Hello, I'm Kate driver Tripathi and women's health coach. Welcome to the menopause and perimenopause masterclass. Thank you for joining and spending some of your precious time to find out what you can do in menopause and perimenopause to feel like a wonderful woman and a fabulous woman over 14 because this is really what you should feel like. And I have noticed that it's very, very common in the Western world. I live in Australia. I have been a naturopath for over 19 years.

And I have noticed that I get many, many clients that have perimenopausal symptoms and menopausal symptoms. And when you look at other countries, more Eastern, Eastern and Asian countries And there's different countries spotted all over the world. They have a different mentality about perimenopause and menopause. And I don't sort of consider that they should feel terrible. I've got less stress levels, or different lifestyle, and a lot, lot better and healthier diet. And this can hugely influence how women go through menopause and perimenopause.

So it's a wonderful trans, transitional stage of your life, that it doesn't have to cause you some terrible symptoms that you do not need. This should be one of the best times of your life. And this is what I'm going to help you with today. Firstly, I will explain the different stages and what you can expect and what sort of symptoms to look for, to know if you're in perimenopause or menopause or post menopause. And what you need to do to change something Your symptoms, I'm going to give you some great tips and tricks. And so you can start feeling better in no time.

So stick around. parry metaphors is the stage of your life before metaphors, where you start feeling a bit different. It can happen anywhere between 39 and 55. For most women, that some women that go through huge amounts of stress or illness or trauma could actually start earlier. I mean, some women have been known to go through in their early 30s. But most commonly, it's about your mid 40s, that you'll notice are these sort of changes, but it can also be as late as 55.

I've had some clients that have gone through metaphors in their late 50s. So they can go through perimenopause in the early 50s or mid 50s. So you'll notice that you're going through perimenopause, where you start feeling a bit different anything. Wow, I'm just starting to feel Tired, I can't sleep. And I'm feeling a bit more anxious. I know with myself, the first symptoms were, my sleeping habits changed quite a lot.

Now, I've definitely rectified that now, but it was one of the most noticeable symptoms that I have. And I think that's one of the most common ones. Some women might just feel tired, and then notice that their menstrual cycle starts changing. So you might find that your period is a little bit heavier or more painful, or you're getting it, you know, regularly, or it's more often or not as often. And it's still fairly regular, but you know, it's not long in between each period. Or maybe you've skipped a few periods, and then you're getting one and a new cleaning for a week or two.

And this is like the worst case scenario because you don't want to have to put up with periods that lasts longer than three, four days. So that's happening to you. We need to really look at your hormones. help balance some a bit more. In Yes, it is normal for it to be irregular and for your periods to stop altogether that you don't need to have heavier bleeding or longer bleeding or more pain and suffering. This is not what should happen in perimenopause.

So I'm here to give you tips and tricks but not to, you know, change your hormones altogether and stop you from going through perimenopause and menopause, but to help you feel good and empowered and and, you know, glide through perimenopause and menopause, so you'll know that you can get through this with ease. And when you are at the other end, you think Wow, that was great. And you just feel wonderful. So, hot flashes might also pop up. It's not just something in metaphors. A lot of perimenopausal women will start getting hot flashes with their their sleeping issues.

And it can happen more in women that have higher levels of stress. For the hormone cortisol. So cortisol is produced by your adrenal glands, and it's one of their stress hormones, and it also helps us counteract inflammation in the body. So if you're somebody with with inflammation, say joint pain or arthritis or you've got a skin condition, then you might find that you are more prone to hot flashes because you've got higher cortisol. Or maybe you have got a lot of stress and you're under a lot of pressure. Because you're a very busy woman, then you may notice that hot flashes are more prevalent for you compared to somebody else with an easier, less stressful lifestyle.

So what's happening in perimenopause is that your hormones actually aren't really fluctuating. They can be on a bit of a roller coaster, which is a bit unfortunate for some women because they can't predict what's happening from month to month. But what I help people through is to help them become Have a bit more balanced so you can glide through knowing what is happening. And so what happens is the progesterone starts dropping dramatically. And that's what helps us feel calm. I call it the cool calm and collected hormone.

And it helps you sleep. So when your progesterone drops, you start feeling anxious and you can't sleep as well. And when a higher stress levels in in someone's life and progesterone is more likely to drop more dramatically and cause all these symptoms. So I'm going to talk about this a lot. But stress is something to really, really take notice of with all of the symptoms is yes, something you really need to work on is reducing stress. And then the estrogen fluctuates up and down.

