Menopause, Gut Health & Hormones: Why Your Body Is Speaking Louder in Midlife with Cindy | Hot Flushes & Higher Self

0:05 Soraya: So hi Cindy, welcome to the podcast. So firstly, could you share just a little bit about your journey, both personally and professionally, and what led you into supporting women through midlife in the way that you do today?

0:58 Cindy: Well, I think first and foremost, I'm old.

Cindy’s personal menopause story & early experience

1:04 Cindy: So um I have my own.

1:11 Soraya: Because you look great.

1:12 Cindy: Thank you. I'm 68. So, you know, I have my own journey, my own experience, of course. And then I have the experience with my own clients. And I got my degree in dietetics and food administration like a long, long, long, long time ago. I never did anything with it. I had my family, I worked with my then husband and he used car business, so kind of a departure from what my degree was in. But when I was in my early 40s, I went through a divorce. So kind of a stressful time in my life, a big change and upheaval.

1:51 Cindy: And um, and during that time, I actually threw myself into menopause. I went from, you know, having a period to not having a period and it never came back. And I I did that by the, you know, just the amount of stress that I was experiencing, and also I lost too much weight. And so my body just says, We don't have enough fat or cholesterol to make hormones here. And even when I, you know, put it back on, my body was done. It just didn't start working again. So I went from uh menstruating to not menstruating.

2:29 Cindy: I think it was just, it wasn't you know a slow deal, it just happened with the click of the fingers. And right about that time was the women's health initiative. So no one was talking about you know, perimenopause and menopause 25 years ago. No one was talking about it. So I didn't think anything about it, and I was lucky in that I really didn't have a whole lot of debilitating symptoms. Um, I did have some night sweats and maybe some hot flashes, and I was an anxious mess, but I contributed that more to what was going on in my life at the time.

3:07 Cindy: So I think I was pretty lucky. I am a functional medicine practitioner. I've been in practice, private practice for um about 20 years, and how I found functional medicine was I was searching two things basically. I wanted to get back on the body. I think the body is a very amazing, amazing machine. And I did end up being a yoga instructor. I went through yoga training right about that time, but I wanted to get back into helping people, not just with nutrition, even though that's where my background is, but I knew there was something more.

3:44 Cindy: And I happened to go to a lecture and happened to pick up the book by Dr. Mark Hyman, who's been in the functional medicine space for a long time, and then circuitously ended up finding um a week-long training in functional medicine here in California. And once I went there, I went, This is my tribe. I found it. It makes so much sense. It helped me heal myself and it helped and has helped me heal my clients. And for those of you, I mean, functional medicine has been around for a while. I kind of got in early, actually, when you think about it.

4:20 Cindy: Yeah.

4:20 Soraya: Before you go on, Cindy, for those of listeners who don't know what is functional medicine, you can just break that down.

4:27 Cindy: I mean, we've got natural paths, we got functional medicine. Functional medicine, which maybe differs if if you want to say that, is that we look at the root cause. And I mean, what does that mean, right? We we look at why a person's body is out of balance, why they have disease, and that's what happens when we're out of balance. Okay, we get into be a disease state, which is very west different from Western medicine. And as I've been doing this for a long time, it's kind of like we're detectives, all right, and we connect dots, and there's so many different layers and so many different dots to connect.

5:05 Cindy: And um, I have learned that we all need a team, not one person can connect those dots for you, okay? We kind of have to have a team and different healers on that team that come about it in different ways. So that is what I do is um help people connect the dots and get the help that they need in order to fix their terrain.

What is functional medicine? (explained simply)

5:31 Cindy: And that's a word that's coming up for me a lot lately is people always want to kill something, you know. It's like we want to kill the bacteria, or we want to, you know, kill the cancer. And it's like, well, what about the terrain? If we change that terrain, guess what? Those things can't take hold, that disease can't take hold. So, anyway, that is how I got into functional medicine. That's how I got into one of the reasons why I got into the perimenopause and menopause space. Um, I mean, I was helping men and women, but it wasn't until about seven years ago, maybe, kind of just before this whole menopause, perimenopause thing took off in social media and in the press.

6:16 Cindy: Um, I was watching my clients, my women, who I knew how they ate, I knew their lifestyle, I knew all of that, but we're still losing some ground. And I'm going, okay, what? I'm missing something here. And then also looking at my contemporaries and watching them, you know, in pain, losing their vitality, losing their joy of life, being in the doctor's offices way, way too much. So looking at all of that, I said, you know, I gotta look a little bit farther into this. And I got what was really fortunate.

6:58 Cindy: And when I was 50, so that was about seven years after I went into menopause, some doctor, and I can't even remember who it was, I didn't ask for it, but thank God I found her because she put me on bioidentical hormones. It was a cream and it was a biestradense. So it was estradiol and estriol. And that's what they were doing. If anyone was giving out HRT at that point in time, they were often doing a very low dose and doing the bias because the estriol part of estrogen is a is a family. There's three estrogens: estradiol, estrone, and estriol.

