Episode 64: Awakening in Midlife: The Energetics of Perimenopause with Dr. Lorne Brown

Dr. Lorne Brown joins the TMI Talk podcast to offer a different framework for looking at menopause: one rooted in 26 years of clinical practice and thousands of years of Chinese medicine wisdom. Together, we unpack why your symptoms aren't a sign that your body is failing: they're a sign that your body is changing its priorities. Dr. Lorne is a CPA turned Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

What You’ll Learn

• Why menopause isn’t just a hormone deficiency, but a whole-body transition that Chinese medicine calls the Second Spring.
• How fluctuating estrogen and declining progesterone trigger symptoms and why resilience, stress load, and emotional patterns affect this
• How menopause can lead to a spiritual awakening 
• The energetic shift of midlife: why the body redirects resources from reproduction to the heart center, purpose, and leadership.
• The truth about hormone therapy: who it helps, who it doesn’t, and why estrogen isn’t the universal solution
• How stress, trauma, people-pleasing, and old subconscious programs can amplify perimenopause shift symptoms
• The role of the nervous system in hot flashes, anxiety, insomnia, and inflammation—and practical tools to calm it.
• How emotions become “stored energy” in the body and how techniques like acupuncture, somatic awareness, and conscious work help release them.
• A holistic toolbox for relief: acupuncture, herbs, low-level laser therapy, strength training, sleep support, diet, and mind-body practices.

Timeline:

00:00 Episode Preview

01:32 Meet Dr Lorne Brown

03:03 Why Menopause Talk Feels Incomplete

05:33 Second Spring Explained

07:26 Hormones vs Resilience

12:53 Heart Center Shift

16:31 Spiritual Awakening Basics

24:35 Surrender and Nervous System

31:21 Stress Biology and Old Programs

38:05 Menopause Hormone Therapy Update

40:27 Safer Hormone Options

41:24 Who Needs Estrogen

42:10 When Hormones Backfire

44:13 Resilience Versus Band Aid

46:48 Access And Advocacy

55:22 COVID Perfect Storm

58:47 Holistic Support Toolkit

01:02:36 Nervous System First

01:05:55 Emotional Patterns Rewire

01:10:32 Somatic Release And Closing

You can learn more about his practice Acubalance here

You can find more information about Dr. Lorne here.

Want support for perimenopause that goes beyond hormones?

Whether you (or your clients) are taking HRT but still having symptoms, not ready for it, or can’t tolerate it...there’s more we can do.

I’ll be sharing practical tools from a movement and rehab perspective, focusing on the nervous system, fascia, lymph, viscera, and musculoskeletal system.

If you want updates on workshops, resources, and strategies to support this phase of life more fully, would love you to join my email list.

Subscribe to my email list here

I’ll see you in 2 weeks!

PS:

If you are interested in being a guest on the show, please fill out the form here.

Transcript

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Welcome back to TMI Talk with Dr. Mary. I'm your host, Dr. Mary. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about having an awakening in midlife and the energetics of perimenopause with Dr. Lorne Brown. I'm gonna dive into what we're gonna learn and then go into a little bit more about Dr. Brown so you know his history. In this episode, you're gonna learn why menopause isn't a hormone deficiency, but a whole body transition that Chinese medicine calls the second spring. How fluctuating estrogen and declining progesterone trigger symptoms and why improving resilience, reducing stress load, and emotional patterns affect this. How menopause can lead to a spiritual awakening. The energetic shift of midlife. Why the body redirects resources from reproduction to heart center, purpose, and leadership. The truth about hormone therapy, who it helps, who it doesn't, and why estrogen isn't the universal solution How stress, trauma, people-pleasing, and old subconscious programming can often amplify perimenopausal shift symptoms. How the role of the nervous system in hot flashes, anxiety, insomnia, and inflammation, and practical tools to help regulate it. How emotions become stored energy in the body, and how techniques like acupuncture, somatic awareness, and conscious work can help to release them. Holistic tools for relief can include acupuncture herbs, low-level laser therapy, strength training, sleep support diet, and mind-body practices. Dr. Lorne Brown is a recognized leader in integrative reproductive and hormonal health. His earlier career as a chartered professional accountant, or a CPA, uniquely shaped his analytical and holistic approach to wellness. Wellness Center, he introduced IVF acupuncture to Vancouver clinics in 2002 and was an early clinic adapter of low-level laser therapy, LLT, for fertility, playing a key role in expanding awareness and contributing to its growing acceptance and using it in clinical practice. Dr. Brown served as the chair of the Integrative Fertility Symposium for six years and authored both the AcuBalance Fertility Diet and the AcuBalance Longevity Diet for perimenopause and menopause. He is also the creator of Healthy Seminars, an online education platform for healthcare professionals, and the host of the Conscious Fertility Podcast, where he explores the intersection of science, consciousness, and mind-body healing. I really think you all are going to enjoy this episode if you're into the mind, body, soul connection and understanding menopause and craving to understand menopause beyond what we see from a Western medicine approach. We dive into so many different ways to look at this and to support our bodies during this time. I was also on his podcast as well, which I'll link in the show notes, so you can check out his podcast as well. Without further ado, we're going to jump into the episode.

