Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to the hormone hub, your go-to source for the conversations every woman in her forties and fifties needs to have. I’m your host, Kylie Pinwill, your nutritionist helping you navigate your way through perimenopause, menopause and beyond. So you can say goodbye to the endless fatigue, unexplained weight gain, hot flushes, PMS, mood changes, and more that come on this hormonal roller coaster. If you missed the memo or think this is only for women of a certain age ladies, it’s time to think again. Now sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you don’t miss any of my latest episodes, which are released every week. Share it with your friends, your sweaty sisters.

The more we talk, the more we help each other.

Menopause in Western culture has always been a bit of a taboo subject, you know, much like many aspects of women’s health. [00:01:00] There’s a certain stigma in menopause and women often talk about feeling invisible or thinking it’s the end. You know, you’re officially old. You’re not sexy anymore. Now, if you think this isn’t even on your horizon yet, stay with me.

My goal is to break these stigmas down so we can embrace this new chapter and be in the best shape of our lives. Okay. You think about it when you get to 50, you are not old. You’ve got half your life left to live. Nobody is putting you in the old lady paddock. All right. So today we’re gonna have a look at what it means to be moving into this next chapter of life, and also some of the physical, mental, and emotional effects so, you know what to expect, you know, what’s normal, what’s not, you know, and this way you’re also best equipped to make informed choices about what’s right for you, you know, in this day and age, no woman should have to put up with embarrassing and debilitating symptoms. The more you know, the more control you have.

[00:02:00] Okay. Let’s jump in, shall we? All right. So officially you’re in menopause when you haven’t had a period for a year. Now, this is not always so straightforward. If you are on birth control, you’ve had a partial hysterectomy or an ablation, or if you’ve gone almost a year before, you know, almost a year without a period, and then you get this big, last hoorah, often, it’s a humdinger of a period and you get to start, you count down all over again, and I’ll get to that in an upcoming episode.

So the average age in Australia and New Zealand for menopause is between 51, 52. And no two women will ever have the same experience. So similar to puberty, pregnancy, childbirth, you know, it’s different for all of us. So some women might find it a relief to be at the end of your periods. You not have to worry about the hassle anymore, or, you know, you might be grieving the loss of your youth and your fertility.

And, you know, you also might be feeling a mix of the both.[00:03:00] 

 You know, speaking openly about menopause, is to counter the stigma and also normalize women’s experience, particularly in the workplace. And also, you know, at home with relationships, with your partner, friends, kids, family, you know, as well. And this is also the perfect storm for breaks, for divorce. You know, men go through their own version of hormonal changes, but somehow, historically society has been okay with them. You know, midlife crisis. They’re buying a sports car, finding a 25 year old girlfriend, um, until she wants kids of course. 

And then the laugh is totally on him. 55 year old with a toddler. Sucker! Haha. Now part of the problem is a lack of understanding of what menopause actually entails. And this includes, you know, the women going through it as well. So most people know that menopause is vaguely associated with the end of our periods. And you know, the thing is though we’re [00:04:00] still relatively young. 

When we de-stigmatize menopause by speaking about it openly, it can lead to us feeling more confident and certainly better about ourselves. So menopause is not synonymous with aging. You are allowed to age well. You know, and we can do that. So the average age, you know, in Australia and New Zealand to go that year without our period or experience menopause is between 50-52. And that is not elderly. 

You know, and that’s not to say, you know, that elderly and getting older is a bad thing. It’s also a normal life phase, but you know, at 50-52, we are not old. Okay. We are several decades from being elderly and no one’s putting us in the old lady paddock anytime soon. So the good thing about being 50 is it’s not exactly young either. So, you know, while we tend [00:05:00] to, um, how do I put this? You know, we tend to reinforce that aging is bad and, you know, we need to stay young and sexy and you know, all of those things, but instead, what if we rewrote our own future? You know, instead of looking, you know, mourning the loss of, you know, looking young, why don’t we sort of look at and go, you know, we want to be healthy. We want to be energetic. We want to be active. We want to be strong. We want to be sexually active. You know, if that’s what we want for our own pleasure, we shouldn’t have to do anything to please anyone else. 

