Dr Mindy Pelz: The Surprising Cause of Brain Fog Every Mother Needs to Know

29:33so tell me first about the weights what is it about me lifting weights that is going to mean that i have left symptoms in perimenopausal menopausal did you experience less symptoms well i don't know if i'm perimenopausal yet it's a it's a hazy time of life it's hard to know yeah i'm in that kind of am i just tired or is it perimenopausal i'm not sure i feel good lifting the weight. Great. So here's what we need to know is after 40, our hormones, our sex hormones are going on a very wild ride. Progesterone will go down and progesterone, remember, makes GABA, which calms us. So now we don't have as much GABA, so we're a little bit irritable.

30:16And then estrogen declines, whether you're using HRT or not, you're still, I mean, both those hormones are supposed to go down. And estrogen kept your metabolic system insulin sensitive. So when estrogen was high, she, and I called it in age like a girl, I call it the girl gang. Like she had all these other members that she stimulated, like insulin was one of them. So when estrogen was high, your pancreas was really good at stimulating insulin. Your cells were really good at pulling in insulin and glucose after a meal was made. But when estrogen goes down, that system is not as sensitive. And so the meal you ate at 35 that kept the weight off at 55 or 45 starts making you gain weight.

31:08And you're like, what? I didn't change anything. What happened? And what happened was your estrogen levels went down and you became more insulin resistant. And insulin resistance is also can be thought of as weight loss resistant. So now you've got to change your lifestyle to put some other things into place. So when you lift weights and you grow muscle, packed within muscle are insulin receptor sites. The more muscle you have the more insulin receptor sites you have. So you just in the sheer act of lifting weights, heavy, heavy weights, and you don't even have, it's like eight reps, three times of like the heaviest weight you can lift.

31:56And you don't even have to do a ton of, it's not like you have to get into like bodybuilding here. You just need to get the big muscles, your legs, your glutes, your chest, your arms, do like four or five weight training exercises where you're lifting eight times and on the eighth time of that lift, you need to feel like you can't lift any heavier, like you need to go to max. If you do that, you will start to build muscle. And when you build muscle, you have more insulin receptor sites. And when you have more insulin receptor sites, your body knows how to use insulin in the absence of estrogen.

32:35It can actually use insulin to keep you feeling fit and healthy and thin. So that's number one. The other thing that estrogen has is estrogen stimulated all these neurochemicals for our brain. And one of the neurochemicals is called BDNF. It's brain-derived neurotropic factor. And BDNF is what allows us to hold on to information. It allows us to learn new information. And so when we go into our perimenopausal years, when we see that estrogen goes down, not only are we becoming more insulin resistant, not only are we gaining weight, but now we can't think straight. So BDNF is another member of the girl gang.

33:23So when estrogen left, so did BDNF. And all of a sudden you can't pick up a book and start to be able to understand the principles of the book. And I've heard so many women tell me this, like, I can't read books anymore. In fact, I kind of laugh because my audio books do really well. And I'm like, I think it's because of the audience. I think it was, it's easier for that menopausal brain to hear an audio book than to actually read it. But when you're lifting weights, what you're doing is when you break down muscle to make muscle stronger, the byproduct of that is a metabolite that goes up into the brain and tells your brain to make BDNF.

34:07That's so cool. That's really cool. And that's cool. So it's like one activity, like one activity and you're making yourself more insulin resistant. You're helping yourself lose weight and you're powering up your brain. Two things that are really profound during that perimenopausal experience, one activity.

34:29that is phenomenal and i've got to say it's really fun i've never thought i'd be someone that would lift weights and i really enjoy it particularly because it's like progressive like i really i'm someone who loves seeing improvements so i really enjoy that yeah can i say one thing on that because i think this is the thank you for sharing that i think when you when you're living in a strong body, you also have a strong mind. And I know that feeling when you start to feel like you're getting more muscle. You walk around feeling like a badass. You're like, look at more of my bicep. Look at this. And you stand stronger.

35:11You feel better in your skin. And then all of a sudden, that translates out into how your mind works. It translates out into your relationships. It translates out into when you feel good about yourself, everything in your world works better. It is so, so, so true. And you talk about perimenopause and the period that, you know, I'm in and coming into, not in the way that lots of health experts do, which can be quite fear-mongering, I think, can be, you know, we know some of the really scary statistics about women having to drop out of the workforce, women have to, you know, lots of the rates of women struggling with mental health.

