MENOMORPHOSIS

#128: Thriving Through Menopause Without HRT – with Laura Lambe

• Polly Warren

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In this episode, I’m joined by the brilliant Laura Lambe—Menopause Practitioner, Nutritionist, and founder of Menopause Mastery and The Menopause Lab. Laura has supported hundreds of women through menopause using a results-driven, evidence-based approach—and she’s here to share why every menopause symptom is treatable, whether you’re using HRT or not.

We dive into the real, often overlooked drivers behind symptoms like brain fog, sleep issues and joint pain—and how nutrition, movement and stress support can make a world of difference.

In this conversation, we cover:

  • Why so many women are actually undereating during menopause—and how that’s making symptoms worse
  • What different types of joint pain can tell you about your body’s needs
  • Practical ways to reduce inflammation and improve sleep without supplements or strict routines
  • How to make exercise work for you, including mobility and pelvic floor support
  • Why menopause can be a powerful invitation to reset your priorities and reclaim your energy

✨ You’ll also hear about The Menopause Lab—Laura’s free resource hub packed with expert guidance, real-world tips, and zero paywalls.


For more about Laura:

https://menopausemastery.health/

https://www.skool.com/the-menopause-lab-2151/about

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/

Speaker 1:

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 metamorphosis begin. Hello and welcome back to Menomorphosis. I hope you're doing really, really well. Now. This week I am talking to Laura Lam, who's founder and CEO of Menopause Mastery and the Menopause Lab. Now, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you will know that this podcast started because of my own perimenopause experience and I wanted solutions to and to investigate all the different ways that we can manage menopause. So over the years, I have spoken to lots and lots of different menopause specialists. So actually it was really great today to speak to Laura because I actually learned some new things which I've never heard before, so this is definitely worth a listen. I know that a lot of you listeners are at the same stage of life as I am, so some of you are going through menopause, some of you are in perimenopause, some of you might be postmenopause, but I just think it's really important that we keep talking about menopause, about the things that we might be experiencing, different ways of managing it. So today's guest is Laura Lam, and she is not only the founder and CEO of Menopause Mastery and the Menopause Lab. She's also a certified menopause practitioner. She's a nutritionist and she's a member of the British Menopause Society, and she's helped nearly 2,000 women feel like themselves again through her evidence-based program. Laura's mission is really very clear every menopause symptom is treatable with or without HRT. While she supports hormone replacement therapy for those who want it, she's also a fierce advocate for women who can't take it, especially cancer survivors and those that simply don't want to take it.

Speaker 1:

In today's episode, we talk about why so many women are under eating and how that is worsening symptoms during menopause. We also talk about how different types of joint pain reveal different root causes. Now, this is something I was not aware of. So, for example, if you've got joint pain in your hands, so, for example, if you've got joint pain in your hands versus your hips, they are telling you different things of what might be going on. So Laura dives into that. She also talks about sleep and how differently to, as if you are waking up in the middle of the night.

Speaker 1:

And we also talk about why movement, obviously during perimenopause, is very, very important, and it's not necessarily about pushing yourself really hard at this time. It's about being smart and doing exercise that really supports you for this stage of life. Laura's approach is empowering, it's deeply informed and it's refreshingly free of fluff. She really does believe that menopause isn't the end of anything. It's a powerful transition that, with the right tools, can really help you feel more grounded, more vibrant and more in control than ever. So, without further ado, please welcome the absolutely brilliant Laura Lam. Welcome, laura, to Mnemorphosis. Really lovely to meet you today.

Speaker 2:

It's lovely to be here. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1:

So, laura, I'd love to find out a little bit more about you and your background and what has led you to come into the world of menopause, because you don't look like you're someone who is in menopause, so tell me a little bit more about that yeah, um, firstly, that's really interesting to um even and that would be a great thing to even dive deeper is that we do swim, as women still have a persona of what we think menopause looks like yeah that's always very interesting to me because, yes, I am not in menopause.

Speaker 2:

However, because I am a younger woman, people think that automatically, think that I don't match what it is. However, however, there's growing rates of women who go into menopause early surgical menopause, induced menopause, poi and so on. So it's always very interesting to me that we still have this, even as women, this kind of like pre-stereotype version of what menopause is, and I actually do think that has a lot to do with the fact that we actually don't get enough education, because we still, in our heads, think menopause is something that happens when you're like 60s and you're way older, and that's why, when women are going into menopause, they don't have enough things. So that's a complete tangent. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I will just say that actually, because that's so interesting that I said that, because I also know that women, you know, there's a lot of people who go through menopause really very early, and I did kind of know that you weren't in menopause from having research. So actually, yeah, you're right and it's really good to highlight that because you're right and I, you know I should know better to say something like that, because I know that you can be any age and go through menopause. So, yeah, good to hear. Anyway, carry on.

