Menopause

From Hot Flashes To High Peaks: Thriving In Menopause

Mastering The Meno(Pause) Transition Summit 3.0

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1669dO4ZtZOSsp6sDdwn7di-jAqi3GQel/view?usp=drive_link

Evaluations: when it comes to testing, as I discussed earlier in the week, but maybe you missed that, it's important to have a 24-hour urine test—not a dried urine test like the popular ones out there—an actual 24-hour urine collection. If you stay tuned post-summit, I'm going to allow you to get one and have it reviewed by me so you can understand your hormones. This is not a time to guess. This is a time to test, assess, and understand, so you can get the best care possible. You don’t want to be working with anyone who is giving you pellets or oral estrogens that cause inflammation. The pellets overdose on you, stressing your entire system—your liver and bile. You want to make sure you're getting the types of hormones and that they’re monitored properly. Bloodwork is not acceptable to monitor hormones. You cannot see metabolites; it is just a snapshot. Walk away from here knowing that a 24-hour complete urine test is necessary.

Bloodwork is important for a lot of things. When I see my patients, I run close to 60–65 levels on them in the blood. It's a lot of tubes, but it just looks like a lot. When you donate blood, you give much more. It's important. Stay tuned, because post-summit, there's going to be opportunities to get my bloodwork list to learn about the blood levels I’m doing so you can understand. I love teaching about the thyroid. Hopefully, you caught my lecture on thyroid earlier in the week. It's important to get the tests and understand how to interpret them so that your doctor understands how to interpret them and gives you the things to help you feel phenomenal.

I’ve had patients in the last week or two, such as a woman who hadn’t slept in 12 years. After getting on her hormones, she is now sleeping like a baby. A 67-year-old woman who hadn’t had sex in forever told me she now feels like she's 40. Those were her words. She is raring to go and love life again. Women who are losing weight, who have more energy, no longer have headaches, whose joint pain is gone, who aren’t suffering from urinary tract infections anymore, whose hair and skin look lovely, and who aren’t having mood swings—all of these things that may be troubling you, and so many others I haven’t mentioned, can be helped. You do not have to suffer during this time. If you take nothing else from this, just remember that suffering is not necessary. During this time, I've been helping women for 23 years, and with the proper testing and application of hormones, you truly can feel your best.

I am 56, I am eight years post-menopause, and I feel better now than I did in my 20s and teens. Absolutely. By my early 30s, I was a physician and got on board with hormones, changing my horrible hormone picture of the worst PMS ever to feeling great. When I went through menopause, I never even had a hot flash. No matter where you are—whether you're watching because you want to be preemptive and in prevention mode, or if you're in the throes of hot flashes and feeling terrible—it’s fine. Even if you’re post-menopause by 15 years and you’re not having hot flashes or struggling anymore, there’s still so much that can be done for you. Remember, symptoms are sacred messengers from the body. They are the body whispering, saying, Hello, there's something out of whack here. Hot flashes are the hypothalamus saying there’s no estrogen, and it can’t control your temperature. We want to listen to our symptoms.

Speaking of that, I just want to throw in something about being patient and understanding what it means to be on a health journey. Many patients come to me. They fly in from all over. For the first appointment, I need at least an hour just to take the case—to understand you, from your hobbies to your past medical history, to your family’s history, to the symptoms you're having, to surgeries you've had, to your dental history, to your exercise and diet history. There are so many things about you that I need to learn to help you as a physician because you deserve to be treated as a whole being on every level: mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical. You want to find someone who listens and who takes the time to be with you. Don’t be so concerned about bringing stacks of past medical records. I want to meet you where you are today. We can always look at past medical records, and we're certainly going to need new ones, but I want you—whether you come to see me or go see someone else—that's fine. I just want you to find someone who cares, listens, has an open mind, wants to hear your story, and works with you as a teammate. No more of this "doctor on the pedestal" where you just do what they say. You want someone who’s going to work with you and understand where you’re at. That is so important.

I hope you now have a little bit of an understanding of bloodwork, 24-hour urine testing, stool testing to look at your microbiome, urinary testing for toxins, saliva testing to check cortisol, and iodine testing—these are some important tests for getting a good understanding of your endocrine system. These tests will help you get balanced and feel amazing. Remember, the menopause transition is not a deficiency of anxiety or sleeping medications—it’s a deficiency of hormones. A lot of people want to do things naturally. You don't get more natural than me. I'm a natural medicine doctor. I am all about nature. I truly practice what I preach, and replacing bioidentical hormones is the best natural thing you can do for yourself during this time. 

All the chatter out there that hormones are dangerous and cause cancer—hopefully, after listening to the interviews, you’ve realized that we were misled. We had a bad study that the media blew up over 20 years ago, and women were gaslit and mistreated. A lot of women have suffered for no reason other than doctors running with poor information and not giving women hormones.

I am so grateful that you are here, that you are learning, and that you are taking this opportunity to make your hormonal journey—no matter where you are in it—a healthy and natural one. 

Now, I always say there’s no magic bullet. Patients come to me asking, Doc Stills, what’s the one vitamin I can take? What’s the herb? What’s the magic food I can eat? Unfortunately, medicine doesn’t work like that. I wish it did; it would be a lot easier. But it's always multifactorial. However, hormones are the closest thing to a magic bullet. If I'm putting a patient on hormones, we're doing the magic handshake. We're saying, Yes, I'm going to take the hormones because I know they're going to make me feel fantastic. 

