Why Women and Men Age Differently and the Secret Benefits of Menopause - With Dr. Mindy Pelz

30:58I'm gonna help move you into the cells so you can energize these cells. I'm gonna make sure that you do your job here. There's a lot of you, but it's okay. I'm gonna get you into the cells so you get activated. That's what your younger self did. When you moved into menopause, what happens is you have this huge meal, but the pancreas is not getting the message. It needs to actually make more insulin. So you have all this glucose swimming around in your system. This is Alzheimer's. This is, where's that glucose going? going up into the brain, it's going around the belly, it's going in the back of the arms, it's going in your face, it's going everywhere because the body doesn't know how to use it.

31:38So when you fast, what you're telling your body is, hey, there's no glucose coming in here for a little while. So you're going to need to go find what you stored years ago or what you stored three days ago. So it's a way of accessing and training the body to go after this storage area of all this extra glucose. Yeah, yeah. And it's free. It's free too. It's something to not do. That's right. Right? And also, you know, there's so much science on this now. Again, this has been known for decades, but now it's just a big part of the health conversation. If you want to improve insulin sensitivity. Yeah.

32:16Right? Yeah. I mean, because what you're doing is you're giving your body, your metabolic system, a break from the influx of glucose. And you're nudging it and saying, hey, so I need you to go figure out how to burn fat. I need you to figure out where you stored all the extra glucose that I gave you over the last 30 years. And so it's like you're sending a message to your metabolic system to switch, switch over to fat burning and start to use that excess in a new way. I love this. So we talked about glucose, another member of Estrogen's girl gang, you said earlier, dopamine. Dopamine. Let's talk about that one.

32:57Yeah. So it's so fascinating to me that estrogen stimulates dopamine because check this out. Dopamine, estrogen hits her peak during ovulation. So why would we need dopamine then? Like why, you know, like why would the body all of a sudden then have a high dose of dopamine? Well, we wouldn't be sitting here if a whole bunch of people didn't decide to reproduce. And so there needs to be motivation that kicks in so that we can actually feel motivated to go and actually want to reproduce so that the species stays alive. So estrogen and dopamine have this very intimate experience with each other. Wherever she came, dopamine went.

33:42Now, dopamine is motivation. And one of the things that I noticed when I, in my clinic was all these women coming in, very, very successful women, really in shape women that were like, I don't feel like working out anymore. I'm not going to clean my house. I used to be a neat freak, not a neat freak anymore. I don't want to drive the kids everywhere now. I don't want to be like climbing the corporate ladder and also be at home trying to take care of my family. Something's happened to my motivation. and that's when I started to study this connection and when estrogen drops so does dopamine and when dopamine drops your motivation starts to drop your moods can drop too and all of a sudden lethargy kicks in now all you got to do is listen to that comment go to instagram and you will see meme after meme after meme just saying with these women they're like I can't do it anymore well a big part of that was because dopamine dropped.

34:45So your motivation molecule is not hanging around as much. So in the book, I talk about if you want your motivation back, you're going to need to find very creative ways to bring dopamine back into the picture. Like what? What are some different things? Well, okay. So dopamine loves novelty. Now I spent a really long time trying to understand what's the difference between novelty and new? Do you know the difference? A fancy word. So novelty is something unexpected. So you do something new that feels very unexpected. So it's new and it has some uncertainty. It has some uncertainty in it. So what I taught my patients to do, and I'll tell you a story about what I'm doing right now is women, when they go into menopause, need to go and seek new activities, go learn something new, change your routine up and change your look.

35:49Maybe you're going to cut your hair short or decide you're going to do something completely different to bring dopamine back. And that will actually energize you. And if it's something that's a little unexpected, then you get that extra burst of novelty and all of a sudden dopamine comes in. Here's what I did. I started, we didn't talk about this. I started learning how to surf. And so I live in Santa Cruz right now. I was pushed out of LA because of the fires. And so I hunkered down in Santa Cruz. And one of my neighbors is a 52 year old woman who's been surfing. And she said, hey, you should come with me to go surf one day.

