Menopause Isn't Just Hormones: The Hidden Impact of Stress, Burnout & Emotional Overload

Andrea (: 00:00

Today we are talking about something that so many women are struggling with, but nobody connects properly. The relationship between stress, emotional suppression, gut health, inflammation, and my favorite, libido. Because somewhere around menopause, a lot of women suddenly stop feeling like themselves. Their digestion changes, their energy crashes, their body becomes inflamed, and their desire is just poof, gone.

And women are told to take a supplement, cut gluten, reduce stress. But what if the issue is actually deeper than that? What if the body has simply reached its limit, carrying emotional labor, people pleasing, burnout, resentment, all the things we've discussed thus far on Menopause Love Lounge this season and survival mode for decades? Our guest today is Serena Teddy. She is a gut health expert and functional wellness practitioner whose work focuses on the connection.

Between digestion, inflammation, hormones, nervous system regulation, and emotional health. We are covering it all. And she does this especially for women in midlife. So without further ado, Serena, welcome to the Menopause Love Lounge.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 01:10

Thank you, ladies, for having me here today. I'm very happy to be able to talk to all of you.

Andrea (: 01:16

⁓ wonderful. We are happy to have you. We also have our ladies here. We have Dawn, Ozzy, and Karen. Unfortunately, we have two of us out today. Juni is on the road somewhere. She's on a road trip in like Colorado or something. And Lori's just a little under the weather. So we're giving her some rest today. But we are here to get you through this episode and we have so much incredible information for you guys. So we're gonna start out with our usual, which is our personal reflections.

And each of us are gonna reflect on the moment that we realize that our symptoms weren't just hormonal or physical, but actually connected to stress, resentment, emotional overload, all the things I just mentioned, the people pleasing, the burnout, the disconnection from themselves. So then we're gonna pop in and talk about Serena. We're gonna get to know Serena.

And she's gonna explain how chronic stress and nervous system dysregulation affect the digestion, the hormones, and the inflammation, And why menopause often exposes dysfunction that women have been overriding for years. Then, of course, we're gonna do our final segment, which is our legs wide open segment.

Where we are gonna play a little game called Helpful or Harmful, and we are gonna confess some of the most desperate or ridiculous wellness things that we have tried for our libido, for bloating, for energy, all of those things. And Serena's gonna weigh in on what is genuinely supportive versus just a wellness industry piece of nonsense.

Ozzie (: 02:39

Ha ha ha.

Andrea (: 02:39

So

we've got a lot to get to, ladies. I'm very excited to talk about this. I think we all are because we're all kind of going through something, trying different things, and we don't know half the time whether, especially me, y'all know I'm just like, I think it's working. I don't know, maybe it is, you know, and I'll just keep going with it. So let's get started. We're gonna talk about what your body is trying to tell you. Karen, why don't you start out for us and

Tell us what's going on with you. When did you realize that your symptoms weren't just hormonal or physical?

Karen Viesta (: 03:10

Yeah, so as I've shared before, I was going through perimenopause as I was going through a divorce. You know, when when my marriage of 24 years ended, I was like deep in perimenopause. So I think I have always known there was a connection because I knew that I was I wasn't feeling that bad from one or the other, but the convergence of both of these like major traumas really.

And and I think over the years, you know, I would say even now, obviously to a much lesser extent, it's something that I have to actively manage. ⁓ you know, I just think there's a lot of anger and resentment that comes up. And I don't think I'm unique in that as women, I think we have a lot of suppressed emotions because we haven't always been told that it's okay to let those emotions out. So, you know, I think I think I've always known about the connection and

Andrea (: 03:58

Mm-hmm.

Karen Viesta (: 04:07

And I've been actively working on it. ⁓ so I I'm much better now than I was then, but I can't say like, I fixed it all and you know, it's it's ongoing work, I think, right? I you know, and I'd be curious to know obviously what what Serena says about that.

Andrea (: 04:12

Yeah.

Yeah.

Serena, do have any advice or tips to give her on that?

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 04:29

You know, most women who go through menopause will experience symptoms when they're going through significant periods of stress.

Andrea (: 04:31

Ha ha

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 04:37

And from my experience of like taking care of women who start hormones or don't start hormones, most of those symptoms actually begin to wax and wane after the stress resolves. And then suddenly when you ask them, hey, how's the hot flashes that you're feeling? How's those sleep disturbances? They're like, you know what? I actually haven't, you know, taken anything and it just kinda went away. And when you kinda dig a little deeper and ask it, what happened? They're like, my divorce finalized. you know, my parent finally moved out of my house. ⁓ my kid is finally off to to

school and college. You know, those master hormones actually affect our sex hormones and it's a fluctuation that people experience that trigger a lot of the physiological symptoms that they experience. And to what you're saying, Karen, about like going through a divorce, that is a very huge shift in your life. You know, you you're changing the world that you know and coming into a world that is incredibly nebulous and you have no idea what's happening in front of you and our fear response goes up. You know, our we need to learn to trust ourselves again. So it's

It's a learning opportunity, you know, when we go through big changes like that. But what I find is sometimes women downplay that, and because the algorithm is always feeding us information on like hormones, we're like, it's a hormone problem. When what we're not seeing is the cracks in our marriage, the the betrayal that what you experience, you know, the anger, the frustration, you know, we're not addressing those root causes because there's no appeal for it.

Andrea (: 05:55

Mm-hmm.

Ozzie (: 06:02

Mm-hmm.

Karen Viesta (: 06:02

Yeah.

Andrea (: 06:03

Yeah. ⁓ why is there not? That's the question.