7:40 Cindy: And it's really important for women to know that. I don't think we're gonna go in uh into that in this, but I highly recommend women know about this because it makes a difference to have an understanding of why there's so much confusing stuff out there. So, anyway, so I was put on that at age 50, and I was on that until that same dosage, everything, until probably about four years ago. And that's when I started, you know, after I've been researching for a while, I said, you know what, I need to change when I'm on because I don't think this bias thing is for me.

8:18 Cindy: And then there was uh a cohort of doctors and practitioners that were into this physiological type of level, bringing your blood levels up to a physiological level.

Why symptoms in midlife are not random

8:29 Cindy: Now, when you hear that word physiological, that can mean many, many different things depending on your doctor. That's something I've learned. But in this particular cohort, it was to basically, it's kind of like the Wiley protocol, what they do is they mimic your estrogen and progesterone psycho throughout the month as if you were fertile. And so they'll get your estrogen levels up pretty high at one point in the month. And I did that for a couple of months, and I'm going, I really don't like this.

9:00 Cindy: And then we tested my levels, and I'm like, I mean, my estrogen levels were huge, huge, huge, huge, way, way, way up there. And so I decided, no, I'm not gonna do this. I'm gonna do a static dose with estrogen and um really bring it down. So but it the reason why I did it, I kind of wanted to hack it. So I had the experience so that something that I could discuss and have discernment with with my own clients. So I am still on hormone replacement therapy. I probably will until the day I die. And I'm getting a huge pushback from my new doctor, and she's young.

9:39 Cindy: And because I try to teach my clients how to be advocates for themselves, I'm trying to be an advocate for myself within the system and to see how far I can get. So I would like to, you know, run and find another doctor with which in within my HMO might be difficult to do. But I think there's other doctors out within the HMO that probably would be able to work with me. But I thought, you know what, let me see how far I can get with her. And this is a learning experience for me, and it's you know, just another level of knowing what my own clients and what other women are, you know, up against.

10:24 Cindy: And it's intimidating a little bit. And I know, you know, I know this stuff.

10:29 Soraya: Going back to your clients, so what are some of the most common symptoms women come to you with when they come to see you?

10:35 Cindy: I deal more with menopausal, postmenopausal women than I do perimenopause. But the perimenopause, often it'll be the weight gain that starts to come on, it will be the the inability to sleep, it will be um, of course, the hot flashes, the night sweats, the loss of libido, um, but vaginal dryness.

Common menopause & perimenopause symptoms women experience

10:54 Cindy: I would say those are the big ones, but also um uh brain fog. And I don't get so much the clients that are depressed, but I would say that I get more of the clients that are anxious.

11:11 Soraya: Yeah.

11:12 Cindy: And because actually digestion and gut is kind of my specialty, I will get more women coming in with gut issues, which is not uncommon as we start moving in to perimetopods. A lot of women don't realize that when we start losing our hormones, I mean estrogen in particular, but progesterone too, estrogen affects every single body system, you know, organ in our bodies. And so it's important to have that understanding and how it works in the brain, it works in the digestive system and all that. So then we can kind of have an understanding of how to support our bodies.

11:51 Cindy: And genetically, we're all different, our life is different, and so it's gonna hit each woman in a different way.

11:59 Soraya: Okay, and so as you mentioned, you take a root cause approach. How is that different from what many women experience from more conventional roots?

12:14 Cindy: If they are not with a savvy doctor, um well, what most doctors will do, especially if you're perimenopause, okay, and not into menopause. I think the UK might be a little bit more um farther along than we are here, but often an anti-anxiety medication will be dished out, or antidepressive medication, or um just bear with it, it'll get easier as you move into menopause. And in some ways that's true. I mean, your your hormones are no longer all over the place. Um if you've lost your libido, have a glass of wine.

12:54 Cindy: If you're not sleeping, take the sleep aid. I mean, so there's all these different patches, right? These different quick fixes that um will be given to a woman. And you know, that can help them through the spell of things, but just like even if HRT is offered to them, and in my opinion, in perimenopause, often I I'm glad if a doctor is open to it, but if it's too young and she's experiencing a lot of these symptoms, I think we're missing a great opportunity to find out what's going on.

Gut health, digestion & hormones in midlife

13:35 Cindy: In other words, you know, what is her thyroid really doing? What are her adrenals really doing? Um, what is her diet like? What is her iron? What's her ferriter? There's so many different layers and so many different things to look at that often are not looked at. So we miss that window of opportunity. We really do. When, you know, and I say that, you know, HRT, obviously, I'm a proponent of HRT, it's a very individualized decision. But I feel like HRT is the icing on the cake, all right? It's kind of like if we just slap on metformin or we slap on an antidepressant or something like that, but we're not taking care of what's going on below the surface, there it's all far reaching.

