Are you sick of spending money in menopause? According to a report from the Female Founders Fund women in North America spend an average of US$2,000 finding solutions.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Today I share many of the tips and tricks I’ve learned to feel better now from the evidence, from experts I’ve interviewed and from my own experience. This audio from the session I held in January with Hotflash inc Substack subscribers.
I hope you enjoy it.
Highlights:
Want to become a Substack subscriber and get access to 27+ years of journalism experience tackling this major life transition? Use this link to get 20 percent off to my paid membership. Or just get the free version.
Join the Hotflash Inc perimenoposse:
Web: hotflashinc.com
TikTok: @hotflashinc
Instagram: @hotflashinc
X: @hotflashinc
Episode website: Hotflashinc
See hotflashinc.com/privacy-policy for privacy information
Are you sick of spending money in menopause? According to a report from the Female Founders Fund women in North America spend an average of US$2,000 finding solutions.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Today I share many of the tips and tricks I’ve learned to feel better now from the evidence, from experts I’ve interviewed and from my own experience. This audio from the session I held in January with Hotflash inc Substack subscribers.
I hope you enjoy it.
Highlights:
Want to become a Substack subscriber and get access to 27+ years of journalism experience tackling this major life transition? Use this link to get 20 percent off to my paid membership. Or just get the free version.
Join the Hotflash Inc perimenoposse:
Web: hotflashinc.com
TikTok: @hotflashinc
Instagram: @hotflashinc
X: @hotflashinc
Episode website: Hotflashinc
See hotflashinc.com/privacy-policy for privacy information
I'd say in my forties, one of the best things I ever learned was to feel my feelings. I read somewhere, I don't know where that a lot of us think when we feel like crying is coming on, anger is coming on. We have to push it away because we think we're literally gonna get swallowed up by that emotion. I had just tremendous lows. In my experience. I had terrible, terrible morning dread. I had nightmares that woke me up in the middle of the. I, I had this reoccurring nightmare for years and years where I thought that I was dying cuz I had forgotten to take a pill that kept me alive, which was like the craziest dream. It was almost like with, if you've ever been on the birth control pill and then you realize you've forgotten one. Like that's kind of what it was like. And for a very long time, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. All of these things, made life very difficult, right? It made it difficult to get outta the house. It made it difficult to relax and get to sleep, and it made it difficult to get up in the morning because I would sort of open my eyes and then just con Kong like, Ooh. So these are some of the things I've learned so take what works for you and you know, leave the rest I really like the concept of ants. Automatic negative thoughts. I've only heard about these called it that recently, but many, many, many, like self-help books will tackle automatic negative thoughts, a concept that you have a running script in your head that is negative. And I had one that was screaming at me all the time, so we. I just let it run rampant. I didn't know. And the thing is I didn't know, cuz I remember in my forties saying I'd like to write a book called the Two U's. Like there's two u's in me. But I didn't know everyone had this or a lot of people had this and I didn't know that there was really anything I could do about it. So, um, anyway, so realizing that I had this sort of running tape of negative. There's this great psycho psychologist, psychiatrist on Instagram. He's written tons of books. Daniel Amen. He's Doc Amon. And uh, he talks a lot about these thoughts and how you can eliminate them. And he has like an ant killing process that he's come up with some from some of his mentors. He just says, write them down. Just write them down and look at them. And they are so. So I think one of the biggest things that's helped me turn things around is just realizing that my thoughts may be real, but they are not true. And, um, honestly, that was a game changer for my mood. Um, one thing that has really changed my day and the, you know, the morning dread that I had, that is definitely a perimenopause symptom, is not looking at my phone first thing in the morning. It helps my mood. Like nothing ruins my mood and my ability to concentrate. More than looking at my phone first thing in the morning. If I can manage to get up, have a shower, get ready, I can absolutely sort of over overcome the day, like get ready for the day. But if I get the phone, it just, things go absolutely sideways. So that's something else. I think, I think in perimenopause more than anything, we really need to take time to have sort of nervous system resets. And this is one of these things. Or proactive, like it's, and it's hard to do, but just sort of, Something every day that you don't hate doing. That just helps you reset and feel, get in touch with yourself and be calm. And everyone thinks of meditation, but gosh, meditation is so hard. And when your thoughts are going through your head and when you have kids and when you have a whole bunch going on, how hard is it right to meditate? So I, I have recently. Doing a bunch of other things like meditation is, is not that great for me. It never has been. Um, I'm a big whim h breather and I'm a ice bath person, so I really like the whim Hoff breathing. But even that is like I'm a little bit over at. So one of the things I wrote about recently in the newsletter was this doctoral student in India. She just presented her research to. The Iur Vida Congress that was in Goa, and she looked at the, these Indian, Indian classical music. They have this thing called Ragga, there's nothing like it in other music, but they're a framework for improvisational classical music. And so she looked at this special kind of music they have in India and it's men and women singing, but there's no
Words.
