MENOMORPHOSIS
A podcast for busy midlifers ready to reclaim their energy, joy, and purpose.
Are you, like me, riding the rollercoaster of midlife and menopause, and eager to get back to living your best life? Are you tired of low energy, a short temper and endless self doubt?
Well, It’s time to stress less and shine more. It’s time ditch the worry, reclaim your mojo and unleash your inner brilliance.
It's never too late to transform, and you’re certainly not too old. And in my opinion, midlife and menopause provide the perfect opportunity to do just that.
Join me each week for uplifting stories and expert insights on how to feel as good as you can and create a joyful, purpose-driven life you truly love.
So when you’re ready, Let the beautiful menomorphosis begin!
MENOMORPHOSIS
#121: The medicine of why, not what, with Functional Medicine Practitioner, Carrie Levine
What if your menopausal symptoms aren’t problems to be fixed, but messages from your body guiding you towards a healthier, more empowered version of yourself?
In this episode of MENOMORPHOSIS, we’re joined by Carrie Levine, a functional medicine practitioner and certified nurse midwife with over 20 years of experience in women’s healthcare.
Carrie has a unique approach to midlife health - she helps women look beyond the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause to understand the why behind them.
Her holistic, empowering strategies focus on addressing the root causes of health issues, not just masking the symptoms. From stress management to practical lifestyle changes, Carrie’s wisdom offers a refreshing perspective on how to embrace midlife with energy, vitality, and self-respect.
What You’ll Learn:
- How functional medicine uncovers the why behind your symptoms, not just the what.
- The interconnectedness of hormones and the profound role stress plays.
- How menopause impacts your entire body, beyond just a few symptoms.
- The power of choice in taking charge of your health for lasting transformation.
- Carrie’s personal journey of loss and how it shapes her approach to healing.
- Essential practices for thriving during midlife.
- Why menopause can be seen as an invitation to transformation, not an end point.
For more on Carrie:
Carrie's Book Whole Women Health
Download The Breath Check-Up - your FREE guide to understanding how well you're breathing right now.
Download my energising 5 Minute Morning Practice to get your day started in the best way possible.
To find out more about my membership The Inner Space go to: https://www.pollywarren.com/theinnerspace
Email me at: info@pollywarren.com
https://www.pollywarren.com/
https://www.instagram.com/pollywarrencoaching/
Are you, like me, riding the roller coaster of midlife and menopause and eager to get back to living your best life? Are you tired of low energy, a short temper and endless self-doubt? Well, it's time to stress less and shine more. It's time to ditch the worry, reclaim your mojo and tap back into the incredible woman you already are, because midlife isn't the end of anything. It's the beginning of becoming more you, more grounded, more radiant, more powerful than ever before. Join me each week for real, uplifting conversations to help you feel better, think clearer and live with more joy, purpose and ease. Because it's never too late and you're certainly not too old. So whenever you're ready, let the beautiful, beautiful menomorphosis begin. Carrie, it's really lovely to welcome you to Menomorphosis. Welcome. Lovely to meet you. Yeah, you as well.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's a pleasure. So, carrie, I have been, I have it here, I've been diving into your fantastic book and you can see there's all these stickies in here because I've been really enjoying it your book Whole Woman Health, which, I must admit, is kind of like a bit of a bible to good health for women and particularly, I think, for women in midlife. I would love just for you to start by telling everybody you know a little bit about who you are, what you do and what inspired you to write this book.
Speaker 2:Oh sure. So I'm trained as a certified nurse, midwife, and in the United States what that means is that I am licensed to take care of women through the entire lifespan, including the childbearing year plus the first year of a newborn. I haven't actually attended birth since 2006, but I did spend the first seven and a half years of my career at our local hospital doing that and I loved it. It was incredible, but it was also a really tough lifestyle, particularly because at the time I had my own two small children, so nursing babies and delivering babies was a lot, and I was sort of always looking for an out and a position opened up at a clinic called Women to Women, which was world renowned in women's health care and was one of the first big clinics that practiced functional medicine, which is a systems biology approach to chronic disease and illness. And when I got there and learned the language of functional medicine, I kind of felt like I had found words for that which I didn't have words for my whole life, and it felt very much like home. So I was there for seven and a half years and in that time I was commuting quite a distance and I was taking care of midlife women and I was asking myself, what are you going to do when you're older, carrie, and it's really hard to commute two hours a day and do a full day in the clinic what are you going to do? And I thought, oh, I have to open my own practice. So I did that in 2014 and it is a home-based practice primarily. So the clinic is in the barn, although I have done satellite clinics at other locations, up until this January actually and I am primarily a cash practice, except for one insurance company that was used to be main based and not for profit, because I really kind of wanted to step away from that system in this country, which is very different, I think, than what happens in your country, and I live in a place where there is a lot of economic diversity and I am aware that not everybody can afford to see me and functional medicine kind of has a public relations problem with being expensive and exclusive and elitist and not for the people, and I kind of understand where that comes from and I wanted to increase access and I would see women at the clinic and they would be like whoa, that is such a different way of thinking about things. Is there a book I can read about it and there really wasn't, and that is largely what inspired me to write.