36:30And so I went out there one day, completely suck at it. Do you surf? No, I don't. It's really hard. So I go out there first day, everything is new. I don't know the people out there. I don't know how to catch a wave. I don't need, you know, I'm not even thinking about standing up. The whole experience is new and I suck at it, which was important. And I came home that day and my husband looked at me and he goes, why are you smiling? and I'm like, that was so fun. I don't know what goes down in the ocean out there, but you get tossed around and I'm paddling. I'm using my body, trying to get to the waves.

37:10There's so much to learn. And so I just kept going out and kept going out. I've been doing it for about two months now. I go out every day that I'm in town and every day is new. Every day is a new wave set. Every day is a new pack of people in the lineup. Some days I can catch a wave, some days I can't, But I always, every single time come out happier. And I was trying to understand why is this thing that I suck at making me happy? And it's because it's novel. And it's a completely different thing than the days I was seeing patients at 7.30 in the morning or the days that I was driving kids to school at 7.30 in the morning.

37:49Now I'm out doing something completely different at 7.30 in the morning. And that's bringing dopamine back in. this is, I love this. It's so smart, but it's also, if you think about that change and it's a, it's a change in your roles, it's like giving yourself permission to, uh, to attune to your nature, which is like right now I'm, I'm transitioning, I'm changing. Let me give myself permission to change and do some things differently. Right. Just like, and there's so many, there's so many things. It's like, you know, of course it's like the tale of two cities, the best of times, the worst of times.

38:26But one of the best things about today, we have more access to novel experiences and you might find that thing that you fall in love with. Yeah. Yeah. And this might be one of my more favorite parts of the book because I watch so many women come in and they're just like, I'm depressed. I'm bored. Nothing in my life is giving me joy. Well, you're going to need to mix your life up. And I'm not saying like blow up your marriage or leave your career, how about you try something new so you can bring dopamine back into the equation? And I was actually sharing this with one of my closest friends who I've known forever.

39:04I was sharing what I had found on dopamine and estrogen, and she's about three years older than me. And one day she calls me up and she's like, hey, guess where I am? I'm like, where are you? She goes, I'm on my way to Lake Tahoe. I hired a fly fishing guide, and I'm going to go learn how to fly fish for the next two days. And I said, I didn't know you liked fly fishing. She goes, I didn't either, but I read about it in a book and I heard you talk about how I should be doing novel activities. And so I thought I'd go give it a try. Well, oh my God, after two days, she called me, she was buzzing.

39:42She's like, same thing. I sucked at it, but I was out in nature and I learned something new and I had a new experience. So let's put that in context of what's happening in the culture right now where people, women are like, I'm depressed, I'm unmotivated, I'm irritable. Maybe it's time to change. Maybe we need to mix it up. Maybe a new version of you is trying to emerge. Maybe something you wanted to always do as a child, you can actually have time to do now. And when you do that, you bring dopamine back in and all of a sudden you start to feel happy and motivated again. So let's go to another one of Estrogen's Girl Gang.

40:21And we've got so much of this mapped out, illustrated in the book, but I want to ask you about creatine. Yeah. Let's talk about this one. Well, so another thing I saw in my clinic was all these type A women that were pushing themselves working out and they would come in with these injuries. They would come like limping in the front door of my office. And I would always say to them, have you thought about cross training? Have you thought about resting? And if you tell like a type A, like motivated woman that she should rest, like that's the worst thing you can say. So the audacity. Yeah. What do you mean take a day off?

41:01I don't even know what you're talking about. But it was happening literally to a subset of women in my practice. And that subset was the high achieving overworker outer that was in her late 40s. So I started to look into what's going on with the musculoskeletal system. Well, estrogen, once again, stimulated collagen and creatine. So when estrogen goes away, you don't have as much collagen and creatine in your natural system. So you have two options. You can change how you work out, which I do recommend. I'm not a fan of Spartan racing or crossfitting for postmenopausal women. I think it can be a little hard on our joints, but that's a personal preference.