And that can cause sometimes depression in some women and sometimes hot flashes. And then you know, I can stop your period for a while and then you can get a heavy period if it's increased again. So that can actually be on the roller coaster quite a lot in perimenopause and happen for a few years. So the most common symptoms, as I've mentioned already, some of these are anxiety and insomnia, or sleeplessness hot flashes that are causing a horrible sleep, or maybe you're waking up quite a lot. Now a common time for women to wake up is between one and three o'clock. And if that's you then take note that that's particularly your liver health and your liver is under a bit of stress.

And generally as we age our liver doesn't function as efficiently then you need to give yourself some liver support because our liver is a really important organ to help us balance our hormones and metabolize our hormones and metabolize our thyroid hormones as well and keep our blood sugar levels in our weight at a good level We talked about some of the other symptoms that migraines and headaches can be other symptoms that can pop up in paramon pores and they can pop out in people that have never had them before. And this can be something you can rectify fairly quickly. So please don't put up with them. And if you're somebody that has had them all your life, then it could be exacerbated at this time. And generally it's because of the fluctuation with the hormones. It's low progesterone, higher estrogen, and poor liver health.

So you need to look at all of these if you have headaches and migraines, and then we become a bit more histamine. intolerant and histamines are naturally occurring chemical in foods. But it's also that our body doesn't eliminate the histamine as efficiently so we become more sensitive to it and it can trigger off headaches and migraines and then changes in libido. Some women might have a higher libido some women might have a lower libido and feel a bit like you Things have changed and things have just shut down and that seat, but please don't worry about that because you can definitely get your libido back if it's if it's gone to sleep in perimenopause, medicals and beyond. So the aim in perimenopause is to increase your progesterone which I'll talk about soon, and help balance out your estrogen. And make sure you're getting rid of the bad estrogens.

Reducing Stress is a big one I should probably should have put this at number one. You want to eat healthily if you already don't any want to exercise if you've already died. Now if you're going to start exercising and you never have before play start slowly and choose having you know your stick to like walking or you know, going to a gym class if you need somebody to motivate you in a class or going somewhere with a friend to yoga or polities. But if you're already doing exercise, then sometimes you need to increase intensity before putting on weight or if you haven't changed it up over the last few years because your body gets used to the same sort of exercise. But if you're pretty happy with your body at the moment and the way you feel, then just stick to what you're doing. Then we need to correct nutritional deficiencies in perimenopause, and there's quite a few that can pop up.

The most common is magnesium deficiency. And I find that a very, very high percentage of my clients have magnesium deficiency. And it's been estimated in the world that 80% at least people are deficient. Now a lot of this is because of stress levels, and it's not available in our food anymore. So most of us have to rely on a supplement. and supporting adrenal and thyroid health is so so important when we're looking at hormones, the adrenals other glands that sit on top of your kidneys, and they produce the fight and flight hormones that I was talking about, such as cortisol.

And if we don't keep our adrenal glands healthy, then you're more prone To anxiety, depression, overwhelm sleeplessness, hot flashes, and adrenal burnout and fatigue. And once that started happening, it can affect your thyroid gland or your thyroid health. Now, this is the most common time that women start experiencing thyroid problems. Particularly underactive thyroid, when they're going through perimenopause and menopause. And it's more prevalent nowadays because of people's stress levels, because we have more adrenal fatigue and adrenal stress and adrenal dysfunction. And because our third has to take the brunt of the stress also.

And I D deficiency has started to become more common also in the world, partly because of neurotic fluoridated fluoridated water with fluoride in it. I was trying to work out how to say that. So yeah, water with fluoride in it can inhibit the absorption of iron And we don't get it in our foods as much anymore as well, unless you're really big into seaweed and seafood, and kelp and things like that. And look, getting a good slate is so important for all of this stage of your life that for most, for the majority, unfortunately, it is the most challenging problem. So working on your sleep and your stress levels first can go a long way to helping you get back on track. Sleep is generally your best medicine.

So if you're not getting at least eight hours a night, then it's going to affect you long term detrimentally. When we sleep, we actually balance our hormones, and we detoxify, and our cells regenerate. So it's such a regenerative time. And yet if we don't detox overnight, when we're sleeping, then we increase inflammation in our body and we become more toxic and then we can't metabolize our hormones. as efficiently so you're in metaphors when you have not menstruated or had a period for at least one year or 12 months. So some people say I'm in metaphors when they're actually in parry metaphors, but only really starts when you haven't had a period for a year.