So with menopause, you know, you are still a sexual being in whatever way that’s pleasurable for you. If your libido or your desire for sex goes down, that’s okay, too. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. And you know what? It can also be a perfectly normal response to the fact that you’re tired. You’re stressed out. You’re not sleeping well. 

So if you’ve got declining [00:06:00] estrogen levels, or maybe you’ve been in the same relationship for the last 20 or 30 years, and things are really boring. You know, it happens. So we’ll explore in a few episodes, you know, treatment options. That, again, we aren’t talking enough about for physical issues like vaginal pain, dryness. 

Um, I’ve got a speaker coming in to talk about that and also to talk about prolapse. Okay. There’s so much we can do. We don’t have to just put up with it. Okay. So we do live in a society that continually is telling us that we need to be smooth skinned. We need to be a certain size. We need to be sexually attractive. We need to look how we did when we were younger. And a lot of us dread that sort of loss of our youth. 

Um, but I. I know for me when I turned 50, I really didn’t care as much about looking as young as I thought I would. Um, I care about being healthy and, you know sure, that usually results in looking a bit younger. You know, I care more about being [00:07:00] well-groomed I, even though I work from home on my own, I still put, make, put the effort to put makeup on and I do it for myself because it makes me feel good. It puts me in work mode. 

Um, I like wearing clothes I feel confident in. I enjoy nice things that make me feel good about myself. And, you know, for me, that’s lighting a candle or it’s, you know, having, you know, drinking tea out of a nice teapot. Um, you know, and this will be different for me than it is for you. Like to be honest, I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than spend an hour getting my nails done, but for so many women and you know, there’s an entire industry of it. That’s the thing that they do for themselves. It makes them feel good. 

So over the last two years, I’ve started to embrace the greying of my hair. Uh, I do have a love, hate relationship with it. But, you know, same thing. I value my time. And to me, I did not want to be at the hairdresser every two to three weeks. So it’s my choice. [00:08:00] And I don’t feel that I’m letting myself go rather I’m choosing not to fight a fight that I wasn’t winning. And, you know, to be honest, my hair’s actually in better condition than it has been in years. 

All right. So I, you know, I’d like to sort of think that, you know, the more we see successful gray haired, powerful sort of women. The more we’re going to learn to see it as, you know, distinguished in the same way we do for men. You know, we’re likely a long way off that, but you know, there’s a movement happening. It’s okay. 

So, you know, I don’t personally have an all out battle with aging because at the end of the day, I have better things to do. So it’s a refreshing departure of that pressure of looking younger. So, you know, your appearance is yours to do with, as you wish. And I think as long as you don’t feel pressured into feeling unrealistic, it’s okay to lift that perfectionism. You know, do what feels good for you, wear whatever you want. You know, [00:09:00] And while we’re sort of on this I want to talk about feeling invisible. I’ve had lots of conversations with a lot of women who say that, you know, they, they feel invisible. So usually this is, you know, they’re overlooked while they’re waiting in line to order a coffee or, you know, it’s harder to be seen and you know, they’re not taken seriously at work. And the promising thing is, you know, we’ve arrived at that time of life where you begin to feel, it’s easier to say no. You know, like we still have responsibilities. Sure. But you know, one of my aims through this podcast is to help you realize that it’s not your job to put everyone else’s needs ahead of your own. 

So hopefully, you know, saying no will mean more time for you doing what you enjoy. Spend less time apologizing or justifying yourself. You know ladies, remember, this is one of my favorite things I tell the ladies in the program. No is a [00:10:00] complete sentence. So, you know, a lot of my clients sort of looking at this as, you know, the step forward, they’re looking forward to planning more travel, you know, now that we can, but they’re not going necessarily going with their partners. They’re going with their friends. They’re signing up for volunteer work. They’re taking up hobbies that they never made time for. They’re jumping into artwork and lessons, singing lessons. Um, for me, I’ve started pottery classes once a week. Yeah, I’m not good at it, but I actually don’t care. It’s fun. And I’m, it’s just for me. And I’m enjoying the process. 

