Brain Changes in Menopause That You Need to Know About

Introduction to the Summit Guest 0:00

Hello, hello. Welcome back to mess during the Menopause Transition Summit. I'm your host, doctor Sharon Stills, and we are about to have a fascinating conversation, one that I almost can guarantee you've probably not heard about before. So grab a cup of tea if you're at home or if you're driving, just pay attention. You can always re listen to it and take notes later, but we are going to learn some really fascinating things to just kind of open up the way you think about your breath and your hormones and your brain.

And we are going to do this with my very special guest, Doctor Chang. Run. And he is the founder and physician at Texas Center for Lifestyle Medicine. And he's responsible for the creation of a learning program for patients, WW article and university.com, which is Texas Center for Lifestyle Medicine University, which he launched during the global pandemic when there was decreased access to medical services and it took off like wildfire. His passion is to bring integrative health to the public by offering lifestyle medicine services that is covered by medical insurance.

His focus is brain and mental health, and he's been featured in multiple media outlets such as Forbes. And now he's being featured here with us at our summit. So welcome to the summit. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you. I'm so excited to talk about this. And it's not often talked about, and for me, it's even discuss about what we're going to talk about is just absolutely fantastic. So let's get started. Yes, yes. So just tell us a little bit about you first and how you got into doing what you're doing in such unique medicine.

Yeah. So, you know, my mother is an acupuncturist. My father is in the sciences, in the field of cardiology, oncology. So I kind of had, like, the scientific role in the holistic world all wrapped up in one for pretty much my entire life. So it wasn't necessarily a departure from the norm for me.

How Lifestyle Medicine Connects to Hormones 2:12

And so in starting Texas Center for Lifestyle Medicine really wanted to get access of really valuable, great information from the holistic community and then inject it into, you know, what we like to call conventional medicine in the conventional insurance model, and then see how that actually marries. And it wasn't the easiest road in the world, but it's certainly a successful one now and then when the pandemic hit, I realized that a lot of people are really just craving for knowledge, you know?

There's a lot of uncertainty in the world. So we decided to create some, certainty by launching a TKM university, which is, which has been doing fabulous, I love that, I love that. So we are going to talk about the brain and breath and hormone. So tell us what, tell us sort of. Absolutely. So I can't tell you how many times, you know, people come to the office and they're like, hey, my hormones are out of whack. But then, what they don't realize is I'm very judgy. So, whenever I walk in, I'm seeing them.

If they're turning around to greet me, if they're doing, like, the whole body turn of their necks, it's kind of fixed in one place. I'm seeing, though, what their breeding patterns are. So a lot of the anatomy of a human that's seen maybe when you go to a chiropractor's office or orthopedic surgeons office, I tie that into, hormonal balance. And part of the reason is that the human body is incredible. I mean, like, we create hormones for a specific purpose. So someone's, for example, perpetually traumatized about something like PTSD since our hormonal regulatory systems will be able to accommodate for that.

But when it happens over a long period of time, it no longer serves us right. Or if someone has chronic pain and they have chronic, neck issues and they can't really turn very well, then guess what? A lot of times their salary uniforms, will be very, very different than if they weren't in pain. So a lot of things that that we, you know, to see as these sort of hormonal things, they're not necessarily mysterious, they're just a little more to be observed. And then lastly, the the entire human skull.

You know, sometimes I see how people are moving, to see, a lot of times people are holding their head like this when they're talking to me, and they have hormonal issues and kind of rubbing their TMJ. It's probably they're grinding and they have an entire night time of just a lot of stress here that affects all the balance. So a lot of times I just take a pause, like before we even get into like the hormones part. Let's talk about what I'm seeing here. You know, are you in any pain? Are you any stress.

Like what is what is your life like? You know, and so, I think it's, it's the conversation that's left out the most, in my experience, for a lot of people. But it is my favorite part of the conversation. So let's, let's drill down a little. So what does that mean? If the neck is is out of balance or out of alignment, how does that affect the hormones? And is it all the hormones? Are there specific hormones for specific pain patterns? Sure. The easiest way to describe this is to talk about the two main control switch hormones in the body.