Ozzie (: 06:05

Yeah.

Karen Viesta (: 06:05

Yeah.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 06:06

Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins (: 06:06

You speak in my

language.

Karen Viesta (: 06:08

Yeah.

Ozzie (: 06:12

Yeah, so too.

Andrea (: 06:12

Can you relate to that,

Karen? You feel like that's what a lot of it came from? Yeah, think so too.

Karen Viesta (: 06:14

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And

and you know, I the symptoms ⁓ definitely did fluctuate. I went through a period of terrible night sweats in the middle of that, and and they just stopped on their own, even before I started the bioidentical hormones. They stopped once you know the divorce was resolved. And and the funny thing is, for in my case, I I didn't even have a a particularly nasty divorce. Like we mediated, we had a pretty amicable situation.

But Serena, what you said is absolutely true. It's just the few the fear that the future you imagined for all these years went away in a puff of smoke. And you feel like you just don't know what's what's ahead. I think that that fear ran so deep. ⁓ that I think as I started to piece my life back together, you know, as I started to feel like I was gaining my footing again.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 06:50

Right.

Ozzie (: 07:00

Mm-hmm.

Karen Viesta (: 07:10

things did get much better. So so yeah, I I think what you said made a lot of sense.

Andrea (: 07:13

Mm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 07:15

I I'm I'm curious, like kind of like looking back, you know, and I not to cause you to reveal anything about your relationship, but were there moments when you're like, well, that was a big red flag and I didn't address it and I stepped up to the plate instead and and soothed the problem, you know? So and I think we see a lot of divorce happening in midlife because women are like at we're on our wit's end. There is no more that we have to give, and there's nothing left.

Karen Viesta (: 07:39

Yeah.

Ozzie (: 07:41

Mm-hmm.

Andrea (: 07:44

Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah, I'll actually jump on that bandwagon there because it's the same thing for me. And I went through a time when when I was wanting to go through the divorce was probably the most stressful. And that was in my late 30s going into 40s. So I was in my paramenopause stage and I was having all of those symptoms come on. I had so much anxiety and I had like

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 07:45

You know, so you just need to ask

Karen Viesta (: 07:45

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Andrea (: 08:11

inflammation of my joints and I was overwhelmed and you know I wasn't sleeping. I was just exhausted all the time. And I couldn't relate it to the divorce either. I kind of thought, I must be going through, you know, what everybody's talking about. I'm in perimenopause and and everything is just my hormones out of whack. And it makes so much sense. You're so, I felt so tense all the time and so, you know, like everything had to be handled in that moment or it was going to blow up.

And I didn't know how to handle a lot of that stuff. And then I was also doing a lot of people pleasing at the time because that seemed like the safest space that I could actually control, And I wasn't even actually controlling it because I was just doing exactly what they wanted me to do. But it felt like I actually had that opportunity to do that. So I think for me, I was just kind of running on adrenaline for the longest time and just in survival mode. And then finally, ⁓ you know, after just holding on all

Karen Viesta (: 08:51

Yeah.

Andrea (: 09:07

That all of that stress and the pressure and the resentment, a lot of resentment was going on during that time. And once I had, you know, was able to let that go, same kind of thing with the divorce. And after that, you know, not immediately, because immediately you're in that ⁓ did I make a mistake phase? Or, you know, what have I done? kind of thing. So yeah.

Ozzie (: 09:26

Mm-hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (: 09:29

What have I done?

Karen Viesta (: 09:30

Yeah.

Andrea (: 09:31

That was huge. Like,

Karen Viesta (: 09:32

Yeah.

Andrea (: 09:32

my gosh. Like it seemed so great at the time. And I'm gonna get divorced. I'm gonna be able to do whatever I want at night and go out with new people and actually feel what love is really like and all of these things. And then when you do it, who that was huge. So getting over that hump, that's when things really shifted for me. And ⁓ then I started to understand it was just about my body and I started to set boundaries.

Ozzie (: 09:44

Yeah.

Andrea (: 10:00

And I started to make more time for myself and I started to take care of my own emotional health and met with therapists and everything that, you know, needs to be done during that time. So it's interesting to see, I'm sure it's gonna be a common denominator between, a lot of us that went through the divorce and come out the other side of it and what changes, you know. Yeah.

Ozzie (: 10:18

Hm. Yeah.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 10:20

And I think

this speaks to like women actually having to work on ourselves way earlier before we reach this middle age so that we don't end up not being able to ask for what we want and need. Like in a sense, we don't communicate with our partner because oftentimes we teach people how to treat us. You know, so we let them, you know, run amok with how we ask for things or they're disrespectful to what we want, then we just as women we just suck it up. We just do it.

Andrea (: 10:39

Mm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 10:50

You know, and I think if younger women can I I hope for the next generation, you know, that they are much smarter, you know, in terms of finding the right partner or knowing when, ⁓ it's time to it's time to bail. This is not the right relationship for me. Instead of, you know, spending so many years of our lives with relationships that really were not able to go a whole lot of anywhere.

Andrea (: 10:50

Yes, we do.

Ozzie (: 11:11

Yeah. You know, you know what's interesting is I'm actually seeing younger women going on hormones, meaning that they they're they're seeing what we're talking about, right? They're noticing what we're talking about. And then immediately, as you could tell, there's a shortage. Shortage. and and so now now it's, you know, they're jumping on and they're taking hormones really early on instead of actually really listening to us and understanding how can I set myself up with the right tools to be able to handle.

