"Doctors Are CLUELESS About Women's Bodies" - How To Take Your Power Back & HEAL

Today I have three extraordinary experts in women's health - Dr. Mindy Pelz, Dr. Mary Claire Haver and Dr. Ellen Langer. We dive deep into the often misunderstood world of menopause, hormonal changes, and how women can optimize their health throughout different life stages. From debunking myths about fat burning to revealing shocking truths about medical education on menopause, this conversation is packed with game-changing insights. Whether you're a woman approaching this life transition or someone who cares about the women in your life, this episode offers invaluable wisdom on navigating the complex journey of women's health. Get ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about aging, hormones, and the female body! IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:Why women's bodies are designed to carry a little extra fat and how it affects their healthThe surprising truth about menstrual cycles and their connection to detoxificationHow women can optimize their fasting and exercise routines based on their menstrual cycleThe shocking lack of education doctors receive about menopause and its impact on women's healthWhy prioritizing muscle strength over thinness is crucial for women's long-term health and longevityFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1676For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dr. Mindy Pelz – https://link.chtbl.com/1543-podDr. Mary Claire Haver – https://link.chtbl.com/1641-podDr. Ellen Langer – https://link.chtbl.com/1578-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

• 0:18Lewis Howes?

  So what would you say is the difference was between how men should be thinking about burning fat versus how women should be thinking about burning fat, unwanted fat?

• 0:28Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it's such a good question. And one I've never been asked before, and here I'm gonna make a really bold statement that I don't think a lot of women will love, but it's part of living in a female body is that a little bit of, we're meant to have a little bit of fat.

• 0:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh, don't say that.

• 0:45Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  I know, right? Like a little bit. I'm not saying like, but we're not meant to be skin and bones.

• 0:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 0:53Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  We're meant to have a little bit of extra fat. It's part of like, the female body. And because here's, here's what's interesting. Both men and women have, the body has one major thing it's focused on, which is survival. But women have two. We have reproduction. So our bodies always, it doesn't want to be, think about when we're too thin, we bring calories down too much, our cycles stop.

• 1:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:18Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  So we, we need a little bit more padding to make the reproductive system work. Men don't need that.

• 1:25Lewis Howes?

  And if a cycle stops for a woman, is that a bad thing?

• 1:29Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, it's horrible thing.

• 1:30Lewis Howes?

  Why is that bad?

• 1:31Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it's, and thank you for asking that. I will say that one of the biggest ahas I've had from this book going out in the world is how many 20 and 30 year olds don't have a cycle.

• 1:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:41Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  So this is what women need to know. Your cycle is, is a detox. You are shedding the inner lining of your uterus, and you're getting rid of what is not serving you. So it's not just a troublesome situation you have to deal with. Your body is getting rid of hormones, it's getting rid of toxins, it's how we detox.

• 2:02Lewis Howes?

  It's recycling.

• 2:03Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 2:03Lewis Howes?

  It's kind of like a fast.

• 2:04Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  It's like a fast.

• 2:06Lewis Howes?

  Really? So a cycle is detoxing and getting rid of toxic things in the female body?

• 2:12Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  That's right.

• 2:13Lewis Howes?

  And it happens once a month, right? Every twenty eight, thirty days roughly?

• 2:17Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Twenty eight to thirty two. No woman has the exact same. I mean, every woman's different, but twenty eight to thirty two.

• 2:23Lewis Howes?

  Does it usually go in the same time for most women? Or when does it line up? And why do you hear that some women and families or, you know, friends say, oh, where our cycles are aligned?

• 2:36Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:37Lewis Howes?

  Does it have anything to do with astrology or the moon? Does it have to do with what you're eating? How you're sleeping, your environment, your mood cycles, your age? How does it all work?

• 2:49Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  It's kind of all of it.

• 2:50Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 2:51Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  So here's something that I think women really need to know. That is, again, different than men. And that's that our bodies are always adapting to our environment.

• 3:02Lewis Howes?

  Women's are.

• 3:02Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Women's are. So if we're restrictive too much with our calories. This is why I taught fast, like a girl, when to fast and when not to fast. If we're too extreme with our exercise, if we're too extreme with our, our stress levels, whatever environment we're putting in, our hormones are like navigating that and adapting to that.

• 3:25Lewis Howes?

  And your cycle will change based on that.

• 3:26Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Your cycle based change based on that. I'll give you a great example. I had a friend who had, she had three, at the time she had two kids and was trying to get pregnant with a third. And she was struggling to get pregnant with a third. And she waited a year to go to this reproductive specialist who had her filled out, fill out like, you know, mounds of paperwork. She goes after a year of waiting, she sits down with this guy and he says, I'll tell you how you need to get pregnant. You need to stop doing so much.

• 3:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:57Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  You need to stop stressing so much. And she was so upset, she left and she's like, I waited a year. I filled out all that paperwork. And then she was, and that's what he told me? And she goes, and then I decided to try it. And within a month, she was pregnant.

• 4:11Lewis Howes?

  Really? Why do you hear this a lot from, you know, women who who say they can't get pregnant? And then you hear stories of, well, they were too much in control or they were stressing too much. And the moment you let go and surrendered, then they got pregnant. Why do we hear that so frequently?

• 4:28Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So if you think about it, if reproduction is a top priority for a female body, if you're under so much stress, the body is like, it's not safe to house a baby.

• 4:40Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  The body's always doing the right thing at the right time. So if it's not able to have a baby, the first thing you have to ask is, for the female, is, is, does my body feel safe? And sometimes, you'll love this because you're such a mindset expert. I was gonna call you guru. You're a mindset guru. If, if you are thinking toxic thoughts, if you are constantly under, like not dealing with traumas in your life, if stress is really high, the body is always feeling like it's under threat, your, your hormones will go massively out.

• 5:16Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 5:17Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 5:17Lewis Howes?

  So your hormones are connected to the way you think also?

• 5:20Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Absolutely.

• 5:21Lewis Howes?

  Do you think if a woman is subconsciously knows that they're in a relationship with the wrong person, they married the wrong person, or they're trying to have kids with some man, that subconsciously they know they're not supposed to, do you think that their cycle will be off, or they won't get pregnant because they think that way?

• 5:40Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  I, I think it's very possible.

• 5:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 5:42Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  There's, there's some interesting studies. I want to go back to the.

• 5:45Lewis Howes?

  Cause they don't feel safe.

• 5:46Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 5:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 5:47Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  You have to feel safe for your hormones to be balanced. That's why fasting didn't work for women to do all the time. Because people, the body was like.

• 5:56Lewis Howes?

  Too stressful.

• 5:56Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Too stressful. But cycling fasting works for women because you're, you're using the principles of fasting to heal, and you're using the principles of food to nourish yourself. So the body feels safe and you do that in accordance with your hormones and your cycle. And the body's like, I'm safe. I can release weight.

• 6:15Lewis Howes?

  I want you to talk about cycling fasting in a moment, but I think I just cut you off from something you were going to say.

• 6:19Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So I want to talk about, I wanted to go into the pheromones for a second because why do we cycle together? And then I wanted to talk about one study about birth control. That was really interesting. So we cycle together, women do, because as crazy as it sounds, we smell each other.

• 6:36Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 6:37Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So there's a scent that we give off and it changes our cycle. That's how powerful a woman's body is and how it will adapt to the environment it is in.

• 6:47Lewis Howes?

  So when you smell another woman?

• 6:49Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 6:50Lewis Howes?

  Who has, it'll know when the cycle is happening?

• 6:53Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 6:54Lewis Howes?

  And it'll sync up your hormones with theirs?

• 6:56Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, but it's when you're like in families and work environments.

• 6:59Lewis Howes?

  When you're constantly with that person.

• 7:00Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, it's constantly. It's not like you go out into the world and...

• 7:03Lewis Howes?

  It's not like you see your girlfriend once a month and, oh, we're gonna sync up right now.

• 7:07Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Because they're called pheromones.

• 7:08Lewis Howes?

  Pheromones?

• 7:09Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 7:10Lewis Howes?

  That's fascinating.

• 7:11Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, second interesting study.

• 7:12Lewis Howes?

  What is the reason behind that, you know, pairing of cycles within families or communities? Is that, is there a safety thing when you're both in a cycle at the same time? Is it?

• 7:24Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  That's a great question. I always go back to our primal caveman days. I'm like, why did, because that's where you can really see, why did we do that?

• 7:33Lewis Howes?

  I guess men back in the day used to spread their seed a lot, you know, just everywhere.

• 7:38Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Maybe that was it. Maybe that was it. There was a lot of...

• 7:41Lewis Howes?

  To multiple women, you know, at once.

• 7:44Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 7:44Lewis Howes?

  It's true. I mean, in tribal days, it was like, okay, the man with the most money or the doctor or the whatever, the person with the most resources is able to kind of spread their seed to as many people as possible.

• 7:55Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Lewis Howes?

  For survival.

• 7:57Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. It's possible. I, I think there's something I wrote in both my books called the hormonal hierarchy. And it works, it works in women because our hormones are more complicated. So, and the hierarchy looks like this.

• 8:12Lewis Howes?

  Well, you guys aren't simple?

• 8:15Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  We're not.

• 8:16Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 8:16Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Are you just picking that out right now? We're not. I, I, it's so funny. So many men say to me, like, you said it. I didn't say it. So, and this is why I love conversations like this. Let's just, yes, we're not simple. And, and our moods constantly change.