And this is when you can say, after a year, no period, this is day one a bit. Of course, I'm finally in it. And it can go on for a few years until you're in post menopause and your symptoms have come down. But what you can do to find out if you're in menopause or perimenopause, if you really do need to know you're not sure because of your age or your symptoms. very obvious, then you can have your hormones tested. The FSH and LH.

So that's follicle stimulating hormone, and luteinizing hormone. And these hormones increased when your estrogen and progesterone have dropped Because these hormones try and stimulate your ovaries to produce more estrogen and progesterone. So that's generally what your doctor will test and if they're raised then you know you're in perimenopause or menopause. So the most common symptoms during menopause, as you probably all know is hot flashes and sleep problems or insomnia and overwhelming anxiety seem to be very, very common and mood swings and mood changes. Some women just feel overwhelmed and like they just don't cope with symptoms they used to, or, you know, stress in their life that they used to before and everything becomes too much. Then the horrible less talked about symptoms that women tend to have like drying out of your skin, getting skin thinning hair or drying out of your hair, and vagina and low libido and just feeling like You've lost yourself and you don't feel sexy anymore.

And that's a great, great place to be in because you can definitely get that back. And you can definitely feel like the vixen that you've always felt like and like the woman that you need to feel like during this time of your life. And if you work on it, you can actually feel better than you ever have. Because this is a fantastic time when you should feel liberated, more confident and be doing what you actually really desire in your life. So the aim in menopause is to increase your progesterone because it makes you feel calmer and cooler and collected. And you want to increase your estrogen and reduce your bad estrogens.

And we want to reduce stress as I've talked about before and increase your sleep. So Reducing Stress can mean that you just you know say no to more things. Instead of saying yes, yes, I can do that I can help you. You have to think of yourself more and put yourself first especially if you've been a mum all your life and you still are If you're looked after other people in your industry, and you haven't looked after yourself, this is a time that you have to, because this is where that's going to catch up with you. If you haven't looked after a certain area of your life. This is when it's going to come back and bite you in the bum and say, hey, you've got to take notice now do something about it.

And that includes exercising and eating healthily. As I mentioned with perimenopause, it's really really imperative to have a high nutritional healthy diet, reduce your processed foods and your carbohydrates and your sugar and increased protein and I'll talk about that more very soon. And then again, I talked about adrenal and thyroid health. I don't need to repeat that. But that's really important. Our adrenal glands produce a hormone called D HPA.

And that control so as we go through perimenopause and menopause and as we age, but it's a really important hormone to keep had a very good level, because it keeps our cardiovascular system and our bone density healthy. So don't let the doctors or just the general media for you in thinking you just need to take calcium because that is not the case. And most calcium just gives you kidney stones. So we need to look at the whole, the whole your whole lifestyle and your hormones in balance and your adrenal gland health, but also at your alkaline and acid balance. Because if you're an acidic person and you're stressed and you have more processed foods, then you're always going to have lower bone density anyway and especially if you don't exercise. And the same with the cardiovascular health when we do all these things, like eating healthily and exercising and reducing stress, obviously for good health all around but also for your cardiovascular health.

But we need to also do some things around that to make sure that we're not too prone to later after we go through post meta pores or even during menopause, we're more prone to cardiovascular disease and heart attacks, and it doubles that compared to Have men so that's pretty scary. So we need to look after our heart and our cardiovascular health. So post meta pauses after your menopause symptoms have released with eased or stopped. And this is when you're really praying to Austria process and heart disease. You can be healthy if you know how. And this is the time to start.

So you can stay healthy, over 40 and beyond up until you're, you know, on your deathbed, you can always know what to do and know how to balance and look after your hormones. So stick around. I'm gonna start now talking about what you can do. cite tips and tricks for perimenopause and medical support. So I'm going to go through some typical symptoms and tell you what you should be doing. So let's go through that.

Now. If there's something I haven't covered on here, then you might look at thinking about working with me one on one or in one of my programs, because I can't cover everything here. I'm so sorry I'd love to but would end up being a two hour or even three hour masterclass. And I find after about half an hour, I start getting tired talking. So let's keep this to the, to the simple, most common symptoms and this will help you a lot anyway, and I'm sure some of you have different symptoms for what I'm going to talk about, but as I said is the most common. So before I start, I've got these on the slides, but I just like to say that if you have any serious health problems, or if you take any prescribed medications, then please, any of the suggestions I'm going to talk about check with your health practitioner or your doctor or your GP.

