Win Perimenopause: How to Beat Fatigue, Weight Gain, and Brain Fog
with Bria Gadd
Dr. Wendy Myers
Hello everyone. Thank you for joining the Myers Detox Podcast. My name is Dr. Wendy Myers. You can find my work at myersdetox.com. On this show, we talk about everything related to heavy metal detoxification, health issues caused by toxins, bioenergetics and anti-aging. Bioenergetics is basically energy medicine, which is one of my passions. On this show today, we have Bria Gadd on, and she’s the period whisperer. We’re going to be talking about everything hormones and what happens in that 10 years before you go into menopause, the importance of hormone testing and keeping an eye on your hormones, what kind of hormone replacement you can do during this time, and how you feel. We’ll talk about progesterone and estrogen and testosterone and bioidenticals and different forms of hormone testing and hormone supplementation replacement, and just some really interesting tips on the show.
Bria is a great interviewer, super energetic, and knowledgeable. She is also going to talk about all the different symptoms you might be experiencing during this time, during this transition, some of them a little bit scary, but we will give you a lot of solutions and insight into what you can do to optimize how you feel during your perimenopause years. Our guest, Bria Gadd, is an integrative nutritionist, holistic health coach, and a certified personal trainer who specializes in female hormones, helping women with weight release and energy gain in pre and post menopause and finding clarity in hormonal chaos. You can learn about Bria’s work at briatheperiodwhisperer.com. Bria, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Bria Gadd
Thank you, Wendy. I’m really excited to be here. I love your podcast and how you serve.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Oh, thank you so much. I’m really happy you’re coming on because I love this topic and talking about perimenopause. A lot of people talk about menopause, but I think it’s very important because I’ve had a lot of girlfriends of mine that asked me questions. They’re like, hey, I’m missing my period, or it’s super heavy and they have all these symptoms that they don’t know that it’s perimenopause. And these are women that seem very educated about health and whatnot, but I think for a lot of women, the change that happens can happen 10 years before menopause kind of takes them by surprise. So tell us a little bit about it, and that’s what we’re going to talk about, but tell us about your work and how you got into focusing on this.
Bria Gadd
For sure. So, I spent the better part of my first career, I’d say as a fitness and nutrition coach, as a trainer online and I loved it. I got to work with thousands of women and I really felt like I had this fitness and nutrition piece figured out for myself. Around the age of 35, I started noticing a shift in my clients. They weren’t getting the same results. They were starting to have some discomfort in their cycle. Their motivation was changing and things like that. That started me thinking, okay, what’s this about? And then around 37, it really slammed. It hit me hard. I started having symptoms like brain fog, a lot of fatigue, a lot of energy issues, anxiety for the first time in my life, and what I like to call undeserved weight gain. When you’ve changed nothing and things start changing.
Dr. Wendy Myers
It’s always undeserved
Bria Gadd
That’s true. It is always unwarranted. Maybe that’s a better thing. Unwarranted. I didn’t do anything, but that’s a good way. I’m going to change my language on that. Thank you. That’s a good way and then my period started changing with getting really heavy and that should have been sent to my healthcare practitioner at first, because anytime we have major changes, we really should be looking at that. But it wasn’t until my sleep started being affected, where I was waking up every night and I just wasn’t sleeping the same as having a lot of night sweats where I was like, okay, something’s not right. I went off to my healthcare practitioner and had all the blood work, asked all the questions, and she was wonderful. She kind of looked at me, Wendy, and was like, Bria, you’re the picture of health. I was like, okay, there are these moments you have where you’re like, I’m really grateful that I don’t have any of these awful things that came up when I was Googling night sweats, but if this is the picture of health, I was only 37.
I thought I had these pieces sorted, like, what are the next 40 years of my life going to be like? That was really what spun me off into becoming a functional health practitioner, diving into female hormones specifically. It was in that process where I was able to heal and support myself where I no longer had the unwarranted weight gain, where I was sleeping again through the night, where my period got re-regulated and where I started to really understand this transition and what was going on. I really felt at that moment like, I’m in the wellness industry and I didn’t know these things. How on earth are all these amazing women out there doing these amazing things that aren’t in the wellness industry? How are they going to know? That was what propelled me into this passion of trying to simplify and educate in an area that we’re so highly uneducated on.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, and just to be clear, what exactly is perimenopause? What does that look like? When does it start and whatnot?