Speaker 2:The book was to sort of be like here's an overarching view of functional medicine, which I was very discouraged to write. I was told general books don't sell well to a specific market. People want an answer to a problem, which is why books on specifically hormone health or particularly adrenal health or particularly digestive health generally do much better than these broader books. But I thought to myself that's the publishing industry doing the same thing to books that healthcare does to people, which is like trying to silo and pigeonhole problems into one whole when really everything is connected to everything.
Speaker 2:So I was sort of insistent on writing the book that I wrote, which is a walk through the functional medicine matrix, which is a tool that the Institute for Functional Medicine uses to teach practitioners this model of care and how to organize patient information and how to go about taking care of people and try to make it super accessible and user-friendly. Here's five nutrition recommendations, five supplement recommendations, five lifestyle recommendations so that people can have their first visit for $19.95 or whatever it is in the country where they live, or they can get it free from the library. So I really it was really an effort to put a book out there that didn't exist, an overarching view of the model, so that women could get their heads wrapped around it and increase access for people who either couldn't afford it or can't actually access a functional medicine practitioner in their community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's definitely accessible in the sense that it's really easy to read. It's really easy to understand, because I suppose there would have been a danger to have gone really complex, because some of these, some of the things you talk about, are very complex. But actually that's what I liked about it, is that actually it is easy to understand. So thank you for doing that. Let's talk a little bit about functional medicine, because you describe functional medicine as the medicine of why rather than the medicine of what, and I think that's a really helpful way to differentiate between conventional medicine and functional medicine. So I wonder if you could just explain a little bit more about that and functional medicines.
Speaker 2:I wonder if you could just explain a little bit more about that. Yeah, sure, I have to say that's not my meme someone much smarter than I came up with that, but I feel like it works so well because it does point to what differentiates functional medicine from conventional, which is asking the question why? What happened? Right, like something happened along the way that created somebody's specific clinical symptoms. Most people weren't born with irritable bowel or with depression, right, something or some things happened along the way, and functional medicine practitioners look to figure out what happened, and sometimes what happened was relational, sometimes it was environmental, sometimes it was physical. Right, it might be I haven't been the same since I had a baby, or haven't been the same since I had three UTIs last year, or I haven't been the same since I started this job, right? And so then we get to sort of drill down into the biochemistry of what changed and work to correct that, so that wellness is restored, as opposed to prescribing medication so that a symptom is dampened or dampened yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's more like symptoms aren't really of themselves the problem. The problem is the chain is like the change in the physiology which creates the symptoms 100, 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker 1:So, because obviously we talk a lot about menopause on this podcast and menopause, I mean, has a whole host of different symptoms, so many symptoms. I think I don't even know how many symptoms there are anymore. But for me that just goes to show that it's not just menopause, it can't just be menopause that's going on, when it shows up in in so many different ways in areas, in every single area of your body. I'd love to know, carrie, from your point of view or from a functional medicine point of view, how would you describe menopause and and how it shows up at in midlife?
Speaker 2:well I'm. I always start with defining terms, because terms get used sort of interchangeably and not always accurately. So menopause is an anniversary, a one, one day anniversary, right Of essentially a year from the last period, so that's just like a day. Everything that happens after that is technically called post-menopause, and it is super complex because it turns out we have hormone receptors in every part of our body. So when those hormones start to decline which is the natural order of things, right, like there's not something wrong because we feel those hormone shifts in our body, we may not like it, then it may be horrifically disruptive, but it's not a disease process, right, like it is the natural order of things. But we will feel that everywhere. We will feel that in the, in the, in our um eyelids, because those are mucus membranes. We'll feel that in our nose, cause that's a mucus membrane. We may feel that in our mouth because that's a mucus membrane, right.
Speaker 2:I saw a woman last week and she's been having gum pain, severe gum pain, and she has been to the dentist and she has been to the oral surgeon and she has been to the ENT and nobody has talked to her about the fact that maybe it's a low estrogen situation. So we started hormone therapy and we'll see. Does that resolve the gum pain? So it does affect everything. And the other thing too that I think is so important and I may have lost track of your question, polly, my apologies, so please feel free to re-ask it Once I get going. I'm like is that all right? Yeah, no, let's go.