Andrea (: 11:11

Yeah.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 11:24

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Ozzie (: 11:40

when it comes to be able to take care of our ⁓ younger selves to heal the parts of us that haven't been healed yet and do the work ahead of it because once hormones come in as you know as you all know and all experience all is right all is all hell breaks loose and all is fair and love and war. And so

Andrea (: 11:54

Mm.

All hells break all hell breaks loose, right? Yeah.

Ozzie (: 12:04

You know, it it's so I for my younger clients that I work with, that's something that I always preemptively talk about is before, you know, if you could do this work now, before you get to midlife, you could save your marriage. You could save your your sense of self. You there's so much you can do ahead of it. And for me it wasn't my divorce. I mean, I'm sure it was. I think it kind of piled in because I I got divorced in before I was forty. So before I went through perimenopause. And then

I I I think what for me was was during COVID, I was thriving. I thought I was thriving. I was a person that handled it's like, it's a piece of cake. What? I I I could s I could stay in, I could help a thousand people and I would get on and I would I would I would do seminars, I would do workshops, I would I I held everyone else. And I did not allow anybody else to hold me and 'cause I thought I was fine.

Right. I was overfunctioning in a time where everybody else needed me. And I was great. Not until afterwards in my did my body start to show signs of lesions and ⁓ cysts in my body. And eventually led me to going to Serena's practice and being looked at. And ⁓ and I think I I at first it was everyone everyone told me, get on hormones, you'll feel better, get on hormones. And so eventually I did, and I did feel better, but then

Andrea (: 13:01

Yeah.

Ozzie (: 13:30

I realized I I think it was around the time that I started to meet with Serena, I realized that I there were there were a lot of things that were under the hood. So I think most women don't know exactly what's going on with their body until they really look under the hood and they see. You know, I for me was I was relating it a lot of it to also resentment and anger because my liver was activated. So I learned a lot about my liver. I learned a lot about how my body functions and how hormones.

start to run amok. ⁓ and and and for me, you know, I also went to Serena and I said, my God, I cannot lose weight. I cannot lose weight. And we started to do some testings and what we noticed was that my body does not know how to, my liver is not a good detoxer. It was not detoxing well, which meant that there's something going on with my liver. I hang on to everything. and I needed to learn how to let go.

Andrea (: 14:09

Mm.

Yeah.

Ozzie (: 14:29

And that was that started my journey of how can I let go? How can I let go? How can I let go? In order to be able to allow my body to be more effective and efficient. And ⁓ not until I did that did I start to did the weight start to go down and fifteen pounds down.

Andrea (: 14:48

Woo woo Amazing. That's so good.

Ozzie (: 14:51

So with a little bit of help,

but still I was able to name it. I was able to actually see that it wasn't the hormones didn't heal me, the hormones didn't fix me. I I just needed to, I needed to recognize that there was something deeper that I needed to address. And and and also, you know, speaking to Dawn and getting on some homeopathy and and just a mix of things. I was able to, again, when you look under the hood.

Karen Viesta (: 14:53

Yeah.

Andrea (: 15:12

Yeah.

Ozzie (: 15:17

you will start to s you will start to go on a different journey.

Andrea (: 15:18

Mm.

Where do you think your ⁓ toughest struggle still is? Do you feel like you've kind of resolved all of it or are there certain things that are still still so magnified?

Ozzie (: 15:31

I don't think you ever really resolve everything. I think I just have a better manage I have a better management system, right? Which which is what you mentioned, which is our boundaries. I was able to say no to things that didn't feel right to me. I was able to right there there are things that I was able to set up for myself so that I could set myself up to win. So my body can function less ⁓ you know, less ⁓ and yes, I still overfunction. And then I speak to myself and I remind myself that I don't need the love and you like I don't need to to

Andrea (: 15:34

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Ozzie (: 16:01

access love through my over functioning. I could I could, you know, take a moment, take a rest, take a break. I could give and I could also receive. And I started to I started to do equal parts. Sometimes more for me, less for others. But always give to myself. Always, always, always. That that's been my non negotiable.

Andrea (: 16:04

Mm-hmm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 16:12

huh.

Karen Viesta (: 16:25

So Ozzie, I have a question. and I guess it's a question for you and Serena, especially since you're you've worked together. ⁓ so where do hormones fit in with the emotional work? Like I know they work together. There are people who would say, don't take hormones, just do the emotional work. There are people who say it's, you know, only take hormones and you know, I just it's

It's obviously it's a blending of the two, but how do you manage that with your the the women you treat?

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 16:59

⁓ so for me, I think like for women who are having persistent symptoms, having the hormones there to help and support is helpful. But the way you think, how you think, how you process information, how you deal with stress, that is still something that needs to be worked on. So think of hormones as kind of like the

Ozzie (: 16:59

go ahead. Yeah.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 17:20

crutches that you need when you have like a sprained ankle, right? Hormones are just that. They're just crutches. But at the end of the day, you still have to learn to strengthen your leg, your your foot, in order for you to learn to walk and then eventually run. So if you don't lean on ⁓ the lifestyle stuff and just on the hormones, you're gonna end up always limping the rest of your life.

Andrea (: 17:26

Mm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 17:42

You know, so that's where I when women come, the it's hormones. I'm like, okay. And most of the time it's because they've been on their phone, you know, they've been to the doctors, they've gotten tested, the doctors tell them everything is fine. And I'll I'll touch back into why doctors say that. And then they still have these symptoms. They go to the internet, the the algorithm Reddit, whatever social media thing that they're using, the algorithm feeds them information and suddenly they're knocking on the doors of these HRT companies and asking for hormones. And to your

earlier point of like women in their 30s starting hormones, my concern is like, what are we doing to these women who are in their 30s, who are still in a very robust time of their life where they are normally making hormones? What will happen when their body reverts back to normality? Are we giving them so much hormones that we end up giving them cancer five, 10 years down the road?

