SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome back to Empower Your Menopause, the podcast that turns midlife myths inside out, shakes off outdated advice, and brings you empowering insights to thrive into your 40s and beyond. It's coaches James and Julie here, and today we're tackling a topic that touches us all. It's our old friend stress and stress reduction. Now, if you've listened to any of our other podcasts, or if you've been listening to us at all over the year and a bit that we've been working together, and the I don't know, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years each that we've been working in this space, you'll have heard us say this many times before. Stress is a woman's biggest enemy, and particularly during the menopause years. We'll go over that in a little bit. So if you've ever felt like stress was part of your life that you just had to accept, this episode is going to be for you because it's going to change your mind. We're going to show you how managing stress isn't just possible, but it's essential for maintaining your health, your happiness, and your hormonal harmony because that's what you're here for, after all, right? Especially throughout your whole menopause journey. So, Julie, let's just dive straight in attack this one then.

unknown 1:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

It's a really favorite topic.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Yeah, big question, small answer. Oh, small question, big answer, rather. What makes menopausal women particularly susceptible to stress?

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Well, it is a big answer, and I can only give you a little part of it. Um, but the truth is that because we are going through this major transition period, our hormones are all over the place, especially in paramenopause, and we get on this roller coaster. But then as we get into post-menopause, um we have a lot of different hormones that are shifting, and our endocrine system likes to try to work in harmony. So all of those um hormone-producing glands that we have in the in the endocrine system. And once estrogen and progesterone start to decline, they while they're at normal levels, they are kind of like natural stress buffers because we have receptors for those things throughout our entire body. So um the big the big hormone that comes into play here is cortisol, because cortisol um is somewhat modulated by estrogen production. And I know we see that later because the adrenals that produce cortisol also become producers of estrogen when our ovaries don't produce it anymore. So when we get stressed and cortisol levels rise, we've got all kinds of things going on there, and and we become a lot more reactive rather than kind of maintaining that resilience that we had when our estrogen and progesterone, or I should say estrogens and progesterone were functioning at at pretty good levels. And it also affects our sleep, it affects our ability to regulate mood. We all know what a huge part sleep plays in mood and hunger and satiety and all of the things that we deal with on a daily basis. And who can deal with things that get piled on you more and more when you're sleep deprived? Um, I mean, let's be honest. If you know we don't feel if we don't feel sleep feel like we've got restful sleep, we can get all kinds of mood swings, um, cry easily, or re maybe even transition into rage. I know that's a that's a thing I've been talking to people about lately. So we throw mood swings into the mix because of the hormone fluctuations, and we've got a really kind of volatile cocktail here. So little things can really feel like big things. So we've also got a lot more social and emotional pressures during this phase of life. We've got maybe aging parents to deal with, we've got families and partners and communities and friends, and we're trying to manage all of these things while these hormone fluctuations are going on, while these massive changes in our bodies are going on, and it all is easily it's easy for it all to start to feel like too much. What bothers me is that so many women, and I have experienced this myself, we internalize this pressure to do all the things and be the way we were when we were younger, and we blame ourselves for not being able to cope, for being weak, for having something wrong with us, when in fact we're actually being asked to perform more and more things under biologically and socially impossible conditions based on the changes our bodies are going through. So that's as as short-lived as I can make that explanation. Um, what about you, James? How do you see this um manifesting differently at this life stage?

