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Welcome to The Modern Midlife Collective—where midlife isn’t a crisis, it’s a rebirth. Hosted by Dr. Ade Akindipe, DNP, and Dr. Jillian Woodruff, MD, this is the podcast for women ready to unapologetically own their power, thrive through the ups and downs of hormones, weight, and self-care, and show the world that thriving at 40 and beyond isn’t just possible—it’s your birthright.
Biweekly, we bring you science-backed insights on hormones, menopause, longevity, and sexual health—real tools to empower women in midlife and beyond. With a fearless blend of functional medicine, real-life wisdom, and no-nonsense empowerment, we’re here to challenge the norms, break through the barriers, and help you step into a life of vitality, confidence, and unstoppable strength.
Ready to rise? Let’s do this.
Ade Akindipe (00:26)
So many women feel exhausted, but also kind of wired at the same time. So your body feels tired, but your brain just won't shut off. Can you relate with that? Definitely, I can. You wake up already tired. You crash in the afternoon. And then ⁓ somehow at night you are lying in bed, of replaying everything in your head.
Jillian Woodruff MD (00:38)
absolutely, absolutely.
Ade Akindipe (00:53)
over and over again. And what we hear over and over is the frustration because most of these women aren't doing everything that they're supposed to do. They're trying to eat better, they're trying to sleep better, they're moving their bodies. Some are taking supplements, they're doing all the things, and they're still asking, why do I feel like this?
Jillian Woodruff MD (01:10)
Yes, I totally know the feeling of being...
tired but feeling wired at the same time and being just, you know, exhausted. I feel like that's the Alaskan summer, right? Like we have these, this daylight that's like 22, 20 hours, right? And so you're like trying to do as much as you can because we're coming out of like six months of darkness basically. And then you want to do all these things. You want to stay awake. And so you are, you're trying to soak in every moment of sun and then your body and your psyche and everything is just totally like
Ade Akindipe (01:21)
That's a really good analogy, actually, that's true.
Jillian Woodruff MD (01:43)
I need rest. That's the Alaskan summer. So yes, but aside from that, it does happen to midlife women. So all over the world, right?
Ade Akindipe (01:44)
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely. So yeah, today we're going to talk all about that. you know, yes, cortisol, I'm sure you've probably heard a lot about cortisol. We'll dive deep into that in a way that actually reflects how it works in the body. We want to explain why stress feels different right now in midlife. What's actually happening in your body and what help really looks like in real life.
Jillian Woodruff MD (02:16)
Yeah, this is usually when women say something along the lines of something feels off. I just don't feel like myself anymore. I maybe I've never had an issue with anxiety, but all of a sudden, all of a sudden, I'm just feeling anxious and persevering on things that never used to bother me. And it's like a gradual realization that their body isn't responding the way that it used to, especially when it comes to stress and sleep and energy, right?
Ade Akindipe (02:30)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Jillian Woodruff MD (02:43)
Cortisol, as you mentioned, is our body's main stress hormone and it's often made out to be the bad guy, but it is not. It's actually an extremely necessary hormone. You need cortisol to wake up. You need it to regulate your blood sugar to reduce inflammation. You think of cortisol and the synthetic form of cortisol is steroids. And what do they do with steroids? They use it to decrease inflammation, decrease pain from inflammation. And then most importantly, you need
cortisol to respond to emergencies. So the issue isn't cortisol, the issue is chronic activation of cortisol. Right? It's meant to rise when something stressful happens and then come back down and it's the key hormone in your body's fight or flight.
Ade Akindipe (03:19)
Great.
Jillian Woodruff MD (03:29)
mechanism and it helps you to mobilize energy when it's needed to fight a stressful situation, keep you alert during these times of stress, but many midlife women are living in a body that just never gets the message that it's safe to stand down.
Ade Akindipe (03:46)
Yeah, that's a great way to explain that because you can't avoid stress. Like you said, chronic stress is the problem. And I feel like as you get older...
