Create (Peri) Menopausal Confidence: Cut the Noise with Tamsen Fadal

It's time to unlock the wisdom, power, and leadership potential that accompanies menopause. Join our guest, Tamsen Fadal, as we explore how this stage of life has transformed from a taboo subject into a prominent conversation. The episode delves into social media trends, legislative shifts, and even the growing understanding among men regarding the implications of menopause. As Dr. Mindy emphasizes, "My brain goes crazy when I think about 1.2 billion women by 2030 who are gonna be in menopause." This episode offers vital insights and actionable advice for navigating this significant life transition. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep302 Tamsen Fadal is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, New York Times best-selling author, documentary filmmaker, and host of The Tamsen Show podcast. After more than three decades as a news anchor, Tamsen pivoted her career towards women's advocacy, guiding her audience of 4+ million through midlife and beyond. She is the creator and executive producer of the PBS documentary, The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause, which has been viewed by over 1 million women across 350+ cities and 42 countries, and the author of instant New York Times best seller, How To Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life, and Feel Even Better than Before. Check out our fasting membership at https://esetacademy.drmindypelz.com https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/. Please note our medical disclaimer https://drmindypelz.com/medical-disclaimer/.

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

• 0:02Mindy Pelz?

  On this episode of the Resetter Podcast, I am bringing you Tamsen Fadal. Now Tamsen is a force. If you're not familiar with her, she brings such a cool perspective to the menopause conversation because she's a journalist. She's not a doctor. She's not a health advocate. She is really working to change the narrative around menopause. And if you're not familiar with her work, let me tell you a little bit about her and then I want to launch into what you're going to learn in this conversation because it is truly one of a kind. So Tamsen is an Emmy award-winning journalist, a menopause advocate,

• 0:44Mindy Pelz?

  documentary filmmaker, a content creator who left her 30-year career as a news anchor to rewrite the narrative in menopause. So she put out a really epic documentary called The M Factor, which really became this groundbreaking movement across America of women finally standing up and saying, yes, I have these symptoms of menopause and they are affecting my quality of life. Tamsen was really gets a lot of credit for rallying doctors together, rallying women together to open this conversation up. Now, what I wanted to do with this conversation

• 1:29Mindy Pelz?

  with her is I really wanted to take a 30,000-foot view of the menopause conversation because as you've heard me say before, and you're going to hear it in this conversation, that we've really gone from a cultural hush to cultural chaos. And I know that many of us are confused. We're confused as to patch or cream. We're confused as to whether we have the right doctor or not. We're confused as to how long these symptoms are going to last, what kind of lifestyles we should change, what changes do we need to make. So in this

• 2:05Mindy Pelz?

  conversation, Tamsen and I go through what do we know in 2025 about the best practices for menopausal? How do you talk to your spouse? How do you talk to your doctor? How do you talk to your workplace? How do you know what type of HRT you're going to need? Where does lifestyle fit in? All of this. Is discussed in this incredible conversation between Tamsen and I, and I'm really excited to bring it to you because I know that a lot of you get stuck, and I've seen this with my patients, I've had this experience with myself where we get stuck in, did I eat enough

• 2:46Mindy Pelz?

  protein? Did I fast long enough? Am I supposed to fast? Should I be doing a different type of workout? We get caught in those details. And what I wanted to do with Tamsen is really give us a bigger framework to look at menopause from. And that's what we do in this incredible conversation with this beautiful woman. So Tamsen Fadal, how to menopause? Enjoy. Welcome to the Resetter Podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control

• 3:27Mindy Pelz?

  of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Okay, well Tamsen, first, I just have to welcome you to my podcast, which would be like me, the closest thing I could do to inviting you into my living room. So I'm super excited to have you here. So just let's start out with a big welcome to you.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. I'm excited to be here. I like being in your living room.

• 3:54Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, there's a lot of great conversations that happen in my living room. But here's what I think is going to be really interesting to talk about. You have such a unique lens to the menopause conversation, perhaps the most unique lens of anybody out there. And you know, I, my clinic was a lifestyle clinic. I took women to the grocery store and taught them how to read labels. I helped families, helped moms make good nutritious decisions for their kids. We talked about detox. And when we were doing those kind of conversations, nobody was doing lifestyle for women. Nobody was talking about hormones online. There was

• 4:35Mindy Pelz?

  like a cultural hush around menopause. And in just like three years, like such a small amount of time, we've gone from not talking about it to everybody talking about it.

• 4:48Mindy Pelz?

  So let's start off with this. Where do you feel like we are in the cultural conversation around menopause right now? Like, what is it that is the tried and true? What are people gravitating towards? And what is it that women need to know right now?

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a good question. And you're so right about it. When I go and I think back to three years ago, and even five years ago, you know, we did a documentary, we're working on another one now. And we got a response like, there's no audience for it. It's a niche audience. Nobody wants to talk about it. Now, I feel like we're in a place where I don't know that a lot of people don't want to talk about it. Because they want, you know, because, which is a great, is a great place to be, as long as they're getting the right information, right? So I think that there's a lot of conversation about it, from a couple of different areas. Social media is one. The marketplace is another. You know, businesses and seeing how we can, you know, this is a big group of women that want a lot of answers. And obviously, businesses go, oh,

• 5:47Speaker 01

  what does that mean? And then I think that the third big place, obviously, is in workplace. And then we have, you know, politics and legislature and all those other areas. But but I do think that there is a lot of confusion out there right now. But then I also say, okay, well, then let's, we can work on some of that. But at least we've got it like pulled out into the, you know, culture or the atmosphere and the environment. And men aren't afraid to say it. I was in a meeting before I jumped on here. And I said, I literally saw the thermostat and it's at 80 degrees. And I'm like, oh, no, I'm not sitting in a room like this. And I go, guys, I said, my patch isn't going to cut through 80 degrees. You got to fix that AC. And nobody felt weird about it. You know, nobody was like, oh, gosh, Tamsen again with the whole hot flash

• 6:29Speaker 01

  thing. So I do feel like happy that we're, we've got the words out there. Not everybody, but we've got the words out there. But I do think we need to tweak down a little bit.

• 6:39Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So the conversation has been started. And one of the things that I realized in, like, this is from the hundreds of thousands of comments we get on YouTube and my socials, is that women are confused. And we have, like, gone from a place where nobody was to do HRT, and now everybody's to do HRT. But then there's little nuances in that, like,

• 7:07Mindy Pelz?

  Um, what if you don't get the right doctor? There's a learning curve for your dosage. Where does lifestyle fit into this? So can you talk a little bit about what we know culturally, like the experts right now about HRT? When do we start it? How long do we need to be on it? What's the cultural message on this?

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Understanding of it. Yeah. And I also, I'd love to talk about some of the, the confusing parts because I think that that's what I, I'm seeing the same thing now, repetition, right? Of the, of the issues. So people don't really, people don't know where they got the fear, right? Of, of hormone therapy. I mean, we, we kind of all, you know, know it now, but there was a study in 2002 that I'm, I know you've talked about many, many times, the Women's Health Initiative, that, that scared, the headlines scared a lot of women. So in the back of our minds somewhere, we have estrogen equals breast cancer, right? Because that's kind of what the, the media pulled from that, put into the headlines, scared women, scared doctors, scared medical institutions. And, you know, I wasn't around reporting on those things then, or that I don't, I don't remember it.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  But I do know now, fast forward 20 years later, three years ago, everybody was afraid of it. Today, we're talking about it openly. You know, I just started doing a video like Post Your Patch, you know, so we could just kind of normalize the, you know, what that even means about it. But I think the biggest challenges we have right now is what is HRT slash MHT slash HT? You know, what is hormone therapy? Cause that can be confusing, right? If you're just jumping into the conversation and I'm a regular woman, so I feel like I'm almost a conduit between, like, you know, understanding what the doctors are saying and then finding a way to simplify it for a book or for the documentary. So I think what, what is it? You know, what, what comprises of it? Could you say there's nuances?