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Well, I I agree with you, Julia. One of the biggest challenges is this what's going on in your body. So, what are the changes that are happening hormonally that are causing stresses anyway? And then what's happening in your life in general? So, you know, are you trying to be everything to everybody all at the same time? And then that creates kind of like a tsunami effect, one thing on top of the other, and you know, you get those typical things, increased anxiety, increased irritability, some emotional overwhelm. I was talking to a client the other day, and she was just telling me about how almost a switch had flipped for her as she hit 50, 51, and Easter Journal had stopped that up and down part of perimenopause, and she was really in full sort of like symptom mode, and so her anxiety, which she'd never had before, she'd never reported any anxiety at all or any stress before, just literally went through the roof from one day to the next. And then, and bear in mind that she worked in the health space as well, so you'd think that she might have some idea about how to handle this kind of thing, but she really felt as though she was absolutely overwhelmed, fallen to pieces, particularly when she was getting this natural anxiety on top of her life load, if you like, which is that whole everything else that's going on, and then marry that with a hot flush. If they were all coming up at the same time, she said that she literally thought she was going crazy. And unfortunately, the challenge often is that you know what's the first thing you do when you're feeling that kind of way, you go and see your doctor, right? And you know, I'm not calling out doctors here, they obviously do an amazing, amazing job. But quite often, particularly here in the UK, if you've got 10-12 minutes to diagnose somebody in an appointment, and then you've got to take a full case history, come up with what's going on, and you know, many doctors who we speak to tell us that they don't actually any training that they do in menopause is often extracurricular, it's not part of a medical degree that they do, and so they're doing it in their own time and trying to learn about it because obviously they want to heal people, but then the flip side of that is that quite often a woman can go in and see a doctor, and the first thing that's done is it's written off as anxiety or depression, and then the easiest way, because it's just the way that Western medicine works, is to reach for the prescription pad, right? And the prescription pad is usually for an anti-anxiety medication or an HRT medication. Now, once again, I'm not calling out medicals here, and we're not really against big pharma and all that kind of stuff. Both of those medications have roles in an appropriate place, but it's really challenging, I think, for women when they're suffering from all these stresses of life, of the menopause transition, to go in and it just be dismissed as something that can be written off with you know that idea of uh silver bullet, if you like, that can just slay this stress menopause life monster, which really doesn't address any of the symptoms at all, right? And then when the symptoms aren't being addressed, it starts to affect all different areas of life: work, home, family, friends, your mental health, your physical health. You know, we even speak to people and they feel these feelings of like hopelessness and shame. But I mean, that client that I was talking about before, she was saying very much that she literally didn't know what to do, and she'd started to feel worthless because she in her mind she was trying to rationalise it and say, I should be able to handle this. And of course, you know, the challenge then is when you can't handle it, we're all used to negative self-talk. How do you start talking to yourself about that? And then, you know, the challenge then becomes: do you end up just trying to push even harder? Because now you think that you're not coping, and you've got to have keep up this image of I'm not coping, and therefore or I am coping, and therefore you just try harder and harder and harder to to catch up. And whether that harder and harder and harder is I'm gonna take on more, I'm gonna do more, I'm gonna show myself to look better. And I'm for those of you who are listening and not um watching on YouTube, I am doing air quotes when I say look better, and so there's this whole cascade of feelings of trying to push harder, and of course, all that does, whether that be pushing harder in life, pushing harder in the gym, and trying to smash it with all those hit sessions that used to work in your 20s and 30s, or trying to starve yourself to death in the kitchen, all those three things just do one thing overall, and that is add more stress to the load. So it's really easy to see, and we see it quite a lot, where women have just got this layer upon layer upon layer upon layer. And I suppose one of the things that we do want to talk about today is how do we actually reduce those layers and get some of them down. And we've not even started to delve into things like cortisol and what that does when it comes to your weight, and the fact that body fat then becomes part of the endocrine system as well and produces estrogen, your adrenal glands are trying to produce estrogen, and therefore, you know, your body's trying to hang on to weight, which then causes more stresses, and that is probably a separate conversation, but it is peripherally involved within stress because one of the things that we're told more often than not by anybody that comes to see us is I cannot manage my weight anymore. And I would argue that these aren't women who are coming to see us and seeking out advice because they don't know that they should work out, they don't know that they should eat better, they kind of know everything what to do, but the one thing they're probably not dealing with is that sort of like nebulous concept, because it is somewhat a nebulous concept to feel stressed out, isn't it? It's hard to pinpoint it, particularly when you're living in it. How many people actually hold up their hands and say, I recognise that I'm stressed out and therefore I need to distress? And the answer is unfortunately not too many, really. So I suppose the question then, Julie, is how did you feel about all this when you were actually living it, both sort of like in that perimenopausal phase and days of the menopause itself, but now in post-menopause, how does it show up for you?

