Jennifer Smith: Welcome to You're Not Crazy, It's Perimenopause. If you're a woman over 40 and feeling more anxious, not sleeping well or disconnected from your body, this podcast is for you. I'm your host, Jenny Smith, functional medicine health coach here to help you understand what the heck is happening in perimenopause. Each week we're diving into real life conversations about how our changing hormones impact anxiety, sleep and stress. and I'll share simple strategies to help you feel normal again. So grab a cup of tea or beverage of choice, get comfy and let's dive in. Welcome back to You're Not Crazy, It's Perimenopause. I'm your host Jenny and today we're going to talk about all things estrogen. If you joined us last week, we talked about the highs, the lows and the just rights of progesterone and that is our calming hormone. And today we are going to learn more about estrogen and what it looks like when it's low, when it's high, and how we feel when it's just right. Let's start off with what is the purpose of estrogen? This wonderful hormone that makes us so unique as women. In a general sense, during our fertile years, estrogen is your body's primary growth and protection hormone. It regulates your menstrual cycle and ovulation while also supporting brain chemistry, supporting your heart health, bone strength, metabolism, and skin health. In perimenopause, what tends to happen is our brain starts to get mixed signals every day, possibly even every hour, from fluctuating hormones. And this is why you feel like you might be going crazy. Let's start off with the symptoms of low estrogen. So common symptoms that you can experience are vaginal dryness or painful sex, which is so unfortunate, increased UTIs or bladder, like feeling like you have to go to the bathroom all the time. UTIs are very, very common when estrogen is low. And oftentimes doctors aren't really addressing the low estrogen they're addressing. UTIs with antibiotics. Another common symptom is anxiety, irritability, or depression. And the reason that this happens is when estrogen drops, it lowers our serotonin and our dopamine levels because estrogen supports those brain boosting hormones. You might have brain fog or forgetfulness. You'll have less blood flow to the brain. That is why you're feeling forgetful, like early signs of dementia, which is one of my symptoms. It was really, really frustrating. I can tell you a quick story. I remember calling my son's pediatrician's office to schedule an appointment and they asked me what his date of birth was. And I went, ⁓ like I could not get the date right. His birthday is February 28th. And I said February 27th. And they're like, well, we can't find him. And I was frantic. I'm like, ⁓ my gosh, like how embarrassing that I don't remember my son's birth date. And I thought, ⁓ the 28th, it's 28th. And the reason being is one, my hormones were a mess when this happened. That was another warning sign. And in my defense, my daughter's birthday is June 27th. So I often like get them mixed up sometimes June 27th, February 28th. And it was so, it was embarrassing. And so I know that a lot of women that I work with and talk to, they have these things happen at work and it's frustrating because they're used to being mentally sharp and more clear. And now they're starting to have this brain fog and forgetfulness and it's frustrating and it's embarrassing. Another common symptom is fatigue that feels flat. So essentially you just feel very blah, like there's no motivation. have low motivation to do anything. Things that used to light you up and excite you are just not doing it anymore. And that is one of the symptoms of low estrogen. You likely will have sleep disturbances, especially waking up between two and 4 a.m. in the morning, which is so frustrating. And you can't go back to sleep. You might have more dry skin or thinning skin because estrogen is responsible for our collagen production. And we start to lose that as we age. So that's where you might notice more saggy skin on your face. ⁓ Me and my friends talk about our jowls around our mouth that we didn't used to have. ⁓ It's because of the estrogen is not producing the collagen that we're used to having. And so that's why we might have, you know, more drier skin. You might feel more itchy because of the dry skin and thinning skin too. So we're losing that plumpness. ⁓ Estrogen is responsible for making us feel like just youthful, that youthful glow. You might also notice thinning hair with low estrogen. Another common symptom is joint aches or pain. Estrogen supports the cells that maintain cartilage. And so when estrogen declines, cartilage can thin over time, making joints feel less cushion and more sensitive. We went out of town last weekend. We went to this cute little town in Bisbee. It's a little mining town with our friends and we decided to hike the Bisbee 1000. And if you are not familiar with it, it's a cute little town, not very big, but there are stairs throughout the whole little town that equal to a thousand stairs. It's a lot of climbing. It's a lot of, intensity to get up the hills and to get up the stairs. And I noticed that my knees were starting to hurt. I have stairs in my house too. I noticed it's a little bit more painful and it's because of the lack of estrogen. Another common symptom that women get with the joint pain is frozen shoulder. Frozen shoulder is super common because we're starting to lose that lubrication in our joints and we're getting that pain. And so we'll often go to the doctors and they'll either tell us that nothing's wrong or there's nothing we can do about it or they'll offer up surgery. But really it's just your, your body is starting to lose the connections with the cartilage and the flow of the joints, which is so frustrating, right? It's like, this is what we talk about when it comes to old age. It's like the aches and pains. It's because of our hormones. It's not anything that we're doing wrong, but I'm going to talk to you about things to do about it towards the end. Cause we're going to talk about natural ways to support estrogen. Another symptom is bone loss. That's why osteoporosis is