In this enlightening episode of The Susan Sly Project, Susan Sly interviews Dr. Jen Burke, a renowned family physician with extensive certifications in Family Medicine, Sports Medicine, Lifestyle Medicine, and Health and Wellness Coaching. Dr. Burke, who has also served as a physician for Team USA and at the 2014 Winter Olympics, shares her expertise on the specific fitness challenges women encounter during perimenopause and menopause.

Throughout the episode, Dr. Burke discusses the importance of strength and interval training to preserve muscle mass and bone density, and the role of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in alleviating symptoms like hot flashes. She also emphasizes holistic wellness strategies—nutrition, sleep, and stress management—that help women thrive through midlife transitions.

Listeners will learn to rethink fitness as they age, advocate for personalized care, and integrate evidence-based, proactive approaches to menopause health. Dr. Burke’s passion for compassionate, individualized care is clear as she offers practical advice for maintaining health, confidence, and well-being during this pivotal life stage.

About Dr. Jen Burke:

Dr. Jen Burke (MD, CAQSM, DipABLM, NBC-HWC) is a family physician who has dedicated her career to improving the health and well-being of her patients through individualized evidence based medicine and compassionate care.

Her focus on holistic wellness and proactive preventive care is backed by her certifications in Family Medicine, Sports Medicine, Lifestyle Medicine and Health and Wellness Coaching.

A highlight of her career continues to be her service as a physician for Team USA, working with athletes in many sports.  She had the honor of serving as a physician at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi working with Figure Skating.

Connect With Dr. Burke:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jen-burke-md-caqsm-dipablm-nbc-hwc-19ab3534/

About Susan Sly:

Susan Sly is the host of The Menopause Health Podcast and the Founder and CEO of The Pause Technologies, an AI-enabled platform helping women navigate menopause with precision recommendations and gamification. A seasoned entrepreneur and MIT Sloan graduate, Susan is a second-time AI startup founder. Before The Pause Technologies, she co-led a computer vision company that achieved the largest retail deployment at scale for both interior and exterior analytics. Globally recognized for her work in AI, Susan continues to pioneer the intersection of technology and women’s health, empowering women with the tools to thrive.

Connect With Susan Sly:

LinkedIn: @susansly

LinkedIn: The Pause Technologies Inc.

X: @Thepauseai

Website: https://thepause.ai/

Subscribe to our free newsletter here: https://thepause.ai/newsletter/

On this episode of the menopause health podcast, I have the privilege of interviewing the amazing Dr. Jennifer Burke. She is a family physician who has dedicated her career to improving the health and well-being of her patients through individualized, evidence-based medicine and compassionate care. On top of everything, she has numerous certifications in family medicine, sports medicine, lifestyle medicine, health and wellness coaching, and she served as a physician for Team USA, working with athletes in many sports. And in this episode, we are going to talk about something different that's not spoken about often, and that is how our bodies' needs really change in terms of fitness levels as we're navigating perimenopause and menopause.

So, as women who are coming into this phase, are super fit, and think about Olympians that have competed in their 40s, people like Dara Torres, even McKaylee Jones in triathlon, what we need changes. And so for those of us, myself included, who are cardio junkies, who could just go for hours and hours, that doesn't necessarily work. So we're going to talk about what potentially causes weight gain, how you need to train differently, and as much as in this world of menopause, I learned several things from Dr. Burke that really helped me to rethink my strategies in terms of exercise and fitness. So with that, let's get started with this episode, and please help me welcome Dr. Jen Burke.

The opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the show or its hosts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional regarding your specific health needs.

Welcome to the Menopause Health Podcast, your go-to resource for practical advice brought to you by credentialed health professionals and industry experts. Here is your host, Susan Sly.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Menopause Health Podcast, and I just want to give some shout-outs first and foremost to those of you who have LinkedIn messaged, who have DMed, and in other ways emailed to let us know the show is impacting your life. We did a soft launch for season one, but as many good things do, good news travels fast. As you heard in the introduction today, my guest is phenomenal. In addition to all of her accolades, she’s one of the most humble people I know, and we’re going to be having some interesting dialog about some of the things that have emerged lately in terms of perimenopause and menopause.