41:53but what I do think women should start to do is actually supplement in with collagen and creatine. Now creatine is interesting because the research is now showing it's not just for muscles, it's also for the brain. And you've got a brain that's rewiring itself and it could use as much nourishment as possible. So adding in creatine every single day is not only going to give you that muscle power, but is going to really help with your brain power in general. But again, if I'm looking at Instagram, I'm just seeing all these people doing creatine, but I don't really understand why. And it's because when estrogen started to decline, she took creatine with her.

42:40She's not stimulating creatine. So that's why. Makes sense, right? Yeah, yeah. So this isn't, creatine's not just a fad, a nutritional fad. It is a nutritional necessity for the post-menopausal woman. That's a bar right there. That is a bar. All right, I'll ask you about one more. I want to ask you about BDNF. Yeah. So BDNF is brain fertilizer and it helps with cognition. Cognition is your ability to hold on to new information. So another trend I saw a lot in my clinic and I experienced with myself was women who no longer decided wanted to read. And when I asked my patients, why don't you read anymore?

43:28They said, well, I can't keep my focus on the book and I can't seem to hold the information in. So when I looked into what does estrogen stimulate when it comes to cognition, I found so much research showing that estrogen stimulated this miracle grow. It's like a steroid that goes into the brain and it makes the neurons really ready to hold on to new information. So anytime you want to learn something new, you need BDNF in your system and estrogen brought her along. And now estrogen's gone. So you don't have as much BDNF. So your ability to hold on to new information goes down. But we're back at your lifestyle.

44:14You can bring BDNF back in. And one of the ways you bring it back in that I love is weightlifting. So now we're killing two birds with one stone. Let me lift some really heavy weights, which is considered definitely a crucial part of the menopausal experience is to start lifting heavy weights. But the brain component of that that's not being discussed is that when I break down muscle, there is a metabolite that gets released that goes up into my brain and tells my brain to make BDNF. Now you also can get BDNF from fasting. So we're back at why should men and puzzle women fast? One of the reasons is to get yourself some BDNF because estrogen is not stimulating her anymore.

45:04So there's, it's like checking multiple boxes. That's right. Right. Fasting and lifting weights. That's right. Those two things. That's right. You're talking about those myokines. You got it. Right. Just from the muscle contraction and this relationship with BDNF is so fascinating. This speaks to another thing you cover in the book, which I was so happy to see why our ancestors rates of Alzheimer's was incredibly rare. Yeah. It was incredibly rare to find Alzheimer's. Whereas today this is now it's right around, it's like number six, number five or six, leading cause of death in the United States.

45:39Wow. It's one of these unbelievably, like at this point, to say it's a silent epidemic is crazy because again, it's so high on this list of issues that are ending our lives, but it is a long suffering involved in this as well. Yeah, and for everybody involved, not just the person, the people around too. And so with this relationship with BDNF, that's, I would assume is gonna be a part of this that you focus on with, this section was called primal memory, but outside of the nutrition domain, which we're going to, of course, we'll talk more about that, but you talked about some knowledge sharing practices.

46:17Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. Thank you for pointing that out because this is one I really want to bring back into the culture. So if we look at the daily habits of our primal ancestors, the grandmothers, and in the book, I talk about an interview I did with an anthropologist who's a champion of the grandmother hypothesis. Her name is Kristen Hawks. And she actually lived with a modern day tribe called the Hadza tribe in Tanzania and watched their whole lifestyle. So to say that the grandmother hypothesis, we were living longer than they did in the hunter gatherer days is a small part of that conversation because Kristen's lived with all these grandmothers who are living into their 80s and 90s in this tribe.

47:08What happened every single day? Every single day, the grandmothers gathered to go out and forage for food. So they went into community. They had a purpose. Okay, what are the neurochemicals that they stimulated just from those two things? They stimulated dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, three members of the girl gang, that they actually every day gathered with these women to go out and forage for food. Then when they got the food, they came back. And what they did is they sat tubers are a big part of what they foraged for, which is sweet potatoes, jicama. Sunchokes are one of my favorite tubers.