Speaker 2:

It's just always super um, yeah, just especially when I speak to clients on such a regular basis. Especially, we work a lot with post-cancer survivors and I know that actually causes a lot of like um, emotional burden on their end because they are a younger woman, um, and then even they get met with like um oh, you couldn't be in menopause, and they're like I am, I've gone through post-cancer, I'm in menopause, and they feel such an alien in their body already, yeah, so, yeah, it's always like a thing when I hear it in terms of that side, um, but in terms of my, my journey into this, it has been a little bit more different. So actually I was in, um, the corporate world for pretty much in my entire early career. I used to work in trading and that's what I moved to London for, that's what I went to university and studied in and so on, and I did love it. It just was not the world for me and it just wasn't what I wanted to do the rest of my life. And you know, spreadsheets I still look a lot of spreadsheets now running a business, but I didn't want to sort of be on a trading floor in terms of that.

Speaker 2:

I had a very disordered relationship with food. I didn't have an eating disorder in any shape or form, but definitely disordered, and probably a lot of women have disordered relationships with food. I went from one extreme diet to another. I had some very unhelpful and very toxic advice from a nutrition coach that I was working with way back then and I was very afraid of food and very afraid of eating certain things like carbohydrates and like punished myself if I ate like a cake or anything else. So I actually started my nutritional journey to really save myself. I seen that I was kind of going down a path that I didn't like. I seen that I was nervous every time I went out for dinner with friends and I was constantly in that emotional turmoil in my head of you're lazy, you're not motivated, why did you eat? That Like this constant battle in my head at all times. So the reason why I went back to school and became a nutritionist was actually more so out of my own desire to become actually educated in nutrition not diets in nutrition and I really wanted to sort of just get myself free from that emotional, constant battle that was always going on in my head. Then that's where I really fell in love with nutrition and I really could see that, once you actually learn about nutrition, how freeing and empowering it is, like it completely changed my life and having just that power of knowledge around what is actually in food and why it's not bad, and like why carbs are actually good for you and why dieting and eating 500 calories is actually not good in any shape or form, and like it freed myself so much that I really then wanted to give that back to other women and that's where I became then a coach or building that sort of like company in terms of the nutrition.

Speaker 2:

So at the very birth of my company, that's what we were focused on was women's nutrition. It wasn't built out of menopause and that's not where the kind of story began that just naturally, organically happened for two key reasons. The more that we went into business was, firstly, anything in my life that I haven't gone personally through myself, and I always make sure that I try and educate what the living experience is like off it, so that when I'm speaking to a woman I can really relate to how she's feeling. I know the science but like, how does that look, turn up in her life? So, for a simple example, I'm not a mother, and we do have clients that come to us who are mothers and that can change their energy. It can change their priority list across the day, it can change their mental well-being across the day. And so I've attended so many young mums or new mums support groups Like I would just go to these in London and sit and listen to the real life experience and what they were struggling with and how it changed their feelings about themselves, and so when I went, I was coaching them. It was a lot easier.

Speaker 2:

I did the same for menopause and I still remember the complete pivotal moment in terms of when I did that. I went to and I had been to a few before but I went to a local coffee shop in London that were hosting like a menopausal support group and there was this woman who wasn't massively older than myself at that time I think she was like kind of like late thirties and she stood up and she was a powerhouse, like she had owned so many businesses, like she was what the definition of what you would call like a woman who appeared to have it all on paper. And when she got up and she started to speak about brain fog and about her mental wellbeing and how menopause, in her words, had robbed her of her life. I was sitting there in shock. I was like what do you mean? Like, what like? And she was saying that she'd been to her doctor and like her doctor didn't believe her. And I was like, surely not. Is this woman exaggerating, like what's happened here?

Speaker 2:

And the more I got to talk to her, firstly I was like god, that's like crazy that this menopause completely, because you would hear about the hot flashes and you'd hear about the regular periods, but she wasn't talking about anything that she was talking about how she couldn't put sentences together and how, like, she would be in board meetings and she couldn't remember why she was in board meetings and she couldn't and she felt like silly and she was making mistakes and like her mental well-being and she was talking about the impact on her relationship.

Speaker 2:

And to me that just opened a whole other door of this menopause that I never existed. And then, once I started to peel the onion back on that, I then started to realize that this wasn't just a unique situation for her. This was happening to thousands upon thousands of women that, yes, hot flashes and dysregular periods are a thing, but actually there's so much more that was happening, and from there is where, then, our wheels really started to turn and where my passion really sparked in terms of actually wanting to do something and actually become more educated in that part.

Speaker 1:

It's so sad but so true that that's exactly it. You know, most women have heard of the hot flashes and some of those physical symptoms, but actually it's the emotional and psychological symptoms which are really so cruel, because actually they're creepers. They creep up on you and before you. You know it, you don't feel like you're capable of doing the things that used to be second nature to you, and that is when you start to lose your confidence and and it it kind of is a downward spiral from there.

Speaker 2:

So you know you've got the energy to throw into it, which is fantastic yeah, there's a lot of time and energy, especially as the company is the size that it is now and the global practices and everything like that. Yeah, it takes's a lot of time and energy, especially as the company is the size that it is now and the global practices and everything like that. Yeah, it takes up a lot of my, my headspace on a day-to-day basis yeah, amazing.