Ann Marie:And she she combined that with Ayurvedic treatments and found that it really, improved, like many different, uh, menopause symptoms. And her thesis was. The music matched the natural frequency in our body's tissues and organs, and that they actually soothed this H P o hypothalamus, pituitary, and ovarian axis that we get get so out of balance when we're in perimenopause. And I think this is really, really, really, Interesting because I've written about sound healing quite a lot in my career, and when I first moved to Abu Dhabi, I wrote about it for the newspaper I was working at, and that story sat, I mean, it was all science-based. There's a lot of evidence, but that story sat in our system for. Weeks and months. And the, and the editors were saying, there's just not evidence to run it. This is woowoo, whatever. And then one day they ran it when they needed a story. But, that was the first time I got sort of turned on to sound healing. It, it is, it's completely based in science. We are a frequency. Music is a frequency. This is a really easy way to reset your nervous system. And I know I have met people in the course of my reporting who say they've healed. They're various autoimmune disorders. Like there's a major sound healer, Sonya Gonzalez here. She was an opera singer, but she worked in the corporate world. She healed her Hashimotos, she says, with sound healing. And then she became a sound healer. And so what's the problem with just putting on some sound healing from YouTube and laying down for 10 minutes or even 20 minutes and just letting yourself sort of reset with the music. I think that's one of the things that's really helped me lately. You'll probably hear me mention. A couple of times. Andrew Huberman. I'm obsessed with him. He's gorgeous. He's a newer neuroscientist at Stanford. I died, interview him, died in, he's just like the hottest, who cares about Brad Pitt or anyone anymore, but I just read him talking about structured breathing sessions and they did some work at his lab that was just published in a journal and they talked about five minutes. Cyclic breathing. Like they tested different kinds of breathing and they stacked up better than meditation. And the best kind this, I think it, this is so cool. I've been seeing it across social media. When people say you do two breaths, like it really calms you down and it does. And that's what you do after you ball your eyes out. Like you, that's what a little kid does when they've bawled their eyes out. You know, that like they're like, It's your body, like calming yourself down. So when you do that cyclically for five minutes, it helps with everything. Sleep, mood and heart rate variability even inside your body. Absolutely essential as I've gotten older is, this is also gonna sound woowoo. Okay, this is gonna sound woowoo, but grounding, there's, this is also based in science. I, this is very hard if you're in a place where there's snow on the ground, I understand, but if I don't get outside, there's a park near my house. I love to go there and walk with my shoes off. I'm the crazy lady walking with my shoes off, and then I sit on the ground for like 5, 10, 15 minutes, whatever. This calms me down. This helps me sleep. If I don't do this for a couple days, I start to feel full crazy. I start to just feel like I'm like taking off. There are. There. There, there are lots of studies that look at grounding. It's not a crazy thing like there were a review of a dozen studies in 2015 published in the journal, inflammation Research. They found reductions in pain and inflammation, improvements in mood healing, wound healing. And more, but I literally will feel myself like unfurl, just calmly, calmly, calmly getting better. And when I do this combined with, you know, sort of breathing and a bit of listening to music or sound healing, these are really important things for me to keep my mood going. I'd say in my forties, one of the best things I ever learned was to feel my feelings. I read somewhere, I don't know where that a lot of us think when we feel like crying is coming on, anger is coming on. We have to push it away because we think we're literally gonna get swallowed up by that emotion. And when I read that I was like, yeah, that's it. You don't wanna cry cuz you think if you start crying you won't stop. But then I read. Literally those emotions can last for about 90 seconds. And when I realized that everything changed in my life, like, yeah, you don't wanna cry at work, you don't wanna cry in front of your husband or whatever, but if you can find a place to just like sob and let it out, then those feelings start to move through you. And I think it's really important in the, in our forties and fifties to realize, We've kept a lid on a lot of the things that happened to us when we were young. Like we didn't have to