• 8:31Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think you can be, uh, simple when you understand a lot of this stuff as opposed to feeling like, I don't know how to understand it. Why is, why am I feeling this way? Why are you feeling more stressed this time?

• 8:41Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 8:42Lewis Howes?

  When we have awareness and we have an understanding of our... Our body, as a man, as our body, our hormones, or a different environment, things like that, we feel more at peace. It doesn't mean it's gonna give us a hundred percent peace, but we're gonna feel like, okay, I have a sense of understanding around it.

• 8:57Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  That's right.

• 8:57Lewis Howes?

  I think when women get understanding around their bodies, their cycles, their hormones, like, why they're gaining weight and why they're losing weight, and all these types of things, when they are aware of it, they don't feel, they don't have to feel as bad, or shameful, or anxious, or stressed about it.

• 9:12Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 9:12Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 9:12Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, that's exactly right.

• 9:14Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't mean it's perfect, but at least you have awareness.

• 9:16Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  That's, you, you nailed it. And this is why I'm trying to open this conversation up, so we can all talk about it. If you look at what we've done historically in our culture, is women don't, we don't wanna talk about our periods, we don't wanna talk about menopause, we don't talk about it. Um, it's like a shameful thing that we have to hide. And that's now changing, which is really great. And, but if we can bring it to the surface and talk about it, men and women can understand each other, women can understand each other better. So it's so important that we bring it to the, to the light. So, but here's what, I wanna go back to this.

• 9:48Lewis Howes?

  I've gone off so many different tangents.

• 9:50Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  I know, but you've got me thinking and excited. So here's what I think happens.

• 9:54Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 9:54Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Is, is in this hormonal hierarchy, in order for your sex hormones to be balanced, you have to be insulin sensitive. You have to have that system right. Which is why I think Fast Like a Girl is so many women are getting their cycles back, they're getting pregnant for the first time, because I helped them see how to do that.

• 10:12Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 10:12Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  But what's in charge of insulin is cortisol. So like we talked about, well, okay, if cortisol is high, you become more insulin resistant, and you have a harder time balancing sex hormones.

• 10:23Lewis Howes?

  And cortisol is stress.

• 10:24Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Cortisol is stress.

• 10:25Lewis Howes?

  And it's stress based on food stress, lack of sleep stress, environment stress, relationship stress, all of it?

• 10:31Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  All of it. Fasting is, raises cortisol.

• 10:34Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:35Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Exercise raises cortisol.

• 10:36Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:37Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Which is why we have to do it differently as women.

• 10:39Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 10:40Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  But at the top of that, all is oxytocin. And this is why I think perhaps we smell each other and would cycle together. Because women are, right? Women are meant to be in community. Because when oxytocin, we're connecting with each other, then cortisol goes down. This is why you should always let your gal go out on ladies night, always. Because now she gets oxytocin, it brings cortisol down, she's more relaxed. And then when she's more relaxed, now all the dieting and exercise that she wants to do makes her, is gonna work. And when that regulates insulin, now we can balance her hormones.

• 11:18Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:18Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  So we're just, humans in general, but women are geared towards connection.

• 11:23Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. And so what about, you know, so you mentioned cycling fasting, or fasting while cycling. How do we know, how does a woman know when to fast? And how frequently to fast, based on their cycle?

• 11:37Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  So, in Fast and Giver, I created something called the fasting cycle for women. And basically, I walk through the whole menstrual cycle. I'll give you the basic principles of it.

• 11:47Lewis Howes?

  Break it down for me.

• 11:48Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and showed women, this is when you fast, is when you don't fast. And then I timed it to six different level fasts.

• 11:54Lewis Howes?

  Give me the 101 of a menstrual cycle.

• 11:56Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  This is gonna be great.

• 11:57Lewis Howes?

  When does it start? Or what happens the day it starts versus when it ends?

• 12:02Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, great. And then you gotta go home tonight.

• 12:04Lewis Howes?

  This is what I learned.

• 12:05Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and let me know how useful this is. Yeah, because it's really interesting, if more men understood this, I think you'd understand the women in your life more. Okay, day one through day 10. Day one is the day you start to, a woman bleeds. A lot of women don't realize that that's day one. So you have to use feminine care products, it's day one. So your hormones actually are, come crashing down at that point. And for the next 10 days, you're gonna specifically build a hormone called estrogen.

• 12:36Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Estrogen needs you to be insulin sensitive. So keeping your carb load down, keeping fasting longer, exercising more.

• 12:46Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 12:46Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Those first 10 days, a woman can do it then.

• 12:50Lewis Howes?

  That's when you can fast?

• 12:51Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Lewis Howes?

  And exercise more?

• 12:53Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:54Lewis Howes?

  Day one through 10?

• 12:55Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Day one through 10, and that's where keto works. That's where, you know, the low, whole low carb situation worked really well in those first 10 days. The other unique thing about estrogen is when cortisol shows up, she's not, she doesn't care as much. She's a little, she's a little tolerant of cortisol. The other interesting thing for you to know with, and anybody who's got a woman in their life, those first 10 days when estrogen builds, estrogen, one piece of estrogen, it's called estradiol, stimulates dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, BDNF, acetylcholine, glutamate. So she's going to be happy, focused, more outgoing, want to socialize more.

• 13:34Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 13:35Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 13:35Lewis Howes?

  The first 10 days?

• 13:36Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  The first, yeah. Give her a couple of days after she starts to bleed, but as she gets closer to day 10.

• 13:40Lewis Howes?

  Because usually when it starts, you hear people say a little more moody, right?

• 13:44Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  I think that's because we don't mind the back half of our cycle.

• 13:47Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 13:48Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  And so when I go all the way through, I'll explain that.

• 13:50Lewis Howes?

  Okay, yes.

• 13:50Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 13:50Lewis Howes?

  Because Martha, my fiance, she really doesn't get moody. Like she has, she doesn't get cramping. You know, it's really rare if she feels pain or feels, she might for like a couple of hours be like, I just want like to cuddle a little bit more, something like that, but I don't know, maybe that's, she's got good hormones.

• 14:09Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  She might be doing this right, though. We're not meant to have, PMS is because we're going against our, our natural rhythm.

• 14:16Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 14:17Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Bad menopause symptoms also, going against natural rhythms.

• 14:21Lewis Howes?

  How many women do you think percentage wise have, you know, intense PMS?

• 14:26Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, I would say the majority of them.

• 14:28Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 14:29Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  But think about it. Women exercise the same all month long. Women eat the same all month long. Women don't think about, oh, progesterone's coming in, I maybe need to slow down my life a little bit right now. We don't talk like that until this moment in time. And this is what, again, another thing I'm trying to open up this conversation. So we have been trying to diet and exercise and live life very much like a man.

• 14:54Lewis Howes?

  Right, especially in like the coastal cities, you see, you know, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but you see women going to the gym five, six days a week or getting up early and intense yoga, hot yoga every single morning. It's like you gotta get it in, you gotta work hard. And it sounds like yes, for a period of the month, but not the entire month.

• 15:13Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Exactly.

• 15:13Lewis Howes?

  Or for part of the week, but not the end, every day.

• 15:16Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Exactly.

• 15:17Lewis Howes?

  That's what I'm hearing you say. Got it.

• 15:18Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  And that is so important for women to hear. And when I get to the back half of the cycle, you'll understand why. But we, our hormones pulse in and out in a 28 to 32 day period. You all have one hormone. You have testosterone.

• 15:34Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 15:35Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  That's it.

• 15:35Lewis Howes?

  How many hormones do women have?

• 15:37Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Uh, we have, well, sex hormones. Let's, like, so we have three, but you also have estrogen, but you make testosterone. It goes up into the brain and converts into estrogen. So the conversion happens in the brain. So all you have to think about is make more testosterone and you get it every 15 ish minutes.

• 15:56Lewis Howes?

  Every 15 minutes?

• 15:56Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, just pulses in.

• 15:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 15:58Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Hormones are always pulsing. So they pulse in every 15 minutes and then it goes away. And then it pulses in, then it goes away.

• 16:05Lewis Howes?

  Naturally.

• 16:06Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Your highest in the morning, testosterone's highest in the morning. Women.

• 16:10Lewis Howes?

  That's why men usually have, you know, extra sex drive in the morning, right?

• 16:14Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Exactly why men are, have a higher sex drive in the morning.

• 16:18Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 16:19Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  And it's a good time to work out. But if you use testosterone for you all, when testosterone comes in, if you're lifting weights, you're gonna help build that muscle more. We only get testosterone, check this out, we only get testosterone, a big surge of it, day 11 to day 15.

• 16:35Lewis Howes?

  You don't get it for 10 days?

• 16:37Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 16:38Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 16:38Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  It comes in, in a big surge, right in ovulation. So it's a great time for a woman to build muscle. It's, you're gonna notice her libido's gonna go up during that time.

• 16:48Lewis Howes?

  She's gonna have sex during then.

• 16:49Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  She's gonna wanna have sex more then? That one is like mind blowing, right? How many men and women are a mismatch? And again, we're, this is purely, obviously, a heterosexual moment. But you, how many men and women don't feel like they're sexually matched right? But yet, do we understand that women get that surge of testosterone in that five day period?

• 17:12Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. How do you time that up though? It's like, okay, day one, she's got her period, she started bleeding, right? And you think, okay, 11 days from now. Let me put a mental note or put it in my calendar. Okay, this is gonna be the day, right?