Speaker 1:

So, laura, tell us then. So how you um claim that you can help women mitigate their menopause symptoms without the use of supplements, without the use of hormone replacement therapy. So I'm really interested, firstly to understand your thoughts on things like hormone replacement therapy, but also to understand you know how do you do that, because for a lot of women, hormone replacement therapy has been an absolute lifesaver.

Speaker 2:

First, I'm a huge advocate of HRT.

Speaker 2:

I think it's an incredible resource. I think we need a lot more advocates of HRT. We know that there's such a small percentage of women, both in the United States and the UK, who are even on HRT and the media would make you think that everybody was on it and it's not. Women can't get it, they're not getting diagnosed properly with menopause and there's a massive gap. So I'm a huge advocate of HRT. However, hrt is not the only answer. It's not the only thing that we should be doing in menopause. It doesn't treat all symptoms and not all women can take it or want to take it. So there's a huge then pocket of people who either cannot utilize HRT or who simply don't want to take HRT and unfortunately there's not a lot of other resources or choices out there for those individuals. So, kind of coming back to the two things that I mentioned earlier around, why I started the menopausal space was obviously, firstly, that woman that I spoke to, but I had a very close friend who went into um cancer. She had struggled with cancer in her early 30s and because of her cancer treatment she was not in a position to take HRT and I witnessed firsthand the lack of medical and healthcare support that my friend was given and she was literally giving nothing because she couldn't take HRT and that then realized that there is this huge individual or huge population of individuals who are unfortunately left on an island and they think that this is now their new normal, when it doesn't have to be so.

Speaker 2:

Firstly, I am a huge advocate of HRT, but even for women who are on HRT not all of our clients are not on HRT. We work with women who are on HRT as well there's so many other things that we should and can be doing to even support the effectiveness of that HRT. So, for example, we know that when oestrogen drops, inflammation is one of the biggest reasons why so many of their menopausal symptoms are even triggered in the first place. We know, and we have always known this, that our nutrition is our first line attack of inflammation. We know this and so if a lot of the symptoms are inflammatory linked, then obviously your nutrition becomes vitally important. It's important at all age and it's important for men and women, but it becomes vitally important when we lose that estrogen protection to help regulate that inflammation.

Speaker 2:

So a large thing that we do with the vast majority of our clients in the beginning is actually to help them with their nutrition to get it to the place where it is in spike in inflammation. This is where we'll start to see reductions on hot flashes that are primarily inflammatory driven. This is where we'll start to see a reduction of things like brain fog, which can be primarily inflammatory driven, and this is also where we'll start to see a decrease in visceral fat. Visceral fat is one of the things that is not reduced by HRT. Hrt doesn't help menopausal weight gain, but one of the biggest drivers that why women naturally gain visceral fat and menopause is inflammation. And again we know one of the key things to reduce inflammation in both men and women is what we're putting in our body.

Speaker 1:

So diet obviously is key. So someone listening who's going right? Yes, I know diet is key, but I don't want, you know, I don't want to change every single thing I eat and what do I have to eat? And is it going to be really hard for me? Because I've tried eating in different ways before. So how do you make it easy, how do you make it easy for women to be able to adopt a different way of eating?

Speaker 2:

Firstly, education. So nothing about your nutrition should have rules. It should not have any foods that are branded good or bad. You shouldn't be thinking of it as diet. So when you're educated on nutrition properly and you're not trying to follow a set of rules like here's a new diet that you're not going to follow it's not mentally draining because it's not, you're not tied to it. You're not thinking every single day like, oh, is this part of my diet routine, or it's not part of my diet routine, or I can't go out for dinner with my friends because it's not part of my diet routine. That's draining and that's not sustainable way of life for anybody.

Speaker 2:

Nutrition is not about being perfect. It doesn't mean that if you're looking after your health, that you can't have the odd glass of wine, or it doesn't mean that you can't go out for dinner. That's life. And with our clients we talk about minority habits and majority habits. Minority habits are going to be your old glass of wine you're going out and with friends at the weekend. Your majority habits are what you're doing the most of the time.

Speaker 2:

Ie cooking with like as many like non-processed foods as possible, you know, trying to have things that are not massively inflammatory, linked ie, sugar, alcohol, processed foods, etc. So trying to deviate the fact that you're not trying to be perfect. And I think that's why, women, that we think of nutrition so hard all the time, because we are trying to be perfect at every given time and in reality we don't need to be in terms of what I would say. First, and the biggest thing that we see women come into our practices with, and the biggest mistake that we see is actually women under eating. So the vast majority of women that come to us will eat, and this is because they have been conditioned for so many years in terms of eat less, it's better, and, gosh, every magazine that you open it's about another diet to lose 10 pounds and it's eating these kind of crazy calories. And so we're conditioned as women to think eating less and less is good or it's healthy. It's never healthy and it's never good.