47:52And they came home and they peeled the tubers and started to boil them to prepare them for eating. In that actual process, what they were doing is storytelling and sharing knowledge to all the little kids in the tribe who wanted to hear what their stories of their younger life. Okay, that sounds like a very sweet little grandmothery experience, but let's unpack it neurochemically. When the grandmother is sharing a story, she is actually making her brain secrete acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is a member of the girl gang. So I don't know about if your mom's still alive. My mom's 86. She tells the same goddamn story over and over and over again.

48:40And for until I understood acetylcholine, I was like, oh God, she's got like 12 stories. It's all she tells are these same 12. But what I realize now is that every time she told that story, she was having to dip into the hippocampus to find that memory. She was having to make sure that she secreted enough acetylcholine, which is the neurotransmitter that helped her go grab that memory. And when we were little and she told that story, she was actually, and this is a really cool part of the grandmother hypothesis, her sophisticated language, which is more sophisticated than a five-year-old. When she was using words that that five-year-old brain hadn't heard, that five-year-old brain was starting to grow.

49:28So when we look at knowledge sharing, this is something we have to bring back into our culture. We have to look at our wise elders and say, teach us, talk to us, tell us how it used to be. What did you learn? And in doing that, we're helping their brains. We're helping them start to stimulate the part of the brain that becomes, turns, you know, flacky and goes into an Alzheimer's state. We're also causing that brain to actually stimulate acetylcholine. We're also in this knowledge sharing, helping develop the young brain who's learning a more sophisticated language. Nowadays, knowledge sharing happens on the phone.

50:09Knowledge sharing happens on the TV. Why are we not having knowledge sharing happen within families? And if we bring that knowledge sharing back, everybody wins, but especially the menopausal woman, because she's now having to share a story with you because she wants to, but there's a neurochemical upside, neurochemicals that she lost when estrogen went away and it keeps her brain sharp. Oh my gosh. This, I love this. I love this. Have you noticed that a lot of skincare products are now adding green tea extract to their ingredients? And for good reason. A review of 20 studies published in the journal SkinMed revealed that green tea is effective in reducing acne, dermatitis, warts, keloids, rosacea, and many other skin issues.

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53:30Oh, so well said. And we have the ability to, and what's so important about this is that our lives depend on it. That's right. Our species depends on it. Absolutely. And simply acknowledging and make, we culturally normalize grandparents, our elders, being able to share their story, be able to share their experience, be able to share wisdom, right? Wise counsel and value that. Unfortunately, we're kind of trapped in this matrix of valuing stuff that is petty, you know, just like all this superficial stuff. We need this. It's going to help us to be more resilient against that petty superficial stuff, right?

54:12So I love that you brought this incredible feedback loop, you know, this circle of life because it's helping the children to develop their brain, their vocabulary, their insights, but also the power of those stories, the power of the wisdom from somebody who's been through stuff and figured some things out. That's priceless. That's right. I even found some really interesting research that showed that they think our sophistication of our language, which is kind of funny because I don't think of our language as sophisticated. But if you go back to the hunter and gatherer days, they probably were very simple in how they spoke to each other.

54:49Language had to develop at some point somewhere along the human evolutionary path. And they are actually saying that our ability to communicate right now with the level of language skills that we have actually was because of the grandmother. Because what she did is she took her more sophisticated language, her more sophisticated experience of life. And while she was cooking, she turned around and she taught, told those stories to the children that would listen. And it grew their brains. And everybody had a neurochemical experience that was beneficial for their brain development. And we don't, now we're like, oh, I'm going to make dinner.

55:29I'm going to put the TV on. You know, how many, like when my, when my parents come over, they're 89 and 86, when they come over to our house, phones go down, TV goes off, and we're playing games, we're communicating. And now whenever they tell a story, I ask more questions. Because I know if I can ask more questions, I'm forcing their brain to exercise going into that memory bank. So we've really, that family unit is really important. And understanding how to lean into our wise elders is more crucial now, I think, than ever. Yeah. Oh, wow, wow, wow. I'm just thinking about the experience with my grandmother, you know, and just even my first recollection of writing, you know, just being able to like, she had this, gave me this Garfield like writing book to like learn how to do my letters and things like that.

