Midlife Women's Health: What Every Yoga Teacher Should Know

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Yeah. so let I want to start by just going high level and well, what's really at stake here? I was, you know, like I said, I had a masters in health education and then I shifted into the more esoteric mystical yoga and I just I loved everything about the science of the soul and the and the body. Well, you know, it's cool. It's great. We've got one. I mean, how complex does it have to be? Well, what's at stake for us, right? And to really give so much attention to the realm of soul and spirit and to skip over what's going on in our bodies in midlife has a real cost to it. the cost of not giving our body, especially through midlife and beyond, the attention that it really needs. What's at stake is whether or not we're going to recognize the faces of the people we love now when we're 75. What's at stake is, you know, how we navigate perimenopause, which for many starts at 35. And for a lot of people, perimenopause is anywhere in your 40s or up into your 50s. I'm 53 and I'm still in late perimenopause.

How we navigate perimenopause is one of the strongest predictors of our risk for dementia and Alzheimer's. It's how we navigate life. How we treat our bodies in our 30s and 40s is going to determine whether or not we can get up off the toilet without help when we're older. you know, muscle mass is one of the single strongest predictors of longevity and independence in older adults. it's a predictor of whether or not we'll fracture a hip. 20 to 30% of people who fracture their hip in older age do not survive the first year. So, independence at 80 is built in our 40s and 50s. Cognitive clarity at 75 is built in our 40s and our 50s and our 60s. So this is a conversation about whether the women that we serve and ourselves get to live the last third of their lives fully alive or feeling like they're disappearing. Recently I sat with a client who had been to her primary care physician. She'd seen a naturopath, told her labs were fine. She came to me exhausted. so fatigued that after a short walk, she had to spend the rest of the day on the couch. Brain fog made her feel like she was literally losing her mind. And when she got her labs done, her ferritin is seven was 17. Conventional reference range, the normal range for ferritin.

Now, ferritin is your iron storage, right? So, there's the iron you're using and then there's the tanks on reserve. If you go to your primary doctor that takes your insurance, they are going to do your labs. The range for acceptable ferritin goes from 15 to 200. Remember, hers was 17. The functional medicine optimal range says if you have ferritin levels below 70, you're not going to even feel functional. So she was walking around with ferritin at 17, which is now eight, and being told that she was fine. So this isn't fine. And the difference between functional medicine optimal ranges and your conventional medicine normal ranges is that the normal ranges are based on the averages of a sick population. So it's what we're treating when we're not well versus functional ranges. Say this is these are the ranges. This is where you need to land so that you can feel optimally alive. So, nobody caught this with this w with this woman, not because doctors weren't caring, but because they were a they were asking, 'Are you sick enough to treat? They weren't asking if she was thriving.' This is the same data with two completely different questions. And that's why this conversation really matters. Here are a few more numbers, okay? And these are low because I took them. I wanted it to be reputable science. So I took it from CDC, NIH, and peer-reviewed research. Functional medicine would have probably more severe numbers.

12% of Americans only are metabolically healthy. Healthy in our cells. 88% of American adults have one marker of metabolic dysfunction. 53% of adult calories come from ultrarocessed foods. For children, it's 62%. And only 24% of the US adults meets basic physical activity guidelines. Meaning 76% of the adults in America don't at all meet any physical activity requirements. So nearly nine out of 10 people, this is in your classes, are metabolically dysfunctional. More than half of what your students are eating is factory-made. Three-quarters of the United people in the United States are not moving enough. And we wonder why women in midlife are exhausted, inflamed, and feel like they're falling apart. So, I keep mentioning inflammation. What is inflammation? And what drives it the most? You're nobody's going to like what I have to say now. It's sugar. The AH AHA recommends no more than 25 grams of sugar per day for women.