Speaker 2:

But it becomes even more important in menopause to eat enough food for lots of different things. Firstly, um, obviously we know our bone density decreases at the quickest rate that it ever does in our perimenopausal years. What makes that go even faster under eating? We know that the vast majority of menopausal symptoms are like, even linked to gut concerns, cortisol, concerns inflammation. What makes all them worse? Eating less and less so. That's the first thing that I would advise, before you even think about like timings of food, or should you be fasting, or should you be doing supplements is are you actually eating enough? Like, are you, at a baseline, eating three healthy, balanced meals a day? Are you having a couple of snacks in there, like, are you actually getting enough food into your diet? And that's where we would start with probably about 90% of the women that come into our practices.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I've seen it as well. I mean it it's just crazy. Just, you know, we still all have this mentality I need to eat less, Whereas in fact we just need to nourish ourselves more with the right foods, don't we? In terms of getting variety into our diets? I'm presuming it's whole foods, it's a diverse range of foods from different food, all the different food groups which you recommend for your clients to eat yeah, um, we kind of go through different things, so it's not like overpowering at the beginning.

Speaker 2:

So definitely at the start, like I say, just eating enough and trying to get higher levels of actual food and nutrients into our diets. And so a big thing that we will always hear is women saying like I'm eating healthy, but I'm still feeling tired. I'm not, I'm not sleeping well, my weight's going up, like what's going on. And then you actually look at their diet and, yes, actually a lot of the women that come to us are eating healthy, but they're eating such small amounts of healthy food and so there's a very big difference between eating healthy and are you actually eating enough healthy? Like, yes, you may be getting some protein across the day, but if it's not enough, then it's not enough. And if you may be getting some fruit and veg and some fiber, but again, if it's not enough, it's not going to have the same impact to things like your gut microbiome and so on.

Speaker 2:

So the first thing is always consuming enough food and then, yes, trying to get like back to what I was saying earlier the majority and the minority, the majority of your foods from like whole grains. And we know like women are busier than ever women are, you know they've a lot more priorities than ever. So, again, it's not about trying to be 100 perfect, that all your foods are organic and all your foods are like non-ultra processed. Even in today's living costs of society, it's. It's just not realistic for the vast majority of people.

Speaker 2:

And so, again, it's it's about making at your life to think in my time and the money that my family have and what I can do in terms of cooking, what is the best that I can do? Like what is the majority for me that I could make sure that I'm getting as much whole foods into my diet. That's not gonna look the same to the woman beside me. That's gonna look like in my diet. Like that could be simply just changing from white bread to sourdough. It could be simply changing from white rice to whole grain rice. It could be simply changing from protein shakes to a greek yogurt or more of a, a natural source of protein simple choices that we could be making, rather than again trying to think that we need to overhaul our entire diet.

Speaker 1:

In terms of the women who are coming to you, what is their primary concern? What is the most pressing thing that they want to help with?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, probably our top three would be broken sleep, joint pain and weight. They'd probably be our top three. Stresses that we get Now again, half-lashes are incredibly common. We'll probably see them with nearly all of our clients. Half lashes are night sweats, but it wouldn't be one of those like impactful things that you know women are saying like I need my sleep. That's probably the most impactful thing, and then joint pain yeah, yeah, I had all three of those.

Speaker 1:

I mean, the joint pain for me was an absolute it. That was. That was really the most debilitating one of all. And yeah, I mean, I think for me it was like, yeah, not eating enough over exercising, doing doing too much, too stressed, all of that in terms of what they actually then go on to do. So they come to you, they've kind of got these issues and then what would happen that you then put them on a program of and how does it work?

Speaker 2:

well it would do it would. Our symptoms tell us a lot of stories, and so when we hear and do um a consultation and we screen um symptoms, it's always about trying to understand exactly what that symptom is. So if we break down a couple of those things so, for example, joint pain when somebody comes to us with joint pain, we would ask them quite clearly what joint pain like, where are what joints are sore? Because how you would treat that is different. So joint pain in our hands is usually a big sign of inflammation. So the first thing that we would do for an individual on that end would be really focusing on more of an anti-inflammatory approach to their nutrition. Joint pain in somebody's lower back is usually more of a sign actually of their pelvic floor. So when we go through menopause, our pelvic floor begins to weaken and when it does, it does start to put a pressure on our lower back. So making sure that does that individual have pelvic floor exercises that would be a big thing that we would do there. Joint pain in our knees and hips is very common with added body mass. So yes, there is a combination of inflammation and we would be putting that in place in terms of their nutrition. But what I would like to see is that when we start to see that weight coming down, is that we start to see that knees and pain coming down and hip pain coming down, we may need to pull back on um high intensity exercise for a period of time with those individuals with hip pain and knee pain while we get the inflammation down through their nutrition. And once we start to see that knee pain coming down it typically takes us about 68 weeks at that point then we would slowly start to see that knee pain coming down. It typically takes us about 68 weeks. At that point then we would slowly start to increase their resistance training and high intensity exercises. At that point so different things that we'd be asking for to understand exactly where the joint pain is. It's the same with sleep. So broken sleep, night sweats, falling asleep all would have different treatment protocols.