• 8:53Speaker 01

  So are we talking about vaginal? Are we talking about estrogen, progesterone or testosterone? And then in lifestyle, where lifestyle plays. And then I think that the, the next area of confusion is, is, is it that I'm at risk because my mom, my mom did have breast cancer and died of breast cancer. Am I allowed to do that or am I not? And then I guess maybe the final one would be, I have a doctor that. You know, is telling me this or telling me that, telling me it's not safe for me, safe for me, or doesn't even want to have the conversation. So that's where all this confusion happens. So if we talk about the guidelines right now, you know, most women are able to, should be, should be able to go to their doctor when they're in perimenopause, that that time of,

• 9:34Speaker 01

  you know, before you're in menopause where your period stops, where, you know, you're no longer having a period. And it could be birth control, or it could be a form of hormone therapy. That could be a mixed hormone therapy. And you're 51 years old on average when you get, you know, when you go into menopause, some women before, some women after. And the guidelines, to my understanding, and you know this better than me, is that you can stay on hormone therapy for the rest of your life. And we have a lot of the, the leading voices, doctors out there saying like, that's the case. Now we have different guidelines. The guidelines that most people refer to are the Menopause Society, which says that if you're 60 or you're within 10 years of that post, that menopausal transition, then that's

• 10:17Speaker 01

  another conversation for you to be having individually with your doctor.

• 10:21Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  When it comes to breast cancer, then that's another conversation. So you're right, there's so many nuances now in between things that are leaving women going, but what about me? Because it's not clear cut.

• 10:33Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And I think this is the downside of social media, you know, I, I keep saying, stop organizing your health around a 90 second reel. Like, like, we've, we've got to look at the experts and then ask ourselves how it fits for, for us. And it's interesting, because I'm sort of seeing two sides of the HRT conversation. I actually, when I, the last leg of Age Like a Girl, we brought in an, an editor who had worked with me on Fast Like a Girl. And one of the things that came up is that she's, she's in her 60s. She said, me, my friends and I are upset. And we're upset because we weren't even given the option. So what do we do now? And she was like, literally, and I was, I was like, that's a very valid point.

• 11:18Mindy Pelz?

  And then on the other side, we are getting messages from women that are like, I went to the doctor, I put a patch on and nothing's helping. I feel worse. And then another part of the conversation we have is people like Mary Claire, who are getting up and saying, well, actually, doctors haven't been trained in menopause. So it feels like the wild, wild west still a little bit. And is, are there ways we can engage our doctors in conversation? That keeps it open. They, we don't get gaslit. We have, we're in a collaborative experience. You've interviewed so many doctors. How do we know we're at the right doctor? And how do we have this conversation to get the nuance we need?

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I love this question. And, and you're right, you know, and, and Dr. Mary Claire is right, that we, a lot of doctors have not been trained about this. When we go back to what that study was, a lot of the doctors that I've interviewed, and especially for the last documentary we did, the M Factor, Shredding the Silence on Menopause, doctors were like, I got two hours. I got no training. I did it myself. It really wasn't a conversation. We weren't even talking about perimenopause. And that's in the OBGYN discipline. That's not saying, we're not talking about our, you know, our cardiologist, or our, you know, our whatever other, you know, other doctor we're talking about. We're talking about our general practitioner. We're talking about OBGYN, which is like, what?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  But, you know, there are a lot of incredible doctors out there that, that are learning on their own and that are educating themselves and are being certified by the Menopause Society that says, look, we're doing these extra hours. We're doing this community, this continuing medical education so we can get, get them up to speed or beyond where a lot of the other doctors are not willing to have the conversation. So when somebody says to me, how do I even know if it's the right doctor? You know, my answer is, one, are they willing to have the conversation?

• 13:12Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Two, are they all or none with everything? Three, are they saying, okay, maybe for you hormone therapy is good, but maybe it's not okay. And maybe we need to incorporate these other parts of lifestyle. So I'm appreciative to the doctors that are willing to, to, to go out there on social media and talk about this, and doctors that are willing to have the conversation. And doctors that are willing to have all the conversations because I I don't think that I have seen that there is this, here's the answer and here's the only answer. And I think that everybody in this space will, mo- most people in this space will tell you that, that that we are still learning, that we have a lot of things that we have to focus on, that we're going in front of the FDA to say like, why do we have a black box label

• 13:55Speaker 01

  on, you know, localized vaginal estrogen when it's been deemed by now, even most of the organizations all across the world to say it is safe for pretty much all women. So I, I think we're in the middle of a learning curve. There's no question about that. And unfortunately, unfortunately, the onus is on the woman. And that sucks in a lot of ways.

• 14:15Mindy Pelz?

  Always.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  It's terrible.

• 14:16Mindy Pelz?

  Always.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  It is. It is. But the good news about that is, is those 90 second reels are giving women questions to ask. And so even if we don't have all the answers with them, we do have the questions. And that's what I hope that they use it. So don't use it as your diagnosis, but use it as a place to say, okay, Dr. So and so, will you have this conversation with me? I- am I at risk? Am I not at risk? Here's what I've learned. Are you willing to to talk openly about it? And what other things do I have to implement? Because it's not, hormone therapy is not a, all, you know, it's not a, the end all of everything.

• 14:51Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  It's going to handle a few of those symptoms, certain symptoms, very important ones, and, and deal with a lot of long-term health issues that we want to, to talk about when it comes to women's health in midlife, which is your heart and your brain and your bones. And those are the things that we want to be talking about. And thank goodness for, you know, doctors like Dr. Lisa Moscone, who is every single day in a research lab, trying to figure out, you know, how we deal with and tackle Alzheimer's and women in menopause and what's going on next in our lives.

• 15:21Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, at least is a great segue to my next thought on hormone replacement. And when I brought her on the podcast here, when she was doing, promoting the menopause brain, um, there were, she taught me about three area, three times a woman's brain actually reorganizes itself. And I found this so fascinating that I ended up down months and months in PubMed, trying to really understand. And so it left me with this burning question that I've now written a book about, which is what is the purpose of menopause? And what I learned from Lisa was that there is a pruning away, the drop in estrogen

• 16:02Mindy Pelz?

  is causing a pruning away of neurons we no longer need in our brain so that we can grow new neurons. And in all the research I've done, those new neurons are built for leadership. They're built for purpose. They're, they're, they're not meant, this wisdom, this is not your time to fade away. But the, what signals the drop in the, the change in the brain is the drop in hormones.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:29Mindy Pelz?

  So when we put a patch on, we also need to make sure that over time, there's an adjustment to the, to the dosage. Is that also what you're hearing? Like, should every year, women be doing less and less and less because we still want to be working naturally with what the body is meant to do?

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if it's less and less, but I certainly know it's being aware of that, you know? So there's always the question about blood tests and like, but you know, my hormones are here one day, here one day. But when you get menopause and then you're starting with whether you've decided to do hormone therapy or not do hormone therapy, knowing, that's where you can actually know where your levels are, right? Because you're not all over the place, like perimenopause is like this, it's just all over the place. So I just think like it's that chaotic area of it. And so, you know, for me, I've had to go up in some of my doses. Now I'm leveled out or I'm feeling good, but I will say I started out in a very small patch and then I had, and then I was like, oh my God, I've got, I've got these symptoms again. They started me as low a dose as possible. And now we've moved around a little bit and now I go in and I get my consistent blood, blood test. I'm on testosterone.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Every six months I go in and I make sure that it's not too much, it's not too little, that it's still, you know, doing what it needs to do. So, you know, I, I think that the, the jury's out for me anyway, on whether or not I take that and scale it back, because right now I'm feeling good where I am and I don't want to go back to where I wasn't feeling good. And I know that there's been a lot of talk of like, you just stop it, you're going to revert yourself back and it, it won't have been very helpful. It's not going to keep replacing and replenishing like what you've lost, right?

• 18:01Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Consistency.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Consistency, but I know there's a lot of women that are concerned about that, like, how long do I have to be on this? You know, and it's not like it's an antibiotic. I mean, that's just not how that works, you know, where you, you do a 10, two, 10, 10 days and we're done.

