What do you believe about your health? Who makes and keeps you healthy? Who is the expert in your physical, mental and emotional health? Today on the Work IN we’re going to talk about how our health beliefs and fear programming can make us and keep us sick, how big pharma and big food in collusion with the media and big government make that happen, and how you can take back your power.

Today we are talking about sleep and hot flashes. For the past few weeks we’ve been talking about how menopause and perimenopause affects our bones, our muscles, our pelvic floor, our gut, our brain, our metabolism and more and perhaps you’ve already noticed some of the connections between all of these areas. Sleep is one of those integral connections. How we sleep no matter what season of life we’re in is the canary in the coal mine. If we don’t sleep well we don’t function well and it’s an indicator that we aren’t functioning well. In perimenopause and menopause it’s the number one complaint for women. Not that we can’t get to sleep but that we can’t stay asleep. And the culprit is often the dreaded hot flash. What is going on here and what can we do about it? That’s the question for today’s Work IN.

Today we’re talking about the gut and gut health. We have discussed the importance of the gut microbiome in previous podcasts but never in relation to perimenopause and menopause. And that’s because no one really knew that was a thing until very recently. But it makes sense though since our gut and the biodiversity of the microbiome affects every other aspect of our health why wouldn’t our hormone balance be involved in some way.

Menopause brain…We say it like it’s a bad thing. We laugh it off as if it’s a joke when deep down we wonder if we’re losing our mind. It’s not a joke. And it’s not a loss either. It’s actually an update. During perimenopause and menopause every system in our body gets a giant hormonal update over the course of a decade or so. And just like when we update our computers or our phones, it takes time to learn the new systems. Things might look a little different on the home page than what we’re used to. The drop down menus change. That’s our Work IN today. We’re looking at how and why a woman’s brain changes through menopause.

In the trauma-informed space where movement, mental health and western medicine overlap, there is an expectation that as a wellness professional we are up to date on the latest science and most effective ways to help people optimize their health. There’s an assumption in the US that we have proof of efficacy for all of our favorite mind body modalities through double blind controlled studies. The truth is the space between eastern and western medicine is filled with hope and unanswered questions. Today on the work IN we’re discussing some of the difficulties with getting hard science when it comes to mind body modalities and what we do with answers that aren’t what we hope for.

When a child is emotionally dysregulated we call it a temper tantrum, a phase and these days “big feelings”. When an adult is emotionally dysregulated we call it mental illness. What is it that happens or doesn’t happen between childhood and adulthood that paves the way for the long list of disorders now associated with emotional dysregulation and what can we do differently? That’s the topic for today’s Work IN.