You have melatonin, which we know that's supposed to be excreted before sleeping. And then you have cortisol, which is increased or melatonin decreased or supposed to be. And so that's during the daytime. And there's usually a nice beautiful curve. So when we test patients if they're not stressed out or have any other issues right. And so the melatonin, even though it's a hormone, it's also a huge trigger to, balance other things that are going on. For example, most people don't know that melatonin actually prevents acid reflux because the melatonin that your brain excretes goes to the lower esophagus and helps constrict the lower social sphincter.

So acid reflux back. So when you're laying down a night time, you're in deep sleep you don't wake up with as reflux. That's what a lot of people don't get a lot of deep sleep. They wake up with reflux that can happen in sleep apnea and stuff like that. And that completely, wrecks your day night cycle. So a lot of times that melatonin balance is depleted during the night time, which is a lot of people. And by the time the daytime hits, the adrenals are just starting out cortisol. And then if you're fatigued by one, two, 3 p.m.

right. And so that, that, that entire balance is based on our entire physiology, what we deal with throughout the day. So whether it's psychological stress or a physical stressors in this day

Neck Tension, Stress, and Hormonal Balance 6:48

and age, there's so many people who are like, you know, taking the phone and doing this and, and a lot of posture issues, especially, when people are kind of stuck at home during the pandemic and their work and, and stuff like that, which is why I'm on a standing desk right now. I'm trying to talk straight. And so, a lot of postures, issues actually create a lot of tension, especially for the neck areas, the fascia, which the covering of the muscle on the outside right here. And there's a lot of nerve endings that are right here. Right.

And your neck is kind of important because if someone cut off your head, you're not going to be alive, right? Or someone cut off your wrist. You can still be alive. So you have a lot of structures. Protect this entire area. So a lot of times, you know, I can tell that people have, a lot of tension between this muscle. And for those of you listening on audio, I'm falling between the, the bottom part of my jaw to the top of my clavicle right here. You know, the sternocleidomastoid, you have the into scalene.

So you have a lot of structures that are buttressing the neck right there. And when those area becomes tense, it's like your body's bracing for impact. So naturally, your adrenals are like, yeah, okay, you're about to, like, ram into a wall. That fight or flight response. Right? But what happens when you don't sleep on a good pillow, or you having to stay off of a mattress and stuff like that? Your body kind of goes to the same thing. So progesterone and melatonin and start being depleted during the night time, which is not supposed to be in cortisol, goes up.

And so, you know, even before we even get into the hormone balance area, it's a lot of biologist's observations of what people are actually doing as they actually walk into the office. And a lot of times we'll have some major, issues with the male stars or orthopedic issues that they don't perceive to be an issue because they probably dealt with it for 30 years. You know, I know I always I was a massage therapist before I became a physician. And so I have such an appreciation for the physical body, for chiropractic, for, for and a lot of women listening think probably, oh, I do that once a year on my birthday for treat or my anniversary, but I'm always preaching.

So I love that you're preaching that too, that this is medicine. And we it's not a special treat to get a massage. It's okay to get a massage regularly. Your physical structure. Exactly. And massage is, you know, my mom's the acupuncturist, so everything's about the muscle in the mile fast. Even massage therapy. It's it's not, you know, and I hate it when people kind of treat it like an optional thing sometimes, when in reality, it really is like something that affects the quality of life. Like big time, you know, big time.

And so, so if I were to. And we've done this before in our practice, and we used to do a lot of this and not much so much anymore. But what we do, we just want to look at what people's, hormonal balances are in different physiologies. So, usually a saliva test, and we find that those people who undergo in, like, you know, seven days straight of acupuncture or massage therapy, if you look at their, hormonal balance curves, they look completely different from one week to the next. And that's not surprising because that really, really that a lot of the the sense of that piece, in the sense of that the hormonal balance really relies on what our body's going through, you know, physically.

And so, and, you know, during the pandemic, actually, and this is humorous for me. But it's not that humorous, I guess, is they talk about how a lot of, like, military veterans, with PTSD, there's a huge association of the 86% association with low testosterone. And you see on the news, it's like it's it's low testosterone. Really, the cause of PTSD. I'm like, well, may maybe the other way around with the trauma causes decreased production of the reproductive hormones. So in woman, you look at progesterone as one of them.

And men is progesterone and testosterone. Right. And so, even men go through something like this and the, the brains physiology of a man, when they have hormonal balance like that mimics a menopausal women. And so and so we so in our facility we look at the quantitative EEG, which is looking at electrical signals of the brain. And I can actually tell, that's a lot of people going through a lot of stressors. And then of course, they look like men with PTSD and vice versa. And so that's where the similarities come in.