The stress tends to compound. It's like your body probably when you were younger was able to you know, recover fast where you don't have all the responsibilities. Maybe you don't have this much responsibilities that you have now, you know, taking care of aging parents, children, work, multiple jobs, businesses, you know women, we're doing wonderful things out there. But you know as that starts to compound on each other, you know, it interrupts your sleep, it creeps into there even though women will say, well I'm asleep.
I'm like, are you really sleeping? Like, do you wake up feeling restored? You know, what's really happening? Are you having to get that cup of coffee in the morning before you get started? So the body adapts, right? Your body's always giving signals, right? And that's why it thinks that you are, something's going on, right? Because it's spitting out more cortisol, that stress hormone. So if you're constantly doing that, your body's
like hey you know what after a while it's it kind of sort of gives up but not really but it kind of sort of does like it's it's it's tired of being wired all the time so it's helpful to have that cortisol in the short term but long term you know it's exhausting and it's exhausting for you and if you're feeling tired all the time maybe that's what's going on with you
Jillian Woodruff MD (04:58)
Yeah.
Exactly, exactly. You're stressing me out with that list of responsibilities. Right? Like, ooh! Then you start thinking of all the things that you have to do and there's always something. Yes? Yes.
Ade Akindipe (05:16)
You know it's the fruit!
We were just talking about that today via text message. Look at all the things that we view as mothers, as wives, as
business owners. It's a lot. It's exhausting.
Jillian Woodruff MD (05:29)
as
humans. It's just a lot on our plates, right? Yeah, so your brain perceives a threat. It perceives a stress. It could be mental, physical.
Ade Akindipe (05:32)
you
Jillian Woodruff MD (05:40)
It could be an illness. Those are all stresses. So your brain perceives this and then sends a signal to your adrenal glands. then cortisol is produced and released to manage stress or manage this illness. And then once the situation is handled, a signal gets sent back to the brain that says it is safe to turn the stress response off. And this on and off rhythm is what keeps the system healthy.
Ade Akindipe (06:06)
Absolutely. When that signal to turn things off doesn't shut off, just imagine what's happening. I look at it like it's like having an ambulance just constantly going all the time. It's saying that there is a problem all the time. So your cortisol stays elevated. So that can lead to increased belly fat, which women start to notice. Compounding, of course, we've talked about it many episodes of hormonal imbalances, you're losing estrogen. And imagine having stress on top of that, high blood
sugar, you start to get things like diabetes or you know insulin resistance, your body's not tolerating the kinds of foods that you used to eat because you're just so stressed. Your immune response, right? You get sick more often. Digestive issues, you see how stress can really manifest its way in so many different ways like IBS. We talked about sleep, insomnia, right? Mood swings, anxiety, health, depression, muscle breakdown, that's a big one too.
bone density loss, disrupted hormones. So hormone imbalance is also a big thing. Yes, you're in perimenopause, maybe you're losing hormones, but it also disrupts the normal function and how you kind of change one hormone into the other to get the hormones that you need for sleep and for all the other things that you need for your body. So it can really wreak havoc on a woman in midlife.
Jillian Woodruff MD (07:21)
Absolutely. estrogen is used or was used to buffer cortisol's effects. so that buffering just doesn't happen the same way or at all in menopause and certainly not the same way in perimenopause. And in perimenopause, we've discussed many times how the estrogen levels fluctuate, they're up and down, and suddenly cortisol then feels much louder and anxiety feels sharper and
sleep gets lighter, weight shifts towards your midsection, which you know, from estrogen loss, from cortisol increase, your energy levels are unreliable.
your estrogen levels are unreliable and you get on this perimenopause roller coaster and it's really hard to slow it down or and it's impossible to get off. You just, you know, you want to slow it down and figure it out and that's so hard. And so people don't handle stress in the same way that they could before. And it's not, you know, that you've changed your hormonal environment changed. And you think about the pro hormone, like your adrenal glands and pregnant alone, pregnant alone can make cortisol.
and then can make your sex hormones, it can make progesterone your calming hormone. It also can make down the line to estrogen and to testosterone, all of those things, testosterone. And so, but your body's choosing like cortisol, let me make that or.
let me make these sex hormones, right? So if you have a stress, you're going to be, okay, I need more cortisol, we got to fight the stress, here we go. And we're shunting that system, overwhelming it with making cortisol and less with the sex hormones. And as you're going through perimenopause and menopause, your ovaries are not functioning as well or at all.