Speaker 2:

So again, sitting with a client and a woman and asking what's going on um, in terms of is your, is your difficulty falling asleep or is your difficulty staying asleep? Two different things. So, with difficulty falling asleep can be melatonin production. So melatonin would be our main hormone to help us with our circadian rhythm to fall asleep. We do know that the drop of estrogen also blocks the drop, the production of melatonin. So possibly looking at foods that's going to heighten some melatonin also.

Speaker 2:

Does she have basic health hygiene? So just because you're into menopause doesn't mean that everything else that we know goes out the window. Ie you know you should be getting up and moving around, looking at some natural sunlight in the morning. Are you scrolling? Are you looking at the screen too late? Are you overusing caffeine, like? Those things occur a lot, unfortunately, in individuals, and so sometimes sleep is not just completely menopause driven. It can be linked to some of those other habits. Broken sleep is probably the biggest concern it will get in terms of sleep issues. Um, and the broken sleep, again we're asking questions like are you getting up to go to the bathroom? That's pelvic floor. You should be doing pelvic floor exercises. If you need to get up to go to the bathroom, that's pelvic floor. You should be doing pelvic floor exercises. If you need to get up to go to the bathroom, that's a sign of a weak pelvic floor. So that individual should be doing pelvic floor exercises.

Speaker 2:

If an individual is coming to us with night sweats or just randomly waking up and feeling alert and their mind's racing at like 2am 3am. That's typically a sign of dysregulated cortisol. So when we go through menopause and oestrogen starts to decline, cortisol levels start to naturally increase. Cortisol is a really overused word right now on social media and there's a lot of fear and clickbait created around it. It's not a bad thing. Cortisol helps us with inflammation. Our body is creating that to help us in the fact that it's dropping oestrogen. It's good. It helps regulate blood pressure and so on.

Speaker 2:

But one of the side effects of higher levels of cortisol is higher levels of body temperature through the night. Cue night sweats and also higher levels of cortisol at 1 am 2 am, ie a disrupted circadian rhythm wakes us up. So that's where those kind of 1 am, 2 am, 3 am wake-ups come. So when we're hearing that, we're then starting to look at things on how we can utilize cortisol regulation. A really big change that we see with clients for cortisol is their evening protein source, so we would put that in straight away. So, for example, animal protein meats regulate more body temperature so they can't spike cortisol going into the evening. So if one of our clients came to us with night sweats or broken sleep, one of the first things that we would be doing is pushing them towards more of a plant-based protein option in the evening to help keep that cortisol level. That's probably the biggest driver to help us with night sweats and broken sleep in the evenings oh, that's a good one.

Speaker 1:

I haven't. That is one I have never heard actually. Yes, I love, yeah, that's, that's a good one. Turkey, though I thought was meant to be quite good because it's got tryptophan in which is a good one, for sure.

Speaker 2:

But again, everybody's body reacts differently to things, so we always like, try and um, adapt. You know, just get to know yourself, get to like know what works. Like you know, if you have turkey and it's like still not helping or whatever, then maybe try a slightly more plant-based and see how it reacts inside of your body.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean. One thing we've always said on this podcast is how unique we all are. Everyone's experience is going to be so different from the next person's and it's about really listening to your body and finding out what works for your body. And it might take a little bit of a, you know, let's try it out before you find the thing for you. But it's just about having that knowledge and awareness and the desire to want to explore and try.

Speaker 2:

Agreed. So, yeah, definitely, learning where symptoms are centralised and what's happening allows us to create, like very specific protocols for that person. And then, obviously, learning a little bit more about their life, because everybody's different. You know a woman who a single woman who works from home is going to look. Her lifestyle and what she can do is going to look very different to, maybe, somebody who's got three kids and needs to travel an hour a day for work. Like their exercise routines, their ability to cook their meals are all going to look different.

Speaker 1:

And that it looks different when we put together somebody's nutrition plan so we've talked about sort of the nutrition and and a little bit about movement, so moving our body, the importance of weight training as we get old because of our loss of muscle mass and bone density, which is key. So what, what are your recommendations on that?

Speaker 2:

yeah, again, there's a lot of um noise on social media around menopause exercises. So I always try and recommend to people to really unfollow anybody that makes very blanket statements like black and white cutoffs, like you should do this and you should avoid that and everybody should be doing this. Everybody should do that. That's just complete BS and it's just complete like clickbait trying to get people to view your social media aspect. The answer is there's no right way to exercise in menopause. There is no clinical evidence to show us that one perfect exercise routine is the golden way. That that's not there.

Speaker 2:

We've worked with thousands of menopausal women. Now at this point and take it right from the horse's mouth there is no golden way that we should be exercising a menopause. We would always want to make sure that a woman is moving their body through three different areas, so we always want to see some form of cardio across the week, some form of resistance training across the week and then some form of mobility and pelvic floor. So obviously we know when we go into menopause, women, our heart risk goes higher. We obviously know that CBD, or cardiovascular disease, is the biggest killer in women worldwide at present. So again, social media fears women. It's popular now to tell women to stop cardio or to stop hot exercises and blaming that. That's all again exaggerated information. But the way that you do your cardio is just the way that you like to do cardio. Some people like to swim, some people like to dance, some people like to dance, some people like to run, some people like to go for a walk. Whatever you like to do, just make sure there's some form of cardio across your week and then some form of resistance training to help, obviously, with bone density and muscle mass. It helps with lots of other things, but they're probably the two leading factors. But again, lots of ways that you can do that. Reformer, it gets a bad rep on social media. Reformer's good, reformer's good Classes sometimes get a bad rep on social media and we see PTs trying to shame women into like that they shouldn't be doing these classes.