Speaker 2:I guess just to finish that thought and then recap your question, if I missed it, is that estrogen for many, many women is an anti-inflammatory hormone. So not everybody, but for many, many women, when they have less estrogen on board, they have more inflammation. And and that could be anywhere, right, that could be the frozen shoulder that has rised in people's awareness. That could be knee pain, bilateral knee pain. That could be plantar fasci awareness. That could be knee pain, bilateral knee pain. That could be plantar fasciitis. That could be cystitis, right, I like to say, anything that ends in I-T-I-S has a inflammation root cause, the home of which, primarily, is the gut, because that's the home of inflammation. But estrogen is a potent mediator. It influences our experience of inflammation tremendously, so things can really explode for women in midlife.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think what you have just highlighted is how and I suppose it's the case for all disease illness is that we are, it's all connected. And what you talk about in your book is, you know this, how conventional medicine, you know you have, you have an issue and then you get to see the person who has a specialism in that part of the body and then they give you something to help with the symptoms, but you're never really getting to the root. And it's the same with menopause. You know, I think this is why it's so difficult for many women to really join or anybody to join up the dots sometimes is because there are so many different symptoms happening in all these different places in your body that there's never really been in conventional medicine someone who can look at them all with looking at the whole, looking at it with a whole umbrella kind of perspective. And that's why it's it's so important, I think, to have this broader understanding of looking at the whole, as functional medicine does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love the metaphor of a spider web, right, like our biochemistry is this incredibly complex web of interactions, much of which, in my opinion, I don't think is understood. Thank goodness, right, like still mystery in the world. Think is understood Thank goodness, right, like still mystery in the world. And so when I go about helping someone, I think about pulling on a strand in that web, right, knowing that when I pull on that one strand, the entire shape of the web is going to change and I don't even really know how. And that kind of makes people crazy, right? Because people want definitive, they want to know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2:And I say to women you know, in regard to hormone therapy, among other things, like I have no idea what is going to happen in your body when that molecule hits your bloodstream. It could do nothing. It could run rampant through your body and this systemic body pain or this cognitive issue or this genitourinary issue or this joint issue that you're having, could resolve. But I have no idea. Women don't really want it. Nobody actually really wants to hear their health care practitioner say I don't really want it. Nobody actually really wants to hear their healthcare practitioner say I don't know.
Speaker 2:But the truth is, if I truly honor each individual woman's biochemistry, I really don't know what happens when I pull on a strand in that web or which is the home of inflammation and the home of hormone detox, the home of hormone detoxification. I don't really know what's going to happen and I typically have to pull on a few different strands for a woman to achieve optimal wellness because, in the same way that you know, disease processes are not limited to one body system. There's not generally one root cause. You know we talk about a root cause like we can really get to the bottom of it and and we can get to some of them some of the time, and that generally yields good results, but sometimes that still remains a mystery.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what? I love that metaphor of the spider's web. So what are the different? Can you just tell us what are the different strands which you pull on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's right, there's like the hormone strand, there's the GI strand, the gastrointestinal strand. There's musculatel, skeletal issues, right, let's not forget, sometimes it's just simply anatomy, simply it's just, you know, a spine issue or a vertebrae issue or a postural issue or a muscular issue. It's really easy to forget that one. There's transport, which is like the way in which things move around the body. That's a strand which is like the way in which things move around the body. That's a strand. You know.
Speaker 2:I also will talk. We'll address adrenals Sometimes. We address immune system often, and that also ties into the gut and there's overlap in a lot of this. But in regard to midlife women in particular, you know there is an incredible intersection between hormone health and gut health. And then you can't really address hormone health without also addressing stress, right? So the whole HPA access, right, the brain, the thyroid, the adrenal and the gonadal access, which in women is ovaries, and the loop that all of those organs share and how one of those organs is affected. The whole system is affected.
Speaker 2:And so that's like I would say, that's the bulk of where I spend my time, yes, and really holding women to looking at stress in their life and where is it coming from and how can that be modulated? Because, as I tell women, the more stress, the more hormone dysregulation hands down and that's lifelong. That's not specific to midlife. The bummer about midlife is that we have less resiliency to deal with it. We can't quite function without the sleep that we could when we were 20 or 30 and still wake up and think clear and do what we have to do and get through the day, and that's part of aging, right, it's like the machine doesn't function as optimally as it did when we were 30. But it also doesn't mean we have to just accept not feeling if that's how it feels.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely yes. When I learned about this access, it just made so much sense. I wonder if you could just explain that a little bit deeper for anybody who doesn't understand that relationship.