• 18:14Mindy Pelz?

  And you're over.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  And you're over. But but it's also where I think that we have an opportunity when we talk about the pruning of the brain to put ourselves in that first position to say, what other changes can I make in my lifestyle? So that maybe that is also helpful in this process. And maybe I won't need as much. And I don't know if that's the case or not. But right now, I'm where I am, and I haven't gone up at all in two and a half years. And I feel like that's a win for me. You know, I feel like, okay, maybe my body is leveling out. My brain feels like I have memorization now. You know, and when I did an interview like this before, I had a conversation, I have notes in front of me.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yes.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Remember my own name. I'm like,

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  What does she ask me? But so I do feel different, but I want to keep feeling good different.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  I have a funny story. So I, this is gonna sound weird, but I sort of haphazardly ended up on Stephen Bartlett's Diary of a CEO. Like, don't, like, don't tell, don't tell him this, but when he invited me on, like, I didn't know who he was. I know.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Doctor Mindy.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  I know. And this is, I was like, okay, who's this guy from England? And my, my staff was like,

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll do it.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're like, you're getting on a plane and you're going. And I was like, I'm a little tired. They're like, no, like, literally, one of my staff member was like, you're gonna go. I'm not gonna let you not go. So I go. Yeah, I go and I sit down and like, about five minutes in, I'm like, oh, this is kind of a big deal. This guy's kind of a big deal. And three and a half hours, a three and a half hour interview. And at the end, I wanted to grab his 31 year old shirt and be like, listen, you don't put a menopausal woman in a three and a half hour interview. I don't know who you are, but that is not okay.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Well, I gotta say, first of all, I would, I would have dragged you there myself if I'd have heard you were like doing it and then you were like debating. And, and second of all, you're so right about that. But, but I think I, but I thank goodness for that because I can't even imagine what, what people have taken away from that interview, you know?

• 20:24Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, we have, it was a huge interview. There was like over 10 million views.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  I remember, I remember.

• 20:30Mindy Pelz?

  It was, it was quite a moment.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, there better be that many, three hours of you, you know, three hours of brilliant thing said. But, but you know, I do have to, I do want to say one thing is thank you to, to doctors like you that take your time and do this, that take your time and get out there and educate, that, that are constantly speaking and are constantly learning and are constantly doing the things you don't have to do, you know, once you're at this stage of your career and still doing it. And I, and I, I can't say it enough. And I think it's really why I, I think it's really why I decided, or I don't, I just felt this need and desire and understanding of elevating these voices because I, I could see very clearly like, I feel like myself as a journalist has always been a conduit, right? Between the information and the people who

• 21:16Speaker 01

  need it most. And so, and so I've, and, and, and distilling it down so that it's, it's easier to understand and simplified. And like even with my book, I'd get information in interviews and I'm like, oh, I have brain fog. So I have to write this for somebody with brain fog because I've got it right now. And so I would go through that distill process. And the same thing with the documentary, you know, we would do hours of interviews and really have to distill down the areas that we would, you know, pull out to make it understandable. And so I think that that's been something I've been so grateful for with, with doctors like yourself. So I know, I know how many people that helped. I just, I just do. So thank you. Well, thank you.

• 21:52Mindy Pelz?

  Thank you. There's a little behind the scenes.

• 21:57Mindy Pelz?

  So, which actually brings up a really interesting thing because several of my friends who are doctors and helping women, we were really agitated for a long time that the only two people that were talking about hormones were Huberman and Peter Attia. And they would not, I mean, not to, I'm not dissing them, but what I want to point out- Out is that for a long time, even our education was coming from men. And I kept listening to those and thinking, you can tell me from an educated point of view, but you're not having the experience. So it skews the way in which you can speak about this. And then last week, two weeks ago, I interviewed Dr. Vonda Wright. I know she was just on your podcast.

• 22:42Mindy Pelz?

  And she said something that I really loved, which is she's like, you need a doctor who can listen with her menopausal ears.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Oh, so true.

• 22:53Mindy Pelz?

  And I was like, that is important. So do you feel like there's room, and this is just straight up, you know, let's just call it what is, is there room for men to be educating us right now? Or do we really need to be looking at going to female doctors who have been in the experience that maybe have a different perspective? Or do we need not to get that nuanced?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  I mean, look, I think that at this point, we need all the help we can get, right? In terms of helping women that are suffering. And so I don't want to pull anybody out of that conversation, but I sure do really understand how I moved from a male doctor who said to me in his whole practice, and he wrote my patient portal in menopause, any questions? And that was the end of the conversation. It's where it began and where it ended. That was it. And I walked out of that place and I went, what in the, I mean, that was in my patient portal, those words when my tests came through, my blood test came through. And I went to, you know, I made my way around a few female doctors and ended up with one that is, you know, is absolutely incredible. But I do feel like there is a reason that when you walk into a doctor,

• 23:59Speaker 01

  or I've walked into the doctors that I've had that are treating me for this stage of my life, they're around my age, or they're close enough to my age where they understand what's coming up, you know, because they're either perimenopausal or menopausal, and I do feel like they understand. So I do think there's something to it. My own experience was that I had had that kind of ear, and now I have this kind of ear, and this kind of ear feels better.

• 24:23Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  So I don't, I, you know, look, I'm happy that I hear men talking about it. I'm happy that men are willing to have the conversation, not going. Really? I don't know. But I also do think that there is, is a lot of room for a lot more conversation coming from, from women. And I, and I think that that's when I got excited. You know, I left my job of 30 years as a journalist doing news to, to focus on this entirely. Never thought it was anything I would ever, it never even crossed my mind to do. And I do feel like that's where a lot of the doctors in, in this space have done the same thing. They have kind of left, you know, not delivering babies as much and moved now into this midlife care, which I have found very interesting, or something around that area,

• 25:05Speaker 01

  whether it's the lifestyle changes or strictly, you know, strictly hormones.

• 25:09Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah. So you went out and did a book tour. You, I saw you pretty short after that. And I have, I have a couple quests. Yeah, I know. I was like, you did? Well, how did that go? Are you crazy?

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. I know. I remember. I was like, I think I was comatose. And I saw you. I was like, I don't know what I just did. But it was, it was great. It was great.

• 25:29Mindy Pelz?

  Well, book launching, book launching is a little, a little like that. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm actually, this is my fourth book in five years. And I told,

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. I thought that I knew what it was for.

• 25:41Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I told my publisher, I'm like, can we take a year break, please? Like, I, like, it's not just the writing the book, it's launching the book. Like, this is a lot. So, yeah, so we're gonna take a little break after this next one.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:53Mindy Pelz?

  But, but I think for the longest time, if you Googled menopause symptoms, you would get hot flashes. And what I have now seen in my research is actually the number one symptom is irritability. That seems accurate.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Irritability and anxiety. Yeah.

• 26:10Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So what did you notice when you went out and you talked to people and women that are absorbed your book and they're learning how to menopause? I love the title of your book.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 26:20Mindy Pelz?

  What, where are the biggest hurdles they're coming up with? What are the biggest symptoms they're having?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think the biggest hurdle is the confusion that you talked about early on. I really, I really do. I go back to that. I don't, I don't think we can, I don't think we can say that enough. Right. And I think that that's the big hurdle. The second big hurdle is where to find a practitioner. And so those are the two. And I think that, you know, tele, telemedicine and telehealth have done an incredible job of, of helping, you know, move that needle along. I mean, but just move that along. The second area, which is interesting, so I went to, I started out in New York and then I was in San Francisco and LA and Denver and Dallas, Miami and Chicago and New Jersey. And so it was, you know, it was, it was all over the place. And it was interesting, a couple of things, the irritability is a big one, and then not understanding all these other symptoms that came together.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  And but I think that one of the biggest symptoms that women are struggling with was the lack of sleep and the brain fog. And I think it's because that we're seeing more of these women staying in the workplace a lot longer, right? And being so aware of these symptoms in a bigger way, because a lot of them are moving into different kind of positions. A lot of them are, are dealing with that, everything that's going on that you and I've talked about before, dealing with elderly parents, dealing with children, whether they're there still or left the nest, and then also dealing with menopause, perimenopause at the same time. So I think that those would be the two big symptoms that women feel are impacting their lives the most. But I did find in every city, it was interesting to see how excited people were to come out and get together and talk.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  So whether it was about the book or was about the documentary, it wasn't so much those two things, but it was the coming together as a community and saying like, oh, wow, there's somebody here physically in person that can help me. So it was interesting when I got off of the online and did that in person, how women were just so grateful to be, to be there with somebody who could listen. And then that brought me to really understand community in this space, because I don't think, I think I underestimated community a little bit, honestly. Yeah. I was like, oh yeah, it's a couple of your friends that, you know, you go for walks with. But that's not what this is. This is a whole different definition of community now. Yeah.