And, you know, quite a few women that I’ve worked with inside the well-balanced woman program are amazing. You know, they’ve given themselves the opportunity to kind of like sort out those health issues in the program. And they’ve gone back to uni to do their masters, and I’ve got a few taking on PhDs. 

Um, others have taken up Pilates or strength training. Um, and one [00:11:00] of my clients said for her, it was all about getting strong after she got divorced. So for the first time in 20 years, she’s hitting the gym. You know, in a society that values younger women, it can feel a bit sad that it’s too late to do some of the things that you wanted to do, but you know what? It’s really not. 

You know, it’s just the beginning. So if we think of, you know, menopause as sort of that. That season or that half of our life, you know, So let’s truly make it count. All right. So ladies menopause is a natural transition that we will all go through. So why not embrace it as a time of liberation? Okay. We are not being put out to pasture. 

We are at, you know, in our early fifties, we are not old. We have a whole lot of life, you know, have a whole lot of living left to do so potentially it’s a halftime break. 

Okay. So let’s jump into some of the main signs and [00:12:00] symptoms. So there’s a lot that we’re familiar with. So things like hot flushes or hot flashes as there are also called.. 

Uh, there’s vaginal changes. There’s also a mental and emotional transition. So this can mean mood swings and you know, not so well known, and what we’re not really talking about is the onset of anxiety. Okay. So there’s many kind of varying factors that can impact your experience of menopause. This includes things like your general level of health, wellbeing, any previous history of anxiety or depression. 

Lifestyle choices, whether you’ve had sort of a natural, a surgical or a chemotherapy induced menopause, you know, that’s going to impact your experience. And as I mentioned, no two women are the same and we’re all going to experience it differently. So let’s just run through some of the common symptoms. So we’ve got, you know, hot flushes. 

[00:13:00] So the causes of these are not completely understood. You know, we get that drop in estrogen, um, which does impact parts of the brain, you know, that control our thermostat. Stress, anxiety can influence the frequency and intensity of hot flushes. And also sometimes certain foods. Uh, alcohol certainly can have an impact. 

Uh, generally they start in that chest area and they spread to the upper chest, neck, the face. It can spread over the whole body as well. So they’ve been described as like a burning, over heating sensation, reddening of the skin with, you know, degrees of sweating. So again, each women’s going to experience this differently and you know, some can have hot flushes that are mild and quick and others can have, you know, one a day and some women, more than 20 a day. 

Night sweats, you know, as well as, or instead of flushes. You know, this is where they literally wake up in a puddle. And again, it can [00:14:00] happen a handful of times and for others, it can last for years. So there’s tiredness, fatigue, insomnia, wakefulness during the night, weight gain is a big one. Aches pains, bloating, constipation. 

God it’s fun list. Isn’t it? Crawling, dry or itchy skin. This can also influence that touch, you know, making you more sensitive to touch as well. Headaches are a really big one. And I want to make special mention of urinary, vaginal and vulval changes because this is something that’s really common that we’re not talking about. 

Um, I will not let you suffer in silence ladies. And over the coming months, I have guest expert speakers to come in and you know, we’ll go into more depth. So we’ll dive into the solutions for this. So low estrogen can cause changes to vulval, vagina and bladder area. So this results in, you know, [00:15:00] dryness, burning, irritation. 

Can certainly affect our sexual function. You know, there’s a lack of lubrication, discomfort, pain, impaired function, loss of kind of elasticity in our vagina. Uh, we can also have, you know, urinary issues. So recurrent urinary tract infections, pain, urgency, all of these things. So you know, with all of this, like it’s not meant to be doom and gloom, but I just want to sort of point out what is potentially an issue. 

And you know, women who have menopause induced by hysterectomy or the result of chemotherapy treatment. You might find, you know, unfortunately that your symptoms are more severe and it’s certainly worth having a conversation with your doctor about the treatment options and you know, whether MAT, which is Menopause Hormone Therapy, you know, which is what we used to call HRT, is an option for you and I’ve got [00:16:00] an episode coming up about the different treatment options available, including, you know, natural therapies, diet, lifestyle, as well as the pros and cons of, bioidentical and synthetic hormone treatment. 