• 17:26Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 17:26Lewis Howes?

  That doesn't sound so sexy, though, when you think about it. Let me like mark this on my calendar and really be aware of when she's gonna be available at the best time.

• 17:34Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Well, so here's what you can do is, I mean, it's not, I'm not saying don't have sex the rest of the month. I'm just saying you're, you got a shot, a big shot at that point. Like, like, so just be aware of that.

• 17:47Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. She, the woman may be more aroused.

• 17:50Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  That's right. She might have more desire.

• 17:52Lewis Howes?

  Naturally.

• 17:52Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 17:53Lewis Howes?

  And she can't even control it. She can't. I mean, well, the body is surging with the hormones, right?

• 17:58Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, yeah.

• 17:59Lewis Howes?

  I mean, I guess you could mentally block it, but the body is naturally more turned on.

• 18:04Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  The body is naturally more turned on.

• 18:06Lewis Howes?

  Okay. I mean, yes, you can control anything, but I'm just saying the body, you can't block the hormones.

• 18:10Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  I was thinking of like all these, this visual of like all these, all these women like.

• 18:15Lewis Howes?

  Jumping on men, ah, ripping their clothes off.

• 18:18Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  That's right. It's not like that.

• 18:19Lewis Howes?

  I can't control it.

• 18:21Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Not like that. Yes.

• 18:23Lewis Howes?

  But the body, unless you, I guess medically or put some medication, you can't block these hormones, is what you're saying.

• 18:30Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  That's right. Well, I mean, there are, there are situations like birth control pill has.

• 18:35Lewis Howes?

  That's blocking it.

• 18:36Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, manipulating it.

• 18:37Lewis Howes?

  You're taking a medication to block.

• 18:39Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  It's changed it. It's synthetically directing it.

• 18:42Lewis Howes?

  And when a woman has been on birth control for multiple decades, what challenges might come up in their bodies with their hormones?

• 18:54Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Well, there, this is a big, a major issue for women, especially the younger women, is because it takes a couple of years for the pattern of the brain and the ovaries to get to know each other. So if we come in with birth control a year after a woman started her period, there's never an internal innate sense of the body. And then we keep women on birth control until menopause and we take her off of menopause. And now she has a serious hormonal issue that because she never learned that pattern.

• 19:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:22Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  So that's one. Second one is horrible for the microbiome. It decimates the microbiome and you need your microbiome to make serotonin. You need it for immune system. You need your microbiome to break down estrogen. So.

• 19:35Lewis Howes?

  So when you take that pill, and it's like a daily pill for like, what, 10, 12 days or something?

• 19:39Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it's on a month.

• 19:40Lewis Howes?

  It's like half the month?

• 19:41Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Lewis Howes?

  You take it for two weeks?

• 19:42Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yep. You have a cycle according to them.

• 19:44Lewis Howes?

  When you take it, you take it daily for like two weeks or whatever it is. What is in that pill? And what is it doing to your gut microbiome?

• 19:52Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 19:52Lewis Howes?

  And what it's doing to your brain?

• 19:54Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Well, so it's it's controlling hormones for you. So you're adding in hormones into your body. So it's it's make it's doing the controlling instead of the body and naturally doing it. So.

• 20:04Lewis Howes?

  Is that good?

• 20:06Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Uh, my opinion is no, but we have to really think about what the alternative is. We don't have any, and there's a question for you. I asked my 21 year old son this recently.

• 20:20Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  It's it it's what has become standard for women to be the ones in charge of birth control. And when you look at the birth control pill, it is it is exogenously from the outside controlling our hormones, which is setting us up for a whole bunch of hormonal problems. There's some new research where they're looking for a looking at a pill for a man. That would change the change.

• 20:45Lewis Howes?

  The semen, the sperm, right?

• 20:47Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  It changed sperm.

• 20:48Lewis Howes?

  Huh.

• 20:49Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Now, would you take it?

• 20:51Lewis Howes?

  I wouldn't take it.

• 20:52Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Why wouldn't you take it?

• 20:54Lewis Howes?

  Why would I want to block my body's natural way of being?

• 20:58Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Then the same goes for women.

• 21:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I'm not saying women should take it.

• 21:01Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  I know, but but that that's the that's the that is.

• 21:04Lewis Howes?

  Why? And I also, I wouldn't take it unless they were like, listen, there are zero side effects. And right when you got off of it, you would be perfectly back to where your body was in sync. And your sperm would be just as optimized or healthy or powerful, whatever it is. And there wouldn't be, you know, you wouldn't hurt your sperm later.

• 21:25Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 21:25Lewis Howes?

  Then I'd be like, OK, well, if there's decades of research and this is proven and and babies are still OK afterwards, you know, then I'd be like, oh, maybe. I don't know if I was 20 or something, but it's not something I would take right now.

• 21:39Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  So that's what's happening to women.

• 21:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 21:42Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Is that we have manipulated our hormones. And this is why so women's health is in is in a really disastrous place right now. So I I totally hear what you're saying, and I would agree. Like, yeah, your logic is right, but we've been doing this to women forever.

• 21:59Lewis Howes?

  Why? Why? I mean, this is probably a whole other subject, but why is birth control such a normal thing if it's so bad for women's bodies?

• 22:09Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. It's a, why do we do it is because the alternative is, nobody wants to have a child.

• 22:15Lewis Howes?

  Young.

• 22:16Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  A young child.

• 22:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:17Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  And, um.

• 22:19Lewis Howes?

  What's more, what's more painful, hurting your body for decades and maybe a lifetime? You know, having a child young, I get it's a big risk and there's a lot of pain and pressure that could come to that. Along with a lot of beauty and wonder and magic as well, but at what price?

• 22:36Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Somewhere along the line, we decided that the woman was in charge of the birth control process. And, and we didn't think, and I will, I will say this with as much kindness as I can.

• 22:46Lewis Howes?

  Yes, and I'm not here to judge people.

• 22:48Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, no, me neither.

• 22:49Lewis Howes?

  My sisters were both on birth control for a long time. It's one of the reasons why I asked because one of my sisters was on birth control, I think for two decades.

• 22:56Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 22:56Lewis Howes?

  And she couldn't get pregnant.

• 22:57Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 22:58Lewis Howes?

  And it was devastating for like four or five years, she was trying and she could not get pregnant to the point where she gave up. She was just like in tears for months.

• 23:07Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 23:07Lewis Howes?

  Sad that she wasn't able to have a child.

• 23:10Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 23:10Lewis Howes?

  And there were some other complications. I can't remember the terminology of things. It was something she had.

• 23:16Lewis Howes?

  But it wasn't, it wasn't in her cards anymore.

• 23:18Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 23:18Lewis Howes?

  And she was in her late 30s and she was devastated.

• 23:21Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 23:22Lewis Howes?

  And then she got off of birth control and just said, okay, well, I guess I'm not going to be a mom. And then four or five years later, she was able to have a child. Like it kind of magically happened. But, uh, and now she's got an amazing, you know, one and a half year old son. So it's a beautiful thing now, but it was really scary and painful for many, many years. And, um, you know, it's sad to see and it affected her hormones and different things.

• 23:48Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Lewis Howes?

  It took time for the body to re-regulate.

• 23:51Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  That's it. Exactly. I mean, you, you just painted the picture that so many women are struggling with. And, and so when we come in with an outside source to manipulate our hormones, what it there, when we get off of that outside source. We don't have a natural rhythm. And that's honestly, one of the things that I'm seeing with Fast, Like a Girl. When I go and read my reviews and see what, how people are responding to it. Is I, I just gave a lifestyle that allowed women to get back into routine with their hormones.

• 24:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:21Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  So it's awesome. She has it now. It took her four to five years. But what I'm hoping is that we can use lifestyle as a way to give that rhythm back.

• 24:29Lewis Howes?

  Right. And you said between day 11 and 15, that's when there's a surge of testosterone for women in their cycle. What happens after day? And that's when they, that's when they can be working out harder. That's when you can go to the gym four or five days that week and push it a little more.

• 24:44Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Well, so day one through day 10, you can do the hard workouts. Um, day 11 to day 15, you get the most amount of testosterone you'll ever get. You have the most amount of estrogen you'll ever have and a little bit of progesterone. So let's talk about that period because it's a really cool period. So testosterone is libido and motivation and drive. Estrogen is she's going to want to talk to you. She wants to have a, so if you, if you, if you want to have sex with her, you better talk to her first. Cause she's during that time, she's got estrogen. She wants to verbally process with you.

• 25:18Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 25:19Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Um, so her brain is-

• 25:20Lewis Howes?

  Especially late at night.

• 25:21Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 25:22Lewis Howes?

  When you just want to sleep.

• 25:23Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yep. Her brain is like on fire. And then she's got progesterone, so she's a little bit calm. So that is, I call it, I called it in the book, the manifestation phase. Because I was like, oh, we are super, our superpowers, like we put on our hormonal superpower cape. And we could manifest a baby. We can manifest a raise. We could manifest some new project at work. Because all our hormones show up then.

• 25:46Lewis Howes?

  So for those four days, is it just you're sharper, you're more focused, you're more energized, you're clear? You're like goal oriented during those days? You know what you want to create?

• 25:56Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  That's how we should be. So women listening that are like, I don't feel like that. I'm going to ask you to look at, are you, are you living a lifestyle in accordance with your hormones?