• 28:30Mindy Pelz?

  And I think if you look, one of the things that I researched in my For Age Like a Girl was, you know, really, what is the evolutionary reason behind menopause? And, you know, of course, you find the grandmother hypothesis, which Lisa pointed out in her book. So I actually brought Kristin Hawks on to this podcast and I interviewed her. And going towards more collaboration is actually our evolutionary design as we move through menopause. And it's really crazy when you break it down, because I never felt like in competition with other women. But primally, when we're, when we have a reproductive system, if we were sitting

• 29:14Mindy Pelz?

  around the cave, waiting for a man to come back, this sounds so sexist, and I'm just gonna say it.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  No, but it is what it is.

• 29:21Mindy Pelz?

  Right. If we were waiting for the man to bring the animal kill back, and then when he, you know, he brought it back, he also brought his seed back. And there was like, you know, the fertile women were sitting there, you know, vying for his, for him to reproduce, so that the species can continue. Yeah, it's horrible. It's horrible. But, but if you, but it's our primal design that you can't take out of us, even in a modern world. So I love what you just said, because I, when we look at the menopause through the grandmother hypothesis, we actually are meant to have three things returned back to us: fitness, cognition, and social connection. And the grandmothers, according to Lisa,

• 30:06Mindy Pelz?

  calls them evolutionary heroines, that they were the ones that were keeping the tribe alive. So how do we create that in this online world, in this world that we're in isolation? Is there anything you've seen? I mean, you did 100,000 people for your book launch. But like, how do we bring women together so they can feel heard in this moment?

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that. And I, and I think that we're still looking at all different ways to do it the right way. I think the way that, I think how I realized it is this, you know, we We did the M Factor documentary. We had no money. We had, nobody wanted to fund it. You know, once we got into it and we actually talked to this incredible person that helped us go through like the marketing of it city by city. And then that was very helpful. But when we went into this originally, it was like, there's no audience, there's no interest. No, no, no, no. PBS wound up partnering and putting it on the air and that was great. But we said, well, but we wanna, you know, that's like an airing of it. We want more women to see it. So we decided we're going to give it out to women and see what happens.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  So we were like, oh, maybe like 25 different groups will come together, want to show it. And they're saying, we've been over, in over 800 cities and 45 countries now around the world. Wow. The most exciting part of it is the women would take the documentary, they would organize a group themselves of a hundred women in their city, whatever city it was. And then they would bring a panel up afterwards of other women to talk about their experience. Maybe a doctor would be there, maybe a, you know, a community advocate would be there. What happened after those screenings, what, it always gives me chills, was, was the most important part of it, which was the community aspect and

• 31:49Speaker 01

  aspect of it, of the women sharing information about the doctors in their community, about the women sharing what their experiences were of, of different groups that came together. One, one, somebody reached out just recently and said, oh, there's a men's group that was started as a result of it, of men talking about it. Amazing. So that's where that community part has happened. Now, how to mobilize that into a bigger way? I don't know that I've conquered yet, but I have seen it now go from online, which is, you know, is always going to be there, but seeing it go into these communities. So the biggest thing I could say to somebody, if they want to advocate for themselves or somebody else, is to find a place to do that within their own community.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  And I don't think any group is too small to feel good about that, whether it's a walk group, whether it's a, you know, you want to go and, you know, and talk to your local lawmakers about, you know, what kind of changes, whether you do it in your workplace. So I think that that community, you know, might not be the big, large one, but like we did see it for the, the launch party, the World's Hottest Menopause Party. I was like, all these people are coming together everywhere. Let's bring them all together at once. So.

• 32:48Mindy Pelz?

  I feel like I wanna, I wanna lay, I wanna give you the job of figuring out how to rally us all. I appreciate your, that answer, but I also think you're the gal, you're the gal.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  All right, well, I might take that on.

• 33:01Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, maybe we need an even bigger menopause party, but.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Don't you think though, that that's where you see the, the actual change happen? Like, I don't know about you, but like anytime you go to something, and even where you and I met, you know, not too, a few months, when you bring that energy of women together like that, I feel like it's unstoppable. And I don't know that I would have felt that at, at, at thirty. I mean, I was, I was in a workplace, I was working alongside women, I, you know, I would bring them up, you know, behind me or mentor or intern, but I don't ever think that I, I, I saw that or felt that before, the desire.

• 33:36Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and I think, again, I go back to there's like an undercurrent of competition, whether you're in the workplace.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 33:43Mindy Pelz?

  You're out at the bar or whatever, when we're in that reproductive, or even on socials. Like, I have a, I have a twenty-five-year-old daughter, and I've watched her at nineteen years old, completely melt down because of something she saw on socials. So, so I think there is something that's unique about when we start to lose our cycle, we come together in such a beautiful way. And I keep thinking, how do we amplify that? That's what, that's what we need to be doing.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  All right, I'm taking it on with you.

• 34:15Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Cause you're right, though. But I mean, when you think about it, you and I are, I, I think we're around the same, I'm probably older than you. I think I'm older than you, right?

• 34:23Mindy Pelz?

  I'm fifty-five.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, so we're the same age. And so, we've been around, right? We've been around, we met as a result of this, right? That's, that's how we met. We've probably crossed over in a lot of different areas, but we, but we met as a result of this, and actively are working in our, on our own, you know, in our, in our own ways together and in our communities, to continue to amplify this message. I don't know that we would have done that at thirty. I think maybe we would have been like, oh, hi, hi. Oh, yeah, I can help you with the book. I'm a journalist and we go on our merry ways. And so I do feel something, and I don't know about you, but I feel like I could reach out to anybody that I've met within this community now and go, hey, could you do me a favor? Can you help me out with this? Or I need, you know, can you explain this to me?

• 35:07Speaker 01

  And so I'm hoping that women are starting to do that in their pockets, too. And I'm starting to see that. And that's what was exciting to me on that book tour. We did eleven cities and then we did Vegas to start it off. So twelve cities.

• 35:17Mindy Pelz?

  Wow.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  And I saw that everywhere. And it was cool. Yeah, it was really, it was really cool to see.

• 35:23Mindy Pelz?

  So one of the other things you said to me when we met that that really sat with me because I was in the final stages of writing Age Like a Girl.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, you were.

• 35:31Mindy Pelz?

  And it was something I really thought about in the book is you had a woman come up to you at one of the book tours and say, thank you so much for your book. It gave me the courage to divorce my husband. And I spent a lot of time with my collaborative writers saying, I don't want this to be a divorce book. But there is a transformation that's going on where a lot of women are standing up and saying, no more. And the husbands were just, we'll just stay on heterosexual relationships here, that they, they are like, what is going on? I liked who you were. I don't know who you're becoming. What, talk to me a little bit about what you've seen, because you address divorce in your book.

• 36:16Mindy Pelz?

  You know, how do you, how does a woman know if it's just a life shift? If it's her husband? Does she need to leave? Like, there's a lot of confusion around that as well.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with you. I'm so glad you brought that up because I don't think we talked about it quite enough. I, you know, I hesitated, too. I was like, am I putting relationships in this book and dating? Like, does that go in a menopause book? Like, that doesn't make any sense. And even, you know, when I, when I went to my publisher and they were like, what, you're doing the whole chapter on it? And I was like, yeah, I think we need a whole chapter on it.

