172. Why Women Burn Out: Hormones, Circadian Rhythms & Inner Wisdom

welcome to Mind Power Meets Mystic. The show where practical mind power and mystical wisdom collide with humor and wild curiosity. Yeah, we're not here to play it safe. I'm Cinthia Varkevisser, your resident spiritual shit disturber. I stir things up with mystic power and bold action. And I'm Michelle Walters, coach and Hypnotherapist. I bring strategy and transformative hypnosis to help you turn subconscious blocks into unstoppable momentum. Let's shake up your thinking, dive into your soul and make bold moves in your life. We'll take you on a journey of breakthrough and aha moments, exploring spirit, business, love, relationships and self expansion. We're connecting you with your highest self and flipping fear into strength. So buckle up. We're doing this one wild, transformative conversation at a time.

Let's go

Hello friends and listeners, welcome to Mind power meets mystic. I'm Michelle Walters. I'm the mind power part of our program, and I am joined by my podcast PAL and buddy Cinthia Varkevisser. She is our show mystic. We are excited to be continuing our chakra series this week, and we have a special guest with us today. Dr Theresa Myers brings over 20 years of physician experience to her telehealth practice called inner rhythm health. She specializes in metabolic health, midlife women's health and personalized BioIdentical Hormone Replacement Therapy. Central to her practice is circadian rhythm entrainment, aligning biological rhythms with natural cycles through targeted lifestyle interventions and hormone optimization, her medical services are tailored to each patient's individualized needs through a collaborative approach that helps clarity and achieve. Helps clarify and achieve personal health goals. This integrative approach combines traditional medical expertise with innovative modalities, including compassion based emotional regulation techniques addressing both physical and emotional well being through comprehensive collaborative care. Welcome Dr Theresa, thank you so good to be here. Thanks for having me. I am so intrigued by your work and all the things that you do. I would love to know a little bit more about the income, the compassion based emotional regulation techniques, because we know, growing up in the United States, we know about the Western traditional medicine. So this little piece and I grew up with, I'm 58 so I think my I've gone to, I had gone to

doctors that were smoking as they were giving you their, their, you know, there are things, prescriptions, prescriptions and they were overweight while they were telling us all the things that we needed to do. So please tell us more about this part, because I don't think, I don't think people have caught up to this part of of the medicine.

Yeah. Oh, thank you for that question.

Compassion key is a modality that I've only recently started studying in about the last year or so, and it's it's useful. I use it in a one to one format. It's also used by people with more training than I in group formats,

and it basically helps bring compassion that you direct your client to apply to anything that they are experiencing as a block or a disturbance. And so many things are related to traumas, if you will, whether it rises to the level of a clinical trauma or not in childhood that we then become unaware of, and by meeting that with compassion and insight, we're able to

produce a change, produce a flow, and release some of those blocks. It's a technique that's very powerful, very quick. It's deceptively simple, relatively easy to learn, but you know, like any other art, does have an art to it, but it basically takes from the patient or the client, their own feedback to you about what they're perceiving or tuning into, and you then guide them to respond in pretty much the same words they gave you, but with loving compassion. I'm so sorry you felt that you couldn't bring your true gifts to the table because you would be punished if you did. So I'm so sorry.

That's sort of an off the cuff example.

So yeah, it's something I'm hoping to bring in to.

I practice more. It's not necessarily part of the individualized treatment plan for every patient, but it's one I'm interested in exploring more. You know, first of all, I love simple. Ain't easy, right? Simple is always simple, but simple is rarely easy. Because we're really smart human beings, and, you know, because we are these smart human beings, we always create more drama than we need, right?

And I love that, the part of I'm sorry there, there's something about someone saying that they're sorry that can heal something when someone else is the one that needed to say, I'm sorry. It's just that I'm sorry that needed to be filled Michelle with her hypnotherapy also does not, I'm sorry, but she also does that compassionate care with with that piece. So I love seeing the connection between there, between the two of you.