At that it is okay to do these changes, particularly just the herbs and the supplements. Because sometimes there's contraindications with some chemicals in your medications, or with some disease states and I'm talking about you know, something like if you have some sort of cancer or you're going through some sort of treatment, or if it's, you know, multiple sclerosis or epilepsy, or something, you know, quite serious within the cardiovascular realm as well. And if you're taking blood thinners, please be aware that as well. So always check that you can safely take any of these supplements that I'm going to recommend hot flashes, the most common one. So hot flashes are triggered by an excess of the cortisol and that's why I was talking about cortisol before. This is the hormone produced by the adrenal glands.

So reducing stress is the most important thing. And as much as you can, I know it's a bit unfair to say get rid of stress Because none of us can, unless you don't do anything, and you're sitting on an island every day, that we all have some sort of stress whether we like it or not. So our adrenal glands need to have the most support here. So we also need to avoid or reduce stimulants because this reduces the production of cortisol. So if you're having too much sugar or carbohydrates, especially in the evening, if you're getting hot flashes, alcohol or coffee, or even if you feel stressed in the evening, because of your family or you're rushing, then you will notice that your hot flashes will be worse. So try cutting down on your stimulants and that includes spicy foods.

And you know, if you're having a whole bowl of rice or pasta, they can increase the levels of cortisol and increase the hot flashes. So what I tell most women is to cut out alcohol, you know if you want to get a good sleep, or at least cut it down kind of sugar and try and avoid caffeine. And evenings if you're getting the symptoms during the day of hot flashes, then do the same thing throughout the day and evening. And it might be a good idea for your coffee drinker just to ditch coffee altogether. It's not going to hurt your health anyway. And there's lots of other caffeine free drinks around especially herbal teas and talking about who will taste Sage tea is wonderful for hot flashes.

Sage tea tea is also good for sore throats just in case you wondered. And you can gargle it for sore throats. But it's great for hot flashes, but you'd have to drink it regularly and have a few cups a day. And then magnesium and vitamin C are really important to reduce cortisol levels. So I'd be taking those regularly throughout the day as well. And you need to check with your health practitioner at what how much you need.

That yes, these are very nourishing for the adrenals also and reduce cortisol and also your hot flushes. Then if you want to go down to herbal track, you can drink the sage tea, or just drink nice calling, counting teas like peppermint or caramel. But there's also Herbes such as the surface Magnolia, shut up Aryan chase tree, they can all help with hormone balance and hot flashes. And again, somebody is not put on this slide, but please check with your health practitioner or doctor that you can safely take these herbs or supplements. If you're on medications or you have a serious illness to reduce stress, I've written on he laugh, but you know, have fun basically meditate. I think meditating first thing in the morning has become my new thing to do.

I always I when I do it at nighttime as well, but I always had this block about doing it in the morning. But if you start start your day in a really good state of mind and you feel really calm and you visualize your day going well, then it will. If you get out of bed and jump around and sort of feel stressed already, then you're more likely to have hot flashes. And exercise increases cortisol initially. But after you've done exercise, it helps you reduce it and use it up if you're feeling one of those people that feel anxious and stressed throughout the day, make sure you exercise daily and do yoga. If you're one of those people that really can't stop thinking and can't stop worrying, then meditation and yoga are probably for you.

Now, a really good tip for hot flashes also is deep breathing. So a lot of studies have shown and I've had a lot of my clients do this as well, that doing the breathing for five can really like really cut down or even get rid of the hot flashes altogether. So it's pretty easy. Do it for as long as you need. Don't make yourself dizzy, you don't have to hold it for five if you can't, but try and really breathe, slow that breathing down. And if you have to do it for 10 minutes and do it for 10 minutes, but most people will notice after a few minutes, if you're right in the middle of a hot flashes subsides pretty quickly.

So they're your hot flash tips. There's many more, but these are the most the easiest things to incorporate into your life. Then another common symptom that I noticed that women complain about and then wonder why it came out of the blue all of a sudden is weight gain. That can happen anytime I know that perimenopause and menopause, you can sort of pop up when women haven't had problems before. Now part of that can be because you become insulin resistant, and maybe your thyroid gland function slows down also. But unless I know exactly what it is for you that there's happening then it's this is just general recommendations.

