and change.
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Then we are shifting into perimenopause and then eventually we shift into menopause. Perimenopause can happen a couple of years before menopause. It can happen a long time. I saw even up to seven years. So it can happen for a while and typically starts in your 40s.
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But I did research and found it does often start for some people in their 30s or mid 30s. So it is a range. And then you go through menopause and typically that age range is anywhere from early 50s, but it can start in your 30s depending on your situation. So obviously all of us are going to hit our late 30s, our 40s, our 50s. We're all going to experience this.
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And the more we know, the better it's going to be for us. These changes in our hormones, the reason they're interesting is because they cause hormonal dips and surges of these hormones, which our bodies aren't totally used to because they're not as regulated. And because of that, we get these unexpected symptoms of perimenopause, which is how it starts, which is the phase before menopause. And as I mentioned, that does start kind of earlier, late 30s, early 40s. I'm going to give you some examples of things to look for because I think as we talk about what we can do to help with the situation, ease some of the symptoms we have, it's important to even know what the symptoms are so we can recognize them.
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Because if you don't know anything about what you're looking for, how are you going to know how to adjust for them? And you may just think like wow, I'm just being really different lately, or things just seem off. Instead, recognize the symptoms and know them ahead of time or in the midst of them. So some really common things when you start to go into perimenopause is mood swings. It's because the hormones are changing and so obviously it's going to cause some mood swings.
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You're going to have changes in your menstrual cycle that is going to include longer or shorter flows, lighter or heavier flows, and you'll even start skipping your period a little bit. I read one study that said normally if there's a span of 60 days or more between your periods, then you're likely obviously in later perimenopause before menopause because at menopause your period ends up stopping altogether. You may also experience vaginal and bladder problems. So estrogen diminishes as you start going into menopause. It decreases.
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And your vaginal tissue, which helps with lubrication and elasticity, also decreases because of the estrogen decreasing. So with low estrogen, it leaves you feeling a little bit drier. It can lead to more urinary and vaginal infections and it can lead to loss of tissue tone and can increase urinary incontinence. So knowing this is also important because if it's increasing incontinence, then we do want to be aware of our pelvic floor and making sure our pelvic floor is healthy, not too weak as we talked about in episode 17, and not too tight. Because while we can't stop some things, awareness and being able to use other factors around it are going to be very helpful.
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You're also going to experience, once you go through menopause, a loss of bone because your bone decreases and that's why people often get osteoporosis. And osteoporosis is very common in females as they age as well. Some other signs and symptoms that you are starting perimenopause or menopause is migraines, insomnia, hot flashes, weight gain, fatigue, decreased sex drive, hair thinning or loss, and even acne. So I know you're feeling like me when I read these. And then I even went through and researched some other things that increase as we go through menopause.
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And it was like, heart disease increases, osteoporosis increases, once that happens, chances of stroke increase. And literally I read all of this and I was like, man, it is so hard to be a female. You get your period at an awkward young age and then you're trying to have babies and then you're trying to figure out how to care for the babies, and then your body feels like a hot mess afterwards, and then we go through perimenopause and the menopause. And I am digressing, but either way, there are so many things that happen to the female body. It is insane, but it also shows how amazing it is that it does so many different things and it makes people and somehow it just is able to do so much and it has to go through so many changes in order to do that.
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So you've got to look at it that way. That like, wow, it is crazy. It does all these things and it shows how truly amazing it is, even though so many of them are actually really hard. Today, what we're going to talk about is what we can do to prepare for this stage in our life, or if you're already in it, what you can do to manage it. I'm going to give six simple tips for this.
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The first thing is, I think in your 30s it would be effective for you to start tracking your cycle. I read a lot of doctors that said this was helpful to do in your mid to early 30s because it can give you a good idea of keeping track of your cycle. And it helps you recognize spotting or heaviness or any changes in your bleeding, which tracking it now ahead of time will make it easier for you to recognize changes. And when the time comes, you will be better cooked with a base layer to help your doctor understand where you are in this phase. And I thought, oh, man, that's so easy.
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Even if you got a little book and you just wrote down or you just mentally paid attention to what was going on instead of just going through the motions, you would notice when something changes. And that's not even a ton of work. Just mentally taking note every month. How long is it taking you to get your period? Are the amount of days you're on your period changing?
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Is the flow changing? Just that mental thought every month can help us be aware of changes and will help us better. Equip doctors who are asking us questions because I don't know about you, but I've been in a doctor's office where they asked me a question about something that happens all the time. And I'm like, I don't know. I've actually never paid attention because I'm going through the motions when it would just take awareness for me to be aware and answer their question thoroughly, which would help them help me better.