I'm like, okay, you know what? Let's talk about, you know, psychological and physical trauma as a primary function. First that affects balance. And let's address that and believe it or not, I'm really proud to say my facility, we're really able to tease out stories that's never been told. Especially like rape, sexual violence, even from spouses. And that's never really been told to, not just any doctor, but any human as well. And so once we're able to cultivate sort of that, that, that trust and bond is no longer becomes like a hormonal issue.

You know, let's talk about the actual trauma. And we have one body medicine expert in our, in our facility that does that as well. And so that's something that I honor as like the foundational before we get into like a lot of the technical jargons of hormones and stuff like that, I love that I always say that our, our physical symptoms start out here. They start in the emotions. And then if they're not attended to like, severe trauma like that, they come into the body so the body can start screaming, because then perhaps we'll pay attention when we're in physical pain.

So that's that's powerful work. You guys are, are doing there and showing the connection. And so brain changes during us. What do you see? What can women do about it. Sure, sure. Let's talk about that for a second. So menopause is something that women's goes through. Obviously you know my wife's an observation.

Menopause, Brain Changes, and Mood 12:40

So we talk about this pretty much all the time. So menopause changes occur and there's physiologic changes. And then there are, things that can move the needle on how severe they are. Right. So we know during menopause that, sex hormone production actually decreases, but most people get symptomatic by the speed at which they decrease. Not necessarily the total amounts. So the, the percent drop over time of like progesterone, for example, creating hot flashes, etc.. Right now, why is this important?

This is important because the things that affects the speed of those changes are also the stressors in our lives. And even like some people are looking at the television screen or the computer screen right now, the a lot of the blue light can actually suppress, hormonal, regulation. And so there's a lot of external things that are there that affect it as well. And so let's talk about what the brain goes through. So the brain can actually sense that there is decreased, hormonal production. And the brain itself has its own hormonal regulators as well.

So there's a cause and effect and a big cycle the brain goes through. So as a human brain goes sort of into that menopausal state, the there's different areas that get highlighted. And we call this power the frequency ratio. And in, an EEG and these areas correlate with the fight or flight centers, of the brain. And so a lot of times we're seeing, the, the, the anatomy and the functionality of the brain being very similar to, someone somewhat like an aggressive male, for example. Right. And so part of the reason is because of the downshift in that hormonal cycle pathway.

Now, that sounds really science. If you want to make it super simple for people, understand as hormones go down, the human brain doesn't matter what gender becomes very similar, the risk for memory loss and dementia and anxiety and depression all go up. After that time, regardless of the gender. And we're seeing that for heart disease and other factors as well, but specifically focusing on the brain, it's because a lot of the hormones, that allow women to reproduce actually protects the brain. During, before the time of menopause.

And as it protects it, it's losing its protective mechanism. So whatever assault the brain's been going under all these years, they tend to accumulate, and they show up during this menopausal time. And so that can be scary for a lot of women, because a lot of women feel like, oh, this is, you know, abnormal or this is something that's really shameful and it's really not, which is that address really was the underlying cause, right? A lot of times I hear in my clinic about I just don't feel like me.

I don't know who I am. I'm not funding the right way. I'm I'm just I don't recognize myself is very, very common. So that's kind of explaining explaining why. And so these root causes of so the hormones are dropping. What else is playing a role in these brain changes and these mood changes. And, and what are some mind body hacks that we can do to change it. Sure, sure. There's a lot of speakers on this, some summit that's covering other things, but I'm going to try to tackle that. Some of the, some of the things that aren't really talked about very much in terms of root causes.

So if you're someone who suffers from, like chronic seasonal allergies or just chronic allergies in general, a lot of nasal, stuffy nose, that's a huge impact for hormonal balance, you know, like, well, why? A lot of things that affect breathing, affects our, our hormone balance. So all mammals, not just humans, we're all mammals have these beautiful little cavern structures right next to the nose. And, it's called the nasal sinuses. So paro means next to. And nasal means the nasal. So right next to the nose, again, you have these two caverns, and they're called sinuses sinuses.