Audio Only - All Participants-1 3:03

Welcome to the show, Dr. Lorne Brown. I'm excited to have you here. I am so glad to be here, and I dunno if your listeners know, but we're doing like a swap, so I'm really excited to interview you on my Conscious Fertility and Beyond podcast, and so thanks for having me here. Yes, I've been craving conversations like we're about to have because as we were talking about a little bit before, we were like, pause. Let's, let's talk about this on the podcast, uh, the way the menopause movement is going, I, I'm very incredibly thankful that we're getting a ton of awareness to it, but I feel like we're missing a huge point in the menopause movement. So much of it has been focusing primarily on HRT, hormone replacement therapy, lifting weights, and diet. But there's this whole other slew of things that we can do to help, and I wanna dive into those things with you, especially because not many people even have access to hormones. Yeah, well I wanna talk about the holistic approach 'cause that is my approach. And you talked about like diet weight lifting and, um, hormone replacement therapy, which they call now MHT, menopause Hormone Therapy. Um, I'm just glad that they're talking about it because, um, in my practice, many of the women I have seen are dismissed. Yeah. Um, you know, wait, the seven, eight years or here's an an, an, an anti-inflammatory for your aches and pains, here's an antidepressant because that's why you're not sleeping. Or you think you're crazy, which is not the, probably the best approach, but if that's the only tool you have, then I guess that's why you give it. But I still don't wanna dismiss. So first of all, I'm happy they're talking about it because that's creating awareness. Yes. And I'm happy they're talking about movement and diet and there is a place for hormone therapy. Absolutely. We can talk. I'm happy to dive into that too. Um, and then there's all these other things that I think we're gonna dive in today as well to support those. The perimenopause and menopause phase of their life. What are all these other options that are available? You know, I think of it as a book, well, chapter one, you know, hormone Replacement Therapy chapter two, diet chapter three, strength training. End of end of end of book, right? Mm-hmm. I'm like, hey, no, there's a whole series of chapters here and that's what I'd love to dive into with you today. Well, I love to simplify things, right? 'cause it can be overwhelming and if you're experiencing these symptoms, you're already in overwhelm. So I, if I can, I would like to start with kind of what's happening during this phase and kind of define it a bit from a Chinese medicine perspective as well, right? If, if I may. So. First. So just to clarify, from a Chinese medicine perspective, perimenopause and menopause are not diseases. They're phases of a woman's life, and they're supposed to happen. It's a natural trans, uh, transition. Um, it's actually called menopause in Chinese medicine's, also known as the second spring. So the first spring is puberty. So we don't call it puberty disease, although if you're living with a teenage daughter, maybe you think it's, um, but it's, it's, it's a, it's a stage in, in a woman's life. And perimenopause and menopause is a stage. So it's not a disease and it, it's meant to be symptom free, but we know it isn't right for many women. So let's talk, 'cause we're gonna talk about hormone therapy a bit and all the other chapters of this book. So here's how I, this is now very personal for me, my, my window into this. The hormone imbalances are not the cause, the the underlying true cause They are part of the picture. And I, if I can explain, every woman who lives long enough, who lives in lives to 60, will go through perimenopause and menopause. Menopause is your, your period menstruation has been at least one year not of having it. So it's a retrospective understanding. And perimenopause is just period before menopause. So, um, you know, we kind of generalize and say, we used to say after 40 45, um, up until you stop menstruating is perimenopause. Now they say it could be 40. And then we know even women in their early thirties. So bottom line is perimenopause is that time period before you stop menstruating. In that perimenopause window, you will have erratic, fluctuating estrogens and a decline in progesterone. And then in menopause, you have a decline in both estrogen and progesterone. So first clarification is everybody thinks it's an, it's an, everybody thinks it's an estrogen deficiency in perimenopause, but no, in perimenopause, estrogens can go really high and really low, high and low. And then the, and the progesterone slowly dropping. And then we have both decline. If it was due to the fluctuating hormones and declining hormones, which every woman will go through who lives to 60, then every single woman would have, would suffer if that was the reason. And we know not every woman has perimenopause or menopausal symptoms. And those that do, they don't all have the same symptoms. So what's the difference here between these and the way I view it from a Chinese medicine perspective, but I'll use kind of like layman terms, not Chinese medicine terms so much is your window of resilience. Your, if your resilience is low, then you don't have the capacity to adapt, and therefore that stress of those changing hormones become messages to the body. And you experience these symptoms. And I'll say this another way, so if you. In life when there's change in life, nobody really likes change too much, especially when it's brought on without you choosing to change. Um, and that can stress us out. So those are obvious when we have stress in our life. But inside your body, when you have fluctuating hormones in a decline in hormones, that is an internal change. And if you don't have resilience. In Chinese medicine, the kidney system has become deficient or your liver system is stuck 'cause it's important for transition. It has nothing to do with your western liver. Kidney, but I'm bringing in some Chinese concepts. Then those are the women that generally will experience the night sweats, the hot flashes, um, losing my mind, can't remember things, aches and pains. Um, so it's not so much that the hormones are the main issue. They are part of the issue. They're the trigger, but they're supposed to happen. This is actually supposed to happen just like a, a 7-year-old doesn't have all these estrogens and progesterones, but a 15-year-old does. They're, it's going to happen. Um, but if they have crazy periods and acting, all that stuff, then there's a little bit of an imbalance. Something's going on. Same thing when you have your second spring. Going to perimenopause and menopause. This is going to happen. This is considered normal. It's supposed to happen. But if you're experiencing symptoms, then to me we wanna address those. 'cause I don't think women should suffer. And I want to get to the underlying cause, which is why I was interested in us connecting, because you talk a lot about the shadow and all these other things you can do, and we do all of it in my clinic. We also do hormone therapy. It's just usually we don't give it out like candy in our clinic. Um, but we do use it when, um, warranted. Um, because we don't want women to suffer. Yeah. I, I, I love all that explanation, and I think a lot of people think it's a gradual decline of estrogen, right? And like you're saying it, the spiking, it's the crashing. It's when progesterone or calming hormone that helps stabilize our mood. When that starts lowering, that's when estrogen can become a bit more erratic. And I also think it's important for people to just understand some of these basics, because the way I also describe it too is like when you go bowling, right? Mm-hmm. Maybe people will say, what, I used to be able to function on four hours of sleep, or I used to be able to have that glass of wine without getting a hemorrhoid, you know? Mm-hmm. And the reality is, is we ha it's not that. We couldn't do those things, we could do those things back then. It's that our bodies had more buffers, we had more ability to compensate. It never thrived in chaos. And I like to just describe it as like those bumpers in the bowling alley. And it's not that we were getting strikes all the time. We were getting bumpers that were helping us go back on track. And then menopause or perimenopause, those bumpers are slowly declining and we can't veer off as much because the body's like, Nope, go back. And it tells us in those symptoms. Well, on that point, I'll add two things. First of all, I love your bumper analogy here. Um, in Chinese medicine there is an expression that says before age 35, you cheat disease. After age 35 disease cheats you. So there's that idea of when you're younger, we say you have more jing, more essence, and so you have the capacity to drink and wake up the next day and function at work. Where at my age, in my late fifties, if I did what I did when I was 21, I can't, I'm not great at work for three days. Right? It takes my body a while. It's just, you know, that's life. So you're right. You can't be 45 and, and exercising and working like you did at 21. You gotta work smarter versus harder. Um, the other thing that you're saying about this, this bumper idea, um, in Chinese medicine, again, I, I lost my thought. Sorry Mary. I was gonna talk. Your bumper idea triggers something besides before age 35. See. Men also have estrogen, forge strokes. Testosterone, you're great. You, it's your, it's your menopause. I have my menopause. This is what I, this is why I can relate to all my clients. I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot the word. I, I will, um, no, I do have it back. Always like charade. I have it back. Thank you. All right, it's back. So in the menopause stage also though, um, when we're losing our, our resilience in Chinese medicine, menopause is a, what's the word, word to use here. It's there to save you, to keep you