Creating Midlife Calm: Coping Skills for Stress & Anxiety in Family, Work & Relationships

Ep. 140 Understanding Hormones and Anxiety and How Midlife Women Can Regain Control

• MJ Murray Vachon LCSW • Season 4 • Episode 140

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Are you focusing on the wrong hormones in midlife?

Many women believe estrogen is the key to feeling better, but what if the real secret lies elsewhere.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

1. The three essential hormones that impact your mood, weight, and sleep.
2. Why your ovaries act like The Odd Couple and how that explains your hormonal ups and downs.
3. The surprising connection between your thyroid and your reproductive hormones—and how understanding this connection empowers you to make better health decisions. 

🎧 Press play now to uncover the truth about midlife hormones and take the first step toward feeling your best!




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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW (2):

In this episode, you'll discover why estrogen isn't the queen of midlife, and the three key hormones you must balance to feel your best. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. To the podcast. I believe nothing defines midlife for women quite like hormones. Today, I'm thrilled to have my trusted colleague, Dr. Connie Chacko, here to guide us through hormones. Hormones 101. By the end of this episode, you'll be able to name your best. Three basic hormones, and you might be surprised to learn they aren't the ones you typically expect, like estrogen and progesterone. Learning about the big three is just the beginning, as these hormones are key to boosting your energy, enhancing your calm, supporting weight loss, and getting better sleep. Oh, isn't that what we all want in midlife? Plus, Dr. Chacko will reveal her three essential truths about hormones, empowering you to take charge of your wellness. This is a bucket list episode for me. So Connie, I'm so grateful that you're here because I have not really met anyone who can talk about hormones in a way that's so understandable, but often brings a smile to my face. So let's begin by having you introduce yourself. Thank you very much, MJ. I feel the same way about you. I am a clinical pharmacist. I was a clinical hospital pharmacist for 17 years. I graduated from Purdue. I have been a certified menopause clinician for the last 27 years. I ended up starting with hormone consultations, and

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

kind of turned into a hormone detective agency. think

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

excellent way because I often send people to you who are in my office and suffering, and I mean suffering from anxiety, and you really are a detective of helping them parse out what of their symptoms are related to menopause or perimenopause. and You are as much an educator as a sleuth. This episode, we're going to try to contain it or you would have to give your whole weekend to allow Connie to give you her incredible depth of knowledge. Connie, from your experience, how do you want to begin.

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

Most important thing that you need to know is that we use the word hormones a lot. So if you go online or you're talking to somebody and they're like, I need to balance my hormones or there's something wrong with my hormones, basically, in order to balance your hormones, the three most important hormones in your body come down to insulin, cortisol, which is our stress hormone, and vitamin D. Many people don't know that vitamin D is a hormone and here in the Midwest, especially northern Indiana, southern Michigan, we have the lowest vitamin D levels literally on the entire planet Earth because of the angle that the sun's rays hit us, not how much sunlight we get. When we start talking about hormones, Yes, estrogen is important, and so many times women say there's something wrong with my hormones, or I need hormones, or their doctor says they won't give them hormones, they're saying estrogen, and estrogen has over 400 purposes in a woman's life, and Even though estrogen has all those purposes, you can never, ever, ever let her think she's the most important person. She'll just be annoying.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

My burning question is anxiety and hormonal anxiety the same?

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

There's three basic truths that I say in my consult. First, every woman is different. I don't care what your sister did and your cousin and your twin. Every woman's different and they have a different path. The second one is that your ovaries are guys. So you have these two guys that live in your body and your whole life, one has been an overachiever and the other one's been a slacker. So you could have these ups and downs throughout your cycle with your anxiety. But, it's not your imagination that you could feel worse. One month and the other. And women who don't have a uterus and still have their ovaries, they truly think they're bipolar. Because they don't realize that these are all those fluctuations. And the third one is that your ovaries and your thyroid, never invite each other to their birthday party. So there's three truths. Every woman's different. Our ovaries are guys. And the third one is that your ovaries and your thyroid, never invite each other to their birthday party. Those are some Hall of Fame metaphors. I'm sure those of you listening know each of you has your own unique path, but I want you to talk to my listeners about their ovaries being guys, because for me, that is a completely new concept. For a long time, I couldn't quite understand how somebody's periods would be heavier or more clotting or their migraines would be worse. And then the next month it wouldn't be so bad. And we'd think, okay, now we've got it under control. And then they would come back. I was, Flipping through something one time, and I saw a picture of, Tony Randall and Jack Klugman from The Odd Couple, and I'm like, yes, those are a woman's ovaries. One month. That ovary is determined. He is going to get out that egg he's going to clean out all that extra tissue. And then next month he's sitting down in the basement playing Nintendo going, eh. Maybe I'll ovulate. Maybe I'm not. Eh, whatever. So women are on this roller coaster between these two guys. Most women really do have an every other month cycle. They will also start skipping every other month. When they get closer to menopause,. Even if you don't bleed and perimenopause, you still cycle.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