Speaker 2:

A lot of my clients love classes. It's their social aspect. They like getting out with their friends. It's a lot less intimidating than going to a gym by themselves. So if you like a class, just try and pick something that's a little bit more weight focused. Or if you want to do some actual weight training by yourself at the gym, perfect.

Speaker 2:

And then definitely wanting to do some form of mobility and pelvic floor. We know when we lose estrogen, our inflammation in our joints begin to rise and we do start to lose collagen and cartilage. So definitely having some mobility. So for example that could be, a woman could go on a 20 minute walk a day If that's maybe all that she had time to do. A 20 minute light stroll on a daily basis, that's her cardio. And then she may be do two or three classes with a little bit more weight focused. That's her resistance training. And then she may be want to like include maybe a five or 10 minute, maybe like a yoga or some pelvic floor exercises part of her morning routine. And that's that box checked and that's going to look different for each person. But kind of trying to keep those three categories and then picking something that you like and knowing that each week is going to look different depending on your time, and then just picking something around. That is the easiest way to stay consistent with moving your body.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that because, also, even if you are somebody who loves to run and loves to go to the gym and weight train and then loves to maybe do some yoga, actually that changes. I know, for me, all of that changes as I go through different seasons of my life, of what I enjoy. So it's nice that you yeah, you really highlight that flexibility in choice.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it changes with people's stress levels. Like, some weeks at work your stress is a lot higher, and so we know when we're very stressed or cortisol rises, and we know we're a lot less stress resilient in menopause. That's where kind of we snap a lot more in the moods and that we're a lot more resilient to some of those stress factors like bloating and constipation, et cetera. So maybe when you're going through a slightly stressful period, pulling back on exercises that do produce a little bit more cortisol, like the higher intensity stuff, the running, whatever it is and maybe just thinking I'm pretty stressed out this week, like maybe it's some just like easy yoga or some like easy walking this week and perfect, and then when your stress levels come down you can push up some of those exercises again. So we're constantly in a season of changing and just getting a little bit more in tune to your body and realizing what you need, rather than going by what some coach on social media is telling you on a social media post just because they're trying to get views.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk a little bit about stress because, as you will know, as I know, as I think most midlife women know, midlife can be a really stressful time where you're bang in the middle of kids, maybe your parents are getting older, a lot of people are at the sort of a pinnacle of their careers, there's a lot going on and it can be a really, really stressful time and often a time where you don't give yourself what you need because you feel like there isn't time for that.

Speaker 1:

So I'm interested how do you approach that with the women that you work with? Because, as we mentioned, you know, menopause has so many emotional and psychological aspects of it and psychological aspects of it and I think a lot of women, particularly at this stage of life, can feel very disconnected from themselves, from the women that they are. They are questioning their identity. It's all changing. So I do believe this is such a big part of this menopause shift, which really is what this podcast is all about. It's like how do we move on from that and become this sort of next amazing version of ourselves as we go into the next stage of our lives?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, obviously we're seeing a lot more research coming through on stress being one of the leading reasons why they believe women are going into menopause earlier and earlier. Because now more than ever, women in our generation are taking on more stress than generations before and so we are going into menopause earlier. And that's one of the things that they're researching is possible connections between levels of stress that are just we now deem as normal in the hustle culture and staying quiet and women prioritizing everybody else. We deem just being stressed all the time is as normal. We kind of laugh about it on social media, about being stressed and fight or flight and our body doesn't know. We kind of normalize it. But there is a lot of research now coming out that that is the reason why that women are going into menopause earlier. But dealing with menopause comes, or sorry, dealing with stress comes through kind of two lenses. So menopause is a great shining torch and for some women on things that they just no longer want to tolerate in their lives and that things that maybe have been causing them a lot of stress and undue stress that maybe it's time to have slightly changes of mindset. So whether this is like boundaries at work that maybe they should have had in place long ago and now they're just realizing. Actually, this is just not worth it. Why am I stressing myself out of this? For I'm not getting rewarded or I'm not happy or I don't even like my job. Marriages is the big one as well, and we do see a big difference in people's stress levels on who people who have a supportive partner, and then, unfortunately, in women who maybe don't, or their husbands, and we don't understand the changes of menopause and what that can bring. Maybe they're not well educated on that aspect, which a lot of men aren't, and so we actually even notice a big difference on the women's symptoms that come to us, who they have, and this is one of the things that we'll ask in the beginning do you have a supportive network, like do you have a partner at home that does support this journey and is picking up a little bit more slack? And when they don't, we know that woman is probably going to be more receptive to a lot more of the cortisol driven symptoms of menopause, which is sad truth. So menopause does shine a light for a lot of women on things that they no longer want to tolerate, and for a lot of women. It can be a very freeing experience on what they want to actually take into this next chapter in their life and what they actually want to leave behind now that they do feel like they need to prioritize their health more than ever before.

