56. Zora Benhamou: Struggling with Menopause? Here's the Solution You Need

What if menopause didn't have to be a challenge, but an opportunity? In this episode of Extend, I'm joined by Zora Benhamou, host of the Hack My Age podcast, to challenge the common narrative around menopause. Zora shares a refreshing perspective that empowers women to see this stage of life as a chance for reinvention, growth, and better health. We discuss the science behind hormone therapy, the importance of muscle-building and stress management, and how women can navigate menopause without feeling defeated. Together, we dive deep into practical, science-backed insights on how women can not only reduce symptoms but optimize their health for the long run. Zora Benhamou is a gerontologist and health and longevity expert, dedicated to helping women navigate aging confidently. As the host of Hack My Age, she educates listeners on biohacking, menopause, and anti-aging strategies. We Also Discuss: Podcast Interview on Women's Health Global Attitudes Towards Menopause Optimizing Menopausal Health Through Biohacking Mastering Parasympathetic Balance and Hormone Replacement Post-Surgery Supplement Hacks for Recovery Surgery Gratitude and Recovery Hacks Thank you for our Sponsors: Deliverance: Give your liver the care it deserves! Deliverance is a powerful plant-based formula designed to support and restore liver health. Get 10% off your first order with code DRSHAH at loveyourliver.com https://loveyourliver.com Timeline: Upgrade your energy from within! MitoPure by Timeline helps power up your cells, supporting muscle strength, mental clarity, and overall vitality. Stay active, sharp, and strong at any age! Claim 10% off your first order now at timeline.com/DrShah Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: https://www.drshah.com/ Clinic: https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd/ Learn more about Zora Benhamou: Website: Hack My Age https://hackmyage.com/​ Instagram: @hackmyage https://www.instagram.com/hackmyage/​ Facebook: Hack My Age https://www.facebook.com/HackMyAge/​ YouTube: Hack My Age https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa6ATAZ6NxXfaqRQpu_yYHg TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@hackmyage Membership Group: https://hackmyage.com/biohacking-menopause-membership/ Menopause Quiz: https://quiz.tryinteract.com/#/661e9e6786298f2031ac25ba ​

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

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 0:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hi, I'm Dr. Shah. Welcome to another episode of Extend. Transitions are a natural part of life, but some, like menopause, can feel more overwhelming than others. What if you can actually shift your perspective? Approach it as a transformative opportunity rather than a challenge? In this episode of Extend, I'm joined by Zora Benhamou. She's the host of Hack My Age, a podcast that specializes in aging reversal. Zora is an absolute advocate for women's health and longevity. She's dedicated her career to empowering women to embrace their body's natural changes, including menopause. She shares her wealth of experience, offering new lens on how menopause doesn't have to be a setback. It can actually be a powerful phase of reinvention and growth.

• 1:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  We're going to dive into how menopause has been long misunderstood and neglected by the medical community, and why it's crucial that we shift the narrative. Zora brings her personal journey and science-backed tools that can support women in navigating this transition with strength and vitality, from hormone therapy to lifestyle adjustments and mindset shifts. Whether you're experiencing menopause or just looking for ways to optimize your health at any stage of life, this conversation is going to be packed with insights and actionable steps that will help you take control of your well-being.

• 2:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to the Extend Podcast and I have a really interesting guest, Zora here today from the Hack My Age Podcast and Instagram page and all the other things that you do, Zora. Welcome. I'm so happy to have you.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Uh, thanks for having me. I'm, I'm super excited. Someone, especially a male, is interested in menopause.

• 2:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I've dedicated our podcast be half female guests and half female topics because, you know, a lot of the podcasts I listen to in the medical field and the health and longevity field is kind of like a bros club is very male dominated. So half my patients are female. So I figure I need to speak to them as well.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And half your guests have been binge listening to your podcast. I love the Mindy Pelz one. Awesome. Awesome. Two thumbs up. And, uh, yeah. So your guests, your guests are actually, yeah, maybe 50% female.