And so that's when your adrenal glands need to pick up the slack and start making some of those sex hormones so you can have more. And so if you're under this chronic stress that's not managed, then your ovaries aren't working as well to make hormones, your adrenals aren't working as well to make your sex hormones, and everything just feels more heightened and less manageable.
Ade Akindipe (09:22)
you
Yeah, absolutely.
That just reminds me of a recent patient who presented with that and just thought, actually, she didn't really even realize that it was her family members that realized that she was different. And it was around stress. She's just more irritable. She said little things that used to not bother her bothered her now. So it's really interesting how that starts to even change. Like people say that their personality has changed and it's not really
It's not your body malfunctioning. It's like you talked about it's that constant go go go and Even just things like exercise can raise that level if you're constantly Overdoing it because women are it can feel good, but it can also be a form of stress on the body But anyway so far you know we've been talking about high cortisol, but there's also another side to it After prolonged chronic stress right your adrenal glands the little glands that sit on your kidney they can still
stop functioning efficiently and may produce less cortisol over time because it'll lead to things like...
What's a good way to explain this? Women will say, I feel tired all the time. I feel excited, but I don't have the energy to do the things that I normally would do. It can be low blood pressure, dizziness, cravings, because you don't have the energy, so you'll probably crave more carbs. So they'll say, just feel like I'm eating a lot of sugar. So they tend to go for sugary foods. Caffeine, having to survive on
Jillian Woodruff MD (10:44)
yes.
Ade Akindipe (10:51)
caffeine, and then just always sick. Recovering from illness can take a lot of time. So this is where the term adrenal fatigue comes in. It's not a medical diagnosis. It's just a way of saying it. You're producing less cortisol. It's controversial, but it isn't a form to diagnosis. But even though it's being used to describe it, it's describing real problems that women experience. And not just women. It can happen with anybody. But really for women, it's such a big issue because it's just how we're wired and we're
tied to our hormones. So if this sounds like you, this might be something that you need to look into. Are you feeling really overwhelmed by just little things? You feel like your body can't bounce back. Maybe you're somebody that exercises, but exercise feels like a chore. Just getting up to do the normal things of daily living just feels like a lot.
Jillian Woodruff MD (11:39)
Right. Medically speaking, the adrenal glands don't poop out. They don't burn out. Adrenal insufficiency when your adrenal gland isn't functioning is rare and it's life-threatening. But that doesn't negate the fact that as this system functions less efficiently, there is a process and you describe the symptoms of it. So it is like a controversial term to use the term, you know, adrenal fatigue.
I use that term because it does describe those symptoms that you mentioned. And so even though it's not a traditional diagnosis, okay, let's just then we talk about the symptoms if we don't want to acknowledge that fact. But that's how you get terms and...
You know, that's how you get terms that are used by using them, right? It's not like we all came with a dictionary of these are the only diagnoses we can use. You're right, exactly. And you know, if any system runs at high wattage for a prolonged period of time, it just cannot sustain that pace. And it's the same thing with our bodies.
Ade Akindipe (12:26)
Yeah, absolutely.
Somebody came up with the name somehow.
Jillian Woodruff MD (12:46)
if we're in this high alert state for so long, then our body kind of shifts into this low power mode. know, kind of like your, don't our cell phones do that? You know, they just shift into this like low power mode. We're only going to do what's necessary, right? They're not going to function optimally, right? Like not going to do that.