• 36:45Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  And there was a couple of reasons. One, because we certainly have seen that most, you know, there was a study out a few years before I wrote the book, that was essentially that women in their, you know, mid forties, those are the ones that are initiating the divorce, right?

• 36:59Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, like seventy percent.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a ridiculous number. It was a ridiculous number.

• 37:03Mindy Pelz?

  It's huge.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  And so, so that one thing, I'm like, that's not just a coincidence. Like, that just didn't just happen. There's not been a lot of, you know, of research on it. There was a study out of the UK that they kind of did a survey and looked at some of that. But but what I think is is the part that was important to me was to say that, okay, my the book that I wrote, How to Menopause was it starts in the doctor's office, but it doesn't end in the doctor's office. And I'm sure, I mean, that's what you're talking about. It goes to all different aspects of our lives, right? And so we can't ignore this relationship part. So we've got to deal with what's happening with us physically. And you know what's going on psychologically, because that's really happening. And then I think we move into that relationship part. So a lot of the conversation I had on the road, and even now, is like, don't jump and make any of those decisions right this

• 37:49Speaker 01

  second. Like, get this part stabilized a little bit. Like, I don't say like, balance all your hormones first and be perfect. But get this part worked out first. The you has to be the most important first, and then figure that out. Because there might be a reason that you don't want to have sex. Look, the person could just be a jerk. But it also could be that like, your body just doesn't feel like it. You know, I got married again at 50. I went to my honeymoon, and I was like, you want me to have sex with you? No? Like, you know, I couldn't. Is that what we're doing? I thought we were just hanging out. What? I thought we're just in Hawaii for fun. And so, so I, so I understand that part of it. But I also say that, like, there was so much going on with me physically, I couldn't even make that decision then. You know, if I had made a decision, it would have been

• 38:31Speaker 01

  a not the right decision for me. That's, that's also to say, if you go back to what you were saying with Lisa Moscone, and you know, and really kind of clearing out your head and what's important. I, what I want now, and if I had been married to the same person, I'm not sure that that shift would have been, I would have stayed with that same person. You know, so I, so I think it depends. But I, I think it's very, very important to get this other part, you know, figured out first, because hormones can really wreak havoc. But it's not surprising to me that we see this divorce rate really increase, and women getting back out there and going like, I don't even know if I want to date again. I want to just, I just need me for a little while. You know, that's, that's what I'm looking for. I'm not even looking for somebody else to come, you know, to be near

• 39:13Speaker 01

  me. And we're also learning what else we like with our bodies, too. So I think that that's where the communication part, you know, that's like, sort of that in between of, hey, I don't, I never even liked that. I don't know why I thought I liked that. But this is what I like now. So I think that those are hard, there's not always easy conversations to have, but

• 39:29Mindy Pelz?

  Well, that's, that's part of losing our filter. We're willing to say what we want to say. Right? And so, so if we're gonna have sex, we're not putting up with bad sex. I need to be more descriptive as to, you know, what my needs are here. So I do think that could be the upside of a low libido is maybe you need to talk, talk differently to your spouse about what your needs are. Which would be, which is a really interesting conversation. The, you know, there's a lot of connection that I'm seeing right now between the menopause conversation and the relationship conversation. And, you know, we were with Julie Gottman together at Lisa Billy's house. And one of the phrases she has that I really have used in my own menopausal journey is that

• 40:13Mindy Pelz?

  women get depressed when they are in relationships where they are saying yes, and they really want to say no. And when you say yes, and you really want to say no, it builds resentment. I am, I'm the queen.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  So much. Me too. Me too.

• 40:32Mindy Pelz?

  It's really, yeah.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  But we were, we were trained to do that in so many ways. Like that was societally, like, you know, I, I work with so many younger people now and they're like, what do you mean? Like, they can't even fathom that that's, you know, how it, but we were really kind of taught that that's the way to go along, to get along, be the good girl, be the this, be the, be that person. Right?

• 40:55Mindy Pelz?

  The, one of the moments I learned that we were really, grew up in a misogynistic time was when I watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High with my children. And they were like, what did they just say? Why are they, I'm like, oh, that was the, that was the seventies. That was the late seventies. You were allowed to talk to us like that. You can't.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  You were allowed to. Isn't that funny? I, I saw it on, I don't know why I was even watching this nine to five. And I'm like, oh, God, what? Cause I, I've, I watched a documentary and the nine to five was brought up into it. And then I went back and I watched it and I'm like, Oh my gosh, how did I think that this was funny even to watch this as a comedic show? You know, I can't even. And and that changes only happened recently sadly.

• 41:43Mindy Pelz?

  So fast.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  I mean, we say it was like that was then, but the changes only happened recently. I mean, when I got into my career, you know, I was like, thank you for letting me be here and you know, get your coffee and report your news for you. You know, it was really like, it was very, very different. And so I do, I do think that that's why we're seeing this. I'm sure there's a lot of men that are like, wait, what? But, but you know, we're seeing women in the last three years be so vocal about, you know, everything, feed my algorithm. I don't think it's just my algorithm anymore, talking about hormones and nutrition and fitness and fasting and and and aging better, longevity and menopause and perimenopause. And now I'm seeing men put up perimenopause videos and menopause videos. And so I'm like, okay, I guess.

• 42:28Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  I guess it's not a taboo topic so much anymore. Remember taboo, we were calling it taboo constantly. And I'm like, if we could never call it taboo, I'd be so happy. So I feel like we're, we're getting there. But we still have a lot to do. There's still a lot of confusion, you know?

• 42:42Mindy Pelz?

  Exactly. And, and so where do you think men, you know, fit into the conversation? I did, in Age Like a Girl, I have an appendix to men. It's actually written to men, directly to them.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:56Mindy Pelz?

  And I, I have a husband that has been willing to see my changes, try to understand my changes. We have conversations a lot about like the new you. I, the other day I bought a baseball cap with a butterfly on it. And I told him, when I put the cap on and I had you, that way you know which version of me you're talking to. You're talking to the butterfly version of me. And so he, he's been amazing. But it, but he, I had to kind of pull him into, I know there were things that, that I was okay with before, and I am no longer okay with them. And that was hard. That was a hard conversation to have.

• 43:41Mindy Pelz?

  So where do you see?

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, because there's no roadmap for it.

• 43:45Mindy Pelz?

  No.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  There's no roadmap for that conversation. I mean, there's a roadmap for a lot of other ones, not that one.

• 43:49Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  I, I mean, I love that he's willing and my husband is too. I kind of met my husband in the middle of all of this, you know? So he's only known me screaming the word vagina across the dining room table to somebody on the phone while we're both sitting there working. I say, I think men come into the conversation a couple of different ways. Like first of all, I love that you're, you know, that you have that conversation with your husband and can, and can have that openness. And I like the symbolic part of it with the butterfly. Um, you know, I think men have to come in, in the workplace is one place, but you know, whether they like it or not, because I think we can't ignore that in that, in that area. Because we're working alongside them all the time. And I, and I do think it's incumbent on them to learn some of this. I mean, this is just stuff that wasn't, you know, wasn't taught. We didn't know.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  So I think it's important for them to just have a, a, a understanding of it, that it's not just a, a joke all the time. Because unfortunately, that's how we all grew up. We grew up with a hot flash being a joke. We grew up with women being the butt of most jokes. We grew up with this time in life being just the annoying woman that was anxious and moody and hot and sweaty. And so I, I think that men have to come into that conversation in a lot of ways and because we'll be like this if they're left out of it. You know, I, I, you know, so if you, you, if you put that word in, and I think it's important. We did find that when we did these screenings of the documentary was all women. And then after about six months, men started trickling into them.

• 45:12Mindy Pelz?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  So we'd, we'd shout them out and be like, hey, for the 10 men in the room. And then it'd be like, hey, for the 15 men in the room. So I do think they're interested if, if they're the kind of guys that care enough. And if, and, and you want, and that's who you want to be with, isn't it?