14:22 Cindy: Okay, we're we're our bodies are not siloed, it's all connected. So we're treating the symptom basically. Now, I do think hormones is a little bit different from medications. I do believe that. But um if we're not looking at lifestyle, if we're not looking at the stress levels, if we're not looking at body movement, if we're not looking at toxic load and toxic exposure, if we're not fixing the gut, if we're not doing really good lab work, you can put on that HRT, but just like any other medication, if we don't handle what's going on, guess what?

14:58 Cindy: You're gonna be on another medication fairly soon. Yeah.

15:04 Soraya: So so what well, why do you feel that so many women feel dismissed or unheard during paramenopause and menopause?

15:12 Cindy: Because they are dismissed and unheard.

15:16 Soraya: Why is that why? That's a really reason. Okay, but why? Um because they are, you're right, but why? Obviously, you know, they're not being listened to.

15:26 Cindy: Unfortunately, because we've had basically close to three decades of practitioners not being educated at all in perimenopause and menopause and or HRT. Okay. So once the Women's Health Initiative came out, the erroneous results from that, um, which was in 2003, and they immediately stopped the um the trials, okay. It was on thousands of women. And this this erroneous result came out. There's only one arm that they did stop, actually, initially, and it was the estra estrogen and progestin, okay, arm of the trial.

16:16 Cindy: They had placebo, they had the um estrogen, progestin. You notice how I'm pronouncing progesterin, not progesterone, because it's two very, very different things. And too many people, and even in reports, say progesterone when in fact it is progestin that was used in the trial or whatever, and progestins are not bioidentical to our body, so it operates differently. So again, there's three arms: the estrogen only, the progestin and estrogen, and then the placebo group, and it was the progester progesterone, progestin, excuse me, and estrogen group.

16:59 Cindy: And by the way, by the way, the estrogen that they used in this study was from pregnant horses, mares, okay, that it was from their urine.

Why women feel dismissed in menopause (Women’s Health Initiative impact)

17:11 Cindy: So again, that wasn't bioidential, and it was oral, and it's not something that we use now. It's all transdermal, pretty much, pretty much, that is used and bioidentical now. So this this it was a cancer stare scare in the estrogen and brigestin group, and so they said it causes cancer. First of all, non-bioidential, right? Secondly, it was statistically insignificant, the amount. So they've been walking this back and re-examining this trial ever since. But what happened was is that doctors immediately stopped prescribing, women immediately stopped their hormones, and since there's really nothing to teach doctors, right, and women's health, what could they do but slap on an antioxidant, slap on this, right?

18:02 Cindy: And so we're using different pharmaceuticals, including for bone health and everything else, from that point on. So there is no training, there's still still that fear that HRT causes cancer, which it does not, biodential, there's absolutely no studies supporting that. And then there's the idea that you can only be on it for 10 years, and then you have to go off of it. And if you haven't been on it for the first 10 years of menopause, then it's too dangerous to go on it. And it's like, show me a study that actually supports that.

18:43 Cindy: So there's so much conflicting information and very untrained practitioners, and some women are left trying to figure this all out on their own, and there's no way you're going to be able to figure this all out on your own. You need really good people in your court to help you advocate for yourself and guide you. And that's basically what I do for my clients because I can't prescribe hormones. A lot of my clients are on hormones, and then I help them ask for what they need and get what they need.

19:16 Soraya: Yeah.

19:17 Cindy: So it's unfortunate. I guide them, yes. I I become their advocates and um and discuss things with them so they can feel like they have agency for themselves, whatever their decision is. And I would say it would be the same thing, like if my one of my clients is, you know, prescribed a statin, let's say, which I hate statins, especially for women. And high cholesterol is not the issue with heart disease, it's it's inflammation. And if you give a woman estrogen, estradiol, her cholesterol will immediately go down.

20:01 Cindy: Okay. And the reason being is that our bodies will make more cholesterol during perimenopause and menopause for a couple different reasons. One, it's a backbone of our sex hormones. And so our body's still on estrogen, it's still screaming for estrogen. And there's different tissues in our body which do make a type of estrogen. It's called estrone. And we make it in our breast tissue. Our bodies will want to start putting on more weight around the middle area because, again, that can be aromatized.

20:33 Cindy: That fat can be aromatized to that estrone. Estrone is the inflammatory form of estrogen. So I said there's three estrogens in a family, types of estrogens in that family. So estrogen is something that our bodies still make. Okay. We'll still make a little bit of estrodiol from our adrenals as well. But you know, people don't realize too that estrogen helps our body become stay um insulin and sensitive and metabolically healthy. Okay. So when that goes down, we'll start seeing, you know, more issues with A1C.

21:11 Cindy: We'll see more issues of woman moving towards diabetes. So then we've bit the metformin. So and before what I like to recommend is before any of my clients goes on a medication, talk with me so we can talk through it so you understand the pros and the cons, and maybe some of the things that we can do that we can try before going on it, because all prescription medications, with the exception in my opinion, uh bioidentials, um, usually shut down something else. And so, you know, people sixty five, seventy will be on three, four, five different medications.