So tell me if I'm hearing you correctly. Because what I see in my office is women who, one month, terrible period. High anxiety, the next month, not so much. And then they're Oh. I don't really think it was all that bad last month Which means they often don't get the help they need.

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

they cancel because they're feeling

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

That's takeaway number one. Because your ovaries are this odd couple, you can expect fluctuations to be normal. So now let's move to the third point you make in your consult. And that is the ovaries and the thyroid never invite each other to the birthday party. Again, quite a metaphor. What do you mean by that?

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

There's five times in a woman's life she's most likely to develop thyroid problems. That would be puberty, pregnancy, going on the pill, perimenopause, or postmenopause, which would be a total hysterectomy. If your estrogen is being annoying, It is going to make you look like you have symptoms of low thyroid. If you have high thyroid, even if it's from your medication is too high, your periods are going to stop. If your high thyroid is too low, your periods are going to become heavy and irregular. They're like gears inside a very, very expensive Swiss watch. They all affect each other. Throw in some poor nutrition where your blood sugars are going crazy and high stress. You got a mess.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Okay, so I get it. While the thyroid and ovaries might not invite each other to the birthday party, as the owner of them, you better figure out what their relationship is if you want to feel balanced and healthy. Can we circle back to something you said at the beginning of the podcast that kind of blew my mind, and that is our main hormones. Are not progesterone and estrogen, which is what I would have thought, but rather vitamin D, cortisol, and insulin. Can you talk to us about the importance of these three hormones and how we should take care of them?

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

Have to fix those before you can do anything else. And that's where it comes back into lifestyle changes to at least get a good basic framework to start with.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Because that's all life, right? People have cortisol, insulin, and vitamin D before they have their period, before estrogen becomes the queen.

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

I do want to say one thing real quick. As a nana to I have five granddaughters, my son would be Mom, she's got a headache. She's in bed. She doesn't feel good. And then she'll get better. These girls are maybe 11, 12. They are cycling way before they start we know, like, oh yeah, it's probably your hormones, she's going to start her period pretty soon. Menopausal women are the same way. So just because your period stopped does not mean that you don't still these ups and downs. You're not making hormone levels high enough to bleed, but you're still cycling. So you do need Make sure that you're taking care of the big three first before you take care of other

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

let's stop Hormones 101 here. I want to summarize what we've learned in today's brief episode because you and I both know women in midlife have about 10 minutes to learn really important things to make their lives better. And you have shared with us three takeaways. One is that everyone is unique. Everybody has their own path. Second, You had us think about ovaries like The Odd Couple which normalizes the natural fluctuations in our cycles. And it also highlights that we might need extra support in order to manage those fluctuations. Thirdly, You uncovered the relationship between ovaries and the thyroid, and that it's not always a party. And this really led up to the crucial insight in which I want us to continue on Thursday's episode. And that is about the main three hormones, vitamin D, cortisol, and insulin. To be honest, I have never heard anyone say this so clearly That if women in midlife don't balance the big three, vitamin D, cortisol, and insulin, then the rest of their hormones will not be balanced and happy. Listeners, your inner challenge this week is to ask yourself, how well am I taking care of these hormones? And could their impact be greater than I realize? Connie and I will be back on Thursday to walk you through exactly what you need to do to nurture these vital hormones. It's not as difficult as you imagine. I so look forward to continuing this conversation with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening to Creating Midlife Calm.