Ade Akindipe (12:57)
Yeah, low power.
I love that. I'm operating on low battery
mode right now.
Jillian Woodruff MD (13:07)
I'm lop-shh,
right? Many times, you know, we have to decide that too. Like, hey, you I'm not going to put my all into this. I'm going to save myself for this other big event that's coming or something, right? So our bodies do that, but you cannot function all the time on this low power mode. You're going to feel terrible. So that's when your symptoms, you know, your body's trying to conserve your energy and then you have those symptoms, fatigue, brain fog.
Ade Akindipe (13:19)
That's right.
Jillian Woodruff MD (13:32)
Poor stress tolerance, poor sleep, all that.
Ade Akindipe (13:34)
Yeah. Yeah,
and that's why when...
you know, women will show up in the doctor's office and say they're just always tired. It feels like, you know, you might not show up on, it may not show up on normal labs, but also maybe it does. We just talked about how, you know, it eventually can lead to your high blood sugars, high blood pressure. So all of those symptoms could be from chronic stress, right? So if your blood sugars are climbing up and your blood pressure is climbing up,
you're having arrhythmias or your sleep is messed up, can also be from that. you know, meanwhile, your body feels like anything but normal. I think I'll pull this is one thing I always recommend women to do is to track their symptoms. When is this happening? Is it after a really stressful day that will kind of cue you into what might be going on with you? We had talked about, I think we had talked about continuous glucose monitor in the past. Maybe even something like that might be a good way to track.
Jillian Woodruff MD (14:18)
yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ade Akindipe (14:31)
what's happening with your body.
Jillian Woodruff MD (14:33)
Right? And women will often ask after they've done their research or listened to podcasts, shouldn't my provider have checked my cortisol levels if that is what's increased with stress? And that's a reasonable question.
Ade Akindipe (14:44)
Okay.
Jillian Woodruff MD (14:47)
Cortisol is rarely checked in traditional medicine settings because it's a single blood draw. And we check your serum, your blood cortisol level, and it's just a snapshot in time. It measures the total cortisol level in the blood, and most of this cortisol is bound to proteins and not actually biologically active and able to do work. so cortisol naturally rises and then falls throughout the day. So one value isn't going to tell you anything
your stress system or if it's dysregulated and it won't diagnose something or lend itself to thinking about adrenal fatigue.
Ade Akindipe (15:26)
Absolutely. Yeah, there are other ways your cortisol could be valid. And I totally agree with you, Dr. Jill, that one number on lab test is not enough to diagnose chronic cortisol issues. But there are some salivary tests that can be done, which looks at patterns over time rather than a single amount and measure the free, what's actually not bound to protein, the ones that actually active that your body is using, your tissues are using.
Salivary tests can give insight into your cortisol rhythm, so that's something you can ask your provider for. There's also some, I think, at-home tests, but like I said, I don't know how accurate they are, but I know that there's a lot more common ones out there that you can use to check for your patterns. But it's important for women to know that these tests are usually done through specialty or functional labs.
Jillian Woodruff MD (16:00)
Mm-hmm.
Ade Akindipe (16:15)
Again, there's lots of options out there. They're often not covered by health insurance. So you would have to invest in that if you wanted to try that. But they could help guide care, but always make sure that you don't just look at those numbers and go by that. Make sure you go into a provider that understands and you can interpret that. Even then, you know, it's always, you know, to look at it in the terms of symptoms, because sometimes things don't necessarily show up on lab. So what is your symptoms? What is your sleep like?
stress exposure, what's happening with you in this time period, or what was your past looking like? Because even past experience, traumatic experiences can impact you today, Hormones, overall health matter, you know, all of those things, all those little pictures, not just those numbers on the labs, right, Dr. Jill?
Jillian Woodruff MD (16:55)
Absolutely.
Yes, and I have used an at-home service before, like just from online, and I've done the salivary testing and I think I had to do a urinary.