But I'm also committed to my entire terrain, to having a healthy lifestyle, to eating the best diet I can, to getting rid of the seed oils, to eating organic, to optimizing my protein, and to ensuring I’m absorbing my protein. I see so frequently that women are eating the things but not absorbing them. I also see the importance of committing to sleep, movement, and purpose. I'm going to pause, evaluate my life, and have a plan for detoxifying. I'm going to have a plan for monitoring my health. I'm going to be preventive, not waiting until something happens. I’m going to take charge and do all the things I can because, I promise you, when you take charge and start living a healthy lifestyle, you feel so much better. You have more energy and can get into your purpose. 

Every one of you is a unique, amazing butterfly, unicorn, goddess—however you want to think of yourself. You all have a gift to give. Some people have a huge gift, some have smaller purposes, but each one is equally important. Your gift may be to clean up your community, to start a community garden, or to change a million lives with a book you write—or anything in between. Your gift may be to show your family how to be the best wife, mother, grandmother, sister, cousin, or aunt. It doesn’t matter how big or small; it’s all important. It's about clearing your physical body so you feel good, so the noise is gone, and you can get in touch with what's important to you. What's important to you may change from year to year or decade to decade. I know for me it has. 

In this last decade, it was important for me to exhale and change the way I was living. I was coming off of running a huge practice, putting myself through medical school, and raising two boys. I needed an exhale. But now, the fire is back in my belly. If you haven’t heard, I’m getting out of my daily pajamas and being called to service because cancer rates are going up, autoimmune rates are going up, mitochondrial dysfunction and chronic fatigue are going up, and I want to help on a deeper level. I want to have a place where you can come, get the diagnostics and the therapeutic tools, feel heard and safe, and heal. 

That's my mission for the next decade. After that, who knows? Stay tuned, and we'll find out. 

I want that for you. If you didn’t know, I climbed Kilimanjaro to celebrate my menopause transition. I stood at the top. We summited a year to the day from my last menstrual cycle—that’s the official definition of menopause. I did that to remind myself that menopause is just the beginning. If I can climb the highest freestanding mountain and stand on top of it and say, Menopause, I'm coming for you. I’m excited. This is a brilliant time in my life, then you can do it too. I ask you, What’s your Kilimanjaro? It doesn't have to be climbing a mountain. What's your Kilimanjaro? What's the change you’re going to make?

I hope this summit has been an opening, a new way of looking at your health, how you are in the world, and how you view the aging process. It truly is a privilege. It has been my privilege to be here with you, and I am excited to see where our journey takes us. It may be the last day, but often we save the best for last. Enjoy the talks today, and see you at the live Q&amp;A coming up next week. Deep gratitude. I bow deeply to you all. Thank you for being here and for taking this step to make your health more vibrant.

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<h6>Sharon Stills, NMD</h6>
Hello, ladies. Dr. Sharon is still here. It's day seven. It has just been phenomenal spending these last days with you. I am just so excited. It's like I gave birth to this summit. It truly is a labor of love, and it truly is like giving birth to quintuplets. That's what I say about my upcoming clinic opening in March of 2025 in Scottsdale, Arizona. We'll talk about that in a second. But I just wanted to sum up things for you. I want to talk about how the summit title is Mastering the Menopause Transition. It's like, How are you going to master your menopause transition? You've heard so much information; your head is probably spinning, and I'm here to be a guide and help you through it all. I want to go over some highlights and things that are going to be of extreme importance to you.

https://d1tnc8rqovg0h0.cloudfront.net/2024+Summits/Meno(pause)+Summit+3.0/Transcripts/2024_MTMTS3_Mini+Talk+Day+7+Transcript+File.pdf

Dr. Sharon Stills, a licensed Naturopathic Medical Doctor with over two decades of dedicated service in transforming women’s health has been a guiding light for perimenopausal and menopausal women, empowering them to reinvent, explore, and rediscover their vitality and zest for life. Her pioneering RED Hot Sexy Meno(pause) Program encapsulates her philosophy: to Reinvent your Health, Explore your Spirit, and Discover YOUR Sexy. This unique approach has revolutionized the way women experience their transformative years, making her a sought-after expert in the field.
A proud graduate of The Sonoran University, class of 2001 with a rich background in European Biological Medicine, pro-aging therapies, and Bio-identical Hormone Replacement, Dr. Stills has successfully guided thousands of women through gentle transitions using all-natural methods. Her expertise is recognized globally, evidenced by her invitation to take part as the Co-Lead North American lecturer for the Paracelsus Academy in Switzerland when the Academy was up and running. She also is a long time contributor as a physician expert at Women’s Health Network. Her influence is also felt in academia and professional circles, sitting on the boards of the Bio-Regulatory Medicine Institute and the Archive of Healing at UCLA. Dr. Stills continues to share her knowledge through the annual Mastering your Meno(pause) transition summit and as the former host of The Science Of Self Healing podcast.
The opening of Stills Health Clinic, her new 7,000 sq. ft. clinic in sunny Scottsdale, Arizona, in late fall 2024, marks another milestone in her mission to provide unparalleled naturopathic care. There along with her son, Dr Ben Stills, they will be providing unique diagnostic and therapeutic options addressing all forms of chronic illness including but not limited to cancer, autoimmunity, covid-20 and of course Meno(pause) concerns. This venture follows her previous success in founding and running one of the largest naturopathic clinics in the country.
Dr. Stills’ personal journey of overcoming her own serious health challenges underscores her commitment to the wellness path she advocates for her patients. Her life is a testament to the principles she teaches: from embracing a healthy Paleo diet and a rigorous vitamin regimen to prioritizing restorative sleep and physical movement through yoga, hiking, and dancing.
Whether meditating in solitude, cheering for the NY Jets, baking paleo cookies, or exploring the world collecting passport stamps with her family and adorable granddaughters, she embodies the RED-Hot life she champions for others.

From Hot Flashes To High Peaks: Thriving In Menopause

Sharon Stills, NMD

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Sharon Stills, NMD