And the nasal sinuses have receptors. And these receptors sense a lot of different things. But they're able to sense the velocity of air going through and the pressure within the sinuses. And so people can sometimes have those areas plugged up and they can have sinus headaches and migraines and stuff like that. We understand that. But what happens is over time, the more plugged up this area is, the less, production of a very, very important substance in our body called nitric oxide. Becomes a nitric oxide is required to deliver blood flow and oxygen to all parts of our body.

Right. And so, as the nitric oxide starts being depleted, blood pressure starts going up, blood sugar start going up. People are having metabolic issues before starting getting that belly fat right. People can start developing fatty liver issues. So these are from decreased nitric oxide. And a lot of times it may be from impaired breathing. So a lot of people who suffer from like environmental toxins maybe they have black mold in their house. Maybe they have a lot of, volatile organic chemicals that are kind of roaming around and they're being really affected, and it's causing a lot of brain fog.

Well, it really affects the way that our, our, hormones are as well. And so looking at the root cause, maybe looking at root causes of what's causing those congestion issues and whatnot, you know, we're in Houston, Texas, and there's mold everywhere in Houston, Texas, the floods every other month. Right. And so, you know, there's there's there's black mold, 86% of the buildings, you know, and in Houston. So they're everywhere. But the mold or the other things aren't necessarily the culprits.

Breathing, Nitric Oxide, and Sinus Health 18:38

The fact a lot of people can't tolerate it is because, of these sort of plugged up sinuses. Right now, some people have smaller calibers than other people. And it's funny because my dental friends actually told me that because when they do cone x rays, they can see some people have really underdeveloped sinus cavities. And those are the people that get more predisposed to things like brain fog, especially during the middle pause or even have early menopause, because of those issues as well. So the so there's ways there's actually ways to improve that.

There's a book that that's out now called Breath by James Nestor. He was really made famous by Joe Rogan, was on the Joe Rogan Podcast for 2.5 hours talking about breathing. But there are ways and there's different breathing mechanisms, from box breathing to Wim Hof. Breathing is several different things that you can actually improve your hormonal balance literally within a few seconds. Right. And this is the best example, how we know that some people, when they when they take deep breaths in and out, they feel like they're going to pass out.

Right? So and then their face gets a little flushed. That's nitric oxide. Nitric acid is being produced. Blood pressure's dropping. Their face is getting flushed. That's literally through a different nasal breathing techniques. And then the of the body goes up, which means the acid, balance of the body goes down. And so as acid goes down, cuz temporarily goes up here, you can experience, different, effects on the brain. And practicing this actually significantly increases the way that we produce melatonin at nighttime.

To allow that that circadian cycle allowed the balance of our day night cycle to as really the master hormone switches. So if you guys are wondering what that looks like, go ahead. Beatclub university.com. Midway down, if you scroll down, there's something called mind sculpting master workshop where Jenny, my mind body medicine practitioner, and I and my other health coach, Jillian, we walk people through this entire process, and I kind of tie together, much more than I can in this short segment interview with you, can you give us a short breathing exercise so that we could we could all do together?

Yeah. So I won't actually do the exercise, but I'll kind of explain. And, this is something that I did on stage recently, so that's kind of fun. So, instead of just doing a breathing exercise because everyone's different, we're going to do kind of a check in, and the check in is to see what. How, are you breathing right now? And so one of the things I encourage people to do is, either go on Amazon and buy some melt in your mouth shut and literally just walk around at a brisk walk, for about five minutes.

If you're if you feel like you're struggling to breathe, what's about, one 1 in 4 humans have the issue. If you like, really struggling and you really have to rip that tape off, then what's happening is you're probably and you probably do, mouth breathing at nighttime. So the idea is to do the mouth taping and build up that stamina over time as you take, breaths into the nose, the internal structures over months will start slowly to dilate. You move, memories will start, decrease in thickness over time.

So that's one of the easiest things to do. And what you'll notice now is that melting is a huge phenomena. Right now you have a lot of people at the park. You'll see them have a clear tape right here. And these are marathon runners. They'll start jogging. They'll start training them to increase their natural gas delivery. A second thing I highly recommend, is to also start with box breathing. And box breathing is quite simple. So what you want to do is you want to start, taking a deep breath. So four seconds, inhale four seconds.