Ade Akindipe (17:07)
Woof.
Jillian Woodruff MD (17:13)
test to just for a cortisol level. And I would agree that don't know, it is lab quality is very, very important too. But what I found that I thought was super helpful in this is I could see that rhythm. So I didn't put much stock into this is the number or the amount, but I could see, was I higher in the morning? Did it go down throughout the day? You know, and I think that's really helpful. And that's really what we're using to kind of look at that, right?
Ade Akindipe (17:14)
Urinary.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Jillian Woodruff MD (17:42)
Yeah
Ade Akindipe (17:42)
Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree.
All right, well, let's talk about supplements. Supplements are what they are. They're supplements. meant to support the body, right? Not replace the basics. So they can help stress response. They can make up for chronic sleep deprivation, which is really important for women to make sure you're getting enough sleep, you're not eating enough, or pushing the body too hard for too long. So if those foundations are in place, supplements are very limited.
Sometimes people will say, yeah, what kind of supplements would you recommend? I'm like, well, are you still scrolling at midnight? Are you eating the right kinds of foods? Everything has to work together, right? So when we talk about some of these supplements, some of them are things like adaptogens. Specifically, we're referring to a group of compounds. Most commonly are herbs that help the body adapt. That's what they're called, adaptogens, to stress better.
Jillian Woodruff MD (18:19)
Hahaha
Ade Akindipe (18:39)
so they don't shut the stress off. They don't force the body into balance. Instead, they support how your nervous system and stress pathways respond over time. So some women do not notice benefits from adaptogens like ashwagandha. They'll notice like things like ashwagandha might help, which is one of the most common ones out there. Rhodiola is another one which can make women just kind of feel more relaxed. they're not... Some women have
reported, they just noticed that they're not feeling like the thoughts in their head won't go away. So they're able to just focus on sleep, you know, of course, with all the other sleep hygiene in place. Magnesium is another great one. It's one of my favorite magnesium glycinate to be specific. We use very frequently. It plays an important role in nervous system regulation, muscle relaxation, and sleep quality. So it can be very helpful for that tired but wired feeling.
when the body feels exhausted, but the brain won't slow down. B complex is also good. That supports energy, metabolism, and stress signaling. Vitamin C, yeah, which is involved in adrenal and immune function. Omega-3 fatty acids is also great for inflammation and brain health. So all of these work great, but again, making sure that all those other things are in place, making sure that you're getting exercise.
exercise is a great way to reduce stress even simple things like walking can do a whole lot for the nervous system regulation.
Jillian Woodruff MD (20:08)
Right. Yeah, clinically, I'm with you. I start with those basics like the magnesium and the B vitamins and vitamin C, especially with traveling. So people traveling over the holidays and things vitamin C. And it's important for your immune system. A favorite supplement of mine is the amino acid L-Phenene. Do you use that at all?
Ade Akindipe (20:31)
Yes. Yes.
Jillian Woodruff MD (20:32)
Yeah,
and it definitely also just calms those thoughts and calms this overacting nervous system and without being a sedating, it's more calming, just not putting you to sleep. They do often put it in things that are for nighttime use, so they may put it with some other things that will help you sleep better, but on its own, it's really just a calming thing that you could use during the day as well. But yeah, they support.
It's not meant to take over and support your lifestyle changes and your diet and all of that. I do add in vitamin D, is a vitamin in a hormone. one of my favorites as well.
Ade Akindipe (21:03)
Yes.
Jillian Woodruff MD (21:11)
Vitamin D plays a supportive role in many systems that are affected by this dysregulated stress response system. So it also is helpful in immune function and muscle strength.
your mood and your energy levels and bone health. So many benefits to vitamin D. And this is another issue that we have in the Pacific Northwest and specifically in Alaska. We have a lot of vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency and especially during our very long and dark winter. So supplementation with vitamin D is important.
Ade Akindipe (21:47)
right now.