35:50I think we know all that. I love that you are actually putting a quite different and way more positive spin on it, which that it really can be this kind of second empowering awakening. Tell us about that and how you came to that insight and that realization and how we actually live that in the real world? Yeah, such a good question. And you know, you're reminding me of one of my favorite talks that I've given over the last couple of years was in London. It was at Amazon and it was a group that was formed within Amazon of perimenopause and menopausal women that were learning how to take better, you know, learning how to navigate the turbulent waters of menopause, but also they were noticing that in the 40s is the most common time for women to leave the workforce and how expensive that was to a company.

36:48And so this group was formed in order to help women understand themselves and understand the lifestyle. I came in to talk about lifestyle, and I think it's a really important thing to talk about. So anyway, So I just, you know, huge plug for anybody who was at that talk or anybody who is an employee of Amazon in London because what they were doing for menopausal women there was really cool. So here's what's happening again after 40. As estrogen goes down, she has over 12 neurochemicals that are going with her. And so what happens is those chemicals are dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, glutamate, GABA, oxytocin, BDNF, melatonin, glucose, insulin.

37:32Like, that's a lot. So you're not just losing these few sex hormones. You're having a massive neurochemical shift. And in that shift, the positive that's happening is it's rewiring your brain. This is Lisa Moscone, the top female brain researcher in the world, proved that there were three times that the female brain rewires itself. The first is at puberty. We all know this. Anybody, this is why I'm like, you're not, I don't know if you're a nine-year-old, a girl, but I'm like, you know, call me anytime when she goes through puberty. Because what happens, any mother of a teenage daughter will tell you, like one day you're like, oh, you're besties.

38:16and then the next day she's like, get away. Well, that's because her brain is rewiring from one that was dependent upon you into one that was independent from you. When we go through pregnancy and we go into postpartum, the brain rewires itself again. And these rewirings are there so that we can be prepared for the next job. So the girl going into puberty needs to know how to have a brain that can stand on her own that isn't dependent upon a parent. The postpartum brain needs to rewire itself so it can be highly intuitive because you can't read your baby's cues. Well, I mean, your baby can't speak to you, so you have to be able to read the subtle cues.

39:02So postpartum, you need to have a high intuition to be able to sense what your baby needs, mother's intuition. How many times has dad handed the baby over and said, I don't really know what to do when mom knows what to do. It's just her intuition is heightened. So at perimenopause, another rewiring happens. And this is why I want the positive. I want to start talking about what's right about menopause, not about what's wrong. And that's what's going on in the zeitgeist right now is we're just bitching and moaning about everything that's going wrong with it. And I want to start talking about why it is the most beautiful experience for a woman if she allows it to be.

39:43So what's happening is she is pruning away neurons in her brain as this neurochemical shift happens. So those neurons that get pruned away were the people-pleasing neurons. Those were the ones that we wanted to make everybody around us happy. So we don't have those neurons anymore, which is why our behaviors change. But what it does, it makes room for the new neurons. And the new neurons are where we start to be more referenced in making ourselves happy. We start putting ourself first. And the preparation and why the brain would do that is for leadership. The perimenopausal brain is rewiring itself for leadership.

40:34And in order to be a good leader, the first person you have to know how to lead is you. So this is called, it came from something called the grandmother hypothesis. Lisa Moscone proved it through her neuroscience and her research. We have mystics that have talked about it. I quote in Age Like a Girl, a feminist psychologist who talks about how at puberty, girls become very susceptible to a patriarchal message of do this and you will be loved. And what I'm seeing in perimenopause is your brain rewires itself and you don't care to do things to make everybody love you. You just want to love yourself and you want to put yourself first.

41:21And every time you do that, you feel like a badass. Every time you do that, you feel like your most authentic self. And that is the purpose of menopause. That is the brain rewiring that's going on that we are not talking about. So it's a process to get you to the best part of your life where you start to actually live life on your terms. I can tell you at 55 years old, I have this brain and it is freedom. It feels so good to not care and control and try to fix everybody. I don't have a desire to do that anymore. And if you sit with enough postmenopausal women, they will tell you the same thing.