be chained to a radiator and, and abused to have had adverse childhood experiences. And that's ace. Those are thing, those, that's a recognized term. It's it's trauma of a certain kind and we didn't have to have terrible, terrible, terrible trauma to have those things come up. And I look at the forties as kind of a time. you've kept a lid on a pot and it's just sort of like getting ready to boil over. And there's so many different ways to sort of process these emotions, but I think learning to sort of cry in the moment. Is a really good start, So those are my mood recommendations. And I just wanna throw in TikTok because there's a trend that's been going around for a couple of, uh, about a week now, and of course there was a backlash to it. It's lucky girl TikTok. So I, I don't know, did anyone see the two girls in their car talking about how they're lucky and everything goes well for them? Everything goes their way. They're so cute. They're two university girls are eating noodles in their car and they're like, oh my God, everything we're, we just did tried this experiment three months ago. Like, and we just say all the time, like, we're so lucky. Everything goes our way. Now, of course, TikTok has a backlash and people are saying it's toxic cuz not every people, everyone can say that and it's ableist and it's whatever. But so many people have made videos in response to those two girls that talking about how they've just started thinking like, I'm so lucky. I'm so lucky. Everything goes my way. This is such a silly, silly thing, but it's not because all it is is just making a shift. in how you look at the world and how you think about where you are right now when it feels like things aren't going your way. It's just like, it's just this energetic like hmm. And I love it. So I just thought I had to throw out there to lucky girl TikTok, although it's getting some flack because I guess a bunch of people just deciding to be in a good mood. is too much for the world. One of the things, just keeping on the, the thread of mood, 47 was probably like, it was the worst year of my life, and it's not just me, it's everyone, like 47. There was a study a couple of years ago that 47.2 is like the absolute worst age. We have a U and that's like the bottom of the U, and then it's coming up. For me, I lost my job. I had a really big, like in the space of eight months, I lost my job, I lost my relationship and I had a really big betrayal all sort of at once, and I really like hit the ground. And I ended up sort of just almo, I'm not religious, but I ended up almost just sort of being like, you know, Jesus, take the wheel. Like I don't know what's going on and I've never been slow and I have no idea what's going on. And one of the most pivotal things I did at that time was I just started following. Like positive people, just people who, who were my age, who were just talking about around my age, who were talking about their life, like they had loads of time left. I felt like I was old, I was ugly. I was over the hill. I had, I didn't feel. Like I would be dating again. I didn't feel, you know, I lost my job. I didn't, I couldn't see what I would be doing. Stop it, and I just, started fo. I just started following people and really positive people. And one of those people is so obvious, but he's like a marketing guy. His name's Gary Vanner. Check if you're having any problems with being like a positive. Changing your positive outlook and feeling like you wanna overcome age. I, I would totally recommend him. He talks about marketing most of the time, but all the time he just talks about how much time you have left. Such a reasonable guy. I really like Dr. Amanda Hansen. I'll put this all in your cheat sheet. She's midlife muse and she just, Doesn't care about age. There's a lot of Silver Sisters and people like that on social media, but I, I don't love them so much cuz I feel like that's a lot of like thirst trapping and flexing and it's really not my alley. Like I believe I like people with a little bit more depth. I really like the ages platform. That Sky. David Stewart, he started an online magazine and a super age podcast and it's just all about our time. We have so much time left. So that's something I really wanted. Focus on. Okay, so moving on to a few more concrete things. I don't know why. There was no one talking about perimenopause and air quality. And I, I don't know. I shouldn't say, I don't know why, because I didn't know about it until last year. I was interviewing this guy, Chris Leighton, who has a company in Dubai called Air Zones, and they come into your company or your home and they check your air quality. But he opened my eyes so much. Because everyone's talking about food and exercise and hormones, and no one is talking about air, first of all, 7 million people a year globally die because