Absolutely. Yeah, and always with safety in mind, making sure that you're, you know, especially if you're managing thyroid issues, know, ⁓ mood issues, autoimmune disease or medications, making sure that these things ⁓ work well together. Sometimes there might be some of these compounds or herbs maybe interacting with your own medication. So be very careful, especially, yeah, the thyroid one too. So
So what actually helps calm the stress response? Here's the part that we want you to hear about. know, cortisol, like we talked about, is important. It works really well, you know, but this system is very sensitive to signals from the environment. And when we work with those signals instead of against them, we often see great improvement. So like we talked about before, nutrition plays a huge role for women. You know, we often are running in the morning. I know it.
it's
like that for me. So sometimes we're not eating breakfast or we're delaying food too long that we're still hungry. So that contributes to cortisol spikes later in the day. Often where we'll get up, alarm goes off, are getting the kids out the door, we're getting that cup of first cup of coffee, which also spikes our cortisol as well. So ⁓ getting enough protein earlier can help stabilize that blood sugar. I saw that on my CGM.
My continuous glucose monitor, I tried it on a few weeks ago because I just feeling more tired and I definitely saw the spikes in the morning. The mornings when I'm not well fueled, whether I didn't eat well the night before or I didn't eat breakfast, I saw the sugar spike because of the cortisol response. So I highly recommend it for anyone who hasn't tried it. It's really eye-opening what happens in our bodies. ⁓
Jillian Woodruff MD (23:29)
Mmm.
Yes. Yes. ⁓
Ade Akindipe (23:40)
That doesn't mean everyone needs to eat first thing in the morning because I personally don't do well with breakfast. But it does mean that you're paying attention to not eating over a long period of time. Even if you're just grabbing something, maybe a protein shake or something like that. Not waiting to the point where your blood sugars are super low, right? So exercise, know, high intensity workouts are a form of stress to the body. So they are, they're not bad, but when someone's stress is already high,
than adding high intensity workouts makes it worse. So it's where you need to maybe potentially pull back or maybe do more zone two kind of workouts where you're like walking like we talked about before, know, incline on a treadmill, something like that where you feel like your heart's, know, you're getting a good cardiovascular workout but without overdoing it. that's probably support more of your stress response.
Jillian Woodruff MD (24:33)
Have you ever put protein powder in your coffee? Yeah. Because, yes, I try to have breakfast, but it doesn't happen very often, even though I know we should, I think, because otherwise I'm going to have...
Ade Akindipe (24:37)
No, I've never tried it. No. Is that what you do?
Yeah.
Jillian Woodruff MD (24:51)
especially if you put anything sugaring your coffee, right? Then you're going to have that spike and then you're going to have that blood sugar drop. So, but with protein, I have noticed that I feel, you know, fuller if I have that protein powder. The issue just is you really have to kind of stir it or it becomes clumpy.
Ade Akindipe (24:55)
Yeah.
You gotta get it mixed up really
well. Yeah.
Jillian Woodruff MD (25:12)
Right, and
it's like the scoop is quite large and so if you're not having a, you know, maybe if I'm having like a grande or a venti coffee maybe, but if you're having something like a normal cup, it's kind of hard to get it in there. So I haven't found like the perfect thing, but I feel like for my life that would be perfect if I could get that right.
Ade Akindipe (25:25)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
I do fiber sometimes, but even not getting that consistency down where you actually can enjoy your coffee without that thick stuff in there is something I struggle with, but that definitely makes me feel full. So even if I'm not eating until about 11, 10, 11 is kind of the timeframe when I start to get hungry. At least there's something in my system. But yeah, it makes a huge difference. That's when you start to get cranky, irritable, or your energy starts to crash if you've gone hours and hours without food.
Jillian Woodruff MD (26:02)
Right.