Now, the body doesn't distinguish added sugars from naturally occurring or for an in insulin response. Okay? So, women 25 grams per day and cap it at that. At the most, it's saying one cup of orange juice right out of the gates has 23 gram. Inflammation is also created by processed foods. So just because it came from a health food store, Trader Joe's, Sprouts, cauliflower crackers in a box doesn't make it food. It's still a bit of a franken food. Okay, it is. It's processed. What else contributes to inflammation? Chronic stress. Cortisol is an issue in our body. It instructs the body to release glucose in the bloodstream. It's a hormone. So when we are chronically stressed, we automatically have chronically elevated blood sugar. Now if you asked me earlier in my life, are do you experience chronic stress, Daniela? I absolutely would have said no. Now I think that is absolutely adorable and hilarious and horrifying that I not have like no I don't ex I never identified as someone that was living with not a I had not a clue. I had not a clue. So chronic stress elevates our will chronically elevate our blood sugar from the inside regardless of what we eat.

That's key. So this is one huge interconnected system. Sugar creates insulin resistance which creates inflammation which creates cognitive decline, hormonal disruption, autoimmune flares and contributes to cancer. These are not separate problems. One cascade that begins decades before anybody else gets a diagnosis. And the last thing that I want to say about that is that we hear the term inflammation and often if I if you what do you see and imagine if I say inflammation? When I first was learning this myself, I imagined something red, hot, swollen, and maybe as inflammation. Okay? or like a swollen knee because I banged it or something. What I didn't realize is that inflammation is so much more than that. People that get persistent colds, colds or viruses that then when you get it, it just lingers, sinus, headache, migraines, gut issues, constipation, bloating, hair loss. There is fatigue, brain fog, inflammation creates allergies, such a wide series of symptoms that many people don't recognize these to be what symptoms of inflammation are. So they think, well, that inflammation thing is for somebody else, I guess, because my digestion is fine or I feel okay. So it's important to understand what the symptoms of inflammation are. And if I could just add to that, depending on your Ayurvedic dosha, inflammation's going to just it can show up differently. For example, if you're pitta constitution, you have fire predominantly in your constitution, you're going to see more skin rashes or more heat show up in your body when you're in inflammation. if you're

Coughic, you might have more fluid retention in your body, and that might be how inflammation shows up. so, so it's going to look different for everybody. And I think that's the problem from a western medicine perspective is it doesn't show up in a single way for every single person. And if you're if you're skilled in Ayurveda, you understand, oh, well, that's because different doshes will hit imbalance and it will look very different in a bird than it does in a lion or a bear constitution. And I think, you know, that's why it's been this underlying issue for so many because you can't just say, 'Oh, if you have X, that's inflammation.' Inflammation shows up as all of these autoimmune labels, which are really hard to identify. And in my opinion, I think the word autoimmune is just an error in language because it could be very it could be I don't believe inherently that the body would naturally be attacking itself personally. That's my personal opinion. I do believe that we throw our doshas off of balance and we'll will create a furnace within our bodies, right? and then the immune system may come out of balance. So, whatever perspective you have, what Daniela is not Daniela is not saying sugar is your issue, stop all sugar and then your insulin resistance. Like, it's not a one-sizefitsall piece. It's really looking at where have I lost balance in my lifestyle such that I'm not reaching for food for prana that I'm that I may not recognize the underlying stress load that's there emotionally and mentally such that my body has really shifted out of alignment with self and it can

Come for all of us who are so knowledgeable on the yogic and the vadic systems it's really finding that next level of data collection which Daniela is going to go into more information on. All right. Now, we're going to talk a little bit about hormones. Okay. So, perimenopause can begin for people as early as 35. Menopause averages around age 52. So this is up to 17 years of hormonal shifting and often without warning and almost always without adequate support. All right. So estrogen protects the brain, bone density and our cardiovascular system. There is a window of opportunity in early perimenopause when estrogen support can be prof profoundly protective for the brain. So if we miss that then the protection does diminish but it doesn't mean it's like all over for us. Okay there's the direct line really is there are years of estrogen decline which can lead to osteopenia osteoporosis and hip fractures. Now the sec the next hormone that we want to touch on is progesterone. This is our hormone of calm of deep sleep and of nervous system settling. So often this is the first hormone to decline, right? Progesterone and estrogen are declining and doing a dance. And sometimes this starts to decline in your late30s, a full decade before menopause.