56:24And also just, she had this ability to create magic, like magical moments, right? And I remember conversations later on, like my mom was like, my mom said this to me about her mom. Like she wasn't like this when she was my mom, right? Right. And it's just that evolution as well of being able to do certain things differently than you might have done previously, right? And so that's one of the greatest benefits with grandparents is like they are expert lovers. Yes. You know, they have this ability to express this feeling of joy and truly see the child. Right. Right. Whereas like, again, it's not intentional with parents, especially today.

57:11Like it's just a lot going on. So it might not see, like really feel seen. That's right. Grandparents have this ability to make you feel seen, make you feel like you matter. Not that parents don't, but it's just like this extra unlocked capability. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah. And if you pull behind the scenes, the neurochemical changes that are happening in everybody as that connection is going on, you would no longer think it's a waste of time to hang out with anybody that's older than you. Right. And that's why I love this idea of storytelling. Like, we've lost the art of storytelling. We've handed it over to TV.

57:49We've handed it over to movies. but there's something really magical when you're deep in conversation about telling stories of different ways in which life taught you something. That's where we all start to learn, but that's where there's this massive neurochemical shift going on in the body. And we just don't give it enough credit. Yeah. Oh, so good. All right. I want to ask you about this because aging like a girl is very different today. And this is one of the things you're highlighting and creating a roadmap so that this becomes, again, normalized. Part of this disruption, part of this turbulence, part of this complexity is highlighted in a section in the book you titled The Toxic Dump of Menopause.

58:38Please talk about that. Yeah, and I so appreciate that you are pulling that out. It's one that needs to be discussed. So hopefully everybody knows we live in the most toxic time in human history. And the toxic barrage, whether it's from air pollution or pesticides or dyes in our food or plastics that are wrapped around our food, all of that, your body has to understand what to do with. And so the liver filters it, but because the barrage of toxins is so great, there's a point at which it can't do that. So what it does is it starts to store all those toxins in the body. Well, one of the most difficult types of toxins for the human body to get rid of are heavy metals because they're heavy.

59:24So the body can't get them out as easily as plastics. So it stores those in tissues, mostly the brain, but also largely in bone. Now, this one's really interesting because lead especially gets stored in bone. And when you go into your perimenopausal years and estrogen goes up one day and then she drops down the next and then she's up and then she's down, that's the natural progression of estrogen's exit. She's up, she's down, she's up, she's down. That wild ride she goes on actually triggers these toxins that are in our bones, in our muscles, in our fat, in our brain to come out into the bloodstream.

1:00:09And when they come out into the bloodstream, usually where they'll get recirculated back into is the place where you have the most fat. And one of the places we have the most fat is the brain. So those toxins start to go up into the brain and they start to create the memory loss, the mood challenges. They also go to the gut and they'll affect serotonin production. So why I wanted to put that in there is my whole practice, like at the last 10 years of my practice was like 90 % of it was detox because all these women that were coming to me in perimenopause that were like depressed and anxious and irritable and losing their memory, we would test their toxic load.

1:00:54Nine out of 10 times, their toxins were so high. And when you detox them, the mood came back, the memory came back, the vitality came back. So it's a part of the menopause conversation that really needs to be discussed because you don't know it's there until estrogen went on a wild ride and then all those toxins came out. And then, so like, I'll use myself as an example. My biggest heavy metal was lead. And so all of a sudden at 43, I was becoming so forgetful. I was in the middle of conversations at 43 and I'm like, I don't know what we're talking about. And when I went to go test my heavy metals, my lead was through the roof and I detoxed lead.

1:01:42And literally as I got the lead out, like I stopped saying, um, I stopped saying, what were we talking about? I stopped looking for my keys. I knew where they were all the time. all of that memory and mood challenge, all of that went away when I detoxed the lead. And so we're like storage containers. We're holding on to all these toxins. And this massive hormonal shift is dumping that all out. And those toxins are all going up into the brain. And we're not talking about the detox. That's why I put it like the toxic dump of menopause is serious and it's real and it needs to be addressed. And the last thing I'll say on it is that remember cells have receptor sites.