of poor air quality, but we always think about outside and smog. And he said most of the problem is coming from inside the house. Like most of the air quality Is you. It's, it's what we're doing. And he said you eat food and it takes like 45 minutes for you to digest it and you eat food a couple times a day and you wouldn't eat anything like knowingly toxic except if you order a bag of popcorn from the movie theater as someone in this house has done once or twice. But he says like all the time people will use stuff in their house. They inhale it instantly and it goes everywhere in your entire body and it goes into every, it goes into your lungs and it in your heart. It goes everywhere instantly, almost. And when he said that, I was like and I'd already used sort of clean ingredients for my, my cleaning, but I was still using perfume. He mentioned like a huge one is. Scented candles, scented products, incense, all that stuff. Anything you wouldn't eat. He says, why would you use it? If you spray your counter and it's wet, that is going, you are inhaling it. Every single thing that you use in your house is going inside your body. And I know it's a lot to change if you're using toxic products. So when we breathe, we breathe over 11,000 liters of air. That's 10,997 more liters than they drink. The air we breathe in includes pollutants that we inhale past our lips and within seconds or in all major organs of our body, it goes down into the lungs, through the wall of the lungs, into the blood, and is pumped all over the body. What do you think this is doing to Essam perimenopause? Like this is something I believe that is vital for us to address. I'm addressing it in all areas, so I just wanted to pass it on to you. Okay. Now we are gonna talk about food, so, Food is a land mine and I am not a nutritionist or a dietician. I'm not a medical professional. I get confused about this all the time. Like I have been trying to figure out what to eat for the last 25 years and following this, you know, things I used to think were great. I don't, you eat now it's like, don't eat greens because they actually have toxins and you, they don't want you to eat them. I don't know, like it's so confusing. But I really like to pay attention to, uh, Michael, Paul and the journalist who says, eat real food. Not too much. That's what I like to do. And obviously we need protein. Some people say we need animal protein, if that's okay with you. Clean animal protein. Is it really good thing to eat if you're a vegan or a vegetarian? Obviously you've figured out how to do this. Um, I think one thing that's important to note is that we're very, very, Susceptible to insulin resistance, pre-diabetes. And so when we're eating, everyone is very obsessed with weight gain and weight management. And I get it. I totally get it. But I think it's just very important to pay a lot of attention to the insulin resistance pre-diabetes side of things. I had blood tests a year ago. I. I had one alarm, and so I've been paying a lot of attention to this and there's tons of noise about it on social media because pre-diabetes is like, you know, this is the beginning to all of the, you know, all of the other medical problems. This is a precursor and it can also be turned right around. So I've really enjoyed paying, following the glucose goddess on social media. she has taught me a lot. Jessica Inspe. She's a biochemist. She's also written a book called, the Glucose Revolution She taught me about food pairing, like eating fruit and protein together to minimize blood spikes. She taught me about the order of eating, vegetables and protein and fat, then carbs. And those things are very, very important. I interviewed a guy this week, Ali Hashmi. He's a doctor who co-founded a new program to manage diabetes and metabolic health in Dubai called Zone Health. He. Pre-diabetic in Covid, he was about 45 pounds overweight, so he's lost that. But his wife was pre-diabetic as well, and she was very slim and it was a huge shock to them all. And he said she was eating for breakfast every single day. Oat milk and all bra. And I was thinking, That's not a very good combination for breakfast. You know, that's like, there's no protein in there. Oat milk is sort of like a, a phony food. And I, I felt like saying like, why does the doctor have oat milk and a Brandon in his house? But, one thing she did was change to a protein breakfast. The other thing that comes with this tendency to insulin resistance like perimenopause. Can cause insulin resistance. Insulin resistance can make perimenopause symptoms worse. So this is why we really need to pay attention to. Our blood sugar. Jen Celeb Huber, she's the menopause nutritionist. She's so reasonable. So she's not into any fads or anything. But when I had her on my podcast, she said, you know, rather than obsessing about