So women with low progesterone are naturally going to feel the sensations of anxiousness in their system. They're going to feel restless, wired at night. And many women, this is one in four women friends, are oftentimes put on anti-anxiety medication without ever having their ferritin levels checked or their sex hormones checked. I think we need to say that again. this is something that's, I think, absolutely critical. Women are having midlife anxiety. They go to their doctors, they're prescribed SSRIs, and never do they have ferritin, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid levels checked. And so we're covering up the effects of something that's underlying. I myself have been doing trauma healing programs for the last 15 years and working with the yogic practices to bring someone's nervous system back to balance. And while that very much helps and bring someone back into balance, if I'm covering up these deeper imbalances that are happening in the physical body, then dementia, bone fractures, heart cardiovascular issues can be down the path. And so really my responsibility in making you feel less depressed and less anxiety through your yogic practices while not being conscious of hormone levels and the effects of hormone levels in the future I think is an absolute important part of the yogic path of the path of union between soul and source because if the body is not vibrant and healthy then we're not going to be able to really move into a state of samadei or into a state of real union because there's too many britties or waves going on in our bodies such that we can't even

Concentrate and achieve the state of dana. and that was one thing that I didn't even really include in when I shared my story earlier. The lamest part of that journey was that I as somebody that really felt myself to be deeply connected to spirit with my system so dysregulated. I felt dense and separate. What used to be my direct experience of spirit now abided as a as a bit of a memory as I could I remembered in my mental body that that was a thing. But when your system is navigating such dysregulation, it's hard to feel spirits settle comfortably inside of you. Yeah. And it's and it's heartbreaking actually. So it's devastating to those of us who spent decades anchoring in to the divinity within. you know, like that that was my I had three te three daughters. My haven was my spine and was my connection to the divine and to the earth. And so hitting this stage where like the spring started popping out of my body, you know, I was like, wait, I can't really meditate anymore in the way that I used to be able to concentrate.

And so to me that was I've dealt with physical ailments my whole life. I have had vata imbalance in my body and my gut. I can deal with physical ailments. What I couldn't deal with was the disconnection from my spiritual practice that gave me that sweetness of anunda. and so that's why this is so important to me right now and that that we look at the cells and the soul, right? and I'm going to let you go on and I'll weave in more of this in a moment. Let's get to testosterone because I don't think we got there yet. And I and thank you for just hanging in here with us, friends, because we will be closing out this presentation with what are the questions you want to be asking yourself and your students that may come to you after class or your sisters, your friends, your girlfriends, your family members, right? Like women are so incredible. What like Kim and I once we got this information through our own journey, I will dedicate the rest of my life quite literally to shouting from the mountain tops around this. And it's true. I think we're both we're both dedicated to educating women and yoga teachers to just be able to balance out conversations with our students of like did you get your labs done yet? Make sure you get your labs done. Like what are we working with here? Is this a is this a trauma in the body or is this a you don't have any ferritin and you feel depressed because you literally have no iron in your system? Like which is it? where your estrogen and your progesterone are so low. Of course you're waking up wideeyed moon pie eyes at 3:00 a.m. and you have insomnia. Of course you are. And that doesn't require an inquiry practice. That's the wrong practice for that.

Exactly. And I see and what really gets my fire going is so many educators, helpers, healers, light workers. We love our practices because they've made a difference for us and we adore sharing them with others. But here's the thing, you cannot sound bath a student's ferritin levels up higher. We cannot meditate our hormones back into balance. And we can't asa our way into increased testosterone if we're depleted. and mindset work, inquiry work, Reiki, that's not going to help my testoster my lack of a zest for life. That was the other thing, right? So, as we get to into testosterone, mine had tanked. Kim and I have very different constitutions, right? So, my testosterone tanked, hers skyrocketed. So, the result of testosterone feeling low is that it drives your motivation, your strength, your mental sharpness, and your zest for life. I have always been an enthusiast for life and when I walked around feeling s like thinking internally like I don't really care like it doesn't m like about anything like do well do you want A or B I don't really care I don't really care the phrases that we hear women say over and over to us I don't feel like myself I don't recognize the version of myself that I am I would now I knew I knew better but I would see I would be in the seat of the witness of my mind just sort of like imagining like wonder how long this lifetime is going to be like I this is before I knew what was going