• 2:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, that's what we're aiming for. 50% of the female side. So, you know, I feel in this certainly a topic we've had on the podcast many times is that menopause is an area of medicine that has been ignored for a very, very long time. I mean, you know, it's a natural process that women go through, but it doesn't have to be so debilitating and so, so difficult for women because they really have never had a chance to really talk about it or a platform for it. And also I do feel like, you know, with the current stress levels, current levels of toxic exposure and also current levels of just, you know, being exposed to less activity or diets. I feel like the actual symptoms of menopause have actually

• 3:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  worsened over time. And a lot of my colleagues say the same things. And so I know there's a lot there where menopause and overall health are so tied together. Right? And you mentioned Mindy Pelz earlier. She's a big believer that menopause should actually be a part of a woman's life that actually leads to bigger and better things. Right? It shouldn't be something that's viewed upon negatively. So I'm just wondering your perspective on that. How's menopause changed over the last 50 to 80 years?

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Well, we are just at the tip of the iceberg of researching it and learning more about it. Unfortunately, like you said, it hasn't, hasn't been studied. People, people don't take women, period, often, not all the time, but you know, most of the time, they don't want to deal with women because of periods and pregnancy and of course, menopause. So we really need more research. So I think it is coming. We are starting to have a voice and starting to be comfortable with the conversation as well. So it is getting there. But as I mentioned earlier to you off camera, that I am a nomad and I interview women all around the world and I see, I just literally stop them on the street, ask them five questions about menopause, turn them into a one minute reel for my social media. And it is amazing,

• 4:52Speaker 01

  all the different experiences that we have. And unfortunately, menopause is still a stigma and menopause needs a rebranding. And I think absolutely, it should be a rebirth, a transformation, a time in our life. This should be the best years of our lives and it can be, and it's a moment. It's a chance to reinvent ourselves, a chance to better our health and to really, really have an incredible second or third, third half of your life, whatever you want to call it. Because when you think about women going through menopause and perimenopause, that we spend a third, some women, yeah, a third, a third of their lives in, in menopause, right? And, and that's a very, very important thing to consider.

• 5:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, absolutely. You know, you have a lot of videos on your social media, at HackMyAge, that's the, that's the handle. And a lot of videos where you're interviewing women from all over the world in menopause or going through perimenopause. What have you learned through these videos and traveling the world and how menopause is thought of maybe differently in different societies?

• 5:54Speaker 01

  So, yes, I've learned that all women will go through menopause. We're not getting away with anything. Maybe we can delay it.

• 6:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You ever found one that was able to escape it?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Haven't met one yet. I haven't met one yet. However, we can escape the symptoms and the signs. And some of us are just, without any effort, just that's the way we're genetically programmed. And I have met a lot of Of women who say, well, I didn't go through menopause and she's sixty five. And I said, well, wait a second. Do you have your periods anymore? Nope. Well, then you are in menopause. Well, I didn't feel anything. And so what they're saying is they haven't had the signs and symptoms of probably about four or five that they know of, which is the stopping the periods, a hot flash, maybe some sleep disturbances and mood swings. That's all they really know. They don't realize there are a hundred and three symptoms of menopause that are happening.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Plus, there are things that are happening under the hood. So I always worry about the asymptomatic woman because she's not likely to go to the doctor, not likely to check her heart, not likely to check her bones, thinking everything's fine until she gets a fracture and then winds up in the hospital. And that's, that's what we call the silent killer. So, so you haven't gotten away with anything just because you haven't felt anything. So I try to stress that, but women around the world, they will all have something that they're going through. And, and they, they may feel it more, they may feel it less, but they're, what I do notice, because I've interviewed women from Thailand, I've interviewed them from Vietnam,

• 7:30Speaker 01

  from Portugal, from Spain, from France, from the US, Canada, not every country in the world, but I've done over two hundred interviews. And I find that the attitude towards menopause can be different than people in, say, North America. And they, and I see differences in socioeconomic levels as well. So when I ask women around the world, at least some of the, the eastern countries, how, yeah, how is their menopause? What's it like? They're like, well, I don't know, some hot flashes, it was a hard time and like, it's okay, it's not that bad. It's kind of what they expect or, but even though they don't speak to their mothers, they're very, it's kind of universal.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  No one has spoken to their mothers really about menopause or their mothers have not warned them or told them anything. That's pretty universal. I'm, I'm sad to say.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  But but the attitude is interesting and I find that when I ask a woman who's selling fruit on the street on Thailand, she kind of looks at me like, you know, why are you even asking me this? Like, I really don't care. I have got bigger fish to fry. And she's just trying to make a living. She needs to feed her family somehow. And and dealing with this is just not at the top of her list. Now, I whether that's right or wrong is debatable. But I find that I more women around is as we get closer to the West or in Europe, they're more excited to talk about it and to share and to say, hey, you know, this is what's been happening. And I've also noticed that women who seem seem to have such higher socioeconomic