21:50 Cindy: We're not really taking care of the pr uh the root problem.

21:54 Soraya: We're not getting to it. Well yeah, it goes back to the big pharma, right?

22:00 Cindy: Big pharma is really big. And then that's another reason I can't write it.

22:04 Soraya: It's a big market, yeah.

22:05 Cindy: It's a big market. And you know, the interesting thing is that I don't know how much money there is in bioidentic bioidentical hormones. I mean, the patch can be patented because of the delivery system, not because of the hormone that's on there. So if you have creams and maybe injections and things like that, guess what? Big pharma ain't making money.

22:31 Soraya: That's why I'm sure there's a no side effects either. A lot of the big pharma, there's a lot of side effects, which, you know, as you know, is more expensive and worse than the actual original issue you're dealing with.

HRT, bioidentical hormones & the confusion women face

22:43 Cindy: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah.

22:45 Soraya: Right. So, Cindy, you connect gut health, hormones, and emotional well-being. How are they all linked together?

22:54 Cindy: Well, the interesting thing of well, gut health is kind of a a couple, it's it's layered a little bit, but um we can have women who maybe have had issues throughout their whole lives a little bit. That's kind of their spot where things show up, really get bad. And again, one of the things that estrogen does is it helps with our tissue, right? So it helps, it makes collagen. And collagen helps with our sphincters, right? Work well or with our ligaments. So we have sphincters throughout our entire digestive system to make sure that things stay where they're supposed to stay and open when they're supposed to open.

23:38 Cindy: Estrogen is also so we can have more heartburn, right? We can have maybe a weekend sphincter, we have more heartburn. Well, okay, so let's kind of, you know, you give a mouse some muffin. Have you ever read that book or had a child? You give a mouse a muffin, and when you give a mouse a muffin, then they have to have some milk. And then when they get the milk from the refrigerator, then they spill seal the milk. So there's just a whole cascade of things that happen. So you give someone a PPI or something to, you know, bring down their acid, well, then all of a sudden, their minerals aren't available to them.

24:12 Cindy: Their B vitamins aren't available to them because we need stomach acid. They're not breaking down the protein the way they should be, because we need stomach acid to do that. Um, we're not sterilizing our food the way we need to, because we need stomach acid to do that, right? So right there, we're starting a whole cascade of things that could possibly happen. Possibly they become iron deficient. Um, or again, we need iron, we need zinc, we need all of that for our thyroid. We need a proper amount of B vitamins, B12, and folate in order for methylation, for detoxification, and for brain health.

24:52 Cindy: So we can open up a whole can of worms by just giving a woman a PPI when maybe all she needed was some estrogen to help with her flapper. You know, I don't know. It could be it's a place to work. Look, the other thing that um estrogen is plays a big role in is the production of choline. Why does choline even make a difference, right? We need choline in order for brain health, but we also need choline to make something called bile. And people think of bile, that green stuff you throw at. Well, actually, bile is made in your liver, and I call it liquid gold because it really is for what it does for us.

25:33 Cindy: So there's so much that goes on in our liver, the detoxification, everything is kind of gets churned up and put back together in a certain way, and then it gets attached to our bile, and then that bile moves from our liver up to our gallbladder stored there, and then when we have food coming into the small intestine, that bile is trickled out into the top of the small intestine and the functions of the bile to break down and help absorb our fat, and then to um again sterilize our food a little bit more, and then the bile, you know, all those toxins are attached to it.

26:13 Cindy: So we want that bile to continue moving through the digestive system all the way out into our poops. That's really what happens. And bile is also essential for the proper peristalsis of the digestive system. So there's a lot of different things that can affect peristalsis, and bile is one of them. So if we lose our estrogen, some women, it depends on genetics, and I I'm one of them, um, the production of choline and bile can go down, and we can all of a sudden have more bloating, more constipation, be more susceptible to SIBO, which is a small intestinal bowel bacterial overgrowth.

26:56 Cindy: So we can have a whole lot of things that go on from there. So there are certain supplements that you can take to help support with that production. Um, so you know, leaky gut, our uh lining, our gut lining is one cell layer thick. And again, this has to do with collagen and skin and protecting all that. If we start having leaking gut, we'll start having all of a sudden all of these food allergies. We have food intolerances. It's like okay, so we can start restricting, right?

Root cause vs quick fixes in conventional medicine

27:30 Cindy: We can go on the FOD map for months and months and months, we can start taking one food after another. And when I start seeing my clients do this and/or they want a food allergy test, I discourage them from that because if we have a real inflammatory issue in the digestive system, if I do a food allergy test, of course you're going to come back with a lot of food allergies. How about if we start fixing things and then you get to see what you can bring back in? So there can be a lot of food restricting.

28:01 Cindy: And so what eventually happens too that affects our social life, but it also affects our nutrients that we're taking in and utilizing. So again, this is this whole big broad picture. Did I answer that?