Bria Gadd
I love this. So, we all hear about menopause, right? I remember hearing about it on the TV and just to clarify, ultimately, menopause is just one day, 365 days after you finish having a period. Everything leading up to that, starting around the age of 35 is called perimenopause, and it’s really a reverse puberty transition. So, it’s not a diagnosable condition, which is why we can go and get blood tests from a doctor who diagnoses things and be like, there’s nothing to diagnose because it’s not diagnosable. It’s this transition. A few key things that are really important for women to understand that I didn’t know is that one, all transitions require more energy. We can see this in life. If you move, you change careers, you get married, you get divorced, you have children, you’re going to be more tired. More stuff’s going to happen. We know that more is going on in the body in the same way.
For anyone listening, if they have ever been pregnant, when your body’s building a human, you’re more tired. So, we know this starts to happen, but I think the biggest thing that I didn’t understand about perimenopause that I think is really important for women to know is that there’s a few key things happening inside beyond the transition. One, the transition really is whose job is managing the stress, the main sex hormones. It was your ovaries, and now it is transitioning to be your adrenals, which are our stress managers, are taking on this job. And let’s be honest, our adrenals are already very taxed.
Dr. Wendy Myers
They’re toast. By the time you’re like 37, they’re done. They’re like little raisins.
Bria Gadd
Totally. I already feel it. They’re already like, I’m juggling five balls. If you’re going to throw one in, one’s going to get dropped and that’s what we start to have more. We start to notice symptoms. The other piece I think is that obviously we know in this transition, the amount of our hormones is decreasing because we’re going from being driven to reproduce to no longer being reproductively capable. The balance of them is really where the symptoms, I think, get out of hand. Obviously, we’re going to notice some changes with the amounts, but it’s when that balance and the function of them go off, where we really start to notice trouble. We have a lot of control over that with our own life and choices. Finally, what I think is so important is understanding what’s happening in our brain and the shifting of these hormones. This transition really impacts the hippocampus, the amygdala, the real memory encoders and retrievers in our brain. The science for me, when I think about it, is that we start to become really much more aware of things that are bothering us or things past traumas that we didn’t resolve.
The philosophy around it is from puberty until now, we’ve been somewhat hormonally hijacked every month by estrogen. It comes in like these rose-colored glasses, purely to make sure that we reproduce, that we’re amenable to reproduce, and that we prioritize our children’s lives over ours so that they survive. So, there’s a real purpose. Well, that’s going away, and I think we often feel like we’re not ourselves, but ultimately what we start to notice around this time is we now have the space to kind of access our real feelings, the things that are bugging us are actually bugging us. They probably always bugged us. Now they’re just really bugging us all month long and not just half the month. Knowing that gives us a little bit more cells and creates more function in our hormones so that we aren’t so frustrated, so exhausted and suffering.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, I felt the same way at 37. I was like, what the F is going on? I just looked in the mirror and I’m like, who is this person? I was just getting angry and it was probably part of my diet. I was vegan at the time for like six months. I had a moment there and an experiment that did not work out. So now I’m definitely erring on paleo, but I hadn’t, poor sleep and all these things, but I just had a baby. So just like compound, I was like adding layer after layer after layer of disasters to my health. But it was partly the beginning of perimenopause as well.
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Bria Gadd
That’s a good point. These days women are having children later and later in life. So, it’s not uncommon for women to have children between the ages of 35 to 42 to 45 even. If you have children in your twenties, it sounds like you have a bit more time for your hormones to reestablish before they go through that transition, but if they’re already transitioning after having a baby and then they’re transitioning again, it can hit you even harder.