Speaker 2:The relationship around stress and hormone balance. Yeah, yeah, of course. So I think it's really important to understand that hormones are produced from cholesterol, and so people get really worked up about cholesterol and it's bad and it's evil, and it's a risk factor for heart disease and et cetera, et cetera. But the flip side of that is to remember that it is the biochemical substrate for all of the hormones that we make in our body, and so if someone is put on a high cholesterol medication and their cholesterol drops out, their hormones may drop out too pregnenolone. And then pregnenolone either gets converted to adrenal DHEA, which is the biochemical precursor for testosterone, which is the biochemical precursor for estrogen, and so not a lot of people understand that pathway. Adrenal DHEA is the primary precursor for testosterone, which is the precursor for our largest circulating estrogen, estradiol. So again, if we're in this situation of chronic and sustained stress, where the adrenals are needing that DHEA they need, they need, they need, they need, they need and that DHEA gets depleted, then we don't actually have the biochemical substrate to make testosterone. And if we don't have enough testosterone, we don't have the biochemical substrate to make estradiol, our largest circulating estrogen.
Speaker 2:So the other pathway that pregnenolone goes to is progesterone, and progesterone is largely produced by the corpus luteum, which is the sac that remains after ovulation, and it makes progesterone and and I'm embarrassed to say this, but it's it's just as such a testament to I don't know everything, nobody knows everything. So it wasn't until like within the last few months that I learned progesterone is the hormone of pregnancy, it is the pro gestational hormone. Nobody in how many years have I been taking care of women over 20 years? Not in my graduate school, nobody, or if they they said it, I didn't hear it. So, in any event, progesterone is primarily produced from the corpus luteum, which is sort of what's left after we ovulate, and it's designed to make progesterone to support a new, growing human until the placenta is established and that can take over the progesterone production, which is why, if we don't ovulate, which is normal and natural during midlife, then we don't have much progesterone, and it is largely that low progesterone, that early in perimenopause, that premenopausal time, drives our symptoms.
Speaker 1:So in terms of feeling as well as we can at midlife. What I really like the way you speak about is that we all have choice. We have a choice and I think sometimes we forget about that. We can feel slightly disempowered because we want we're so used to handing over our power to the medical profession who, and we feel that they, they know best you know, it's that whole doctor knows best and we want to get a pill just to make us feel well. But actually when we realize we have more choice, it's so much more empowering. Yes, there are medications such as HRT that we can take, and for some women it's an absolute godsend and a lifesaver. But we also have so much choice in what we've put into our body, how we move our body and, as you say, how we manage our stress. So I wonder if you could just talk a little bit more about that, because I think we forget that we all have choice in how we look after ourselves.
Speaker 2:I mean I would say that that really is the bulk of the work that I do. I mean I would say that that really is the bulk of the work that I do, which is to just remind women that you know, if you're tired, you could choose to take a nap and not go out or fold the laundry or do whatever chore. It is Right and, and that it is up to us to keep ourselves moving. Nobody else can do that work for us, and you can't put it in a pill, and so it's really. There is so much on us, right, and it is important to see that. I feel like to frame that as choice as opposed to obligation. Right, this comes up a lot.
Speaker 2:Women will be like I can't even have one glass of red wine without feeling hungover, and I totally appreciate the sadness around that, and I also think that it's kind of amazing that our bodies are like, yeah, no, you don't actually get to treat yourself poorly and still feel well anymore. Our bodies are like, yeah, no, actually you are going to take good care of yourself. They're like, yeah, no, actually you are going to take good care of yourself. You're not going to drink too much, you're not going to eat a ton of carbohydrates, otherwise your pants aren't going to fit and you're not going to be able to get off the couch. You are actually going to finally take care of yourself the way you've taken care of other people your whole life, and there's some real beauty in that If you can get there, if you can get past feeling cranky about not being able to have your wine, and so I try and frame it that way and and I also, you know, talk to him in like the psycho-spiritual task of midlife is to transform Hence the name of your podcast right, it's like it is this gigantic transition, and we can either walk into that fire willingly or we can go down trying to avoid it. You know, and I, and, and, and.