And just know, when you're hearing about menopause, this isn't just a moment; it is here to stay. We are finally having the dialog. So Dr. Jen Burke, you just came back from the North American Menopause Society annual conference, and you and Mia—Dr. Mia Chorney—I know you were DMing like crazy about all of the updates, like it was a play-by-play. Then Mia was messaging me. What was for you one of the biggest things that you saw emerging at the conference, and maybe even something that surprised you?

I think the best part of the conference was the women there—and the men—who filled the room. The conference was sold out, apparently for the first time, which was amazing. And the content was engaging, like all of it. Usually, when I go to a conference, I don’t go see everything, but this conference—I was there at every single session because there was something to be learned, new information, and everyone was just so engaged. The collaborative discussion between the experts in the field was amazing. They debated things, they didn’t agree on everything, but in general, it was very respectful, and the messaging was the same, which was great.

So you’re saying people could actually disagree and be respectful with each other? My gosh, that’s a shocker.

And it wasn’t on big points, you know, it wasn’t about the benefits of estrogen therapy. It was more about the fine nuances about how maybe they might navigate specific situations for different women. But it was all with the intention of doing the best thing based on their experience, the available research, for that particular woman. So it wasn’t like big debates, but I appreciated that they would discuss it out loud because that doesn’t always happen in the medical field.

No, absolutely. And there have been some sad myths and misinformation about menopause that have actually caused millions and millions of women to suffer. And there are the lifestyle interventions, which we’re going to talk about, and then there are, of course, the other interventions—things like HRT, as an example. You know, someone listening might say, “How do you spend multiple days just talking about menopause?” So you’re mentioning these sessions. What were some of the, I don’t want to use a pun, but I’m going to use it—what were some of the hot topics?

The hot topics? Well, I thought some of the information around the newer medications available to help navigate hot flashes was one. There was information about using different medications sequentially to help optimize bone density, which I kind of heard about but hadn’t really heard presented in that way. And that was great to hear because I mean, I have those patients. There were some talks around AI and how AI is being utilized in medicine, and sort of frank discussions around guardrails that maybe should be considered as we move forward.

There was a fantastic talk about voice and menopause, and how our voices change, and how there’s hormonal influence in the way we—the tone of our voice. There was a fantastic presentation on VR (Virtual Reality) and using that for pain control. There were so many good talks. There was a whole symposium around breast cancer screening and how we should risk stratify women as far as screening. And I know in my practice, we’re sort of just starting to do this, but we could do a lot better in screening women differently and more mindfully. So not everyone shows up for their annual mammogram, but there could be different ways of navigating this, and that was great. It was just great to have these really relevant topics talked about out loud, in depth, and it’s all translatable to what I do during the day.

Absolutely. And I mean, I would love not to have an annual mammogram. Like the—you know, we have men who listen to the show, too. Like, you would look forward to your mammogram like you look forward to your prostate exam. You know, it is not something that’s pleasant, ever. So any alternative to do that in a more, as you say, mindful way would be very welcome.

Well, I’m not sure there’s an alternative. There could be more mindfulness about frequency of screening and age of screening and whether or not you might need even additional screening. So there’s that.

Well, yeah, maybe I can’t wait to have my VR mammogram. That’ll be great. And to your point, too, the research in AI, especially what we’re seeing in voice—for those types of language models to do the interpretation and to be able to identify not just changes in hormone levels, but the other research that I’ve looked at is early detection of things like dementia and so forth. And so I really see an opportunity for—not just for women in menopause and perimenopause as, you know, just a cohort—but really the opportunity to be able to be very predictive, and then ultimately be prescriptive with these different modalities.