Dr. Wendy Myers
That was me because for sure, you have this huge rush of estrogen when you’re pregnant. You have just more estrogen than you ever produced in your entire life and the rest of your life. When you’re pregnant, it feels amazing. I felt so good when I was pregnant. And then that party was over and the hair fell out, my eyelashes fell out, my arm hair fell out. I was like, this is going on, but it was crazy and it’s still gone but it’s indefinitely I was like, what? There’s something seriously wrong with me and that’s what drove me to the doctor. That’s why we’re standing here today, essentially is that health crisis I had like a year after having a child, but part of that was that transitory period, the adrenals burned out whatnot, and then the hormones being really low. So, what I really wanted to talk about is the importance of hormonal testing and seeing where you’re at and if you need replacement, because definitely doing like bioidentical progesterone replacement, especially starting to think about that after 35, I think is so important and can mitigate a lot of symptoms.
Bria Gadd
Yeah, absolutely. No, I agree with you. I think for me in my practice, I’m a big believer in tests, don’t guess, because I think when it comes to taking hormones, which I do believe in and I don’t think people should suffer. We do have to recognize that it’s not just about hormone production. We can’t just take the hormones and assume everything’s going to get better. There’s hormone metabolization and there’s hormone absorption in the body. If we don’t test, and for me, it’s always in a functional way, then we aren’t recognizing we might just do a blood test and check our level, but we’re not looking at the relationship or the balance necessarily of those hormones. We’re not looking at the liver function, and is it able to metabolize? We’re not looking at the cell cellular function and oxidative stress and gut health and all these things to know that it’s being absorbed. I often run into women are taking HRT and it’s either not making any difference or just making a little difference, which again, I don’t believe we should suffer, but when we get into testing, we can actually see where the loss of function is and address that so that the body can get back to doing what we want it to do, which is function properly.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I 100 percent agree with you. I think there are a lot of people women whose livers are not functioning optimally. 100 million people have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and obviously livers are not functioning optimally in that state, not to mention toxins and whatnot, but all the endocrine disruptors throw a big wrench into your hormones as well. There are many factors to consider, but I agree. I think a lot of hormone doctors you’ve gone to or heard about or people have gone to, I’ve gone to, just test the blood markers. They just look at your blood levels of hormones, which is very myopic. It just gives you one angle.
Bria Gadd
It does. I heard someone explain it as, your blood is really your body on its best day. We’re really only getting the highlight reel. We’re not getting, if you imagine going to watch, like a musical or a movie and then after you watch the movie scene to think you know exactly how to produce a movie. That’s very different. We don’t know how all the costumes change and everything that goes on behind the scenes to make that movie possible. Bloodline measures that front bit, and as you said, it’s myopic. So, we’re only looking at it in a way of, is it low, is it regular, or is it high? For all the people of all the sizes of all the energy demands of all the world, it doesn’t give us a very good answer, does it?
Dr. Wendy Myers
So, yes. Do you like Dutch urine testing or what kind of functional testing do you like?
Bria Gadd
Dutch urine and for sure, or a stress hormone panel, depending on where we’re at. I really love, which is like saliva for stress hormones. I really love to run what we call metabolic wellness panels. It’s like dried urine that’s going to determine detoxification of the liver, digestion, so if we’re not digesting some of our macronutrients, we’re going to see some of that there, and oxidative stress levels. I love to run a mucosal barrier assessment so we can really see, is there a leaky gut? Are we absorbing nutrients? Is there a pro inflammation in the body? And if so, why? Then I really like to run a GI pathogen test too, which is a stool test to understand not just the good and bad bacteria and how they’re relating to each other. Is there a pathogen, a parasite, or bacteria? I didn’t realize I had H. pylori, which is a bacteria in the stomach lining that 50 percent of the population has. It was a big part of the added stress on my body that I didn’t know about. So, I really like to look at all of them and even a food sensitivity test at times, just to really see what’s there.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I think it’s so important to run stress tests. That’s so smart because if you’re stressed out, you’re making stress hormones and you’re doing that at the expense of your sex hormones. So, if you’re stressed out
Bria Gadd
Nobody knows that as well, right?