So you want to again, Reduce Stress because as we're stressed and we have high cortisol levels, we cannot use our glucose for energy out of our food, we actually store it as fat more easily. So that's probably the number one thing is to reduce stress and cortisol when you're trying to lose weight. If you're trying all the things and you're taking lots of supplements and cutting down on all the different foods or doing their their fasting, which a lot of people are into, which can actually really help reset your insulin, you might want to do a 12 or 14 hour fast and only have two or three meals over the next 12 or eight hours depending on how you do it. Then that can be very helpful as well for for the weight loss. But reducing stress is really important and obviously exercise if you've never done exercise before please start because to increase your metabolism exercise is most important, particularly in the morning, when we need the most metabolism support.

That actually gets your metabolism going. And if you can do it for at least half an hour every morning, then it will actually increase your metabolism for the rest of the day. And you will burn your food that you eat more efficiently and keep you in a better mood and have more energy throughout the day. And reducing carbohydrates is really important as we become more sensitive to carbohydrates. The simple carbohydrates which I didn't write here, but the simple ones, which is bread, rice, pasta biscuits, even if it's gluten free or weight free, try and reduce these to only one to two servings a day. And this the serving sizes are generally recommend is about 30 grams.

So if you're looking at, you know, a small bowl of pasta or cereal or half a cup of rice or two slices of bread once, twice daily, because we become more resistant to insulin. So every time we have these simple carbohydrate foods We need to produce a hormone called insulin to unlock it to use it for energy. And if we don't, we store that glucose as fat on our body. So the more we have these foods, the more we're going to store the glucose from these foods as fat rather than use as energy because we're stimulating the production of insulin, which our cells don't like this age. So it's better to have less of these foods as much as you can. And that obviously includes sugar you know an alcohol as well.

So one important tip for for this time of your life and and threw out to the rest of your life is to make sure you're having good quality protein at every meal. I generally say as a rule your palm size. Because if you have less than you can be become easily protein deficient. And protein is really important for our hormones, our immune system, our muscles, our brain function, and because we actually don't absorb it and we lose muscle as we age Then I recommend for your metabolism and for your brain health and for inflammation in your body to have organic coconut oil every day. Apple cider vinegar helps with this internal resistance. And it helps balance out your blood sugar levels throughout the day and reduces inflammation, which is very handy and also increases your stomach acid which means that you break your foods down more efficiently.

Because as we age, we don't digest our foods as efficiently as we did when we were younger. So those three things are really important tips for eating. Then if we're just looking at the basics for supplements, magnesium, chromium, and zinc all help balance your blood sugar levels and help you become more sensitive to insulin. So when we do eat food, we can use that glucose as energy and burn it up rather than storing it as fat. And then an acetyl carnitine helps us not only produce energy but helps us burn fat more efficiently as well. A great, easy supplement to take for energy and weight loss.

And I mentioned before reducing stress, so they are the most important things for weight loss. PMT PMT is premenstrual tension or premenstrual syndrome, and moodiness. And quite commonly, as I said before it pops up in perimenopause. But it can happen throughout your life. And it might have been happening for 20 years, I don't know. But if it's only just started happening, then let's look at what you can do.

As I mentioned before you want to for cortisol and for inflammation in your body, you want to reduce your processed foods. And this can make you feel a lot worse because it increases inflammation in your body. And it puts more stress on your adrenal glands if you're having any of these stimulants. So I take night turn props, perhaps sorry, perhaps Use these types of foods altogether for lots of different symptoms that you might be experiencing. And then again, I would be taking magnesium. I've written on here, sorry about this one hour before sleep.

But that was for the sleep one. You can do that if your PMT is keeping you awake. I would look at magnesium throughout the day and in divided doses, and you need to check with your health practitioner that it's safe for you to take and how much you need particularly. Chase tree is a herb that can help increase your progesterone and help you with the PMT symptoms. It's also called biotechs Agnus testers. And activated vitamin D six is particularly important for PMT as well.

And then make it three oils such as in fish oil, and you can find it in sea buckthorn and hemp and evening primrose oil was very helpful for most women with PMT and mood swings. Reducing Stress again, this is going to come up a lot. This is really important and most women find that they get more moodiness or premenstrual syndrome or premenstrual tension when they're more stressed. And it can vary from time to time from menstrual cycle to menstrual cycle. Or if you're in many metaphors and it's happening, then you still find it cyclic. Even if you're not getting a period you might find every month you get a week of these funny symptoms, because your whole mind's always going to be in that cycle of fluctuation.