• 45:25Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Like the person that's proactively going in there saying what's going on, not, I don't know, fix it and then come back to me.

• 45:31Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. The one message I wish I could get out to men and I, I recently was interviewed on Rich Roll. And I, I, he kind of played, he sort of played this like, I'm a dude. What do I know? And I was like, here's what I'm gonna tell you, Rich, is that, and please take this with love. But you men need to step it up right now and get to understand what we're going through. I have two of my closest friends. I have sat on in my she shed on my couch at ladies nights out and they are both divorced. And they both said, I tried, I tried, I took him to therapy. One's husbands wouldn't go to therapy. The other husband was like, everything's fine.

• 46:16Mindy Pelz?

  Why are you so upset? And, uh, and I think if there are men listening to this podcast, or if there was a message I could get to men, is just try to understand what we're going through. Because you wanting to the status quo is the status quo is no longer around. That is not women are rising up and we need to be heard. Menopause is being looked at differently. And that divorce rate, I think, could be changed if men were willing to see us different.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  I, I do too. I, I do too. I acknowledge that this change is happening and it's not just, all right, that's what you're going through. But not everybody could be going through this. And I think unfortunately, there's been so much silence around this that that was really, you know, along with the damage that it did to women's health, long-term health. The other damage that it did was just the acceptance of all this, right? The, the cultural acceptance of you get through that, your own problem and let us know when you're, when you're, you got that sorted out. And, and so I, yeah, so it is incumbent on men to do that. And, and I also think that it's interesting and I, I've seen it go a couple of different ways. Like I think I've seen it go from like, oh, the eye roll. Like the first time I went to the Capitol, we were out in front talking about, you know,

• 47:30Speaker 01

  we were with the Let's Talk Menopause Organization and we were holding a press conference, the first time we'd gone there. And we had a couple of people walk by like men, you know? And then recently I was in a TV studio and I was talking about the book and one of the camera guys came over to me afterwards. He goes, my, my wife is really suffering right now. Is there a place I can go to for more information? So I'm seeing men step forward, but I don't think that they, I don't think that. Any of us have the luxury any longer of saying like, oh, not, you know, I now let's not talk about it, figure it out, that especially men.

• 48:06Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, so we, we dove, my husband and I dove into Esther Perel's teachings and one of the things that I love that she says is you will fall in love with two to three people in your adult life. And some of us that will be with different people, some of us that will be with the same people. So just I'll throw in what has been working in my marriage is we actually looked at marriage before kids as marriage 1.0. We looked at marriage with kids as marriage 2.0. And now we refer to our marriage as marriage 3.0, which is after kids and Mindy's and Mindy's post-menopausal. And it's been a beautiful way to say, hey, can we talk about this through the lens of marriage 3.0?

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's great.

• 48:52Mindy Pelz?

  And it just sort of shifted it. It was really, it was really beautiful. So, or it has been. I mean, we're still working on it, but it, it's, it, at least the door is wide open, which was really a wonderful experience to, to have a spouse that was willing to do that. So.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Well, I have to imagine it made both of you feel safe in coming forward with any changes or thoughts or fears or acknowledgements of something that maybe worked before, but isn't going to serve me now.

• 49:19Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  You know, and that's nice to have feel that safe zone in there where you're not like, oh gosh, what's the reaction to this going to be versus, okay, I have a, I have a sounding board, a safe, a safe place to go with that.

• 49:31Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  I, I was, I was divorced in my early 40s and did menopause, peri-menopause contribute to it? I don't, I couldn't say. I mean, I was definitely in that stage of it now that I look back, but I don't even know. He wound up being not the right partner for me, period, inside or outside of that. But I will say that to go back to where I am today, you know, I started dating in my later 40s, then wound up getting married a second time at 50 years old. What I, what I expect and what I would.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  tolerate, right, in a relationship is very different than it was before. And I think it's, and I also think I give a lot less pressure too. Like I, I'm think I'm, I'm a little bit like, now I'm like, this is my life, this is your life, where I'm, I say I walk the world with him. Like I want, he's who I want to walk the world with. But I don't feel like I'm looking to him for all of these answers to my life, right? But I certainly do expect both of us to understand each other during this time because we're gonna, we're getting older together, right? So we started our marriage one point oh, at fifty, me fifty, him sixty. And so I'm seeing, I see how we dance with each other a little bit differently, even from our, my mid forties to where we are now, to where I assume we're gonna be as we, as we get older.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  But it's nice because he tal-, you know, he's like, he talks about it, he's open about it.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  People come up to him now and they're like, oh, your wife talks about menopause all the time. And at the beginning, he was like, oh, gosh, Tamsen, you know, it's a lot. And now, and now he's like, yeah, yeah, she's working on another, whatever. So it's become more of his, you know, in his zeitgeist too, not just in, not just in mine.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  Right. I, I'm laughing because that sounds very much like a, a few of our conversations, like I'll walk around and I'll be like, I think my estrogen's off today. Like, I'm sorry, I'm a little bitey, blah, blah, blah. I tried adapting, you know, my creams and, um, and, and some days I'm like, I, I start to say something, I'm like, do you not want to hear about hormones today? And he's like, yeah, I'd like a break, thank you.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Like a break, I know.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  So I, I totally get that.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Every once in a while, he'll be like, I'm like, I'm changing my patch of the video. And he's like, you're put, you're putting that online, huh? And I go, yeah, I am. And now, you know, I've got a fourteen year old nephew, I'm an eighty-five year old father. So my father's like, become this, he's become all of a sudden this advocate for menopause, but I, I'm not sure if he knows the boundaries of it all. So he goes, cause I've normalized it now. So, you know, when I lost my mom, I lost her from breast cancer and, and we assumed that she went into a medically induced menopause as a result of a double mastectomy and chemotherapy and everything. And I remember her just being pouring sweat all the time, but I, but we were young and we would like all laugh about it together and didn't know why she was so hot and, and never menopause was ever brought up and, and I was young then.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  And, and so when I started, you know, going into researching all of this and then in talking about it more openly, my father said to me, do you think that your mom was in menopause? Like I, I, I think she might've been in menopause. And I said, yeah, I'm pretty sure dad that she was. I mean, this is, you know, years ago, she died in 1990. So fast forward to today, you know, I published the book. I sent my dad a couple of copies. He's, he's in a superagers group, like a superagers group in the morning. He has they, they meet. It's so cute. And so I said, hey, do you want to bring some of books, books to the, your superagers? I'll send you some more. And he goes, oh, those women aren't in menopause. I'm like, but their daughters probably are. So if you want to do that, I gotta bring this up, Tamsen. I'm not gonna bring. So, long story short, I guess some of the conversation happened.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  And so, so now the women are coming to him like, can we get a copy of the book for our daughter? So my dad thinks he is like the coolest. He's like my menopause distributor in, in, you know, in his, in his superagers group. And then he recently, he had, he was in physical therapy and the woman's like, oh, I'm so hot. And he goes, do you think it's the menopause? And I go, dad, now you got, you can't, you can't do that to a woman. You can, you can bring it up subtly, but you can't ask her if she's in menopause.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a whole nother generation that needs to be taught how to talk to women. So I applaud you.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  That's so cute. I'm like, oh no. Yeah. So it's, but it's interesting to see, you know, it's interesting to see. I just, I love that everybody's coming into the conversation. It's just really beautiful. What, what would, advice would you give a woman about talking about menopause in the workplace? What are we seeing in trends? I know, I, I, I'll give you a, an example. Uh, I was in London over a year ago doing some interviews and promoting Eat Like a Girl. And I was asked to go into Amazon and speak to a group of women. It was a menopause group. And I was like, of course, I'll come speak to you all.

• 54:20Mindy Pelz?