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Yeah, it's it's it's interesting because I'm I'm just nodding along with all of the things that you've been saying. And I had, oh my gosh, I had I didn't know anything about menopause when I went through it. It was, you know, my menopause day was over 10 years ago. So you can imagine how much less information was available back then. And even though I had studied nutrition and I had studied health and I was certified as a health coach, I still didn't have the tools because again, this was not talked about. So I didn't understand what was happening to my body. I had that anxiety when the hot flushes came, and a few women told me, oh, you know, it's just a change, but that was the extent of my advice and that I got. So I remember having those intense feelings of rage and massive mood swings. I could look at a picture of a puppy and start crying. And I've always been a very, you know, resilient kind of person. And I really, like your client, I really thought I was losing my mind. And as I got better care from a functional medicine doctor and understood what was going on with my body, it was easier to for me to make the changes I needed to make. And stress has always played a huge, huge role in all of this because it affects what we eat. When we're stressed, we don't want to have an apple or some broccoli on the side. We want the the chips and we want the chocolate cake, you know, because our hormones are driving that and messing with our hunger signals. Be and the more stress we get, the more that intensifies. And um, I know for me, it's taken me a really long time to figure this out for myself. And now here in postmenopause, I still have occasional symptoms. Um, and my body is still changing and I'm discovering new things all the time. But I've learned to sort of embrace that process because we're not gonna stop it, right? We can't we can in one sense kind of slow it down by taking care of ourselves a way we need to, but stress always rises to the top as the thing that drives all of the other things. So for me now, I know when I start to feel overwhelmed, like I don't have time to do my self-care routine in the morning and in the evening, or especially in the afternoon. I have too much to do, I can't do that today. I know that's a big red flag because it means I absolutely need to take the break. I absolutely need to do those things for myself. And when I do, even though I feel compelled not to, I find that it makes a such a huge difference in the way I can be present, not only for myself, but also for others and my mental focus and all of you know all of the other things that we that we feel on a daily daily basis, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Yeah. Um it's interesting, is it because I suppose the the key thing is the easy thing to say to people would be to say, well just stop doing the things that stress you out. But the truth is that is almost impossible, right? For for for most people in general, you know, but for for women who have you know, not trying to gender stereotype, but there is this very caring side to many women's personalities. Um, there is this side of wanting to show their best face, as I said before. There is this, you know, I know so many women, friends, clients, everything else, who despite the fact that they have an absolutely chocker block workload and life load, as soon as something comes up, their hands shooting up to volunteer, you know, whether it's running the kids to soccer practice on a Sunday or volunteering at the Christmas fair for the PTA or you know, helping out at the church or whatever it may be, it's almost like uh another stress is added. So I think we need to stop this idea that life is simply somehow miraculously gonna get less stressful because I've got news for you, it ain't right, whether you like it or not, unless you know you suddenly have a massive lottery win, and then you can just junk everything and disappear off to a Greek island somewhere and live the rest of your life. Nice pipe dream, but it's probably not gonna happen. And so I suppose the question then is how do we counterbalance this idea of being stressed all the time? And I think it's worth saying at this point that stress of itself is not a bad thing. Stress is a learning process for our bodies, right? You I don't know, you go into the gym, you lift some weight, your muscles get stressed, your body comes back and it repairs them, and therefore your muscles get bigger. That's a really simplistic way of showing how a stressor can help us. You know, the fact that our adrenaline levels and cortisol levels can spike when we're in danger means that we can run out of the way of a car that's hurtling towards us if we've not seen it coming down the road. All those kind of things, stress has a really important role to play. The the challenge tends to be in finding, and it's a word that I I know it's been hackneyed so much in the health industry over the years, but this concept of finding some kind of balance, and that doesn't mean sitting there with you know your fingers together in that sort of like uh yoga pose with your back up straight and your legs crossed looking out into a sunset in Ibiza, as nice as that may be. But what can you do to bring in some ways, small ways to de-stress in uh in life then? Give give us some daily practices, Julie, that people can can at least have a try at, right? Because the truth is is that we have got lots of strategies to suggest, but they don't work for everybody. So what can people try?