• 9:07Speaker 01

  levels, can't really say I don't really know these people, they seem to be more educated about menopause, know that there are solutions. But, you know, I have met plenty of women who have higher socioeconomic levels, they don't know either. But if I were to say one, it's a little bit skewed that way. But yeah, there are different attitudes. The the experience of research has shown, at least, you know, this is not my own research, this is just research that's been published, that women who have a supportive community, who have a supportive spouse, or who have people they can speak to, they report fewer symptoms. They seem to have a better transition. And when you look at other research that shows

• 9:50Speaker 01

  in, oh, I was going to say Dr. Becca Levy, I'm not sure if you know her, she's a she's a gerontologist, very famous gerontologist who looked at aging around the world. And so she her what she's done, I mean, she's asked people around the world, you know, how do you feel about aging? And she found out those who had positive attitudes towards aging, lived seven and a half years longer, right? They were they weren't fearing it, they just embraced it. And I always wonder, well, if we were to repeat this study with women in menopause, you had a better attitude, would we have a better transition or not? And and not to say, I mean, it is that we need some women are suffering with every single symptom around the sun, and it's very intense. It's really hard to have a good attitude.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  But there are solutions. And I always say menopause is inevitable, but suffering is optional. You can suffer if you want to be a martyr. That's fine. But you have to know that we have solutions. There's so much that we can do to make this transition easier. And then, of course, protect our future selves.

• 10:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow, it's so powerful, like your mindset around what's going on in your biology can completely affect the symptoms that you're feeling during this stage of life, right? And so that's a really powerful statement, I think, is getting into that mindset of this is a positive thing versus something that it's negative that that you need to be sad that you're going through it because you're going to go through it no matter what. It just depends on how you approach it.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. You can take it as a challenge. You can say it's a time, it's a chance to better myself. How can I improve my health? What can I do? Because taking the steps that you speak of all the time, improving your health, that's more likely to help your menopausal symptoms. And why not? Why not make that choice now?

• 11:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. So what are some of the top things that women can do? Maybe top three things that you could think of that women should consider that maybe most people don't normally consider that could help them through this stage and decrease their symptoms and improve their outcome from it?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Well, I'm a big fan of hormone therapy, bio-identicals. I did went to the Institute of Bioidentical Medicine, so I understand the benefits and I do see in my community how much it can help. Hormones are good. Hormones are beneficial. We were thriving when we were full of them. And once we lose them, we have issues, we have problems, we have accelerated aging. So we can't fear them. We have to understand them. We have to read about them. We have to learn about them. Speak to your doctor about them. See if this is a good choice for you or not. But I really think when women go to a doctor, the first question is, what are the risks of taking hormone therapy?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Now, I really think you need to turn this around and ask your doctor, what are the risks if I don't take hormone therapy? Not that you should. Or shouldn't, but let's ask the questions. What's good for me? Is it good for me? Is it not good for me? You know, of course, your doctor has to look at all, all of your history. But it is definitely something to dig a little deeper because it is so life changing. I've seen it so many times. And when I speak to women who are in their sixties, seventies, eighties, still using hormone therapy, they're doing fabulous. They are, they are carrying their hormones to the grave. And so you, you see how, how well they're doing. And I think it's, it's, um, yeah, definitely hormone therapy is biohack number one.

• 13:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Definitely. And biohack number two is, is kind of the stuff that, that we know is, is getting your, your metabolism. Right? Right? Getting healthy, get metabolically healthy, whatever. You know, that's, that's for you. You're the one who's actually very good at explaining this. But this is more your diet, your exercise, your lifestyle. Quit smoking, right? Women are afraid of cancer from hormones. But in fact, the real picture is look at, are you smoking? Are you overweight? This is obesity. This is, this is really the drivers of cancer more, much more than, than a hormone. So you have a much greater risk with that. We're still drinking alcohol. We're having wine every night. Like, we're not questioning that.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Uh, so why, why not, why are we questioning the hormone therapy? So please, like, we have to get, our liver's been so, so worked so hard for the, these 50 years that we are alive, that we cannot keep adding more and more toxins to the body. And, you know, I'm, I'm in Europe, everyone's drinking wine, everybody's like having the time of their life. But I think it's time to just take another look. If you're drinking over, you know, over drinking, or if you, you know what, who you are, who you are, I'm speaking to. It's time to reconsider because your liver needs to detox the hormones. It needs detox from all the pollutions that we have around the world. We have so many phytoestrogens as well. We can't keep burdening the liver as well. So reconsider the alcohol.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  So getting metabolically flexible, getting metabolically healthy is, is hack number two. Does that make sense?