alive. Meaning that this is another beautiful concept from Chinese medicine during your, what we'd call reproductive years, meaning the years where you are able to carry a child, the resources, the energy is going down to the uterus to be available for a child. After when you get into menopause, that energy is diverted from the uterus to the heart center because they need these resources at this stage of your life. It needs to go to the heart center, and what's really cool is because it goes to the heart center. This is the idea of she spirit in Chinese medicine. Just physiologically how Chinese medicine understands the body in your late forties and beyond, you now have resources in the heart spirit, which means you're now ready to be the matriarch for your community. It's a different role rather than bearing children. Now you are the matriarch for your community and it's the body survival mechanism to not have resources going to try to reproduce. We need to keep the body healthy and functioning for longevity. And so this is that idea with the bumpers, you're like you said, the bumpers are gone. Yeah. Because there's a new phase in your life, in your community from a Chinese medicine understanding. I love that reframe because the current narrative is. I don't know if it's different in Canada, but just what you see on social media, you're just inundated with Oh, negativity. Negativity, negativity with, with, oh, well these are the symptoms that are having, and it can be, really frustrating. This is, there has to be, this is a body's natural progression. It can't be so negative. Like there can't, and trust me, I have been super frustrated and angry at my body for during this process. But like we were saying a little bit before on the call, when I reframed it to my bodies in partnership with me, what is it telling me? What are these signals versus let me put a patch on it and call it a day? I think how can we support our natural hormone process? But then also the people that are really struggling, how can we help them with, you know, the hormone replacement therapy to help support them? So I love this approach 'cause it's a, a shift of the narrative of looking at it in a, in a different light. And when you're wanting, when we're being called to being matriarchs in our, our society, in that there's more wisdom overall to give. And we can't give that wisdom if we're still in these old narratives of giving, giving, giving to the point where we're depleted and not going inward and helping ourselves. And like you're saying, with the heart-centered for people that don't know what that means necessarily is if you'd like to dive in to what that means. I'll let you actually hear what's the question? 'cause I want to talk you, you brought up hormone therapy again and I wanted to give a, our clinic's approach to hormone therapy if you, 'cause we haven't talked about this yet, so you're gonna, you'll hear our, our approach on this. But did you have another question you want me to ask first or do you want me to kind of give an overview of HRT? I love how you went into the heart center and some people might not know what that means, so say if they're in their early healing journey, they might be like, what does heart center mean? If you could explain that maybe from the spiritual point of view or energetic point of view on what heart-centered focused means. Yeah, I, I'll share that there's this understanding that we're mind, body, spirit. And we live in a world that's, um, kind of ruled by Newtonian materialistic perception. Um, but there's a whole other understanding, a whole other science, physics. So this isn't like woo anymore quantum physics. And, um, but the, the world we live by is still very materialistic, but there is a paradigm shift happening. So I have to go under the assumption that there is a mind, body, spirit. People say, prove it. I have hundreds of talks with quantum physicists, um, PhDs that are doing research on this. So I, I had the credibility factor people talking about this. So let's just go with the assumption that there's a spiritual part of blueprint. Um, and what I see in my life and in my practice is that when you're, when you really get aligned with that part of yourself and you learn to tune into it. You just have, life seems to be more, more peaceful, and when you're conflict with it, it seems to send you messages and you suffer. That's my simple part of it, and people that come to my practice. Again, it was an OB observation. I've been in practice since 2000, and there was something I noticed somewhere around age 40 plus or minus five years, people would show up and the things that used to work, their antidepressants just straight. Um, barefoot acupuncture style, their supple. It would work for a couple of weeks or months, and then either that symptom came back or a new symptom would pop up. And then I went through my own in that age group. I'm in my late fifties now, but in that time in my life, um. I had my burnout and my wake up call and, and developed, developed debilitating anxiety. And you, there's no reason for it. Like you, there was nothing on the outside of the world that could explain this except for I'm losing my mind here, what's going on. And I was a man, I couldn't even blame it on perimenopause. Um, so it brought me to the spiritual work. So, you know, I walk my talk, I had to do a lot of healing. Um, we call it shadow work as well. Um, and, um. It changed my life and I use this in my practice, so I can't give, 'cause you know, it's one of those things that's been talked about from different cultures. Old, old, um, traditional cultures have talked about this in Buddhism. You know, we hear about this Chinese medicine, Taoism, Kabbalah, and Judaism. It's there, right? But because it's hard for us to measure, we tend to dismiss and ignore it. So the best answer I can give you, Mary, on this one is that I'm really good and we're all good at working on the physical level. We got really good at that, and yet people are still suffering. So what's going on here? So the mental, emotional that's there too, but really that spiritual side, getting into that aspect, which I, I have difficulty describing it. I just have some tools and approaches to help you tune into it. And then we see how things unfold, which it's really cool. Things tend to unfold and we have people doing research on this and doing their best to measure it. So, um, that's why I say the spirit part. Coming back to your full question. So in Chinese medicine, um, you're the soul part of you. The spirit part of you. This part of you that apparently lives beyond the physical. I can't confirm or deny this. That just is what all the cultures talk about. Um, there's that aspect and it seems like if we're gonna go totally into that direction. When we're struggling, it's kinda like we have the ego and the soul here. The ego's not a bad thing. It's actually part of the human experience. You need it. I used to be CPA without the ego. I can't do your books. The engineer can't build the bridge, the blueprint, you know, you need the ego. In the human experience, what's happening is you have a hierarchy. And in our world, the ego's kind of running the show show and the higher self is below and that relationship is upside down. Kinda like our world today, upside down. And what conscious work does or spiritual work does is it flips the relationship. So now the higher self is kind of running the show and the ego's working with the higher self and things tend to get aligned, manifest. And even when they don't in the outside world, they don't impact your inside world. So you have this sense of peace and you're tapped into something that you can't, the external world can't really shake too much, and so you're outer world. Is a mirror of what's going on with your inner world. So if you don't like what's going on outside the world, the first thing is to come in and do the inner work. And darkness is attracted to light. And so as you do this, you may still get more challenges, hence the shadow work comes up. Right? Um, and if you keep doing this work, call it light work. Um, eventually, um, there's some people have a fast awakening and some people have a slow awakening. And the people I've interviewed that are self-realized, the fast awakening is not a fun awakening. They've had six months to year of. This is not good. They're on the other side of it. They're happy, but it, but they thought they were going insane. It was quite uncomfortable. Most of us were on the slow train, which is, you know, be thankful you're on the slow train. 