Dr. Wendy Myers
It’s very elementary. It really is if you think about it, but a lot of people don’t know and they’re like, I don’t have a libido because all you’re doing is making stress hormones. So, you have to bring down your stress level, which is definitely easier said than done. The easiest way is to say no to this and that and the kids and the husband or whatever you have to learn to say no.
Bria Gadd
Yeah, absolutely. You brought this up already, but I think it’s so important as we very quickly fall into it. I don’t feel well. How’s my eating and how’s my movement? Although those are very important and powerful ways to impact, there’s a hundred ways our body is being stressed out. There are hidden ways and there’s obvious ways. And that stress is really the crux of all the other dysfunction in the body.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yes, let’s talk about some symptoms that women would have if they’re starting getting into that perimenopause territory because everyone’s a little bit different when they hit menopause and when they start perimenopause. What can that look like?
Bria Gadd
Some of the most common ones we see are obviously lower energy or depleted energy, brain fog, and heavier periods. I’ve even had clients call them murder scene periods with lots of clots and things like that in there.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I’ve had a girlfriend call me. It’s like, Wendy, what? She had to stand in the shower. She thought she was bleeding to death and she needed to go to the hospital or something and I was like it’s probably perimenopause and you’re okay to stay in the shower. But she couldn’t function. Yeah, It’s scary. I didn’t have that. I did not have that but I would be kind of scared if I had that murder scene type of like period.
Bria Gadd
Yeah, and although it’s common, it’s not normal. It is an indicator that there’s like a major hormone imbalance in this transition. I always say perimenopause highlights what’s not working for us because it’s that constant energy drawdown. You’re going to become really aware of the things that aren’t working in your body and in your life. Some of the other common symptoms of course are this unwarranted weight gain or stuck weight. If we are doing things and it’s not working, then we know there’s going to be some loss of function in there or something going on.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I have a comment about that too because I feel like when women are not making as much estrogen, the body will start putting on extra pounds because that fat will make estrogen as well. That’s part of why women gain 10 and 15 pounds in that transition into menopause because the fat actively makes estrogen and makes perfect sense.
Bria Gadd
Yeah, it is logical that way and, but we can, I think we often think like, oh, I’m getting older, I’m just going to gain weight. Although the reality is, yes, our metabolism starts to slow, we can really fight that in different ways by putting on lean muscle, which is going to be good for us long-term and just making sure we’re doing what we can to keep the hormones balanced. So, we’re not in a situation where our estrogen is too low, we’re studying the process and it’s kind of slow and steady. Sleep is a really big one. We hear disrupted night sweats, hot flashes and anxiety and moodiness. A lot of those things come up and less popular is frequent urination, more bladder or even incontinence in any way can be signs of this phase. I really am often careful to say things like, we don’t want to blame the hormones. I really think it’s because the transition is happening and there’s more of an energy suck on the body, things are breaking down faster than they’re building. So, it’s not necessarily our hormones responsible for some of these things, but it is the transition that’s creating them to be more irritating.
Dr. Wendy Myers
What about testosterone? There’s a lot of focus placed on estrogen and progesterone. What is the role of testosterone and thinking about maybe testosterone replacement for me was a big thing for me because I felt like I just couldn’t gain muscle. I’d be going to the gym. I’m dedicated. I’m like, what is up with these flabby chicken wings? What in the hell is going on here? I’m just like, I’m so over it. I’m like, I think I don’t have any testosterone and I tested, I had two. My testosterone was two and it’s supposed to be for women, like 120 plus. So, it’s not surprising and men are like, this must be 900. So, I’m like, oh, that explains a lot. I took testosterone and wow, it’s so much better.