• 14:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love that. Yeah. I mean, this is, I feel like you're like saying exactly what I would have said to this question.

• 15:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  At my practice at Nex Health, I'm often amazed by how many of my patients have liver health issues. It turns out that 38% of Americans have fatty liver disease, and most people have no idea. You wouldn't really know until you do something like a liver scan using ultrasound shear wave technology, which we offer to all of our patients at Nex Health to get a good idea of how much damage has been done from metabolic disease and alcohol consumption. This is where a new product called Deliverance comes in. Invented by Siggi Clavien, it uses natural plant extracts that you drink as a liquid shot, which have been shown in studies to prevent and reverse fatty liver disease. I personally have a history of metabolic disease, which I work really hard to keep at bay. I use Deliverance myself

• 15:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  three times a day to prophylactically make sure that my liver stays healthy. It's super easy to use and actually tastes good, too. You can save 10% on your first order when you use the code DRSHAH, that's D R S H A H, at the website loveyourliver.com.

• 16:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 16:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  from the inside out, my friends at Timeline are offering you a 10% discount on your first order. Go to timeline.com/DrShah to get started. That's timeline.com/DRSHAH. Your future self will thank you.

• 17:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You can hear what hack number three is because I'm wondering, that was also my third hack.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Hack number three has to do with stress and this is, as a gerontologist as well, when we, we look at aging and longevity, one of the biggest problems we have is that, is our reaction to stress, not the stress itself, because stress isn't going away, right? But how our perception is and how we're reacting to it is what counts because this low-grade chronic inflammation is what's driving disease as well. So, and it's also a trigger for hot flashes. It's, it's not going to help us through this menopause transition. So managing the stress, but because I'm in the biohacking world, like we love to, you know, like gadgets and all these things, I mean, we can first talk about the free stuff, right? Because people are like, oh, what's, what do you do for stress?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Okay, meditation, yoga, yeah, it's not my jam. Breath work is so powerful. Learning how to breathe. And I know that you'd be like, well, I don't know, I'm breathing. No, we are over breathers. I, I've done the, the training through the Oxygen Advantage, I don't know if you know, Patrick McKeown, but it was one of the best programs I ever did. And I just wanted to, you know, learn for myself. I'm teaching the women in our community how to breathe because it's so practical, it's functional breathing. There's many different types of breath work. I mean, what you do in yoga, it's great and everything else is great. There's no one that's, you know, better than the other. They all have different purposes. What I learned is functional breathing is how we should be breathing the other 23 hours of the day outside of our yoga class.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  And how we breathe during the day and how we breathe during exercise is how we're going to breathe also at night. And it's really important how we're breathing at night. It affects the whole system of the body and it can help us with our menopause transition as well. How we can calm the nervous system in a, it just seconds, seconds. And so I highly encourage people to, you can go on YouTube, you can research, you can find so much free stuff on learning how to breathe. Just do it, just do it. And it's, it's, the key is to become a nose breather. Our mouth is made for talking and eating and our nose is made for breathing. It's this amazing filtration system and it's a lot of, lot of cool stuff that happens that I won't get into because we don't have time, but, but learn how to breathe. That's the free stuff in terms of managing stress.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  You're, you're nodding your head, I'm assuming you're like a fan of breathing.

• 19:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it. Yes, absolutely. I love the book Breath by James Nestor as well. If anyone is curious about the powerful role that breathing and how we breathe plays in our biology. That's a good book to give you a primer on it. And also the course that you had mentioned as well. But those are, those are awesome hacks. I would add number four, and this is probably your number four as well, is build muscle during this time, right? I mean, I think it's so critical that women emphasize muscle strength and muscle volume over cardio, for example, or being sedentary for sure during this time, because there's never a more important time in life to do this than at that moment of menopause.