So I want to—as great as technology is, I want to talk about lifestyle. And so as an Olympic team doctor, as a fit badass, as someone who—you and I have had conversations about what it’s like for very fit women going into menopause—I want to start there because this isn’t something that’s often spoken about because the women who enter this transition stage of their lives aren’t necessarily the majority when we look at the overweight and obesity rates and some of the other lifestyle risks such as smoking or diet and so forth. I want to speak about the fit women and what happens to their bodies and what happens to their minds as they go into perimenopause and menopause and what you recommend. So I would love to start there because it’s—it was hard for me. Like I’m like, “What’s this weight gain? What’s going on?”

That’s a huge question. Because I, you know, I don’t—women I don’t think realize that they sort of start navigating perimenopause long before they think they’re in perimenopause. And that can happen sometimes in your late 30s. Some women notice symptoms in their 40s. Many of us notice them in our late 40s and early 50s, and nothing seems to happen in a linear fashion, and it doesn’t happen the same as our friends. And even though we can talk about it, you kind of think you know what’s going on, but you’re never really sure. So—and we don’t have a great tool to say, “Hey, this is exactly where you are,” you know? So I keep these discussions open and ongoing. I, you know, with my patients around the importance of exercise, the importance of eating well, the importance of prioritizing sleep, the importance of making sure we make time for ourselves and our family and those things that we enjoy, and that we are mindful about not doing things that are bad for us.

But, you know, in an office visit, you can’t cover all of those topics so easily. So I do spend a lot more time probably talking about exercise and guiding around nutrition. I’m not a dietitian, so I often refer out to a dietitian who can help with the nitty-gritty of how you do this from day to day. But the conversation is vast. It’s a lifestyle conversation. It’s like, how do you want to show up? How do you want to do things? What makes sense for you? And when you’re a fit woman, a lot of times, my experience—personal and also sharing with my friends—is that you try to solve it yourself without all the information that you need, and then you kind of get frustrated, and it’s a really challenging time on a lot of different levels. There aren’t a lot of voices in the field, as you said, describing how to navigate this as a more fit person, but I think we need to rethink how we exercise. We need to rethink how we recover. I want to say that one again—we need to rethink how we recover because it becomes a much bigger deal as we get older than it did in our 20s.

I mean, I remember in my 20s, waking up, going to do a thing for two hours, coming back, doing another thing for another little while in the afternoon, and then doing it again tomorrow. And, you know, now that’s probably not the best thing for me to do week after week. I don’t recover the same way. So I have to do things differently and also be really clear about what my goals are. You know, if my goal is to feel good, then there’s one way of approaching it. If my goal is to finish a marathon, then it’s a different way. If my goal is to, you know, lift more weight, then I have to navigate my training even more differently. And those are conversations that need to be sort of individual based on a woman’s goals.

And thinking about the thinking about the goals and thinking about the times of life—I was reading, I’m a huge Dara Torres fan, and for the listeners who don’t know, so Dara Torres is an American swimmer, and she went back to the Olympics in her 40s, and everyone said, “She’s too old,” and she medaled at the Olympics. And I was reading how she had to train differently. And the same thing was with McKaylee Jones, the triathlete who was—McKaylee was racing when I was racing long course; she was racing Olympic. And when she went into her 40s, the big changes were—and you mentioned recovery—they went from training six to seven days a week to training five and taking two rest days. Mentally, as a former pro triathlete, I had a real challenge with that, and candidly, at 52, I still have a challenge with that—like looking at what is a rest day and that definition for me. Because for me, at this stage, exercise is like a mental release, right? But to have to reframe it... And Dara also talked about the need to stretch more and do different kinds of training.

And Jen, could you speak to that, like how our bodies change in our late 40s, 50s, and what we need more of? Because it’s counterintuitive to like the, you know, the HIIT style workouts, and the—I won’t name the brand names of the chains—but it’s like, “Go push it, push it every day,” and then suddenly that doesn’t work, and you end up gaining weight, or cortisol levels go up, or your body is not recovering, you get injury prone. What do our bodies need more of, generally speaking?