Hold for seconds. Exhale four seconds out. Now some people can't do four seconds. It's almost impossible for them to do that. Start, slower and start a, lower number of seconds. And so that's able to help you kind of gauge where you are right now. And then the third, then the last thing I really, want people to understand is that most people who, tend to have a lot of the nasal obstruction also have a lot of neck tension right here. They have, pain, especially around the brows or the temples or both.

And even just behind here, these are called trigger points. And these are the anchor points of the fascia. And so some people tend to, look like this. And three guys are who are listening on audio. I'm just wrinkling my brows. And a lot of times they're in my office and they're just like wrinkling their brows the whole time. They're trying to hold tension right here. That's actually an airway issue, you know? And so, but be aware of that and start doing some meditative relaxation, deep breathing exercises, even ten deep breaths will help a lot.

And when I say breaths, take belly breaths. You know, this is my message to women. It is okay to expand your belly, during breathing. A lot of people, a lot of women just tend to, like, hold it in. Men do the same thing as well. But as you breathe in, make sure your belly expands. It's not like you're not doing this huge chest rise, right? You're doing a whole, whole soft belly breath, which you want to allow the belly to expand that, that draws air into the lower part of your lungs as well. And so those are my my main things that I try to teach our patients.

But of course, our, our breathing classes are far more intricate than that. Yeah. Fantastic. I, I always say breath is the best medicine. So these are some good little, little pieces of medicine that can really shift. And so, can you just connect so the nasal passages and the breathing, is that affecting your estrogen. Is it affecting your progesterone? What exactly is happening there? Sure. Let's let's go back to that for a second. So the the breathing mechanism, is activating nitric oxide. And nitric oxide affects, your hormonal balance, whether it's cortisol or melatonin, which in turn affects all hormones.

So thyroid progesterone is again pregnant alone etc., etc.. Right. And so so what's happening is that the, the breath allows the body to be in some sort of physiologic state. If there's impairment and breathing, the body will naturally want to be like armed to fight, right? Naturally wants to be, allowing the body to go into that fight or flight state. And so that doesn't feel very good for most people. For most people, they're always feeling on alert. They're always have this sort of baseline anxiousness, especially around menopause.

And they're like, what's going on? Right. And so, the connection is very simple that, you know, and let's talk about Chinese medicine for a second. We'll switch gears. So in Chinese medicine, you know, we have this concept of cheat. So G most people think it means energy actually does not. So let's, let's for right now translate energy or qi into, breath or flow of air. Right. And so what's happening is, is, you initiate the flow of energy into the body through nasal breathing. And then, mechanisms such as, like taichi or qigong are mechanisms that you can allow the delivery through circular and nonlinear movements of the body.

That's why a lot of people to tai chi to allow that delivery of, this, this cheat to the body. So what's happening here is that is a natural gas dependent mechanism that is a hormonal dependent mechanism, such as estrogen and progesterone, and that is a mechanism that, with without the actual mechanism there. This is how most chronic disease states develop from, you know,

Practical Breathing Exercises and Airway Support 26:48

from a lot of menopausal symptoms all the way to Alzheimer's, dementia. That's exactly how that develops. That's impairment of their system. And so, if we were and by the way, during Covid, this is where we're the best part is during Covid, a lot of, people are starting to realize that the nasal microbiome, which is affected by the flow velocity into the nose, the nasal microbiome, or the bacteria within, the middle are just below the middle, turbulent. There are specific species that correlate with how well people do with Covid, and those species are determined by the amount of airflow velocity into the sinuses, believe it or not.

Right. And so we know that yes, there's a gut microbiome, which is the the the bacteria that's really assisting with the digestion and the gut and healing the gut. There's oral microbiome like in the periodontal areas, the teeth areas, the gums. And there's the there's the nasal microbiome. All three are just as important for that balance. And my good friend Felice Gersh, which you interviewed on another course on this summit. And she talks about the Esther biome. The Esther biome is basically the gut bacteria that allows the metabolites of estrogen to come through.

