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23. Navigate Perimenopause like a Boss with Dr. Mary Knudsen
24 Plays1 year ago
“I just wanted to get in my car and drive away from my life.”
That’s how perimenopause has felt for Dr. Mary Knudsen, co-founder of Grassroots Naturopathic Medicine Health Clinic. Which is to say, you’re not alone.
With 19 years of expertise, Dr. Mary educates us about the intricate links between shifting hormones, fatigue, distraction, and mental health. Plus, she has some sage advice if you find yourself… ahem, hating everyone.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to:
- Identify and reframe the symptoms of perimenopause
- Understand the effects of estrogen, progesterone, and cortisol
- Use the power of the broccoli family (yep, really)
- Find hormone support to boost work/life well-being
- Prioritize rest so you can avoid (or at least minimize) burnout
P.S. Why isn’t it called (wo)menopause? Asking for a friend.
For more inspiration, subscribe to Unbound Turnarounds on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts!
LINKS:
- Connect with Nicole
- Connect with Mallory
- Connect with Mary: https://www.grassrootsnaturopathic.com
Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult with a qualified health care provider before starting any health plan.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Unbound Turnarounds, a podcast all about the challenges women business owners think about constantly, but rarely voice. We're Nicole and Mallory, entrepreneurs, friends and co-founders of Business Unbound, a community helping women alleviate the headaches, heartaches and backaches. So work actually works for life. This is your safe space for the ups, downs and the turnarounds.
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome back to Unbound Turnarounds. As a quick reminder, in this season, we are digging into a variety of well-being aspects and how that impacts our feelings about entrepreneurship. So today, we have a wonderful guest here to talk about paramenapause and how it affects women business owners. So Mallory, you have been chomping at the bit for this topic all season. I don't know that you've ever been more excited. Tell me about the love for this topic.
00:00:59
Speaker
Which is so funny because people hear the word perimenopause and it can have a lot of emotions that come up with that. But I have been so excited and we did have to reschedule a couple of times. So I'm just so excited that it's actually happening. And today I'm really honored to welcome our guests. So I'll just get us going into this topic. So today we have Dr. Mary Knudsen. She has been a naturopathic doctor for 19 years and is the co-founder of Grassroots Naturopathic Medicine Health Clinic here in Calgary, where I live now.
00:01:28
Speaker
So she is focused on hormones, fatigue, digestion, and mental health. She's fascinated by the complex interplay between nutrition, the microbiome, environmental toxins, hormones, and genetics, and how they can affect our energy, mood, sleep, digestion, and metabolic health.
Perimenopause and Its Impact on Entrepreneurs
00:01:45
Speaker
Dr. Mary is also a facilitator for the WILD Collective, which is a group health program for women intersecting community and health empowerment.
00:01:54
Speaker
And as if that didn't keep her busy enough, she is a mom of three, well, four, because she does have a really sweet doodle hanging out in the house if you count the pup. I have actually been lucky to attend her wild collective sessions. We're wrapping up this month and I'm sad about it because it's been an amazing 10 months together with her as my naturopathic doctor as well. So I can personally attest to how impactful her work is on the lives of
00:02:20
Speaker
patients and me as a women entrepreneur. Mary, again, thank you. I'm so glad to have you on the show. Thank you for being here. Oh, thank you for that wonderful intro. I appreciate it. And I'm very happy to be here. Wellness for women is kind of my jam, but wellness for entrepreneurs, I'm also an entrepreneur. So I get it and I get the mindset of the entrepreneur. So I'm really appreciative to be talking about both of these topics. Amazing.
00:02:47
Speaker
There was a perfect little match that we have here. So we've been talking about many different wellness components this season from nutrition to fitness, from mindset to mental health. But one thing we haven't heard on other business podcasts is an honest discussion actually about perimenopause and how that affects us as business owners. So we're obviously very excited to bring that to our listeners.
00:03:12
Speaker
mostly me, but Nicole agreed. So she let me have this one. So we're going to preface with that and then we're just going to dive right in. Sounds great.
00:03:22
Speaker
So as a woman in her forties with friends of similar age, I have noticed a really sharp uptick in the amount of conversation about perimenopause. I'm not sure if this is just because I'm now in this group, but I think there's been a real uptick in it. And so let's just start by setting the stage of what is perimenopause and how is it different from menopause?