28:17 Soraya: Yeah, there's a lot of information there. So a lot. Um, no, it's great. So another question I have is how much of what women experience in midlife is connected to stress and the nervous system?

28:30 Cindy: And I know this is something that the where you shine, and I know you have a lot of people on your podcast that talk about this, which is so important because I tend to talk about the body systems and the functions, and you can't separate that from what's going on in our heads and the stress and all that. But I I my focus is more on that, but stress is such a driver. And I and I know it is because I see it in my clients. I know it is because I still watch it in me. And I want to go, how old am I?

29:06 Cindy: When is this gonna stop? When am I gonna learn? Um, but it's huge. And I find it if we don't handle the stress part of it, we're only gonna get so far. And I know from a digestive point of view, you know, you know, you got that vegas worn nerve coming down. And if we have something stuck either there or we have something stuck in our digestive system, that vagus nerve just really gets out of whack. And it's it stimulates that fight or flight. And you know, a lot of people think of stress as just coming from the outside, right?

29:53 Cindy: Um, it happens in our own heads and our thought processes, but stress also happens in our body from if something is out of whack, like we have an inflammatory situation in our bodies, we don't realize how much that taxes our adrenals and shoots up our cortisol, too. So we can have someone that has diabetes or moving towards diabetes and they're eating great and they're exercising and they're doing all the right things. But since that cortisol will push that glucose up, that can be a root cause of why someone's blood sugar is off.

30:30 Cindy: Not necessarily what they're eating, not necessarily you know, they're sleeping, they're getting their exercise, but their blood sugar is still not being regulated. So that would be an underlying root cause for some people. So stress is huge. And you know, I was listening to one of your podcasts, I forget who it was with, who was talking about the lymph, who was talking about the fascia and all of that. And I mean, I'm asking so okay.

31:02 Soraya: Yeah, she's just punch fascia release.

31:04 Cindy: Yes, and it's something actually I'm very interested in. So if she was here over the pond, I would probably look her up because I you know we all find our ways, right?

The link between gut health, nutrients & hormone balance

31:16 Cindy: When we're ready to, but I kind of get, you know, that that's kind of maybe uh another step for me that would be really helpful. So we there's so many different modalities, so many different healers that absolutely.

31:29 Soraya: But I do feel, you know, women, especially midlife, do hold on to a lot of stress. I feel we have so many roles to play as you know, mothers, wives working, trying to keep everything together. I I think I see more and more in that for my clients, older clients, is kind of like it's a buildup of all the stress over seven years.

31:49 Cindy: It it is a buildup, and you know, and I'm this might be a very old-fashioned um point of view, and some of your viewers, listeners may want to throw a tomato at me, and that's okay. And this is just my own point of view, it's not anyone else's, maybe. But you know, because of the age that I am, I am really grateful for the women's feminist movement, okay? Super grateful because I had the opportunity to work a job, to get an education, and you know, be a mom if I wanted to, whatever I wanted to do, okay, pretty much.

32:35 Cindy: So that our generation, I think that opened up that door, and then I feel if I'm wrong, please correct me. That from about 45 up to maybe high 50s, which is what Gen X.

32:56 Soraya: I don't know what we're called to be on this. Is it Gen, I don't know.

32:59 Cindy: I've lost either Gen X or Gen Z.

33:00 Soraya: I think it's Gen Z, yeah, I don't know.

33:03 Cindy: Okay. You guys are so fierce and so I want to say strong, but yet we're seeing the leaks, the holes in the dikes, right? But so many of you have had careers, which is different from a job, right? And at the same time, raise children, run a household, and everything else. And I think the difference is there's that expectation that you're supposed to do all of those at the same time. Yeah. Can I cuss? Absolutely. No, but yeah. That's bullshit. That's bullshit. I know. I mean, you can do maybe one or the other, or tone down something, or you gotta hire somebody who's gonna take care of all those things, all that scheduling and all that everything else, because you're one person, and so I think we're seeing more cancers at a younger age.

34:09 Cindy: I mean, we really didn't see it until actually menopause, and it's women who were not on HRT, by the way. That's when we see it. And by the way, um, the biggest killer for postmenopausal women is not cancer, but it's heart disease. So, and estrogen plays a huge role in atrocosic oxide and healthy hearts and healthy blood vessels. But going back to the stress part and what you guys go through, um, I think we're seeing more women um feel the symptoms of perimenopause more so than our generation, I think.

34:48 Cindy: And again, are more thyroid disease, more cancers, more everything because of environmental, but also the stress factor. So if I could, I'd reach out across the screen and take hold of everyone's shoulders here and go be kinder and nicer and breathe and you know, I know you're spinning, but try to give yourself a break. And you know, economics are different too. I I get all that, but it is such a load that is on your generation, and I think even you know, the younger generation, like in their 20s and maybe low 30s.