Andrea (: 18:19

Mm-hmm. ⁓

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 18:36

Because the function of hormones is really to communicate. And when we go through a lot of stress, some women lose their periods and for good evolutionary reason. Because when we go through a lot of stress and we can't get pregnant, guess what? We save resources for ourselves.

Andrea (: 18:37

Mm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 18:52

There's an evolutionary reason why that happens. Hormones are just the body's way of communicating with us. They're really not there to do anything beyond just communicate. And that's all hormones do. So when your body is presenting symptoms, it's telling you something. The question is: are you listening and do you know how to interpret what it's saying?

Andrea (: 19:06

Yeah.

Ozzie (: 19:13

Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, yes, yes. All clicks. I I and just to to to add to that, you know, for me was taking the hormones and allev alleviating, and I don't think I took it too early, but I maybe I did because I still am getting my period every eight months. But when when I did take it, it did a ⁓ it helped me with a lot of the symptoms that I was having anxiety, night sweats, confusion, right? Fog, foggy brain.

Andrea (: 19:14

Mm-hmm.

Karen Viesta (: 19:15

Yeah.

Ozzie (: 19:43

⁓ and so when when I was able to feel better, I was then able to do the deeper work. And I think we mentioned that in a different episode. It it it it was just it wasn't a crutch for me. It was it was more of a a tool that I used to be able to feel better so that I could go deeper.

Andrea (: 19:51

Mm-hmm.

Karen Viesta (: 20:03

Yeah. And and so I I guess my follow-up question for Serena would be, then do you view hormones as a temporary thing to help women get over that hurdle? Is the goal to get off of them? Because there are some doctors who say you could be taking hormones till the day you die. ⁓ you know, I I've always had kind of an issue with that. So I'm curious what your opinion is about the length of time.

Andrea (: 20:04

Mm.

Great question.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 20:30

So I looked at the data this morning just to kind of like I figured you were gonna ask that question, like is there any is there any of women who are on hormones forever? The truth is there isn't. What we do know is that the risk for certain pathologies increase as we age for some women.

Andrea (: 20:36

Yeah.

Karen Viesta (: 20:36

You know us well.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 20:53

Now, some women, it's not all women, it's just some women. So the general recommendation is that it is an individualized approach if you choose to be on these hormones for life.

Now, with that said, in my years of practice, I've seen horror stories of women starting hormones and then, like, you know, five years later, seven years later, I find out they have cancer, and then their pendulum swings to those. I never ever want to touch those things. And then I have women in their 70s and 80s who are on hormones thriving and having, you know, a good time, and they are completely okay.

Andrea (: 21:04

Mm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 21:26

Now I think what we're doing right now is this giant experiment and we we are a part of the experiment and we won't know until like maybe 20, 30 years down the road. So to answer your question, like you know, should you be on hormones for life, look at your risk factors.

You know, what is your family risk factor? What is your personal health history risk factors? What is really, really important to you? Because when you talk to women who've never touched hormones, after about 10 years of them being done with hormones, they revert back to their normal self. And you talk to women in their 70s, they're like, I'm fine.

Those years of like perimenopause, they're okay. Our body will regulate itself, it will get back to normal again. The brain fog will naturally disappear, even if you don't start hormones. Now, with that said, if perimenopause is only a hormone problem, then all the women on this planet should have the same symptoms. But the reality is they don't. You know, so

Ozzie (: 22:19

Mm-hmm.

Andrea (: 22:20

Mm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 22:21

means that it's a much bigger problem than just a loss of estrogen or a loss of progesterone. There are other factors that we have yet to consider when it comes to symptoms of peramenopause.

Ozzie (: 22:32

Mm-hmm. And Serena, how is it that some cultures don't take hormones and they go through menopause just fine reporting that they don't have symptoms? How? I'm curious if it if it changes culture to culture, country to country. What what what makes the difference?

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 22:52

Our perception of women as we age is what makes a difference, mainly from

Ozzie (: 22:57

Interesting.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 22:58

What I mean is that if we saw women only as sexy young things, but we're unable to transform into wise women, into women of value despite our age, then we see the loss of our youth as tragic. And our body, you know, begins to experience all these intense symptoms. Cause it's like we're aging and there's nothing we can do to stop it the way hairs are gonna grow, our wrinkles are gonna show up, things are just gonna go south, you know, things are gonna dry up, and you know, so we we start to panic and that our stress hormones drive

lot of those symptoms. Now with that said, there is a society in, I think, Yunnan, China, more so society that's predominantly matriarchal. They report of very little, if not any, perimenopause symptoms whatsoever. But they I know.

Ozzie (: 23:43

Hm. I'm moving there.

Karen Viesta (: 23:44

Wow.

Andrea (: 23:46

Mm-hmm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 23:47

They get to make a

majority of decisions in, you know, the society. They have they view the loss of their period as I am no longer going to be responsible for these little children. You know, and I now take a different administrative role in the family. I get to manage finances, I get to decide what happens and so they take a much more active role in the society than in cultures where women are seen only as childbearing creatures.

Andrea (: 24:00

Right.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 24:16

You know, so I think I know. So that's why I'm like here where we are, Americans, we're quite vain in a sense that we want to keep women always young, but we don't see the value of women who age. That's not true. How many women do we have in society that are like incredible and they're not young, they're not childbearing anymore, but they're wonderful additions to our society, but we don't celebrate them. And I think it's we should.