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Bria Gadd
Yeah, it’s amazing. I love hearing you share that because we don’t realize as women that testosterone is actually our most abundant hormone in our body. So more than estrogen and more than progesterone, it is still only a tenth of what men have, but that full tenth is really important to us for our energy, for our libido, for our motivation, for our confidence, and for our muscle building, like you were saying. It’s critical for all of these things and it is tied into that stress piece that we’re talking about. If stress is up, then DHEA is down and that’s that parent hormone to these sex hormones. So, we’re not getting the production that we need. If you’re going to fall into that place, I think the trouble that we’ve seen is that it wasn’t even thought of as a female hormone for so long and so it wasn’t even measured for a really long time. Women are suffering in all of these areas and a lot of it has to do with testosterone. So, it is an important hormone to test and see where you’re at and use some bioidenticals if we need it.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, because I just refuse to turn into a butterball. I’m just not doing that. I’m not playing that game and you know when I was younger my 30s, I was like, oh, I’m not gonna do that hormone replacement. I’m just gonna age naturally and like hell no when you get here and you’re a mess and your body’s a mess and you’re going to the gym every day and nothing’s happening, you know, you might reconsider.
Bria Gadd
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. It’s just a tool that helps support your body and why not? Why? We use tools every day in our life to be better. So no point in suffering, I guess, is my point.
Dr. Wendy Myers
You’re testing your thyroid and you’re testing this and that when you go to the doctor for vitamin D and all this stuff, why not test your hormones? I wish I’d started testing my hormones a lot earlier. I did a random Dutch test I think when I was maybe at 40, but I wish I’d done regular hormone testing throughout my perimenopause years. I definitely needed testosterone and progesterone and I think I suffered needlessly, not like severe, but I could have been. I’m feeling a lot better but I would be feeling my best if I had been testing those hormones.
Bria Gadd
I totally agree with you. I think our world and our culture has set up that we really don’t go and do anything until we have symptoms. It would be ideal if you’re right, if we did these tests, if we started testing at 30 or even younger so we knew where our levels are every year, every couple of years to know what our foundational, how much of each hormone do I have when I’m feeling really great. That would make it a lot easier to get back there, wouldn’t it?
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, and I think it’s true. A lot of women take hormones. They take hormone replacement and they don’t really feel all that great maybe as a result. They’re not feeling this aha moment from taking the hormones, but your doctor might not be checking it. You may not be taking bioidenticals. I’ve gone to different doctors that do different things. I was doing pellets and now I’m doing bioidentical estrogen like a capsule and it’s so much better than the pellets. So much better. So, there are patches and there are testosterone pellets, but then there are injections. There’s different methods and different things that work for different people. I decided to go to not like an OBGYN, but like a hormone specialist, all they do is hormone replacement and it’s a totally different ball game. I think you have to look at that. Then, if the hormones aren’t making you feel better, then you probably needed them, but there’s just something else going on in your system that is more pressing that needs to be addressed.
Bria Gadd
Yeah, absolutely. As a functional practitioner, I only work with bioidenticals, but I agree with exactly what you said there. If we’re taking things and it’s not working and you’re still not feeling well, then we know there’s that lab loss of function and we know we want to look at the whole body as a whole.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yes. So, are there any other things women can do to optimize their perimenopause years?
Bria Gadd
Absolutely. I always think we have really gotten away from our foundations of health, right? I was guilty of this too, where it’s like, I’m going to do these workouts. I’m going to try this way of eating. When we look at our health in general, in order for the body to do what it can do most of the time all on its own, which is to heal and thrive and move through these transitions, we have four foundational pillars of health. When we start with these, and I’ll give the example in a minute, and we do them long enough, which I think is another piece we run into is thinking that we should be getting results yesterday or in two weeks, like we’re in our forties. We didn’t get here overnight, so it is going to take a bit longer. When we do them long enough and they’re not moving the needle, we know it’s something else, but we have to have these foundations.