'cause when the people I've interviewed on the fast train, they wouldn't wish that upon anybody. They're glad they're on the other side of it, but, um, it was quite uncomfortable. I was, I was a fast trainer. Okay. And, uh, that, that was the last six years. I was like, what is this? Okay, wow. Wait, why don't other people see it this way? Am I crazy? What's going on? And not even having, knowing the resources or where to go or what to do. And, um, yeah, looking, looking back and like what you're saying, I never thought of it as a way, I just assumed, you know, everybody has this fast track awakening. And, and, and then over time I realized that's not actually true. Most people, I, I like the perimenopause phase and working with people in this phase because it's this slow awakening for a lot of people. And, and they're like, wait, why was I doing everything and, and never taking time for myself? It's this collective shift that it is a shift, it is occurring, and they're ready. They're hungry to learn 'cause their bodies are talking, talking, talking. And they can't ignore them at this point. They're not whispers anymore. Pain and suffering is a great mood, uh, motivator. I, I like, um, Eckhart Toll Toley who wrote the book, the Power of Now, and a couple other books. Um, but he often says, suffering leads to awakening. So when we're things are great, we tend not to have great growth, right? When things are uncomfortable, we tend to grow, right? And so, like you said, perimenopause, people come in and it's an opport, it's an opportunity, um, to have a reframe and it mo use this as motivation to reassess and change and. I say it's bidirectional because again, in Chinese medicine the, the emotions impact the physical and the physical impact the emotional. So I do it bidirectional because if you're gonna do this spiritual, emotional work, you do need to have the physical capacity as trauma and things come outta your cells and you have to metabolize and process them. You do have to have some capacity to deal with that. And so I don't ignore the physical again, 'cause we are both, we're physical, chemical, bioelectrical, spiritual beings. So I don't think we ignore any of it. Sometimes we need to focus on one area a little bit more than the other. And depending on the individual and what they're open or um, yeah, what they're open to. Yeah. Physiologically they may need more focus on the physical, right? Like if somebody's having a mass cell flare up and histamines are loading their body because they're in these per menopausal shifts. Telling somebody like that, when. They're having a physiological response and it's causing anxiety to, you know, focus on manifesting and the quantum and all these things can almost, it feel like another form of gaslighting because you're just flooded. Your body's giving you a signal. And so we need to calm that signal first before somebody has the capacity to take on some of these emotional traumas and, and understanding the spiritual world because I listened to something the other day and so much of spirituality is surrendering, right? And just trusting that what will beam will be, but it's really difficult to surrender when your physiological body is in fight or flight. It's so easy to say that. But if we don't know how to ground ourselves and help our bodies be in a calmer state. It's hard to tap into that. So how can we tap into Yeah. Well that's like telling our patients just relax, like for fertility, right? Yeah. Um, the surrender is, is, is, is the key. We just need tools to. To learn how to surrender it. And I, um, interviewed, uh, uh, Amit Gu Swami. He's written quite a few books. He's a quantum physicist in his eighties. Really interesting character, love. And, um, he calls the process Doobie Doobie Doobie. Right? Doobie Doobie. And, and I, I, I'll, I'll share, 'cause you remind me of this is my process of notice, except choose again is a do be process. Meaning when I read Eckhart's book and he says, the power of now when you're present and you're now, you don't suffer. Right? You're not regretting the past, you're not fearing the future. You can be, there's peace and sadness. And I was like, gimme some of that. I, how do I now like, I want this. I was never the type of person to sit on a cushion for half an hour, an hour. I had that kind of a DHD type of personality mind. Um, and that that wasn't a, a, a great option for me to just get into being. So being the left brain accountant before I had do now, um, I. Learned processes and tools, I've learned ways to do to get into being so a gentle doing to get into being, which makes sense 'cause that's the yin yang process. Yin is very receptive. Yang is doing, they are together. They're not mutually exclusive, they're interdependent. You look at the Tai chi yin yang symbol. So there's no like one is better than the other. They're interdependent. And I understood that sitting on a pillow's yin, I couldn't do it right. But yang creates yin, right? You know, the eating of the food and the digestion is a yang activity. And then that food becomes your cells yin physical, right? So I was like, I need to look into the Y processes 'cause that works with my nature to get me into yin. So when you said surrender, surrender's the in and that's not fair to somebody like you said, who's having extreme anxiety that they're full and sympathetic 'cause their body doesn't feel safe. So their nerve auto nervous system is dysregulated. Their nervous system may be intergenerational or what's happened in their life and now what's happening hormonally has made their nervous system think it's not safe. And so it is high beta brainwaves, you're in fight or flight. Um, you're in overwhelm. And then to say surrender, yeah, that's not going to be very helpful. However. They need to learn to surrender is true. Like I'm not a fan of saying what you want to hear, just so you're not triggered in that sense. We do need to know surrender is the key. Like if you don't fight with the reality, surrender when you surrender, you. You, it's not resignation. Surrender is when you stop fighting with reality, the resistance drops and now flown, receptivity come to you. 'cause when you resist, um, you amplify. Perfect example. One of my patients, um, just this week, um, was upset 'cause she's having, she was having, um, hot flashes and I've been in night sweats and it was keeping her up and she shared, part of it was, she's not supposed to get this like that, you know, her health, like, she's not that woman. And so we did three things in her treatment. One is acupuncture that I did based on what I, she was presenting in the, in the treatment room. And she was in for conscious work. So we did conscious work together and we did a reframe. And she's been working with me for a while. So she has tools. I see her 10 days later. She hasn't started her herbs yet, so it wasn't the herbal therapy. And I asked her. What's happened? And she said A, that conversation, that reframe was helpful. The tools you gave. 'cause I gave her doing tools to help her surrender. She says, I don't know if I'm having hot flashes or night sweats anymore because I'm sleeping. So she said she wasn't sleeping so she could be having them, but she took up a different relationship with it because if you have a hot flash and you're resisting it, fighting it, you're going to amplify that autonomic nervous system. Fight or flight will aggravate it. So she was able to use these tools to have the hot flash but not be emotionally triggered by it. And we did stuff on the physical level. So that's a long story of saying that the surrendering letting go, I have found to be a key ingredient and for some reason we don't, we've never, we don't have the skillset. So we need to learn that skillset so we can purposefully surrender. So we don't amplify what's going on. I don't know if that's a fair statement, and I'm curious to see what you think of that. The reframe is everything though, because if, if the narrative of going through menopause is negative for four to 10 years, it's gonna amplify that. And even with, the liver, right? We need the liver from the western perspective, we need the liver to metabolite, metabolize, estrogen. We need it to metabolize that so it doesn't build up in the body. And now if we're chronically in fight or flight and we're releasing cortisol and that cortisol's increasing blood sugar, do we think the body's gonna prioritize? Metabolizing blood sugar or estrogen, it's likely gonna be more of the blood sugar because that's more physiologically what is most important. And so even from that standpoint, if you're chronically in fight or flight. The body's just trying to keep you alive. And then that can amplify potentially some of these estrogen symptoms, some of the autonomic nervous system symptoms. And, and I'd love for you to tap into what the liver also means from an energetic perspective because the more we're angry and hold that in our liver, if you could tap into what that Sure. Well, just in general, the stress, right. When your body thinks it's not safe, when you're in stress, your resources get mobilized to fight or flight. So that means those resources aren't available for digestion. They get pulled away from the reproductive system. Right. Um, blood flow is shifted, right. So you start to get the cold hands and feet 'cause they're going to the larger muscles so you can fight or flight. And so therefore everything else gets downgraded for survival mechanism. If you can relative, um, regularly elicit the relaxation response in the body, so your body nervous system feels it safe. So you engage the parasympathetic nervous system, you free up those resources for reproduction, for digestion, for healing. I mean, that's the simplicity. You're just pulling all your energy. And so if your energy is now the sympathetic nervous system, again, everybody likes to demonize something. The ego now the sympathetic nervous system. Look, if you don't have an sympathetic nervous system, you're dead. Okay, you, you're sleeping all the time. Well, you're, you're, you're actually, you're dead because it's your relatives that had the sympathetic nervous system, your ancestors that survived the reason you're here. Because if you didn't have that, then you're walking in the wilderness and there's a massive line and you're like, Ladi, da da. The universe will protect me, ladi, da da. And you got eaten. So you never had any children. They got died, the ancestor that was walking in the woods and there's a massive line and went, holy shit. Heart started pumping, breath, got shallow eyes. The, the pupils changed, got very narrow focus and found a tree to hide. They survived and that's why you're here. So the sympathetic nervous system is necessary. The issue is there's no survival benefit when, um, you have a deadline at work. The same hormones get released. When you think you're gonna get eaten by a wild animal, there's no survival benefit. Um, if you have an argument with your, with your partner, or if you're single and you can't find somebody, there's no survival benefit. But the same hormones get released, they're not meant to be on all day long. That burns out the system. So a better analogy for the people that love cars combustions, you know, I've been told I'm not a car guy, so I've only been told this, so this could be incorrect. I apologize, but somebody told me that. It's really good for a combust combustion car that you really