Well, if you take it from the perspective that our goal is to hold on to and to build muscle, because we want to maintain our power and our strength as we get older, and we also want to support our bone density, and we also want to be able to do all the things that we want to do, you need all of those things, but you just need them differently. So interval training is crucial. You know, is it every day? Oh no, definitely not. I don’t think most of us who are in our 50s will recover particularly well from a good solid interval session every day, but maybe a few days a week depending on what you’re trying to do. You know, if you’re training for a marathon again, you’re probably not going to do three interval sessions. But if you’re training—you know, if you’re in a recovery phase or something, you’ve just got a big block in the winter where you’re just kind of doing whatever, then yeah, maybe two or three days a week you are doing interval training. Interval training is fantastic for losing weight, actually.

It’s probably more efficient to weight train and to do interval training to lose weight than it is to do long, slow cardio, but it also decreases your cortisol level if you recover enough, and it also helps with that sort of mental calm that you’re talking about. But again, you need to recover enough. And, you know, one of the beautiful things about interval training is you can get a lot done in 20 minutes, which is great. But the other thing that women really need to focus on is strength training, and that’s new for a lot of people. I think our generation, we grew up kind of in the gym. You know, many of us used the high school gym or whatever. We joined a gym. We did the thing, maybe. And women after us have done the same, but not everyone has really continued to strength train. And it’s sort of, you know, you walk into a gym—it can be intimidating on a thousand different levels. You end up on the treadmill or the bike or something like that, and that’s probably not where you should be, or ideally want to be, for your goals as a menopausal or postmenopausal woman—you want to be lifting weights.

And then, how do you do that, right? So there are all these barriers that we need to navigate as women to lift weights, but it’s totally doable. And that’s something I spend a lot of time talking to patients about is, how do you—you know, what makes sense to you? Do you want to hire a trainer? Do you feel comfortable? Do you know what to do? I mean, I can give you pictures and tell you what to do, kind of. I’m not a strength and conditioning coach or a trainer, but, you know, I can get you started, and then you can find somebody. But, you know, it’s trying to meet someone where they are, and then try to help them move forward. It’s important. To your point, you know, you really like the hardcore cardio, you know, go out for hours on end, it feels so good, but that kind of training can increase your cortisol over a period of time, and then it makes it harder to kind of lose fat weight.

And sometimes, if you’re also kind of calorie restricting because you’re not losing the weight that you want to be losing while you’re doing all that cardio, you end up losing muscle mass, which then decreases your metabolic rate because your muscle is sort of like your engine. And it becomes this catch-22. So the educational piece around exercising differently is very much part of that conversation—that considering strength training, seeing how you might be able to fit that in two or three days a week, adding interval training one to three times a week. Don’t give up the cardio, but do it differently, and then also, recover, recover, recover. And I wanted to come back to what you said about not wanting to take rest days. Rest days are not lying-on-the-couch days. Rest days are just not the other days. The rest days, you’ve got to stretch, you’ve got to do yoga, you have to do the mindfulness things. You might go for a walk or a hike with friends. You do other things. They’re just not sort of those hardcore training days.

And that—the wrapping, you know, for me personally wrapping my mind around that and really defining what strength training is. And for years and years, I was a personal trainer, and I prepped athletes like NHL athletes and MLB athletes, and I prepped rock stars for tours. And I, you know, did all of those things, and I would train them better than I was training myself. Because, you know, especially for Ironman Triathlon, that putting the strength training in there when you know, like on a Sunday, you’ve got a 10-hour training day. And so deprogramming my mind was something for me that I found really challenging because I realized I still had those old beliefs from, you know, growing up in being a teenager in the 80s and a track athlete—we would do some weights but not a ton of weights—but seeing, associating like the Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the day with the weight training. And now to wrap my mind around it and think about, and I love your opinion on this.