very common in women as they get older, they're starting to lose bones from lack of estrogen. A frustrating, frustrating symptom is weight gain around the middle of your belly where you don't have any weight gain anywhere else. It just seems to all kind of pile up in the middle of your belly, which is incredibly frustrating. And a symptom that we've all been told is a symptom of menopause is hot flashes or night sweats. And It's one that's talked about quite a bit, especially with our doctors. However, not everyone experiences these. I have low estrogen right now. It is something that I am working on and I don't struggle with this. don't ever wake up hot. I don't have night sweats. I don't get hot flashes. I'm just not struggling with this, but many women do. And it can disrupt your sleep and wake you up in the middle of the night, which is why you are possibly waking up at two and four in the morning. So when estrogen drops significantly, this usually happens late to perimenopause into menopause. And this is why you don't feel like yourself. And if you remember an episode five about progesterone, that is the first to decline. So estrogen typically is latter in the decline. It tends to fluctuate wildly, which can cause all these symptoms. So progesterone is imbalanced, estrogen is imbalanced. You're going to feel terrible. So let's talk about symptoms of high estrogen. So common symptoms are bloating and water retention. You might have breast tenderness and swelling, heavy or prolonged periods, PMS, especially mood swings or irritability right before your period. This was probably my biggest hormonal complaint when I was pre-menopausal is PMS, the mood swings, the irritability. So it's because your estrogen's high. You might have more fibrocystic breast. You will have weight gain around the hips and thighs when estrogen is high. another common symptoms are headaches and migraines. And so that was really cyclical. It just depends on where you're at with your cycle. Or if you're dealing with too much estrogen, you will have the headaches and migraines. You will experience anxiety and agitation, difficult sleeping and Another common symptom of high estrogen is uterine fibroids or endometrial thickening. So what does it feel like when estrogen is just right? When estrogen is in a healthy range and it's balanced right with progesterone, most women describe feeling emotionally grounded, like you're not, you don't have any anxious feelings out of nowhere. You're not reactive. You're able to handle stress without spiraling. You feel more mentally clear words become easier. You have less brain fog, better focus. You can track conversations without losing your place. Like you're in the middle of a sentence and you're like, I completely forgot what I was talking about. That doesn't happen as often. You are energized. You feel just more natural energy throughout the day. You don't have any crashes. You wake up feeling more restored more often. It's a very like calm vitality, not like wired in a sense. When estrogen is just right, you are more motivated and you're interested to do the things that you love to do. Estrogen supports the dopamine and serotonin in our brain. So when it is balanced, you have more engagement in things that you're doing. You want to participate in life. You take initiative, you want to do things. And I really think about estrogen being kind of like that flirty hormone. It's preparing us for mating with a partner. It's getting us excited to go out and to meet people and to flirt and to have fun and to do things and to be social. That's really what I feel that estrogen is designed to do in getting us kind of like excited to procreate and how we were designed and how our bodies were designed. And another way that women feel like estrogen is stable, is feeling physically comfortable. You don't have stiff joints. Your skin feels more hydrated. You just have more ⁓ plumpness to your face, more fullness to your lips. Like that's one of the things I noticed when I look in the mirror is that my face tends to be a little bit more droopier and my lips are thinner. And it's because of the estrogen decline. If you haven't listened to the previous episodes, I am postmenopausal. So my estrogen is done fluctuating. It's completely just flat and I'm working on things to improve it and to increase it. And I'm going to talk about the natural ways in a minute. So you just feel like your vaginal tissues feel more comfortable. You're more lubricated. You think about estrogen as like lubrication and stimulation. So you're not dealing with painful sex. You're not dealing with hot flashes and night sweats. Your body feels way more comfortable and your nervous system would feel more regulated when your estrogen is balanced. You just feel like you're able to tolerate stress more and you're able to deal with complex things in life. So really thinking about estrogen as the project manager of women's health, it oversees a lot of the daily operations, regulating your menstrual cycle, keeping your bones strong, your skin healthy, your hair healthy, your brain sharp, even helping with your moods. So we talked about progesterone last week and let's compare the two and why they work together in sync. So think of it this way, estrogen is your energy, your happiness, your lubrication and stimulation hormone, and progesterone is your calm, grounding, resilience, and gets you ready for like really good sleep hormone. Let's do a quick comparison of the two. So when you have low progesterone, you're feeling anxious, irritable, have poor sleep, you're wakeful throughout the night, your PMS worsens, have breast tenderness, and you might feel wired. Low estrogen, you feel flat, low, just very blah, like just no feeling really, just very flat affect. You feel sad and heavy, depressed. You'll have night sweats that will wake you up. Your periods become lighter or they stop. You're dealing with vaginal dryness and sex is painful and you're just feeling depleted. Anything that used to light you up to give you the energy to go out and do, you just don't have it because you're depleted. So we want to talk about ways to naturally support