• 26:04Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 26:05Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  So let's go to your fiance who is like, this is kind of, you know, the, her period or menstrual cycle's easy. She's probably, if you, if she looked at it, is living in accordance with her hormones.

• 26:16Lewis Howes?

  She is. She is. Yeah. She's doing amazing.

• 26:18Dr. Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 26:19Lewis Howes?

  She's got great family relationships, great friendships. She's got a meaningful work that she loves. She eats very well, you know, very clean. She rests well. She's-

• 26:31Lewis Howes?

  And she's positive and joyful. She has an attitude of just gratitude and giving and thoughtfulness and

• 26:39Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 26:40Lewis Howes?

  accepting. She doesn't hold on to grudges.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:43Lewis Howes?

  Like she has a calm mind in the sense that it's not a rigid mind.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:47Lewis Howes?

  She lets go of things.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 26:49Lewis Howes?

  She creates boundaries and lets go of things, right? She give forgives people. So she doesn't have a lot of stress and tightness internally.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:56Lewis Howes?

  I think that allows her to flow and not be in pain or have PMS or be like cramping a lot or

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:02Lewis Howes?

  off cycles.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  You nailed it. I mean, you just gave the formula for oxytocin.

• 27:08Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 27:10Speaker 02

  So she gets a lot of oxytocin is what I just heard.

• 27:12Lewis Howes?

  All day.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's it's balancing everything else out.

• 27:16Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:21Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, how is this possible that there's only eight hours of, I guess, educational training for menopause? When I've also heard you say about a third of all women are in some stage of menopause right now.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  I think it's multifactorial as to how we got here. And I left, I was a program director in 2018, I left that job. So I was teaching at an academic institution. I had seen patients, teaching med students, residents, but I was in charge of the curriculum for the residents as dictated by the American Board of OB GYN. Okay. So I know exactly up until that point, what was required. And menopause was required, but we didn't have menopause clinics. We didn't have more than just a few required lectures. It was really just menopause is the end of the period. It's you might get osteoporosis, just the most cliche kind of basic, basic learning. No nuances about treatment and training.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  And so, you know, how do we get to where this is a natural process, but it affects 100% of women who live long enough? Completely going into ovarian failure. Okay. Loss of all of sex hormone production from the ovaries, pretty much. And then she's expected to live the last third of her life without the benefit of her sex hormones. And no discussion around how that affects her heart or her brain or her bones or her general pancreas system or her mental health, you know, and and how like we can shepherd her through this last third of her life to live as healthfully as possible, you know, by limiting these effects of the hormones. And so. I mean, I went through the training program. I was all on board till 2018 until I realized I went through menopause.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  And was like, wait a minute, this is much bigger than we're teaching than I was taught than what I actually believed.

• 29:08Lewis Howes?

  As an OB-GYN, when you started entering menopause, did you think that you were prepared and educated?

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Not at all.

• 29:16Lewis Howes?

  Even though you were treating women and helping women on menopause for years.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  So I gaslit myself for probably six months. So a lot of things were happening to me at once, as most women my age at that time.

• 29:30Lewis Howes?

  What was happening?

• 29:30Speaker 02

  So I was 48. I had been on birth control pills for treatment of polycystei ovarian syndrome, which worked great for me. It's not for everyone, but I was, I was fine on them and had been on them for years and years. Decided to come off and to see where I was at hormonally.

• 29:46Lewis Howes?

  At 48?

• 29:46Speaker 02

  48. And so average age of menopause is 51. So I figured it was coming. Okay, let me see where I'm at. And I get off and I'm like, my brother gets really sick. So I'm from a huge family. I have six brothers and one sister. My oldest brother died when I was nine. My next brother, Bob, the second in line, had HIV and hepatitis. And so he, I get a call from the hospital. I was in the OR. And I get a call, like an emergency call, and they kind of put the phone up to my ear. I was finishing a case that my brother had had a stroke and was in the hospital. And he'd been kind of in and out of the hospital for a while. So he was in the end stages. And so I, I just like went home. He got discharged from the hospital to hospice and my sister and I did his end of life care.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  And like, everybody come into the, it really was a beautiful way to die, you know? But I had just stopped my birth control pills and I just kind of forgot. Now, remember, I had been on them for treatment of a condition where I didn't have periods. Okay. So me not having a period was not a red flag. So here I am, months into this, I think I'm grieving, which I was, but every single thing that I'm going through, I'm attributing to my grief. Definitely there was something there, but then as the grief fog starts to lift and I'm trying to get back into my habits, I gained weight and I wasn't sleeping, you know, I realized, wait, when was my last period? This is a hot flash, you know, like.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  I'm in menopause. Like, I literally could not figure it out for months in myself. And so I always thought I would treat hormone therapy like an epidural. In labor, like, we'll see how I do. You know, if I'm a good girl and I'm strong, I won't need it. Right? You know?

• 31:28Lewis Howes?

  Like, it take the pain.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  And, of course, I got an epidural at three centimeters, which is very early in the process because I was in so much pain. And so I felt like hormone therapy was an act of not being strong enough and throwing in the towel. I had no idea the protective benefits of HRT for my heart, for my brain. You know, all I knew was it was the last ditch treatment for debilitating hot flashes. And that, pretty much, there wasn't much else it could do for me. And so I go on HRT because I can't sleep. And I know if I don't sleep, I'm setting myself up for failure and everything. Plus, I was working shift work at the hospital, you know, very busy life, trying to raise teenagers, all the things. And immediately, I feel better. And all of a sudden, other things are getting...

• 32:09Lewis Howes?

  After therapy, after hormone therapy.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  After starting hormone therapy, okay, I start sleeping, the hot flashes go away. But also, like, the weird joint pain I was having gets better, gets better. Some of the brain fog lifts. I'm like, whoa, this is a bigger deal. The same time, I was struggling to lose some of the weight I gained through the grieving process and what now I know was menopause. And I couldn't get it off. And I'd been thin. I'd had thin privilege most of my life. Like, I, you know, could diet for a week and get back into whatever genes and, you know, I just, it was easy for me. It was, like, melting off. And it was not coming off. It was about 20 pounds. It was all in my midsection. And I was, like, banging my head against the wall, like, getting up at 5:00 a.m. to go work out. I was doing two-a-days. I was calorically restricting to dangerous

• 32:55Speaker 02

  levels. I was doing all the negative, negative things. And my husband, like, pointed out, "Your girls are watching."

• 33:00Lewis Howes?

  Your what?

• 33:00Speaker 02

  "Your girls are watching." Like, you're...

• 33:03Lewis Howes?

  They're modeling after what you're doing.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  You're exhibiting behavior. I was, like, literally an aminom, you know, like, I was just judging them for their food choices. And it was all really about me. And so my husband was like... Oh, he was going on a trip. And it was like a two-week trip. And he said, "So when you get back, I'll lose this 10 pounds or whatever." And he goes... I don't care what you look like. Like, I love you. You're beautiful. But you're not happy. Like, you're, you're, you're getting up at night to pee and you're weighing yourself. You're constantly talking about your weight. You're, you're, you know, this isn't working. And what do you tell the kids? When you can't exhibit, you know, you can't expect change if you keep utilizing the same behaviors. And he's like, figure it out. You're smart. You're a doctor. And so I took that as like a challenge. And so I

• 33:46Speaker 02

  went to the PhDs at the university I was employed at. And, you know, I was everybody's doctor at that point. I was like, what's going on in menopause? I can't lose weight. My patients aren't losing weight. What is this around my middle? And they're like, well, that's visceral fat. I'm like, what's that?

• 33:59Lewis Howes?

  Because you'd always been skinny.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  I didn't even know. Right. You know, like, I didn't even know the difference between subcutaneous and visceral fat. Like, we learned nothing about nutrition in medical school. There, I mean, the minimum. And so they send me a few articles. I just started going down rabbit holes about inflammation and visceral fat and nutrition. And so that's where, you know, the whole, my first toe in the water with menopause was let's get this weight off. And it was the pain point for so many of my patients.

• 34:22Lewis Howes?

  So what is the number one pain point for women in menopause? Is it getting rid of excess weight? Is it dealing with hot flashes? Is it dealing with?

• 34:30Speaker 02

  So when we look at, so for forever, menopause was only quantified by absence of periods and hot flashes. Those were the top two. But when you actually-

• 34:38Lewis Howes?

  And what is a hot flash?

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Good question.

• 34:40Lewis Howes?

  Just so I can be educated.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  A hot flash is a thermoregulatory dysfunction. So there's a little thermo, the temperature gauge in our hypothalamus in our brain. And it has a really, a set point. And when our estrogen levels decline, we end up with dysregulated serotonin, which then resets the temperature gauge. So what we used to just kind of go with the flow, all of a sudden we'll have this profuse sweating. Profuse, like, most women, it'll start somewhere in their chest area and you'll feel this heat building and then it'll just rise up. I can probably make it happen. Go up into your neck and then your head starts sweating. It's going down your arms. I mean, some women will drench their entire clothes, but it usually starts central and it goes peripheral. It lasts seconds to minutes.

• 35:23Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 35:24Speaker 02

  But it is completely disruptive.

• 35:26Lewis Howes?