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Well, my the very first one is to give yourself permission to say no, because you're the only one who can decide truly where you spend your time. That's a lesson I'm working on constantly because I love to say yes and help people. Um but but some daily some daily practices outside of that, breath work, you that's become a real trendy thing, but something as simple as what we call a box breathing, where you breathe in. So, example, you breathe in for four a count of four, you hold your breath for a count of four, you exhale for a count of four, and then you hold that emptiness for a count of four, and you do that as many times as you can, maybe five or six times. It doesn't take very long. Oh, and by the way, that needs to be done through your nose to engage your parasympathetic nervous system, your rest and digest. Um, it has to be through your nose to trigger that. But that's something that's really simple. Nobody even has to know you're doing it. You know, you can do it sat at your desk on a conference call, you can do it in the bathroom. If that's the only time you get to yourself, you can do it anywhere, and nobody has to know you're doing it. But it can have a very quick effect on regulating your nervous system. Um, movement is my favorite. It doesn't matter if you get up and just stretch your arms, do a few squats, dance for two minutes at your desk. Anything you can do, mini workouts, um, anything you can do to get your body moving will help that energy flow because we get, you know, emotions, our energy in motion, right? So we want to get that energy flowing to help process those things out of our body. It's great for your muscles. I mean, animals, when when they're finished, they have a big serious, um, stressful like the gazelle gets chased by the lion. When they stop, you see them shake their whole body, or dogs or cats when they've had a stressful encounter, they shake their whole body. They do that because it resets their nervous system and allows them to carry on. That movement is what makes such a difference. And our bodies were designed for movement anyway. We weren't meant to be sitting in in gray cubicles at desks all day long. And I I I had a uh recently on on um Instagram, one of the doctors that I follow had showed a an MRI brain scan of the brain after sitting for 30 minutes and then after walking for just 10 minutes. And the difference in how much the brain was lit up after walking was remarkable. And that was the 10 minutes. It doesn't have to be some big major thing. If you can't get to the gym, you don't have to go and work out for an hour or two hours every day. You can move around five or ten minutes at a time. We call that exercise snacks, right? Um, getting out into nature, just being five or ten minutes outside, fresh air, sunshine. In in Japan, doctors actually prescribe nature time. They call it forest bathing because they've shown how much of an impact it has on the central nervous system and how how good it is for for regulating stress. And of course, if you get out in the sunshine, you're feeding your body with vitamin D, which is really essential for our hormone production, our immune system, and lots of other parts of our body. And my very favorite is cuddle time, and whether it's with a pet or a loved one or a child or a grandchild, you know, cuddling, it's an instant mood booster. I can sit down. With with my dog. Ian comes in after a really stressful day. If he spends five minutes playing with the dog, it completely changes the mood and the energy. And it's one of the reasons why service animals are used in hospitals, especially when you're talking about patients who are dealing with catastrophic illnesses. They even use them in prisons. They've shown that that's been something to really help calm the inmates. So so animals, if you don't have animals in your house but you love them, maybe you can volunteer at a shelter, offer to walk the neighbor's dog, or or you know, I I'm sure you can find different people who have pets. They'd be happy to to let you babysit. Those are those are some of my thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Yeah. So how do you how do you get those seamlessly into a busy day then? We've talked about women being busy at this time of life. How do they actually how can they integrate this kind of kind of thing?