If you're getting headaches or migraines, and I've never popped up before, or if you've always got them, then you need to look after your liver and the inflammation in your body. So we want to reduce the processed foods again, and I think I mentioned that before histamine rich foods. Really commonly, one group of foods that can be very detrimental for headaches and migraines. Not with everybody but it's worth looking at. So you might want to find a list of your own but the most common histamine rich foods are fermented foods. Dairy products are forgot to mention he like tinned foods as well.

Especially tinned fish and tuna, tomatoes, spinach, chocolate and avocados. And then you also want to reduce stress, including lack of sleep that can always exacerbate headaches. If you're getting them every month around your period. or roughly You know, every month if you're in metaphors, then you'll find that looking after your gut health in your liver is really important. So you want to take some probiotics because it helps us clear out excess estrogens which can be the cause of the headaches and migraines as well. And that creases your good bacteria in your belly.

Which is really important for a certain clearance but also for our balance of our immune system and hormone health. And then we've got some various disorder which supports your liver health and just helps it work more efficiently. Magnesium can help relax the blood vessels in your head. A lot of people can be quite deficient when they have headaches and migraines, magnesium and coenzyme Q 10 can help quite a lot as well. I didn't put that on this list but that's a very handy nutrient to take for headaches and migraines also, the good oils again, and then for a certain clearance in your daily lifestyle, you could actually have flex seeds ground up, make sure you grind them up that can help support your good estrogens. And dandelion root tea can help with your liver health and help you clear out the bad estrogens and just generally for liver health.

It's great to have instead of caffeine or coffee broccolis sprouts, you can get both in supplements as well. And tumeric is amazing along with like fish oil and magnesium for headaches and migraines and tumeric also supports inflammation in your body and liver health. And again, please check with your health practitioner or GP. These are safe for you to take if you're taking any medications or if you have a serious illness. So moving on to anxiety, anxiety is really really common. And in perimenopause, it seems to pop up a bit more and he may still be getting it three minute pours.

So the most important things in with anxiety and I feel is the most important supplement is magnesium and I mentioned that before. Magnesium is amazing like because so many people are deficient and if you're an anxious person, you'll be burning burning up a lot of magnesium. So magnesium You might want to take it two or three times a day. with vitamin C, particularly by three good to reduce the cortisol levels and to help you feel less anxious, then reducing stress is really, really important. Again, and I talked about this a lot because it has such an impact on every part of your life and just about every symptom, but something I haven't mentioned is grounding. Everything.

I find particularly for myself, as a naturally anxious person, but it's hugely changed over the last 1010 years, is grounding. Everyday putting your feet on soil Earth water, I particularly do it down the beach, even in winter, I take my shoes off and walk in the water, even if it's freezing cold. Doing that every day dramatically reduces anxiety and inflammation in your body. And there's a lot of research scientific research on this. If you Google grounding or anything, then you'll find out how much it can improve your general Health, and particularly anxiety. So I completely swear by it.

Because I've traveled it for over. It's been over a year now, I've been doing it every day. And it has, there's no, that other things that I do are the same, but that's something I've added and it's made a big difference. And also meditation. I mean, how amazing is that? Even if you did five or 10 minutes a day, if you feel anxious, just do the deep breathing exercise I mentioned with hot flashes.

Just stop and focus. Even if you're, you know, your mind is racing, just focus on something and say, Okay, I'm going to breathe in for five, hold five and out for five and just focus on the clouds or a nice picture or a nice thought. Then as I mentioned, magnesium is amazing but also with mania is a great herb that can help reduce cortisol and anxiety. It's a really good one for PMT symptoms as well. Everybody loves it. I take it fairly regularly in a tea that you can get in supplements as well.

Some people call it ashwagandha. And it's an ru Vedic herb, but you can get it readily everywhere. It's probably one of my favorite herbs. And again, check with your health practitioner what dose you should be taking. But it's very well tolerated and it can help you with if you take it during the day with anxiety, energy and a better sleep. And it's actually a very mild antidepressant as well so it can actually help lift your mood.

