Menopause

Stress

Master Stress, Master Menopause

Mastering The Meno(Pause) Transition Summit 3.0

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hmvByaTvq_zCRQFxq5gMrwy3bYIlFzUh/view?usp=drive_link

We're going to the hammock in the Bahamas, and there is no production of hormones, even though that's what we read in the textbooks. Let's face it, we all have stress in our lives. I don't want to teach you how to get rid of stress because that's not realistic. I want to teach you how to dance with stress, how to interact with stress, and how to respond rather than react to stress. Because there are so many different levels of stress, there's emotional stress. We're having difficulties in our relationship. There's situational stress. We're moving. We're having our house redone. I know that sounds silly, but having construction done or remodeling is way up there with divorce and death. The loss of a loved one causes stress. We create stress in ourselves when we forget about the sacred know and we say yes to too many things, and we're overcome and committed. We have metabolic stress, we have chemical stress, and we have anatomical stress. When our vertebrae are out of alignment, the fascia is restricted, our lymph isn't flowing, or our muscles are too tight. We have stress from artificial lighting, chemicals, food, and glyphosate. It's part of the human condition. I want to do the things we can do to reduce our stress, to reduce our exposures as much as possible, and to become resilient.

We can boogie with the stress. We can learn to dance with it and know how to be a ninja, a stress ninja. We have to think about one of the biggest hormonal problems or deficiencies we see is progesterone. When we're looking at the biochemical pathways, it comes before our glucocorticoids or our cortisol. If we have a lot of stress and that can be too many emails, that can be the neighbor's dog barking. That can be because we didn't prioritize ourselves. We're not getting the exercise we need or the meditation we need, or we're not sleeping enough. Then our body says, survival is more important than procreation because progesterone is pro-gestation. It's the let's get pregnant and stay pregnant hormone. The body says we need to build glucocorticoids. We need to secrete cortisol, and it depletes our progesterone. Stress is always there; it's just always lurking and always there. Too high cortisol levels will interfere with our T4 to T3 conversion and T3. I'm talking about thyroid hormone now, which is the active hormone.

Too much stress will deplete our DHEA. If you've done a consult with me, it was called the Ponce de Leon hormone. He was my favorite explorer in school. He's the only one I remember. But he discovered the fountain of youth. I was foreshadowing what I was going to do with my career. But DHEA is that fountain of youth vitamin. It's good for your muscles. It's good for your brain; it's good for your skin; it's good for your immune system; it's anti-cancer, it's anti-diabetic. It supports, as I said, your immune system; it's anti-auto immune. I use it a lot with autoimmune disease. It's just such a great hormone, and stress will tank it. If we have too much stress we deplete our lovely oxytocin. The bonding, the hugging, the love yourself hormone, the orgasm hormone. It's all this lovely little symphony; this lovely little spider web of hormones and stress can always be at the bottom of it. What can you do for stress? A lot of it has to do with taking inventory of how you are.

Maybe you're stressed now because you want to see all seven interviews today, or eight interviews, or however many interviews there are that you want to see, and you don't have time because time causes a lot of stress. I encourage you to take time, maybe a little bit of time daily, more on a weekly, more on a monthly, more on a quarterly, more on a yearly. When I say retreats are medicinal and mandatory, I need a minute. It's why I host menopausal retreats; we need that time to pause, step away, and be the creator. Be the artists of our lives; paint our canvas, and we have to look at what is stressing us. Is it too much of something or not enough of something? It's the same in health. When I'm working with a patient, I'm looking at, let's just say, your diet. Are you getting too much sugar, or are you getting too many processed foods? Are you getting too many greens? We can look at it from that perspective; we have to cut it down, or we can look at it from what are you not getting enough of?

Are you not getting enough of pure oils, olive oils, and avocado oil? Are you not getting enough protein, or you're not getting enough essential fatty acids? It's the same with stress. Are we getting too much conflict from a relationship, or are we not getting enough love and attention from a relationship so we can look at it from each side of the table and then we have to decide, is this worth putting energy into changing to shifting? Is it nurturing me? Or is this something that I do? I love you, but I'm going to love you from the other side of the street, and this just goes on for everything. Are we making time to sleep? Deep sleep is foundational. You must, be sleeping. A lot of us don't sleep because we've said yes to too many things. We've overstayed. We're cutting into our sleep time because we're staying up too late, answering emails, working on projects, whatever it is that we're doing, instead of honoring that this body needs to rest. I to sleep at least eight hours a night, and I to be in bed for longer than that. I don't want to go to sleep stressed.