00:03:45
Speaker
Yeah, perimenopause just means around menopause. It is the time leading up to menopause. I'm always sort of shocked to present this information, but it can last 10 to 12 years, which seems like a really long time. It can start as early as age 38, and it's a gradual progression through our 40s. And I find it such an interesting topic for the entrepreneur because a lot of women around their 40s is when they're maybe deciding to go out on their own, do that business that they've always wanted to do.
00:04:14
Speaker
so that you can really overlap at the same time. And so the stress of being an entrepreneur and then the stress of hormone shifting can be heart. It can be a mixed, muddly picture, right? So it's a really interesting topic for women in their 40s.
00:04:29
Speaker
And then just to confirm, because I feel like I want to say I'm ashamed, but I don't feel like I should say I'm ashamed that it took me way too long to know that menopause was actually just one day.
Hormonal Changes and Their Effects
00:04:41
Speaker
That it was like the day that was 12 months after your last period. Am I right on this?
00:04:48
Speaker
Yeah, the medical definition of menopause is 12 months without a period. But I look at hormone balance. You know, I've had women who make it to 11 and a half months and then get a period. And their hormone picture is very much corresponding with menopause, which is all hormones have dropped. So just because they didn't quite make it to the prescribed 12 months, it may still be menopause. So I'm more interested in what the hormones look like, which I'll talk about.
00:05:15
Speaker
Okay. Okay. So you have segued beautifully. Of course, when you hear perimenopause and menopause, the big word is hormones. So as a doctor, how have you seen internal changes affect women's wellness and their everyday experience at work? How have these hormonal shifts really affected us? Or can they affect us?
00:05:36
Speaker
Well, I think my take-home message from my experience of perimenopause, and you know, I've been a naturopathic doctor for almost 19 years, so I've studied hormones, I've talked to women about their hormones, and I think when I experienced perimenopause myself, I had a moment of, wow, hormones are powerful.
00:05:57
Speaker
Like, it was a huge surprise. And I just think if you haven't been through it, you may not fully get it until it happens to you. I remember I was sitting with a woman. It was the first time I had met her, and I seem to remember that she was 42. And I was in my mid-30s. I'll call them my smug mid-30s. And I was sitting there, and the first thing she came into the office, she put her hand on the desk, and she said, I hate everyone.
00:06:26
Speaker
And then we laugh. Well, she laughed first, so then I laughed with her because what do you say when someone says that to you? And then the next thing she looked at me and she said, but it's not me. And so she was just irritable with everyone. It's like she didn't like it. She didn't like how she felt. She didn't like how she was acting. She didn't like how she was speaking. It's always the ones closest to us. So we're our husbands, our partners, our kids.
00:06:48
Speaker
who are getting kind of the brunt of these mood changes. And I remember sitting there in my little smug 30s thinking, that sounds awful. You know, I can explain why she's feeling this way, but as a human woman sitting there listening to her, I went, wow, this...
00:07:05
Speaker
This sounds awful. And then, you know, flash forward a decade and into my mid forties, I would say my main first symptom of perininopause was irritability. And you hate everyone as well. Yeah, I might not. Yeah. And you know, it's figuring out how to gauge, you know, is this a new symptom? Is this a worsening symptom?
00:07:24
Speaker
Are there other factors here that's going on? But I think for me, it was just the severity of the symptoms and the sudden change in them and how I was feeling about my work. So just to go back to your question, Mallory, I can see this affecting women's relationships at work. I could see it affecting their self-esteem at work and their confidence and their abilities. Perimenopause and menopause can cause a lot of brain fog. So even just being able to
00:07:49
Speaker
recall words and be sharp and be on all those types of things. We'll talk about sleep because when you're not sleeping, everything is harder. So when you're trying to be the successful entrepreneur out in the world and you're running on very little sleep, that can be extremely challenging as well. So yeah, we have a lot to talk about for these women.
00:08:10
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, if it helps, if that one patient is listening right now, I've had at least two people in their 40s this past week be like, I hate everyone. This is very much on message for the 40s as far as I can tell.
Understanding and Normalizing Symptoms
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:26
Speaker
Yeah, but I do think like the more that we can normalize the experience that women are having so that they don't feel like suddenly they're worse at work or they are worse people like that patient said like this isn't you
00:08:41
Speaker
This is a change in your body affecting how you feel, right? And I think it just, it impacts our identity in a big way. So how have you been able to talk to women about showing themselves some grace around this topic as they navigate this time of life? Is this really just one more thing we get to beat ourselves up about?