So as an example, even today, there’s a yoga class I go to, and there are a lot of push-ups, a lot of planks, a lot of balance, a lot of strength holds, even types of squats that are all body-weight resistance. And I’ll, you know, I’ll do weights one day and I’ll do that as a strength workout one day. But what is—you know, let’s talk about that. And so people listening, maybe they have some of the same misperceptions I do, like, “Oh, if you do weights, you’re gonna gain all this bulk.” Can you define different types of strength training so that, you know, everyone could leave and go, “Oh, I could do that. I could do that.”

Well, let me start first with there’s offense and defense on strength training. So I consider defensive strength training the kind to not lose muscle mass and to preserve the bone density you have. And that’s doing what you’re doing, which is absolutely great, you know—body-weight stuff, maybe moderate weights, things that you can lift 10 to 12 of, something like that—some sets, different exercises, resistance bands, maybe you’re using kettlebells, whatever is comfortable for you to use. But you’re able to do a fair amount of repetition per set. And then there’s the heavy strength training, and that is fewer repetitions, maybe a few more sets, with a lot more rest in between, perhaps, and that’s more of a muscle-building option.

I think that women are changing their perception of beauty and acceptance a bit, which I love, because I think we’re valuing being strong and looking strong and feeling strong over what was valued in the 80s when women were, you know, the thinner, the better kind of approach, 90s. And it’s just not like that, because that approach leads to decreased bone density, decreased muscle mass, increased fat weight, and less function. And ultimately, it comes down to function. You know, you want to show up every day and do the thing, right? So if you can’t do the thing, then that’s frustrating. So if women lift weights, as much as we would like to look bigger if that’s our goal, we’re not going to put on muscle mass quite like Arnold Schwarzenegger did in the day.

Unless we’re also taking some other additional...

Exactly. Unless you’re supplementing in some way, which I don’t think is a big part of this podcast, right? So, you know, our goal is to be toned and strong. And, you know, the number on the scale is not as important as the way we feel. And what we’ll notice is that muscle does weigh a little bit more than fat. So if you are a super strong, toned woman, you’re going to look smaller but weigh more if that matters. But the strength training really is important for our function. It’s important for our bones. Whereas we go through menopause, our estrogen levels fluctuate, and then they sort of plummet, and we are more prone to put on fat weight, particularly at rest. Estrogen is sort of muscle fuel, kind of, and if you don’t have it, you’re going to lose lean body mass. You lose all that, you lose sort of your engine as we talked about, right? So your muscle is your engine. So then you gain weight, and that is all reversible or navigable, if you will, with strength training.

So you can sort of preserve where you are by strength training to a degree. I mean, bodies do change. You have to be accepting of your own body as well. But you don’t have to accept sort of the decline of estrogen and all the things that come with it. You do have some tools in your toolbox.

And I love that you mentioned that, because Kathy Coover is, you know, one of our advisors. She was on the show, and she’s 72, and girlfriend is fit. I have been in the weight room with her, and she alternates functional training with heavy days as well. And I’ve seen her lift, and she’s so funny, Jen, she’ll be like, “Susan, come here,” and you know, it’s like, we’re on a leg machine, and she’s like cranking it up. And she’s very, very lean, and she was very open on the show—she’s a cancer survivor. She’s added in the functional training after getting injured. And so that balance—and so what I’m hearing, and I hope this is landing for everyone—is that number one, there is the variety piece, and it’s alternating the functional, like I’m talking about with, you know, the body weight and so forth, and then also with the heavier workouts. And as women, we’re not designed naturally to put on mass. Now there are edge cases with everyone, but that heavy lifting is essential, especially if you don’t want to go into your later years all hunched over, and, you know—and which is significant.

I do want to talk about stretching. I can’t—you know, I want to talk about stretching. My husband doesn’t listen to this show; he listens to my other show, but he just will not stretch, like not stretch at all. But stretching as we age is so critical because—can you talk about the physiology of what happens to our body as we age and why we need to stretch? This is a PSA for stretching.