1:02:23So if I'm 45 years old and I'm taking hormone replacement therapy, trying to push these hormones into my cells so they can activate them. If I've got lead and mercury and arsenic and thallium, by the way, thallium causes hair loss, big reason why women are losing their hair as they go through this process. Thallium is a byproduct of secondhand smoke. And so all of a sudden, all these toxins are coming out. They're sticking in those receptor sites. And now your HRT is not working. Your thyroid medication is not working because there's no entry point for those hormones to get into the cell because they're blocked by toxins.

1:03:05Does that make sense? Of course, yeah. It's crazy. My clinic became, up until the end, it became literally a detox clinic for perimenopausal women. And I watched so many women's personality change, memory come back because they went into a detox program and started to work with all these heavy metals. Yeah. Obviously this has levels of complexity and reach, but are there some simple things that people can do just to, again, help the process a little bit. You started off by saying, you know, we think most people know we live at the most toxic time. No, most people, they don't think about it. We're just in it.

1:03:50We're just swimming in that. We're talking billions, I almost said thousands of billions and billions of tons of newly invented chemicals every single year. Just like we're swimming in this stuff at this point. It is a very different environment. So I don't think people really understand and oftentimes don't relate their manifestations of different health issues to that exposure. And so with that being said, what are some things that people can implement, consider maybe on a regular basis or semi-regular basis to help their body's detoxification pathways? Because our bodies are very good at figuring stuff out.

1:04:32Yeah, they are. If we give it the conditions and ability to do so. So can you share? So, okay. So the free, let's start with the free stuff because detox can get crazy. You want to make sure your detox pathways are open. So are you sweating every day? Are you improving circulation every day? Are you walking every day or moving so your circulation is going? Are you going to the bathroom every day? You need to have a bowel movement every day. So we need to make sure that you're just naturally getting rid. Your body can get rid of those toxins. A trick I always tell women is look at your armpit and look to see, do you have a pit or a puff?

1:05:11Because it should be a pit. It's not supposed to be puffy outwards. If it's puffy outwards, that's stagnant lymph. That's a lymph pathway that is not detoxing toxins out of breasts. So you really, you want to get a loofah when you're in the shower and you want to make sure you're really working on armpits, inguinal area, your gut. You can take a loofah and go over the top of your gut. You go for walks, sweat. Sleep is also another form of detox. Our brain actually shrinks at night. So the cerebral spinal fluid can come up and wash the brain and get rid of toxins. So you need to prioritize sleep.

1:05:51So those are free things to do. The second part that I would say for menopausal women specifically, you got to go look at your beauty products. You got to understand if those are endocrine disruptors. And there's great apps out right now, like there's a Think Dirty app, it's a cute name, and you can scan all your products and you can see if they're toxic or not. So get rid of the toxic beauty products. Other simple things, you know, get off the plastic, water bottles, turn more towards glass, you know, obviously those kind of things are pretty simple. Then we get into, do you eat fish? I do, yeah.

1:06:35Yeah. So fish is an interesting one because our waters are polluted. Yeah, it's complex. Yeah. And so I can even tell you for myself, because I've been doing a lot of blood work this year, I started to bring tuna back into my diet and my mercury levels started to go back up. And so that's part of why I was detoxing this morning is I got to get those out. But it's a bummer because I really like tuna. but know the foods that have more heavy metals in them. So there's an awareness there. And then there's all kinds of detox treatments. Everything from Corella you can get is an easy binder. You want things that can bind to these toxins.

1:07:17Activated charcoal is amazing. Take two activated charcoal before you go to bed so it can hold on to all those toxins while you're sleeping. and then from there you can go crazy. And I mean, what I did this morning was an IV detox. So people who are really into detoxing can go that direction. But what I found in my clinic is that most people aren't aware of this toxic dump. And there are a lot of women, I think this is a really important one to talk about because I don't think we're talking about it enough in the zeitgeist, is what do you do with the woman who tries HRT and she doesn't get a result.