42:00That's the conversation we need to be having. That should be exciting, hopefully, to your 42-year-old brain. it's very exciting and I and I actually interestingly have seen this amongst you know my community and my friends and I saw something on Instagram the other day which had me howling I am sure you've seen it this is incredible woman who started the we do not care club oh yeah yes yeah she just reads out she says we yeah you know now I'm 55 or I do not care and she lists out all these things that she just does not care about. And it's so true. And I'm really struck by that idea of leadership, because actually I never thought of that this way, that if we look at, you know, from maiden to mother to matriarch, you know, the matriarch leads, the mother nurtures and the matriarch leads.

42:51So it's so fascinating, isn't it? That that our brain is rewiring for these different phases of our lives. That's it. And this is why, so it's so funny because this book, Age Like a Girl, I actually started, I've been researching it for 10 years because I wanted to understand what the purpose of menopause was. The human body, the female will live, if she's lucky, 42.5 % of her life in her post-reproductive years. Whereas every other mammal on the planet, most other mammals, they die right away once the reproductive system's over, the female's out. So why would the human female be left 42 % of her life without a reproductive system?

43:38And that's when I found something called the grandmother hypothesis, which is this understanding that when we go back to the hunter and gatherer days, what they knew back then was that when a woman stopped cycling, it was time to move her to a place of leadership in the tribe. So the men would go off, check this out, the men would go off, they're strong, they'd go, they're fast, they could go off and get an animal kill. Only 3 % of the time did they bring back an animal. 3%, that's one out of 30 days. So who was keeping the fertile woman? Who was keeping the little children? Who was keeping the baby alive?

44:23Because the pregnant woman couldn't go out hunting. The nursing woman couldn't go out hunting. So who fed them? And it was the grandmother. So they knew that what happened is when your reproductive system stopped, you had more energy. And that energy that went towards releasing an egg every month now actually went towards fitness, cognition, and social capabilities. And so all the grandmothers would gather around the cave in the morning and they would go out and trek for food, like we were talking about, all day long. And they would go and get food, mostly tubers. They brought back berries. They brought back sweet potatoes, potatoes.

45:05And they would feed the clan and keep them alive while they waited for the big animal kill. So Lisa Moscone in her book talks about it. And she says, and I agree that when you look at it through that lens, we actually as a species would not be alive right now if it wasn't for the postmenopausal woman who went out and found food and fed the tribe. We are like evolutionary heroines. But what's happening in our culture? In our culture, we're like, oh, we don't know what to do with the old women. So we toss them aside and we don't lean into them. And then you've got all these young women that are like, I don't want to become irrelevant.

45:43I don't want to become invisible. So I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you don't see me aging. So we've created this huge, massive commercial industry around something called anti-aging. Because God forbid you would see that I was old and then you would toss me aside. My number one driver for this book, why I wrote Age Like a Girl, is I want to bring back how powerful postmenopausal women are. Because if you understood our brain, you'd probably be best putting us into places of political power. Because we would do a lot better than the bozos that are out there right now. Sorry, I just had to say that for a hot moment.

46:24it's female leadership is at its best in those postmenopausal years because that is how we were designed to be it's absolutely incredible and i i i love your passion for it as well it's just it is oozing out of you and i was reading the other day i'm very very interested in women becoming financially independent starting businesses you know i think our organizations aren't necessarily designed to help us thrive. All that to say, the average age that a woman starts a business in the UK is 46. Perfect. And I was thinking, well, that makes a lot of sense because maybe your children have gone to school and the mental load's a bit less, but actually that's why.

47:10Yes. Because your brain is rewiring for leadership. And luckily it coincides with the kids going to school, you know, your job as a mom is changed. And then your brain's rewiring itself. So something really interesting about that rewirement is that when estrogen came in during your puberty years, you started to stimulate a highway that connected your right hemisphere of your brain and your left hemisphere of your brain. And it's called the corpus callosum. And when you went into puberty, what ended up happening is every time estrogen came in, the estrogen comes in on day one of your cycle to about day 15, first half of your cycle.

47:55You have a lot of estrogen. And so that estrogen makes it so that every decision you make in your life, you will bring in the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere of the brain. It's called a cross-referenced brain or otherwise known as a relational brain. So when you were cycling, whenever a decision was in front of you, you would use the right side of the brain, which is, well, what does everybody want? How does everybody feel? It's the very emotional side of the brain. And you would mix that with, okay, well, what time do we need to make dinner? What do the kids have for homework? The logical side of the brain.