estrogen. And you're going to notice as I'm talking about these things, it's very similar to progesterone, the natural ways to support progesterone because they really do work together. And I want to just make a note about the differences between low estrogen and progesterone. Many women in early forties or in early perimenopause will feel anxious and reactive. And it's often related to progesterone deficiency because that's the hormone that begins to drop. first. It's not technically true low estrogen yet. It's because it drops low and then estrogen is higher. And so you have those, those fluctuations of hormones. They're not working together. They're not in balance. So progesterone is low and estrogen is fluctuating, which is why you feel like you're on this emotional roller coaster. It makes so much sense when we really kind of dive deep into this and break it down of why we're feeling this way. So if you are really struggling with the symptoms that I talked about earlier, don't beat yourself up over it. Try not to be hard on yourself because you're really at the mercy of your hormones. But we want to talk about ways that we can naturally support them. the first way that we can naturally support them is to support our progesterone. And the reason being is because progesterone is the first to decline and we want to make sure that we do the things that we can do to support progesterone because progesterone loves sleep. It loves when our body is not stressed out and it loves when we're eating enough. So you wanna make sure that you're sleeping well, you're doing your best to reduce stress and you wanna make sure you're eating enough food. So many of us are cutting calories cause we're wanting to lose weight and that is actually going to be very detrimental to you. You wanna make sure you're eating enough food and especially protein. You want to stabilize blood sugar. I will be talking about this quite a bit because our blood sugar is so important in keeping all of our hormones stable, including our insulin, which is a hormone that is responsible for a lot of our mood swings. And I had talked about this in the previous episode with making sure that when you are focusing on keeping blood sugar stable, that you have protein with every meal. that you're not skipping meals if your stress levels are high. When you are stressed and then you're skipping meals on top of it, your body goes into fight or flight. And that will just set you up for a hormonal, emotional disaster. You wanna make sure that you limit ultra-processed carbs and sugar because that will put you on that emotional blood sugar roller coaster. And something that you can do to stabilize blood sugar and I don't, I didn't haven't talked about this yet is walking after meals. It's a, it's an old trick, but it works and it really helps to stabilize your blood sugar. I've been trying to walk almost every day after dinner because it's just so important to make sure that we are kind of burning off that fuel source and that we are getting our blood sugar to come down before sleep. The other thing you want to do is you want to make sure that you maintain a healthy body weight. You want to do your best to not increase body fat. And I know that it's easier said than done because we are talking about low estrogen. puts on weight around the middle and we just, we want to make sure that we are trying to do our best to reduce body fat. And in the coming episodes, I will talk about other ways to do that, to lose fat and why it's important because fat tissues produce estrogen. And when you produce more estrogen, then you have too much and then it's not balanced and you're wanting to focus on the balance of our hormones, right? So making sure that we do our best to stay at a healthy body weight and reduce body fat. With that said, I want to share that I think it's super important that what you eat and don't eat matters more than you think. You want to have more energy. You want to be more clear headed. You want to feel more calm. But when life gets busy, it's easy to grab whatever is convenient and end up stuck in the same frustrating cycle. And that is why I really, really emphasize meal planning and that I think it is such a game changer when it comes to our health and making sure that we are eating the right foods. We are increasing our nutrient intake. We are making sure that we're hitting our protein goals. So I would like to invite you to my five day meal planning challenge that I'm hosting beginning on March 31st. So in the five days, you are going to do everything that you need to do to set up your kitchen for success. We're going to do a pantry clean out and we're going to do a restock. Then we're going to talk about meal planning, grocery shopping, and time saving tips to make it easier for you. And this challenge is for women over 40 who are wanting to eat better and they just are struggling to make it happen. So with this meal planning challenge, it's free. It's going to be a community of us and we will have that accountability to make it happen. And I'm going to show you simple, realistic strategies to take the guesswork out of eating healthy so that you save time. You can reduce brain fog, stabilize your mood and feel steady throughout your day. All with the support of me and the community cheering you on. We start on March 31st and the signup link will be in the show notes. I hope that you decide to join us. The challenge is completely free. You have nothing to lose and so much to gain. I have done this challenge before and I've gotten such positive feedback from it really kind of helps build the momentum to keep going to continue eating healthy. So hopefully you learn something new about estrogen, the highs, the lows and what it's like when it's just right. Next week, we're going to talk about the symptoms of high and low testosterone in perimenopause and simple ways to help you balance it out. If you found this episode helpful, share it with a friend who might need to hear it too. And if you haven't already, be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss a new episode. Thank you so much for being here with me and I'll see you next week.