Speaker 2:

But how we deal with stress comes down to what we can control and what we can't control. So there is things that we can control and put in place. So, whether that is just maybe having stricter boundaries of work, maybe that is just having more direct conversations with people around you and what you're going to do and what you're not going to do, and maybe just adding in some more stress management tools, like do you do anything at present for stress? So again, that's going to look different for each person. So when we look at one of our clients lives from bird's eye view, we'll look at what they're doing in the present, like do they do any kind of like journaling, self-care? Do they wind down in the evenings? Do they take any time for themselves? And for a lot of our individuals it's not. So we possibly start there and adding some things in ie, what can we control on that?

Speaker 2:

And then for a lot of women, they just can't control their levels of stress.

Speaker 2:

So, unless they quit their jobs and ditch their family and go live in a desert or somewhere, that stress is going to follow them around.

Speaker 2:

Like, we do have stressors in life that we can't get rid of.

Speaker 2:

Like you may have mentioned, in terms of like caring for elder parents, there's a lot of women that will go through, maybe, upsets in their marriages and around menopause.

Speaker 2:

We do know that as well.

Speaker 2:

So, again, there is stresses that we can't avoid.

Speaker 2:

So at that point we don't want to add any extra stress to our body. So big things that add extra stress to our body is, as we mentioned earlier, under eating. This is one of the biggest stressors on a woman's body is under eating. So, for those women who do have very high stressful jobs and have a busy life in terms of their kids, we educate them on the importance, then, of making sure that they're not putting their body in any more stress because they already are with all of this other stuff Undereating, protein, not getting enough sleep at night, not looking at we normalize bloating and constipation so much. That's all signs of high levels of cortisol in our body and adds even more high levels of cortisol in our body, so looking at things that won't be controlled, like stress management and putting some things in there, and then there does become an element of stress that we can't control, and so hence we look at things like nutrition, sleep, gut health, so that we're not adding any more stress unnecessarily to our bodies at that point.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, nice, I totally agree, and I think you know, alongside that as well, the thing which probably, for me, was the biggest game changer was changing my perception.

Speaker 1:

We're changing my mindset, really working on my mindset and my perception of the world at large and having that just seeing everything through a different lens, as you say, controlling what I can control, you know, not worrying about what I can't control. And it takes work, it takes practice, but that has been just fundamental in just my approach to life and managing those stresses Because, as you say, those stresses are always going to be there, they're never going to go, but it's how we manage them. I know for one that I've got three teenagers in my house and you know there's a lot of stressful moments with that, and so, rather than and I used to be someone who would shout and scream and get triggered by them all the time Actually, if you can come at it from a place of calmness, of knowing what you can control, it changes everything and obviously it's a great way to try and manage those cortisol levels as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, 100 percent. And, like I mentioned, more than ever we even compare ourselves to social media and women who do it all right, everything, and even that puts a lot of subconsciousness. We're constantly judging ourselves and we're constantly thinking it's not enough and we're constantly critiquing ourselves, and so we're just constantly in this state of, like, stressful scenarios. So even that's the thing that we would advise to our clients is try and have days where you're not on social media. Try and have days where you're kind to yourself. Try and have days where you talk to yourself the same way that you would talk to a friend, because the amount of on subconscious stress that we carry around with us all day, every day, is is mental, and we just never really stop enough to think about it and how much we're actually putting our body under pressure every single day.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely so, laura, for you. You have obviously started this business. How long have you been going for?

Speaker 2:

So the Menopuzzle Space. Now this is our third year of the Menopuzzle Space. The company itself has been in around five to six years.

Speaker 1:

OK, great, and how has that been in terms of building this business? What have there been? Any challenges that you've come across that you've overcome?

Speaker 2:

challenges has been actually been finding specialists.

Speaker 2:

Um so, for example, there's only one menopausal specialist for every 48 000 women in the united states at the minute, so they're rare, and so trying to hire a team like we have a team now of 20 specialists worldwide and finding those individuals was the hardest thing ever.

Speaker 2:

So, like when we do a recruitment round of like hiring for menopausal team whether it's a consultant or whether it's a one of our specialists for our clients, the amount of unqualified people that come and, because they have worked with women in menopause believe that they are a menopause specialist it would blow your mind. And so trying to actually find credible individuals who are actually trained and educated in menopause has been the hardest thing and so much harder than I ever thought and definitely has slowed us down. There's been so many times where we've unfortunately had to have wait lists because we don't have the the means of a team to facilitate the demand of women wanting to come in, and so that has been the hardest thing and that's been a lot, a lot slower than I ever would have imagined and was just trying to find actually properly trained menopausal specialists when you employ a menopause specialist, do they need to be registered with the british menopause society, or how do you?