  Does it, is it happen multiple times a day?

• 35:28Speaker 02

  It depends on the patient. So it could be, some patients will have multiple times a day, like, to the point where she, you know, so that's severe. Some will have it once a week. It really does vary from woman to woman and it's not really tied to- Exact estrogen levels. So it's more to do with neurotransmitters and how those are affecting her. But 85% of women will have those. But probably 90 to 95 will have body composition changes. Almost 100% will have fatigue, like differences. And almost every single woman that I talked to was like, something wasn't right. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I felt different. And either it was through sleep or her, what her body was doing.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  But like, she wasn't changing anything in her nutrition, in her exercise, in her stress levels. Like, everything was stable, but her body was changing. And the thing is, we have estrogen receptors in every organ system of our body. And it will affect each of us differently. And so doctors love the duck. You know, walks like a duck, talks like a duck, quacks like a duck. It's a duck, right? So we have these checklist of things. Da, da, da, da. Okay, this is the flu. This is, you know, broken leg. This is whatever, but menopause.

• 36:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the symptoms of menopause.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  Right, are variable. So 85% of us have hot flashes, sure. 100% of women will lose their fertility and their periods will stop. Um, normal regulatory periods will stop. But probably 90%, you know, fatigue, um, probably 80% sleep disruption. 50% of women at any time will have sexual dysfunction. So changes in libido, pain, you know. Um, we see almost 100% body composition change. So not just weight gain, but where we gain weight changes. So we stop depositing fat so much in the subcutaneous area. We can still do that, but we start shifting a lot of fat to the intra-abdominal cavity or that visceral cavity.

• 37:19Lewis Howes?

  You're talking about from the legs and the butt to the stomach?

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:21Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what, when most women typically estrogen drives a more pear shape, which is natural and healthy versus all of a sudden you're having new fat in the abdominal cavity.

• 37:31Lewis Howes?

  You're a half pear.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Suddenly you look pregnant. So, or, yeah, or their pants are getting tight and they can't figure out why.

• 37:38Lewis Howes?

  It seems like there's a lot of challenges or changes that women go through during this period of time. And how long does menopause tend to last for?

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, great question. So, um, menopause is actually one day. So let's, let me walk you through all these definitions. It's so confusing. So menopause is, is medically defined, which I think is a terrible thing. One year after your last menstrual period. That is menopause and it's one day. Everything after that is post-menopause and everything before that. So you go normal reproductive cycles. That very predictable

• 38:07Lewis Howes?

  30 years or something.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  EKG like ebb and flow of your hormones that happen each month in a healthy patient. Very predictable, right? So we know she's going to peak on day 14 with estrogen and then that's going to drop and it's going to rise a little bit more. But then we'll have a surge of progesterone and the whole thing starts over every month. And that's very, very predictable. Perimenopause is when that predictability starts declining until your period stops. So the ovaries, so.

• 38:31Lewis Howes?

  So it could be once every two weeks. It could be.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  It could be 10 times a day. It could be, it's very, very variable. So here's why, here's why. And what I think your, your listeners and followers should understand. Difference between us, I was born female, you're born male, right? You make your genetic material in the testes every day. And you can do that probably till you die. It might be a little harder as you get older, but you can do it, right? Females are born with all of their eggs and it has to last them until they go away. So then we actually reach our maximum egg count five months in utero when we're, our moms are still pregnant with us. And then they decline. So we lose quality and quantity over time.

• 39:10Lewis Howes?

  How many eggs do you, most women start with?

• 39:12Speaker 02

  At birth, one to two million.

• 39:14Lewis Howes?

  Two million eggs? Holy cow.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  And then by the time we're 30, we are down to 10% of our egg supply roughly. It's about 120,000. And then by the time we're 40, we're down to about 3%. And menopause is when you have no more eggs.

• 39:29Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  You're done.

• 39:30Lewis Howes?

  The day all your eggs are gone.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  It's, yeah. And, and there's nothing, no sex hormones are being produced by the ovaries anymore.

• 39:36Lewis Howes?

  And that usually, what's the average age of that?

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, so menopause, 51 average. However, normal is still 45 to 55. Peri, and I'll walk you through that. Peri begins seven to 10 years before that. So the hypothalamus pituitary, right? Two glands in the brain, you probably know them well. The hypothalamus is constantly sampling our blood for estradiol. It is what drives that monthly period. Okay, so the brain is like, we're good, estrogen levels are good. Oh, they're getting low, they're getting low. Sends something called GnRH, gonadotropin-releasing hormone to the pituitary. Pituitary is like, all right, boss, I got it. Starts pumping out LH and FSH, which are stimulating the ovaries to ovulate and make those hormones, right? And so what happens when we start losing quality? We've reached some critical threshold in the number and quality of our eggs.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  Then the brains, then the ovaries like can't do it with the same LH and FSH. It's not, it comes resistant to those signals. So the brain's like, where's the hormones? I sent you the signal. And the maturing goes like, I try. And he's like, try harder. So you get these bigger surges of those stimulating hormones, almost like what we give in a fertility shot. Right? And then the ovaries like, okay, fine. Spits out an egg. So we get these wild fluctuations, super high surges of estrogen, way higher than you ever had in your normal reproductive stage, then these crashing lows. So what used to be this EKG predictable thing becomes a zone of chaos. Literally, everything looks like this. It's trending down, but it is a roller coaster on the way down. And then you end up in menopause and it's like, flat line.

• 41:06Lewis Howes?

  That doesn't sound enjoyable.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Well, it's less tumultuous if you understand what's happening.

• 41:13Lewis Howes?

  So educating yourself is half the battle. If you're educated and knowing when you hit these ages, there's going to be a lot of changes. But you don't have to be afraid.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  Right, don't be afraid. It's going to happen and we can coach you through it. And there's so many things, nutrition, exercise, stress, you know, all the pillars of health are helpful. But just understanding what's happening and so you don't gaslight yourself and being able to stand up for yourself at your doctor's office. Cause here's the problem, like the first question you asked was like, how did we get here? Where a woman can't reliably walk into a doctor and get information and she has no idea what's happening to her body? How society views aging, how society views women in aging, how the medical profession deals with women? You know, in my training, there was this underscore of women tend to somaticize their symptoms,

• 42:04Speaker 02

  meaning giving a psychological reason instead of biology, just blaming it's all in her head, basically. And that's been going on for thousands of years.

• 42:12Lewis Howes?

  Called WW, right?

• 42:13Speaker 02

  The WW, the whiny woman. So the WW was a term used by my upper level residents for a woman.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Who was coming to our clinic, who had a laundry list of vague symptoms.

• 42:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Some headaches, some fatigue, depression, libido, joint pain, whatever.

• 42:33Lewis Howes?

  Everything's an issue. It sounds like it's like a little bit of issues everywhere.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  This is Texas, so I have this long, tall Texan, you know, in his white lab coat with his cowboy boots, meaning well.

• 42:43Lewis Howes?

  Suck it up.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  It was taught to him, saying, well, there's not much we can do for her. You know, like, it's just that this women go through this at this age and, and, and I just bought it. I bought into it.

• 42:55Lewis Howes?

  There was no education on like, can you

• 42:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 42:57Lewis Howes?

  Prevent some of these symptoms? Can you optimize certain things?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  No. And my last year of training was when the Women's Health Initiative came out and HRT was taken off the table. So there was no, no education around perimenopause and how we can intervene and, and decrease symptomatology and improve. You know, then the other thing, so we have the chronic things, the hot flushes, the night so it's the things that bring people to the office. But what I think the bigger impact is that if you look at men and their risk of, of heart disease. So there's things that lead to heart disease, hypertension, high blood sugar, you know, diabetes, stroke risk, et cetera. It's pretty linear with age, for the most part, as much as that could be biologically plausible. Women are pretty much lower than men until menopause, then they shoot up and then they go past them.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  So menopause is a huge risk factor for chronic disease. The loss of estrogen affects the liver, cholesterol goes up. You know, it affects the intima of the artery. It's very, very protective of the lining of the artery, so much less atherosclerosis. You take age matched women, remember it's normal 45 to 55. So if you go through menopause on the younger end, you are higher risk because your body's away from estrogen longer and all the protection that it offers.

• 44:10Lewis Howes?

  Don't women in general live longer than men?

• 44:13Speaker 02

  They do, but 25% of that life is in poorer health. So their lifespan is lower, longer, but their health span is horrible. Women are three times more likely to end up in a nursing home or three times more likely to end up with dementia and frailty. Whereas men, that doesn't happen. They kind of live, have a short decline and die. Right? So they're way more functional in general, of course.

• 44:33Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Not every man, not every woman. But what we're seeing, the trends are women are living three to four years longer, but they're in nursing homes and they can't take care of themselves.

• 44:41Lewis Howes?

  Do women suffer dementia more than men?

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:44Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Two to three times more.

• 44:46Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 44:47Speaker 02

  So, there's a great book on this subject. Lisa Moscone wrote The Menopause Brain and The Double X Brain. And she explores a lot of this. And we know that estrogen is really protective in the neurological system. And when those levels decline, we start seeing acceleration of disease.

• 45:02Lewis Howes?

  But what about for men? If we have less estrogen, right?

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you actually kind of, your estrogen stabilizes. It's lower than women's. But once we go through menopause, you have more than me.