So with anxiety It can also be exacerbated because your progesterone levels have dropped. So we want to support liver health because our liver needs to be healthy, the healthy progesterone levels and our thorough it needs to be healthy for healthy progesterone levels also. So I might have mentioned this before, but if I haven't then please get your thyroid checked thoroughly. And this includes thyroid stimulating hormone or TSH. Free t three Free T for and if your doctor will allow it your thyroid antibodies, because this is the most common time for women to experience thyroid issues and thyroid issues can cause weight gain anxiety, depression, hot flashes, sleeping problems, dry skin, low libido. And for a surgeon especially, you know, perimenopausal used to become quite excessive and and cause more heavier periods and horrible symptoms that we don't need that headaches, hot flashes.

So get your thyroid thoroughly checked, because this will affect your liver health and your liver health will affect your thyroid and therefore your progesterone levels. And I mentioned chase tree before and that's to help increase the progesterone. But it's quite a good herb to reduce anxiety as well and help balance your hormones generally. So again, please check with your health practitioner or your doctor. Or whoever you see that it's okay for you to take these. And particularly if you're taking medications or you have a serious health problem.

Then the last one I'm going to talk about is sleep. Sleep is your best medicine. And look, this is the most common issue that women have. And if you're one of those women, it takes some time to work on. So it could if you haven't had a good sleep for a few years, it could take a few months at least to get back on track, if it's only been a few months, and it might only take a few weeks. So please be patient with sleep, but you need to work on it in lots of different areas of your life because it's not just what you do before you go to bed but what you do throughout the day, as well.

And also what your hormones are doing. So stress, obviously again, this is really important. First thing in the morning, if we start in the morning, get get outside get some sunlight. This resets your hormones So it'll expose you to sunlight, which means that your melatonin, which is your sleep hormone will be switched off and your cortisol will be turned on. And you'll feel more vitalized. And then your body knows that that's it for now, melatonin will be produced later on in the day when you're near bedtime, and when it's dark outside.

And if you can get outside at Sun down as well, then I would suggest to do that, but if you can't, I can't understand it. But at some, you know, sunset is I can see where I live. But if you get out that time of night that can actually help you with your melatonin production too, because your body knows that the sun's going down. You have to start releasing this melatonin to help you get ready for sleep later in the evening. And having a bit of a light walk or a bit of exercise in the evening can help you if you find it hard to go to sleep because a lot of people don't exercise enough They feel restless when they're trying to go to sleep. And then if your brain is very busy if you wake up a lot, then try and meditate or listen to some theta healing music before you go to sleep to slow your brainwaves down, or write stuff down journal.

Before you go to bed, write your worries down because if you don't, they'll just go ran around in your head. So these sounds simple, but they're quite effective. And then if it's hot flashes and you're experiencing that are causing you sleep problems, and you need to work on those. But also, as with hot flashes, we need to reduce stimulant so we don't want to have anything like that in the evening, because they will increase your cortisol levels and block that melatonin production which is your sleep hormone that we need to release and keep at a nice level so you'll feel sleepy and you can get to sleep and stay asleep. So the most important Herbes and supplements I recommend again is Magnesium. And please check that it's not going to interact with any medications or that you can take this if you have a serious health problem, melatonin or five HTP, which is a form of tryptophan.

So it's five hydroxy tryptophan. These are hard to get some places in the world and it's better to get them prescribed by your health practitioner or doctor and just check they're safe to take for you, especially melatonin because with some people, you need to take a very low dose but with some people can make you feel a bit hangover the next day. So it's not something you'd jump into only if you're very, very sleep deprived. Five HTP or five hydroxy tryptophane helps you produce the melatonin and that can be a little bit safer. It's good for anxiety as well. But again, please check with your doctor or your health practitioner first.

And then Herbes are there's so many of them but my favorites are passionflower Magnolia and sizzle In that combination is nice because it helps reduce the stress hormones and helps you feel more relaxed and gets you into a deeper sleep. A lot of women are not women, a lot of people use Valerian, but I try to avoid that because it can have some adverse effects with some people. So if you if you know that it works for you, then that's great. And there's lots of other hoops too. But I find that I stick to these because they're wonderful. sees the first is particularly good for hot flashes as well.

So if you're one of those women that can't sleep because of hot flashes, you might like to have Sage change during the day. And it has this effect as for sleep and hot flashes at nighttime. Sorry, just to wrap up my top tips. Generally if you're thinking oh my god, I have all these problems. I can't take everything. What should I do?