Karen Viesta (: 24:16

So interesting.

Ozzie (: 24:17

So

good.

Andrea (: 24:44

that.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Ozzie (: 24:47

Hundred percent. Okay, Donna's been quiet.

Karen Viesta (: 24:48

Facts.

Ozzie (: 24:50

I dine to hear what Donna's saying.

Dawn Wiggins (: 24:52

Suppression

Karen Viesta (: 24:52

Yeah.

Andrea (: 24:52

Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins (: 24:53

kills, y'all.

Karen Viesta (: 24:53

Me too.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 24:55

Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins (: 24:57

I think this is going to be one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. And obviously it's because Serena and I speak like identical languages, except like, you know, not that we, we compliment anyways, I digress. ⁓ So I am someone who scores very high on the adverse childhood experiences scale.

which I know Serena talks about. ⁓ And so I thought marriage was going to be, at the time, part of that solution. It was gonna get me out of one situation and plopped me into a different situation. But by 27, I had been diagnosed with cluster headaches, which...

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 25:16

Mm.

Andrea (: 25:17

Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins (: 25:32

is really rooted in one of those master glands, the hypothalamus, which starts this cascade of signaling through the body, right? That affects hormones. So in that marriage, I was diagnosed as infertile. I was diagnosed with cluster headaches. I was put on some fertility meds. had certain testing done, but nowhere anywhere did any medical professional discuss.

stress, mental health, the health of my marriage, whether or not there was zero of that. And so then by 30, I was getting divorced, which was just an extension of that early childhood stuff, and ⁓ found functional medicine, and was put on hormone replacement.

in my early thirties because I was already peri-menopausal. was already having hot flashes at night. They paired with the cyclical nature of those headaches, became a chronic cluster headache sufferer, which is even rarer, was put on a boatload of medications to try to stop that pain. But nobody had anything to say about how they happened, why they were happening, how to cure them, none of that. And I did end up becoming pregnant when I was 34, had a very successful.

pregnancy, labor, and delivery, although ⁓ I was a therapist and in therapy through all of this, ⁓ remained highly dissociated. And my child was born highly suppressed and disassociated, right? So A, none of the healthcare circles were talking about any of this and none of the therapists had any of the knowledge about the HPA access or even disassociation to connect all these dots, right?

Andrea (: 26:54

Mm.

Dawn Wiggins (: 27:09

which is why I'm an now trauma therapist turned into a homeopath that links the two, right? Because anyways, so, you know, I was perimetaphyseal in my thirties. I did the hormones. It was something that helped reduce some of my pain or allowed me to function a little better, but it no means cured anything because it's not the cure. And if we look at this, like I wanted the marriage to solve the pain that I had to recover from, right? I had to do the work to connect the dots, to have my own agency, my own

Andrea (: 27:27

Yeah, really.

Ozzie (: 27:31

Mm-hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (: 27:38

empowerment to recover my life. And I think as a people, we're doing the same thing with the medical system now, the one that's covered by insurance, right? Because there's no insurance covered provider that helps me get where I am today. ⁓ And we just want to not have to deal with it. And we've outsourced our empowerment, we've outsourced our agency, and we have to connect those dots and learn. So I am so excited for women here this episode, because you cannot bypass your recovery.

With HRT, it's a tool to Serena's point. And so, you know, in my line of work where people say EMDR therapy didn't work for me to heal my early childhood experiences or brain spotting didn't work or whatever didn't work, it's because of disassociation. And so there's these pieces, right, where we have to give women, we have to give women the tools to be able to thaw, to be able to face, to be able to transmute, to support them with the functional elements to help them.

Andrea (: 28:10

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Ozzie (: 28:11

Mm-hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (: 28:38

get through the work. of course, I say thank God for homeopathy because it was the thing that got on all the way to the root and then helped recover my body from how much medical suppression and ⁓ downstream effects of all the prescriptions over all the years because that was profound to my kidneys and my liver. And even to the women who are trying to supplement their way out of it, Your liver and your kidneys have to process all of that.

Andrea (: 28:51

Mm.

Ozzie (: 29:03

It's right.

Dawn Wiggins (: 29:03

And

if you're already having hot flashes and you're angry and you're having flashbacks and you're heavily supplementing on top of it, probably you're adding more stress to the vessel, right? Yeah. So I am just obsessed with this conversation and hopefully women hearing all the pieces coming together and knowing that there are professionals out there that can see the whole woman and really help navigate and guide.

Andrea (: 29:14

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Ozzie (: 29:14

System. Mm-hmm.

Amen. A woman.

Dawn Wiggins (: 29:33

It's so exciting. Because Serena, you are

Andrea (: 29:34

Yeah. Whew.

Karen Viesta (: 29:35

Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins (: 29:36

probably the practitioner I needed when I was 27, right?

Andrea (: 29:39

Mm-hmm. Oof.

Karen Viesta (: 29:40

Right.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 29:41

And I think

the issue with like our medical system right now is that because insurance runs how it works, doctors are overworked. They don't have the capacity to be curious and to seek answers.

So when I work my, you know, nine to five your regular medicine job, I might I by the end of the day, I'm burnt out. I'm like, I cannot read another medical journal. I just want to sit in front of TV and turn to a potato, right? But in order for us to encourage these incredibly ⁓ intelligent minds to be curious, we have to, in a sense, like give the doctors the liberty to be curious, to go seek answers. Dawn, you did what you did because you had your own experience.