everything you put in your mouth and carbs and sugar, she said the way to manage this is to increase the energy demand. So rather than obsessing about what has sugar and what doesn't, increasing the energy demand. So that's movement. Moving, moving, moving. And that oftentimes, That means just going for a walk after every meal, or even just moving around after every meal. I'm so guilty of eating and then just like putting my plate down. I live alone so I don't often sit and eat with people and then, you know, continuing to watch Emily in Paris or whatever I was doing. But walking around movement, really makes a big difference. A new study came out just today. Researchers looked at adults in their forties, fifties and sixties. It was a small study. It was only 11 people, but when they took a five minute walk after every half hour of sitting, it lowered their overall blood glucose spike by 58% compared if they just sat all day. So it basically eliminates the risk that we had if you just got up and moved around. Half an hour for five minutes. Now. I know that's really hard if you have a sedentary job like me, but I think just even standing up and just doing a little, you know, like would go a long way. I asked my friend Andrea Dansky, she is a TikTok star. She is like almost 300,000 followers on TikTok. We did the menopause shift summit in June and we're doing another one. I just asked her what her top tip was and she mentioned something I had completely forgotten, which, that we really should be eliminating seed oils. And I don't know whether you guys, do you know about seed oils? Oils are, are, you know, your canola oils, your overly refined oils. They're unstable. They are a cause of, they contain inflammatory linoleic acid and that's associated with heart disease, cancer, dementia, a whole bunch of other health problems. And this is really confusing because a lot of. Oils when you look at them, they'll have like heart healthy labels and so it's like, what's going on? I don't wanna get into that cuz that's a whole big food situation. When we did the menopause shift summit, when I was doing the transcript of that, the experts we interviewed over and over and over, it was like seed oils, seed oils, seed oils. And you know, I realized that I was, I'm a healthy eater, but I work in coffee shops a lot and I was sort of grabbing snacks and those have seed oils. And I've started looking at all energy bars, like healthy energy balls. They always have seed oils in them, and takeout food has seed oils in it. If you're eating in a restaurant, they're probably making things with canola oil. So this is one of the best things you can do to feel better. And since I really eliminated this for my life, I feel really bad when I eat them. And I've started in restaurants just saying, can you cook that in olive oil or can you cook that in butter? Beef towel, coconut oil, macadamia, not oil. These are all things that we can use to replace can oil, oil, and, and the other bad oils. I think if you google the hatefully, you'll find the ones that you can eliminate. Okay, moving along, you have to eat carbs. Jen Hoover told me you have to eat carbs. I'm a big fan of Jay Feldman, the Energy Balance podcast. He says, you have to eat carbs. He says, it stresses your body if you don't eat carbs. I was, Reporting this, but I wasn't doing it. I was, I, for so many years, I managed my weight by, you know, cutting out carbs. And my energy was really in the toilet for a long time. And then I realized when I listened to an episode of the Energy Balance Podcast, that I had to start eating carbs. I ate, you know, I, I'm not eating like. Hamburger buns. I'm just eating sourdough bread. I'm eating rice, I'm re, I'm eating potatoes. It's sort of like pro metabolic eating and my energy, like almost within days just shot right up. And a lot of people say eat the carbs in half the day, like, eat them at night or eat them in the morning. If you eat them at night, it can help with sleep. We're gonna talk a little bit about electrolytes and minerals. Something else I don't hear people talking about very often. Electrolytes and mineral in, in terms of perimenopause. It was Jennifer Harrington. She's a naturopathic doctor in Australia who told me that she does a seven day electrolyte challenge. She says, get a really like clean, kind of electrolyte. I use Hum human, which is a brand, I think it's all over the world. I don't have any affiliation with'em. but just you don't want flavors, colors, preservatives, like there's a lot of crappy, electrolytes out there, but she does a. A seven day challenge with her clients. And she said that usually they end up having, more energy, more vitality, clarity, less brain fog, relief from dizziness and lightheadedness, and even a drop in heart palpitations. And she said, just try it for seven days. If