• 20:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Because if you don't do it, there's an exponential decrease in muscle mass, which leads to the decrease in bone mass. I think we're so focused on osteoporosis and just focus on the bones itself, but the bones are hugely dependent on the muscle stress that's put on them. And so the more you build muscle mass, the healthier your bones will be.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  I'm so glad you mentioned that. That's part of our metabolically healthy component because muscle also helps us regulate our blood sugar levels. And as we go through menopause, we lose our estrogen, we're losing our progesterone, losing our testosterone. We are not able to handle the same foods that we used to be. But if we put on some muscle, we're much more able to regulate blood sugar and it's more fun to eat. I'm sorry, I'm like, I'm not a huge fan of fasting. I know you had Mindy Potts. I love her because she has, there's a way to do it for the girls, which is super important. But in my community, I find women are just eating not enough and exercising too much and fasting too much.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  And it's, it's, they're not feeding their muscles. If you want muscle to grow, you need to feed it. So putting on muscle is the exercise, as we do lifting and heavy, heavy lifting and also, but be careful how you lift. And so as a gerontologist, I'm really conscious of we can be killing ourselves at the gym. So I want either people to get a trainer or you get a pair of Katsu pads, which I'm a huge fan of. And this is a partial blood flow restriction. Of your limbs to help us activate growth hormones so we can lift with less, but still get the same gains. I mean, I do you know my tuckings?

• 22:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. Yeah, I love the Katsu bands. Actually, they're they're a really great way to build muscle strength without hurting yourself is what you're talking about trying to avoid injury. Like you said, a lot of people injure themselves trying to lift really heavy weights that they're just not balanced enough to lift, or their joints can handle, but their muscles probably could, but there's an imbalance there. And so the Katsu bands are a great way to strengthen up before trying to use actual weight sometimes.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Oh, good. I'm glad you're familiar with them because that is a fabulous hack. So many, so people, few people know about. So that's the part of the metabolic function and the and the stress stuff. I mean, a lot of people were like, I can't meet, I don't like breath work. I don't like meditation. There's so many devices out there too, that you you can you can buy that helps you train you into a more meditative state, helps get your mind calm. I'm a big fan of Newcom. I don't know if you know what Newcom is. It's neuroacoustic software. I call it meditation made easy because it's just like boom and had some crazy results.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  As I was getting a hip surgery, a hip replacement, and I use Newcom in order to regulate the autonomic nervous system. Because as brave as I am, I was not looking to for a charred surgery and my body was waking me up. And and I use it to actually calm the nervous system and it worked fabulously.

• 23:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna have the founder of Newcom on the podcast as well.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Jim Poole.

• 23:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, Jim Poole. Yeah, he's a genius. And I love, I met him a few years ago and I'm a big believer in the technology. And it's exciting to hear that it helped you recover from your hip surgery as well.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it did. Well, it did. It helped me because what?

• 23:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Did it help you prepare for the hip surgery?

• 23:56Speaker 01

  It was more. It was more prepared, but I just kept going and I'm still doing it because it's like, wow. It's a, it's a, it's a game. It was a game changer for me. It was, I was waking up in the middle of the night worried. You know, was this gonna hurt me? Is, am I gonna have trauma the rest of my life if I wake up in the middle of the surgery? What's gonna happen? Painful. And actually, I started and I actually, I don't get anxiety, but I felt a pain in my chest. I was like, uh huh, this is what all the women in my community are talking about because I think this is anxiety and of course you have it. And I started to do Newcom. I, I called the company. I was like, what do I do? And they said, do Newcom like three times a day. So I, that's what I did. I had the best night, the night of my surgery. I woke up like, is this like not the best thing to happen?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Was be ready for a surgery. And I was so chill. I was like, bring it on. I saw that Frankenstein table was the doors opened up in the operating room and I was like, I'm ready for it. And oddly enough, I woke up in the middle of the surgery.