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So that's going to be my first tip. If you're not there yet, start tracking that period and just take note and show awareness of what is going on. My next tip is going to be exercise. And this is whether you are preparing or you are managing perimenopause or menopause. I'm just going to say for now, I'm preparing or managing.
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And you know what I'm talking about. I read a study even just two weeks ago about bone loss after menopause, and it said that when people go through menopause, females lose 20% of their bone mass. And I'm not going to lie, my jaw dropped. I was like, 20%. That's a lot.
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That's a fifth of our bone mass. And my mind was blown at that. But I continued to read about bone mass, and one of the ways to try to help protect it is adding muscle. Our muscle sits on bone. It is basically wrapped around your bones.
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And the more muscle you have, the harder basically your bone has to work to support that muscle. So they kind of go hand in hand, stronger muscle, stronger bones, because it's used to carrying more muscle. So lifting weights and building muscle is a very good thing for your bone mass. When I get to the point where I am in menopause, or I'm post menopause, I hope that me lifting weights when I was in my 20s or my having muscle will help me start at a little bit of a higher mass and my bones a little bit stronger because of that. I hope that I'm entering the scene with stronger bones because of that.
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So if you are preparing, you need to remember weights are not just about trying to lose weight. I know that we so connect everything with fitness, with trying to lose fat. No, we are literally making stronger muscles to help wrap around those bones, to make your bones stronger, which is going to help you have a higher bone density, possibly. So when you do lose bone mass, you are less likely to develop osteoporosis. Now, it's not a catch all where you can guarantee it, but we want to do everything on our end that we can do to try to prevent things.
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And that is a simple thing, and it's going to help us be more limber, stronger and all the things. Now, if we can try to make sure we're focusing on adding a muscle with heavier weights. You need to challenge your muscles to be able to do that. That means you need to typically do a little bit less reps, higher weight. If you're doing like 20 reps of something, you're technically sitting in the opt model, which is the training model that trainers use.
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You're sitting in muscle endurance, but if you come down into a rep range of, you know, ten to twelve, even eight to twelve, you're more in hypertrophy. And hypertrophy is the building phase. It's where you build muscle. So be aware of that, that you do want to be building the muscle, making them stronger, making them bigger to support those bones, because they really do go hand in hand. Another important exercise to incorporate, besides obviously strength training to help prepare or manage is to incorporate yoga and stretching.
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Not only because it helps with flexibility and mobility, but it also helps manage stress. And the less stress you have, the easier the process is going to be. I can be so honest here and say this is not my strength. I've worked really well, increasing my mobility work, but I have not as much been into yoga. I mentioned on my social media just last week that I was going to start yoga, and to be honest, today was the first day I did a yoga class, and I did it just at home from a YouTube video.
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And I had to chuckle because I was doing what I thought was the pose that they were showing, and they went into this handstanding. And my four year old Easton is sitting there and she goes, mom, you got to do that too. And I was like, I can't do that, so I need you to know it's okay. If you can't do it perfectly, it doesn't mean you can't try. There were plenty of other moves that I could do perfectly well, and if anything, it gave me something to work towards.
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So as you think about adding yoga or adding stretching or adding weight training, don't worry if you can do it perfectly. Just remember me and my four year telling me that I didn't look like the yoga instructor, but I was giving my all, and that's good enough, and that's going to help prepare us for this phase in life. Another key piece to exercise besides adding muscle is your metabolism declines during perimenopause and postmenopause as well. So the stronger you are before you get to that stage, the better off you're going to be. Because the mistake that people make is they forget the metabolism is fueled by our activity, our muscle mass, and our food intake.
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The biggest mistake that so many people make who are in the fitness industry is they're so terrified of gaining weight, or they're always just trying to lose, lose, lose that we start undereating and avoiding food and living our life in a diet. Dieting long term, slows the metabolism down. Majorly, majorly slows it down. It's why the nutrition cycle that I talked about in episode 20 is so important, because I explained that you live your life in maintenance. You don't live your life in a diet.
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Diets are supposed to be super short term, and somehow we've become super obsessed with trying to live our life in them. And it's actually hurting our metabolism, which is going to hurt this process as we age and we go into perimenopause and dealing with it. If you're someone who always undereats, or you might be someone who's trying to undereat, or even just yo yoing, it's still going to cause you problems because it still hurts your metabolism. So we need to stop skipping our meals. We need to stop avoiding food.