Well, first of all, stretching is sort of immediate gratification. It is the one piece, one sort of modality of exercise that you can do that you can feel better almost kind of right away. You don’t always feel that way when you first start doing new cardiovascular exercise, like running. It usually takes a little while before that feels good. And strength training, in general, there’s some pretty good soreness sometimes right after the first few sessions if, you know, if you’re not careful, you start slow. But stretching, I think almost everyone feels better after stretching every time, for the most part, as long as you don’t overstretch something. So I kind of look at it like there’s mobility, there’s mobility, which is sort of going through the range of motion of joints and making sure everything is moving the way it’s supposed to move, and then there’s stretching, where just maybe regaining some length in your muscles if they get tight.

And as we age as women, and our estrogen levels go down, the estrogen—we actually have estrogen in our ligaments and tendons. And when the estrogen goes down, those areas become more tight, a little bit more stiff. We probably notice—many women notice more joint pain or just increased risk of injury, like I, you know, how many times you all of a sudden just, I don’t know, you do a whole bunch of curls, you do one extra set, and then you’re like, “Wow, why am I so tender over my biceps tendon?” And it’s just because you probably need to do a little bit less, you need to be more mindful because you don’t have quite as much estrogen, and that makes a big difference. So by working on our ranges of motion, it also helps protect us from those kinds of injuries, as well as being mindful about our volume, and that makes a big difference.

I had no idea about the estrogen—wow. And that, it's the—I’m so grateful you said that because we, you know, fact versus myth, right? So there was this whole period of time where women were told not to go on estrogen and not—you know, obviously women who are cancer survivors, this is different—but women who had never had cancer, and now the pendulum is swinging from “estrogen is bad” to “estrogen is good.” And I was talking to Mia about the heart benefits, and now I’m hearing even other benefits from you. For a woman who, let’s say, has never had cancer and is listening to this conversation—and we know that less than two and a half percent of women in the United States who are perimenopausal or menopausal are on HRT—what are your personal thoughts and professional thoughts on hormone replacement?

Well, I think it needs to be very much an individualized approach. Menopause hormone therapy is definitely beneficial in so many different realms. Currently, the sort of recommended realm is probably vasomotor symptoms, which are hot flashes, disrupted sleep, and estrogen therapy—menopause hormone therapy—can make a big difference in that realm. It’s not necessarily indicated for musculoskeletal issues, but it’s certainly a nice side effect if you are on menopause hormone therapy that those symptoms can sometimes improve if you are using it.

And, you know, a lot of ladies who are on the aromatase inhibitors post-breast cancer treatment—that sort of estrogen blockers, if you will—they do describe a lot of achiness and joint pain and discomfort and muscle tightness, and that is because those drugs that are helping protect them from recurrent breast cancer are doing their job by, you know, decreasing the estrogen availability, but they’re also increasing the symptoms that can cause that kind of discomfort. So I am a proponent of menopause hormone therapy in a woman who wants to take it, who has symptoms that may benefit from it. You know, if someone comes in, they’re completely asymptomatic, has absolutely nothing, they say, “Well, you know, should I be on hormones?” I don’t know, you know, probably, I think so. But do I have, you know, an indication medically that makes it, you know, the right thing to do? Not necessarily.

And so now the pendulum is swinging, but we didn’t learn about this in med school. And this isn’t something that comes up in our continuing medical education courses—I’m a family physician—but the GYNs and the OBs will tell you the same. So this is now this incredible groundswell of women who are like, “Hey, you know what? We can do this better. I really want to do this better. Let’s get more information out there.” And then women have better choices to make because I have more data to pull from. Yeah, that’s, I think, a really important part of this whole conversation that we’re having.

Absolutely, and I love what you said. It’s such a personal decision. And I know for myself that, you know, in all transparency, I went 12 years with periods that lasted two weeks, and I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t even tell my OB. I didn’t tell anyone. This is after I had my last child. I had night sweats for 12 years, and I really—it wasn’t until that I started, you know—and for the listeners, this is an emotional piece for me—it wasn’t even until I was having conversations with girlfriends, like I joke, Jen, every woman needs a menopause mentor. Kathy Coover was my menopause mentor. She was—we have a 20-year age difference, and we were traveling together when she was in menopause. We were in a hotel one time, and I was pregnant. She’s going through menopause, and she’s like, “Do you mind if we turn the heat down?” I’m like, “Girl, let’s”—so we cranked the AC on, it’s the winter, and it was the best. But I was suffering needlessly.