And you knew that the answer wasn't out there. So you started looking for your own answer. Same with me, you know. My experience with the medical community, it helped resolve disease, yes, but it couldn't get me to health. So I had to go and find my own answers. But I hope that that's not the case for everybody out there. That they all end up being in the medical field or in some kind of healing field in order to find their own answers. That would be inefficient.

Andrea (: 30:49

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Wow. That was great, Dawn. Thank you for sharing that. And I love that she can like kind of diagnose you. That's so fun. ⁓

Dawn Wiggins (: 30:59

Do you think, Marina,

that our medical system really helps heal disease or does it suppress disease?

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 31:06

It manages symptoms. I don't know healing disease. It manages symptoms. ⁓ I think it resolves ⁓ quite a bit of like, you know, like if you had a broken leg, I'm definitely going to the ER doctor getting that leg fixed up. If I had a tumor, I'm going to a surgeon, get that cut off right now. And then if I had cancer and I need like incredible therapy, I'm gonna go for that. But a lot of what we experience in terms of diseases is not something that Western medicine is incredibly good at.

Dawn Wiggins (: 31:08

Yes.

Yes, yes.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 31:33

You know, and you use homeopathy, and homeopathy works at the level of emotional health and mental health. So it attacks those areas before it becomes a physical problem. And physical problems where regular medicine lives. Unless I see something, it doesn't exist. Right? So how many are how many of us have walked around for years feeling that something is wrong? There's something going on, and the doctors can't find anything. So we are being gas that we're like, maybe we're crazy.

Ozzie (: 32:00

Mm-hmm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 32:00

Maybe we're the

ones the problem. What do we do? We go online, find a lot of supplements, we start taking them, and then that I heard this is good, that is good. And then we end up with 10 things. We're like, I'm afraid to get off all of them because I think I feel good, but I'm not really sure and to what what's actually happening, their liver is overburdened, they're adding to the problem at this point. And now they're like, I have no idea where to go from here.

Andrea (: 32:01

Mm.

Ozzie (: 32:22

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (: 32:23

You know,

Andrea (: 32:24

Mm-hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (: 32:24

one of

my favorite remedies has been very recently, Serena has been Natrium Sulphuricum, and I'm getting in the weeds here, but it helps pull dampness out of the liver, which would take how many acupuncture sessions, how many, you know, and then maybe, and then herbs on top of it. Like, so I've been pulling dampness out of my liver, which can lead very much to cancer. it's, it's been, I have felt so much lighter lately, like so much.

Andrea (: 32:45

Mm-hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (: 32:53

lighter. The answers are all out there, but we have to elevate the voices, which is what we're doing today. Elevate the voices that have the answers.

Karen Viesta (: 32:56

Yeah.

Andrea (: 32:57

Yeah.

Ozzie (: 33:03

Mm-hmm.

Andrea (: 33:03

Mm, hmm.

Karen Viesta (: 33:04

And and you

know, the other interesting thing is that I think, you know, going back to what you said, Serena, about medical professionals, when I was deep in the throes of perimenopause, my anxiety was through the roof. That was probably my ⁓ primary symptom. As I said, it coincided with a divorce. most of the doctors that I went to, and I went to therapists, you know, acupuncturists, my gynecologists, nobody asked me about.

anything emotional. And I heard a lot of people saying things like, well, you know, it'll pass, you're in perimenopause, or well, this is what happens over 40. Like I just think that women have been this has been sidelined. I mean we just have been consistently sidelined by by the medical community because I think that the perception is just write it out and it will pass.

Nobody is really addressing the deeper issues that you're talking about or or Dawn, you know, what you're talking about. It it just becomes a matter of let's just manage symptoms. So it is interesting, and I'm and I'm thrilled that the conversation is now deepening into, okay, let's manage symptoms, but let's look at what's underneath those symptoms, you know, and and that's w kind of why I asked you the question at the top of the episode, because I do think that's kind of a a theme of this.

Andrea (: 34:24

Mm-hmm.

Ozzie (: 34:24

A hundred percent.

Karen Viesta (: 34:33

conversation that that I just don't see when I go to my doctor, you know, my my Western medicine doctors.

Ozzie (: 34:40

No, you're not hearing these conversations very very many places.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 34:40

I I think right. And I

I also think we're kind of expecting our doctor to have the answer. You know, and what I tell my patients, I'm like, look, your doctor is there to identify disease. If disease has not been identified, their job is done. Quotation mark done. Right. However, that doesn't mean that your symptoms are not real. It's just that there is no name with the symptoms. And so we're hoping that the medical community can transform to meet our needs. But

Andrea (: 34:58

Mm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 35:10

You're trying to transform a system that is huge.

You know, and I don't know if that's the best way versus if we created our own wise women community that we can actually go to for answers so that we can talk about some of these things. Because what you went through when you went for anxiety, ⁓ when you had anxiety while you're going through a divorce, that's a very healthy experience for you to have while you're going through divorce. That is a very natural emotional response while you're going through divorce. And yes, it's gonna be hard, however, you know, if your symptoms.

Are severe enough, I'd be like, hey, if you're not sleeping, it's been like five days, you can't go to work. I'm like, then I would manage your symptoms, quotation, not like medication. However, if you told me, hey, I'm going through a divorce, I'm having a lot of anxiety, I'm like, that sounds like a really hard thing that you're going through. And it sounds like, you know, it's something that you loved and treasured, and it's no longer new going to be there. It sounds like it's something that's very natural for you to experience. What can we do to give you the support that you need?