On. So you want to pay attention to the phrases that you're saying because your body is trying to communicate with you. I would walk around the field with Christopher walking the dogs and I would say to him with big eyes, 'Honey, do you think when I die I'll get to rest? I'll feel rested. Do we sleep when we die?' and over and over or I would do somatic vocal healing and that's where you make the sound of the moment. And I got so sick of the practice because the only sound that would come out was it was my and I would even then I even heard myself say this. I feel tired down to my cells. I had a client the other day say to me I had to kept eating like it was as if something inside of me couldn't be satisfied enough. Guess what? It turns out that they had parasites. Oh, parasites. sites. So if you if you really listen to your friends, your students, yourself, your body is trying to tell you through the throat chakra, I'm desperate. I have parasites. I have I have no ferritin. And if I could just add to this because Daniela is a is a bird. She's a vata constitution. I'm pitta. I'm lion. I've got fire. So I was running all these organizations and I was like going into blame which is the shadow aspect of a pita of like why isn't anyone doing anything? Why am I the one that's doing everything? How could how is it that I'm still the one doing everything? I'm holding everything. I can't hold everything anymore. So that's what it sounded like to me or for me. One day I woke up and I heard your dharma is complete. And I'm like does that mean I'm going to die? like because doing for me was very much where my identity was and I want to name what Daniela is talking about also has works with our spiritual identity or our

Identity on this planet and in the yogic path we always say we want to we want to transmute our identity right well I mean it's very human to have a will chakra to know ourselves to have an eye and to have an ego identity and I don't think that's bad or wrong. And in fact, I think authenticity and meeting ourselves where we're at on the stage of enlightenment is super important. But what happens as we start to shift and as our hormone levels like literally tank is that we're going through this shift into the vat stage of life, but it's also colored or grayed by the lack of testosterone which brings pitta into the mental body. the lack of progesterone which grounds our nervous system, the lack of estrogen, right? Like that feeds our brain. And so without these really essential hormones, we're heading into this next stage of life and many people will get divorced or feel suicidal or just become invisible in their lives or really feel like they just don't matter. And I want to name that because it will look different if you're a bird, a lion, or a bear. Like it depends on your constitution and how you might experience this. But I do believe we all to some degree will experience this. And it's the drop in these essential hormones. And I want to name something if I can go off on a tangent for a moment because I went into this stage of life being like, well, this is natural. Women go into menopause. This is the next stage. We must embrace what's natural.

But the thing is that our lifespans have extended by 20 years over the last 100 to 200 years due to modern medicine. Women do did not live past 60 or 70 years a couple hundred years ago. Okay. So Ayurveda based on thousands and thousands of year old science. But modern medicine has extended our lifespans. Women have longer lives than men but a lower quality of life. This is critical information. Why is that? Well, the Women's Health Initiative that started in the '9s was this longitud long longitudinal research project that that came out studying hormone replacement therapy. And we from it there was this red alert. Hormone replacement causes breast cancer. And then everything was shut down. And a whole generation missed out on the wisdom of hormones. It got shut down. And what they're now coming back and saying, 'Oh, we've re-evaluated the data. It was wrong.' What? It was wrong. You told a generation of women that hormones will give you breast cancer.

And now you've re-evaluated and say, 'Oh, we were probably wrong there.' The cohort, the study studied people over 60. These are people whose receptors had dried up, like they don't have the hormone receptors and then you gave them synthetic hormones in the wrong forms. And that's what happened. The age group was a little bit was old. It was 60 to 80 years old versus 40 to 60 years old. it the type of hormone was synthetic and the route for example oral estrogen can create problems but when it's transermal through a patch it's significantly less pro problems so the forms that were used in that study were incorrect and so a whole generation of women walked away thinking you know hormone replacement is bad now we're in a generation if you if you look at your Facebook reels, you'll see a lot of modern female doctors talking about hormone replacement therapy being bioididentical, starting while you still have the receptors for hormones and being in the forms that create the less risk.