I like to look at it like a dining table. If you go out to dinner with friends or your date night or whatever it is. That table has four legs. We’ve got sleep, which is really important. We need really consistent sleep because the body needs to know when it’s getting its energy. We’ve got nutrition. So, we’ve got to figure out our nutrition. We’ve got to eat consistently, none of the skipping meals and eating enough. That’s really important. We’ve got functional movement. I always say before fitness. So, if we don’t have time to be walking seven to ten thousand steps a day, we probably shouldn’t be spending an hour in the gym. We got to get the functional movement first. And then we have stress, pleasure, which I tie together because if you are stressed, you can’t have pleasure, but pleasure is a huge energy driver in the body. If you’re at this meal and one of these legs is rickety, it’s going to be a little irritating, but you’ll move on. But if two are rickety, you’re going to be frustrated and complaining, maybe rigging some cardboard underneath that table. If three are rickety, your meal is on the floor and it’s a bad experience. That’s the same with our health. We really need to kind of start with these foundational pillars and be patient with it.
I think when we’re having a lot of symptoms and perimenopause, for me, that’s like you’re in health debt, and we can’t expect to have a down payment for a home on a great investment in our health, if we’re in debt, we got to get out of the debt, and that can take six, 12, 16 weeks of consistency before we get out of that health debt. But if you are being consistent and it’s nothing’s changing or your symptoms are so bad that you can’t be consistent, that’s another really good flag that it’s time to get help.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, and it takes time to heal for sure. It takes time to definitely deal with the hormones, it can, it can be really frustrating. There are so many things that interfere with our hormones. Oh my God. So, let’s talk about diet because I think vegetarianism and veganism is on the rise because there’s a lot of programming in the mainstream media that this is a great idea and it sounds really good and whatnot, but I think it’s very detrimental to our hormones. What is required to produce hormones?
Bria Gadd
To produce hormones, we need vitamins and minerals. We need amino acids and a whole host of other things. When we talk about nutrition, we need amino acids and vitamins. You need all the foods to create that piece and then proper absorption of those foods. I’m with you on that. I think everyone is different and we can’t just find one blanket way of eating. You see cultures in the world that primarily eat meat and thrive and we see cultures in the world that are vegetarian and thrive, but we’re all different and we really need to understand our unique fuel mixture and that’s difficult to do if we’re just trying someone else’s program. I think when it comes to our nutrition, we want to start with like, okay, first we have to have consistent nutrition so we have consistent blood sugar. Then we need to really look at that fuel mixture. If you are in my practice, we talk about metabolic typing, which is really the rate at which your cell turns food into energy in your body.
If you have a fast metabolic type, then being a vegan or vegetarian is really not ideal for you. It’s going to make you feel sick. It’s going to add a great stress to your body. On the other side, if you’re a slower person and then try to eat keto, you’re going to run into some issues as well. So we really want to know our fuel mixture and what that is for us, what amount of proteins, what amount of carbohydrates and what amount of fats that we need.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, for sure. You’re going to have a tough time doing keto if your liver isn’t processing and metabolizing fats very well, which is a lot of women in there. For sure, you need cholesterol to make your hormones, so you have to eat. You need to eat some cholesterol. So vegan, you’re not getting that. Your liver makes cholesterol, but you need more from your diet. And so, you’re going to have trouble with your hormones for sure. That’s a person to go to. Your thyroid goes, your hormones go, your teeth go, your joints go and things like that, being vegan. But also, what about intermittent fasting? I know in my experience with intermittent fasting is that I found myself skipping breakfast because I’m not really hungry for it, but that’s a sign of cortisol dysregulation. When you’re not hungry in the morning, and I read that, I was like, oh my God, that’s why I’m not hungry.
It’s not because I had a big meal the night before. If you’re not hungry at all in the morning, it’s your cortisol just regulated and that I wouldn’t eat. And then my cortisol surges, in mid-afternoon I felt stressed. My blood sugar plummets, et cetera, et cetera. I just found I needed to eat some protein in the morning and that really has helped a lot just to force myself to eat even though I’m not hungry.