Andrea (: 36:11

Mm. Yeah.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 36:11

Perhaps that's all

you needed to hear was just that, ⁓ this is normal. You know, ⁓ I do need to lean on my community. You know, and sometimes as practitioners, as doctors, right, we our job is like we're so trained to like patient comes in with symptoms, I need to leave have them leave with a pill. But sometimes the solution isn't a pill. The solution is letting them, hey, I heard you. That must suck. Here are the resources you can use. I know this person who can help you out with that.

Dawn Wiggins (: 36:14

Cheers.

Karen Viesta (: 36:16

Right, right.

Ozzie (: 36:28

Mm-hmm.

Andrea (: 36:33

Mm-hmm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 36:38

They don't need to go to a pharmacy for for that. They can just decide, hey, you know what, I'm gonna call my best friend every Friday night. She's gonna check in on me just because I need to lean on that right now.

Ozzie (: 36:39

Exactly.

Karen Viesta (: 36:41

Right. Yeah.

Andrea (: 36:47

Mm-hmm.

Ozzie (: 36:49

Mm-hmm. And by the way, this didn't used to be this way. Women were in community and villages and you know, they foraged for herbs and plants. They use earth to heal. They help you know, w this wasn't this way. And it saddens me that we're where we are today in the ⁓ with so much technology and so much ability to expand and yet we're going backwards and not really.

Andrea (: 37:11

Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins (: 37:16

Well, I know, but we've been persecuting

Andrea (: 37:17

Mm.

Dawn Wiggins (: 37:18

air quotes heavy on the air quotes here, witches for generations. Like, this isn't new.

Ozzie (: 37:21

Right.

Karen Viesta (: 37:22

You're right.

Ozzie (: 37:26

But not all but I don't think there I think there was a time where the the he the the the the wise healing like the healers were not called witches. I don't think they the that the healers always were called witches, were they?

Andrea (: 37:27

Yeah.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 37:39

I mean their grandmothers sometimes, right? Sometimes our grandmothers make us soups and teas and soup and holds us and you know, like taps us and you know, I mean sometimes the healing is not always an herb. Sometimes it's just your grandmother being there for you, say, Hey girl, I you. You know

Ozzie (: 37:42

Yeah. Right.

Andrea (: 37:46

Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins (: 37:53

Heart, heart.

Ozzie (: 37:55

Right. Cause I have to

you have to think of like, you know, in the Jewish tradition, you know, the the mu the the s the the the chicken soup, the the this the soup for the soul, right? When you hear this the is it really the soup or is it actually cause it reminds you of this love that you feel and you right and your body now is experiencing this love and warmth and care that you craved for so long when you were a a s a small child that didn't have it.

Right. And then that makes you feel better. There's something to that. We have to start to pay attention to that. And and I I I I d I I am so happy that we're having this conversation.

Dawn Wiggins (: 38:26

Absolutely.

Andrea (: 38:31

Mm-hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (: 38:31

Well,

EMDR therapy or internal family systems therapy, they're integrative approaches. What do I mean by that? They're when we travel back in time, right? Like in our mind's eye. And we look for those resources. How often in an EMDR session am I asking someone to go look for who were the people that loved and supported you, who you felt unconditionally accepted by in your past? And then we help integrate that felt sense of love and support into your present day therapeutic process. And then all of a sudden something shifts or clicks.

Ozzie (: 38:51

Yeah. Uh-huh.

Dawn Wiggins (: 39:01

and you're able to release something, right? But that's that integrative, absolutely, compliment of the nutrition in the soup with the unconditional love and support of, yeah, whoever that person's love was, yeah.

Andrea (: 39:11

Mm.

Ozzie (: 39:15

Mm-hmm.

Andrea (: 39:16

Mm. So good. And I actually

Dawn Wiggins (: 39:17

And it's never gonna be one

Ozzie (: 39:17

Dawn't do

Dawn Wiggins (: 39:18

or the other. It's always gonna be the compliment.

Karen Viesta (: 39:20

Yeah.

Ozzie (: 39:23

And Dawn do you think that that that when you're doing when you're taking your patience back there ⁓ to that felt sense of love, do you feel that that that also works for people who are disassociated, that that that's something that could click for them as well? Or is that harder to tap into with them?

Andrea (: 39:23

Mm.

Dawn Wiggins (: 39:45

It worked a little bit for me. Like it didn't not work at all, but it only got me like before homeopathy, I could only get so far and I would relapse and relapse and relapse. And I think that has a little bit to do with, I know Serena talks about this too, inherited traumas, right? I think I got a heavy dose of inherited energetic, energetics, A. And B, I also think certain personalities.

and homeopathy, like it would call it like the phosphoric personality, the person who tends to be more open hearted, more warm, more, more porous energetically. And at the core, I think I am she and I think I absorbed so much stuff that got in me. How many times did I go with this massive open heart to these very dangerous, scary situations, and then eventually just had to turn that off and then having cluster headaches had to go numb sort of because of that too, right? It was like just one thing after another that reinforced and reinforced and reinforced.

So I believe in EMDR and IFS very much, but I also want people to know that if those things don't work for you, that doesn't mean you're permanently damaged. And it doesn't mean there's not further tools that can get you there. So I think it helps a little. You know, yoga, I was a huge proponent of yoga, chiropractic, acupuncture, all, I did all of this and they all helped to an extent, but it's like there were vaults of things locked. Yeah.

Andrea (: 41:08

What a great conversation. Yeah. Very, very good. And before we move on to kind of give more insight to Serena, I do have a really quick question. And it kind of pertains to what Karen was asking about, you know, how long we do take the hormone therapy, you know, patch or whatever supplements we're taking for it. Because we talk a lot about peramenopause and menopause, but we don't often talk a lot about postmenopause. And I feel like there's some like a little confusion or or maybe naivety on my side of.