ramp up the RPMs into the red every once in a while. When you pass a car, it's actually good for the car, you know, every once in a while to rev the the engine for a minute or two. But if I drove from, I'm in Canada, in Vancouver, if I drove from Vancouver to Austin with the RPMs in red, I will destroy my engine. If I put in first gear and drove that way, I would destroy it. So same thing with the body. What's happening is we have this beautiful nervous system, but it's constantly thinking it's not safe, and it's constantly pulling on these resources that are meant to keep us safe, but not 24 7. Yeah, so that's the issue. So that's why we want to help engage the parasympathetic a bit more. Cortisol's not bad. Like you're saying, you would be in bed if you didn't have good cortisol. You wouldn't get outta bed, you know, you just wouldn't get outta bed. You need the cortisol, the energy. What happens is when it's out of balance, so it's happening at the wrong time of day. So those of you waking up in the middle of the night, you know you got a cortisol spike in the middle of the night. That's not what's supposed to happen. We want it in the morning, or we have too little too much of them, or the nervousness in the hormones, which reminds me of a term. Psycho neural immunology, PNI, which now they've added psycho neuroendocrine immunology, meaning your emotions impact your nervous system, your endocrine, your hormonal system, and your immune system. So we're not even making stuff up here when people go, oh, this is all nonsense. No, science talks about how your emotions impact your hormonal system, your, uh, endocrine, your immune system, um, and, uh, your nervous system. So we both are aligned with, I think, um, we're doing a great job talking about the physical, what we have not done a great job, but it's starting to happen is. How to be kind to ourselves, how to change that self-talk too. And that's why I like my hypnosis work, how to change those old programs that don't service anymore. They served us when we were young, that they kept us alive. We did the best we could, but now that we're not seven and we're 45, that program probably isn't serving you anymore. The people pleasing probably, you know, the five-year-old had a, with a divorced parent or an abusive parent, they had to be a people pleaser because if I don't get you to like me, I could die in their mind, at 45, that program still running, but you're not a 6-year-old, so you don't need to do that anymore. But it's your unconscious program that's running, that's doing that. I love this quote from Eckhart, uh, not Eckhart Toley, um, Viktor Frankl. It's a, it's not his exact quote, it's, it's inspired by his quote. Where in every situation, you either unconsciously, habitually react, or you can consciously choose to respond. In every situation, the unconscious habitual reaction is your subconscious programming. It's fast, it's superhighway, somebody says something and now you're triggered. That's the unconscious reaction. The conscious response is if you can develop presence and use tools that rather than unconscious reacting, you consciously choose how you want to respond, and over time we replace those old programs. So the default is the one that you want to run. So we are running a lot of unconscious programs and. This awakening process to circle back perimenopause, um, is an opportunity. Um, for the second spring, it's how are you gonna be in the second half of your life? And this is where you get to redo things and change things. You get to heal. Physical changes are happening, so you're gonna be required to make some changes, and then you get to do some self, um, reflection and heal. It's a, it's unfortunate, it's a painful time for many. However, it's an opportunity to heal and grow and you don't have to suffer. And I wanna talk about all the chapters in the book, and I would love to talk about hormone therapy because there's a lot of confusion out there. And I'd like to share what the updated information is that we have from our clinic so people have a holistic approach to addressing these symptoms and the underlying cause. Yeah, we can, we can definitely dive into that. If you'd like to go ahead and go ahead, I'd love, I'd love to talk about it 'cause so. There's a lot of fear around hormone therapy and, and I agree with you. There's a lot of like pushing estrogen. Estrogen, like that's the new thing. The medical influencers. The medical, sorry, they're not medical. The influencers that don't have medical background, no, they're medical influencers too. They're celebrity doctors. I call those celebrity, but yeah. So right now estrogen is what is what everybody's pushing so. Hormone replacement therapy has been rebranded as menopause hormone therapy. Um, we use it in our clinic. Two things to share the fear around. Um, hormones came from the Women's Health Initiative back in the nineties and early two thousands. That study has been debunked on a few levels. Now I will share it. I'm a Chinese medicine doctor. It is not my scope to do hormone therapy, so I don't prescribe it. I have naturopathic doctors in my practice. It is in their scope. So in my clinic we use hormone therapy. We practice as a team integration, and they've also done extra training. I can't remember the name, but there is a menopause group Association for health professionals, naturopaths, nurses, doctors, um, and my two naturopaths are part of it where you have to go through a program training and write an exam. So they're fairly up to date with the data, the research, and they also practice from a very holistic perspective 'cause they're naturopathic doctors. It's a really nice combination. What I've been educated in our team meetings is as follows. First of all, the women that got the hormone treatment in that study were all in their sixties and be of, that's not where we start hormone therapy. They did that because it's easier to work with women that aren't menstruating. So already, let's just roll up that study and throw it out because that's not the population we're dealing with. Mostly. Two is, um, the data, the way it was reported is inaccurate. This whole risk of cancer, um, the way they did it and reported it, I think it was like one in a thousand. It was pretty low. Again, these are women in their sixties though, right? Two is, we think the main issue for this was not the estrogen, it was the synthetic progesterone they used that caused it. So this is what I've learned from my, my team. Um, so that was the, uh, the, the, the biggest issues there is data that just came out that women that start hormone therapy, including estrogen. Before they go into menopause. There's a whole, I just, I literally just got the report yesterday for my team. Um, but showing lower cancers and everything, like it's actually preventative from my team when we, they consult patients. And again, I'm not, I'm giving you information to go to your provider. I, I may be a doctor, but I'm not your doctor. For the people that are listening. So this is for information purposes. There is some concerns around the oral estrogen. So most clinics will use bioidentical estrogen, but they'll use patch or the pump, the va, like if there's u urogenital issues, the va, like around the vagina, um, creams and, uh, lotions or a patch. There seems to be a little bit more risk with oral estrogen. Um, and they don't use progesterone and progess, uh, synthetic progesterones, they use bioidentical progesterone. So that's the first thing I wanna share. Secondly, or whatever number I'm. Most women, this is a general rule, so we, there's no general patient, there's only you. But in general, very rarely do. Our patients who are in perimenopause, meaning they're still menstruating, get estrogen. They often will get progesterone, but very rarely they'll get estrogen, which goes to your point, Mary, estrogen. Estrogen. This very rarely 'cause the estrogen is going up and down. Very rarely. Yeah. Now, if there are some of those vaginal dryness and itching and little low we may use, but often we'll start pretty low dose too, and in our clinic. We have seen some people where they've come in and their lives are upside down, can't sleep emotional, and the projection for them is life changing. Totally. Like heckle and it's life changing. I can tell you that not everybody responds well to hormone therapy. Just like some people get vaccines and they don't do well on them. Some people eat strawberries and die. Right. So there are people that are, I know that there are some people, so you're just throwing that in there randomly. Well, just because everybody's like, well, it works for these people. Most people can eat strawberries and they enjoy it. There are a few people that will get hives. There are a few people who will throat will close and they'll die. So you know, I have a patient that is in premature ovarian efficiency, so she's in her thirties. And her ovaries have stopped working and um, she's tried hormone therapy three times. They make her so sick physically and mentally. So we're working for other ways because that is not her way. We can't confirm this, but we guess I'm saying guess 'cause we don't have data on this, but there's now some genetic testing that we do in our practice where we can look at how the estrogens are metabolized and we can look at your detox pathways. And we suspect that those that don't do well on the birth control pill, you guys know this, when you take the birth control pill, you go insane or you don't feel good, right? Or you do IVF and the meds make you really insane and sick. Or you do hormone therapy bioidentical and you don't do well. Maybe you have that gene that doesn't detox. Uh, do good detox maybe. Maybe. I don't know. But I do see patients that when we give them the progesterone. It aggravates your symptoms. It's not many, but it is. Now, in Chinese medicine, this is a generalization, so my colleagues are listening. They tend to be the, it has nothing to do with your liver, western liver chi, stagnation, depressive, heat. Does it makes sense. 