Then I've just got the top tips here because I understand it can be overwhelming. And you might even have more symptoms than I've talked about here as well. So reducing stress, I'm sure you've got that one so far. I would say that that's the top top tip. And you want to look at every aspect of your life. Even chemicals now haven't talked about chemicals a lot but no it's a stress in your life that you may not be aware of is the chemicals you get exposed to with your personal care products like your skincare, your makeup, your deodorant, your perfume.

If you're not using natural alternatives, then you're getting exposed to lots of chemicals and that is a stress on your body. And they definitely affect your hormones. And then we've got all the plastics. A lot of people are aware of BPA Abbas phenol a, but there's other plastics that are detrimental and most of the plastic water bottles that are saying they're BPA free, still have a form of thermolite or plastic in it that can still affect your hormones and your health. So try and avoid plastics as much as possible and reduce the chemicals in your personal care your your personal care routine and even what you clean your house with. So I mean looking at is so many good cleaning products now.

And you could use essential oils for nearly everything. So try and look at those sort of stresses in your life as well because I haven't mentioned those, that that's really, really important when we're looking at taking the stress load off our body and helping our hormones work more efficiently. Because our bodies are overloaded with stress. And particularly think about this if you have mercury or amalgam fillings are silver ones, because you know, you've got a constant stress of that mercury being released into your body every day and then we get bombarded by other chemicals. And if you're not eating organic food, then you're also getting exposed to lots of chemicals and heavy metals in the sprays that cover your plant foods that you're eating. So try and eat organic as much as possible.

And we've talked about the other ways to reduce stress, looking at your stimulants and your processed foods and which helps reduce anxiety and your hot flashes. And then if you're looking at daily what you can do, how would get morning sunlight exercise every day, eat protein at every meal, increase your fruit and vegetables that are organic and your plant foods and decrease your processed foods and meditate or journal before bed, do some grounding every day. How important is that for every part of your life? And then we look at the basic supplements. I would get everybody on magnesium basically. And some if you're not doing omega three oils, or evening primrose oil then look at what you can do in your diet and make sure you have oily fish really regularly at least you know daily nuts and seeds every day.

Kados and you know, you can adding lots of these things to different parts of your diet, then are looking at a good probiotic, not the shelf stable, because they're not very viable. But if you're looking at a good quality probiotic, this helps us with, like every aspect of your health basically, including things like anxiety and depression because we produce our hormones out serotonin and dopamine in our mouth. So you can't stay happy and calm if you haven't got good bacteria in your mouth. And your immune system suffers if you've got not very good bacteria in your mouth, and your estrogen does as well. So I could talk about that in another webinar, or master class, and just talk about that because it's such a wide subject to talk about. So the other two I mentioned before apple cider vinegar and coconut oil, stick them into your diet, make that part of your routine and you'll find that these small changes can make a big difference.

Another thing that I haven't mentioned at all is making sure you're having adequate water. You need point three of a liter for every 10 kilograms of your body weight. So basically, it will help you produce energy efficiently. It'll flush out your liver and your kidneys, which will help your hormones and your general health and it helps just think of you know, your blood as well helps your heart heals because it thins out your blood. If you're not drinking enough water, you have more viscous blood and it will give you your heart more stress and it can increase your blood pressure. So water is not just you know, something you have to do and you're not sure why it helps us with energy and also helping flush out the toxins in our body to really ruin our kidneys every day.

You might want to also start the morning with two glasses of warm water with fresh lemon juice and drink them fairly quickly. I find That's just a wonderful way to start the day it helps flush your liver and your kidneys. It's alkaline digestive, which means it alkalizes your blood. There's some people that can help them have a bowel movement more easily. And yeah increases your stomach acid. If you're going to eat shortly after that, otherwise, just do it anyway, it's a very good start to the day for a bit of a cleanse.

Thank you for joining. I have gone a bit more either time than I thought I would. Thank you for joining and I hope you've enjoyed my tips and tricks and explanation of perimenopause and menopause. If you have any questions, then please contact me on this page. And I will be happy to help you. And as I said, I'm Kate driver, naturopath and women's health coach and I am a naturopath in South Australia.

I have been consulting for nearly 20 years I help women all over the world and in my clinic, and if you need some more help, please contact me here and I can talk to you about what you can do. I offer online consultations and programs online also. Thank you so much for joining and I wish you the very best of hormones and health and happiness.