Bria Gadd
Absolutely. I agree with you. I think people don’t always recognize that when cortisol is up, insulin is up. So, this is why we’re seeing more weight gain during that time as well. So that consistency of eating. My thoughts on intermittent fasting are, I don’t actually think there’s a ton of research around women in this age box for it. I think that there is value in the rest and digest period, like taking time in between, but if you first thought, the first way to protect your hormones is having regulated cortisol and a regulated circadian rhythm, like you’re saying, and that looks like eating within two hours of waking and then eating four to five hours later, eating four to five hours later and eating enough of your fuel mixture, so enough protein and fats to feel full and satisfied in between. When you eat like that, and sometimes we need a snack depending on how active you are or life getting in the way and it’s going to be more than four to five hours. When you eat that way, when you wake up at 6, you eat at 8, you eat at 12 or 1, you eat at 5 or 6, then you’re getting a 14 hour fast still at night. You’re still getting the benefits of a fast if that works for you but it’s in an appropriate time of the day. In the morning, we expend most of our energy in the first 75 percent of the day. So, we want to fuel that so that we don’t dysregulate our hormones, dysregulate our circadian rhythm, which is going to throw our sex hormones.
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Dr. Wendy Myers
I think what you’re saying here is you have to have some credit in the bank or you can’t have a debit of your health. I think for me, I was coming up with the heavy docuseries, producing that was amazing, but it was very, very stressful. I tried to do intermittent fasting but it wasn’t working for me anymore. It was causing me more stress because I just wasn’t in a place where I could be doing that. So, our health status changes. Our stress levels change. I think you have to factor those things in, if doing that thing six-hour window or eight-hour window is really appropriate for you where you are in your life is a cause and it is intermittent fasting. It’s a form of a stressor that can have a hermetic effect. It’s helpful. But for me, I think it started becoming counterproductive and I stopped doing it for now.
Bria Gadd
I think what I hear you saying as well is like, it’s just so important that we know our own bodies, that we listen to what our body is saying to us and that we trust it because we are all bio individuals. At the end of the day, the more you know about your body, how she’s feeling, because it changes, is going to give you so much more power and insight into how to keep her strong, how to keep her healthy, how to keep her hormonally sound.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Anything that we haven’t talked about that you wanted to address in regards to perimenopause or periods or anything like that?
Bria Gadd
Yeah
Dr. Wendy Myers
Because you are the period whisperer.
Bria Gadd
I really like to use the menstrual cycle to pay attention to what hormonal imbalance we are looking at. In between testing, we can kind of see that. I like to use it to know, depending on our goal, if our goal is weight loss or muscle building. I like to use it to know when is the optimal time to be pushing and doing harder workouts? When should we be scaling back? When should we eat more? When should we eat less? So, for me, I really believe in this cyclical living. When you have a cycle, but even when you don’t have a cycle, we’re still cyclical beings and we feel different at different weeks and different days and different times. So, for me, I like to use it as a reminder of listening to our body and paying attention and also just honoring what’s coming up. That’s what I think is one of the most important things that we do in this time is pay attention and listen. It’s not really a time to be pushing through as much as it is a time to reflect so that we can be the CEO of our body, which is a very strategic position. I want to be thinking ahead. Where am I going? What you do right now is building your body one decade from now. I’m in my forties, I know in my fifties, I want to feel great. I got stuff to do and dreams to fill and I know most of the women listening do too.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I know it’s so important to be very intentional and plan ahead because when I saw how my father passed away and the doctor visits and on 10 medications, I was like, Oh hell no. That’s just not going to be me. That’s not fitting me and I’m going to put in that work now because he was working really hard on taking all those medications and going to the doctor’s appointment and doing all that stuff. He was working very hard on that. I’d rather put in that work now and prevent having various diagnoses and health issues that destroy your quality of life. I think there are a lot of people out there, they see their family doing the same thing and just on that revolving door at the doctors. And it’s just a sad way to live in my opinion.
Bria Gadd
I agree with you. We really want to be proactive and get ahead of it. I think perimenopause is the perfect time because it is the universe giving you a nudge to be like, hey, now in a decade, you’re not going to have cycles. You’re going to actually have more opportunity, more space. But we’re getting older, so let’s deal with this now so that you can thrive for the next many decades as you have left.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Hitting late thirties, your body’s not as resilient as it used to be. You can’t abuse your body as much as you were able to in the past. And so, like you, the rooster’s going home to roost, and you’re like, I have to make some changes here. I can’t just drink wine and do all this stuff, but eat fast food and do all this stuff I used to do. Get a hard workout and get to work for the day. Yeah, just work off that ice cream, but whatever you’re feeling good. So, there are a lot of listeners that they’re feeling good. They’re just trying to optimize. Should they be changing anything during these years and perimenopause years?