• 24:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, my gosh, you did?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Did. And I was chill, but it was, yeah. Yeah, I was totally relaxed. I was like, oh, interesting. I hear a saw, I hear a hammer. Um, I think you're actually cutting my bone now. Uh, but you, you know, you're so in and out. You're, you know, so, so many drugs in there going on. Um, I don't think, I don't know. I don't know if Newcom, maybe Newcom played a role, but I think it'd be pretty strong. I, I actually asked if I could wear them during the surgery and they were like, no, you can't bring your phone in here. So, um, but it, but after I, I was absolutely, yeah. I woke up and I was like, did I wake up? They said, yeah, you did. We just put you right out. So, um, yeah, definitely kept going with Newcom and, um, it's, it's, there's, yeah, it's, I don't know. It's, everyone should at least try it. It gets really cool.

• 25:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. Yeah, this regulation of, uh, the autonomic nervous system versus your parasympathetic nervous system and your sympathetic nervous system. It's such a key skill to master. There's a lot of different ways to shift the balance towards parasympathetic, which right now we're so over sympathetic tone from just stressors in life and schedules and everything. That, you know, we rarely get into a parasympathetic state. And if you look at like our caveman ancestors, it was the opposite. They were mostly in parasympathetic, resting, relaxing, and they only got into sympathetic when they were like being attacked by a predator, right? So there's very few times they were in sympathetic states. Most of the time, they were parasympathetic. And we flipped that narrative in modern society, unfortunately.

• 26:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So mastering skills like breathwork, there's even hacks like you mentioned, NUCOM, there's Vagel Stimulator Devices, I don't know if you've heard of Vagel. There's a lot of different ways of mastering this transition between sympathetic and parasympathetic and finding multiple moments during your day to go into that parasympathetic mode that people need to have a toolbox full of them, I feel.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  We need to. We really have no choice in that sense. You could have the best diet in the world, exercise, but if the stress is there, I'm sorry, it's gonna bite you when you least expect it and it needs to be taken care of. And it's the one that everyone is the most resistant to in my community, unless it's a supplement, then it can pop. But I think it just takes much more than that. And I find journaling works a lot with my community as well. It's simple, free, easy. It's like vomiting all your thoughts onto a piece of paper, and it can help sleep, it can help manage the stress, it gets your thoughts out, helps you clear your mind. I mean, I love the free stuff, and I love the, I love the hacks, the gadgets as well. Do whatever it takes. Getting outdoors, getting a bit of sunshine in your eyeballs, walking in nature, tree hugging, doing some forest

• 27:29Speaker 01

  bathing, whatever. Getting outdoors is a really, really fabulous way to also calm the nervous system. As long as you don't live in Ho Chi Minh or somewhere else where they, New York City, a big city, I mean, it's gotta go find a park and a little bit of nature to feel more relaxed.

• 27:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. No, I'm a huge believer in that. So those are all great tips set for people that are not just going through menopause, but just in life in general. But they're especially important during menopause because all the positive things that you do counteract the negative effects of menopause completely with much more intensity, I would say. And the only negative effect is the lower levels of hormones. That lead to physiological consequences, which you can actually fix that with hack. Number one that you had mentioned, the hormone replacement therapy. And so, you know, there's been years and years of negative publicity around hormone replacement therapy. We know that all that research was misread and misguided, and we know that it's mostly benefits for almost everybody.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yes, but we still need to get the word out.

• 28:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow, I learned a lot from that conversation with Zora. Here are my five top takeaways from that episode. Number one, the medical community has ignored menopause for way too long. Menopause has been an overlooked topic in medicine for years. The conversation is finally shifting, but it's crucial that women have access to the knowledge and tools they need to navigate this transition with confidence. Number two, hormone therapy should always be a conversation, not a stigma. Hormone therapy is a powerful tool for managing menopause, and it's essential to ask not just about the risks of taking it, but the risks of not taking it. Number three, metabolic health is key during menopause. Maintaining your metabolic health through diet, exercise, and lifestyle choices helps

• 29:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  to manage symptoms and protect long-term health during menopause and beyond. Number four, stress management is crucial. Chronic stress exacerbates menopausal symptoms. Learning to manage stress through methods like breathwork, meditation, or just outdoor activities can help make a significant difference. And finally, number five, building muscle should be a priority, especially during menopause. Strength training is especially important during this time because it helps with blood sugar regulation, improves metabolism, and supports bone health. I'm really glad I had this conversation with Zora about menopause. I think a lot of my listeners will benefit from it. If you know someone who's going through perimenopause or menopause right now, please send them this episode. They will thank you for it. Thanks for joining the Extend Podcast.

• 30:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best, and it's always important to seek their guidance.