48:37So everything you were doing was through a relational lens. When estrogen dips, that highway between the two hemispheres changes. And a woman goes from a cross-referenced relational brain to a lateralized brain. And a lateralized brain is a very powerful brain, especially when it comes to business. Because you can now fully function in your right hemisphere. So if you ask a postmenopausal woman or a woman going through the menopause transition, create something, create a business idea, create art, create a beautiful home, create whatever, be relational, be emotional, be connectable. That's all coming from the right brain.

49:25She can go there. She can go there, but she won't do it at the same time as she is in her left brain. So you can give her a task and you can say, hey, here are the 10 things we need to complete in order to get this business off the ground. And she can switch back and forth from right and left hemisphere, using them individually, not using them both at the same time. That actually gives her better brain power and better focus than when she was constantly having to have a relational brain where she was taking everybody's opinion into consideration. when she moves into her post-menopausal year she can she can double down on emotion and connection but she can also be very logical and very focused on building a business building something she wants in her life she doesn't have to have a relational brain she has an independent lateralized brain which is actually a great business brain why is it then that you know when i look at the statistics of the number of women that are leaving the workplace because they'll, I'll often hear anecdotally, you know, I never used to have anxiety around leading a team.

50:34Now I'm physically shaking before going into a team meeting. I used to be able to look at a spreadsheet and I could make decisions. Now I feel like I've got that fog. Why is that? And how is that interplaying with everything that you're saying, which is actually, no, it's our leadership time because some of the stories that I'm hearing aren't matching what's going on. Yeah. And you're right. The change from your reproductive brain to your post-reproductive brain takes somewhere between 10 and 15 years. So those women you're talking about are the ones that are in the transition. And this is back at what we talked about before.

51:11This is why I want these women to start fasting because I want them to make a ketone because the ketone will bring the brain power back while you're moving, while your brain is rewiring itself. And so that you land in those post-menopausal years ready for leadership. But the in-between phase, you've got neurons that are pruning away. Your brain's not as sensitive to the foods you eat. It needs a ketone. And the best way to get a ketone is through fasting. So usually that people, and this is what we talked about at the Amazon meeting to this group of several hundred women in this menopausal group at Amazon UK.

51:53And I just said, if you feel like you can't hang in a meeting, you can't remember a task list, if you feel like you can't hold on to new information, you've got to get yourself into a fasted state and make a ketone so that the brain clarity comes back. But the women that aren't doing that are the ones that are suffering the most. And it's that 10 to 15 year time period in which the brain rewires itself that those women are like, peace out. I can't be in the workforce. I can't do all this. And this is another reason I put age like a girl out is we could save that woman if she understood how to fast and how to get a ketone, she would bring her brain power back online.

52:34It's so fascinating. And I have never fasted, but I am going to start now. What's the best way to start. Obviously, it's all in the book and we should definitely go and get that and I will get it. What is the best way to start? You talk about fasting windows. Can you give me a bit 101 beginner's guide just to wrap up this conversation if someone is like I am feeling, completely inspired, want to take action? What's the basic beginner's level? So here's what I would say is that every day you get up, you want to look at what your fasting window is and your eating window. So we were taught breakfast is the most important meal a day.

53:21We were taught eat six meals a day and you speed up your metabolism. So both of those are the actually breakfast is the most important meal a day was a commercial scheme slogan for Kellogg's Corn Flakes back in the 1980s. They went around said eat your cornflakes breakfast is the most important meal of the day and now we're still following that So what you're going to do is when you get up is decide when you want to eat So I want every woman everybody but especially women to look at their 24 hour period as you have an eating window and a fasting window So if I stop eating dinner At eight o 'clock at night that starts my fasting window if i sleep i go to bed maybe 10 or 11 i haven't eaten anything i didn't put a night snack in my in my mouth and i wake up at six in the morning i'm now 10 hours in to fasting so you've used sleep for a good portion of fasting if you just go another like the first fasting i have six different fasts that i mapped out in fast like a girl but also an age like a grill.