35:36 Cindy: I mean, we're seeing more and more people have children less and less, and at definitely an older age, right? They weren't told that they were supposed to do it at the same time. And I think you're I'm making an assumption, your generation, you were told to do it all at the same time. And it's like, no, it doesn't work that way. So I'm hoping that we'll eventually find that balance.

Stress, cortisol & the nervous system in midlife

36:01 Soraya: Yeah, I can't see that happening. I feel like I do completely agree with what you're saying. I think my generation is so much pressure to do everything and to juggle everything and to be perfect, everything. And I think social media doesn't really help because we see all these other women having these great lives and you know, having really tidy homes and well-cooked meals and the kids all put together. You know, your career is so it is really there's so much pressure. And I feel like what happened back then with the women's rights, actually, I think we kind of stabbed ourselves in the back because back then women were at home taking care of the families and the men would go out to work.

36:42 Soraya: Whereas when now women are expected to do everything, expected to work, plus take care of the families. And you know, this I mean, I you know raise my children from the previous marriage, so I have all of that. Plus, I work, plus I manage the home, plus I did laundry, but it does take its toll. And you do feel, and I think that's why I see my clients as well. So that's why I feel quite passionate about this work because we do have to be kinder to ourselves as women and kind of you know, give ourselves grace.

37:11 Soraya: We are doing a really good job, and we forget that we're very harsh on ourselves.

37:16 Cindy: Very harsh, very harsh. Yeah, yeah.

37:19 Soraya: And it's just trying to live up to the standards, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we didn't have this before, before this internet and everything else, you know, we had a lot simpler lifetime. I think my mom back then would have had it easier than what we have it now, trying to do so much and play all these roles.

37:38 Cindy: I'm in total agreement with you. And if you talk to women maybe in their 70s, 80s. I still think women in their 70s had the choice. I think that's the operative word, the choice. So the women's movement gave us choice, but then it morphed into in order to be a true woman, you had to be all these things. So you're right. It the stress level wasn't there. I mean, I worked part-time when I had kids, which is something I chose to do, and you know, I helped out too, but um I didn't have a career, I didn't, I wasn't working full-time, and that was a nice mix.

38:27 Cindy: It was a very, very nice mix. I was very grateful for and I didn't have the stress that you guys have.

38:32 Soraya: Yeah, it's whereas now, like financially, you need to work as well. It's not enough just one parent working, and it's about trying to be there for your children and you know, do all of the stuff for self-care for yourself. It's so many things we're trying to juggle, and it's no wonder that we're experiencing, you know, perimenopause, menopause, where it's amplified, like you said earlier. I feel by the yeah, I think it is.

39:00 Cindy: Your body's screaming by about mid-40, it starts to scream.

39:06 Soraya: Yeah, and that's why a lot of my clients at that age, they have a lot of anger. This repressed anger is all coming out because they're holding, you know, as women in general, we are peacekeepers and carers. We keep quiet, you know, thinking it'll be better. But what happens is it's like a dam opens and the water comes gushing out, and that's you know, really like the midlife crisis. I think that's probably the opportunity for to really express yourself, right? You don't really care so much.

39:36 Cindy: You don't care so much, and the filters do come off partially because you don't have the reserves left to care. They're just not there. The filters just kind of go off a little bit.

39:54 Soraya: Yeah, it does. But you know, it's so important though, because you know, as you know, the body it does store stuff and it has to come out somewhere. That's how you know the disease is happening, also.

40:06 Cindy: Yeah.

40:06 Soraya: Would you agree as well, Cindy? It's like the body's holding on to stuff and people get sick.

40:10 Cindy: Yes, totally. And and you know, some people say, well, I get this because of the genetics. No, the genetics will show where is it will show where it shows up, where the disease shows up, but it's not the cause of your disease.

Why modern women feel more overwhelmed than ever

40:25 Cindy: No. It'll just is just where we'll take where we tend to see it. That's all. That's where the genetics might come in to play with that. But no, a diseased body is an imbalanced body, definitely.

40:39 Soraya: And it's like you were saying earlier about getting to the root cause to understand where that's coming from, right? As opposed to just putting on the bandage.

40:46 Cindy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's really important. And you know, it's really hard for us as individuals to track that root cause. Um and I'll admit this, I I saw my labs the other day, well, actually in January, and I was a little surprised at some things. And then I went on holiday, as you guys would say, um, for a little over two months, and I felt like there was a shift. And so I wanted to redo my labs, and I kind of went, well, that's not what I expected. So then I paused and I went, okay, so what's happened in this last year, right, that could possibly precipitate this?

41:32 Cindy: And you know, I feel good, but if I'm looking back over the year and I did use the help of chat, and and I think chat is good, Google is good, but I know how to prompt it, I knew what to feed it, I knew what add-on questions to ask, all of this. And it was helpful to have a machine or whatever you want to call it or somebody else to listen all that and then put it in front of me and to put it in perspective and go, oh, okay, this makes sense, and we're not quite out of the weeds yet, we're not quite out of the woods.