You have been listening to Mind Power Meets Mystic with me. Michelle Walters and my co host, Cinthia Varkevisser, we want to tell you about a special gig the two of us have going on. It's called mind power meets mystic, the project, and it starts off on a zoom call with Cinthia. Cinthia tell everybody what they can expect. So for the first half of our session, you will be with me, and Michelle will be very quietly in the background preparing to do her work. What we will do is that we will talk about the one thing that you either want to amp up or that you want to release. And through the intuitive work, I help you get boil it down to its essence, and then give you an RX of three practical things to do to set you on your way. And then Michelle magically appears. What is it that you do that Michelle, I have been listening in but not participating in the first half of the call. I have an excellent idea of what Cinthia means when she says something, and I have an excellent idea of quickly getting to what my client is all about and his or her individual strengths, I turn all of this into a 20 to 30 minute hypnosis session on the second half of the call, which, when we're done, I strip off and send you as an mp three that you can listen to over and over again. You also will have cinthia's Three point recommendations, and the recording of the Zoom call. It is a fantastic one hour offering a great gift for yourself or for someone you don't know what to get such insights, and we've gotten such great reviews. So if you're interested, send me or Cinthia an email. You'll find our contact information in the show notes, and we'll tell you how to get started. I would love to hear a little bit more we have this going in with the sixth and seventh chakra. So why don't you tell us a little bit more about how people are coming in and how it ties in to the sixth and seventh chakras? Great. Yes. So

ou and your audience are that: 6000

and

were treated with hormones in: 1999

What they are experiencing is a seismic shift, and

we come to a stage, in this stage where we need to confront how in tune or not we are with our inner rhythms. And these are rhythms that we basically evolved with as a species over 300 350,000

years. And that involves things like early morning sun exposure and early morning protein and social connection and

rhythms that were in alignment with the planetary rhythms. And over about the last 150 years or so, we've incorporated these huge shifts we haven't had time to evolve with such as electricity and 24/7,

life cycle stresses, etc,

that in combination with conditional or cultural conditioning, which I believe we all experience, but women especially teach us to tune out our inner needs, our inner rhythms, in order to give and produce and so forth with this new cycle. So what our bodies are calling for with these symptoms, these very uncomfortable symptoms, for many women, over 50% of perimenopause is hey, it's time to tune in check.

Change your change your game, tune into the new rhythms, which are really old rhythms, but that you've been overriding can no longer override when your hormones decline.

So we we go from there into an individualized treatment plan that involves

physiological cycling, hormone replacement therapy, and also those individualized interventions that sort of come up in the process of doing a complete assessment of the patient, so what her needs and goals are, in addition to the clinical symptoms, will help us start to create a plan that entails early morning sunlight and early morning protein and movement and creativity and social. There's a whole blend, of course, of things that we want to support ourselves and our patients through this phase of life.

I think that's really cool. I think

we're still learning more about who our listeners are, but I suspect a fair number of them are in the age range of the kind of things you're talking about Doctor Theresa. And

I know for me, do I feel like I knew everything there was to know? And I am like a researcher. I am like a person who wants to know things, but do I know kind of what all the the things are going on with the person's body? No, and I am. I'm also very intrigued, I think partly because I love nature, to think about this,

this, this time that we're in right now where you're talking about, yeah, the last 150 years, we've, we've had the Industrial Revolution, the technology revolution. We have people staying up all night and people listening to the news 24/7, and,

I mean, I see it in my practice, where people just, I think, get to be overwhelmed. People are just overwhelmed by things. And I'm kind of curious how you work with your clients and patients to

to manage that overwhelm, either from a physiological standpoint or from a spiritual or mental standpoint.

So usually the the first fundamental step is sleep, and most people, in fact, across the age range, the most common complaint patients come with is fatigue. Just total fatigue. I don't have enough energy. Why? If I'm getting enough sleep, I'm still not rested or I'm not able to sleep.