And so for me, when I started to learn this through Daniela and I started to get the data on my labs of where my hormones were at, which I had zero estrogen, zero progesterone, zero testosterone, like I had nothing, nada. My ferritin was at a 10. Like my system was working on nothing when I got my laps. And so this is common. I see women all the time with these levels and we're just still doing life. And women in my family, I'm Italian, we lived till 90, so I'm like halfway through my life at 50 with none of the supportive hormones to help bone health, cardiovascular health, brain health. That's to me is fascinating. And even though I'm I went to Ayurveda to help with my digestion and my lymph and my hormones and my nervous system, I went to the herbal route, the Ayurvedic medicine route. I also am exp adjusting myself to estrogen patch testosterone cream progesterone orally all bio identical and was like a 360 in my brain. It turned my brain back on. It turned my body back on. It was the right path for me. And I say this with caution. I say this because I don't know that this is for everybody. And what we're trying to do is to share our own paths to bring into the natural health and healing space the fact that it's worth getting data and it's worth listening to our bodies on in all ways.

And that we don't need to be for or against anything. We need to be really tracking our bodies and getting the data on our bodies because our doctors might take 20 to 30 years to catch up with what modern science is now showing us today and we won't be able to use that data because it'll come in too late for our generation. Yeah. Thank you, Kim. I think that's such an important we're not here to promote any path. We're not I don't know what's right for your body or and only you do. But sharing my path I think is important and I can say for my system as well when I got my labs and I worked with someone that knew how to work with my data that was the key. If I did my if I got my labs done, well, what I did, and just brought even my hormones to my primary care physician, she is so lovely. And she's like, oh, I'm not equipped to do anything with these. At least she was honest. Yeah. Like I was so lucky that I was like, 'Oh, thank you for just saying that.' Sometimes people instead of saying I don't know, they'll have an opinion because that's somehow easier than just saying I genuinely don't know and I wasn't trained in this. And for many of us, even our OBGYNS are not the person that is the most knowledgeable and skillful around women's hormones. So there are and we'll talk about this at the end. There are and you can always reach out to us afterwards for if you have questions that we don't get to today but there are there are now incredible online resources teaalth midi health paloma health organizations that often take our insurance and can help you with your with your labs especially your hormones. So let's just really quickly talk about pregnenolone. Okay, this is just so interesting. pregn pregngenolone is a

Master precursor hormone. So the raw material that our body uses to make estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. Fun fact about women, we actually produce more testosterone than estrogen, right? But yet we think of testosterone as like the male hormone. Now we're under chronic stress, which I had no idea I was in for decades because I'm like, well, this is life. I the body diverts pregnenolone towards cortisol production instead. You've probably heard like cortisol. What's up with this cort cortisol thing? Chronic stress steals the building blocks of the hormones that protect our brain, our bones, and our heart. So, it literally takes it away and it increases your cortisol. Now, the second fun fact about cortisol is over time when your cortisol is elevated, it's sort of picture like atlas holding up holding up like the earth. It just can't anymore. And so high cortisol then becomes it crashes. It flatlines. So again, me who had no idea I was living in chronic stress, not only had elevated cortisol for years, I flatlined into stage three adrenal failure, meaning my your cortisol has a natural curve throughout the day. It's supposed to be higher in the morning and lower at night. A lot of people who go through midlife will describe, I'm wired and tired at night. That's because our cortisol is spiking at night. And why does the morning feel so brutal? Well, because the cortisol is flat when it's supposed to be rising.

So, it took it took some years and a whole lot of care to bring my cortisol levels back up from a literal flatline. And let's see, Kim, did we already cover? Yeah. So I think what we're going to do now is kind of look at these different pieces and how you know we might confuse these yes systemic imbalances as emotional issues. All right. So friends, just keep remembering one in six women has a navigates an autoimmune and one in four women are put on anti-anxiety medication without having any of their ferritin, their sex hormones or anything else checked. Right? So we want to talk about the mimics low ferritin. Remember this is your iron storage when your ferritin is low. So when I say low, I mean under 40. Under 70. Under 40 is where you're going to be experiencing hair loss. And your hair can't start regrowing until your ferritin is at least at 70.