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Well, the the biggest thing is to start small. And again, I we can put this on repeat um because I think we feel like we have to do these m make these major changes. And we really don't. Starting small is the absolute best thing you can do. I was working with a client, uh, she's a um high-level executive and had two young has two young children and a second marriage, and was, you know, going through all of these things and and really stressed, not having time to take care of herself. She just lost her father, who she was very close to. And her downtime was sitting uh watching something on on Netflix or the TV with some wine and popcorn at night, and just afterwards she just felt really bad. So we looked at different things that she could do instead of that or to to incorporate into that. So one of the things was a couple minutes of stretching during the commercial breaks, and then that morphed into her actually taking a few minutes when she got home from work at the end of the day to just kind of decompress. And over the course of time, these these little tiny moments built on each other, and within six months, she had changed, completely changed her routine. She's she wasn't drinking wine anymore just because she didn't feel like she she needed it, and I say that in air quotes, because it it she found other ways to to decompress. She got to the point where she was enjoying those moments of decompression, and she could tell her family, I'm going upstairs, I'll be back in 10 minutes. And they would give her that space because she asked for it. And a lot of times that's something we don't do. We wish people just understood that we need these things, but nobody can read our minds. We have to ask for what we need. So she got to where she had that conversation with her family and said, Look, I need this time so that I can be here and present with you. Um, so give me 10 minutes, and that became kind of a a sacred space for her over time. And that that even morphed into working out and you know, all kinds of other things along the way. But of course, we just started with those couple of tiny things. And it's it's like anything else. Once you get used to doing it and it becomes a habit and you realize how good it feels, you'll want to do more.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so let's talk a little a little bit about some of the pitfalls then that women can try and avoid. I suppose the biggest challenge is this concept of time, isn't it? Like you were just talking about there with your clients. Um I always say that if you if you're listening to this now, I'm I'm sure that many women are and thinking to themselves, I can't actually find five minutes to myself. Well, if you can't find five minutes to yourself for stress relief, you probably need to dedicate at least ten minutes to stress relief, right? Because it means that you are so super stressed you can't even find the time. So, first of all, let's not look at this as some major practice that needs to be just introduced from from day one. One of the things that I like to do is get people to write down a list of things that could be different durations because obviously, you know, getting up, putting on some boots, taking the dog out for a walk is a lot longer than just sitting and doing five minutes of breathing at your at your desk. So write down some different durations and try and fit those in. The second is avoid falling into that perfectionist trap, if you if you can. Um one of my favourite stories is about the teacher at our local kombucha shop, which is a woman sat in a zen pose and it says, Yes, I have tried effing yoga. You know, one of the things that I find that people try to do is they assume that because they decide let's just pick meditation or yoga as something they've tried to do. Because it's not worked for them within five minutes, it's worthless. So, you know, you said to people, have you thought about just being calm, still, or whatever? And they say, Well, I tried it, but for you know, after two minutes my mind was racing. Well, yes, it was because it's the first time you've tried it, and so you know, you can't expect to go from being a stressed-out, super mum, super at your job, super as a partner, super towards your parents, super towards all your friends and everything else, and go to be the Dalai Lama within one session of whatever it is that you try. So let's try and stop thinking that that is the end goal. So trying something until it works, and then giving it a couple more goes. And if it isn't for you, that's absolutely fine. You know, Julie, you just outlined a shed ton of strategies there that people can try, from breathing to yoga to mindfulness to walking out in in nature to cuddling pets, etc. It doesn't have to take a long time. So let's stop thinking that stress relief has to be complicated, expensive, or take ages. But what it does need to do is it needs to happen. Okay, and for it to happen, you've got to tell yourself that you deserve for it to happen. So you've got to get out of this mindset of thinking it's selfish to prioritize yourself. Self-care is not selfish, it's selfless because if you're not looking after yourself, again, it's something that we've said many, many times who's going to look after everybody else that you claim to want to look after when things go wrong and you can't cope anymore because stress has got too much. So give yourself time and belief and tell yourself that it's okay to take five minutes, ten minutes here and there to do this. And then I suppose the other thing as well is you know, using some of the numbing strategies for primary stress relief. It's incredible how many people tell me that they relax by scrolling on Instagram and watching Instagram reels or TikTok reels or you know, playing uh solitaire on their phone or whatever it may be. They might be escapism, but they aren't intentional stress relief. That doesn't mean don't do them ever, but particularly if you're the kind of person who's saying, Oh, I can't find five minutes to do a little bit of breathing. Well, don't then tell me that you've