So this is fundamental to health, and it's also a sign that your circadian rhythm is is needing adjusting. So we'll start with that, with small steps and that that does involve the early morning sunlight. I try to get people up for sunrise. Some people find that extreme, but if they can, I get them to incrementally work back towards that. And that gives you enough of the full spectrum of sunlight that helps cue your clock, and it will then set the time you're going to wake up naturally the following day. And it, you know, may take a few days. It's surprising how short a time it can take if, if you do implement this, and it's starting with the wake up time, not so much the sleep time. You don't want to necessarily lie in bed not sleeping for more than 15 minutes or so without getting up, but you fall asleep when you want to, but you get up at the time that we're shooting for, we're incrementally moving back for, and then getting that sunlight, and I mean in the sun, so not through a window, not through sunglasses, getting sun photons on the retina, and this programs the clock

early. It's good for your eyes too. It can help the eyes as well. Yeah. Like, I've read that, and I don't know, I don't know if this is accurate or not, but I've read that one of the reasons why folks hypothesize that so many of us are nearsighted and having as many eye challenges at this moment in history is partly because we don't spend as much time out of doors. And with that, practicing different focal lengths and getting those sun rays and that kind of thing. Yes, yes, I've seen that too. And really, even if it's shady and even if you're not looking up at the sun, which, of course, you don't want to look, stare directly at the Sun for long. But even if you're looking at reflected light off greenery or other parts of your your field of view, you're still getting those benefits. So very, very important, very interesting, people working in that field as well ophthalmologists. And

so I always recommend, in addition to the early morning sun, that you wear blue blocking glasses, and that's what I have on now for working in front of screens. These are yellow toned, but after sunset, I'm wearing orange or red blue block.

Hours so that that excessive blue light, that's a limited and excessively blue spectrum from screens and indoor lights, isn't resetting my clock and affecting other aspects of my health.

Good to know. Yes, yeah, I keep my red and orange blockers right on the bedside table so they're available to put on if I'm in there at sunset and if I get up in the middle of the night, I put them on before walking out to the bathroom or what have you. But those are those are incredibly significant. I've had patients improve just by doing those steps, being intentional about it, and consistent, and bringing in the morning protein as well. So those are the two most powerful signals to the body clock, the light and the food timing.

I love that you talk about the inner rhythms right going outside and

and the sixth chakra is about inner wisdom and intuition. So really paying attention to what what's happening inside you, as well as

sensing the symbols around you, right? So what I'd love to hear are some changes that happened with your clients as they started listening to their inner wisdom, or you've set them up on this program, and then they, you know, and then they started listening to their inner or recognizing that they do have an inner wisdom, right?

So, yes, I've had a number of patients pretty similar that I could almost describe as a composite patient

who were very used to being very high efficiency people. They could go, go, go. They could only sleep for six or seven hours and still be on their game, giving presentations, being sharp, being productive, enjoying that, that that lifestyle and that energy level, who suddenly hit this wall, and it's like I'm sleeping eight hours or or at least I think I'm in bed for eight hours, but I wake up unrested, and I feel like I'm walking through molasses, and I'm starting to lose my train of thought or search for a word. And this is very distressing, you know, to all of us, but particularly women who are in that sort of type A personality or high stress environment,

and they again, sometimes within days to a week, said, Wow, I cannot believe what a difference this makes. Clearly, I was much more tired than I even realized, and I forgot what it feels like to be to be wide awake.

So that's also a motivating factor, right? You're not going to slip up too often, because, you know, you've got that instant feedback about how much worse you feel when you do, which means pretty much staying on the same schedule over the weekend too, not not sleeping in on the weekend, and eliminating some other things like alcohol or is severely cutting back any anyway, those mess with the hormones.