If your ferritin is in the teens, the 20s, the 30s, you're going to constantly feel like life is a push. No matter how much you rest, it's going to feel like a push. And low ferritin looks and acts like depression, low progesterone. Before you before you go on with that, I just want to say and this is really at any stage. I have a daughter who she was born with a metabolic disorder and she was having long periods just months of bleeding and became anemic. we didn't know it really but luckily I was going through this level of looking at my own body and hormones and I was like well let me check her ferritin and she had a ferritin of five the poor girl and she was like oh I just thought I was just getting a little teenage depression or something mom and I'm like oh my god like you're literally running on empty and as soon as I got her first IV infusion she could feel everything come back on board. She's like, 'Oh my gosh, I haven't felt this way in a long time.' And my gosh, like she's 17. She was like at zero gas. How many of us had that that many years ago? And I don't eat red we at the time we weren't eating red meat, right? So we live this lifestyle of no red meat and weren't replenishing whatever blood she was use losing each month.

And even if you had ferritin levels of 15, let's say if your daughter had had ferritin levels of 15, not five, and gone to her regular general care practitioner, that p that practitioner looking at normal ranges would say, well, your ferritin at 15, everything looks normal. And so that's what we want you all to know, that the lab ranges are outdated beyond. So, if you go to Labcorp or Quest and you look at the range, they're going to give you lab ranges. If you do functional medicine and look at functional numbers, they're looking at optimal ranges, and that's what Daniela is referring to. So, never take the ranges on your blood lab seriously. You want to really do some research and look at what the functional levels are. For me personally, I've trained my AI to act like a functional medicine doctor and give me optimal ranges. So, I'll look at my blood labs and then look at, you know, what's the functional level here. And I think that's a really that we have so much data available at our fingers, but we need to be knowing what to ask. And that's really what you're suggesting with optimal versus normal.

Absolutely. And when and when we say using our AI to help with our labs, it doesn't mean that we're relying on AI to make diagnosis. Nope. Or to do anything other than to take our raw data from our labs and interpret it through functional optimal ranges, right? That doesn't invite it to be a doctor or anything else. And it's very clear-cut. It's black and white. so when we have low ferritin, that could look like depression. So think of a student in your class that just is saying I'm just always tired. I'm I just I can't get going. I just feel ah you can see the light. Ram Dass so beautifully calls the light in the eyes the liquid luminosity. And I swear we can see this in women in midlife. And that light just dim as our as the chemistry of our system becomes imbalanced for some of us. low progesterone will look like anxiety. That's the calming hormone. One in five women h one in six women has an autoimmune. Hashimoto is the most common, the most popular autoimmune. It will look like burnout. Low estrogen looks and feels like brain fog or early dementia.

High cortisol looks and acts like anxiety, insomnia, and weight gain that will not budge. even if you calorie restrict, it just will not budge. So, body composition changes and thyroid dysfunction. So, common looks like every single one of these listed. So, go ahead. Yeah. And I think what we're not saying like go take a pill and everything will be fixed. This is a systemic issue that can be compounded with inflammation and with the loss of hormones. And so I think we all look at our bodies like what do I need to do to fix this situation? And I just want to bring us back to like even if you do get your labs run and you see that things are out of balance, the wisdom within our intu intuition and our soul can call to us the right guidance, the right guides to be able to help us in the space we're in. but we need to know what's going on. And I think self-education and self-standing is absolutely critical at this stage of life because there's so much science coming out that our conventional doctors may just might not be up to speed on. My two best friends are pitakafa fire and earth constitution. I'm like, well, have you had your labs done? They're like, I don't know. I just go to my doctor. I do what they says and I've had the same doctor for 20 years and they just, you know, they'll tell me if there's something wrong. And I'm like, no.

No, you need to be really self-educated in what's going on in your body. Not like trying to fix it, but just understanding where am I at? What are my levels? How are things changing? So that we can really start to call to us the right practitioners to be able to guide us at every stage of life. And that might change based on where we're at. We're not going to give recommendations of what to take or what foods to eat either. We're really just wanting to bring awareness to what's happening within the... [The recording ends here.]