Well, now we're discovering a lot of those organisms also in the nasal sinuses. And then also the, the other sinuses that are, there as well as well as the oral cavity. So this is new science. And I think that studying Covid really allows us to figure out why, coronavirus is causing a lot of these hormonal symptoms. They were causing irregular cycles in cycling. Females were causing significant metal puzzles symptoms. Right. And, and we now understand that that is a it's basically a mechanism that disallows a lot of breath to regulate what's supposed to flow through.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. The a struggle. I, we also had a great talk on here with Doctor Carrie Jones and we, we really we dug deep I think, yeah, yeah. So melatonin. I love what you shared about melatonin and acid reflux. And so if women are listening in, they're like, oh, I have acid reflux. How do you recommend they look into their melatonin and can, you know, they can get it over the counter? Do you recommend they just go out and try some or how do you what's your viewpoint on that? Unfortunately you take melatonin.

It doesn't necessarily have the same effect as when your brain produces it. It has some of the effects. But, you know, melatonin dosing is completely individualized. Some people will take half a milligram, some people take ten milligrams. It's the same thing. But when I say melatonin, it's not necessarily stuff on the counters, the stuff that your brain produces, to induce sleep. So, let's say you have someone has acid reflux at nighttime. What's complete impair sleep? And when you impair sleep, you inferior hormonal balance.

Right. We know that when you take your eating window and, and your daily eating, when there's sunlight and after sundown, there's no eating. So we call circadian rhythm diet or security and rhythm fasting. That actually helps the melatonin, increase the night nighttime and even just shifting that eating window like the next night, you may not have the issue. Another thing is pain. So a lot of times if you're not, you know, a good pillow or comfortable position in bed, we are side sleeper, but your pillow doesn't support side sleeping.

Well, that pain can actually knock you out of deep sleep and actually get acid reflux from that as well. A lot of women also have undiagnosed sleep apnea, and 1 in 4 humans have some sort of upper airway resistance. About half those humans tend to have sleep apnea is, and women don't have to snore to have sleep apnea. And in fact, most women don't snore, to have sleep apnea. And that's really heavily underdiagnosed. And so we might want to seek out medical attention for, for that as well. And, in the, in the last thing to kind of put it out there is, the, the, the thing with the melatonin is that if you are trying to go to sleep and your brain is thinking about something or maybe it's traumatic event, you're, you're that by your brain thinking about it, it can't really tell the difference between reality and what you thoughts are.

So your cortisol is naturally high. No matter how much melatonin you take, it's really hard to suppress that cortisol. And so this is why I tell people to go into sort of the mindfulness meditative states, you know, listen to some binaural beats or something to calm yourself down. And that's far more effective and try and take, you know, melatonin and, a lot of women listening to this, if you are taking sleep, medicine and sleep aids and, and your brain's not ready to go to sleep, meaning that it's still sensing a lot of stress that are really there.

Where you don't realize is that even though you're inducing sleep, your brain actually doesn't necessarily go into deep sleep, so it doesn't get some restorative sleep. So when we wake up the next morning is still feels like super laggy. That happens with most of the sleep aids that are out there, including supplements. As well. So supplements and pharmaceuticals. So I can't tell you how important it is to take time for yourself. You know, at least once a week, go into that de-stressing mode, get a massage, do something for yourself.

And that has a huge implication on on hormonal balance. And I've been saying it all through the summit. Stress is the root cause, or 99.99999% of everything. And so here we're talking about I love that you're bringing in the physical stress. And even from the pillow you're using, do you have any pillow tips? You know, how does someone know if they have the right pillow? That is a good question. Well, first of all, you'll know the next morning and then keep trying and keep trying different things as well.

That's really honestly, it's a really good idea to go and see, like a chiropractor, that you really trust,

Melatonin, Sleep, and Acid Reflux 33:08

a physical therapist who knows about pillows. And even if you have to get something custom like, go ahead and do it. And then if you go into specialty like match stores, they'll have a lot of pillows for you to try to figure out what's best for you. Like, do not settle on a. Yeah, I think this kind of feels good. I'm gonna, you know, take care of it. Most of the, commercial companies that make these pillows right now have, like, a 30 or 90 day trial with no risk, for these pillows. So go ahead and explore those options as well.

And statistically speaking, 50% of you listening to this, have neck issues because your pillow. So that's a big number. So go ahead and, and seek those professionals out. So are you a fan of regular chiropractic adjustments? Well, it depends. So the the the so having a good chiropractor on your team is exceptionally important, right? Someone you trust. Right. And there's a lot of people who may not jive with the current practices. Just like any other doctors. You got to have someone that you trust and that's on on your side.