• 45:12Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  You have more than me.

• 45:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you still have a little bit of baseline protection.

• 45:17Lewis Howes?

  That kind of stays most of your life.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:20Lewis Howes?

  Now, with all these different, I guess, I don't know if you call them symptoms or challenges that women face during these years of menopause, the, I guess it's one day, but the years of experiencing.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Right, the post-menopause years, yeah.

• 45:33Lewis Howes?

  What would you say is the biggest loss for women? Is it the gain of fat, the unwanted fat? Is it that they don't have the sex drive that they once do? Or it shifts and it changes? Does they feel like, oh, now I'm actually getting older? Am I as valuable as a woman in society?

• 45:50Speaker 02

  I think all of it. I think, I think it's all of it. Like, it's all hitting at once. They are feeling so, you know, they're, okay, so like at work, when you look at the economic impact of menopause, this is an age, so I'm 55, you know, I am at the top of my career, and it's only going up. And had I been suffering from brain fog to the point, one in five women will quit their jobs because of cognition changes in menopause. This is at an age when we should be leaning into our careers. The kids are grown for most of it, you know, we're just at that age where.

• 46:26Lewis Howes?

  You've got the most wisdom, the most experience, the most knowledge.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  And now they've lost so much confidence because they can't find their words, or they can't calculate anymore. And they can't, you know, they're used to these high-level cognitive function, and they've, and they've lost executive functioning. So we see ADD, you know, mental health changes, the dopamine changes, the serotonin, the norepinephrine, all of this is linked to our hormones. And when they, you know, when these changes happen, especially in peri, where it's so chaotic, the brain loves to know what's coming, right? So the brain really thrives for most of us in that estrogen's going to surge, progesterone's going to surge, it's used to it. And then when we get to peri and we see this chaos. Mental health, I think it's forty, forty percent increased risk of depression in perimenopause.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Greatest risk of a female to commit suicide is between forty-five to fifty-five. I mean, just look at the numbers. We look at serotonin, SSRI use, so antidepressant use, doubles between pre-menopause and post-menopause.

• 47:22Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  And then goes up after age sixty-five. So, and these are things that don't have to happen. That we can actually intervene early and, you know, provide education, counseling, therapy, and decrease these risks as we age.

• 47:36Lewis Howes?

  Walk me through, because you've worked with a lot of, how many women have you worked with, like one-to-one privately?

• 47:41Speaker 02

  And since my menopause clinic, oh, God, a thousand, over a thousand, yeah.

• 47:45Lewis Howes?

  So walk me through, if you can, and, and put me, anyone, man or woman, in the seat of, what is a woman feeling emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically? When they realize they no longer have any eggs left? And they can no longer, even if they didn't want to have kids anymore, but they can no longer have the ability to have children themselves. What emotionally goes, goes on with women who experienced that, that moment, there's no more?

• 48:16Speaker 02

  I think it's a fleeting moment. And I went through it myself, and I, you know, I've talked to all these patients. You know, you go through a little bit of, of mourning, and then you're like, I don't have to worry about it anymore. We're done. I mean, I had my children, you know?

• 48:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  I purposefully did not have more. You know, I, I wanted to focus on the two that I had and, you know, was happy with that. We did try one more time, it never worked out. But you know, at a certain point, I was like, we're done.

• 48:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes. But you had, but you had a rhythm of a cycle.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:41Lewis Howes?

  You know, a physical cycle.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  But you go through this chaos, you know? So it's not like the door shuts one day. You, you go through months, years of what the hell is happening to me? So also, you know, they're losing confidence because of, you know, cognition changes. They're losing libido, their, you know, marriage is affected, their relationships, they're losing their resilience to anxiety and stress. And so, so many things are happening to this woman. By the time they get to my office, they've seen five or six, they've gone to one guy for palpitations, another woman for, you know, they've been dismissed, gaslit, told this is normal, this is part of your life, weight gain, eat less, you're just lazy, you're fat, you know? And then they get to me and I'm like, I got to move, you know, and they're so great, like the tears pour. I have Kleenex. I'm just, one, that they're validated.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  And then, then we start talking, okay, what are our tools that we're going to use to pull you out of this?

• 49:33Lewis Howes?

  Someone, so imagine I'm, you know, you can imagine I'm a 49 year old woman or 50 year old woman that's gone through five, seven different doctors. Finally gets your book and realizes, oh, I need to come see you. And I come and for two hours, I'm sobbing and crying and I'm telling you every symptom I've had and I say, I don't know what to do. What's the next thing you say to me? And what will you do to support me or any woman watching who's uncertain on how they can feel safe and protected?

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:02Lewis Howes?

  About what to do next?

• 50:03Speaker 02

  One, I, I listened to her and I believe her and that is half of the therapy right there. So because of the way society perceives women, the way medicine perceives women, the way we're training our clinicians and, you know, by and large, at least in my generation of this, you know, it's all in her head and women are just, you know, emotional. To like have someone believe you and just say, and we say, yeah, mm-hmm, yep, that, yes, yes. Yes, here's a study that proved, you know, here's, now let's talk about what we're going to do about it. And I mean, I could basically tell them to go home and do handstands and eat toast or something and they, they would feel, you know? And so, but we, we start with therapeutic options. We go through hormone, non-hormone pharmacology, nutrition changes.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  I do so much blood work. I'm looking for autoimmune disease. I'm looking for hypothyroidism, nutrition deficiencies. I'm just trying to get a broader picture of her whole health. And so, once we kind of get the acute things taken care of, get the hot flashes under control, get her, get her, you know, brain working again, get the muscle pain back in order. Then we start plotting out the next 30 years. So they're focused on, I'm like, tell me about your mom, tell me about your grandmother. How did they age? Did they fall and break a hip? Were they incapacitated? How long were they in the bed at the end of their life? You know, did they have to, did you have to hire someone to come in the house? Were they in a nursing home? Like, what do you want? And they don't want that. So we start mapping out nutrition, exercise, you know, look at a risk for osteoporosis, look at a risk for heart disease.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  What can we do on what I call the toolkit? You know, to put some new things into place that are going to limit that time.

• 51:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Where you can't take care of yourself.

• 51:43Lewis Howes?

  If you weren't able to do blood work for someone, someone's watching, they're not, they're not able to come to your clinic. What would be the three to five things that you would say if you can only do these three or five things during your menopause process?

• 51:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I can't write a prescription, but these three to five things will drastically help improve in any way possible. What would those three to five things be during menopause?

• 52:05Speaker 02

  So I would tell her she needs to watch her fiber intake. So she needs to be getting minimum 25 grams of fiber per day.

• 52:12Lewis Howes?

  More fiber.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  More fiber. Most Americans are getting, women are getting 10 to 12, and so maybe half of what they need. That fiber is going to feed our gut microbiome, keep it healthy. It is going to decrease the rate of which the blood glucose goes up. It'll decrease the absorption of sugars into the bloodstream. It will also decrease, keep us fuller longer. So it decreases some of those hunger cues that are going on, which go absolutely kaddi wampa in menopause. It will, the foods that are rich in fiber are also rich in minerals, vitamins, co-factors, you know, all the things that keep us healthy. So nutrition should come first.

• 52:50Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Second is limit added sugars. So added sugars are sugars added in cooking and processing, not fruits and vegetables. So much of the glucose, you know, the, my patients A1C start creeping up, you know, in menopause, their cholesterol starts creeping up. Fiber will go a long way with cholesterol, but the added sugars are huge. So limiting those to 25 grams or less per day. Most people are getting about 100.

• 53:16Lewis Howes?

  They're getting that in like one drink.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Right. So, and like starting to pay attention to that and be like, oh my God, you know, like I got 80 today and I didn't even think about it. So working on that.

• 53:26Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Prioritizing sleep. It's hard enough. So things like what many of my, and I'm so excited to see research come out on this, but alcohol consumption is so sleep disruptive for anyone, but it is literally debilitating in menopause. Like our ability to tolerate alcohol in the ways that we used to, if you're a drinker, change. And no one can tell me why yet. I know there's data coming, but. And we, and our sleep is so much harder as we get older because the hot flashes, the night sweats, the hormone changes. It is, you know, and then when you add in alcohol, like I know if I choose to drink more than a glass of wine, you know, then I'm choosing not to sleep. It is, it is just not gonna work for me.

• 54:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, there's a study, I think, Dr. Daniel Amen has a study of, I think, over a hundred thousand brain scans. I don't know if you've seen this study. Maybe it's more than a hundred thousand. It's something like hundreds of thousands of brain scans.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  He wants to scan mine.

• 54:23Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. I did a scan and I asked him about alcohol and many other things, like any types of drugs, cigarettes, alcohol. And I go, is there any benefit to drinking alcohol in the brain, the body or anything? And he goes, I can't see any benefit.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:39Lewis Howes?

  It only depresses you and suppresses your ability to think, to recover and to feel healthy. It makes you sick. And I get there's a culture around drinking. I've never been drunk. I've never had a glass of wine. I've never had a can of alcohol. I've had like it sips in my life, but I've never had a full can. And I think life can be challenging enough without alcohol. It's like, why add a depressant if, especially during a challenging season of life where you're already facing symptoms that are challenging?