54:32It's in there too. And so if you, your first ledge of fasting is to be able to consistently do a fast around 13 hours every single day. So you're not talking a lot. So if I wake up at six, I'm already 10 hours in. I'm already 10 hours already done. So I need to push breakfast back three hours. So now at nine o 'clock, I'm going to eat a meal. And then now that opens my eating window up and I can eat what, you know, I recommend you eat healthy food, but from nine until eight again is your eating window at eight. You shut the kitchen's closed. You're shutting the window, the eating window down. And so the biggest thing that people will ask me is, well, okay, how do I, I don't know how I would go three hours from six to nine.

55:26I'm used to eating breakfast. So what I started having my patients do is just push their breakfast back an hour. And it'll be a little uncomfortable in the beginning. You'll be a little bit like, oh, do I really want to do this? But in the uncomfortable, your body's adapting. So then once that gets, do that for a couple of days. And we'll talk about coffee here in a moment because everybody asks me about that. And it's key to this way I'm explaining it to you. So then after three days, if it's getting easier, push it back another hour. So now you'll do that for like three days, maybe a week. And then a week later, you push it back another hour.

56:03If you do that over about two weeks, you will have safely gotten yourself into the eating window and fasting window that you want. It's like if I want to run a marathon, and this is in miles, I would, well, let's do a 10K. If I want to run a 10K, I don't just put my shoes on and go 10 kilometers. I might start off going three kilometers and then I get a little bit better and I go five kilometers. So we got to do the same thing with fasting. Now the question becomes, well, what can you have in your fasting window? And coffee is acceptable. It's what you put into your coffee that matters. So absolutely no sugar.

56:46Some people can do well with a little bit of cream, but it needs to be like a heavy whipping cream or it needs to be a lot of cream. A lot of fasters started putting MCT oil in their coffee because it helped their body make ketones and it killed hunger. I'm a huge fan of a little splash of MCT oil in it. And let's be honest, We all grip our coffee in the morning and walk around and it becomes like our breakfast. Many fasters have that experience. So it's a training. But then once you get that, this is the thing. Every single diet you've ever been on for most women, you just get bored of it. It gets tiring.

57:26It gets harder and harder to keep up with. Fasting is the exact opposite. it. It gets easier and easier as you start to do it more and more because it's how you were designed. So you weren't designed to deprive yourself of calories. You were designed to start to learn how to go to longer periods without food so you can get this ketone. Yeah, I'm like, okay, well, I'm not too far off this. So I can start doing this and pushing the window and I'm super, super excited. So thank you so much. So much of what you have talked about has resonated with me personally, and I know it's going to resonate with our audience, especially, gosh, just thinking about that, you know, postmenopausal leadership, thinking about putting ourselves first as women and mothers, thinking about, you know, reducing stress and fasting.

58:21There's so much to take. So thank you for all your wisdom. I always ask the same question at the end, which is if you could give just one gift to all the mothers in the world, what would that one gift be and why? It would be the gift of self-love. I think as women, but especially mothers, there's something really amazing when you hold your baby for the first time and the love you get from a baby or from your children. But I really, the biggest gift I would want every woman, but especially a mother, is to fall in love with themselves and to really do life from a lens of making sure you're taking care of yourself.

59:09Don't lose yourself in your children. They are amazing. They're bundles of joy. They're also incredibly difficult and you matter. So make sure you're still taking care of you and loving you first. That's beautiful. Thank you. And Asian Iker Girl's out now. Fast Iker Girl's been out and you also run groups. And what are some other ways that people get involved with you and your work? Yeah, we have something called the Reset Academy where we have a group of women where every couple of months we're practicing different fasts. I have a team of master coaches in there that are teaching the mindset behind fasting.

59:51And we do all kinds of, we do meditate together on Monday, like really cool community. So if you're looking for a way to do this together, that's a beautiful, beautiful place. We also have a free fasting group on Facebook called the Resetter Collaborative where people go in and just ask fasting questions. It's quite a group over there. So you can go there. But I don't know about you, but I feel like we need some community now. We have, you know, coming out of the pandemic, we all were so isolated and we kind of kept to our isolation ways, even though we're out in the world. And what I'm seeing is women craving community.

1:00:30So if that lights you up, come join me in my Reset Academy. Beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you. that was the episode I hoped you loved it if you did please make sure you subscribe and I will see you next time