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

Ep. 141 The 3 Essential Hormones You Must Balance in Midlife for Less Anxiety, Better Sleep, and a Healthier Weight

• MJ Murray Vachon LCSW • Season 4 • Episode 141

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Are your midlife hormones working for you or against you? 

What if you could become your own hormone detective and start with the right tests and lifestyle changes?

In this episode, you’ll discover:

1.     The three essential hormones that impact your midlife health the most.

  1. How to talk to your doctor and get the right lab tests without frustration.
  2. Three simple, doable lifestyle changes that can help balance your hormones and reduce anxiety.

Press play now to uncover practical steps to take control of your midlife health, feel better, and stop the hormone guessing game!

 




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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.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW:

In this episode, you'll discover how to get your midlife hormones working for you so you feel less anxious, better rested, and have more energy. 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. Welcome to the podcast Today we're gonna follow up on Monday's episode where Dr. Connie Chalko visited creating midlife calm and helped you to discover that your three main hormones, insulin, vitamin D, and cortisol, is where all midlife women should start in order to take care of their wellness. In today's episode, we're gonna continue that conversation and talk about how you can partner with your doctor to become your own hormone Detective Dr. Chalko is gonna give you three practical and doable lifestyle changes that will help you feel better as you work to get your hormones to function better day in and day out. My goal in these two podcasts is to help all of you in midlife become more educated about anxiety, and that includes understanding your hormones. Thank you so much for joining us again, Dr. Chalko, and I'd like to begin exactly where we ended on Monday. How would you want women in midlife to take care of the big three hormones, cortisol, vitamin D, and insulin? The first thing is make sure that you're taking care of the basic labs. You should, every year, ask

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

your doctor to get a hemoglobin A1c, which is, the most accurate way to see what your blood sugar's been doing. Another lab would be, get a vitamin D. If you don't have a good vitamin D, you can't lose weight. It increases your risk of different kinds of cancer. People with low vitamin D are, more prone to diabetes and absolutely for bone protection. More women die from complications of hip fracture every year than breast, uterine, ovarian cancer together. You really need to get that vitamin D. And it's a simple blood test.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

What you're saying is you start with the insulin, cortisol, vitamin D. and Who do you recommend to go to?

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

To get that basic information family doctor is perfectly capable of checking, I do really like nurse practitioners, but I'm telling you, there's a lot of family practice doctors out there just have a heart of gold. The woman will say, he's a guy. He doesn't understand. Oh, let me tell you, honey, he may have had raised three daughters, had a mom, four sisters and a wife. Them check the basics for you. Because never before in history have women lived this long. The average age of menopause has always been 51, there's so much wisdom and, joy that can come with this second half it, it's not a death sentence. And I think so many women. Just feel like they give up.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

What's a way to ask your doctor if they are educated in this area?

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

You don't want to do that because you're going to put them on their defense. You don't go in there saying, I want you to check all my hormones. That's not fair for a doctor. Give him some guidance. Do your homework. Part of being a hormone detective You honestly have to find out what it's not before you can find out what it is. is your anxiety day in, day out? Is it only on days at work? Do you wake with it in the morning? Does it come on in the afternoon? Is it worse the week before your period? So many women at midlife, they're so freaking busy I call it Swiss cheese syndrome, they wake up and maybe their hormones are good and they're feeling good and then by the end of the day they have given so much of themselves away They feel like a piece of Swiss cheese. Start the conversation with your doctor saying, I'm concerned about these symptoms. I've been tracking them and what I would be interested in is could you check to see how my blood sugars are doing, what my vitamin D level is, and how my thyroid function is, and make sure I'm not anemic. Can we start the conversation there?

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Many of the people I've worked with, expect the doctor to be asking them all these questions about where they're at. They don't think about, oh, I need to give this doctor all this information.

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

Every woman is so different, you can't just have him think, oh, well you're a 45 year old woman, you must be doing this. You need to start the conversation, and you need, to play clue.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

It's really encouraging women to step into their agency. And they become the detective.

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

Bless their heart, the insurance companies are not paying them to do this kind of detective work. Insurance companies want them to follow algorithms. And sometimes you have to think a little bit outside the box. Do you need to go in and have an estrogen and progesterone and all those things drawn? Probably not, especially if you're perimenopausal because it's going to depend on where in your cycle you are.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

The takeaways from this episode that I think are helpful for somebody who's trying to get a little bit of super concrete information Anxiety in midlife is start with your insulin, start with your vitamin D, start with your cortisol.

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

And if you're still having symptoms, track them.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

What are some easy ways for people to track who are just really busy?

