4 Numbers Every Midlife Woman Should Know

From the video captions, as spoken.

Now, before I dive deep into the physiology, I want to give you 4 numbers, okay? The first number is one that if I had a million extra dollars, I would put on a billboard in every town, all right? 1 in 5 Women aged 45, aged 40 to 59 took an antidepressant in the last 30 days. After 60 years old, that figure rises to nearly 1 in 4. So 1 in 4 Women over 60 right now is on an antidepressant. Here's why this matter, this number matters so much to me. You know, a prescription can be written easily without any physician checking a Midlife Woman's ferritin, running a full thyroid panel, looking at what her sex hormones are doing, checking her vitamin D levels, her vitamin D levels. B levels or her cortisol.

Nothing in the medical system requires this testing first. Nada. Now, when any one of those things that I just mentioned is deficient or off, it can look and feel exactly like anxiety. It can look and feel exactly like depression. Now, I'm gonna come back to this later on in the talk and walk through all the Midlife mimics by name, But I just wanted to drop that right now. Now, I'm also not telling anyone stop your antidepressants. Okay.

They save lives. Some Women need them. Okay. What I'm saying is that a lot of Women were never given the chance to find out whether their sadness has a root cause sitting in their blood work. Now, the second number. Women age, this is the second billboard in every community, Women aged 45 to 64 die by suicide at a higher rate than any other female age group. And they have held that position every single year from 2002 to 2022.

All right. Now, the third number is gray divorce. Maybe you've heard that phrase. And here's what it means. Between 1990 and 2023, divorce fell for every age group under 45, but it rose for every age group 45 and up. The steepest rise of all is among Women 65 and older when the rate went from 1.4 to 6.7 per 1,000 married Women. That's more than 4 times over.

All right. I'm going to come back to this also when we talk about testosterone. Now, I am not saying every Midlife divorce is about hormones, okay? And there's a bigger conversation here. Now the fourth number for Women in Midlife. Roughly 1 in 6 Women is living with an Autoimmune condition. So we have psychotropic medication being prescribed to Midlife Women without anyone skillful looking at physiology.

We have Midlife suicide, we have Midlife gray divorce, and we have Midlife Autoimmune conditions. Now all 4 of these come together in this one season of life for Women. This is the exact season when a Woman's hormonal baseline is resetting more completely than at any point since her adolescence. Now hardly anyone out there is putting all 4 of these facts together in the same conversation. So that is what much of this hour is about.