Speaker 1:

how do you vet that?

Speaker 2:

it's not even so much that they need to be registered by a society. They need to be properly trained and they need to have um x amount of years of clinical experience. So, um, whenever we yeah, when we say trained, we mean they actually need menopause certification. So, for example, a gp doesn't have any menopausal training. Gpyn typically has about four hours. A registered dietitian, no menopausal training. So there's, the vast majority of health care providers have not actually taken any credit hours on menopausal training. So when we're looking to hire somebody, we would expect a minimum of 50 credited training hours and on, especially just only menopausal health. And so just because you have a nutrition degree does not mean that you know anything about nutrition or menopause. Just because you have a dietitian degree doesn't mean that you know anything about menopause. So we need to have to see that credited hours of menopausal training and then we need to have clinical hours. So all of my team of staff have worked in menopause clinics, face-to-face with menopausal clients, for about three to five years right, right, yeah, really great.

Speaker 1:

Is there anything else, laura, that you would want a woman experiencing menopause to know? Is there something which you feel that is not out there, which is not talked about enough, which you know a woman going through menopause really might find super useful?

Speaker 2:

that all symptoms are treatable. Every single symptom of menopause is treatable. We don't say that anywhere enough. We we focus very much on the doom and gloom of menopause, that there is all of these symptoms and women struggle with them for years and so on, but unfortunately that's just because of the huge gap of education and the huge gap of resources, whether it is HRT or whether it is what women should be doing if they don't want to utilize a HRT element in terms of their toolbox. But all menopausal symptoms are treatable.

Speaker 2:

The biggest thing that I would love us to get to a position on is that we're actually educating women on menopausal health and we're not so focused on symptoms. When you have the protocols in place whether that is HRT or any kind of natural protocols you should see reduction of your menopausal symptoms within a matter of weeks. The biggest health impact to women for their long term health are things like heart health, bone health, brain health, like menopausal health. But we're not even getting education out on that because we're still so focused on the symptoms, because women don't have enough education or they don't feel like or even know that symptoms are treatable and that they should be treated within a matter of weeks. So that's the biggest thing that I try and educate women that they, just because you're like this right now does not mean that this is going to be your normal life forever.

Speaker 2:

This isn't the normal you like. This is menopause. It's not you. You're still in there. You're just covered on this kind of hormonal roller coaster right now and you just need to sort of get more expert advice, find your tribe, find your community, find that aspect that's going to help you move back to feeling a little bit more like yourself and then you can embrace this a whole new chapter that you have, and this whole new thing, because it can be an incredible experience of women, especially, as I mentioned earlier, women using it as that torch to shine light on things that they don't want to take on to their new space. So probably just that, trying to shed a little bit of positive light on menopause rather than the whole doom and gloom that we usually do typically see on social media around it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that around it. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that. You know, this podcast used to be called the Positive Perimenopause Podcast, trying to find positive solutions to perimenopause, because it's not all doom and gloom and I really think it's just a way I've always believed this that anything you're experiencing in your body, it's just your body kind of signaling to you okay, something needs to change. There's something which is happening right now which isn't working anymore perhaps it used to. So let's just investigate and let's just find the solution to kind of rebalance and put it right again. And and everything you said actually, yeah, is kind of confirms that. So, laura, thank you so much for coming on Men in Morphisms today and sharing everything about what you do and how you help women. For anybody who would like to look you up or come and work with you, can you please tell them where they should go?

Speaker 2:

I always recommend the Menopause Lab, which is our free menopause portal. I don't agree with the paywalls and the academia walls that block women from getting menopausal education. I think every single woman worldwide should have access to free, trusted, factual information on what's going on in their body, and that's why we founded and built the Menopausal Lab over a year ago. There's now 36,000 women in there worldwide. They get access to a free menopausal course that's directly from the Menopause Society, so it's all the latest research on HRT. If you're being dismissed from your doctor, there's templates in there on how to advocate for yourself.

Speaker 2:

They have free monthly experts so they get access directly to some of the best minds in the menopausal space. We have those experts every single month. They get access to free nutrition plans, exercise plans all created by menopausal dietitians. So that, for me, is the place. Yes, you can come work with us in one of our practices and work with us one to one, but no menopausal knowledge should be blocked behind paywalls or academia walls. So you'll be able to find the links to join myself and 36,000 other menopausal women finding themselves again for the menopausal lab and any of my social medias, or you can simply just google the menopausal lab, and you'll be able to join us for free entirely for free and get access to all of that free factual information amazing, thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, laura thank you so much for having me I hope you enjoyed this episode.

Speaker 1:

I will put all of laura's links in the show notes. If you want to get in touch, please do. You can come over to Instagram at polywarrantcoaching, or you can send me an email at info at polywarrantcom. And if you enjoyed this episode, I would be super grateful if you could hit that subscribe button, if you could rate it with the stars and, even better, take just a minute or so to leave a review. It is super helpful. Thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it, and all that's left me to say is have a wonderful week, take lots of care, and I will speak to you next time. Take care, lots of love. Bye.