The other piece is, I think that they just started making space for that, needing to tune into what else am I missing, or have I forgotten about that I used to like to do or be able to do, and in some cases, it centers around food, because the other huge complaint for perimenopause so women tends to be the Menno belly, so that fat accumulating around the center, people start to focus in a lot on food and exercise.

So there are different body types, of course, and we can talk about that, and it's not really about dieting and overdoing, which is often a response in the younger years that no longer works, but it's more about adapting a more forgiving approach to yourself and acceptance of what your body needs to

change if needed. There's definitely a place for muscle growth and development that a lot of people, especially women, do not do,

but it's also tuning into what is your body telling you, and this works better for some than others. But what do we want in terms of color, in terms of seasonal foods? What are our cravings telling us that can tune into other emotional, emotional things as well, or simply physiological things. Creative question, I have a question. Dr Theresa, can you help us, like you mentioned, sort of a composite patient, but can you think of maybe somebody from your practice who showed up with, oh, a litany of

of of things going on and what your approach and results were working with, with with that person?

Yes, so Sarah was one patient who pretty much fits what I just said. She ticked most of the boxes. Actually, she was a very high functioning.

Executive who had hit this wall was distressed by it. Had some family things going on as well. Typical, you know, midlife sandwich generation, the older generation they're taking care of, and the younger generation, not quite out of the nest yet. So things going on there

and and she had some weight gain that she was very uncomfortable with. She

had a recent divorce, relatively recent divorce, and felt like she needed to get back into the dating game while being off her game and dealing with this excess weight and sort of the symptoms that go along with that.

So we did start, of course, we do labs and all of that to to verify kind of the hormone levels, etc. She already knew she was perimenopausal, having irregular periods. We did implement the bioidentical hormone replacement, which is physiologic cycling. Hormones that

if a woman is not cycling, will restore the period. If a woman is still cycling, we'll regulate the cycle and bring it back to regularity, because all those peaks and flows of both estrogen and progesterone are important for multiple bodily functions.

And then we implemented the circadian rhythm entrainment, which is actually I was first introduced to by Ts Wiley, who's the founder, kind of amazing woman entrepreneur who came up with the Wiley protocol, and that's this bioidentical physiological replacement therapy. In her two books, she kind of delves into this whole thing about sugar and stress and survival and light and dark and all of it. Just

totally recommend these books to everybody.

But again, we implemented that, starting with sleep and just incremental changes, because you don't want to overwhelm and there's a lot to do. But she's, she's a driven person anyway, so when she started to get back some energy, the sleep improved and so forth. She was ready to take take it on.

So we did get some weight loss going with different strength training. I I'm not a trainer. I definitely give people some guidelines, but refer them to personal trainers. I recommend people get with somatic practitioners, especially if they're kinesthetic types. So she did that. I don't remember exactly the modality,

but there was a somatic practitioner who helped her tune into the body

places where tension was gathered. I think she had some back and shoulder stuff, and

that was very helpful in getting through a lot of the grief she still carried from her divorce and moving on into the dating world.

Oh, I know a little about that. That is a that is a that is a whole nother thing, man, the dating world of today is super high stress. Super high stress. Well, it sounds like you were able to help her make some huge changes. I'm wondering, Dr Theresa, how did you get into doing this kind of work with Not, not every medical practitioner decides to incorporate compassion stuff and and inner rhythms. And to me, this, this distinguishes you. It sets you apart. And I'm kind of what wondering how did, how did this interest appear in your life and practice? Right? So circadian rhythms were glancingly talked about in medical school very briefly, and it was more in the context of sort of historical physiological information, and maybe of interest in severe sleep disorders.

But I through going through my own approaching perimenopause symptoms, came in contact with

TS Wiley, basically her program, and practitioners who are who are using it, and so I was very inspired by her approach. She sort of bridged all of these areas of chronobiology and molecular biology and physiology, and talked about those rhythms and how important they were, and brought to the market this whole system of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

I also got involved with Paul jamines work, and that was,

oh gosh, back around: 2013

The other thing that a lot of people don't know.