Speaker 2:What I mean by that is like I have seen women's bodies take them down by not taking care of themselves at this time of life, and by that I mean they are like not able to function, not able to get out of bed, not able to go to work, not able to stop crying, like whatever it is, and it's not even like a health crisis, it's more of an emotional crisis. It's more of an emotional crisis. So it is like this invitation to take exquisite care of ourselves, and the body kind of won't tolerate anything but that, which I think is just another amazing testament to the amazing things that women's bodies do. Our bodies are like no, you're going to live well and for a long time because you do not tolerate eating sugar the way you used to and you are going to hurt if you don't move and you are not going to be able to function if you do not rest. So those things become the priority with women to find where they can take a step that feels manageable, because for many women their life is way off the rails and they know it. They know it, I mean, they've known it, they know it. They did what they felt they needed to do for their children or their careers or their families or whatever their priorities were, and they know that they've neglected themselves.
Speaker 2:But rather than berate themselves, I'm like okay, what feels manageable? Like, can you get your wine down from three glasses a night to one glass a night? Can you get it down from seven nights to two nights or three nights? Can you get yourself out the door into the fresh air for 10 minutes a day, five minutes a day? Can you sit on a meditation cushion for three minutes in the morning before you get the kids up? Right, like what tiny step feels realistic, and that's different for everybody.
Speaker 2:Right, like what feels manageable? Can you eliminate gluten and dairy? Can you eliminate sugar? Can you strength train twice a week? Can you do a HIIT workout or a SIT workout once a week, twice a week, three times a week, four times a week? Can you let yourself sleep in on the weekend? Can you decide whether or not you want to change your job? I mean, you know this right, because this is your thing. Is this transformation that happens and we really move from at least in my observations from being a person who we thought we were expected to be to the woman who we want to be. If we take it on, it's kind of beautiful, but it's also really turbulent for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really about finding the space which a lot of us, a lot of women, don't have in midlife because it's such a busy time, as you said, all the things, all the kids, the work, the noise, all of it. But it's about finding the space and and actually tuning in and listening what is going on. You know, I've always referred to symptoms of being like a wake-up call. It's like these little voices poking, popping up and saying right, something's going on here. I don't like this, something needs to change. So what is it that needs to change and that I've always kind of referred to it like that, and that's how I always saw it. It's like my body can't cope with the way that you're living, but I'm living my life anymore. So what can I do differently? Something needs to change.
Speaker 1:I suppose what's very interesting is, then, how people respond to that and, as you say, some people just aren't ready to make those changes. They're just not ready. I did like in your book how you had that. It was almost like a matrix of change, because some people, as you say, they're just not going to do it and they would rather have the issues and stick with that. But there is this sort of spectrum where it goes all the way through to okay, I'm prepared now to have one, one glass of wine less to. Actually I've now realized that not having any wine at all is going to help me the most. But then I was interested in that I need, I can. I have had um moments where I've probably fallen into that, where you get so regimented about, I absolutely have to eat this way, cut this out, do the workout and it kind of interferes with every life.
Speaker 2:So I thought that was just such an interesting way of looking at it yeah, I mean, that's true, right is, and we're so, we're so primed for that perfectionism, right, that feeling like we have to be perfection to be well. And then how about the whole group of women who are doing all the things right, they're taking really great care of themselves, but they still are having hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, foggy thinking, like whatever it is, and they're like flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, foggy thinking, like whatever it is, and they're like I don't get it. I'm doing all the things but I still can't get a decent night's sleep because I'm getting woken up 15 times with night sweats or whatever. It is Right, and that's.
Speaker 2:I always go back to my early career taking care of women having babies, right, where I say you could have the Buddha incarnate, have the labor from hell and you could take. You know the like socially unsupported, impoverished. You know, fast food, eating cigarettes, smoking women, and she popped out her baby in two hours. You know where's. It doesn't always make sense, yeah, no, and that's where we get into the biochemical individuality, particularly around hormone balance, because there's there are so many genes that regulate hormone dysfunction and if you don't have the proper compliment of genes, you may not be able to leverage lifestyle and hormone balance, or it might be more of a full-time job than somebody is necessarily up for. Right like it, they don't want to live that way to that.
Speaker 1:So what do you do in that, in that situation? What do you advise in that situation, if someone can, if someone is doing all the things and yet they are still not feeling right?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean that where I that's where I dig in with testing right, like something is going on. Is it that there's a gut issue so they're not detoxing hormones properly? Is it a genetic thing such that they're not detoxing hormones properly? I'm taking care of a woman right now who is doing everything and she is so frustrated she is not losing weight and she is like she is owning her vanity. She's like I'm not eating this, I'm working out like this, I'm in therapy, I'm, you know, I'm like doing all the things, and she also, in a different breath, we'll talk about being completely type a, totally driven, and so there is a question.