00:09:03
Speaker
It's a really great question and understanding what's happening in our bodies is so important. I've had one woman say, you know, once she understood her symptoms, it's not an excuse, but an explanation. And so if you really understand what's happening and normalizing the experience of it, and there's reasons I bring up these stories and I have some other good ones too, or just in terms of
00:09:26
Speaker
how women really feel about themselves during this time. And if you know that you're not alone in this experience, and this is something that a lot of women experience, it can really improve the self-compassion. And it's really the why, the big capital why I don't feel like myself. I just love the second part of what she had said, which was, but it's not me. So on some level, she knew that it wasn't her. And there was an explanation for it that she was seeking.
00:09:52
Speaker
Okay, so I think we are ready to dive into those hormones that we talked about. So if you would be so kind, could you give us a rundown and kind of walk us through those main hormones involved in a women's cycle? So estrogen, progesterone, and then if you want to hit on how, well, we can talk about testosterone later. So let's talk about the big two, estrogen and progesterone.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah, I always view estrogen and progesterone like a teeter totter. And it's really interesting too because estrogen can be very dominant, it can be very building. If we're looking at it from a yin and yang, it would be more the yang hormone.
00:10:31
Speaker
Progesterone is more calming. It's going to be the more yin hormone. And so when we're in our 20s and 30s, we'll often see estrogen dominant. So progesterone is usually normal in 20s and 30s. And estrogen sometimes can be dominant. And that leads to symptoms like just think PMS. So things like irritability, heavy periods, cramping, those kinds of things.
00:10:56
Speaker
And then we get into our 40s and what can happen is we start to see a drop in progesterone. And progesterone again is that calming in hormone. And so when we see a decline in that, we'll start to see impaired sleep. And then the bigger the gap between the two, so now the estrogen is still dominant in our 40s and the progesterone has dropped. So the bigger the gap between the two, the more symptoms. So now it starts to feel like that PMS is maybe all the time.
00:11:24
Speaker
Some women have told me that they feel like they're PMS all the time. And there's other words. I had read my hormone test and I was showing it to one of our other doctors, a male doctor in our office. And she's like, oh, you might be like a little bit irritable a few days of the month.
00:11:39
Speaker
looking at my harm on her part. And I looked at him and I said, I used a very colorful word and I'll share some of these words that women describe with respect for anything around mental health. But what the doctor said, he goes, I find it really interesting that women use words like insane and
00:11:57
Speaker
crazy and like not to disrespect these words in any way because these are not words we use to describe mental health but these are words that women use to describe themselves and this male doctor in our office was like this is interesting that women use these words and then he kind of just trotted off and I was no this is because this is how we feel
00:12:16
Speaker
We feel out of control with our emotions and our families get the brunt of it. And so I bring up these words because I think lots of women think it about themselves in just knowing like this is a sign of hormone imbalance and this is like this is fixable and we can get you back to yourself.
00:12:33
Speaker
So it's really important to bring up these words.
Stress, Hormones, and Daily Life
00:12:36
Speaker
But estrogen dominance and then progesterone deficiency, the bigger the gap, the more the symptoms. And that can include mood changes as well as a sleep disruption. Night sweats usually come from the progesterone drop.
00:12:49
Speaker
Lots of things, lots of challenges for women in their 40s. Yeah. These changes that happen, like, in what cadence? So is this you wake up one day and you're 40 and three days old and suddenly there's a huge drop off? Or is this something that through your entire 40s, that teeter-totter is just like slowly tipping the other way?
00:13:11
Speaker
It should be a gradual change. I think it depends on a few things. So it depends on how estrogen dominant you are going into your 20s, your 30s. And things that can reduce estrogen dominance would be supporting your liver, eating your brassica family, which is like your broccoli, eating your flax, which is your phytoestrogen. So taking care of your liver, so watching the amount of toxins, alcohol and things that you're consuming. So it really depends on how much estrogen dominance you have going in.
00:13:41
Speaker
And then the other kind of critical factor, and this was also a personal experience of mine, is stress. So when we're talking about estrogen and progesterone, I'm going to bring in a third hormone here called cortisol. And estrogen and progesterone are made of steroid hormones, so they're made from the raw material cholesterol.
00:14:01
Speaker
And when you have a lot of stress, you can actually deplete your raw materials. And the hormone that seems to be the brunt of this problem is the progesterone. So when you have high cortisol or high stress, it'll actually pull away from your progesterone. So that drop of progesterone could be a little more sudden. And that just actually did happen to me because about halfway, I'm going to say it was about a year into the pandemic.