'cause progesterone is a warming, uh, drug warming energetically. And they already have the depressive heat, cheese stagnation. So progesterone's probably aggravating that cheese stagnation. So for those patients, we use acupuncture and herbal medicine to work with that, with the hopes that they'll be able to take the, the drug better. 'cause sometimes I just treat side effects to medications in my practice, right? They come in at all these beds. So when it comes to hormone therapy, if I was a woman. Uh, I have a wife that's in perimenopause, um, to see what they come through. Mentally, emotionally, the forgetfulness can't remembering things, the emotional liability that they go through sometimes. Um, it's cost, like it is much more expensive to come for once or twice a week. Acupuncture, herbs, it is the least expensive approach. So again, if we're worried about accessibility, the hormone therapy cost is cheaper than seeing a naturopath or acupuncture. So there's that, but it's, it's still a bandaid, but a good bandaid. It's not treating the underlying cause. When I say that is, a lot of the people we see just doing hormone, the, they'll change their diet, but the hormone therapy is there. It gives them relief. Why? Because remember I said at the beginning that the resilience is lacking so you don't have the capacity to adapt because of the fluctuating hormones. Well, when we give you progesterone to oppose that insan, the crazy estrogens from the internal, you don't feel the change anymore. We trick the body. Um, and so you're not feeling that change, so you're not having these symptoms, but that underlying resilience is lacking. And what I suspect will happen is because you're not addressing the underlying cause. You just went for the symptom when you're 70, 75. Other problems probably will show up because that resilience factor never got addressed and now it can't handle what's going on in your life. Because remember, we do all die at this point in time. You do lose your resilience as you get older. You will lose bone mass, muscle mass, your blood sugar, metal, everything's gonna change. We're doing our best to slow it so when we die, we're as healthy as we can be when we die at 120, for example. But if you have low resilience and your body can adapt, even though you're not feeling any more perimenopause, menopause symptoms, I would suspect in the seventies, that underlying problem, we'll show up again in your life and it's a lot harder to address it and correct it at 75 than it is at 45. That's the downside of hormone therapy is, oh, I feel good. Now they continue the sex, drugs, rock and roll, people pleasing, working crazy hours. Yes. Because they don't feel the symptoms. But before H 35 disease treats you after 35, you, um, you, uh, sorry. Before 35, you cheat disease after 35 disease cheats you, that will catch up to you. You will have to pay the piper eventually. That's my thing too, is, well first going back to the access, people are having a hard time even just getting hormones because the, in, in the US even traditional practitioners aren't trained on menopause And so the ones that are, they're usually out of network. So people are having a hard time Yeah. Even getting access. My patient came in in perimenopause with distress around her physical and emotional, and her doctor gave her a prescription for birth control pill. So she will no longer menstruate. Um, yeah. Um, that's now again, if that's the doctor's training and her trainings from the nineties, 'cause she didn't want to, you know, then, then that's the best that doctor can do. It's doesn't, you know, there's always somebody who finishes last in med school and the county. That's what we're doing. This podcast is I'm a fan of solution focus. I'm, I'm a fan of, you know, um, living with what is, and then, you know, what can I do? So we're, we're letting them know, like, take this information. Like on my podcast I have. Four or five perimenopause, menopause talks by endocrinologists, OBGYN's, naturopaths. They're on there where they give this information. Um, I'll give a call out for a website. Go to chemco.ubc.ca, CE mca r.ubc.ca, all research based perimenopause on bioidentical hormone therapy and PCOS. And then they tell you how to get your doctor to prescribe and what to prescribe and how to take everything. Oh, I love that. If you wanna go that. Yeah. So really good stuff. They do really cool research. Um, it's Lyn Pryor's, uh, founding site. She's the one where the doctor quotes her research what your doctor won't tell you about menopause. She's the one that did all the research or a lot of the research around progesterone. I, I'll say they're being dismissed. Um. Some things are hard to access even here in, in Canada. You know, it's hard to get into a doctor these days, and yes, doctors want to prescribe that. It's unfortunate, but you know, talking about what is here, here's what I'm seeing right now in the reality. The reality is, especially since COVID. You have to advocate for yourself. You have to get a little extra educated because the system, I treat a lot of doctors and nurses in my practice, they are overworked, underfunded, understaffed. So just like you doing your job, they don't have the resources. They're burnt and, and they can't keep up to date with everything. And again, my job, when I go even see my doctors, I come in with some information and I give them like, can we do this? Like, I, I lead the witness, I help out. So I'm now, if somebody say That's not fair, it shouldn't be the way. Again, when you fight with reality, to quote Byron Katie, one of the cool teachers of consciousness, you suffer. It's not the situation that causes stress, it's how you think about the situation. I don't run this world. So this is the reality we live in now. And so. You can complain about it and create more suffering. Um, and complaining is good in the sense if you are being proactive to help change it. However, you're going to have to, in some cases, advocate for yourself and we should talk about all the other things that you can do. I would say that bioidentical hormones can save some women from suffering. Yeah. There's dosage that's important. The form of application is important. Um, and the type bioidentical and, and there's lots of information I mentioned on that website. We have tons of information on the Acu Bunce website under our blogs and under my Conscious Fertility Beyond podcast. But we do have to advocate my fertility patients. They come in, why doesn't the doctor say this? And that they're not saying this and that, but here's how you can advocate for yourself. Well, when I say this, I'm saying it to validate people's experience. 'cause they're like, people are being told. Hey, go on these things. Do these things. So what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing is extreme frustration with women. And what I'm saying is, I am validating your lived experience. You are right. It is frustrating, it's, but if we can reframe this and say, okay, I dunno why it keeps going, doing the thumbs up. If we can reframe this and look at it as a partnership like you, like, can we look at this as we have to do a lot of our own research. We can't put everything on the doctors. The doctors are overwhelmed. It's not necessarily the doctor's fault. But at the same time, you know, dismissing isn't ideal. We should at least know the basics about perimenopause. Yes, we can be frustrated at that, but what can we do? We can be informed consumers. Now we have access to ai, we have access to podcasts, we have access to conversations like this so we can start building our own. List of things that work for us and for me, my favorite thing is just telling people to notice your patterns. Like if you notice if you're exhausted, what phase your cycle are you in? Or noticing your body? And when you're chronically people pleasing, what does that feel like for you? If you're energetically depleted because you're giving all the time, like notice what that feels like in your body and what are the things that we can do? So maybe. For me, I, I can't, I haven't been able to tolerate oral progesterone, and we're seeing this sometimes in women with endometriosis and PCOS, that they're potentially having some difficulties with that. And so for me, I was, I was frustrated because I was like, well, this, this is supposed to be the answer to all this. And then that's when I had to search for more stuff. Oh, how else can I support my nervous system? How can we reframe this? The, the medical system that we've been leaning on isn't able to support us at the way that we want to right now. Okay. What can we do about that? And can we reframe it to, we're paving the way for the younger generation to have an easier flow through medi perimenopause. I tell the ladies that work for me that are in their early thirties, I was like, I'm doing the work for you ladies. Like we're doing it for you. Because the more that we get to just accept, Hey, we're all figuring this shit out together. Like, can we just admit that it's chaos right now in this, but now can we bring it back to what can we do? How can we learn and how can we be informed participants in our care? And so I'm never the person that likes to sit in the anger of it. But I do like to address and validate those people's lived experience because as a woman myself and going through this and having it be a lived experience, I feel the frustration, I feel that the things that are being touted as the end all be all aren't working for somebody like myself. And yeah, well, everything, everything works on Instagram, right? So Oh my gosh, everything works. Don't even get me started. Yeah. Clinical, like, like you're, the progesterone to you is like the strawberry to the person that gets allergic to it. Right? Um, and I, I shared with you, I've seen people that they get angry on progesterone and they start to spot on progesterone Preach. Yeah. And it, so that's the liver