I tend to be a little cautious about disclosing is that before I went to medical school, I engaged in clairvoyant training at a psychic Institute at a metaphysical church. And so I did deal with energy work, energy healings, okay, now we're talking now you're in the Cinthia and Michelle space.

Yes, before, not that you weren't before, no, but so you were open to some of these kind of higher power, invisible energy kind of stuff, even before you you hit the hit the halls of med school. I was yes, I was and I did go on to medical school thinking, well, there's some gaps that I hit when I'm trying to work with energy healing and with especially body healing and what I don't know about medicine. And it was sort of a childhood dream I recuperated, or, you know, restored with this

thrive or curiosity to know more. And of course, I then found that medicine had its own gaps, right and it didn't necessarily bring everything together, but I do bring them all together, not necessarily doing energy healings per se, at least not overtly, but my intuition definitely informs how I treat my patients and interact with them, and I'm hoping, as I, as I said, to bring compassion key, maybe a little more front and center.

We have to see, I'd like to, I'm looking, in the new year, into bringing more providers in, in a sort of Team model, where we could do some of these other programs, maybe on a group, community level, something of that sort.

So yeah, I definitely love what you two are doing. I've enjoyed listening to your episodes and

learning more about your approach to chakras and Cinthia, you're you're just so very skilled at summarizing what, not only what your guests are doing, but I listened to a couple of your solo interviews that I really enjoyed, where you talked about some of the strategies of intuition and how you use that in your life and others. And I just found it so interesting. Well, let's be real. You are actually being strategic about your intuition as well, right? Because you know how to approach people and where they are going to, where they're willing to listen and where they're willing to

explore, right? So that's the beauty about intuition and and you allowing people to say, well, what are you attracted to with your food? What are the colors? And for me, intuitively,

you know, colors great. It's great for food, but it's also great in your environment. It's it's on so many levels, right when you're wearing it, it also affects you in a certain way. So, you know, having the inner wisdom and that. So you're also very strategic in your in your intuition. And what a lot of people don't realize is that that's exactly what they're doing. So I applaud you for the work that you're doing and how you're doing it, and that you have a lot of structure around your work and their space for for your clients to really get in touch with what they want, so that they are wholly healthy, right? W, H, O, L, L, Y, holy healthy. So really, really excited about that, but, and while we're at it, what have you got going on or coming up that our clients can get to know you a little bit better and connect with you, anything like that?

Well, nothing is set in stone yet. I did think about putting some kind of survey up on my website for your audience that will be ready once this is aired, that might help them

determine what whether what I have to offer is for them and sort of sort some of their symptoms and concerns.

I'm working on a workshop that I hope will come to fruition that involves

a another coach who's an OB GYN, but who no longer practices medicine, is now a

coach for moms, actually, and a musician who plays cello, and they've done some interesting work with presenting to people the emotional regulation aspects of music and the techniques of this coach, and also known as sound therapy, yes, also known as sound I used to play cello, so

I always laugh. Yeah, when people think about sound therapy, they think about crystal balls. I'm so down with the crystal balls. However you throw, you throw

some 60s music, that might you know that I have great memories or get some.

House. You know club music, that's also sound therapy, right? Because moving it changes up your your blood. So sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but no, no, that sounds great. Theresa, well, I love it. We will. We will be touching base with you again as we go to publish this episode. Thank you so much for appearing today on mind power meets mystic. Dear listeners, thank you for being here and meeting Dr Theresa and hanging out for a little while with me. Michelle Walters and Cinthia Varkevisser, we would love it if you would share the podcast. Give us a rating, give us a review, give us a Like on social media. All of your interest is valuable and really helps us to grow our our message and our momentum. Thank you all and have a great day. Bye. Thank you, Michelle and Cinthia,

you've been listening to Mind Power Meets Mystic

Share Episode

Shownotes

Transcripts

Follow

Links

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube