The Menopause Conversation Your Doctor May Never Have with Cindy Dupuie

In this episode, Mary welcomes functional medicine practitioner Cindy Dupuie, who shares her deeply personal journey from experiencing early menopause after a stressful divorce to becoming one of the leading voices helping women understand the root causes of hormonal changes. Together they unpack why menopause is about far more than hot flashes and why estrogen influences nearly every tissue and organ in the body.

The conversation explores the principles of functional medicine, emphasizing how hormones, digestion, inflammation, the microbiome, and metabolic health are deeply interconnected. Cindy explains why declining estrogen can contribute to digestive problems including acid reflux, food sensitivities, constipation, SIBO, leaky gut, and poor bile production, while also discussing how hormone therapy may support long-term brain, heart, and bone health beyond symptom relief.

Mary and Cindy also discuss the current barriers women face in today's healthcare system, the importance of becoming educated advocates for your own health, and why individualized care—not one-size-fits-all medicine—is essential for thriving throughout midlife and beyond.

Whether you're navigating perimenopause, menopause, or simply want to understand how your body changes with age, this episode offers practical insights, empowering perspectives, and hope for building a healthier future.

Connect:

• 🌐 A Living Balance https://alivingbalance.net

Resources Mentioned:

• Dr. Mark Hyman — https://drhyman.com
• Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) — https://www.ifm.org
• Dr. Ben Lynch — https://www.drbenlynch.com
• Dirty Genes by Dr. Ben Lynch — https://www.drbenlynch.com/dirty-genes/
• Seeking Health — https://www.seekinghealth.com
• Dr. Tim Spector (ZOE) — https://zoe.com/learn/author/tim-spector

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Cindy: Realistically, every person needs to budget for their health care. Whether it's $100, $200 a month, I don't know what it is; it depends on where you live. You are legitimately going to have to budget for that. And if you don't, okay, your retirement and all that stuff you have saved up for you- are you gonna be able to enjoy your retirement? And I say that as a 68-year-old woman here, watching my contemporaries, not liking what I'm seeing at all. They are not enjoying their lives as they're getting older, and not living with vitality and doing the things that they wanna do. 

[00:00:40] Mary: Welcome back, my friends. I'm back. It's been a long, long pause, and for many reasons. And one day, I'll share a more intimate conversation with you about what my journey has entailed. But for now, suffice it to say, I've been experiencing what so many of you are feeling too. This massive, I don't know, can't quite put a finger on it shift that is causing a lot of us to question many things. 

And I can say this with confidence because friends, family, colleagues, clients, we're all expressing the same thing. The shift is upon us. What it is and what our role is in it and the purpose it plays in our lives, well, we just can't quite figure that out yet. But we feel it, a shifting energy. Be it a calm before the sh*t storm perhaps, or a settling after this upheaval.

Call it what you will in your own experiences, but for mine, it has been asking me to take a pause and reflect and refill my cup, but not too fast. Maybe like one droplet at a time and watch as each lands and creates this cascading ripple effect outward. Painfully slow, but profoundly purposeful. It is asking me to be present, to be still, to reflect, to listen.

And my instincts are this. This podcast is shifting in the same direction that I am. Less emphasis on the biology of the female species and all the intricacies of our hormones, and more about the subtle body, the energetic body, the chakra system, and all points in between. The kind of work of experts in the field like Cyndi Dale.

But for now, we'll park that, and I'm gonna be talking to another Cindy. On today's episode, I'm joined by functional medicine practitioner Cindy Dupuie, who will share her health journey from early menopause after divorce-related stress and weight loss to becoming a yoga instructor, and then training with the Institute of, uh, Functional Medicine after discovering Dr.

Mark Hyman's work. Cindy is a passionate advocate for women navigating menopause, and she has dedicated her work to helping women better understand what's happening in their bodies during perimenopause and menopause. And through her platform, she challenges the silence, the confusion, and the misinformation that so often surrounds this stage of life. Cindy brings a powerful blend of personal experience, deep research, and practical guidance.

She's built a reputation from breaking down complex hormonal changes into language that actually makes sense, while also addressing the emotional, mental, and lifestyle shifts that come with this transition. What sets Cindy apart, though, is her bold, no-nonsense approach. She isn't afraid to question outdated advice or call out the gaps in how women's health is often supported.

In this episode, Cindy shares what's really happening beneath the surface during perimenopause and menopause. Cindy will explain functional medicine's root cause approach and why she shifted towards women's health after her own experience starting HRT at the age of 50, or menopause hormone therapy, we say here in Canada, and then later refining her regimen.

Cindy argues that women need better education and advocacy, especially around MHT's role beyond symptom relief to support bone, brain, and heart health, and to address inflammation, as well as testing, monitoring, and absorption of your hormone therapy. Cindy also gives details on how declining estrogen can affect digestion, including reflux, low stomach acid, leaky gut, and SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

In this episode, we will discuss barriers in our healthcare system, individualized hormone therapy treatment, including testosterone, and nutrition, specifically prioritizing fiber and protein. We'll also talk about all the tools in the toolbox to help with symptom management, practical holistic habits, and simple strategies like pausing, taking a breath, and yoga that can support nervous system regulation, which is key but often undervalued, overlooked, and taken for granted in our conventional healthcare system.

But before we dive in, here's something you need to know about Cindy Dupuis. Cindy resides in Orange County and is the founder of A Living Balance. Since 2008, she and her business have helped hundreds of clients reach their desired weight, improve energy and vitality, reverse diabetes, improve cardiac health, balance hormones, and improve digestion and skin.

Recently, she has expanded her practice to focus on metabolic health, diabetes, heart disease, and reversing the aging process. You can find out more about Cindy and A Living Balance from her website, alivingbalance.net. If you've ever felt confused, dismissed, or like your body has suddenly changed without a roadmap, this conversation will leave you feeling informed, validated, and most certainly empowered.

Please join me in welcoming Cindy Dupuis to The Menopause Disruptor podcast. 

[00:05:37] Mary: Welcome, Cindy Dupuie to the Menopause Disruptor Podcast. I am so happy to have you here to talk about root cause medicine and all the good things about hormonal health. Welcome. 

[00:05:49] Cindy: Thank you so much for having me here. It's a delight. Thank you. 

[00:05:53] Mary: So Cindy, I always like to start most often with my guest's backstory in terms of understanding our pain points. Because let's face it, when we go through our own personal transformation in our health journey, that often becomes the foundation for how we wanna share with others. So bring us back on your health journey. 

[00:06:13] Cindy: Definitely. You sh- you're right. We usually kinda hone in on where we need to have the healing, and then we kinda take off from there. So actually, my beginnings were way back in college when I really didn't have a pain point, but I got my degree in dietetics and food administration a long time ago, and then did nothing with it. I got married, had a family. I was working for my then-husband. We had a used car dealership, so it was quite a departure from health and dietetics, right?

But I found that I was pretty good with numbers too, so it worked. But then, when I turned 43, I actually went through a divorce. And as anyone who has ever gone through a divorce, or upset of any kind like that, it was pretty traumatic, upsetting, a time when it just seems like there was so much uncertainty. And what happened was, because I think I put myself in a very stressful state, and I also lost too much weight. And that's what happens to me when I get very stressed. Some people eat, some people don't, and some people, their cortisol just goes like this. That's more like me. And my body just went from having periods to not having periods. And I went, "Okay." And I thought it was because, and I think this definitely contributes to it, was the fact that I had lost a significant amount of weight, which means you need an adequate amount of fat to make cholesterol, and cholesterol's the backbone of your hormones. So my body just says, no, we're not gonna make any."

[00:07:54] Cindy: And then even when I righted myself, two, maybe three years later, which would put me at 45 and 46, my body says, "We're not gonna turn it back on. You're just gonna stay in menopause here." So for those of you who don't know, probably your audience does know the average age of menopause.

It's usually around 50, 51. So that was early to go into menopause. And I didn't think a whole lot about it. I did have some night sweats, hot flashes. My gut was an absolute mess, which probably helped lead me to functional medicine. So what happened during this time is, I'm thinking, "Okay, so what can I do with my life," right?

I'm not gonna be working for my ex-husband anymore, obviously. And I still love the human body. I think it's an amazing machine, and I thought, "I've been out of it for a long time. What can I do?" The first thing that I did was I became a yoga instructor. 

[00:08:54] Mary: Nice. 

[00:08:54] Cindy: Bec- Yeah, it was. Because at the time, yoga got me through that period of time.

I remember walking into yoga class just beside myself, and coming out going, "Okay, I'm gonna be okay." And that made me, of course, wanna pay it forward. So I became a yoga instructor, and then circuitously from that, I had yoga students come up to me, knew that I had a nutrition background, and started asking me questions, and started wanting to come to me.

So in the meantime, I thought, "Okay, I've got a lot of catching up to do here. It's been 20 years or close to it." And I happened to go to a lecture   And do you know who Dr. Mark Hyman is? 

[00:09:34] Mary: Yes. The godfather of functional medicine. 

[00:09:42] Cindy: Yeah. So she happened to hold up his book, The Ultra Metabolism, and here again, this was, like, 23 years ago, 25 years ago, so it's a long, a long time ago.

[00:09:50] Cindy: And I hadn't heard of functional medicine, but I picked up his book, bought it, and I started reading it, and I was like, "Oh my God, this just makes so much sense to me." And then I happened to be researching something for a client, and I had no idea at the time he was associated with the Institute of Functional Medicine, but somehow came across him online, and then the Institute of Functional Medicine.

And they were having a very intensive training out here in Pasadena, California, and I went, I'm gonna pay my money, and I'm going. So I did, and I came away from that thinking I have found my tribe. This is where I wanna be. This makes so much sense to me, and I haven't looked back since. 

[00:10:36] Mary: Beautiful. 

[00:10:37] Cindy: And when I was there, when we got into the digestive system module, okay, learning all about that, I happened to be sitting next to a naturopath from Canada.

Delightful. Just the sweetest thing. Yeah. And when you go to something like this, you end up sitting in the same place every day. You walk in, you sit in the same place. So we were sitting next to each other for the full six days. And we got to the digestive part; I told her some of the things that were going on for me.

She and I told her I did have one of the functional digestive stool tests done through Genova Labs. And she says, "Do you have it?" And I said, I can bring it tomorrow." So I did, and she looked at it, and she just listed off all the things that probably were affecting my digestive system, and she was dead on with everything that she pointed out.

There were additional things, but she was dead on. So, long story short, I started helping people from the lens of functional medicine. For anyone who doesn't understand functional medicine and how it may differ from naturopathic or integrative, in that we look at the root cause. And so a true functional medicine practitioner will connect the dots: blood work history, family history, your history, and really go deep, and then come up with a plan from there. That's the real basis of it. And there are many different layers to look at. So that's what I started to do. It's a journey because it takes experience actually to do that.

[00:12:15] Cindy: It really does. And I feel like I'm fortunate because I'm not a doctor, so I didn't have all that conditioning and training, so I was a blank slate. I didn't have to undo all of it. I've been in private practice, and I'm strictly telehealth now, but I've been in private practice for about, I don't know, 23 years, something like that.

And then I started moving more to women's health probably about five or six years ago, before menopause and perimenopause just hit. 

[00:12:46] Mary: Exploded, 

[00:12:47] Cindy: Yeah. Exploded, exactly. And the reason why I veered towards that was I was looking at my own clients who had been with me for a while, and I knew how they ate, I knew their lifestyle. We were doing a lot of the right things, and we were still losing some ground. And I'm thinking, "Okay, I need to pay attention to this." And to give you a little bit more background on me is that I started HRT, Hormone Replacement Therapy, at age 50, so that was seven years after I had gone into menopause.

I got really lucky because I didn't ask for it. I didn't know to ask for it. And this doctor just put me on a fairly low dose bioestrogen at that point in time, which is probably s- something we can get into here. Which helped in so many ways. Again, I didn't know at the time. And so I had been on hormone replacement therapy, and then I was looking at my contemporaries also, not only my clients, but my contemporaries, and I'm going, "They're not doing so well." They're at the doctor's office a lot. They're in pain a lot. They have diabetes. They have high bloo- blood pressure. And I don't have any of that. 

[00:14:09] Mary: Yeah. 

[00:14:09] Cindy: And, so that's when I started to do a deep dive. And then once I started to do that, I changed my own type of hormone replacement therapy myself, and I really started to pay attention to my clients coming in, and then got on the bandwagon for a variety of reasons to help women, to educate women, and so that they can be their own advocates. And I've had a very frustrating week. My clients that are coming in are not getting help, and even myself. I'm within an HMO, and I am trying to see how far I can get before somebody will prescribe within the HMO, 'cause I do it outside the HMO, my insurance company. Yeah. What do I have to go through to get help?

[00:15:00] Cindy: So I'm doing this kind of for an experim- experiment for myself, but also have a better understanding of what so many women, at least in the US, go through. I think it can happen in Canada as well. 100%. And it's just devastating, and it doesn't have to be that way. And so I'm on this crusade of trying to support, educate, 'cause you have to have a bit of education so you have an understanding of what you are even talking about. And a lot of women, and doctors included, but a lot of women just think that our hormones are for reproductive reasons and maybe for sex, okay?

[00:15:46] Cindy: Our libido, and that's about it, right? That's what we're taught. And you- once we know that estrogen affects every single tissue and organ in our bodies, which includes the digestive system, and so some of them are gonna be affected there, some of them are gonna be affected by their sleep, some of them are gonna be affected by thyroid. There's just so many different things. 

In the energy, brain. Once we understand that and how the estrogen actually affects those areas, then we can connect the dots. If we think of hormone replacement therapy, this is my opinion. If we think of hormone replacement therapy only for hot flashes, only for night sweats, only for libido, only for vaginal health, all those are important.

They are. But there's so much more and additional things on top of it. And if we understand it, we can have a better conversation with our doctors. We can arm ourselves a little bit better. So that's one of the things I do. I do have an eight-week course, and that's near and dear to my heart. And we go over anything and everything, pretty much, so that a woman is equipped and she's supported, possibly as she's starting to make some steps to learn how to advocate for herself.

[00:17:10] Cindy: So that's how I got into the hormone part of it. Yeah. 

[00:17:14] Mary: It is quite the journey. And a meaningful one. It 

[00:17:17] Cindy: is. 

[00:17:20] Mary: And when we're in it, we don't feel it, that we're making any sense of it, or why the hell is this happening to me, until we see it on the other side.

[00:17:28] Cindy: Until we see it on the other side, yeah. And one of the things too that I do want to mention here, because this is an area too, partially because of my age, because, according to doctors, I shouldn't be taking any hormones because I'm too old. It's not safe for me, and I get too many clients coming in where there's absolutely no conversation around hormones when it's about bone health or anything else.

[00:17:54] Cindy: And there needs to be a conversation and education of why doctors are coming up with this age thing. It's usually around cardiovascular disease. And so I'm even on a bigger crusade for my older women who have never been offered HRT. And you're never too old for it, by the way. Yes, you are never too old for it.

And I want to support those women. And, if you're younger and you have a mother who's in their 70s or 80s, just to have a conversation, even if it's just vaginal, hormone replacement cream. 

There are so many different things; osteoporosis is a big one, okay? Where estrogen can really be helpful and even possibly progesterone and testosterone.

So there are so many different, again, understanding what the function of our hormones is with the breakdown of bone and the buildup of bone. And there isn't one woman who's come into my practice who has osteoporosis or even osteopenia where their doctor has had a discussion with them about HRT.

Not one. And the thing is that estrogen was approved to prevent osteoporosis in the United States by the FDA in 1975. 

[00:19:12] Mary: In 1975. 

[00:19:15] Cindy: 1975. So they were using it. They were using it. What does that tell you? 

[00:19:18] Mary: Yeah. And then we had that women's health initiative study, right?

[00:19:23] Cindy: And then the whole narrative has been set for over two decades, and doctors have not been educated. And there's so much still confusing, unfortunately, information and misinformation out there. And I just read something this morning on Instagram, and I just went, "Oh my God." And it was by a really good doctor, but it's how she couched it.

It's "Oh, I'm so sorry." It's just like women are gonna go, "Huh?" She was saying only go by your symptoms when it comes to testosterone, but get your estrogen measured. It's that you don't need to have your hormones tested if you're on HRT. Yes, you do, for a lot of different reasons.

So it's not just for symptoms. A lot of doctors will not test your hormone levels once you're on them if your symptoms look okay. But your symptoms are  And I'm all over the place here, but your symptoms are, what I call, you have that iceberg, right? And so the smaller part of the iceberg is at the, is on the top of the water.

Those are the things that you can see. But the things that are even bigger- bone health, heart health, Alzheimer's, dementia, inflammation- all of those things that, again, our hormones protect against, those are underneath the surface. And those are the things that we can't see happening until all of a sudden we have a heart attack, or we have a stroke, or we have osteoporosis, we have something like that.

[00:20:51] Cindy: And that's why measuring your hormones, making sure that we're getting to a high enough level to protect all of those things that are happening underneath the surface, is super important. We need to know: are you absorbing it if you're on the patch? Are you absorbing it correctly? Okay? Some women don't. 

[00:21:13] Mary: You've given us quite a bit. Many takeaways I can pull from this conversation so far, Cindy. First off the bat is I feel like I am listening to my own story when I hear your story. Ah. 

[00:21:25] Cindy: Oh. 

[00:21:26] Mary: And we are just two in a big macrocosm of women who are feeling the same things in different variations. And have their story with similar or dissimilar outcomes. But when I hear what you have gone through, I am sitting here going, "This is exactly what led me into becoming a menopause doula," and taking my background in science communication and trying to dissect some of the information out there and the research, and make sense of it to empower women so that they, as you said-  can take agency of their own. 'Cause we all should be able to walk into the doctor's office and advocate for our needs, our individualized needs, not the like you said, conventional medicine that's just got a cookie-cutter approach, and makes matters more complicated and less serving.

Huge disparity still with women's health as a result of many things. But I'm. I'm so glad, first of all, that you did unpack functional medicine and its role, particularly the gut microbiome. And we have the work of Dr. Mark Hyman, as we said. He is  or Hyman, I should say, who is the godfather, the founder of functional medicine. And then you couple that with the work of Dr. Tim Spector, the gut health doctor, and what he's discovering, and just the significant role of the gut microbiome in overall health and wellness and our digestion. 

[00:22:58] Cindy: Yeah, and that's very significant. I haven't read or listened to him, so I'm gonna have to put him on my list.

But  And the microbiome is super important. You know what? What  Is it okay if I go into some of the other areas that estrogen affects the digestive system? 

[00:23:16] Mary: I was just gonna say, why don't you take us down that journey about- Okay   estrogen and the digestive tract. Again, like you said, something that's not widely known.

[00:23:25] Cindy: No. But- no, it's not   

[00:23:27] Mary: Absolutely significant. In fact, that, I feel, in many ways could be that one missing link that could solve or at least aid a woman in so many different aspects. But take it away, Cindy. Explain to us. 

[00:23:40] Cindy: You're right   what is happening. It can. And every woman's a little bit different. Of course, the microbiome and the way that the whole digestive system is working together can influence how we're able to remove toxins and our metabolized hormones, our estrogen and all that.

So we need to be able to carry it. It's packaged up in the liver, and we need to be able to get it out through the digestive system. So if you could just have that basic idea that if the digestive system, if it doesn't have the correct microbiome, there's other things going on, that there's a good chance that we're recirculating toxins and estrogens.

So that's one thing. And I do look at that if I kinda know what a, what, how much estrogen someone's on, and if it's really high. And I'll go, I wonder what's going on here." Our digestive system starts in our mouth, actually, and it's one long tube. And there are many different sphincters, right?

We have a sphincter in between the esophagus and our stomach. We have a sphincter in between our stomach and the small intestine, and it goes all the way down. And if we think about estrogen, we know estrogen has to do with collagen, right? We know it has to do with synovial fluid and ligaments, all of those things.

So we have ligaments all over our body. We have collagen all over the body. What do you think those sphincters are made of? A little bit of collagen maybe in there. So we want the integrity of our tissues so that they can close the way they're supposed to close. All right? So that's one thing. It's an easy one, kind of. So we will often see an increase in acid reflux and heartburn. Let me back up and see some of the signs, okay, to see if you can identify with some of these signs. We can see more acid reflux. We can see more indigestion. We can see more food sensitivities. Okay? It's like all of a sudden it's like, "Why can't I eat these foods that I used to be able to eat before?"

We'll have a lot more bloating. We can have IBS, which is a, it's diarrhea and/or constipation. We can just feel pretty yucky, and our energy can go down as well. So that's often what we will start to see more of as we move into perimenopause and menopause. And again, that was where I was hit.

[00:25:59] Cindy: So once we get past these sphincters, we have the stomach, and the stomach is so important for what it does, mainly because of the acid that is produced in the stomach. All right? We need that in order to digest our food, to make our vitamins and minerals available to us, and to sterilize our food too.

Okay? That's important. And often when we move into perimenopause and menopause, we start losing estrogen; our stomach acid will go down for a lot of women. So also the lining can be a little bit disturbed too, which produces the stomach acid. So sometimes we need more support, like with zinc, carnosine, and things like that.

It's a specific, it's a specific type of zinc that will help with the stomach lining. So we can actually take stomach acid to help us. All right? And then from the stomach, we go into the small intestine. So much is happening in the small intestine. So that is where we are breaking down more of our food and absorbing it as well.

And we could possibly, if we have a lot of inflammation, all right, so we're having a difficult time digesting things, moving things out, we can have more inflammation. And our small intestines are only one cell layer thick, so if we have a significant amount of inflammation, we can have a little bit of opening in the junctures of the cells, right?

[00:27:26] Cindy: And so then we have leaky gut. When you think about it, if something even tiny is leaking out, right? How's our body gonna respond to that? It's no longer in the digestive system. We're gonna have an allergic reaction to it, aren't we? So all of a sudden we become less tolerant or maybe allergic to foods that we never were.

 That could be one reason why we are allergic to them or just not able to tolerate them. So we got the leaky gut part of it, and here again, we have that estrogen that helps to reduce inflammation and helps with that collagen and helps with that whole lining there. So that's important. Another thing that's really important is that, again, that microbiome, right?

That's more in the large intestine; it's supposed to be anyway. If, for some reason, bacteria that should be mainly in the large intestine creep up into the small intestine, we will then have signs and symptoms that we have SIBO, okay? Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth,

which can manifest itself as either diarrhea, bloating, and/or constipation, depending on what you got going on there.

So that's not unusual. So you can get SIBO from, again, that backup from the large intestine from constipation. You can get it because you don't have the proper motility, and I'm gonna talk about motility a little bit more. You aren't making enough stomach acid to sterilize your food.

There could be a lot of different, again, underlying causes to SIBO, and if anyone's ever had SIBO, you know it is not fun. It's not the easiest thing to get rid of or keep it at bay. 

[00:29:19] Mary: Ooh, okay. 

[00:29:20] Cindy: And I know that personally, okay? I know that. Okay. I would like to trade my digestive system in, and I'm pretty much on top of it, okay?

But I would like to trade it in. So another thing that's, another piece that's really important, and it's really important when it comes to estrogen, and for me, it was a missing piece for me, and I stumbled upon it just by accident. It's like, thank goodness. Thank you. So I'll tell you a little bit about that, and that is Bile, okay, which is made in our liver.

We think of bile, and we think of throwing up green stuff, right? We think it's in our stomach, but no, bile is made in our liver. And the function of bile: there are two or three different functions. One is, in the liver, we are mushing things up and taking things apart, and then re-putting them together and attaching it to our bile to be taken out of the liver, to the gallbladder, to the small intestine to be pooped out.

[00:30:22] Cindy: Okay? Okay. 

[00:30:23] Mary: Yeah.

[00:30:24] Cindy: So again, your estrogen that's your hormones; those are your toxins as well. Some of it does go out in your kidneys, but the majority of it goes out through your intestinal tract, your digestive tract. Okay. So the function of bile is to, again, move things out. It's also for peristalsis.

So is that really important when it comes to SIBO or constipation or even diarrhea? Yeah, it manages that, okay? It also helps to keep the bad stuff out, so disinfecting our food that's coming in from the stomach into the small intestine. And it's also super important for digesting our fats and making them absorbable and available to us, and that's really important.

And then also our fat-soluble vitamins. So bile's really important. Really important. Now- I have a gene SNP. And a gene SNP is, it's just like a little SNP. It's not like you're gonna have this particular disease, but it just means that your body just processes something a little bit different.

Okay? And the gene SNP that I have actually makes it more difficult for my body to convert choline all the way down into bio. Okay? So I have that gene SNP twice, homozygous. 

[00:31:52] Mary: How did you figure that out? 

[00:31:53] Cindy: You know what? I did like This is years ago. This is when  it was complicated. But, have you ever heard of Dr. Ben Lynch? 

[00:32:02] Mary: Yes. Okay. As a matter of fact, I have. 

[00:32:04] Cindy: Okay. So his stuff is good, you guys. You gotta follow him. You gotta listen to him. Oh. Yeah. He's a genius. He really, he's really smart, sometimes too smart. It's like, you need to dial it back here, Dr. Lynch. But it's okay.

 It's okay. It's good stuff most of the time, enough to really listen to him. And he does have products; it's called Seeking Health, and I do use his products too. And I do think they're good. Anyway, I had done 23andMe, it's 23andMe, I don't know how many years ago, and then I found Dr. B- Ben Lynch, and I took that raw data and put it into his program strategy.

[00:32:43] Cindy: And again, that was probably 10 years ago. So I put it through that, wasn't thinking about anything, and then he was talking about choline on, I don't know, on something, YouTube or whatever it was. And I also got his book Stratagem, or Dirty Genes- that's the name of his book.

[00:33:02] Cindy: Dirty Genes. I got his book. 

[00:33:03] Mary: Okay. 

[00:33:03] Cindy: Yeah, Dirty Genes. I got it in, anyway,

[00:33:05] Cindy: So what was happening, I was already on HRT, right? So I think I was close to 55, so I've been on HRT for five years, and what was happening is I was getting cracked and bloody around my nail beds, and then my, my heels were cracking. It was painful. And then I would go into the ocean without shaving. You know how you can get stingy, salty if you just shaved? But I wasn't shaving. It's like it's still stinging. And I couldn't figure out what it was, and I thought, "Okay, this could be thyroid," right? The cracked heels, the cracked this, the cracked that. I did a thyroid panel. It's coming back okay, so it's not thyroid. And I happened to stumble across what he was saying about choline and the genetic part of it, the PEMT, and I looked it up and I went, "Gosh darn it all. Look at this." And the other thing is my mom had her gallbladder removed. It's not uncommon for post-menopausal women to have gallbladder issues, okay? Yes. And that's part of it, right? It's part of that whole choline and moving it, making the bile and then moving that bile through. So I think that was one of the reasons why I was still not where I wanted to be digestive-wise.

[00:34:29] Cindy: I'd gotten about 80, 85%, but I couldn't get past that. So I started to take some supplements, and I still do. I still take them on a daily basis to support my choline production and take some other things mixed in with this particular supplement that helps to move it through as well. It's something that I will probably always need. That's just how my body is.  And even when I upped my estrogen in the last five years, I still find that I still need that support. So that's just how it is. It just is how it is. So it's something really important, and again, if you have signs of gallbladder issues in your family, you can have a history of running to the bathroom after you have a fatty meal or constipation, and you can have dandruff.

[00:35:26] Cindy: Here again, that's, that's fat being absorbed. If you have an issue with vitamin A or any of your fat-soluble vitamins, that's something maybe that you need to look into. So that's why that piece is so important. It's a big, important piece for some women. And some women after, let's say, maybe their third pregnancy will start to have gallbladder issues.

[00:35:48] Cindy: And of course, they're not even into  Not of course. Sometimes they're not even into perimenopause yet. But baby needs tons of choline to develop their brain. So if mom's had multiple pregnancies and perhaps there's an issue for her that she doesn't even know about, that could possibly p- be part of what's happening with her gallbladder.

[00:36:12] Cindy: I know, isn't it amazing?. 

[00:37:10] Mary:  You just don't hear about this in conventional medicine.

[00:37:12] Cindy: No

[00:37:13] Mary: You don't even hear about this, apart from the Dr. Ben Lynchs of the world. And for those who don't know him, he is 100% probably what we said was that Dr. Mark Hyman was the godfather of functional. He is the epigenetic pioneer. Yeah. 

[00:37:32] Mary: Very interesting. There are a lot of pieces, moving parts to this that I wanna talk about, Cindy. 

[00:37:38] Cindy: Okay. 

[00:37:38] Mary: Very interested. Again, I feel like I'm listening to my own story of me back  35 years old. And went through similar rapid weight loss, actually. Oh my gosh, and had to clean up my diet and eliminate food sensitivities that absolutely came out of nowhere. But you reminded me when you talked about the bile, that when I had my food sensitivity testing, they also  You can add on the organ testing. And my bile duct was, like, super sensitive, as was the liver. I got the double warning signs on those ones.

[00:38:12] Mary: So I did some backtracking of some research, and that was my first journey of understanding hormones in many ways. Oddly enough, this came alongside a concussion. Mary: And now that we understand concussions and how that can play in many facets of our health- 

[00:38:32] Cindy: It can. Yeah   I know you did I just was scrolling through before we went on; you just did something about that. Or, well, you did a show on that, and I haven't listened to it. And so I don't know. But I'm assuming that you've gotten into, I'm assuming, I don't know, how important progesterone is with brain health and with brain injury.

[00:38:59] Mary: In this particular episode, I mention it in a previous episode when I did an episode on TBI and concussion and PTSD and the nuanced overlap with menopause. 

[00:39:08] Mary: And it was in that episode when I spoke about progesterone because it was from another doctor who I was on her podcast and she was on mine.

[00:39:16] Mary: That Dr. Fiona Lovely of the Not Your Mo- Mother's Menopause podcast. 

[00:39:21] Cindy: Yes. Okay. 

[00:39:22] Mary: And she did a brain health course a few years ago. Ah. Shout out to Dr. Fiona. And it was in that brain health course that I heard for the first time that if you have a concussion in your luteal phase, now I don't know where I was in my phase- and your progesterone levels are, of course, in our luteal phase, they start to drop after 

[00:39:44] Mary: So while they're higher, and then yes. Because corpus luteum is- 

[00:39:50] Mary: is leaving the body where we have the progesterone, so that can help shedding of the uterine lining, et cetera, et cetera. We won't get into that. But I'll be- 

[00:39:59] Cindy: You explained it perfectly. 

[00:40:01] Mary: Okay, good. So if your progesterone levels are different in that phase and you get a concussion, you can be symptomatic for much longer and more severely.

[00:40:12] Mary: And now I have been trying to find all kinds of information to support that claim now. So, but I don't discard it. I was like, a concussion during the luteal phase, don't they- I 

[00:40:26] Cindy: would think it would be the right time to have it. Because it is- 

[00:40:30] Mary: Unless of course- 

[00:40:31] Cindy: Yeah, go ahead   

[00:40:32] Mary: It's at the very latter part where you're- 

[00:40:34] Cindy: Maybe at the very latter part when it starts to go down

[00:40:37] Mary: where your progesterone is starting to go down. 

[00:40:38] Cindy: Yeah. 

[00:40:39] Mary: And you're coming back into the follicle phase. But I parked that one, and I found it very interesting. 

[00:40:44] Cindy: Yeah. 

[00:40:45] Mary: But it, I did at the time when the results came back from my testing and the bile duct, and I started doing this, this journey.

[00:40:55] Mary: And that journey led to what was happening in my liver. I was under severe amounts of stress, particularly with a concussion and not being supported at the time, and I speak about that in that podcast. 

[00:41:06] Mary: And then I'm thinking, then it's putting   And my, my, my adrenals were just through the roof.

[00:41:12] Cindy: Yes. 

[00:41:13] Mary: Yeah. That- and I thought, the pressure it's putting on the gallbladder, and then moving into small intestines, and the doctor or the naturopath said, "There's probably SIBO present." 

[00:41:23] Cindy: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:41:23] Mary: And then that led me down the path to understand how SIBO can increase histamine production.

[00:41:31] Mary: Yes. 

[00:41:32] Cindy: Yes. 

[00:41:33] Mary: And then, you need methylation to-   get rid of the histamines. And then I thought, but then some, what does the role of estrogen play in all of that? And I- 

[00:41:47] Cindy: Yeah   

[00:41:47] Mary: Was very interested in the whole health issue. And that led me down the journey of the work of Dr. Ben Lynch, but more so the work of Dr.

[00:41:57] Mary: Tim Spector. 

[00:41:58] Cindy: I'm gonna have to look him up. Definitely gotta look him up. So estrogen would be the choline, the bile part. But estrogen, You'll hear that estrogen dominance or too much estrogen can also raise histamine. So there is this balance. There is this balance. I think when I hear that- I always go to gut. I do. Or to bile and gut when I hear of histamine. I think of leaky gut, I think of, we're not able to get things out the way we're supposed to, and then the microbiome. When I think of histamine, I always think of gut. always, 

[00:42:43] Mary: Yes, absolutely. And I have heard it before that a lot of times, if there is an issue with younger women, more so with PCOS, now called- yeah  PMS, and endometriosis, I have heard other functional medicine doctors, practitioners will go immediately to a liver cleanse and a gallbladder support.

[00:43:06] Cindy: Okay. So 

[00:43:07] Mary: Yeah, I found that quite interesting. Yeah. I think, oh, Cindy, suffice it to say, is that look at us two women who've gone through these similar experiences- 

[00:43:16] Cindy: Yeah   

[00:43:17] Mary: And it's led us down a journey of discovery. 

[00:43:20] Mary: And forthright enough to do it, but how many are left confused and are leaving it into the hands of their medical care team, their general practitioner, to solve the problem for them?

[00:43:33] Mary: And they're not the specialists in these fields. 

[00:43:36] Cindy: No, they aren't the specialists in these fields. And your listeners are probably fairly savvy, but I do wanna put a couple things out there for them to take seriously and to think about. Okay. And I know we have different health care systems between Canada and the US, and there are limitations with both.

And I know in Canada that you don't have to pay out of pocket per se, but if you want something that's really going to serve you, you probably are. Same thing here in the US. And so you know how we budget for retirement or holidays or getting our nails done and getting our hair done and getting our Botox or whatever it is, right?

Yeah. We always want to look good on the outside. We all do. And  Realistically, you need to budget; every woman, every person needs to budget for their health care. And whether it's $100, $200 a month, I don't know what it is, and it depends on where you live. But you are legitimately going to have to budget for that. And if you don't, okay, your retirement and all that stuff you have saved up for you- are you gonna be able to enjoy your retirement? And I say that as a 68-year-old woman here, okay? Again, watching my contemporaries, not liking what I'm seeing at all. They are not enjoying their lives as they're getting older, and not living with vitality and doing the things that they wanna do. So yes, our doctors are not trained. And the doctors, we have all these specialists, all these ologists. And so they're going to silo every problem that you have, and that's not how our bodies are. They're all connected, interrelated, interconnected, and here again, that's where the hormones come in place as well. So we all need to have one or two people, someone like Mary, someone like me, or a naturopath, okay?

[00:45:56] Cindy: On your team so they can help guide you and at least, like, if a doctor, wants to give you a prescription, I don't care what it is. All right? I don't care if it's hormones either. For you to have a conversation with someone who can help you look at the pros and cons, so whatever decision you make for yourself, you feel good about it. And when you embark on a new medication or program or something like that, you can again get support and bounce off that other person. Okay, is this working for me? What do we need to adjust here? So you have someone in your court as you're going along. And I say that also because you would think with everything that I know about perimenopause, menopause, and hormones, and I know a lot, okay?

[00:46:51] Cindy: I still get intimidated when I go into the doctor's. I'm going tomorrow, and I guarantee you they're   I'm gonna flunk my blood pressure test. Totally am gonna flunk it because I'm going in because I'm fighting for myself. Okay? 

[00:47:08] Mary: Yeah. 

[00:47:08] Cindy: And I'm gonna have to educate this doctor. So again, I can't get help. I have not been able to get help through the system here.

I have to get it outside, but I'm tired of paying out of pocket. And I also am on a mission. It's like, okay, let's go through this. So if he says no, all right, he's not comfortable, then I'm gonna ask, "Can you please tell me why?" And then when he tells me why, it could be cardiovascular, then I'm gonna say, "Okay."

[00:47:37] Cindy: You can see I had a full workup, nothing. All my inflammatory markers are low. My BMI is great. So if you're, and my cholesterol, which is not really part of cardiovascular disease, even though that's put out there. Yes, 

[00:47:55] Mary: Exactly. 

[00:47:56] Cindy: Yeah. That looks good because I am on HRT. It wouldn't look as good if I wasn't. My thyroid looks good. But I'm gonna try to break it down for him and say, boom, okay, so what are you still worried about then? Okay. And then, and then maybe even go to the HWHI and deconstruct that because that's where this comes from. 

[00:48:21] Mary: Yes. 

[00:48:22] Cindy: I'm armed. I know. And I've had- I've run this through my head getting ready for tomorrow, and my heart rate's already going up.

[00:48:30] Cindy: I can feel it, okay? 

[00:48:32] Mary: I can feel it. 

[00:48:33] Cindy: I know. And I know. 

[00:48:36] Mary: Yeah. 

[00:48:37] Cindy: And the average woman cannot even advocate for herself 'cause she doesn't know where she's, she doesn't have that background. So you have to have someone in your court. 

[00:48:48] Mary: Absolutely out of the ballpark how you explain that, Cindy. Again, I feel like I'm hearing my own story.

[00:48:56] Cindy: Yay. 

[00:48:56] Mary: I offer an- sort 

[00:48:58] Cindy: of. 

[00:48:58] Mary: Yeah.

[00:48:59] Mary: But here

[00:49:00] Mary: I built an eight-module course similar  to your eight-week course. Designed to empower women to advocate. And we take it right into not only the science of our hormones, but I get a little bit more into the energetic body. - Wonderful

[00:49:14] Mary: And emotional intelligence too, because it's a relationship. It is. How you show up and how you respond and have that conversation, that relationship with your doctor can influence

[00:49:27] Mary: Yeah

[00:49:27] Mary: the outcome or not. I went into my doctor just last week curious to have, 'cause it was a concussion follow-up as well as

[00:49:35] Mary: some concerns I have with my vaginal health.

[00:49:40] Mary: That's normal. It should not be overlooked at all. As we get older, it's very much part of the menopause process, but as well as aging, nevertheless. Yes. 

[00:49:48] Cindy: Yeah. 

[00:49:49] Mary: I took the conversation, like you, I'm gonna experiment, and I'm gonna see how she responds to my question on testosterone. 

[00:49:57] Cindy: Oh, okay. 

[00:49:59] Mary: Now let's, I wanna phrase this, and you'll probably agree with me.

[00:50:04] Mary: There's a pretty interesting conversation going on in social media, in the ether internet on t- on the two schools of thought on testosterone. We have  the Dr. C- or sorry, the Dr. Susan Davis, the pioneer in testosterone research alongside Dr. Jen Gunter. And on the other side we have Dr. Kelly Casperson, and they're both recognized.

[00:50:31] Mary: They both are   in the end they both have the same message, but the way theyput it out there is one is trying to find balance with what clinical evidence is out there right now, and the other one's saying, "Look, we need more testing. We need more clinical evidence, and why the hell isn't the FDA supporting more testing and supporting supp- supplementation or a- hormone therapy to include testosterone?" On the other hand, the other one's saying, "There's not enough data, and even if it's for hyposexual drive disorder, do we actually know?" Because there is not enough data to say clinically that this can support it. This is my take on it, and this is what I try to empower with. But I didn't have the words for it. Blamed it on concussion 'cause I was small. 

[00:51:18] Cindy: You can blame it on concussion. You can blame it on whatever you want to. 

[00:51:21] Mary: Yeah. My emotions and my nervous system were racing. Yeah. Yeah. And my short-term memory was out the window, and I couldn't, yeah call upon all this information. 

[00:51:28] Cindy: Yeah. 

[00:51:29] Mary: But this is the one thing that I implore in women, I think you do as well, is that- individualized treatment. And let's all be our own alchemist in our health journey. What? And take all the available modalities- 

and come up with a concoction, experiment, and figure out what is working for us. And when it's no longer working, let's tweak it. And we need that healthcare team on our side. Nobody's gonna go to jail if I go on testosterone.

No. Nobody's gonna be filed for malpractice if I decide, "Hey, I'm ditching everything. I'm gonna go on ashwagandha for the rest of my life," that kind of thing. It  

[00:52:15] Cindy: Yes. 

[00:52:16] Mary: You have a countermar- argument, so let's hear it. 

[00:52:17] Cindy: No, The only counter-argument, it's not an argument at all. It's just I know in the United States, testosterone is still a regulated substance.

It still is. So it's a little bit different here anyway as far as anyone going to jail. No one, and still no one's gonna go to jail. The two camps here, I do wanna address that. Let's do it. And first of all, what you just said, I wanna say something to that, and that is our bodies are changing all the time.

[00:52:48] Cindy: And to revisit, do we need to be on this supplement, or do we need to tweak our hormones? It is year by year. We might- we might not. But you need to understand that the support, we may not understand where we need to change it, and that's why, again, we need someone in our corner to help us.

But our bodies are changing. They are not static. Things come up which will tax our bodies that we're not even aware of, and we as women are really good at going, "Okay, this doesn't seem right," but then it goes away, and we don't even know the lingering effects that maybe it has on our bodies. And as we get older, that lingering effect can last a little bit longer and show up in different ways, okay?

So I want, just wanna let you know that. It's really important to be curious and open and flexible and not rigid, and know that our bodies are very flexible, and they want to heal given the right tools. And sometimes it'll take a minute or two, but being open and curious when something comes along, I think is the 

And taking a breath. It is the biggest thing that we can do for ourselves, okay? And sometimes we can get frightened, concussion, cancer, whatever it is. But if we can learn to pause and know that if we heal the terrain, which is our bodies- 

That pretty much we can get out of most things. And it might be more than we can even imagine or think about, and that's when we need to have different modalities and different people in our camp.

So I wanna say that. Wonderful. The other thing that I wanna say as far as the,

The doctors say that we don't have the clinical trials. I could use a bad word right now 'cause I'm so frustrated with them. We are not gonna have clinical trials because they cost a lot of money. There you go. And there is no money from the pharmaceutical companies to make a bioidentical hormone.

[00:55:08] Cindy: They can't make any money. The patch, the only way that they're able to monetize that is the delivery form. Okay? The patch, that's a delivery form. They cannot monetize estradiol. They can't do that. They can monetize what some different forms? I think- I can't think of it off the top of my head, but there is a patch that has a non-bioidentical estradiol and a progestin, un- unfortunately. So there isn't gonna be the backing, there isn't gonna be the money, there is not gonna be the science. Okay? So you need  There's plenty of women who have gone on testosterone. There's plenty of clinical data, and you are one person. You know what your body is doing. Now, having said that, I didn't go on testosterone until about three or four years ago.

My testosterone was low, but I didn't feel the need until about  I went, "Huh, you know what? I got a feeling I, I need to do that." And I did, and I'm glad I did. And there are some women that's what they need to reach for first, maybe. Depending what's going on. And the other thing that I learned, and here again, everyone's an individual, right?

How our bodies work is individualized, is  And I'm assuming this applies to women. I heard this on a podcast between  Was he a urologist? He was a male doc. I think he was a urologist with, oh my gosh, I can't remember the woman who  She's all about muscle. She's beautiful. Anyway. Oh, Dr. Stacy Sims. Dr.

[00:56:56] Cindy: Who? 

[00:56:57] Mary: Stacy Sims, or- 

[00:56:58] Cindy: No, it's not. Dr. Rhonda Patrick. Gabrielle Lyon? Gab- Gabrielle Lyon. Oh, Gabrielle Lyon. Yeah. 

[00:57:03] Mary: Yes. 

[00:57:04] Cindy: Yeah. 

[00:57:04] Mary: Okay. 

[00:57:05] Cindy: Or maybe it was Stacy. Maybe it was Stacy. Anyway, so I heard them talking about it, and he was saying that some men have receptor sites that are just much more active to their testosterone than other men.

[00:57:20] Cindy: So their testosterone may be down here; they're fine. And another man's who's up here is not doing so great, and I'm thinking it's probably happening in women too. So probably I've got really good receptor sites for testosterone. That's why it's been low for 20-whatever years, and I've been fine. Yeah. Until just recently I went,

[00:57:41] Cindy: You know- Yeah. And not a whole lot. So- yeah  where I do have an issue with testosterone, I will tell you this, is when it comes to pellets. It's not my favorite form for a variety of reasons. And in fact, what I read this morning, and/or heard in a post, was that you don't have to measure your testosterone levels. I disagree with that.

I do think that some doctors panic when they shouldn't panic when it's 70, 80, even 100, okay? Depends on the woman's situation. I don't think you need to panic about that. If she's feeling good and her sex hormone-binding globulin is fine, her thyroid's good, all, the hemoglobin, hematocrit, all of that is doing great, and she's being monitored, and I do think she should be tested, then we're fine.

[00:58:32] Cindy: We shouldn't panic. But they were saying Let's just go on symptoms. I'm like, you're going too far the other way here." So that's this back and forth. And there are good doctors out there. They have varying opinions. It's like, what do you do, right? What do you do? and 

[00:58:47] Mary: That's the problem is that they do have the varying opinions.

[00:58:50] Mary: First of all, thank you for reframing some of those important points. And I think when it comes to the clinical trials, interesting to know, and if you don't mind, I'm gonna quote you on that. No money for clinical trials- because pharmaceuticals can't make money from clinical trials.

[00:59:08] Mary: But you know what? I also feel that scientific research on women's bodies, and of course Dr. Stacy Sims gets big into this as well, is that i- it's significantly lacking. But what I also find is, and this is a point that Dr. Kelly Casperson and others of that same mindset are saying, is that l- women's lived experience is outpacing the scientific data.

[00:59:37] Cindy: It is. 

[00:59:38] Mary: She's right. And it has to be taken into consideration. It does. It must be taken into consideration. 

[00:59:42] Cindy: It does. 

[00:59:43] Mary: Someone is getting   If the testosterone, and some, we've had some celebrities come very forthright and forward, Halle Berry being one of them. Testosterone was just that little extra tipping point- 

[00:59:53] Mary: That took them over the edge of, "Ah, I'm doing better too." Holy sh*t, this is what was missing all along. 

[01:00:02] Cindy: Yeah. 

[01:00:02] Mary: Why not? Because at the end of the day, and this is where I think the two schools of thought agree, and I'm sure you and I do too- 

[01:00:10] Cindy: I know we 

[01:00:11] Mary: do   is that it comes down to quality of life. It does.

[01:00:17] Cindy: It 

[01:00:17] Mary: does. 'Cause when you feel like you have a quality of life, what happens? 

[01:00:21] Mary: Your mindset changes. And mindset has so much to do with our overall health. It is one of the things that we consume, like our food, and like media, on social media, on our TV. 

[01:00:32] Mary: Mindset. 

[01:00:34] Cindy: That's so true. 

[01:00:35] Mary: And shift your overall health, particularly brain health- yeah

[01:00:39] Mary: which is something we need to really pay attention to. 

[01:00:42] Cindy: We do. We do. Yeah. And all of this does have to do with your brain health. It really does. 

[01:00:48] Mary: Yeah. Especially we can get into the gut-brain health, gut-brain access. 

[01:00:54] Cindy: Brain connection. Yeah, we could. The thing too with testosterone is, I don't think a lot of women understand how dynamic our bones are.

[01:01:07] Cindy: So they're constantly breaking down and building up, constantly breaking down and building up. And when we lose our estrogen, we'll have a lot more bone breakdown. And our DEXA scans, which every woman should have in my opinion when they're in perimenopause, not waiting till, eight- in the US, age 65 to get their DEXA scans.

[01:01:30] Cindy: And by the way, I have to still ask my clients to ask their doctors to do a DEXA scan on them when they've never had one. Over, they're 65, 68, 69, their doctor still has not done a DEXA scan on them. It's like, what the heck? 

[01:01:45] Mary: Yeah. 

[01:01:46] Cindy: Yeah, it's just, it's ludicrous. So a DEXA scan is a gold standard, and it's useful.

[01:01:53] Cindy: It's not the end-all, be-all of looking at our bone density. There are other things that we can do, and there's also a formula that we can use online. It's called the FRAX score, I think, and it takes into account some risk factors as well as your DEXA scan. It'll give you your risk score for a fracture in the next five to 10 years, okay?

[01:02:18] Cindy: So that can be helpful. Over and above the DEXA scan, I have started having my clients who do have osteoporosis get two blood markers, and I'm bringing this up because we only have so much time here and I'm just trying to get out some important stuff. Oh, 

[01:02:37] Mary: I'm gonna bring you back. It's a no-brainer.

[01:02:39] Mary: You're 

[01:02:39] Cindy: coming back for another. Okay. 

[01:02:40] Mary: Okay. 

[01:02:41] Cindy: Okay. But there are two blood markers that are really helpful because usually when someone has osteoporosis, let's say you want to st- embark upon a program that's natural, right? Doing more protein, you're doing more weight-bearing exercise, maybe you're starting HRT, whatever it is.

[01:03:05] Cindy: Usually they don't measure your bones for another year or two, right? You don't get a DEXA score for another year or two. Don't you want to know what, if what you're doing is working? So there are two blood markers, and I don't know how available they are in Canada. They are available here in the US, and sometimes my clients pay out of pocket, 'cause it's really important, and one is called a CTX.

[01:03:33] Cindy: Okay. Excuse me, that's the short name for it, and that shows us how much bone breakdown there is. So how much the osteoclasts, what we call the osteoclasts, are breaking down. Then the other one is to look at your bone buildup, okay? How well is your body able to build up the bone? Because we need both. We need them to be dynamic, and that's called the P1NP, and I like to see both. And the reason why this came up for me when we were talking about testosterone is testosterone's anabolic.

[01:04:09] Cindy: Progesterone's more anabolic too, which will help with the buildup of the osteoblasts, which helps to build up bone. So we need to have a dynamic. I wanna know, are we having more breakdown? Is that where we need to really look at it? Do we need more estrogen, if a woman is open to that? Or do we need to maybe put a little testosterone in when we haven't been putting it in?

[01:04:34] Cindy: Okay. So all of these things do play a role together. And- they do. Yeah. 

[01:04:41] Mary: Yeah. So very good, extremely good point. Yeah. And I really want to press upon our listeners that when they're advocating is really ask the doctor what their history is, and

[01:04:53] Mary: success stories on- 

[01:04:55] Cindy: Yes   

[01:04:55] Mary: helping women through their menopause journey. That's 

[01:04:59] Cindy: a good question. Yeah. 

[01:05:00] Mary: Yeah. And there's a list of questions that I actually put in a little workshop that I offer women. But it's, as we say in the women's coaching program, coach the person in front of you, not to a textbook.

[01:05:14] Cindy: Yeah. 

[01:05:15] Mary: If a woman shows up and she looks healthy, don't assume that all these markers are fine, and not offer testing. At the same time, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. 

[01:05:25] Cindy: Yeah. 

[01:05:25] Mary: Yes. If, feel, if there's something such as testosterone or maybe upping her levels of progesterone, estrogen, whatever that might be, and it might give her the quality of health, let her 

[01:05:37] Mary: or quality of life, let her experiment- 

[01:05:41] Mary: with it, and come back after 90 days and say, "You know what? It worked or didn't work." But just because you are against an opinion- 

[01:05:51] Mary: or because a lot of these opinions doctors have got to be forming on their own account because

[01:05:56] Mary: the training in their medical practice is not robust and lengthy enough for them to become, as you can say, an ologist a menopausal-ologist per se. And then really listen to the woman that's in front of you and say, "Your lived experience matters," and the patient comes first. 

[01:06:17] Cindy: We should go into business and open up a clinic.

[01:06:20] Mary: Did you enter my headspace- I know   and pull it out? Because- 

[01:06:25] Cindy: I 

[01:06:25] Mary: know   I was actually thinking that, Cindy. Yeah. So. 

[01:06:30] Cindy: And I don't know about you, but the one missing piece for my clinic, what I do, is having a good resource for women to go to get their HRT, to make it easy for them. I wish I could prescribe, and I can't.

[01:06:46] Mary: I wish

[01:06:46] Mary: I could too. Yeah. 

[01:06:47] Cindy: Yeah. 

[01:06:47] Mary: I wish I could, too. We have one in my community that is so highly sought after. She had a wait list for months and months, and rightly so- now left private practice. And so unfortunately, yeah, a lot of people are scrambling. Oh, no. That's just my community, but my listeners are from all over the world.

[01:07:04] Mary: So whether you are in Spain, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, or here in Canada, I think we all have some battles, some hurdles to overcome in navigating this. stuff. We do. We do. But our generation is the trailblazers. We chose to be here at this time to be-   the way makers and the trailblazers so we can pave the path for our daughters and our daughters' daughters' generations. Yeah. So no-brainer. Yeah. 

[01:07:30] Cindy: Yeah. Yeah,

[01:07:31] Mary: Do you have

[01:07:32] Mary: time, Cindy, for some rapid fire, some- 

[01:07:34] Cindy: I do. I do. 

[01:07:36] Mary: This always makes it so much more fun. We got pretty intense there. 

[01:07:39] Cindy: We did. 

[01:07:42] Mary: I like it. 

[01:07:42] Cindy: Neither one of us is passionate about this, are we? 

[01:07:45] Mary: That passion comes through. All right, let's make it lighthearted, and give us a little bit more insight about who Cindy Depuie is all about.

[01:07:52] Cindy: O- okay. 

[01:07:54] Mary: All right. First question, most overrated wellness trend right now? 

[01:07:59] Cindy: Oh, God. I think I ignore most of them. yeah, 

[01:08:05] Speaker 4: I 

[01:08:06] Cindy: Next

[01:08:06] Cindy: question. 

[01:08:07] Mary: Okay, one-

[01:08:08] Mary: f-

[01:08:08] Speaker 5: No, 

[01:08:09] Cindy: I don't know. Adrenal support. Adrenal support is really important, but just some of the stuff that's out there.

[01:08:14] Cindy: Or, yeah, actually detox. It's like what a person thinks is a detox is really, I- it can be more harmful than good. So your traditional detox, which is really usually your gut, right? Your detox happens in your liver. So if that's not working and you're just doing the gut, you're missing a big piece. So there's just a lot of stuff out there that, I don't know. Yeah. 

[01:08:38] Mary: I've seen it trending recently too. It's showing up in my feed about detox, and- 

[01:08:42] Cindy: Yeah   

[01:08:43] Mary: Everybody's showing these flat tummies. In my opinion, you just shat for the last 30 hours. 

[01:08:51] Cindy: I love it. Yes, 

[01:08:57] Mary: Oh. That's why it's called the Menopause Disruptor Podcast, right? 

[01:09:00] Cindy: Yeah. I love it. 

[01:09:01] Mary: Okay.

[01:09:02] Mary: Next question is, most underrated health habit. 

[01:09:06] Cindy: Takin' a

[01:09:07] Cindy: pause. Takin'

[01:09:09] Cindy: a pause

[01:09:10] Cindy: and

[01:09:11] Cindy: takin' a breath. 

[01:09:13] Mary: Oh, yeah. 

[01:09:15] Cindy: And taking magnesium would probably be good. but yeah, takin' a pause and takin' a

[01:09:21] Cindy: breath.

[01:09:23] Mary: Yeah. 

[01:09:24] Cindy: I- We don't do it. Yeah. 

[01:09:26] Mary: We don't. Yeah. That mindfulness again. Yeah. 

[01:09:28] Cindy: And I suck at it too, ladies. I do. 

[01:09:32] Mary: We're human. 

[01:09:33] Cindy: Yeah. 

[01:09:34] Mary: And on that note then, what's one thing that you do daily to keep yourself grounded?

[01:09:39] Cindy: I do have a yoga practice, and even if sometimes it's only 10 minutes or 20 minutes at home, I don't do it quite every day, but almost. And if I'm really feeling off and agitated, which I have been this last week,

[01:09:58] Cindy: I was just like, what? What is wrong with me? And I've been angry, feeling angry, and what is wrong with me right now?

[01:10:07] Cindy: And I've taken myself away from my desk, and I've gone and put my yoga app on. It's called Down Dog. It's my favorite app in this world. Down Dog. Yeah. It's my favorite. You can say 10 minutes, 12 minutes. And even though I'm a yoga instructor, someone else is taking me through it. I'm letting go. And usually after 20 minutes, I'm like, okay.

[01:10:31] Cindy: And sometimes when we get agitated, when we get frustrated, when we're out of sorts, we'll wanna eat, we'll wanna do something that's maybe not the healthiest for us. And I find if I just do something physical, like even going around the block for a walk, and I am in a sunny part of the world most of the time, so I'm very blessed to have that. Either that or my mat, and those are the things that really do recalibrate me when I'm really struggling. Yeah. But it's also a daily thing, too. Yeah. I don't journal anymore. When I was younger, I would journal. I don't know. When you get older, it's eh. I don't know. I might go back to it. I think sometimes I do need to, 'cause sometimes I forget to be grateful.

[01:11:19] Cindy: And I figure at my age, you would think that would just be all part of life, but I forget sometimes, too. 

[01:11:26] Mary: And that, again, we're humaning, and so we always- we are humaning. Yeah. 

[01:11:30] Cindy: We are humaning. Yeah, but 

[01:11:33] Mary: we're less humaning and more being. 

[01:11:36] Cindy: Yes. Yes, yes, 

[01:11:38] Mary: One food you think midlife women underestimate nutritionally?

[01:11:44] Cindy: Chocolate. Food. No. 

[01:11:49] Cindy: I think dark chocolate is so satisfying, right? What cho- chocolate has magnesium, okay. Aside from the joking, although I do have chocolate every day. I do think fiber, if you can tolerate it, if you do have SIBO, that's gonna be tough for a little bit. But fiber and protein are probably the biggest things that I think are advantageous for us as we do get older.

[01:12:17] Cindy: Yeah. 

[01:12:17] Mary: Yeah. Okay, last question before we wrap up. Fill in the blank. Menopause is not the end of  

[01:12:25] Cindy: Life. It is the beginning of so many different things that I wouldn't trade it for the world. But if you're not getting the support that you need, it's hard to see that. 

[01:12:40] Mary: Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:12:41] Cindy: And you saying, when you don't feel good, our brain doesn't work, and it just all goes there.

[01:12:46] Cindy: So I want every  And I know you do, too, 'cause I can hear it. We want every woman to feel vibrant, good, and enjoying life, whatever that is for her. 

[01:13:00] Mary: Yeah. So good. So when we go into business, the tagline of that business will be, we help women look and feel their best." 

[01:13:08] Cindy: Oh, yeah. We do. 

[01:13:10] Mary: Maybe no- We do   not so much emphasis on the look because we don't want to make it all about aesthetics. 

[01:13:15] Cindy: We don't, but I know Dr. Vonda Wright? 

[01:13:20] Mary: Vonda Wright, yes, I do. 

[01:13:21] Cindy: I like her. I think she's down to earth. I think she is just the bomb. And of all the menopausal women out there, I think she is, and Kelly Casperson, I really like her too. But both of them. Dr. Vonda Wright posted a picture of her in a bathing suit, the front and the back.

[01:13:41] Cindy: I don't know if you saw it. It was just this weekend. 

[01:13:43] Mary: Oh. 

[01:13:44] Cindy: And she was giving her stats of what her body composition was, her weight and all that, and some of the goals that she wants to have, and what she eats, her weight, everything. That was gutsy, okay? And she was wearing some platform higher-heeled shoes, and some women had the audacity to say, "Why the heels?"

[01:14:05] Cindy: And it's really? First of all, she's teeny tiny. She's short. We want longer legs. I don't care how old you are; you still wanna come off looking the best you can. For most women, we're just designed that way. So I think thinking that we look fairly good, or at least comfortable in our own skin, I'm losing some of that myself finally.

[01:14:29] Cindy: I don't know if I'll ever lose it. I think it's okay. 

[01:14:32] Mary: Yes. 

[01:14:33] Cindy: Yes. As long as it's not over the top, 

[01:14:36] Mary: Yes. 

[01:14:37] Cindy: Yeah. It's just not over the top. It's not draining us. It's just I'm comfortable, I'm happy with where I am, or maybe I'm not even that happy. You'll eventually get happy, or maybe not. I don't know.

Yeah. But it's both. Good for her. I don't know if we ever lose it; I think we're hardwired for that. Even in nature, I know the guys are The males always look better in nature, but theBut it's the opposite in the human race, I think. The girls, whatever. But- 

[01:15:11] Mary: Yeah, we don't have the peacock or flowery feathers and 

[01:15:13] Cindy: whatever. No, we don't. But, you know- I think we always have been, from the dawn of time, women have always done things to enhance their looks to attract the male.

[01:15:26] Cindy: And I think it's still hardwired, and I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with it. 

[01:15:32] Mary: We could get into that, going back to the Book of Genesis and how- 

[01:15:36] Cindy: Yeah. We can 

[01:15:37] Mary:  Eve was cast out of the Garden of Eden 'cause she was made to feel ashamed of her body, and it is in her lineage from the very first female that walked this earth.

[01:15:47] Cindy: Yeah. It isn't by accident, ladies. Nope. 

[01:15:52] Mary: It isn't, so stop blaming yourself. Cindy, this has been tremendous. This conversation has blown me away. We could talk for hours and hours, I feel. There's a real connection. Yeah. And I am so excited for the listeners to really feel into that energy we share.

[01:16:09] Mary: But your expertise and your knowledge, as well as your passion, have been so greatly valued, and I appreciate you. I appreciate your time. 

[01:16:18] Cindy: Thank you. And thank you so much for having me. And thank you for what you do, too. 

[01:16:23] Mary: You bet. We need more. 

[01:16:24] Cindy: Yes, we do. We need more of it. We do. 

[01:16:27]