chief stagnation, oppressiveness. You remember you talked about, um, gabo, the, when the body says no, um, we've done talks together. He is from my city, right? Um, in early days we had, uh, interesting conversations about the liver chief stagnation. That's, you know, and, um, and he, he was interested in breast cancer and liver chief stagnation, anger, right? Because the, or organ of liver. Emotion is anger. So yes, if somebody has liver chi, stagnation, depressive, heat, it's not a general rule, but often they, um, have some, um, side effects to the projection, let's say. So can you do both? Yeah, there's sometimes we can address that. And so there's ways to do that. And I love what you're sharing is Yes, there's lived experiences just so you know. 25 years, I see it on my tables. Right. Um, I see the, I like, I sit there and go, holy crap. Yeah. And it's not just men physicians, female physicians are dismissing these women. Yeah. And lived experience. I sleep beside this, right. My wife is there and she's going, and she goes to my clinic now and she's doing great, but I was like watching her like, holy crap, okay. Um, for my own survival, I need to help her. Like I need to, but you know, what's going on? Like, I need to help her. Right. And, and she's, again, she's having a pretty few things here and there, but compared to what I see in my clinic, pretty smooth. Yeah. But again, when it was happening, like, hey. I get this. Here's something, again, I don't have data on this. This is an an observation which may be very inaccurate 'cause we find when we do research the observation is not correct. But there's a perfect storm that I think has happened if you're perimenopause or menopause in this day and age. So you're, you know, you're over 40, 45. I don't know why, but COVID seems to have amped up the signs and symptoms I suspect. You know, we know long COVID, we can see that. Um, like the inflammation is obvious for some long COVID os every time you have ovulation and a period, that hor shift is an inflammatory process. Perimenopause is a amping up of inflammation in the body as well. And I think the COVID, so just the disease COVID, the what it's done to us on an inflamed aspect or the vaccine. So both. COVID or the COVID vaccine. Both, I think engaged that spike prank protein and activate our immune system. The isolation. So the stress around the isolation, the state of the world fear and the how much news we get. And that you are in your forties. Yeah. Is the perfect storm. Why? My practice is so busy with perimenopause and menopause and we're known for fertility, but my passion and my focus has shifted to perimenopause and menopause. A because the patients that I mostly have worked with over the past, at the time of this recording, almost 26 years now, they're um, they're that age group and I live, my wife is that age group and COVID has seemed to. Um, increase in my opinion, the number of symptoms and the intensity of symptoms. It's like the perfect storm. I don't know 'cause you talk to many people, but I just like, damn, like things have changed since COVID for the women I see in their forties and fifties. I mean, I've seen everybody's nervous system amplified since COVID. You know, it's, and, and I don't know how much of it is the rapid divide on social media of, you know, fear mongering and people just staying in this chronic fear-based state. The isolation. So if we're not even with other people, like communities are still significantly lacking. People develop severe anxiety after, you know, the lockdowns. Yeah. And now we're missing community a lot. And with that community is oxytocin. And what's the, uh, antidote for cortisol? It's oxytocin, it's that love hormone. And if we're not connected to our communities. It's gonna feel like we're just taking on this whole world ourselves on top of what we were already carrying. So I think, you know, it's hard to say exactly what it is, but I do think, I believe we are at, you know, a lot of people have a doom and gloom view of where the world is. If you're looking at it from where it is from like A 3D where we are a human experience, I look at it as we need enough pressure and issues to, and pain to happen in order for us to have this next kind of big collective breakdown before breakthrough as they say. Or like we, uh, UL says that from that, uh, suffering leads to awakening. Let's hope. That's the reason. Otherwise it's for nothing. Can I share? 'cause I know for time. Yeah. I like to share the holistic kind of like. Rapid fire, kind of the things that, um, we would do in our practice to holistically support women in this phase, to build the resilience, the kidney system, the heart system, liver system, so the change can happen. They call it the change sometimes, right? Menopause the second spring. So as your hormones are fluctuating, the estrogens up and down and your progesterone is declining, and then they both decline that you don't even notice it because you've built the resilience and helped your body balance. So yeah. One is like you talked about, like slowing down pause, right? And I have two blogs posts that I think if I can shut out. That really covered this well. One is called How to Survive Menopause and the other one's called you are not losing it. 'cause that's the biggest thing as in tears in my practice they're crying 'cause they think they've gone insane in their practice. Um, and they want to kill their partner. Oh, I gotta do a quick tangent. This is funny. My wife and I were listening to Mind Be Alex podcast breakdown. She's the actress from, um, the Big Bang Theory. She played the neuroscientist that dated the tall, skinny guy Sheldon. Okay. Big Bang Theory. Um, and she's a real neuroscientist in life, by the way. She had, she's an actual neuroscientist, but, but as actress. So she was interviewing somebody, one of the celebrity docs. Um, and they were talking, you know, they were pushing the estrogen, but in it, they're talking about how alcohol really can aggravate your menopausal symptoms. Not surprised. It's inflammatory. So your window of resilience is lower. So those people that could handle a little inflammation in the body, now they can't. Right. Stress affects that diet, affects that. So many reasons. So she was sharing that, um, that women who stopped drinking. Realize how much they hate their husbands because, and so she says the alcohol was keeping women in menopause or perimenopause, married because they were numbing their pain. And when they stopped drinking 'cause of the menopause symptoms, they all of a started realizing like, who is this guy? And they all of a sudden, you know, they're starting to, you know, they're not numbing. So they're starting to wake up and they're like, I'm not gonna deal with this. My wife doesn't drink. So we're listening and laughing. And I turned to her and I said, I think you need to start drinking so we can stay together. You need some wine. That's what you need. Anyways. Pause. So number one is, you know, you gotta take time for yourself. There's that, that pause, right? Learn to breathe. There's things you can do. Um, the chaos in the nervous system, there's so many ways to work with the nervous system, um, through diet, um, supplements. Magnesium's a, a, a really nice one. Magnesium bis love. In my practice, I use a vi vibroacoustic sound table. Uh, the neuro visor system. Low level laser. You have the sound table. Yeah. I love it. Love that. So cool. Great. It's a nice way to get people in their bodies. And just so you know, we have people that wear the AA ring. We have a new apparatus coming that's for, for research, so we can really measure. But with the AA rings, in the watches that look at HRV and more importantly like your level of deep sleep, the few of our patients that have had diagnosed with fibromyalgia and they, their sleep shows minimal deep sleep after doing the sound table, they're seeing. Hours increase in their sleep from their, their worse. Oh my gosh. I need to get them to start tracking that. Yeah. Get them to track. Okay, cool. Like, uh, we have people that just come in and lay on our table twice a week just for that benefit. And it has a cumulative, we'll do, like in our clinic, we can do nutritional IVs, low level laser therapy. There are, depending where you use it, you can engage the parasympathetic. That's how, why we use laser for fertility. It came from a Japanese doctor by the name of Oshiro where he was using it over the satellite ganglia, um, vagus nerve carotid and um, the cix plexus to engage a parasympathetic response to create blood flow head to toe. Including the ovaries. So we can use it for as a calming aspect. And I like to use conscious work, my energy ecology. So, uh, what you and I started off with the missing link, I think the most important part is the nervous system. Yeah. And there are many ways to get there. Diet's gonna help. Exercise is gonna help, sleep's gonna help supplements, herbs, acupuncture. There are many ways to get there. So I'm not saying you have to do it this way, but just keep in mind we want to address the nervous system. We need to help it. You know, that whole idea. Let food be your medicine. Let food be your fuel, your fuel here. So we have a diet that's for free called the um, longevity Diet on our website. It's an anti-inflammatory, low glycemic index diet. Basically, it helps with the inflammation, right? Helps with the, um, cellular, uh, metabolic health. This is going to be really important, especially in your forties and beyond. Very important for my fertility patients. So food, um, and then herbally. Know your body type. So in Chinese medicine there's not a one size fits all. And so depending on your patterns, you use the word patterns. That's how Chinese medicine looks at the body. You would get a different hormonal formula. So I kind of broken it down into menopause body types. For example, hot flash, night sweats is a very common symptom. Menopause, let's say I have five women all have hot flashes and night sweats. One is cold. The other one's hot. One has diarrhea, the other one has constipation. One um, has a high BMI one has a low BMI one sleeps well. One doesn't sleep well. All they have in common is hot flashes, night sweats. They would not get the same herbal formula. Yeah. 