Speaker 2:You know, the question in my mind is is she generating this internal stress, this internal hypercortisol that is sort of undermining all of her efforts? And I've been thinking about that as we move through her care. And how am I going to talk to her about that in a way that's caring and not potentially offensive, like it could be the very like I'm doing this and I'm doing this and I'm doing this, and that kind of rigidness that is stressful, that that in and of itself, trying to do all the right things in and of itself could actually undermine the process potentially yeah, I mean that makes sense because you're stuck in that if you are that type personality which I definitely fall into it feels normal and natural to be constantly performing at this high level and needing and needing the kind of you know the successes, as it were, in inverted commas.
Speaker 1:But it's only when you retrain your nervous system to actually understand what it's like to down, regulate, to actually reduce your stress levels, that you realize well. But your nervous system remembers oh okay, I don't have to constantly achieve and do all the things. Actually it's okay. So, yeah, I have found for that breath work is to be. I mean, everybody has their own thing, but that for me has been so powerful because it gets right in there and it kind of communicates with your body, your brain. Right, it's safe to relax, to downregulate.
Speaker 2:It's a practice right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, it is practice. But all of these things, they are practice. It isn't possible to be perfect, and you know I love how you describe you know we're all messy, Life is messy and we're. We have to remember that we're doing the you know we're doing the best that we can.
Speaker 2:No one's, no one is perfect and that is, yeah, I think that's a really important message to that you share yeah, well, and to be a slightly more concrete and directed, and like, what do you do when someone's doing all the things but they're not getting the results that they want?
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes if it's a physiologic issue, like a detoxification issue, that can be supported through um nutrition, and if those boxes are being checked, that's where we move into the world of supplementation, um and and that is sort of right. As we move into the world of supplementation, and that is sort of right. As we move along the continuum of intervention, that is a place where potentially, hormone therapy, something from the outside world, may or may not be helpful. But, as I wrote about in the book, you know there is a huge group of thinkers who talk about when someone is stuck in their healing, who talk about when someone is stuck in their healing it has to do with the previous trauma and redirecting people to that vagus nerve issue and what is happening in the central nervous system. How is that affecting biochemistry and are they open to that possibility and doing the work to address it?
Speaker 1:Because some women are and some women are not, and that's okay to address it, because some women are and some women are not, and that's okay. Yeah, yeah, exactly, carrie, I was so saddened to hear about the passing of your daughter, isabel, in a really tragic accident. I'm really sorry to hear that. What, though, for me, came out of that was the way that you approached that you talked about. You know, we all have messes in life. You know, and we can either drown in them or we can transform them into healing opportunities. You know, as a parent myself of three children, you know it is the unimaginable, and I suppose, until it acts, something so awful and tragic happens to yourself, you have no idea how you're going to respond. I wonder if you could just talk us through that. How did you arrive at that way of dealing with your own trauma in a way which has actually helped you carry on, helped you, carry on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I have to say it was not a particularly conscious response. It is sort of what welled up inside me in response to what happened and I felt, and continue to feel, a tremendous responsibility to honor her life by doing what I can to live my own good life and help women do the same thing. You know it's it's interesting to have a child die. When that happens you realize you're really not alone. Like it's not that uncommon, I mean, it feels like you're the only one. But you can start looking around and be like William Shakespeare lost one kid, if not more. John Travolta lost a kid, joe Biden lost his whole family. You can look around and see how many people survive it when it feels unsurvivable. But I felt such a tremendous charge to, and still do, to live on earth because she cannot and and she is part of and for and informs everything that I do. You know I think that the book in part was. I mean I had started writing a book many, many years before she passed, and writing a book was has been one of my lifelong dreams, always and forever, and so it's not like her passing was the only thing.
Speaker 2:When she passed. I started into a writing group that a friend brought me into and I did that for about a year, which was a lifeline, and and then it's sort of I don't know if it was, I think then COVID hit, or it was before COVID that I opted out of the group and I was like I think I'm just going to try and use that same block to see if I can get this book written and, and I think my mind needed a point of focus, it needed. I needed something to focus on, something to structure my time around, um, something to distract me and also channel all of the energy and emotion. And so the book was a point of focus during that time, her passing, right. So she died in 2018 and then COVID was 2020 and when I look back, I'm like that was, that was a bunch of years, right. You know, like that was, that was a bunch of years, right. You know, like that was wow and um, yeah, I I also sort of.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the things that blew up for me when she died was this belief system that I had, which was everything happens. For a reason I was definitely an ascriber to everything happens. For a reason I had, you know, I was a big believer in positive thinking and I, you know, I can tell you I've kept a journal since I was 13. And ever since I had kids, I would end every journal writing session with please keep my children safe and well. And so when she died, that whole belief system exploded for me.