Right. And some people have other orthopedic issues. They have cervical spine debility. So they have genetic predisposition to have, messed up cervical spine like Ehlers-Danlos syndromes or arthritis etc., etc.. And so it's really individualized approach there. Now my mother's an acupuncturist. I'm really biased. So I think everyone should get acupuncture. I do think that it provides a different type of benefits. Then then chiropractic and depending on the style of acupuncture as well. And each acupuncture is different, just like each chiropractor as well.

But I'm a fan of both modalities. I use both modalities. But you know, obviously I go to my mom, she's lives down the street, so I'm trained in acupuncture as well. Oh, great. Awesome. So I, I'm very biased too. I think it's like the Holy Trinity got, acupuncture is good body work, a chiropractor, and you need to paying attention to those modalities because they're so often overlooked. Or you get into a car accident, God forbid. So then you go see the chiropractor, but these are these are tools that can help us transition all of life, especially through this hormonal transition through menopause that can be supporting us on a mind body level.

And so I'm glad that you you brought them up because I personally partake and I prescribe it to my patients all the time. And it's not like this is something floofy because I think we are we're just so trained to want a pill. And so you come to someone like us. Alternative option you want a pill, you want a vitamin. But it's it's all these other tools that support the body. The supplements are supplements to the lifestyle, to the choices you make, to your physical bodies. So I'm so glad you brought that up.

You've brought up so many, so many good points. So in summary, what would you like the women to to leave with what what should be on their on their to do list or their to explore list from all the things you talked about? Well, first of all the so the women listening to this and you deserve to have time for yourself that that's first and foremost. You know, I have three daughters, right. And I'm very female, dominated in my in my family. And teaching about life balance is exceptionally important.

You know, part of living, is relationships. And a lot of women go through, a lot of phases in their lives, the different relationships. And then when menopause hits and the hormones go bonkers a little bit and there's like, okay, well, whatever's affecting our hormones must be affecting my relationships. But you have to realize that the other way around, it's true as well. Whatever relationships you're in also affect your hormonal balance depending on how traumatized you are in specific relationships. So, taking the time to do self, analytics.

Is is the most important thing, that I can, I can, you know, reach my audience to and the really wants you to really honor yourself. Right. And so by honoring yourself, you're, able to honor others as well. And but you're also able to, create that balance that, that you deserve. And, you know, knowing that you deserve that balance may be the biggest hurdle for most women. So so that's the message I like to deliver. Beautiful I, I stand behind that 3,000% and that that's why we're here. Just being here and taking time and listening and learning and attending the summit is a is a yes to yourself is a yes to

Pillows, Bodywork, and Self-Care 38:08

I deserve to take care of myself. For so long we've been taught self-care is selfish and self-care is life sustaining. Self-care is necessary. It is not optional. And it is not selfish. It's we can't pour from a watering can that's empty. We are the watering can. If we want to give to others, we have to fill ourselves up first. So thank you for that beautiful reminder and thank you for bringing a different twist to the the sinuses. I see I run thermography scans on patients and sinus. Oh yeah, are always a root cause of things that are going on and like you said, you don't have to be snoring to have sleep apnea.

Sometimes you don't have to have actual sinus congestion or headaches. And you can still have sinuses that are are blocks to your healing. And so I love that you brought that to the table and the breathing and the mindfulness and the self-care and just looking at it a different way. There's so many different ways we can look at how we heal. And so take what resonates. Go get educated, go get an EEG, go breathe differently, see if you have sleep apnea. Find a new pillow. There's breathe and tell us your website again because that sounds like an a wonderful resource resource for the women listening.

Go to the website w w w dot tcl m university.com, which stands for Texas Center for Lifestyle Medicine, University of New York. I'm like, what is it is a Texas? And you're of my mind. I'm just trying to figure out what it is. Well, thank you for being here. And you have a summit upcoming that I'm going to do. You're hosting about the brain. So make sure you you stay connected because there's going to be a lot more to learn in a couple of months. And we'll be really just diving in deeper. So thank you so much for being here and for the amazing work you do and for being such a compassionate male who really, I didn't know you had three daughters.

So you you are definitely versed in that in the feminine. Thank you for thank you for supporting us and cheering us on. It's nice to have male energy doing that as well. And so they well, everyone, you've got a lot to percolate on from this episode and we'll be back soon. So thank you. Yeah.