Ozzie (: 41:10

Good analogy.

Andrea (: 41:38

I'm thinking when I'm out of menopause, whew, I'm done. But no, because why would we have that question of do we need to stay on this for the rest of our lives? Right. So what happens when we get to that point? We've gone through the menopause, which is only a 12-month period, correct period, frame of time. Let me change that. And then the postmenopause, you're still having a lot of the same symptoms. Am I correct in that?

Ozzie (: 41:42

Mm-hmm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 42:06

So

Dawn Wiggins (: 42:06

can't wait to hear your

answer.

Andrea (: 42:08

Ha ha ha

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 42:10

definition is the absence of period for twelve months, but nobody ever thinks that's gonna be my last period. Right? Oftentimes when I ask women when's your last period, they're like, and then they start to think, then they start to count. They're like, ⁓ it was a year ago.

Andrea (: 42:17

Yeah.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 42:23

You know, it was eight months ago, or it was whatever, right? So by definition, menopause is the absence of period. But we used your period as the definition of menopause, where where menopause is not just about the loss of period, it's also about the hormonal changes that happen to us metabolically in our brains and our gut, everything. You know, so to what you're saying, like, well, my hormones are gone, like I'm not having a period anymore. Why am I still having these symptoms? Well.

So we come to discover that ovaries are not the only organs that make hormones. In fact, our gut makes hormones, our adrenal glands make hormones, our fatty tissue makes hormones, our brain makes its own estrogen hormones. So all our different body parts make its own hormones. And I believe that we haven't looked into how it all affects our health because we can't measure them.

Ozzie (: 43:00

Mm-hmm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 43:17

The only way the scientists have like looked into how much hormones are produced is when you get a biopsy. So when you stick a needle in your brain, we don't want to do that too often because you can't keep sticking needle into your brain to see how much estrogen you have in your brain. We get to do that in cadaverse. You know, same thing with other peripheral tissue. Our peripheral tissue continue to make estrogen hormones. So now we're gonna ask, you know, if we're having these fluctuating symptoms, is it sex hormones, estrogen progesterone, or is it other hormones that we are not talking about, insulin?

Is it inflammatory factor? So, you know, and I think it you're missing the picture when we think of perimenopauses only as a hormone problem when it's like a revamp of a whole system. Does that make sense?

Andrea (: 44:01

Mm. Nice.

Dawn Wiggins (: 44:01

Right, the missing pieces

like the glands, I don't want to boil it down to a piece, right? But like, how is your pituitary? How is your hypothalamus? How are your adrenals? How are you right? Like how is your thyroid? How is your parathyroid? How it's like all of the how are your glands? How is your liver? Because if you're still having the hot flashes and the things it's like your liver is clogged. So it's like how are your glands and your organs?

Right, kidneys are often deficient when adrenals are deficient, because they're like best friends in the body. So how is the health of those glands and those organs? And that's what you're causing, calling, postmenopausal or whatever symptoms, but it's, All this other stuff. Yeah.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 44:41

It's everything else. Yeah. It's

not just the ovaries. We've simplified it for the sake of explaining it to the mass public. But it's much more complicated than that. And thank God for that, because if we didn't have these fail-safe systems, you know, when our hormones drop, we would just kaput. You know, but luckily we have these fail-safe systems in the in working behind the scenes that continue to have things happen even when our ovaries are no longer producing excessive amounts of like estrogen.

Ozzie (: 45:10

So what can we expect in post menopause?

Andrea (: 45:11

Mm-hmm.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 45:14

It depends. If you're on HRT, it's a lot more confusing because we don't know when you actually menopause because you're s some of the women are still having period. You know, but if you're not on hormones, from what I have, you know, seen is that most women do experience their brain comes back, their gut normalizes, their sleep normalizes to a certain extent. And I say that because they all wake up at three or four in the morning.

Karen Viesta (: 45:41

I well know.

Ozzie (: 45:43

Yep. Yep, I know those mornings.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 45:44

Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins (: 45:44

here in

the remedy you and I have most recently been discussing is a liver remedy. It's a liver, it's a pelvic liver remedy, right? And so yes, it's like when the body hits those walls of its capacity to detox itself at night in our sleep, right? And we're still over functioning, you know, yeah, it's like, again, post-menopausal, it's like, well, how are we living still though? Like, how?

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 46:08

Yeah, I don't

I mean as Western Trump, like we don't know enough about the liver ⁓ be beyond like

it's elevated because you drank too much alcohol, you have hepatitis. You know, but there are these subtleties in the liver that we as Western trained don't really understand. Versus if you're Eastern trained, there's a lot more emphasis in this giant organ as well as your screen in understanding health. But in Western medicine, we're just looking at disease. And so you're asking your Western doctor who's trained in only disease to look for the subtleties in health. I don't think that's fair.

Andrea (: 46:45

Mm.

Dawn Wiggins (: 46:45

Because they look at the

body like a car, right? You go to the hormone specialist for hormones, you go to the sleep specialist for sleep, you go to, right, but it's all connected. And so when you treat the body like a car, like the tire has nothing to do with the engine, has nothing to do with it, but that's not how the body is. And so.

erena Teddy PA-C, MS RD FMCP (: 46:48

Really not?

Yeah. And so that's where we're in the problem that we are in.

Andrea (: 47:08

So it sounds to me like it should just be called perimenopause, menopause, and you're not done yet, menopause.

Karen Viesta (: 47:14

Ha