just spent half an hour on your Instagram reels because the two don't really matter. Spend 20 minutes watching reels and then 10 minutes breathing and everybody's happy, right? So I think it's just trying to get out the habit of this concept of a bit of temporary distraction, um, but rarely provide any kind of genuine relief. So, Julia, anything out of all this that we've talked about that we might think provides us with stress relief, but actually could be counterproductive at this time. We talked a little bit about exercise. Maybe you want to delve into that because you know, not all exercise is created equal, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Right. And especially at this time of life, doing that really high intensive cardio because there's still this mindset with so many women that I just need to do more time on the treadmill. I just need to run more. I just need to, and that can actually backfire because it stresses your body, it elevates your cortisol even further and leaves you feeling really depleted or unbelievably hungry, which doesn't help with those cravings that you're already driven, driving from your increased stress. So overdoing exercise, like some movement and exercise is fantastic, but we need to do it differently at this phase of life. Um in relying on those go-tos, sugar, alcohol, you know, the things that that are seem soothing to us and in our stress and our emotions. And I know this because I I have battled with stress eating for very much of my life, but it really can ex not only exacerbate your menopause symptoms, because menopause generally, our hormones don't like sugar, caffeine, and alcohol, and those tend to be the things we go to for stress. Um, but it can they can also disrupt your sleep and make your anxiety levels even worse. So that's not great. So what what I like to say is when you when you do engage in some kind of stress relief, you you should not ever feel more depleted afterwards. And it's hard sometimes, I think, for us to just shut off and do nothing. And I, you know, I I see myself sometimes I go from the computer at work to the phone to the to my Kindle, like I'm constant that constant feeding. Give your brain some downtime, it needs that, and that will help a lot when it comes to stress and and mental clarity. So, what about you, James? How how can people build better stress relief into their routines?

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Yeah, I I suppose we've covered it really, but uh so this is kind of recapping somewhat. So start small. Yeah. Okay, five five minutes. If you can't do five, do four. If you can't do four, do three. Nobody can tell me they can't find three five minutes or or or five minutes a day, right? I just I I refuse to believe that. I know we're all busy and we've got a lot on, and and it doesn't have to be a huge practice either. Five minutes of breathing. You would be surprised at just what benefits that can have, just shutting your mind off for five minutes and just listening to your own breath. Even if you don't do a routine, I mean you very eloquently explained the box breathing routine there, but just do five minutes of of deep breathing, nothing else. Spend five minutes taking a stretch, five minutes, you know, go and take your morning coffee out in the garden as the sun's rising, rather than having it at your desk and chugging it back as as you're in the car on the way to work or something. Um and then I suppose prioritize or try and prioritize consistency. And like I said, I don't think this is the kind of thing that you just go from zero to a hundred on. Because if you try and do that, all you're gonna do is add even more stress into your life at chasing this mythical thing. So if you can give yourself five minutes a day, perfect. Maybe set that as a minimum. If you can do five minutes a day, brilliant. Um, it's gonna really build those neural pathways when you succeed by doing it small and consistently rather than trying to smash it out of the park. And then lastly, I think you know talk to the people around you. You'd be surprised at how supportive they will be. And it's not a sign of weakness saying that you need five or ten minutes to yourself at all. In fact, it's just it's a sign of of real strength. I know in our house, you know, Laura three, four times a week, she'll draw herself a bath, she'll throw some magnesium salts into it. And myself and the kids, we know it's her time. So, you know, nobody's allowed to call her on a mobile phone. So she shouldn't really have a cell phone in the bath, I suppose. But yeah, nobody's allowed to knock on the door at that point or or in any way disturb mum, it just gives her that sort of like 20 minutes, half an hour to it to herself. So tell the people around you that that's what you're what you're looking at. And it's only then that you'll go into that thing of your mindset is not a sorry, stress relief is not a uh a luxury, that it's a a necessity, and you'll have that supportive environment around you to help you do it. So as we wrap up today's episode, then let's remember Imagine Stress is not just about finding peace in all the chaos, it's about creating a small part of your life where you can thrive rather than survive. So if you found today's episode helpful and you want to support our mission to empower more women, give us a like, give us a share, subscribe to the podcast, tell your mates about it. Every little uh good word you say about us helps us reach more women who might be struggling in silence.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Yeah. And if if you're ready to take action on your stress management or anything else to do with your menopause journey, why not book a free call with us? We offer this. Um, the the link to book that will be in our show notes. It's freecall.fabulousbeyond40.com and check out um other links in the in the show description. Next week we'll be back with another another episode that helps us break down all those barriers and helps you have a more empowered menopause journey. So until then, James and Julie here saying stay strong and stay fabulous. We'll see you next time.