00:19:05
Yes, I do understand that some people overdo food, but I can say I've been in the fitness industry now for 17 years. I got in it when I was 21. Technically, I got in it when I was 20, but I'm going to say 21. And yes, people over consume, but the amount of people I see who under consume while they're trying to get fit is very, very high as well. So you have to realize this is a pendulum, and that pendulum is alive and well of swinging between both.
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And we really do want to just stay in the middle on a more regular basis to create a lifestyle. So remember, as that metabolism declines, exercise is your friend, and eating enough food is your friend, because your muscle is going to help speed that metabolism and keep your Bmr. Your Bmr stands for your basal metabolic rate. It's going to help keep that at a higher rate because it's naturally going to decline. So we want it declining from a higher rate.
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If we're starting at a really low rate and then it's declining, we're like, shoot, we don't have that far to go. It's the same thing with the muscle. If we're starting that phase with less muscle, it's going to be easier for the bone to break down. So it's the same thing with your metabolism. So that's my second tip exercise.
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Add that weight training, add some yoga, some stretching, and don't forget about that metabolism because that exercise is going to help fuel that metabolism. My third tip is thinking about your sleep. Pretty much at any stage of life, you want to think about your sleep. And there's some stages of life where it's really, really tough, like when you're postpartum and you've got a baby or maybe a toddler or even a child with night terrors. There's so many things that affect sleep.
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So I want you to know I am aware of that, but it doesn't mean we can't do our best with our current situation, depending on the situation. The reason why sleep matters so much is because if you can create good sleep habits ahead of time to prepare, then when you're in the moment, it's going to be easier for you to sleep better because a common issue that happens with perimenopause and menopause is it creates symptoms of insomnia and night sweats. And that is going to make if you have a bad sleep schedule already more difficult. So the better. We are keeping some systems and routines in our sleep.
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When it is interrupted with insomnia and with night sweats and with other things as we go through the stage, it's going to help it not seem as extreme. A couple of things you can do to improve your sleep is obviously limit your caffeine, limit a ton of fluids at night. That's going to cause problems as well. Limit your screen time. I recently have been trying to get off my phone at least 45 minutes before I go to sleep.
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And I'm not going to lie, it's hard. Like often I'm like, oh, man, it's like 20 minutes away and I think this should be so simple. But it shows that my bedtime routine is not as good as I wish it was, and it's something I'm working on. So when I say good sleep habits, it's not always just about sleeping. It's about the habits to get us to go to sleep.
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This is something I'm personally working on, so I'm trying to put my phone down sooner. So get off your phone because that blue light has been shown to affect your sleep. Limit your distractions at bedtime. I try not to talk about work or anything at night because for some reason when I lay down at night, that's what I races through my mind and I get all my ideas at night and I really try to avoid that. Also try to think about cooling blankets or pillows.
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I know I've told you guys about cozy earth before. That's a great way because they have some temperature regulating bamboo sheets that might be helpful. And consider a fan or white noise or even an eye cover, whatever works for you. But just to create that solid sleeping routine which is going to help you for when that insomnia or those night sweats hit. Because you'll already be in a rhythm.
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And while there will be disruptions, they won't be as extreme if you don't have good sleeping habits. All right, next, let's get into how to prepare or manage this phase with food. And the key to this is more so than like, foods fixing the problem. It's just being aware of the foods that you're having because the foods you're having can help or it can even possibly cause more issue. And I'm going to tell you some foods that might be trigger, foods that might make perimenopause or menopause worse, and then some foods that might actually help it.
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Number one, you want to regularly be eating protein throughout the day because it helps prevent that loss of lean muscle as you age. As we already talked about your muscle and your bones decrease. So while I mentioned we want to start with a higher muscle mass, we also want to be having enough protein because that helps prevent and fuel muscle as we continue to age. If we're mixing it with weights and solid exercise to kind of keep that muscle strong, which is going to help those bones as well, because all of that decreases with age. One study I found showed that consuming protein throughout the day at each meal slowed down the process of muscle loss during aging and due to aging.
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Thank you very much. I feel like that's a Wolverine power. I'm like, oh, okay, so if I just have more muscle, it will help the aging process. Okay, done and done, friends. Muscle is our friend.
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It is good for us. It is truly like a powerhouse for your metabolism, for your aging, for your bones, for so many things. Some easy ways to get in protein rich foods is meat, fish, eggs, legumes, nuts, dairy. You have a lot of options for that, and it's more about mixing and matching those and just doing the best for your situation. You also want to be aware of your calcium and vitamin D intake because those are super great items and are linked to good bone health.