1:07:58She's not feeling better. Well, is it possible her toxic load is so high and she needs to go through some detoxing and then get back on that HRT? Those are like the nuances that we need to start talking about. Right. We tend to just go all in on one thing. Yep. Right? Instead of looking again, this is a very complex and unifying body. That's right. What are the basic principles of health and performance and just all this stuff working together, doing the stuff it already knows what to do. Let's check those boxes, make sure that they're checked. That's right. And coupled with our new innovations and or before we get into anything new.

1:08:39Right. So listen, oh, my goodness. I could talk to you forever. You know, we love this. I know. I love chatting with you. I love hanging out with you. I know. Um, there's so many incredible things in this book. Um, outside of that, you know, some of the other things that you talk about exercise, the menopause way, reclaiming your mood. What is the neurochemical state of freedom? What are some ways to embrace and enhance this? But in closing in this conversation, I want to ask you about, you've got a couple of appendices here. Thank you. And this one is a man's guide to supporting the woman you love through menopause.

1:09:20Please talk about that. What do you think of it? I mean, we don't get a manual on this stuff either. Right. You know, and I've got many stories now of people in my life who have been with their significant other through this transition. And one of them sat right there in that chair and he said, like, I don't know who she was. You know, like I just kept on loving her through it, but you know, she seemed like a different person from day to day. And, you know, just to have some acknowledgement and guidance on our part, I think it is priceless. It's invaluable. One of the other things that you shared in the book was a staggering statistic about divorce during menopause.

1:10:07And, you know, a lot of people, again, we're just walking into this blind. We have no idea that this is going on or this might be a key reason or foundation on what's happening here. And I just I appreciate the acknowledgement in a strange way because you really need the acknowledgement. Women need the acknowledgement and the support, but how do we do it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I asked, because I wrote it to men, knowing that a lot of women would read this book, find themselves, have all these ahas, and then they've tried to turn around and explain it to their husbands and would fumble. So I'm like, let me create an appendix that's written just to men so that a woman could just say, hey, can you just read the appendix?

1:10:54And hopefully that would open up a conversation. So that's why I wanted to know your opinion, because you're a man. I want to know how... The first person to read that appendix was my husband. I was like, how does that sit? So a couple of statistics and things we need to think about. 70 % of divorces after 50 are initiated by women. Why? That's a question I think I'm not sure we have answered yet. But something's not... I think a lot of women get to this point of their life and they're like, I don't know, there's parts of this marriage that aren't working for me anymore. But since we haven't been talking about menopause and we haven't been talking about this transition in a positive way, then a lot of women are too embarrassed to say that certain parts of their life and the certain parts of the way that marriage works doesn't work anymore.

1:11:46So the most important thing is that a woman expresses, hey, this doesn't work for me anymore. and that a man hears her. So I'll give you an example. I used to not care about a clean house. I had too much on my mind. We were the house that every kid was at. So the kitchen was always dirty and then it would clean up and it was always dirty. And I just loved having people in my house. And then I hit 50. I didn't love that anymore. I didn't like all the people in my house. It was keeping me up at night. I didn't like the mess in the kitchen. And all of a sudden, my family is looking at me and my husband, they're like, what is wrong with you?

1:12:25And I'm having this moment of like, I told you I want that counter chop clean. And to your friend's point, who are you? Where did this come from? And thank God in the research of this book, I had new language. And one of the things I would say to my whole family, but especially to my husband, and I still say it. I know I used to like, not that didn't bother me, but it bothers me now. I have changed. My brain has changed. And can we have a conversation of what it would look like to have a cleaner house? That feels so much more collaborative and open than I've told you a thousand times to not put your clutter on the countertop.

1:13:10That shuts down the conversation. So what my husband and I have done is we use new language with each other. I will say often, I know I used to be that way. I'm not that way anymore. And my husband, oftentimes when we sit down to dinner, he'll say to me, tell me something new you're discovering about yourself now, which is a beautiful opening to like, well, I learned like the other night, I'll give you an example. I was coming down here to LA for a bunch of podcasts. I came by myself because I didn't really need anybody with me. I think my husband was like, are you going to be lonely? Do you need somebody?