• 55:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 55:11Lewis Howes?

  Why put more pain on yourself?

• 55:13Speaker 02

  And we see through the transition, because there's the lack of understanding, education, and women are desperate, they're turning to alcohol to like.

• 55:20Lewis Howes?

  I'm sure, because you wanna, you wanna have some relief.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 55:23Lewis Howes?

  And I get it, right? Sugar, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, whatever it might be. But that's only gonna hurt you even more, isn't it?

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the short term, it's hard to

• 55:32Lewis Howes?

  So hard.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  let that go. Somehow, when I phase it, phrase it in terms of sleep, it makes more sense. And they're like, oh, well, I really, I know I need to sleep. I'm like, okay.

• 55:44Lewis Howes?

  When, when women aren't getting sleep during this phase of menopause.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Everything goes bad.

• 55:49Lewis Howes?

  Everything goes bad.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it just, I describe it as a traffic circle. So we have like our healthiest traffic circle where good nutrition, good sleep, stress reduction, you know, all these things feed in. So we're just much more resilient. We can handle the viruses and the, the bad days and the parents dying, you know, all the things that life throws at us. And then we have the circle start slowing down and then start spinning the other way. And that's, you know, the loss of sleep. And it all kind of, and then the increase in visceral fat. And then the weight gain, and you feel bad about that. Then your mental health takes a hit, and now you can't think at work. You know, and it's just, you end up in this.

• 56:23Lewis Howes?

  The shame and whatever.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so you're embarrassed, you're ashamed, your relationships are falling apart. You're, you know, just, ugh. So, and so we talk about trying to slow that negative circle down and start, you know, getting it to stop, and then spinning it the other way.

• 56:37Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so that's the third thing. Prioritizing sleep, what would be one or two others?

• 56:40Speaker 02

  So, movement, exercise. So, most in my generation, we moved to be thin. Thin was a measure of health, and that is probably one of the biggest fallacies. You know, you know, just moving your body to be thin, just eating to be thin, was how we were raised. And I have had to do some massive self-reflection and some therapy to let that go.

• 57:03Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 57:03Speaker 02

  And that number on the scale, for so many of us, was what, how we judged ourselves, how we set up, you know, get on the scale in the morning, it's a good day.

• 57:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  Based on that number. That number represents water, visceral fat, muscle mass. You know, I could have gained 10 pounds of muscle, but I would have felt so horrible about myself. I did not understand that that muscle is what is going to keep me healthy as I age.

• 57:26Lewis Howes?

  If you could give one piece of advice to any woman in her twenties and thirties about their body.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  Strong over skinny.

• 57:33Lewis Howes?

  Strong over skinny.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  Nutrition over calories. And educate yourself about what's coming, because it's coming.

• 57:40Lewis Howes?

  What is the biggest risk women have in their twenties and thirties about trying to stay thin and skinny versus strong and healthy?

• 57:48Speaker 02

  So, it's, it's hard for them to see it, because they're 20, right? And they feel good and they look great. They feel like they look great because the clothes are, you know, and, but what they're not seeing is, we peak our muscle mass and our bone density at about age 30.

• 58:03Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  And that muscular skeletal unit is tied together. And so, you have to, the, wherever that line is for you, we start losing muscle and bone mass after age 30. And menopause accelerates that when we lose estrogen and testosterone. Like we start losing it really fast.

• 58:21Lewis Howes?

  How much harder is it for you to gain muscle now?

• 58:23Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, it is so hard. I mean, it's literally every day I'm like looking at my plate and I'm like protein, plants, fiber, you know, I'm, I'm not even caring about calories and I'm totally changed the way I move my body.

• 58:36Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 58:36Speaker 02

  Weightlifting. I mean, I used to like work out like, you know, in Zumba last year, a couple of years ago with the eight pound weights. I never got any heavier. I wasn't trying to be stronger. I was just, you know, and now I'm like trying to bench press my weight, you know, and, and do all these things because I, I sit there in the gym and it's all about me staying out of the nursing home when I get older. And that muscle mass determines your basal metabolic rate. Determines your, determines your resilience to insulin resistance. Like it's everything.

• 59:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon has been a big proponent of promoting muscle.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  She's where I learned all this stuff.

• 59:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And just really like.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  She changed my life.

• 59:12Lewis Howes?

  The number one factor of aging, I think, is like a lack of muscle or just like, or of death. I can't remember what it is, but like one of the.

• 59:18Speaker 02

  Greatest predictors.

• 59:20Lewis Howes?

  Is like a lack of muscle and mostly because you fall and you can't get up or you, you can't function after you break something and the muscle will prevent that from happening and keep you stronger and healthier.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  So what I tell my patients is osteoporosis is real and 50% of women will have an osteoporotic fracture before they die. Okay. If you fall and break your hip, your chance of death in one year is 30% with surgery.

• 59:46Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 59:47Speaker 02

  If it's decline, you can't get out of bed, you're, it's like the beginning of the end. And then if you don't have, if you're not healthy enough to have the surgery, 79% will die in one year.

• 59:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  Cause you're bedridden. And so, and that year is horrible, marked with decline. Now, some people, it's not everyone, some people can recover from a hip fracture, but man, if you're over 60, 65 and you have a hip fracture, it is really a bell ringer for a very bad outcome for you. But this is preventable and it's start, it can start in your 30s. Like that's what I'm telling the younger patients, like get to the gym, start lifting weights, focus on your, you know, vitamin D, make sure you're getting good dietary calcium. Like do everything you can to get strong muscle and bones. Eat enough protein. Thank you, Dr. Lyon and. Focus on that is going to keep you healthy and strong and also probably help you lose the fat. But you know what? Curves are beautiful and we all have different shapes and sizes. And subcutaneous fat does not necessarily mean that you're not healthy.

• 1:00:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  It's the visceral fat.

• 1:00:42Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly. Okay, so movement and then one more. What would be?

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  So, stress reduction. And why menopausal patients are finding that easier now?

• 1:00:51Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Because they are realizing that no one's coming to save them. And it's time to start prioritizing themselves. And that can look different for different people, but, but in menopause, women are really like, okay, this is it. If I don't do this, like, they are really putting up boundaries. It's fun to watch.

• 1:01:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  They're like, it's my time. I'm done.

• 1:01:11Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  Feed yourself. Make your own food. Take care of that. I gotta take care of me. So it's really, really awesome for me to see them.

• 1:01:18Lewis Howes?

  Like mom's changing.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  This and like, you can make your own dinner.

• 1:01:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  You know, like, I'm meditating. Leave me alone. So, but what that stress reduction looks like can be boundaries, can be meditation, can be journaling, can be a phone call, can be hanging out with a girlfriend, can be, you know, whatever, but like, find that.

• 1:01:36Lewis Howes?

  Okay, those are great. I think you gave me five different tools that women could do during this menopause phase to make it more enjoyable, make it less stressful.

• 1:01:50Lewis Howes?

  You've got so much information backed by research and science, talking about how to heal our bodies, how to heal our minds, how to reverse our aging, all these different things that I'm fascinated to go into. Because I think a lot of people don't believe that you can change your body and the pain within your body with your mind and your thoughts. And I'm curious, if someone is saying this is just a bunch of... Crap. You know, I don't believe any of this. I only believe that, you know, I have to take a pill or medicate myself to heal my body. What would you say to that?

• 1:02:29Speaker 03

  I'd say I feel sorry for you because you're missing out on a great opportunity to take care of yourself. It's interesting that we have a notion of mind and body as separate. And that's ruled for so long. That's why people think, um, you know, the only way you can heal yourself is by taking some medication. Um, there's no reason to have a mind and body as separate. They're just words. And lots of this book is based on the idea of putting them back together, even just for useful purposes. All right. And if you have a mind and body and they're one thing, then wherever you're putting the mind, you're necessarily putting the body.

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  And so now I have decades worth of research showing that we can put the mind in very unusual places, take the measurements from the body, and um, indeed, uh, the effects are are clear. I think that for this person, the non-believer, um, uh, you might ask them if they've ever seen, this may be off color or whatever, somebody regurgitating on the side of the road. And how did they end up feeling? Because many people need to vomit just by watching somebody else. Nothing is happening to them. Maybe a less colorful example better is, uh, you're walking down the street and a leaf blows uh, in your face.

• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  You're startled by it, just a leaf, but you can feel the changes in your body. You know, my first experience with this mind-body unity was many, many years ago. So I was married when I was very young. And we went to um, Paris on a honeymoon. And I was now eighteen, nineteen, going on thirty. So I had to be very sophisticated. And we're in this restaurant. And on the menu was this mixed grill that I ordered. And on the um, plate came pancreas. So I said to my then-husband, which of these is a pancreas? He points, that one. So I eat everything else, and now comes the moment of choose. I have to eat it because after all, I'm married.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  I don't know how that followed, but it seemed to at the time. So I start eating and I'm literally getting sick. He starts laughing. I said, why are you laughing? He said, because that's chicken. You ate the pancreas a long time ago.

• 1:04:46Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 1:04:47Speaker 03

  All right. So I was thinking myself ill.