Another thing to try for this to manage the cortisol levels appropriately is morning light. And I'm speaking to everyone else that doesn't live here because we don't have the morning light. But it is so important for the setting of your pineal gland and the regulation of that cortisol rhythm to get that light exposure very early, like within 30 minutes to an hour of waking up. And it just anchors your internal clock.
supports that healthy rise of cortisol in the morning and then a gradual decline later. And so you notice great benefits to your energy, your mood and your sleep. I have been starting to put the satellites or I should call it a happy light and I think some people do, but in different rooms set on a timer so that like in bedrooms so that it will like gradually increase in light in the morning. Yeah. And so, you know, you will notice, you know, a difference because you notice a difference in the summertime when you're outside.
Ade Akindipe (26:51)
That's a great idea. Yeah.
Jillian Woodruff MD (26:59)
And it doesn't count if you're like getting your car in the garage and driving you actually do have to be outside of the windows to get this so ⁓ The lights make a difference and then of course and we had a whole episode on sleep But sleep is foundational and it's non-negotiable you have to do it if it's disrupted your cortisol Rhythm is disrupted your poor sleep flattens the normal rhythm of the cortisol makes mornings harder Evenings you're you may be more
Ade Akindipe (27:08)
Yeah.
Jillian Woodruff MD (27:27)
wired even though you felt tired all day and then at night time you're like ⁓ and you're awake and then you can't sleep again and it's just this pattern that continues this cycle that's terrible. So often I do try to focus on sleep first. I think many people want to work on all the other issues that they have and because sleep is it's difficult to do you know it's difficult to
change the lifestyle in the way that you need and sometimes we need that support of different hormones and things but improving sleep can improve the entire stress system and how it functions.
Ade Akindipe (28:02)
Absolutely.
⁓ yes.
Jillian Woodruff MD (28:03)
So it doesn't have to be
elaborate and I know this is hard for both of us too, you know, but you know, we do have to have some lifestyle changes like fewer late nights, fewer intensive workouts. I'm fine with that part.
Ade Akindipe (28:17)
and
like, you know, getting into a sauna or something like that. Relaxing.
Jillian Woodruff MD (28:25)
Absolutely, more spa time.
That's exactly what we need. We do. You have to create enough space for your nervous system to downshift without affecting everything else.
Ade Akindipe (28:36)
So much better. Midlife is where the body stops tolerating push through, you know, push through it. You can do it. You know, we can do it all. Yeah, we can do it all. strategically, right, making sure that we're taking care of ourselves. What worked in your 20s and 30s often stops working. Not because you are weaker, ladies, you are not weaker, but because the system has changed. So the body starts to ask for honesty and instead of endurance. And when you respond to that,
then your cortisol level starts to balance out. Because you need your cortisol. You need to run away from that bear if you need to. Just not all the time.
Jillian Woodruff MD (29:11)
Right?
you
Yes. Well, if there's one thing that we want you to take away from this and really every other episode, it's that what you're experiencing in midlife has physiologic explanations and it deserves to be taken seriously. Understanding what's happening in your body gives you the ability to advocate for the care that you need. Your body has been doing its best under a lot of pressure and I know people will be asking, is there
medication that I can take that will just fix this and I wish there were just some medication. You know there are medications that can put band-aids on the different symptoms that you have but there isn't a single medication that fixes the tired but wired state, the stress dysregulation. This is a stress system issue rather than one hormone being too high or too low and
You need a full, all-encompassing strategy to take care of it. There's not just one thing.
Ade Akindipe (30:11)
That is correct for sure. keep in mind that when you go and get this to be fixed, everything doesn't have to happen at once. So it's always good to pick one small thing each week that supports your nervous system and start there. You know, we're out of time today. If today's episode helped you understand why stress feels louder and more physical in midlife, share it with someone that you care about.
Jillian Woodruff MD (30:38)
Yes, and we hope you liked it and you will please consider joining us again in two weeks and we will be talking about brain fog after 40 and why you can't think clearly and what actually helps in that situation. Thank you again for joining us today. We'll see you next time. Bye.
Ade Akindipe (30:58)
Bye.