you don't have money to get those, just use like lemon and salt and water, and that will go a long. And I actually buy like these electrolyte drops to have just in case, you know, I'm not feeling great or I don't have any of the powdery ones. And I tried her electrolyte challenge and it, it, I felt great It makes a big difference to me. And on that line, I have a friend here who is, has a, a company he imports, natural mineral water from Spain and he's like, I, I called him the water guy and he loves it. So now he's the water guy of Abu Dhabi. But I mean, if you meet him, he'll just talk your ear off about minerals and the minerals and water. And it was from meeting him and I bought his water I realized, I felt better when I drank some mineral water. I don't drink min, it's not like I'm drinking Evian, every glass that I get, but I am drinking maybe a bottle of it a day, and it really makes a difference. And I found a woman's health specialist in New Zealand who talks about this. Her name is Dr. Wendy Sweet. And she talks about this as part of her like menopause program that she does for people. She said The minerals that matter are calcium, magnesium. We know magnesium is huge for us and so many people are deficient in it. Potassium, phosphorus, sodium and chloride. And she said, all these minerals are necessary for heart, optimal heart, blood, vessel, and nerve function of the body in a body that is losing estrogen. So it's more important than ever that we pay attention to the mineral. That are in our body. And I know this isn't like a free thing and it's not even really a cheap thing if you were gonna go around drinking Evian, but I think a lot of people are buying like soda, water laqua. Just make sure that it's mineral water. And, and if you're gonna drink that, drink it every day. Some of it like not, you know, like a glass and just see what happens. It makes a huge difference in my life and when I don't have it, when I go home to Canada, you know, when I stay with my dad, he's, he's not really interested in me getting fancy bottled water. Absolutely notice the difference. Another thing I wish people would pay attention to if I had my dream. we're gonna talk about movement and just some tips for, for helping, with perimenopause. I, I wish people would start talking about fascia and perimenopause, like I need to do a deep dive to see what's out there, but I don't think there's much, and I've been obsessed with fascia since 2007. I was a journalist at the Ottawa Sun and I wrote about trends and it was the world's first International Fascia Conference in, in Boston, and so I got obsessed with Fasha. Fasha is like all her connective tissue. Think of it kind of like the casing on a sausage. And for a long time no one thought that it did anything and they were cutting through it. And you know, basically if you didn't have fascia, you'd sort of like fall to the floor. Now so much has happened since I wrote that first article, which was very early. Like I was obsessed with fascia, but no one else was I went and got rolfed. I don't know if you know what Ralf thing is. It's this. Procedure that manipulates your fascia. I got into yoga then because one of the reasons yin yoga is so helpful is that it, it really, relaxes your fascia. Foam rolling is dealing with your fascia. I've come across a new group of people called Human Garage. They're on YouTube. I'm obsessed with them like they have fascia workouts that will help your thyroid and they're so weird and funny. Like the one in thyroid is like, you turn this finger that way and you turn that finger that way. Like they're crazy. Um, they have them to manipulate the fascia in your internal organs, but I. You know, I have a hunch that if we paid more attention to our fascia, we'd probably feel a lot better. So that is something that I really, really like to do. Um, yin Yoga, I, I love, I love glow that the program glow that is$18 a month, but I love Felicia Thomas Sacco on there and Joe Testa. Um, Foam rolling. I just do a little routine with golf balls and then I roll the back of my legs on the front of my legs and down my back. If we do those things quite regularly, like a couple times a week, it really changes the game and walking. Like there's so much evidence for walking. I just told you about that story, about the, the blood sugar. A 2020 study in the journal menopause looked at more than 3000 papers. 