• 1:04:50Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:04:51Speaker 03

  And all of the research supports that. You know, it's interesting. Again, I thought of this just the other day. I might have it in the book and have forgotten it, but I was in Missouri several decades ago. And a friend dragged me to an iridologist. And, you know, I'm up for anything. I mean, I'll go to. I went to see this iridologist who looked in my eyes and she says, I have problems with my gallbladder. Okay, fine.

• 1:05:19Lewis Howes?

  Just by looking in your eyes?

• 1:05:21Speaker 03

  Okay, so the game is over. And then eventually I go to the doctor and lo and behold, I had a gallstone.

• 1:05:28Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:05:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Lewis Howes?

  Now, do you think you thought that to occur or did you actually have it?

• 1:05:32Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no. That's a good question. I'm gonna go there. I don't know how it, how it happened. Here, the point for me was by looking in my eye, she, you know, she knew there was something in the other parts of my body that were not right. And, you know, what people don't realize is that every thought, if I, if I lift my arm, my whole body is different. Different in tiny ways that we, we haven't been able to measure, but it's all connected. And which in some sense lends more credence to this whole idea of mind-body unity. And the first study we did was a study where we took old men to a retreat that we had retrofitted to 20 years earlier.

• 1:06:14Lewis Howes?

  Right. What was this called again, though?

• 1:06:15Speaker 03

  We called the counterclockwise study.

• 1:06:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:06:18Speaker 03

  So they were going to live for a week as if they were their younger selves.

• 1:06:21Lewis Howes?

  And they were in their late 70s, 80s?

• 1:06:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, even older.

• 1:06:24Lewis Howes?

  80s, 90s?

• 1:06:25Speaker 03

  Now, remember, that was quite a while ago.

• 1:06:27Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  You know, that was when 70 was the, in the new 90.

• 1:06:33Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  Or even 100 or whatever. I mean, they, they were, they were really old.

• 1:06:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. In, like, walkers, canes?

• 1:06:39Speaker 03

  They get younger as I get older, but as I recall.

• 1:06:42Lewis Howes?

  So they're, they're in walkers, they're in canes, they're, they're immobile, they're very slow.

• 1:06:46Speaker 03

  Well, actually, you know, that when I was interviewing people to do the study, so their adult daughter would typically go and bring them to the lab. And I see them tottering down the hall. And at one point I said to myself, why am I doing this? I don't know if they're gonna live through the day, no less be able to live for the week. You know, it was, it was, and. I took on something that only the younger of me would have considered taking on. You know, I was in charge of their entire lives, these several, you know, seven men, old men, every aspect of their lives for a week. At any rate, you could, you know, you looked at them and it didn't matter what number you attached to them, they were old.

• 1:07:32Speaker 03

  Now they were gonna live for a week as if they're their younger selves. So they'll be talking about current events, things from the past, as if they're just unfolding. And other things as well. Like they would have newspapers from thirty years prior? And they were making their own meals and they would correct each other. So if you would say was, you know, somebody would tell you is, because the past was now the present for them. Wow, and they were listening to older music and watching older movies and everything. I could spend the whole time with you just so I know that study. So you want me to give more detail, just tell me, but let me tell you the results. Those were amazing. So they lived as their younger selves for a week. Without any medical intervention, their vision improved, their hearing improved,

• 1:08:17Speaker 03

  their memory, their strength, and they looked noticeably younger. And I must tell you that almost from the beginning, the changes were palpable. You know, and most people accepted the findings. There were a couple of people who said, "You can't make people younger." And I'm not saying that chronologically, we're changing your age. But it is the case that we associate certain ways of being with certain times in our lives. And that these men had, were living their lives now very dependent on their adult daughter, presuming that they can't do many of the things that they used to do. And they were wrong.

• 1:09:01Speaker 03

  And so that set the stage for a host of studies, most of which, well, all of them actually to date, are in the mindful body. That's fascinating. What would you say, you know, that study was a while ago, right? Yeah, now that was, let's see, we designed it in 1979. Wow. Yeah, a long time, before you were born. Yeah, wow. So what would you say in the last forty-four years, I guess?

• 1:09:28Lewis Howes?

  What is the new?

• 1:09:29Speaker 03

  Has the world changed?

• 1:09:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, are what are the, what are the, what are the new studies or research that you've done to show how to either reverse aging or to, I guess, create longer aging in the biological sense?

• 1:09:44Speaker 03

  Remember, it's all one.

• 1:09:46Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:09:46Speaker 03

  Mind and body. So we don't have a psychological as opposed to a biological sense.

• 1:09:51Lewis Howes?

  So it's both. It's the mind and the body.

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  But I thought you were asking me, so I'm going to answer the question I thought you were going to ask.

• 1:09:56Lewis Howes?

  Go ahead.

• 1:09:56Speaker 03

  Not the one that you did, right? Which was, how has the world changed? It's had a lot of years. And way back at the beginning, the medical model believed that psychology was more or less irrelevant. All right. Now, I'm sure everybody thought it was nice to be happy, but that wasn't going to affect your, your physical health. Now that's changed. And now what most people believe is a biosocial model. So these things like stress and so on matter, but they don't go nearly as far. And I'm saying, down the road, psychology will be the most important aspect of your well-being. So, so that's a change that's come about slowly.

• 1:10:38Speaker 03

  Um, now, for me personally, once we had those, um, those data, I did several studies where we simply make elderly people. Every time I say the word elderly, I, I stop not being older myself, but, um, we make seniors more mindful and they live longer. So it's important for you to know that mindfulness, as I study it, has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is fine. It's just different. Okay. When you meditate, you take yourself out of the world and you, um, say your mantra to yourself over and up. Mindfulness, as I study it, couldn't be more in the world.

• 1:11:21Speaker 03

  That what you're doing is not a practice, it's a way of being. You actively notice new things about the things you thought you knew. You come to see you didn't know them at all, and then your mind naturally goes to them. Now, If we start off with the realization that everything is changing, everything looks different from different perspectives. The idea of being certain of anything becomes silly. Because you can't know, it's not what it was the last time you looked. And if you could adopt just one mindset, it's the only one I believe is good for you, on that uncertainty is the rule, not the exception, then you don't, you don't know, so then you tune in.

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  The problem is our parents, our schools, the media, virtually everything, is trying to teach us absolutes. And when you think you know something, you don't pay any attention. So I'll do what I do probably too frequently now. Let me ask you a simple question. This is the one that everybody knows. Oh, man. How much is one plus one? Two. Okay, and that's what everybody says. I feel like this is a trick question. Well, it is, though, because one plus one isn't always two. That if you are adding one wad of chewing gum, plus one wad of chewing gum, one plus one is one. If you add one pile of laundry, plus one pile of laundry, one plus one is one. You add one cloud, plus one cloud, one plus one is one.

• 1:12:46Speaker 03

  In the real world, one plus one probably doesn't equal two, as or more often as it does. So now, look at the difference. Somebody, it's unlikely, but after we finish, somebody comes over to you and says, "How much is one plus one?" You're not going to mindlessly say two. You're going to pay some attention to the context, and then you're going to answer more mindfully and say, "It could be." And then you can say, "It could be one, it could be two." Interesting. It's all context. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Everything changes, and our minds tend to hold things still. We think we know, we want to know, because we think that gives us control. But since things are changing, you don't want your mind to hold it still. Well, in fact, it's changing, because then you're giving up

• 1:13:31Speaker 03

  control that you otherwise would have.

• 1:13:35Lewis Howes?

  This is fascinating stuff. Now, I'm curious about, you know, chronic health, thinking our way to chronic health. This is the subtitle of your book, The Mindful Body. You say we can think our way to chronic health.

• 1:13:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know, the reason I want to use the term chronic, just because it's a little startling, because we only think of chronic illness, but people tend to assume that as you get older, you're going to fall apart, you're going to get sick. And sickness and aging are not the same thing. One can live their entire life without illness. And the way to live one's life is essentially the same when you're 10 years old or when you're 80 years old, just by knowing you don't know and tuning in. Now, people don't like not knowing because they think you can know. And what I'm here to tell everybody is you can't know.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  So what you need to do to to live the kind of life that I'm suggesting is be confident and uncertain. All right, if you think you should know, then you pretend. But you can't know. Now, that makes everything possible. Now, I was at this horse event many years ago. After this, I'm going to use only news stories. And this man asked me if I'd watch his horse for him because he was going to get his horse a hot dog. Well, as you might know from the credentials you read, I was an A plus student. So I knew as well as anyone in this world, that's ridiculous. Horses are herbivorous. They don't eat meat.

• 1:15:15Speaker 03

  He came back with the hot dog and the horse ate it. And at that moment, I realized everything I thought I knew could be wrong. Now, for me, that was actually exciting because that meant that everything was possible. All of those things that we were taught are impossible, not to strive for, actually became available in a whole different way. And the next step in the reasoning for me was to say that And recognize that experiments, science, science give us our facts mostly, right? But that science only gives us probabilities. There's no experiment that gives you anything absolute.

• 1:15:58Speaker 03

  So it's sort of most horses, under the conditions that were tested, didn't eat the meat, which is very different from all horses never eat meat.

• 1:16:08Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:16:08Speaker 03

  You know, and so, and it's very important for one's health because you have to realize that any information you're given is a best guess. Now, it's an educated guess, but it's still not an absolute.

• 1:16:23Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

• 1:17:07Lewis Howes?

  And now it's time to go out there and do something great.