00:24:44
So it's really important that we're getting enough of those nutrients in our diet. For calcium, it's pretty easy. You do dairy, almonds, whey, protein, green leafy vegetables such as kale, collared, green spinach, all of those have a ton of calcium in it. And it's also really plentiful in tofu beans, sardines, and other foods. So you can easily, without even adding a supplement, you can just try to make sure you're getting enough of those in your diet.
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Or if you don't feel like you are, you can do a supplement. As for vitamin D, the sunlight is your main source of vitamin D. So as you get a little bit of sunlight, your body basically makes vitamin D. But as we age, our body becomes less effective at making this. Vitamin D.
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Or if you live in a situation where you don't have the opportunity to get out in the sun as much and get that vitamin D, you're probably going to need to make sure you're getting it in your diet or you're going to need a supplement with it. Now, the cool thing is AG One, which I already talked about in the show. If you sign up with them for their AG One drink from athletic greens, they're sending you an entire year supply of vitamin D, which when I read that and then I read that that was a major item that you needed to kind of help prevent or manage this phase, I was like, Heck, yeah. That's a great deal. So if you're already interested in that drink, you get a free year supply of vitamin D as well, and that might be very helpful for you.
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And that link is also in the show notes for that deal for the whole free year supply and you get the five travel packs. But vitamin D can also be found in oily, fish, eggs, cod, liver, and foods that are fortified with vitamin D. So those are all great options or you can do that supplement. My next food tip is you're going to want to increase the amount of phytoestrogens that you are consuming. And that may be a word that you've never heard and we're going to talk about it.
00:26:29
So phytoestrogens have a molecular structure that are really similar to our own estrogen. So we can fool the brain basically into thinking that we have balanced estrogen when we add in phytoestrogen, which also helps with those thermal surges, which is causing us to get the hot flashes or the night sweats because our estrogen is off. And as we go through perimenopause and menopause, our estrogen levels, as I mentioned, decrease. So basically having phytoestrogens naturally occurring in some plants that we're going to talk about, they can mimic the effects of that estrogen, which will help kind of offset that low estrogen and can help improve the situation naturally. Now, it's obviously not going to stop you from going through perimenopause or menopause, but it might help decrease those night sweats or hot flashes and some of the other symptoms that go along with this stage in life.
00:27:19
Some common phytoestrogen foods include soybeans, turmeric, berries, oats, barley, dried beans, lentils, rice, alfalfa, tofu, apples, carrots, wheat germ and rice. Brand. I actually looked up some foods that included these on a lot of different sites because I wanted to give you a good variety with different options. Because I hate when someone tells me, hey, you should have more of this vitamin or mineral. And then they only list, like, two foods.
00:27:50
And I'm like well, I don't like those two foods. So I hope that was a good list of things that you could add in for yourself. You want to have about 45 milligrams of phytoestrogens every day and that's going to kind of help be beneficial for stabilizing the effects of hormone balance in this phase of life for perimeinopause and menopause. Now, just like anything, you do have to be aware that your hormones like balance and they can swing in both directions. It can be like Goldilocks and the three bears.
00:28:19
It can be too much or too little. So we want it just right. And you do want to be aware of that because if you have too high of a dose of some of these things or if you have too high of estrogen, it can cause problems as well. So you do want to be aware of what stage of life you're in. You want to be aware if you have estrogen dominance, because obviously if you are not in the stage of life and you have estrogen dominance and then you're increasing your phytoestrogens, that's not going to be helpful.
00:28:43
So remember, it's a happy balance between the both of them. Just like with the pelvic floor, you don't want it too tight, you don't want it too weak. With hormones, we don't want too much of a hormone because that causes problems and we don't want too little of a hormone because that causes problems. So be aware of when you increase some of these things that you're not overdoing it. Which is why I said that the daily intake is suggested is only 45 milligrams because you can overdo it.
00:29:10
So those are some simple foods to think about adding in or some natural supplements that we can just eat more things of to kind of help. But I also want you to be aware of some common triggers because for me, because I'm not in this phase yet, I thought, oh, I want to know ahead of time what to not do or what to add. And so I researched what things can cause you problems, what foods can make it more uncomfortable or more difficult as you go through this phase of life. One of them was spicy foods. This didn't really catch me off guard because spicy foods can make hot flashes even worse because you tend to feel hotter when you're eating spicy foods.
00:29:44
And if you have high blood pressure, you're also supposed to be avoiding spicy foods anyway because it just makes everything feel more intense. So you're going to obviously want to be aware of hot peppers, jalapenos, or cayenne because all those could make hot flashes worse or night sweats worse. In those situations, you're also going to want to limit your alcohol intake. Having a glass of wine every so often seems to be just fine and it doesn't create a problem with perimenopause. But if you're doing it every single day or you're having more than one glass of wine a day or any type of alcohol beverage, it's going to cause you problems because alcohol interferes with your sleep and may exhibit more hot flashes and it also increases anxiety and depression.