  So I go into Amazon London and I'm talking to hundreds of women and the leader of the group tells me that what she decided to do was that she saw the trends of when women leave the workplace and it's usually around forty five, somewhere between forty five and fifty, they leave. And then she figured out what that was costing the company. And so she went to the to the C suite and she was like, we need to be doing something different here. And they said, well, we'll let you have a club. And she, her thing was if I can show them the cost of losing a menopausal woman, maybe they will help us through this process

• 55:05Mindy Pelz?

  a little different. And then on the flip side of that, in the research I've done of Lisa Moscone's work and even some of the grandmother hypothesis, we actually, we, we, our brains have the ability to get stronger, to be more focused, to bring more to the workplace. So what do we need to do to change that conversation?

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's one of my favorite conversations in all this as we, as we keep going forward, because I think it's kind of that next frontier that we're going to tackle that is not necessarily, has really been touched because we all come from different workplaces, right? One person might be working in a classroom, one's working in a C suite, one's working, you know, doing, you know, driving. And so I, so we have all different workplaces. So it's difficult to say like, we're going to implement a workplace policy, you know, everybody should be doing this. But there's enough of these little nuggets to take away from what we could do, whether it's changing uniforms, if you've got somebody that's working in a, in a factory or a distribution center, or it's being able to have a conversation like that, or it's being able to provide, you know, a coaching or telehealth services via insurance, right? Or making people at least feel comfortable about the conversation.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  So those kind of accommodations. What we don't want is it to ever work against women, so that we're penalized, or that it's working against them, where we say, oh, gosh, okay, we're not going to hire this person because of that. But I think that we're able to show financially that retaining this level of woman, this age of woman, this experience of woman is, is helpful for the organization. So I don't think businesses can afford to ignore this now. I think that that's pretty clear. I did an article for Harvard. Business Review a few years ago, and we had a hard time finding companies that had been implementing policy, which was very interesting. When we did the documentary, we worked with Genentech, who realized that they had a need for this, and so they implemented workplace policy. And so, so that's encouraging to see with some of the larger ones.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  I came from a media company, and I brought this in like three or four years ago, and they said to me, you can have a group, if that's what you want, but we're not going to do anything on paper like that. And so that was a real disappointment, you know, I worked, I was like, they said, what is a menopause policy? And I said, ah, women need help.

• 57:12Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  So I do like seeing it in the workplace. I think if I was talking to somebody and said, like, how do you want to implement that, however you can? And if that means it's two to three women that are meeting about it, or it's something where you have a big enough company where you can say, I'm going to go into the HR department and say, we need something, where even if it's access to coaching, even if it's access to bring somebody like you or me into a workplace to have a conversation.

• 57:35Mindy Pelz?

  Talk about it, yeah.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Because I don't think it's always easy for a workplace to say, okay, everybody, that's menopausal, you want to understand menopause, come in here and do it. I think it's easier for a third party to come in and say, hey, if anybody wants to have this discussion, we're here and open to that discussion. And I think that's the easiest thing a workplace could do, honestly, for themselves and for the women that they're trying to help.

• 57:55Mindy Pelz?

  And what if you're, yeah, and what if you're a woman in a workplace that doesn't understand, are there advocacy groups right now? Yeah, what are they?

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Oh, having different advocacy groups?

• 58:05Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, like, do we have, like, a general, like, we need, like, advocacy? I feel like I saw.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  We have guidelines, we have guidelines for it. Did you see a group, group itself for workplace?

• 58:14Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, there's some, yeah, there, and I, I forget the name, but I started to follow them on Instagram, that they are actually helping, like, a company could hire them.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, they have those.

• 58:25Mindy Pelz?

  Put a policy in.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:27Mindy Pelz?

  I don't know if, if they're an advocacy group for women themselves, but what we hear a lot is that women just feel gun shy to say anything. They still.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 58:39Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, still don't want to, so how do you know when you should say something and when you shouldn't, and when you're being mistreated? Like, we don't have a solid advocacy group like that, do we?

• 58:48Speaker 01

  We do, we do not. Menopause Society's put some guidelines together that can be helpful to, to have for HR directors and resources that are in place. We have some on the website, the M Factor, which is like, these are for employees and these are for employers to understand your rights. And you know, there I think there's a company called Adobe that is is able to do that is able to go into an actual workplace and implement policy.

• 59:11Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So, so you just have to do a little bit of homework on it.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've got to do homework on it and also decide if you know what you can do inside or outside of there. But I do think that HR is becoming more aware of it. And there's even some state by state lawmakers that are talking about this and they make sure that women are not penalized, you know, if they are dealing with menopause or they're menopausal. So I think that that's promising too. I just don't rely on that for for every state or for every business because I think that makes it hard. So again, you know, I can't, I it's funny, I found myself when I was doing all the interviews for the book going, well, the onus is on the women. So unfortunately, it's on us. Unfortunately, and you know, and but it really is right now. But if that's what it's going to take, well, we're up for the task as usual.

• 59:57Mindy Pelz?

  You know, I had right as usual.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  As usual.

• 1:00:00Mindy Pelz?

  I had to add that in there. Yeah.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 1:00:03Mindy Pelz?

  I had a strategy when my kids were little, I decided to create a team of doctors that I would go and ask opinions of knowing that as a mother, a lot of times you're you're skewed, you know, you can't quite doctor your own child. So it was everything from really alternative to super conservative. And what I did is every anytime my children were sick, I would, I would pull this team. And then I would sit back and I would listen and I would decide what felt the most, the best to me. And I think there needs to be some that that might be the moment we're at is if you're in a sticky situation in work, you need to sort of look at what your options are and then figure out what what feels right. Because you're right. Again, the onus is really up to us. So.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  And it's a workplace, every workplace is so different, too. And I think that's what you have to take into consideration, you know, what might feel comfortable to one woman walking in and bulldozing into the HR office and saying like, this is what we need, is not going to feel comfortable to somebody else that might be at an age where they go, oh, I'm so grateful that I'm still here, you know, because I did go through that myself in the workplace. Like I was, I was very like, oh, you know, I was in television and that's a very youth, you know, forward facing youth industry. I'd be like, oh, thank you. Yay. My key card still works, you know, so I understand that mindset of feeling appreciative.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Okay, one more day.

• 1:01:24Mindy Pelz?

  Every day.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I understand it. I do understand that that's not, it's not quite as easy as everybody feels that same level of boldness, depending on the situation.

• 1:01:34Mindy Pelz?

  Recently, there was something that came out a couple of months ago that really excited me. And it was a conversation with Sophia Bush and Michelle Obama on Sophia's podcast. And what excited me was not what came from that, because really what the zeitgeist did when, when Michelle started to beat to her own drum, is they started to assume she was leaving Barack. And basically, she didn't show up at Jimmy Carter's memorial. She didn't show up at a couple inaugural things. And so, everybody assumed she was leaving Barack. And she went on the podcast and said, "I'm finally doing life for me." And we were seeing, it was so great.

• 1:02:18Mindy Pelz?

  I was like, I was like clapping from my living room at 10 o'clock at night when I saw it come out in the New York Times.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Mindy Pelz?

  When you were out doing book tours, all the, the experts you were talking about, how much of menopause do you think is a transformational moment where we finally start to do life the way we want to do it? We start listening to ourself and not polling everybody around us. I think she's just a small little piece of, of a microcosm of women that are finally saying enough. What are your thoughts on that?

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  I love that you use the word polling everyone around you. My brother used to say like, "Tamsen likes to take a poll before she makes a decision." And I did forever. I'd be like, "What do you think?"

• 1:03:03Mindy Pelz?

  Lot of women.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Hey, hey, hey. And yeah, but I didn't even realize it at the time. I just knew that like, I wanted everyone to be happy and, and be happy with my decision. And I actually didn't even have the confidence in myself to do that. And now I'm like, "No, that's not what we're doing."