1:13:52So he asked me about four times, are you okay going by yourself? You're okay going by yourself? Finally, on the fourth time, I said, can you stop asking me? And I said, let me tell you why. My mom used to do that to me all the time. She would always make me second guess my decisions. And I just learned that the other day. I just discovered that about myself. So you're triggering that in me. And I'd really ask that we, that you, I already told you, you have to, and I said to him, you have to remember, I will tell you what I want now. I am not passive aggressive. I'm not putting my, my desires and sweeping them under the rug.

1:14:32Remember me, 56 year old me is going to tell you every single time what she wants. So don't ask me four times in a row. And he was like, okay, I've never heard you say that before. That was really helpful. Thank you. So we do a lot of new version, old version, and I try to express my change as positively as I can. One thing I do want to say that I think is so important for men to hear, and if I could find a way to get this into every man's heart, I have sat with more friends who have left their marriages that did not want to leave their marriages. And the reason that they left was because they tried to get their husbands to understand this change they were going through, to understand that their needs became different, that their desires were different.

1:15:29And their husbands were the ones that got left were like, I don't understand what you're going through. Our marriage is great. Our life is great. You've changed. I don't understand what's going on. And the husband didn't come on the journey with them. And some of my friends I've sat with that were like with tears in their eyes. They're like, I wish, I wish I could have gotten my husband to understand this change. And that is why I put an appendix because women are not becoming this new version and then turning around and throwing a finger at the men in their life. They're asking that you come on the journey with them as we're all exploring and learning this together.

1:16:13One of my favorite quotes that my husband and I use all the time is from Esther Perel. Have you had her on your podcast? I haven't. I know of her words. She's phenomenal. And she said that most adults will fall in love two to three times in their adult life. For some adults, that will be with different people. And for some adults, that will be with the same person. And so my husband and I, almost every day, talk about the new marriage that's being created, not the 30-year marriage that we've been in, but the empty nest marriage with the post-menopausal Mindy that is actually now being created and we're rebirthing the marriage in a new way.

1:16:59And that I think will really help save a lot of relationships if we can have that sort of attitude to it, to this. Yeah. This is so good. This is just good for my soul. Thank you so much for sharing your voice on this. And, uh, I, there was a moment I just wished that I could have been one of those kids coming over to Mrs. Mindy. Mrs. Did they call you Ms. Peltz? No, you know what? I have a thing because my husband's last name is Hall and they call me Mrs. Hall. And I always tell them, you know what? The only people that call me Mrs. Hall is when I check into a really fancy resort and they pamper me and they call me Mrs.

1:17:34Hall. So if you're going to call me Mrs. Hall, then you're going to need to pamper me. Pamper me. Otherwise I'm Mindy. I love it. But just because of the welcoming energy that you have and just you're so thoughtful and insightful. And I'm just grateful. Like, again, there are a few times that I say this on the show, but this is one of those times. I love that quote. There's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Aging like a girl, the time has come. Where can people pick up a copy? Thank you, Sean. I really, I really, I really appreciate that. I feel really seen in all your questions really.

1:18:11It's just been beautiful. So thank you. Well, but you can find it anywhere. You know, you can go to Amazon and all those places and agelikeagirl.com and we've got some giveaways. But what I'm going to really put out there is that you support the independent bookstores. And there's two ways you can do that. You can find your local independent bookstore and you can ask them to order the book. Or you can go to bookshop.org and it'll come from an independent bookstore. But we're living in a time where corporations are taking over everything and And these independent bookstores are mom and pop people whose livelihood belongs, you know, depends on us buying books.

1:18:51So if you have a good indie, buy it there. Awesome. Great advice to end everything with. I appreciate you so much. Can't wait to talk more. Thank you, Sean. Appreciate you. Of course. The one and only Dr. Mindy Pels, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. If you did, please share it out with somebody that you care about. keep this conversation going and expanding and listen we got some amazing master classes and world changing world leading experts coming your way very very soon so make sure to stay tuned take care have an amazing day and i'll talk with you soon