This hormone hub episode is sponsored by our free hormone help call. On the call we’ll give you some clarity around what’s causing your symptoms and the three simple steps you can start using straight away. If you’re ready to take the next step and find out how we can help you, we can talk about that too.

So, if you are constantly feeling tired, struggling with weight gain, PMS, mood swings, bloating, not sleeping at night, cravings, anxiety, all the things, we are ready to help. If you’re ready to ditch those sugar cravings, regain your energy and shift that stubborn weight, then let us help you balance your hormones, reset metabolism and get your confidence back so you can live the life you’re meant to. The link with the details to [00:17:00] our hormone help call is in our show notes or over at kyliepinwill.com. 

Okay. So just sort of moving into like how there’s an emotional side. So some women can feel depressed or, you know, experience changes in their mood. You know, and this happens back in perimenopause. Like I said, you don’t just wake up with this one day. Hormones fluctuate and menopause cause depression. 

But women who had depression before they’ve gone through menopause or they’ve got a history of PMS or PMD, you know, may be more sensitive to the hormonal changes that menopause brings. So what’s really common is, you know, that feeling of overwhelmed and that you’re not able to cope as well as you used to, brain fog, difficulty sleeping, difficulty concentrating, feeling anxiety, feeling irritable. And this is one [00:18:00] that I always question, you know? Rightly so, I think perhaps we’re a little less tolerant maybe. Um, the forgetfulness and no, you do not have dementia just yet. Lack of interest in sex and then low flat, or sort of like swinging moods. So there’s absolutely no shame in, you know, antidepressants or antianxiety medications, you know, where these are appropriate, but I do want to say that these are commonly prescribed as a first port of call, and if you know within yourself that it isn’t actually depression, there’s a lot of steps you can take before you get there. Remembering that many medications, you know, mask or numb the problem and, you know, can potentially cause more side effects as well. So, you know, there are so many alternatives and we’re going to cover these in upcoming episodes where we dive deep into how you can best learn to recognize the stress and the effect it has on your body and the [00:19:00] steps that we can take to make significant changes to our emotional and mental wellbeing. Alrighty. So it’s been a big episode today, which, you know, it deserves because it’s a pretty big topic. As you can see, there’s a lot more to menopause than hot flushes and getting cranky. Then we can embrace the hormonal changes as a normal transition through life. The easier it will be to cope with it. 

And by opening up the conversations around not only our physical, but our emotional symptoms, we’re likely to give those around us, and those who truly care about us, clear insight of what we’re experiencing. Sweeties, life isn’t over. We have a whole lot of living to do so let’s do it well. 

 You have permission to feel what you feel and not feel the need to apologize, or, you know, feel that you need to explain yourself because you know, the freedom to not apologize and the [00:20:00] freedom to not people please, which we’re all really good at it, you know, might be one of the best and most liberating things about menopause.

Now, unfortunately, as with so many women’s health issues, there is a stigma around it. And this is one thing I really wanna address today. So let’s just get it out in the open, menopause is nothing to be ashamed of. You and I know this, but definitely there’s an awkwardness. So I wanna acknowledge the awkward and encourage you to have, you know, like open conversations about it, where you feel comfortable.

We tend to internalize it and you know, that makes it worse. So I have spoken with hundreds of women and it’s so common in the workplace, women tend not to discuss it with colleagues or managers, you know, for the fear that they’ll be laughed at or ridiculed.

 So they might be stigmatized or, you know, disrespected, as someone who’s no longer rational or even capable of doing their job. And I think, you know, speaking openly about menopause is the only way [00:21:00] to sort of counter the stigma. And also normalize women’s experience. 

Thank you for taking the time to listen today. You can head on over to the show notes at kyliepinwill.com/podcast where you’ll find all the links. And I have a little bonus surprise waiting for you. Before we go, it would mean the world to me if you head on over to your favorite podcast channel, subscribe and leave a review. 

Make sure to screenshot it, DM it to me so I can thank you personally. Then stay tuned for next week’s episode can’t wait to see you then.