00:14:28
Speaker
I was noticing that I was really irritable. And I was sort of writing it off to, I'm cranky because we're in a global pandemic. Sure. And then about a year in, I started to feel much more irritable to the point of I was sitting to people like, I could just get in a car and drive away from my life. Like, just leave. I just want to quit my job. I want to leave my family, even though I love my family. It just felt very extreme.
00:14:55
Speaker
And I had a moment where I just paused and went, wait a second, this doesn't feel like me. Took a little while, though, because I think the pandemic was making us all feel so cranky and irritable. And so now that I'm through it, and I can look back on it with a little bit more clarity, I sort of like to say that I feel like I kind of went face first into perimenopause. I think the acute stressor, that first six months of the pandemic and just running a health clinic, trying to reassure them, tell them that they were fine.
00:15:23
Speaker
I didn't know if I was fine and I think I just, I really went like crashing into perimenopause as a result of the acute stressor. I can't go back in time and do perimenopause over again and find out if it would have been more smooth. But I also was mixing up the stress of the pandemic with like, I'm cranky because we're in a pandemic. Like this is why. And then it started to get a bit more like, okay, but I like my job and I like my family.
00:15:49
Speaker
Why am I feeling these things? And then of course realized I probably needed to test my hormones, but I was a little bit distracted by everything going on in the world. This is a great question because as someone who is self-proclaimed little anxiety monster, when I read about cortisol and I do a little bit of homework on it and I'm like, I might be made entirely of this. Like this may be just like my bodily makeup might be this.
00:16:15
Speaker
So how should people that are stressed, especially like we have a lot of women entrepreneurs who have kids and they have like spouses and busy lives and everything just kind of stacks. So how do you recommend that people tell if they should be addressing stress versus hormone imbalance? How do you know?
00:16:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, I think a lot of women and men too in their 40s are quite cortisol dominant, meaning that their cortisol is running too high. So we can test it. I really assess it through a lot of subjective information. So I'll ask questions like, and I love this, and actually I got this from Mallory, which was the stressor versus the stress.
00:16:58
Speaker
And I love this and I use this all the time, but the stressor is the thing that's making us feel stressed out. The stress is us, right? It's our response to the stress. So I'm always asking the question, okay, is it the thing or is it me? And if the thing is something really stressful, then probably we're meant to have a stress response to it. We're never meant to be serenity now, no stress, like approach everything with, right?
00:17:25
Speaker
Serenity robots, she said. I don't know if that's a thing. We should make that. I'm making it a thing right here right now. Right. And so we're meant to react when there's a stressor, we're meant to have a response to it. But what I usually will ask patients is if the stressor is down here, like let's say, and I often use driving. Yes. Like how if someone cuts you off in traffic or if your response is extremely high, maybe it's you. Maybe it's your body and your stress response.
00:17:52
Speaker
And I've noticed it too with myself, when my adrenals are really nice and balanced and my cortisol is really nice and balanced, you know, if someone honks at me in traffic, if I'm balanced, I'll have moments of saying, you know, oh, that person's really frustrated with me and, oh, darn. And I had one person kind of cut me off, like, come up behind me and then change things quickly and then come in front of me and cut me off. And I had a moment of, oh, that person must be really in a rush. Like, I hope they're okay.
00:18:22
Speaker
Genuinely, you know, but when I'm not well balanced, I will react and respond and get upset and get adrenaline rush. If someone honks at me, I'll jump. So I can kind of tell, you know, if it's something that's really not a big deal and you're having a big reaction to it, that can be a sign that you're running on cortisol. It's really checking in with your response. Yeah. There's a phrase that I asked myself where I'm like, is this a proportional response?
00:18:46
Speaker
You know, where I just try to say like, is this a proportional response or is this a disproportional response where I'm just like, nope, I'm going to treat this like an 11, even though it's a three. That's my choice. So yes, I definitely feel seen by that. Yeah. I think, I think we all do at a different time. We all do is to acknowledge that and then see if you can do things to eliminate those stressors.
00:19:11
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:20:00
Speaker
Okay, so I'm going to go back a little bit. So we talked about the estrogen dominance, the progesterone deficiency, the cortisol dominance, which are all things that Dr. Mary and I are working on. And I've experienced the estrogen dominance two times. I think I kind of fell maybe into pareomendopause, even though we weren't really sure if it really was, but episode 14 was my wellness episode. And I go into my wellness journey.