I want to go to sleep because I've taken the time and because it's meaningful to have my wake-up routine. then in the morning, I want to jump out of bed with an alarm and have to go. I want to greet the morning. I want to feel my body. I want to give thanks. I love my bed. I love my blanket. I love my pillow, I love my PJs, I love how comfy it is, and I want to just enjoy that and give thanks that I have the blessing of having that, of being grateful. then I want to give thanks for the day and start my day off in a positive space. We have to make time and space for these things. Sometimes it's just as simple as getting I'm looking over here my calendar so I don't keep a calendar on my iPhone. I keep a calendar for me. Here I'll show you my calendar so I keep an actual book calendar. This is my book calendar. Tick not on with lots here. Look deeply. I'm just open to that. I love it when that happens. I wrote it on my calendar, and I thought about it the other day. I said to my son Dylan, who runs my practice, that many of you may have interacted with him or will in the upcoming future. I said I needed a day. I need a day with no meetings and no patient appointments unless there's an emergency. But I just need a free day every week so I can catch up, make the phone calls I need to make, be in my flow, catch up on my patient charts, and do my self-care. I do my self-care every day. I'm the self-care queen. Do you want to learn self-care? Stick around. Stay with me. You will be loving on yourself.

I'm going to create that. We have to think about whether we are not getting to bed on time. Are we so tired that we're sleeping in and we're missing that beautiful magic of the morning where we can get up and reset our circadian rhythm, and we can put our feet on the ground, and we can hug a tree, and we can watch the sunrise and give ourselves this time where we're enjoying it, not where it's, okay, check, meditated. Check, put my feet on the ground. And watch the sunrise. If you're doing it with that energy, then you're not feeding yourself. You're not de-stressing. It's almost like you're adding to the stress because now it's become this to-do list rather than I get to do this. Instead of saying I have to meditate every morning, I get to meditate. Every morning I get to wake up. I get to have another beautiful day. I get to be here. Aging, it's a privilege. It is not something everyone gets to do. This life is fleeting, and it's precious, and it's beautiful, and I want it easy for me as a physician to help you balance your hormones, get you detoxing, optimize your thyroid, teach you how to eat, teach you how to move—all the things I love doing that. When we feel good in our physical body, we get to this deep work of how we're relating to our lives and ourselves. Where can we learn to dance with stress rather than being controlled by it? Worry is a waste of the imagination. I love that saying I didn't make it up. Being mindful, being present, and being in the moment are some of the best medicines you can give yourself.

I learned about MBSR, which is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. It's based on the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. I learned about it when I was a first-year naturopathy medical student back in 1997, and I got involved in it. I was part of a research project, and it changed my life. Learning to breathe, learning to meditate, and learning to be present in every moment is one of the best things you can do to learn to dance with stress. Let's take a few deep breaths together. Let's be present. Sit up straight, and we want to inhale through our nose. When we inhale through our nose, we let our belly expand big Buddha belly. As we exhale through our noses, we pull our bellies in. It's the opposite of what we've been taught. We're always sucking in our belly. But no, you want to breathe in through your nose. Let your belly expand. If you're not used to doing this, your mind is probably racing in a million ways. Am I doing it in here? What? She said to wait a second. I'm going to miss the next talk. That's all normal. That doesn't mean that you don't know how to meditate. Mindfulness is a muscle. We got to build biceps by going to the gym and lifting and lifting.

We got to build mindfulness by practicing, by returning to the breath, by returning to the practice. Mindfulness, the definition is paying attention moment by moment, on purpose. I to add in by being kind and gentle to ourselves. None of this. You're doing it wrong. You can't do this. But lifting ourselves. Positive self-talk. Let's take a few breaths. Let's remember that silence speaks loudly if you slow down to listen. A lot of the answers you need are not out here. They're in here. Let's have a great six days. I'm so happy that you are here, taking this time for yourself. Do it. As stress-free and mindfully as possible. This is just the beginning of our journey. I'm thrilled that you're here. I look forward to being a part of your journey in the post-summit parties and all the things I'll be offering, and that we still have today and tomorrow. Let's make the best of it, and I'll be back tomorrow for day seven.

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<h6>Sharon Stills, NMD</h6>
Hi, everyone. Dr. Sharon is still here. Your host. Welcome to day six. It has been a whirlwind, and we still have two more days left of information. I just wanted to come in here and have a chat with you. I wanted to talk about stress today. I think a lot of times we, we know we go, stress is bad and it's hurting my health. But we just give it lip service, and we don't do anything about it. I want to emphasize today because what I say is stress is 99.99999999999999% of all disease processes. Menopause is not a disease. Menopause, death, and taxes are inevitable if you're a female, and it's going to happen and it's a natural transition. If it becomes a very symptomatic time, which I'm sure a lot of you are experiencing, that just means we need to. Pause, exhale, regroup, and see what's out of balance. Is it our hormones crashing? We say that our adrenals pick up the slack for the ovaries. We still produce hormones. But I can tell you, after 23 years in practice specializing in helping women through menopause and going through my menopause transition eight years ago, that most of us, by the time we get to the menopausal age, have trashed our adrenal glands to some point and we are stressed out in our adrenal glands. We've left the house with your ovaries, or we're going away.

https://d1tnc8rqovg0h0.cloudfront.net/2024+Summits/Meno(pause)+Summit+3.0/Transcripts/2024_MTMTS3_Mini+Talk+Day+6+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.

Master Stress, Master Menopause

Sharon Stills, NMD

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Sharon Stills, NMD