• 1:03:18Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  And I always thought like, "Man, I can't wait to be like her." You know, I'd see an older woman, I'd be like, "She's so brave." And hopefully, one day, I'll be brave. I didn't understand where it came from. And I, all I too was like, "Oh, yes, if Michelle Obama is doing that, then I'm gonna do it my way too." And so, I think that that, those kinds of conversations and hearing that admission, and I'm, I loved it myself for the same reasons, gives us permission slips to do those kinds of things. And I think that this is a time in our lives where We just get them, you know, I mean, I think that we've got to give them to ourselves. I don't know how quickly it happens because I do still think that what happens

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  early on during this period of time is is all consuming, right? You're not feeling right, you're not sleeping, you feel like you're gaining weight, you're anxious, you have rage, you're dealing with a relationship at the same time, and then all the other things that we know happen in this especially sandwich generation. And so, you know, I get excited when women kind of get to the other side and start feeling a little little bit better and even better than before. And I really do believe that, like, I do believe that you feel even better than before.

• 1:04:27Mindy Pelz?

  Agreed.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  Because you've got that grounding of who you are, and then you have permission to do that. I don't know that she would have done that at forty years old. I don't know that she would have done that at forty three years old by her own admission, you know? But I do think now it's like, if I'm not, if I'm not doing it now, when the heck am I doing it? And so I do, I do feel like we're done waiting for someday.

• 1:04:47Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and and if when I where my brain goes crazy is when I think about like 1.2 billion women by 2030 are going to be in menopause. Who we we could take over the world, women.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:05:02Mindy Pelz?

  Like, if we understood how powerful we are, and this was such a big part of Age Like a Girl was like, how like, if you understood that your brain reorganized itself so that you were supposed to, you're living forty two point five percent of your life to stand in a leadership position, that we we could change the world. That's what I'm trying to get out there.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  I am convinced of it, and I know you will and are because you're right, I mean, 1.2 billion, can you, I mean, imagine this? And I also think what's interesting about this whole period of time is that it's not just the US. Like, we're talking about women all over the world that are part of this now. This conversation has really, like, when I go on social media for any given day, there are women all over the world having a very similar conversation with me. And I think that part's super fascinating, like, I think it's fascinating, it doesn't have these boundaries right now, you know, that we're we're seeing it all over the place. And we're all speaking the same language about this at this part of our lives.

• 1:06:06Mindy Pelz?

  Right. Which, which leads me on this, on this final thought, which is, can we talk about Melanie Sanders? Holy shit. That is like, to me, that woman, I mean, from a journalist angle, like,

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Mindy Pelz?

  I, I wa- she stood up one day because she had had enough.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  I know, I know.

• 1:06:28Mindy Pelz?

  She said it. And everybody, everybody was like, I don't care either. I don't care.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Mindy Pelz?

  What do you, hey, has anybody checked in to see how she's doing? Because she-

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  Fascinating. I, I emailed back and forth with her just a little bit. And, you know, it's because she had done a, she had done a video with my book and I was like, oh my gosh, that was so kind. But I, I, look, I think that she voiced what all of us have been feeling and maybe just didn't know how, or just weren't brave enough to do it. But whatever it was, it was, it really struck a nerve. And you can't, I mean, it's just been phenomenal. And, and how it, how it took root, like, you know, Kristin Chenoweth just did one. And it was, it was just, I, I really smile. And, and so anytime one of her video pops up, I'm like, like, heart, heart, heart, heart, like, love you.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Because I, I do think that it's pretty special and it's a, it's a, it's really, really the theme where we are and what we're talking about right now. It's, it's everything we're talking about with the female brain. It's everything we're talking about, about this transition. And getting rid of some of the dusty stuff and kind of renovating our, our heads and our, in our lives.

• 1:07:41Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. I hope, I keep saying, I hope somebody's helping her navigate this career moment, which she found herself in. Because she, I don't think she signed up for this. So-

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  No, no, but it's an exciting time. That's for sure.

• 1:07:52Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Where do you think the conversation's going? Like, I've, I have watched it go from nothing to chaos to a little more into empowerment and transformation. We all need to be talking, you know, like, where do you think the conversation's going? And will it eventually settle in where this is just a normal process that everybody understands? What's your, what's your vision on that?

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  That's where we're winning, when that happens. When it, when it goes into that normal process where it's not this like thing, right? That's where we know that we've kind of hit our sweet spot, I think. And then, and that's where we know also, I believe that real change is being made, right? Because it becomes something that-

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  We're not having to point out it's part of our lives. Everybody is real clear of what it is. So we're not, you know, the learning curve is, you know, we don't talk about a learning curve of pregnancy anymore, a learning curve of periods or a learning curve of of of so many different things. I do think it's going into the longevity conversation. There's no question and not to like overuse that term, but like, but, but maybe from a woman's point of view too, not just from, you know, not just from guys. And, and then I also think it's, I also think it's like coming into our own. I always said, like, these aren't our golden years or our bolden years. And I do think that there is something about that, that's that happens for women because we really haven't had that opportunity yet. You know, we, we've, we've

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  made very swift changes. I went back and I was watched, I, I watched the Gloria Steinem documentary and it wasn't that long ago. You know, we were like, hey, we're here and we're not just, you know, and so, so to see where we are, where we've gone since then. I think that we still, we still have a lot of work to do. And so I think that that's going to be that next part of the conversation is to owning that. Understanding what empowerment really mean, it's not asking for permission.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  You know, not, not being like, oh, well, you know, there's two women in charge now. Oh, great. You know, but there's 51% of us. So so I, I, I'm hoping that we settle first into that and then we move into that next thing of to seeing what women are cap, even more capable of. Getting the help that they need, getting a sleep that they deserve to get, feeling like their bodies are functioning at full capacity because we've got another how many decades, three to four decades.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  We got some time.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  We've got a lot of time that we, I wasn't prepared for.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and some things to do. We have some things to do. My, one, one of, one of my favorite comments that my literary agent made to me that I just adore her. She's like, she's like, I gotta stick around so I can see what's gonna happen to the, to the world right now because you know, there's a lot of belief that the misogyny is actually in, in an extinction bubble, that it's rearing its ugly, ugly head before it goes away. And when we look at the 1.2 billion women going into menopause, it's like, hey,

• 1:10:44Mindy Pelz?

  This is getting exciting now. We don't know where we're going, but I have a feeling it's gonna be really good.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do too. I do too. And I'm excited for it. And I'm proud to be standing, you know, with women like you, leading this charge and the conversation with the knowledge and education that we need. And we need it. Like, we can't, I hope I never see that part slow down, because I think that we're, we're learning a lot. And luckily, like, now we're mandated to be in research studies. And, and, you know, we've got some incredible women at the forefront doing that research. And so that's exciting to me.

• 1:11:18Mindy Pelz?

  Amazing. Amazing. Well, Tamsen, I love this. Thank you.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 1:11:23Mindy Pelz?

  I'm such a-

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  I'm coming in the shed next.

• 1:11:26Mindy Pelz?

  Yes. Yes. You need to come to the she shed and sit in on my couch with me next to my womb, Crystal.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  I would love that.

• 1:11:33Mindy Pelz?

  In your pajamas and-

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  I would love that.

• 1:11:36Mindy Pelz?

  Have a great conversation. So, but I really appreciate what you put in your, your hat in the ring, the menopausal ring, and bringing the journalist perspective and all the interviews you've done. And when your book came out, by the way, I was like, that is a brilliant title. And I love titles. And I love-

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 1:11:56Mindy Pelz?

  -phrases because they stick. But yeah, we need to know how to menopause. How do we do this? And it is so dense with information. So, you know, where, where do people find it? Or let me ask it this way. Where's your preferred place that people can get it?

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  Gosh, anywhere, howtomenopause.com. And of course, wherever you buy books. Like, you know, if you do, if you're Amazon, it's on sale there right now. But any of your local bookstores, that's why we did the tour all around to hit the local bookstores, because that's always important to me.

• 1:12:26Mindy Pelz?

  Great.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 1:12:27Mindy Pelz?

  So, thank you, Tamsen. Appreciate your time. I know, agreed, agreed.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:12:32Mindy Pelz?

  Let's do it again. Let's do it in New York.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  I'm your girl.

• 1:12:35Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you.

• 1:12:39Mindy Pelz?

  Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.