00:20:24
Speaker
Nicole had her as episode 13. So if people listen to that, it was like I explained it like I turned off a switch, on a switch or off a switch. And then it was just like all these things were wrong. I was 39 and a half. So it wasn't even 40 yet. So these are all things that we're talking about and I'm learning about is through the wild collective and through Dr. Mary recently. One thing though, is that I actually think I experienced a massive hormone shift when I was done nursing and it ended up being estrogen dominance. Of course, I wasn't anywhere near perimenopause.
00:20:53
Speaker
So when you said at the very beginning how powerful hormones can be, I got that firsthand and it wasn't even related to perimenopause. This is something that can affect us really like our whole adult lives, like from the time we get start menstruating, right? So these things are so important. And I think my point in all this is that it actually shifts as we get older. So it doesn't start all of a sudden with perimenopause. There's all these things have been happening all the way up till we get to this point. And we're in this age now and I think
00:21:22
Speaker
it's more prevalent for us. We did touch just briefly, I said we would talk about testosterone later. So let's just cover the rest of the hormones and let's talk about what testosterone normally is known for. I think we kind of all have an idea, but how you see that affecting women in the entrepreneur space.
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, testosterone can decline in women in their 40s, and we don't have as much testosterone as men do, but we do need some. Typically, we think of testosterone for libido, maintaining muscle, and testosterone is also very susceptible to cortisol as well. If the raw materials are getting stolen away from the progesterone, they're often being stolen away from the testosterone as well. I see that quite a lot.
00:22:05
Speaker
But in the workplace, testosterone has an interesting role in motivation as well as decision-making ability. And so not always, but sometimes if someone is a really decisive person and then suddenly they're feeling like they're indecisive or they just can't make decisions, this can be a sign of low testosterone. So it's kind of interesting, and I was thinking about this, and I mean, entrepreneurs are probably making decisions
00:22:30
Speaker
hourly. So it could be really something that could affect a woman in her 40s if her testosterone is declining, even just the motivation to get up and get going in the morning. Entrepreneurs need to be very self-starting. So it is another important hormone that we should be measuring too.
00:22:47
Speaker
And then I think we have to get into sleep. You mentioned we were going to go there. I think now is the time to go there. So again, my episode 14 sleep was a huge thing for me both times when I've experienced estrogen dominance, rather the lack thereof sleep actually. And it can really affect your entire life. So cortisol levels can affect the quality of your sleep
Sleep, Decision-Making, and Hormonal Balance
00:23:11
Speaker
too. So they're not just affecting your hormones. I guess inadvertently they're affecting sleep too as well, right?
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's really interesting what you're describing. You're kind of making connections about your sleep with the estrogen dominance and the cortisol dominance. I'm going to assume that some of these periods during your life were more stressful when you weren't sleeping well. Your progesterone very well could have been normal at age 39.
00:23:34
Speaker
But when you have estrogen dominance, it almost creates a functional deficiency of the progesterone. So you're getting symptoms of low progesterone, but what we actually need to do is remove the estrogen dominance. So the treatment may not have been giving you progesterone. The treatment must probably work on the estrogen dominance. But progesterone is very sedative, so I will see women
00:23:56
Speaker
when their progesterone is declining or when they have too much estrogen dominance, have trouble with sleep, or night sweats as well can be part of it. Cortisol, when cortisol is dominant, it is meant to decline around maybe 8 p.m. It's starting to taper off and melatonin is starting to pick up. And if you are getting surges of cortisol, you're going to wake up between 2 and 4 a.m. Kind of a magical time that I
00:24:19
Speaker
Sometimes we'll ask patients, are you waking between two and four? And they're shocked. They're like, are you watching me? That is the cortisol time for waking up. And so it's interrupting the secretion of melatonin, which is our sleep hormone, and causing that waking. And usually when we're waking up with cortisol in the night, you're waking up either with anxiety or a very active brain, or you can't shut your brain off, and then it's really hard to fall back asleep. So that's usually a keynote that your cortisol is surging at night when it's not supposed to.
00:24:49
Speaker
This makes a lot of sense. I'm wondering how maybe some of these sleep issues then carry through to the daytime. So for people trying to run a business, if they're trying to do it without getting kind of that restorative sleep, right? Or I always call it like the scrubbing bubbles time. Like I envision that old commercial with like scrubbing bubbles and I'm like, sleep is my time for my brain to just like clear itself out.
00:25:14
Speaker
so that I can come back like all bright and shiny tomorrow. So if that isn't happening and people are not experiencing that and then they're trying to wake up and run a business and make these constant decisions, how is that going to feel?