Speaker 2:And when people say everything happens for a reason, I'm like no, it doesn't, sometimes stuff just happens. In the same way that sometimes women just have a hard labor because because there's things that we don't understand, and so in all of that I sort of landed on the idea that she, her not here, but her spirit, soul or whatever language you want to use is still here. And that wisdom really came from my son, who is now 25, who was an engineering major, and he was talking about the principles of physics, you know, and he said if energy can be neither created nor destroyed, then Isabel is still here. Like she is still here and and I that is where I have settled my mind and so, and I feel that and I live in that way that she is still here, she is still part of when we talk about her. All the time we joke about her, we are like Isabel would love this. What would Isabel do, you know, and so she's very present. She's not.
Speaker 2:You know, people are like, is it okay to talk about? I'm like heck, yeah, we talk about her all the time, and so I, of course, miss having a relationship with and embodied her. You know, one of my strongest memories is the last time I hugged her as she walked out the door for school and feeling her 15 year old body against my body and being like whoa young woman and being like no, she's not a baby anymore. Like this is my young woman, daughter, and I never saw her again, you know, and so I think about that and I it, you know this in so many ways.
Speaker 2:Her passing informs my practice so strongly in helping women be comfortable with that which we don't know, because there is no explanation for what happened for her. Three other girls walked away from that car and she did not, and there, there will never be an explanation for why that happened. And so I live with that, you know, and I. It's just like someone living with cancer and not knowing if it's going to come back, and it's like the moment of internal rotation during birth.
Speaker 2:I write about this in the book because it still touches me so profoundly, like when you see that baby's head rotate just before they're born. There's some physics at work there, but there is mystery and I hope we never understand that. Some things are not to be understood, in my opinion. So I live with that. I live with that and it informs my practice and it and it is, I feel, in so many ways, the biggest offering I have to other women and to other health care practitioners of like, hey, there's a lot to know, there's a lot we do not know and we will never know. And can we be comfortable with that? Can?
Speaker 1:is it possible to be on, to be comfortable with not knowing, because that's my daily practice yeah, and I, and it's so refreshing to hear that from a practitioner, because I think everyone's so obsessed with feeling like they need to know all the answers but we nobody does. Thank you for showing that. I have a 15 year old daughter currently, so I that really hit me very hard in the heart and um, yeah, and I just think it just makes you what you were saying. You know, we just need to remind ourselves of just how great you know and be so grateful for what we have, and, um, and just enjoy these moments and and it really is a good reminder for that well, it changes the way you live, right?
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm sure you don't say goodbye to your daughter the same way anymore, because you're that could be the last time. Yeah, that changes your relationship between the two of you, right, and your relationship with yourself in a big way. You know, there definitely is a sense of why wait? What are you waiting for? Like, if you wait, you may never have the opportunity to dot dot dot. You know Isabel would always be like how come we never do anything fun, anything fun? How come our family never travels? How come we don't get to travels? How come we don't get to do this? How come we don't get to do that? Which was, in part, her 15 year old self talking. We didn't know, we had plenty of adventures. And you know, now with our son, we're like, yeah, let's go do the thing that we thought wasn't possible to do because we have. Now, that's what we have and and that there is blessing in that and I suppose we can transfer that as well to health.
Speaker 1:Why wait? Why wait until something goes wrong and that you're feeling really crappy and not very well? Why wait to take care of yourselves, to to do the things and feel good?
Speaker 2:Totally, Totally. What are you? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for to quit the job, leave the relationship, take the trip, care for your body, spend the money on the trainer, get the good night's sleep, skip the social obligation in favor of rest like for like. Waiting for what?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, do it now. To finish, I would just love you to, if you can I know this is probably quite a big question, but I think you know but you did carry. Include some recommendations that most of us can, can include in our lifestyle to keep us as well and as healthy as possible. What are your kind of non-negotiables? What are some of the things all of us need to be think about, thinking about, including to keep us well and healthy yeah, yeah, I mean I think about healthy stress management strategies.
Speaker 2:Right like drinking herbal tea instead of going for a glass of wine at the end of the day. Right, doing some breath work instead of scrolling on your phone. Right, meditating instead of binging Netflix. Right Like this, leveraging stress because there is nothing as inflammatory to our bodies as stress, and we all have it and it's real and it's not avoidable and it's not bad. It can be motivating right as an opportunity to make choices about do we manage that in a way that's constructive or destructive, and so really being conscious and making the choices that we can to manage it in a way that's constructive. So that is huge and overarching and probably the hardest thing, because we're talking about lifestyle. We're talking about changing our lives.