'cause their pattern is different. Um, and then there's acupuncture. Um, so in my practice, the way I do it is they usually do twice a week for four weeks of acupuncture while starting herbs. Um, and if that works, they usually don't go into hormone therapy. Some people want hormone therapy, so they start with hormone therapy. It's up to them, but usually it's acupuncture, herbal. Usually by the second or third acupuncture visit, they start to see, um, some relief and then doing, um, there's menopause, hormone therapy as well. So those are kind of our approach if you do it, diet and lifestyle is key. Moving the body more resistance training than cardio. 'cause you need the muscle mass to help with the blood sugar regulation because of your changing estrogens. It's going to negatively impact your, your insulin resistance basically. And the estrogen also is gonna impact the collagen in your body. That's why some people start to take collagen for the dryness, the loss of muscle mass for the aches and pains. There's just a lot of, I mean, creatine as well. It's not just for teenage boys. We're seeing this helpful in the perimenopause menopause. So there's a kind of group of supplements we like to use. There's diet, movement, sleep, um, if you're not sleeping, helping you sleep without narcotics. Um, and then there's acupuncture, low level laser therapy, the conscious work, and there's also menopause. Hormone therapy. That's kind of our approach. And where we're really aligned is, um, the emotional and the spiritual that that subconscious work. If that changes, then your nervous system gets a new message and then your immune system, hormonal system has, has a, a new reaction to that and your inflammation goes down and you, and we see it in our practice, we see changes. No, I think that. It's important to note, like if somebody's listening to this and maybe they don't have access to you or resources where they're at, or they're just feeling frustrated, I think so much of it is, is doing this work and starting to recognize what are my emotional patterns? What are my default patterns? You know, I mean, you can look at your life and know, oh, I'm a chronic people pleaser. Oh, or I am an avoidant attachment. Like where do these things come from? And looking and understanding that shadow work. And because if you're in that chronic fight or flight 24 7 because your default patterns are these, I don't think many people know that they have default patterns and that you can retrain them. You know, it's like when you get an apple or like your, your laptop and you never up update the software. It, it's not gonna be programmed. It's just gonna keep doing what it's always done. And how can we, you know, start, I like this. You're giving yourself a software update and when you do a software update, the hardware, the body. Performs differently because you've changed the software. Right. I love that. That's a great metaphor. And that's what you're doing. You know, in my practice, I, I can think of this woman where I worked with and, um, it came up that she had a lot of trauma from her, her childhood. That's, you know, she came in with symptoms and we're doing the acupuncture and started doing some of the conscious work with her, and all of a sudden you could just see it and then the energy came up, the tears came and she just released, her body shook and that was a big shift for her. And then she started exploring stuff. It was, I don't chase, like I'm trained as a clinical hypnotherapist. My styles, I don't kind of. Chase the early wounding. It usually comes up in, in our sessions, but I don't look for it. I look for what's going on now and um, I like to just provide people with tools. Tools are crutches. Tools are there to support you to, to access that part of you, that innate healer, that part of you that already knows. And you said about, you know, validating that woman that came in that was told to go on the birth control pill and not have her period. When she came to my practice, she said. Intuitively just feels like this isn't the right idea, right? And I said, let's go with that. Let's go with that. And then we came up with a new plan for her, and she had tears just because she wasn't dismissed. Like I just started sharing with her stories, and she was telling me what's going on? And I was explaining, oh, this is what is causing this, this was causing that. And no, you haven't gone insane. And, and we can rebuild you. You know, like you're resilient. We can, we can replenish you. You, it's the replenishing that we're gonna do here. And the things that you're sharing on your podcast on TMI, this is great. You're giving, you're validating. Validating is healing by the way. When people feel seen and heard, they feel loved. That is great for the nervous system. If you don't feel seen and heard, if you, if you feel dismissed by your provider. Unconsciously or consciously, your nervous system feels attacked, not safe. That engages the sympathetic if some, they don't have to agree with you, but if somebody gets you and hears you and listens to you and holds the space that is healing because now you feel heard, now you feel safe, that engages the parasympathetic. We think it's like always these complicated things. It's so simple, which is why. A, it's nice to work with practitioners that are kind, and two is be kind to yourself. This is what I got from you in your TMI podcast. It's to work on that inner dialogue and be kind to yourself. I always say be curious and compassionate with yourself and 'cause you're the best healer and you're the one that's going to really help change your nervous system. I'm the facilitator. My patients do all the work. I just facilitate, but they are doing all the rewiring with my facilitation support, but it's them doing all the work. Well, they're the heroes in the journey. And we're the people along the way guiding them. I'm the guide. Yeah. We're they're the hero, the guy. We're not the, we're not the heroes and yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't think. As physical therapists. It's something that we should be diving into their traumas, but more of, Hey, noticing what that feels like in your body. How does it feel when you release in? So say we talk about what they're stressed out about, right? And I'm working on their shoulder and then they have a release 'cause they're crying because it's, their emotions are coming up. It's validating them, letting them have those emotions and then noticing how do you feel in your body after you, you cry. Does that feel good? Do you feel lighter? I love that heavier, getting them to notice like I don't even have to do anything. Just like, just hold. That's the first step of my process called notice. Notice. Except choose. Again, you use the word trauma as well. It's stuck energy. I'm not a clinical, I'm not a counselor or a therapist, but I'm a clinical hypnotherapist. It's stuck energy in Chinese medicine it's stuck. Energy. Yeah. Emotion, energy, emotion. When you change the flow of energy, you experience it differently. When it's stuck, it feels really frustrated. When it moves, it feels good. So when it comes up, like again, that patient, when I worked with her, there was no story. We just did some needles and then all of a sudden all this energy came up and she just cried and she's like, where did this come from? And my acupuncture colleagues, or if you've ever had for those listening, if you've ever had acupuncture, if you ever had that experience, you're sitting there, the practitioner puts the needles in, and then in three minutes, all of a sudden either anger or deep sadness comes up and you just start to cathartic cry, but there's no reason for it. That is the acupuncture moves. The energy, emotion, energy, motion that stuck energy just got released, what Mary and I are talking about today. You can also without needles purposely, so you can learn how to purposely move the energy to release it, to let it go. Surrender it. That's what this work is about, what I call conscious work and the emotions come up. And again, I don't get caught up in the story. I'm just doing the hypnosis work, conscious work and using my needles to help move the energy to bring it up so you can metabolize it. That's where the alchemy comes up. Trauma, that's the therapist word. Call it whatever you want. It doesn't matter 'cause you're on my table. So it's not happening now. It happened 10 years ago or 20 years ago. But the mind forgets, the body remembers. I'm just interested in the somatic aspect. What stuck energy is stored in your tissues and then we help bring it up and release it to free up the flow energy in your body so you can have an enjoyable perimenopause, menopause or for my fertility patients. So those resources, 'cause they're not meant in your thirties to be going up to your heart center like that, they're still meant to be going into the uterus so they can go to your ovaries and help, um, optimize your fertility. I love that. Thank you so much for your work and thank you so much for coming on today. I feel like we could, we could probably talk for hours on all of this information I've enjoyed and I'm looking forward to having you on my podcast, so we're gonna have more to chat about. Oh yes, I'm excited as well. Thank you so much. Thanks, Mary.

Speaker 4 1:12:53

Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. It would be a huge help if you could subscribe and rate the podcast. It helps us reach more people and make a bigger impact. I would also love it if you could join my email list, which is LinkedIn, the caption for podcast updates, upcoming offers and events. You can also find me on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram at Dr. Mary pt. Thanks again.