00:25:27
Speaker
It's absolutely what you just said. When you're not getting into deep sleep, your brain doesn't have that opportunity to shuffle and do everything it needs to do for memory, for concentration. Cortisol is really important actually for focus. So cortisol we actually really need in the morning. There are receptors in our frontal cortex that help us with executive function. So that's like laying out tasks, making decisions. And if we don't get that nice surge of cortisol in the morning because it's been up and down all night long,
00:25:56
Speaker
So cortisol is not all bad, but if it's up and down in the nighttime, it can be really problematic. We're not going to get that surge of cortisol in the morning. That actually stimulates our brains to function. It can be really, really difficult, not to mention you're going to be exhausted throughout the day. And then if your cortisol is surging up and down throughout the day,
00:26:14
Speaker
You're going to have moments of anxiety. You're going to have a lower tolerance for stress. So little things that might not bother you are going to trigger you more. And then having those tough conversations during the day with staff or colleagues is going to feel harder. You'll be more reactive. So certainly cortisol dominance is a challenge for the entrepreneur to stay level headed, to make good decisions, to speak clearly with intention. It can really interfere with that.
00:26:40
Speaker
So we have an understanding of a lot of things that can happen. And I do want to put the caveat out there that we've kind of only scratched the surface. There's more, there's more symptoms and things. So if people are noticing other shifts that it could be related, so they can get help on that. But I really want to make sure we have time to get into how people can help themselves. You know, we've talked about all the things
Testing and Managing Hormone Levels
00:27:01
Speaker
that can happen. So let's talk about ways we can support ourselves during this transitional time. Because I know you have quite a few we want to make sure we get through.
00:27:10
Speaker
Absolutely. So the first thing probably is looking at the hormones themselves and testing. It's really important. Women in their 40s really need to be tested to see really what's happening with their hormone pattern because the pattern that I've laid out for you today is the most common pattern, but there are variations and there are exceptions. So we just want to make sure that we're treating the right thing.
00:27:32
Speaker
something that could look like progesterone deficiency might not be. So we want to make sure we're giving the right treatments. So my preferred test is called the Dutch test, and it's a urine test that we can do to test all of the hormones, estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, cortisol, and all of their metabolites. It gives us the tool to do really targeted treatment to know exactly what we're doing. And then let's say we find the more common pattern. So let's say we find estrogen dominance,
00:28:00
Speaker
We're really looking at ways the body can remove estrogen. So supporting the liver is really important. I mentioned eating the broccoli family is really important. And sometimes I will even give supplements that have broccoli in them, which sounds so stereotypically naturopathic. Wow, okay. That's what I've been using it and it really helps because I just am not eating that much broccoli, let's be honest.
00:28:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's called dim, and I like to describe it as a crate of broccoli in a pillow, but I recognize the irony of that as the naturopath recommending broccoli. But it is very powerful. The sulfur components in broccoli help your body detoxify estrogen. So it's really, really important. We want to use things like phytoestrogens, which are plant-based estrogens that actually block the more harmful effects of the more potent estrogens. So things like flaxseed. I love throwing two tablespoons of ground flaxseed in my smoothie every morning.
00:28:53
Speaker
just to get my phytoestrogens in. So those are some things we can do to detoxify estrogen. So liver loving and phytoestrogens I love to do. The cortisol dominance, I use so many lifestyle interventions for cortisol dominance that we all know and we all know we should be doing. Gratitude practice, meditation, journaling.
00:29:15
Speaker
deep breathing, gentle yoga. We want to do anything that we can do to boost our yin. And so the entrepreneur is going to be probably the woman who's going to do everything herself. She's going to be very dominant in her masculine energies. And so it's going to be a lot of go, go, go and doing. And sometimes what we really need to boost our yin, and I would equate yin to progesterone.
00:29:40
Speaker
And Yen is also going to calm down cortisol. What we really need to do is rest, take a break, laugh, flay, do some really fun things. So this is where I think women entrepreneurs, I would guess, knowing a few entrepreneurs, including myself and my business partner, we tend to go, go, go constantly. And it's constant doing.