Bria Gadd
I mean, it’s a great question. I think again, in an ideal world, it’s much more easy for me and accessible to me being a practitioner. I’m going to test myself and my hormones and the function of my body once or twice a year. If you really are a high achieving woman and you want to make sure you stay there and optimize. I would do it anyway. I would be getting tested. I would know your levels. I’d make sure you’re supporting because we don’t always feel the beginning of loss of function usually until there’s a bit of a domino effect, windfall until we start to feel crummy. I’ll see you next week, especially high achieving women because we’re very good at telling ourselves everything’s fine and pushing through. So, we don’t always realize other things. I think in an ideal world for those listening who are feeling great, I would get on it like, why not be preventative like you were talking about so that you never have to get to the suffering part.
I do think that a lot of our symptoms stem from the state of our adrenals, like we said. If you’re feeling pretty great and genuinely are, then you’re probably doing a lot of things right. And if you aren’t sure, then just come back to those health pillars like, do I have these locked in? If these are locked in and I’m feeling good, then I can stress my body out doing other things. I can go after big dreams and goals. I can take on an intense workout program. I want to work on the composition of my body. I can play around with different tools. But if you’re not there, that’s when we know we’re in that debt and we want to start building.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point that you don’t really know what’s going on inside your body unless you test. I know if I think I’d been really low in testosterone my whole life, and I wish I had tested at some point to really figure out what was going on and to supplement because it’s not really like that big of a deal or you can take lots of magnesium. Just doing that can help to raise testosterone. There are some fairly simple things you can do to raise it naturally short of supplementing with it. I think It took me a really long time even being super knowledgeable for it to dawn on me like, oh, maybe I’m not getting muscle because I don’t have testosterone. It took me so long years before it finally dawned on me that that might be the issue because you don’t know what’s going on inside. So, it’s great to test. I think that’s such a good point.
Bria Gadd
I totally agree. I think, again, it’s just this change of our mindset in the world instead of we’re only going to get help when we are sick. Why don’t we go and be proactive about it and get ahead of it so we’re never hitting the sick point if we can help it.
Dr. Wendy Myers
So, why don’t you tell the listeners that where they can find you or they can learn more about you, work with you. You have a podcast too, correct?
Bria Gadd
Oh yeah. My podcast is called the Period Whisperer Podcast and all we do is talk about these this time in our life and perimenopause and hormones. You can come check that out anywhere you get your podcasts and hang out. I also love to hang out on Instagram where I share a lot of quick tips, small things for people who want to start to get to know that area. Or you can always find me at briatheperiodwhisperer.com.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I’m sure there’s a lot to talk about and this is just the hormone of this time of life.
Bria Gadd
Like, don’t you run out of things to say? I’m like, I have over 200 episodes now.
Dr. Wendy Myers
No, there’s a lot to know. There’s a lot to this whole period. So, thank you so much for coming on, Bria. What is your website again?
Bria Gadd
It’s briatheperiodwhisperer.com
Dr. Wendy Myers
Fantastic. Well, Bria, thanks for coming on the show and everyone, thank you so much for tuning in every week. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. You can check out my work at myersdetox.com. You can take my heavy metals quiz at heavymetalsquiz.com to determine your levels of toxins. I’m just so grateful every week for you guys for tuning in. We’re honing in on 6 million downloads and have been doing this for 11 years. This will be the 11th year. It’s just really been a joy, and many more conversations to come. I have amazing guests booked out, really, for the rest of the year. I have some amazing content coming for you guys focused on anti-aging, bioenergetics, and heavy metal detox and some really fascinating conversations. So, I’ll see you guys for the next conversation next week
Disclaimer
The Myers Detox Podcast is created and hosted by Wendy Myers. This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Wendy Myers and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.