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

Honestly, don't use your phone. Period apps make me crazy, it's going to increase your anxiety because they're going to try to force you into what normal is. there are very few women in the world, that have a 28 day cycle. Remember, we have two ovaries, so you might be a 26 one month, 31 the next, and that is your normal. a paper calendar. Day 1, and see where are your symptoms happening. Just tracking it, because you have to find out what it's not before you find out what it is. Bring it to your physician and you could say, look at my pattern. This always happens in the middle of the night. It always happens on Wednesday afternoons when We hear it's a school bus pulling into the neighborhood, work with them as a partner. I just had a woman go on to some site. She had a, five minute consultation with some hormone doctor or something like that. And they were like, Oh, we're going to send you this cream. Holy Moses. These doses were so high and she didn't even need any estrogen. And they were giving her really high doses.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Wow. That's scary. So one really important thing in midlife is labs aren't optional.

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

they're really not. We circle back to those three hormones and then after that, if those are good, you've got to have a foundation and then we can start building walls or hanging curtains. I think this is such a missing piece of information in midlife because people really do go to Queen Estrogen who talks about vitamin D, cortisol, or insulin. Let's move on to what women can do when it comes to making some lifestyle changes that you think would be really helpful for their hormones, which of course would then help their anxiety. Let's start with nutrition now. Start with a protein containing breakfast. be peanut butter toast. It could be eggs. I know eggs are expensive, but they're still a good deal. It could be a leftover piece of cold chicken Because that's one of the most important things that you can do, it's putting a log on the fire or some fuel in the tank. If you went out in your car and it had no gas and you expect it to drive you to work, it can't. It's a machine. So how do you expect your body to perform? And so I'll ask you, do you eat breakfast? Oh, I don't have time. I I'm getting the kids ready. Are the kids getting breakfast? Oh yeah, I make them breakfast every morning. What's wrong with this picture? You're making them egg cups or you're making them, peanut butter toast. You couldn't stick some in your own mouth. Which goes to the second thing. No sugar or alcohol after dinner. Because you're just going to ramp up your sugar and everything.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Can you just explain why diet pop isn't good for us?

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

For one thing, artificial sweeteners trigger fibromyalgia. Irritable bowel and migraines. one can of Diet Pop It Day increases your risk of obesity by 40%. On your Tongue you have all these taste buds, so salty, sweet, bitter. When you have a diet drink, tastes intensely sweet. It hits your taste bud and it immediately sends a message to your brain that you just had something sweet. what is it going to do? Okay, let's go back to those three important hormones. It's going to release insulin because you had something sweet. there's nothing there for it. So now your insulin level stays high, which can make you fatigued, anxiety, headaches, sugar cravings, now you really want to find a carbohydrate because your insulin are high. You have a diet drink and they're sipping at it all day, what are they doing? They're crying wolf all day. And at some point in time, your body's going to be like, I'm not going to fall for that. So now your glucose level stays high. Your insulin level staying high. And that's what insulin resistance is. And our bodies were not wired to have high glucose levels. So what do we do with it? Put it right on in the stomach. And abdominal weight causes more insulin resistance, and then you get into this whole vicious cycle. And remember, hormones are made at night while you sleep, which comes back to get a good night's sleep. Try to honestly get 8 hours of sleep.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Those are super doable,

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

They are super doable, but how many people actually do them?

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

People come into my office and they haven't done them. They might not know to do them,

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

Right.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

I have never been successful with clients giving them more than one small change at a time, but I've been crazy successful with clients who have done one small change, incorporated it over two weeks, then said, Oh, I'll do the next small change.

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

Absolutely. How about if we do just one thing for two weeks? Stop your diet sweeteners, and that includes the Crystal Light or the tablets you put in your water,

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

it's interesting because we're ending up talking about Diet Coke It's just not where I thought we'd go.

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

That's because when you talk to a woman, and I'm making a general statement, but I've worked with a lot of women in 27 years. And if you have a woman that says that she thinks there's something wrong with her hormones, she is almost always saying she thinks it's estrogen. But circle back. Are you working on those three? top hormones.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

I think this is such a missing piece of information in midlife.

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

We also don't take care of ourselves. You're making sure that your mom's got nutritional meals or that your kids are eating breakfast or that they're going to their doctor. You're driving your parents to their doctor's appointments. When was the last time you made one for yourself?

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

In closing, the one thing I've learned, is the idea of being a detective is so spot on because so many of the women that I've worked with, it has taken a while. It's a journey and it can be, for some people a short period of time because they have a lot of lifestyle things in place, but for other people it is a big detective case and it takes a while.

Dr. Connie Chalko Ph.D:

Find out what it's not before you can find out what it is. track your symptoms, fix the obvious things and start there and see how you feel.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

This has been fantastic. Thank you so much. In this episode, Dr. Connie Chalko encouraged you to become your own hormone detective. Get your basic labs, vitamin D, cortisol, and insulin. Make sure you're not anemic. Partner with your doctor and start with simple lifestyle changes that will help you feel better. Eat breakfast, no sugar after dinner and get eight hours of sleep. I hope you have found these two episodes to be helpful because at creating midlife calm, we just don't want you to feel like crap

Mom’s Powerbeats Pro-2:

Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.