00:30:27
Those things are already kind of off kilt a little bit when you are going through menopause or perimenopause. So we don't want to do things that are going to even cause more of a problem and increase those issues as well. You also want to be aware of your caffeine intake so you are not overdoing it during this phase, and also how many sugary foods you are consuming. I found a study which I'll link in the show notes of a large group where they studied women that were 50 to 59 and their diets were highly processed with snacks and then they associated that with poor bone quality. And then women that they studied whose diets were higher in fruits and vegetables led them to less bone breakdown.
00:31:08
Now remember, they're studying women in their fifty s to fifty nine. So it's 50 59, which means a lot of these habits of what they were doing were built in their twenty s, thirty s. Forty s, which got them into the situation. They're in their 50s. So be aware that it's not about a sudden shift, it's about building those habits and preparing now so that we have less bone loss because we are eating more fruits and vegetables.
00:31:31
And you know, I'm not a believer of being perfect. I believe in 80 20. So this isn't saying ban them for life, it's saying have moderation and still eat mainly whole foods. So those are a couple of things to be aware of because they could be triggering. And when you are going through this phase of life, it might be also good to keep a symptom journal and see what you're eating and when you're noticing your hot flashes, when you're noticing mood swings or irritability or when you're noticing night sweats, and see if you can link it to possibly any food and possibly adjust around that.
00:31:59
It's the same way with gut health, with hormone imbalances. Anytime you see something that's a little off, if you can kind of track it, sometimes you can link it to something and then it can help you be more in control of your health. And that's something that we all want. My last two tips are a little bit different, but I think they really matter. One of them is to develop good coping skills now.
00:32:21
We need to do it now because just like the sleep, we need to make those routines now so that when we have disruptions in them, it makes it a little bit easier to try to keep that routine. With coping skills, it's the same thing. We're not going to be able to prevent mood swings, but it doesn't mean we can't learn coping skills to respond to the mood swing. And this is something that I honestly feel like anyone could work on at any point because for me, I get kind of moody when I'm PMS and I tend to be sharp with people. So if I could work on my coping skills, on recognizing that now, it will make it easier if those things get more intense as I go through perimenopause.
00:32:59
So some simple things is you can think about trying deep breathing, walking away from a situation, going on a walk, practicing meditation, and just having an outlet besides the situation to step outside of it. If you're having a mood swing, that can be helpful. And using the Halt method, which I discussed in episode 103, because that helps you break down your emotions, your mood, your responses, and helps you create coping skills to deal with them better. The better we are equipped ahead of time, the better we will handle the situation. And that's why we're even having this conversation.
00:33:33
With the coping skills, with the exercise, with the food, preparing our bodies, preparing our minds ahead of time is going to be more beneficial for us. Lastly, something that can help you with this phase is check your family history. Consider talking to your mom, to an older woman in your family, your grandma, your aunts, and find out when they went through perimenopause or menopause, because genetics play a huge role in the menopausal experience. If your mom went through early menopause, then there could be a chance that you may, so you might want to get prepared sooner. It's the same thing with late or how the experience went for them.
00:34:09
Getting a sense of your family history and the experience really can help prepare you and help you manage it better. Because, one, you'll be prepared ahead of time, or two, you will know in the moment that what you're experiencing is normal, as other people in your family have possibly experienced that. And both of those can feel empowering. As I mentioned, I'm not in this stage of life yet, but I am thinking about it. I am preparing for it.
00:34:33
I want to be able to manage it, and I know many of you are already managing it. So I am going to do another episode, probably a couple of weeks out, where I'm going to talk about supplements, other supplements that help, as these are all natural ways to do it, and the other ways are actually natural supplements. But I'm going to try to weave in a little bit of this information a little bit more. Because, as I mentioned, the more we can prepare ahead and the more knowledge we have in the moment, the more empowering. It's going to be for us to handle this phase of life and not have it feel like a bumpy road, but have it feel like, okay, I knew this was coming and I know how to handle it.
00:35:09
Or I'm in the middle of it, and I'm doing a good job because I knew this was how it's going to be. Or I have some tools to help ease the process along the way. Anytime we can learn about our own health and women's health in general, to improve our own and to help others, it's going to make us stronger as individuals and stronger as a community as we share. So that is all for today. As always, you are doing so much better than you think you are, and we'll chat next week.