00:30:03
Speaker
and maybe not enough being and so ways to bring down cortisol are less doing more being however that looks for you in your life and taking a break the word rest has become new to me in the last i'd say two years since launching the wild collective i had this
00:30:21
Speaker
brainwave of what? Rest is important. I have to scout every once in a while. When am I going to do that? I don't have time to rest. So this has been a really new thing for me and I've realized that when I rest I actually have more energy and I have more to give and it's actually a very productive state to rest and then go back to
00:30:41
Speaker
the doing, I have more to offer and more to give. So I'm sure this is not rocket science to some people. But to me, rest was like, what? This will make me more productive. And that's getting in touch with my yin and my more feminine side, which is difficult for the entrepreneur. There are a lot of herbal medicines that we can use for cortisol. So I love formulas that have the laura, ashwagandha,
00:31:07
Speaker
different formulas that can help bring down cortisol dominance, which can be really helpful as well. And then for treating progesterone, once we've got the two dominant hormones balanced, sometimes if we do need to treat progesterone, I love using vitamin B6, primrose oil, chaseberry is a wonderful herb that we can use. So there's lots of different ways to support progesterone. There are also bioidentical hormone replacements that we can do.
00:31:33
Speaker
So progesterone comes in a bioidentical, which can be really helpful for women with progesterone deficiency. In Alberta, it can be prescribed by a medical doctor or a prescribing pharmacist. Currently natural product doctors are not prescribing bioidentical hormones, but we can certainly refer you to the right people. So there are lots of options for women and for treatment, certainly herbals and vitamins and things like that that we can do, but I do welcome my
00:32:01
Speaker
perimenopausal women to start thinking about how they can invite more of that yin energy into their lives. I need this advice as well. I'm fully admitted. Yes, I'm still waiting to hear like what vegetable you can give me in a pill just for the cortisol. I'm like, is it broccoli again? Should I do it? It's like they're an asparagus pill? Like what do I need to do?
00:32:21
Speaker
I think Mary, at the end of our last appointment, I was like, okay, I want to talk about detox and hormones and da-da-da. And Mary goes, well, should we maybe add a number five for stress? And I was like, nah, nah, nah, no. We're just going to give over to that. That's too hard. No, no thanks. Next session, we can get to that next session. I only have the capacity for the broccoli right now. Yeah.
00:32:44
Speaker
That's right. It makes me think this is not something, at least in my life, that has come up at a traditional doctor's visit. Like has never been mentioned, has never asked. I feel like you're going to just be like, I've never suggested any sort of hormone testing. Like it's just not part of the conversation. So let's say that people listening to this are like, well, this seems weird. This has not been part of the equation. So for someone that's totally new to it,
00:33:12
Speaker
Where should they start getting advice or support in this particular way? Because it's possible that they would go to their normal doctor and be told maybe it's not a thing, it's not a specialty. So where should they go?
00:33:26
Speaker
A licensed naturopathic doctor is probably going to have the most training for this type. The perimenopause is sort of a gray zone. There's no black or white there. So it's really difficult with the traditional testing and an approach is really identified. There are functional medicine medical doctors as well that specialize in treating hormones. So they would be great
Seeking Professional Help and Building a Support Team
00:33:48
Speaker
as well.
00:33:48
Speaker
My training is from medical doctors and they're running the less traditional lab work like the ones that we are running through the private labs. And they are more nuanced than black or white menopause or not. And so this is where we really need to support women. And unfortunately, I see a lot of women end up on medications that maybe aren't right for them. You know, I do see a lot of women end up on SSRI or antidepressant medications, which
00:34:14
Speaker
I would say I often will see kind of a third, a third, a third, like a third of women or patients really need the medications. They go on and they feel great and they never look back. You know, I see another third are kind of like, I guess it's helping. You know, I don't know, but they're maybe missing the root cause, right, of why am I feeling irritable and anxious? So it's really kind of a mandate solution. And in some cases, it's not the right solution. And then the other third are often the patients that I see, which are
00:34:42
Speaker
I went on this medication. I hated it. I want to figure out what's going on. And so I'll get the patients a lot because they're like, my doctor offered me this. It didn't work. And here I am. So just trying to get to the root of it, to the why of your symptoms as opposed to treating the symptoms themselves.
00:34:58
Speaker
Well, and I imagine getting to that root cause of why really also transforms women's experience with paraben laws, to just be able to say, okay, well, actually, so this is what's happening in my body. And now I maybe don't have to take it so personally that I hate everyone. Like maybe there are things that I can do about that, right? And maybe it's not me needing to just assume that I have failed as a human
00:35:25
Speaker
And so I think if we can just change the experience of it and how it feels and how you logically approach it, that just transforms your whole experience with it.
00:35:37
Speaker
That's exactly it. Women are so hard on themselves. We're our own worst critics. And so if we understand the why, and it's becoming that curious observer of yourself and going, oh, wait a second. I'm feeling this way. Is this a proportional response, like you said, or not? Is something off? Is something out of balance? We teach women to start recognizing these symptoms in ourselves as little whispers.