42:17 Cindy: And if I didn't have that ability to see that and to understand it, and I know when I go meet see my doctor next week, probably what she wants to say, I wouldn't be equipped to with the understanding that my body can probably write itself. I just probably need to tweak and give it a few more things right now. Um, one is supporting the adrenals, funny thing. Um, and we do tend as women to get through life to shut these things that happen down, right? So we get sick, shut it down. This happened, oh okay, we're done with that now.

43:03 Cindy: But we don't realize that there is a layered effect to that, and sometimes it's helpful for someone to actually show us those layers to go, okay, I understand. And it's helpful to understand that it took a while to get there, it might take a little while to bring it back. So we silo, we go okay. I acknowledge that, gotta move on.

43:33 Soraya: Right. Yeah, so are there a few uh simple daily practices that you often recommend that can make a real difference to listeners?

43:44 Cindy: I think so. Yeah, I think getting up in the morning and not reaching for your phone. And just I know, and I'm guilty too, but just spending a few.

43:57 Soraya: We all are though, but yeah, but it makes a difference when you say. Away from it.

44:01 Cindy: It does. So get up, go pee, go sit somewhere, put a timer on for five minutes or whatever, and then go get your phone. But just that five minutes of just listening to the sounds around you. So you're present in your body. And maybe even thinking about just one or two things that you're grateful for. I know it sounds cheesy, but it does help. No, it's not cheesy at all.

44:26 Soraya: I'm a great advocate for gratitude. I mean, research shows how powerful that is, just using, you know, it's a muscle we train as well, the gratitude.

44:35 Cindy: You know what? It is a muscle. It is a muscle. And and I know, you know, and I have the ability to do this because of where I live, but getting outside every day, and you know, I'm looking outside my window and I've got trees and I have a trail out here. I'm very fortunate. And I try to get outside every day. I think that's important. I do think some type of because I'm a physical person, meditating for me, if I'm not moving, is hard for me.

Midlife anger, emotional release & the body holding stress

45:10 Cindy: So to me, yoga or tai chi, something like that is a moving meditation. So you are pulled into your body. You have to think, you have to be on your mat to do the certain postures and poses and be aware and breathe. And I think that's super important too. You know, at another level, I think yoga and that type of thing is really important because it moves limp. And we get stagnant, right? We don't move the limb. So I think that's really important. And and even just watching again, my contemporaries, um, I feel something like yoga, I don't care what kind, is super important to keep our joints juicy and to keep us mobile.

45:56 Cindy: To keep us mobile. So yeah, and the first thing in the morning, just take a pause, take a breath, take a breath. If you can, even 10 minutes of yoga is beneficial, or 10 minutes of movement, you know, here and there throughout the day. It just allows us to take a pause.

46:19 Soraya: That's great advice. Um, what does sustainable supportive self-care look like in real everyday life?

46:26 Cindy: Will you repeat that, please?

46:28 Soraya: Yeah. What does sustainable supportive self-care look like in real everyday life?

46:34 Cindy: That's a really good question. And I'm trying to be realistic. What do you do, Cindy? What do I do? Okay. You know what I've done recently? And I know not every most women probably listening to this are not in this position to do this, and I get it. So that's why I'm hesitant. But I have cut my workday down to about five hours a day, and sometimes four hours a day, and I might work a little bit more on Saturday or something like that. I might not be the best example. But what I try to do is make sure that I do get my yoga or body movement in.

47:13 Cindy: Okay. So there is a schedule, there is a time slot in my day where I carve that out. And if I find that it's really difficult for me to do that for too long, it's like if I'm away from that for two or three days, I do stop and go, okay, what do I need to adjust here? What do I need to give up? Not give up, but what can I say I I I don't need because this is so important. So I guess if you're finding that you are not doing the things that you feel like are important for you because of time or energy or something else, you know, sit back and really look at that and go, okay, what is realistic?

48:00 Cindy: And what 10 to 20 minutes can I adjust over here? Sometimes it's just taking those little increments so that we can do the things that we know that we need, that we know is important for us. So it's a give and take, it's a bargaining and negotiation, I think all the time. So I don't know if that's helpful. Um, like I said, not everyone's in the same position where they can do that. I just think we have to prioritize things and whatever that is for us. And it can change from month to month, from week to week, from year to year.

48:38 Cindy: So checking in with yourselves and asking yourself, what is the most important thing for me right now?

48:48 Soraya: No, that's good advice. I think that's I think a lot of us is always rushing to the next thing to do.

48:55 Cindy: Yeah.

48:55 Soraya: That we lose really track of what we actually want to do.

48:59 Cindy: Yes.

Genetics vs lifestyle: what really drives disease

49:00 Cindy: I still do. Yeah. I still do. I lose my way too, and you would think I wouldn't, but I do.

49:08 Soraya: We're humans, aren't we? So we we that's what we do.