And I didn’t want to talk about it. And then, you know, having the conversation with Mia and just getting really honest and saying, “Why am I choosing to”—like going back to that athletic mindset—“I’m going to tough this out. I’m, you know, doing a marathon. I’m doing”—like, I’m going to push, push, push. And I just—I got to the point where I just didn’t want to do it anymore. And for me, it was life-changing. And I have, you know, as a former holistic nutritionist, I have great eating habits, great sleep hygiene. I do all the things one would recommend. And my message—and I’ll give the final word to you—my message for anyone listening is if you are suffering, please go to the Menopause Society, and we’ll put it in the show notes. North American Menopause Society site. There are a list of certified providers in menopause. There are people out there just like when Botox, you know, was becoming popular, you could get it on the corner by Joe the Botox guy. There are people out there prescribing hormones that have no business necessarily doing it because they don’t have the foundation, and that can also be dangerous. Start with the lifestyle, but then really, truly, if you are suffering, go see someone who’s certified and find out if you’re a good candidate for it. That would be my recommendation. But Jen, I’ll give the final word to you.

I agree. I think the Menopause Society is an amazing resource. And not only are there clinician lists on there, but there’s a ton of information because, as women, if we’re informed, we make good decisions, right? We sometimes just need to get solid information from a place like the Menopause Society rather than just plain old internet searches, because sometimes that can be a little confusing. And to your point, you know, does someone have to be menopause certified? No, not necessarily, but they definitely have to have done the work and have done the research and sort of figured out what they—and this is a labor of love. This is not something that we can easily find out from our, you know, the American Board of Family Medicine. It’s not that the information is not there, it’s just not in one place and easily accessible.

So there are women in the community that I refer to also that have an interest in menopause, and they’re not menopause certified. And then there’s a few that are—there are not a lot of menopause-certified practitioners out there, but there are more and more. And more and more—I hope to be one by the end of next month! That’s the goal.

You will be! My vibe sister, you will be!

And Mia is one. So it’s, you know, I think the place to start is with your physician, your healthcare practitioner, asking the questions. If they’re not answering the questions or if you feel like you’re not being heard, or you’re being dismissed, go find someone else. I’m saying that as a clinician. I did that. My gynecologist, 43, I was 43. I mentioned some stuff, she goes, “Oh no, it can’t be.” I’m like, “Are you sure? Of course not, you can’t. There’s no way.” And in retrospect, that was exactly what was going on. I had just some, you know, weird flash things and just didn’t feel great, and there was another way around it. So advocate for yourself, I think, is really the most important thing. And don’t take—don’t take the first answer as the correct answer all the time.

I love that. Advocate for yourself. And, you know, use the—on this show, we always recommend well-researched—you know, any sort of, when Paul Arciero was on, obviously we were referencing his nutrition research on perimenopausal and menopausal women. But we always recommend what has been researched. And use the Menopause Society. It has an excellent website. Their blogs are excellent. There’s a tremendous amount of research. Educate yourself.

And so, Jen, I want to thank you so much for being here. And if this podcast has helped you as you’re listening, please do share the show. Tag us on social media. And I—I learned so much! Oh my gosh, I had no idea about the estrogen and the muscles and the—I’m like, oh my gosh, wow. So thank you again for being here.

Thank you for having me. This has been fun, Susan. Thanks.

Well, thank you. All right, everyone. So this has been another episode of the Menopause Health Podcast, and I will see you in the next episode.

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This transcript has been generated using AI technology. There may be minor errors or discrepancies in the text.

The opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the show or its hosts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional regarding your specific health needs.