00:36:03
Speaker
You know, sometimes the whispers shout. And so it's just like, there must be a reason that this is happening as opposed to what's wrong with me. Like, there's something obviously really wrong with me. That self-criticism that comes with that. So understanding it and recognizing it is just so important and knowing that it can be part of your hormone shift that can happen over such a long period of time as well. As we're just navigating, you know, probably our most stressful decade, like the 40s would be
00:36:32
Speaker
So to recap, because we have listeners in Canada and the US and maybe other places, so we're looking for certified naturopath doctors, MDs, or functional medicine doctors, because it really ideally is a long relationship because it can last a long time and you have the time to get into finding the solution, whereas the MDs might not find the label, right? And just say, okay, it's this.
00:36:56
Speaker
Just to recap, I also think people's insurances are different, but even an investment of even seeing a naturopath and investing in that, if you had to pay out of pocket, like I know in the US, I would have had to and it can be a financial investment, but I think even a couple times a year to check in could be really beneficial or just kind of set the stage. I know here, I feel so much more resourced and grounded by having Mary in my corner. So Dr. Mary is part of my wellness team.
00:37:22
Speaker
to make sure that I feel supported, to feel grounded and resourced are two of the ways of being that I want to be this year so I can show up for launching Business Unbound's new offerings and more used new offerings, my two companies, right? So I think having that support network in place is also worth the time investing, finding somebody that is a good partner for you and the financial piece.
00:37:47
Speaker
Yes, I would agree with that. I think too, the more you have that, like you said, like a personal wellness team that just impacts the ways that you're able to respond versus react. Right. And it's just like, you know what, I want to intentionally respond to the things that happen in my life. I don't just want to be reacting all the time. So giving yourself a bit of that space to be like, you know what, I'm going to build up this team of people who can support me in these different ways that I need.
00:38:17
Speaker
And then you'll be able to say, like, Mallory, you can say, do I trust Mary's opinion? Yes. So maybe when she says this and I feel this other way, I have someone and I'm like, you know what, this may be a disproportional response because of this. You get to that why. And that is just like such a comforting existence that way. Yeah.
00:38:36
Speaker
Well, for our fun closer, since you are an entrepreneur as well, and this is who the podcast is for, we wanted to ask you, what was one piece of advice that you wish you would have been given before you co-founded your practice?
Embracing Rest and Expertise
00:38:52
Speaker
Yeah, I love this question. I wrote one answer, and then I came up with a second one, so I'll share both as I was going through this material. The first one was, and I touched on this already, but entrepreneurs are notorious for wanting to do everything themselves. Like, I've been known to be an accountant and a lawyer, and I have not trained in any of those things.
00:39:12
Speaker
And so I think what I've learned over the years is my time is best spent where I'm truly passionate. The value that I provide is really in helping patients and in being a naturopathic doctor. So letting go of some of those things that are really
00:39:29
Speaker
energy leaks for me has been really, really helpful. And I think this is just the entrepreneur's journey, really, is like when we start, we just do everything and we also don't take breaks. And so I think the second thing that came through as I was thinking about Yin and Yang and for myself as an entrepreneur, the resting, the taking breaks, the taking holidays, it can wait. There can be time for rest and
00:39:56
Speaker
Otherwise, I do think burnout is a real risk for entrepreneurs. And it's just because if we don't do it, there's nobody else really doing it. And so it's finding ways around that, whether it's just
00:40:09
Speaker
shutting it down or whatever you need to do to take that rest is so important because you can't keep going. I've been doing this for 19 years and without any rest, I think it's a real risk for burnout. And I see that a lot in patients. So taking breaks, this whole rest concept is fantastic. I highly recommend it. Such a great highlight. That is so true.
00:40:31
Speaker
Well, Dr. Mary, you have been a light in my life here since moving here and I'm so grateful for you personally and I'm also really grateful for you sharing this knowledge and all your expertise from 20 years of doing this almost with everyone because hopefully whoever needs to hear this will hear this and they will feel supported and then get the help that they need. So thank you again for being here. We really appreciate you. Oh, thank you. Appreciate you having me.
00:40:57
Speaker
All right, you guys, that is a wrap for this week's episode. So we will see you same time, same place next week. Thanks for listening. Hop over to UnboundBoss.com to join our community and leave us a voice memo. We absolutely love hearing from you. If you'd like the podcast, please subscribe, leave us an Apple review and share your favorite episodes with other women entrepreneurs. Talk to you soon.