49:11 Cindy: We are we are humans. So yeah. Um, and some of us are later bloomers than others.

49:20 Soraya: Yeah, but I think it's again going back to just giving ourselves grace, you know. We all have stuff going on. We have an idea of what we would like to do, but sometimes life gets in the way. But it's about kind of finding our way back to what it is that we want to be doing.

49:35 Cindy: It is funnier way, and I love that word grace. And I have a course, okay, and it's called Grace in Transition. Um, it's for women of a certain age, which is perimenopause menopause. And I think that word grace resonates with me a lot because you're right. I'm in total agreement with you. We need to give ourselves and each other that.Yeah.

50:00 Soraya: Yeah. And what's lighting you up most in your work at the moment, Cindy?

50:06 Cindy: What am I enjoying the most is working with my paramenopause and menopausa women, but also I just mentioned the Grace and Transition course. And I launched that for the first time a year ago. And it's a course that I absolutely love for a couple of reasons. Because I can reach more women, right? And give them what they need without them spending a ton of money. That's one thing. The other thing I love to teach, I'll teach an audience of one and educate. So this is a beautiful venue for me. It's all about me.

50:45 Cindy: Um, and the other thing is it is a community. So the women that do enroll in this were in a community for eight weeks, which is wonderful. So we get to share, and I like creating that, and then I like to continue that community afterwards. So I think the biggest thing that I'm enjoying right now is connecting with other women, creating community, being in a community, and um helping women get the help that they need so that moving into you know an older age, um it is still enjoyable, and I want them to know that they can be vibrant, that there's different ways of doing this.

51:35 Cindy: So that's what excites me right now. Yeah.

51:40 Soraya: And if you could leave listeners with one message about trusting their bodies and themselves, what would it be?

51:46 Cindy: Trust it. It listened to it, it is talking to you, and if you don't, it's gonna scream at you eventually.

52:00 Soraya: Yeah, great advice. And to close, as part of the podcast tradition, I've got a few questions I always ask my my guests. So, firstly, what's something your body has been teaching me lately?

52:15 Cindy: To be kinder to it, um, to listen better. We teach what we need to hear, right? What we need to know. We do, we do. Um acknowledge it. Acknowledge the be kinder to it, listen to it, but also acknowledge what it brings to me, what allows me to do.

Simple daily practices to support your body

52:39 Soraya: Thank you. And what does living as your limitless self mean to you right now?

52:44 Cindy: Oh, I the what what comes to my mind, limit less to me means taking away the thought of lack. Okay, so moving more into abundance, and again, grace. Yeah, and that just opens up everything. Scarcity, yeah, yeah.

53:11 Soraya: Getting away from scarcity into abundance, yeah.

53:14 Cindy: Yeah, yeah.

53:15 Soraya: And just lastly, how can listeners connect with you?

53:18 Cindy: You mentioned you have a program, um, Grace, living, is it Grace and it's Grace and Transition for women of a certain age. And you can get to this description of the course through my website, which is a livingbalance.net. And then if you click on Menacause Pause course, then you'll see the description. So that's one way. You can also go to my website to schedule a 20-minute chat, you know, to see if um we're a match working together. And then Instagram, I have a lot of information and helpful things, I hope, on Instagram.

54:01 Cindy: And that's Cindy C-I-N-D-Y um underscore dupuy du p-i-e. So my last name. And then oh, I do have a lab checklist for the pause years, so it's a specific um checklist that I recommend for my women in perimenopause and menopause, and it lists them in a short description as to why you want them and then how to ask your doctors for them. And I don't know how it is in the UK. If you guys can can order your own labs on your own, I don't know outside of the medical system. We can here. So if you can't get your doctor to do it, then we can get it, we can order them ourselves.

54:52 Cindy: But it's just knowing, you know, see what you can get done. I think they're really important, and that's free. And if you go to Instagram, there is a link in my bio to get that. I do have a YouTube channel, and it's uh under a Living Balance, Cindy Dupuis. So um, those are probably a good enough if you want to find me. Yeah.

55:18 Soraya: Yeah. And you're based in California, but you do have clients online. You can do work. I'm all telehealth.

55:26 Cindy: That was a really good question. Yeah, I'm all telehealth. Um, I do like to see my clients um, you know, online, either Zoom or another form of a telehealth. Um, so I get to meet you and we get to see each other. So it's all telehealth now. Yeah. Yeah. So I can see any and help anyone wherever you come from. Yeah, which is fun.

55:51 Soraya: Thanks so much for listening to Hot Flash and Hive Stop. And if something in today's episode spokes you, and if getting ready for deep support, then you can put a one-to-one section with me.

What sustainable self-care actually looks like

56:02 Soraya: I work with women around the world to help them check and stop. And if you quit your connection, I'll make up the connection.com and help me on Instagram at emptherapy. You can also reach me directly anytime at my atmstherapy.com. I'd love to connect. Take care of you, fill that cup of yours, and remember your next chapter is already unfolding.