91% of the walking programs showed a beneficial outcome and at least one menopause related medical issue. I don't know what the 9% of walking programs that didn't show what benefit were. I don't know if people were walking sideways, I dunno. I don't know how there is not a benefit from walking. I really, we hear all the time about strength training and it's so important. It's expensive to go to a gym. Like I was going to F 45 and I was really obsessed with it and I was getting really strong and they moved away. So almost thank goodness cuz my monthly fitness bill is much less, but I'm sort of struggling with how to do all those weights. But I just recently became a big fan of the Nike Training Club workouts on. Netflix, they're 20 minutes, they're body weight exercises. They're not too hard, they're not too easy. You feel great. And as if we don't have time for 20 minutes. So lately I've just been doing those, those workouts, walking, and then I do this stretching routine, on YouTube. This woman Mady Morrison, they aren't in any language, they're just music. And there's a little beep when you have to change position. These things are game changers for me. I used to be like the craziest workout person. I would spin and do Bikram yoga and then I was doing hit, and I don't know about you, but I cannot. I cannot work out like that anymore. I just can't. I can't take it a really, like I, even the F 45 classes, there's one a week that's an hour, and if I started doing those, I would just be pretty much out for the day. So I'm sticking with walking and weights and short workouts. Okay, so this is very important. We're gonna talk about sleep. Sleep is so tricky. Who is having problems with sleep? Waking up in the middle of the night, trouble getting to sleep, waking up too early. Anyone else, like any other, I mean, what other sleep problems can you have? Like, as I know the sleep problems I have where I don't have rem sleep, like I didn't dream. I just, I wake up and I just didn't have a very good night's sleep. So essential for sleep costs, a little bit of money. Le Briden, the naturopathic doctor in New Zealand, who's one of the people I trust most in the world on all things menopause. She's so out in front of everything in her. Hormone repair manual, an amazing, amazing resource. She talks about, she has like a rescue prescription for perimenopause and menopause, and stage one is taking magnesium mentoring every night. We know that like 80% of the population is deficient in magnesium. Our soil just isn't what it was. But touring is something not very many people talk about. Touring is an amino acid that has effects on the liver, brain, and immune system. And in women, estrogen can slow down how it works. So when you add that back in, it is a game changer for sleeping. I have run out of touring. I haven't had it for about four nights. And what did I say? My sleep is not great. I'm having trouble getting to sleep, so yeah, I, I just can't recommend her combination enough. And, um, Walking, she walking too. Carbs at night. I l alluded to that before. One of the people I have interviewed is Esther Blum, an integrative dietician, in New York City. She told me to eat carbs at night because that would help me sleep. And she said, she even tells her clients sometimes to have a teaspoon of honey with salt on it before you go to bed. And it's delicious and it does help you sleep. So that's just a simple thing you can. Okay. I'm gonna go back to my buddy Andrew Huberman, He's at the forefront of the morning Light in your eyes, throw away the sunglasses. We don't need sunglasses. And this is best paired with the walk, but it doesn't matter. Just sit on your porch. Any, you don't have to stare at the sun. He says it's just a matter of getting sunlight in your eyes. If you can just do it for two minutes. This is one of the biggest game changers, and there's a whole bunch of. Behind it, but it's all about optimizing when our various neurochemicals are released. And he talks about how it's particularly important cuz it sort of regulates your dopamine release across the day and it helps to keep your cortisol and your cata catling. I think that I'm getting that right peaks to the early part of the day. And if you're not getting the morning light, you kind of get those moved throughout the day and that's where we get the trouble, sleeping. So anyway. This is everyone's having trouble with sleep. It's not just perimenopause, but this is absolutely a game changer. And if I don't get this, things start to go woo. Um, okay. No phones before bed. I don't want anyone to use their phone before bed anymore. And I think you probably know this, but some people don't. And some people swear their sleep is fine and maybe it is. But if I wanna ruin my. I'll use my phone before bed and then I'll sort of sleep. I, I won't, I won't have dreams. It won't be a good sleep. So that's another thing to keep in mind. And all of that stretching and the yin yoga and the foam rolling that I talked about, if you do that before bed, It is absolutely magical for sleep. Like I don't know why. I'll sit and watch a TV show. I'll look at the foam roller. I could just be stretching if just 20 minutes You, the difference in your sleep is so amazing. And like I told you before, I