Speaker 2:In addition to that, eating vegetables is tremendous in terms of hormone balance, detoxification, cancer prevention, having the micronutrients that we need to make all of the substances that help to keep us well for a long period of time.
Speaker 2:Obviously avoiding processed food, anything that comes in a package. Eating a large amount of protein, particularly for midlife women that certainly is the buzz right now. I'm always a little weary about buzzes because we know the information changes right. There was a time where keto was thought to be the magic bullet. There was a time where high fat, low carb, no carb was thought to be the magic bullet. Right, we've lived through all of those trends and right now it's high protein. But I do find, for both myself and for a large number of women, that I take care of that, shifting the proportions on the plate, where protein takes up a bigger part and a complex carbohydrate takes up a smaller part, that there's no, no, no carbs, but that the carbs are slow carbs and that they are a smaller portion than um they then we want them to be yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1:Just to just to make that clear to listeners, slow carbs are not your kind of typical white carbs like pasta, rice.
Speaker 2:They're more kind of, you know, legumes, lentils, pulses, uh yep brown rice quinoa yeah squashes those kinds of yeah, okay, yeah, and healthy fats, right, like not being afraid of. We got so fat phobic in the eighties. I also was fat phobic in the eighties. But the naturally occurring fats the nuts, the nut butters, the olive oil, the small oily fishes, like those fats are so crucial for good cognitive function and fighting inflammation. So that's sort of the nutrition sound bite. And then the movement. You know, some movement, any movement, is better than no movement, I like to say to people. And so you do what you can, which is, if you can get yourself out the door for five minutes, that's what you can do and that can be enough. You know, the standard recommendation right now is five sessions of 30 minutes of cardio plus two strength training sessions. That's a little bit different for menopausal women, where the research seems to be landing on speed interval training plus strength training. The beauty of that is that it shortens the time. And then I find I'm like really 10 or 20 minutes and I'm done. Really, are you sure? Like I've been so socialized that I should be there for an hour or longer? So I'm working through that myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but, and and I also, I'm just such a huge believer in getting outside into beautiful places. I don't think that there's really any medicine as powerful as the natural world and in terms of quieting the nervous system and getting vitamin D and breathing fresh air and whatever the bioenergetics are of grounding and all an inspiring awe and all of the health benefits of being in the natural world that is so on the top of my list. Um, I mean, those are really the big ones. Right and rest, rest and recover, right, which is like really, particularly in our culture I'm thinking it's the same in yours where it's right produce, produce, produce, produce, produce.
Speaker 2:And what about unstructured time? Is there time for unstructured time? And I will say there is never time for unstructured time until one chooses to make time for unstructured time. And it is so valuable and I know that I find, as I age, that's really all I want. Like, the best plan for me is no plan and to meet the moment with whatever. Whatever it is, is feels suitable to the moment. Sometimes it's reading a book, sometimes it's gardening, sometimes it's being outside, sometimes it's going somewhere and doing something, but more often than not it's stillness.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, and the thing is, none of you know, none of this is rocket science. It's all good and you know, it's stuff that we all know, but it's we can't say it enough because it makes you feel good, it makes a difference and, and it is so important I'm the same. I have to get outside every day. I have to, whatever the weather. If I don't do that and actually for me it's like if I don't move in some way, then I just feel. I really feel it. Well, we all do. We feel it. If you go and eat you know, none of us are perfect, you know, if we, if I go and eat like two donuts which I can eat very easily, do, I then can feel it. I'll then feel really heady and not feel very good, you know. So we know it.
Speaker 2:It's just about tuning in and listening and doing the best we can to to look after ourselves in the best possible way it's the best place to start anyway, right before the supplements, before the this, before the purchasing, that right it just like are you doing what you can, which doesn't necessarily mean doing it all. Are you doing what you can?
Speaker 1:I was about to ask you about supplements, but I'm going to leave it there because I wish we could go down the ring and have it all, I think. Carrie, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing all your wisdom, and sharing so vulnerably as well. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on today and sharing all your wisdom and sharing so vulnerably as well. It's been such a pleasure, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, polly. It's lovely to spend time with you, and your accent just makes me feel like I'm just being washed in beauty.
Speaker 1:That's so funny. It's so funny, thank you, that's so funny, it's so funny. Thank you, uh, carrie. For anybody who'd like to find out more about you to get your book where, just tell everybody where they can, where they can go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, carrie levine cnm. That's the internet, that's instagram, that's facebook and that's linkedin great.
Speaker 1:I'll put that in the show notes. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you.