had a lot of trouble with panic attacks and nightmares, and I, for a long time would sort of like wake up like. Do you remember? I think Patricia Arquette was in that show where she was a medium and she was always like, like, like that's how I would wake up and I would be like, oh, and then the dread and the thoughts would come. So during that time, I created my own, like just sort of cobbled together my own sleep rescue remedy in the middle of the night because, I, I, all, my terrible thoughts become all the things I had to do, and it was terrifying. So this court came together over time, but in a sense, it's a bit woowoo too. So don't, like, don't judge me, but I, it works. So if I wake up in the middle of the night, If I, I know I'm waking up in the middle of the night. I take to bed with me a cup of Camile tea and I might have a few sips of it, but it's sits, it's sitting there and it's cool. Then, so I wake up in the middle of the night. I drink some of the camile tea, I lay back down. I do this thing that I read on the internet a long time ago and I can't find it, but I'm telling you, it works. If you take your wrist and you do measure three fingers
Three fingers down from the top of the wrist.
Ann Marie:And then you lay down and you just sort of wiggle your thumb in the tendons, just wiggle it and then do a kind of like a slow breathing. Like if you can do like a box breathing, like four breaths in, maybe eight or 10 breaths out. And they just say to yourself like, I'm, I'm gonna get back to sleep. Like obviously I'm gonna get back to sleep. You'll start to feel like yourself sort of calming down and it's the belief that you're gonna get back to sleep. This is calming you down. The Camile tea is working. And then once you do that enough and it works, it's just sort of like, okay, that's what I'm gonna do. And if that doesn't work, because sometimes your thoughts are too strong. I get up, turn the light on, write down everything that's bothering me, like absolutely everything. Put a check mark beside things I can do something about and X beside things I can do nothing about. And the, you know, really right then you can do nothing about anything. And then I do it all again, and then I usually get to sleep. I think the thought like, I'm not gonna get back to sleep. I'm not gonna get back to sleep. It's just so hard and upsetting. Okay. I just need to tell you about peak nogal. If you don't know about peak nogal, this is a thing that stops my hot flashes. It, it, it, it, it works in the production of nitric oxide in the endothelial system, like in your, in your, veins. The cell layer, the sort of lines, the blood vessels, it enhances blood flow. Cardiologists recommend. it's standardized. It's been studied in clinical studies. It's produced in Mediterranean. It's made from the bark of a tree. I don't have hot flashes when I take Pina. It is not cheap. It's not crazy expensive, but it, it is the one supplement that I wouldn't wanna do without perimenopause. The most important piece of information, which is from the British endocrinologist, Dr. Anise Muk. She stopped me in my tracks when she said this in a podcast that I did with her. She said, Anne, you have to treat your energy like it's money in the bank. We haven't treated ourselves like this our whole lives, and I understand resenting the fact that you have to treat your energy like money in the bank, but you can't keep making endless withdrawals. You have to put money in or there'll be nothing there, and you will pay the price. And so anytime you're using energy, You have to put it back thank you so much for joining me. If you like this conversation, I hope you'll check out some of my other interviews on the Hot Flashing Podcast, subscribe, give a rating, maybe a review, and come back for more next week. Hot Flash Inc. Was created and is hosted by Annemarie McQueen, produced and edited by Sonya Mac. The information contained in this podcast is intended for informational purposes only, and is not intended for the purpose of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider, read all labels, and he all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice. Care provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem, ie. Menopause or anything else or any healthcare questions, please promptly see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Annemarie McQueen and any producers or editors disclaim any responsibility from any possible adverse effects from the use of any information. Contains herein opinions of guests on this podcast. Are their own, and the podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about a guest's qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have direct or indirect financial interest in products or services. Referred to here in this podcast is owned by Hot Flash, Inc. Media.