Ep 164: Menopause in Motion - There is More to Menopause & Movement Than You Think

In this episode, biomechanist Katy Bowman and biologist Jeannette Loram talk about menopause and movement. They discuss menopause as a natural developmental phase that humans share with only a few other highly social marine mammals. They explain the evolution of menopause in relation to the role of grandmothers within human—and whale—societies and also explore the movement diet of postmenopausal women within hunter-gatherer tribes.

Katy and Jeannette discuss health concerns that arise around menopause: bone osteoporosis, muscle loss and cardiovascular issues and how movement is key to maintaining those tissues. They speak to the loud media noise around ‘heavy lifting’ and High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) as the ways to stay strong. They explain that we absolutely require muscle strengthening and bone loading activity as well as some intense heart and lung movement. However, the way we get those movements could be, but does not have to be, in a gym. They share ideas on how to get the movement our bodies need, in ways that we enjoy and work for us as individuals.

Finally, don't miss the end! Katy remembers to talk more about the benefits of  menopause, particularly in relation to remodeling of the brain.

--
I'm excited to help you develop a movement practice—that moves ALL of you—so you can keep moving well throughout your life! Learn more at https://nutritiousmovement.com/nmi

Creators & Guests

Host

Jeannette Loram

Biologist, Yoga & Movement Teacher, Nutritious Movement® RES-CPT, Restore Your Core® Teacher

Host

Katy Bowman

Bestselling author, speaker, and a leader in the Movement movement, biomechanist Katy Bowman is changing the way we move and think about our need for movement.

Editor

Brock Armstrong

Brock is a podcast editor and producer (audio and video). Currently working on: The Resetter with Dr. Mindy Pelz, Better! with Dr. Stephanie Estima, Health Coach Radio, Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman, and Change Academy.

What is Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman?

Although the world is becoming mostly sedentary, our bodies still require a wide variety of daily movements in order to work well. Many of us struggle to get regular exercise, but even that can fall short of nourishing the body from head to toe. How can we move more—a lot more—when we have sore, stiff parts and overly busy lifestyles?

Join Katy Bowman M.S., biomechanist, author, and movement educator as she combines big-picture lessons on biomechanics, kinesiology, physiology, and natural human movement with simple and practical solutions and exercises to get all your body parts moving better. Katy’s lighthearted and funny approach helps us all put the movement back in our lives, and the joy back in our movement!

(Theme Music)

This is the Move Your DNA podcast, a show where movement science meets your everyday life. I'm Katy Bowman, biomechanist, author, and is it hot in here or am I having a hot flash? And I'm Jeannette Loram, biologist, movement teacher, and if I'm really honest, in need of a really good nap. Every body is welcome here. Let's get started.

(Music Fade )

KATY: Okay, we're going to talk about menopause today.

JEANNETTE: So how's it been for you so far, Katy?

KATY: Well, I feel like we will use this entire episode. So I'm in perimenopause.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: So I am in the stage leading up to menopause, an ultimate termination of menses. And I just want to say, if there are any non-menstruating people out there who listen to this episode, extra points for you.

JEANNETTE: Absolutely, yeah. And you can provide lots of support to maybe the people in your life that are going through this.

KATY: And just understanding it. We are at a time where everyone needs to understand what's going on with bodies in general.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: How can we help, support, understand, not create resistance about people, as you will say, going through their developmental stages if we don't understand them. I mean, I think sometimes we're inadvertently blocking people. You know, like kids and teenagers. We're going to talk about puberty, and that's one thing you have to understand is to not block it.

JEANNETTE: Absolutely. That's right, and for me, I have only boys. My kids are boys, and so I've had to try and understand a developmental phase that I didn't go through...or not in the same way. So I think it's really valuable to understand all the phases of life that might be in your wider tribe and family.

KATY: And yeah, I agree.

JEANNETTE: Before we get started, I can't help but ask about your shirt. So if you're not watching, Katy has this amazing funky Top Gun shirt, which I love, obviously being an '80s kid.

KATY: Yes.

JEANNETTE: So tell me about your shirt.

KATY: So I actually wore this shirt on purpose today. Top Gun was a very important movie in my life for many reasons. I come from an aviation family. But more importantly to this episode, I started my period the day after I went to see Top Gun in the movie theater in 1985 or '86. I can't remember when it was.

JEANNETTE: Wow.

KATY: So I always associate this movie with a change in phase. But we're not talking about only menstruation/periods. That's not really actually the focus. We're trying to get at menopause. So Top Gun launched me into puberty. I really started perimenopause when Top Gun II came out, which was a few years ago.

JEANNETTE: Brilliant.

KATY: So Tom Cruise and the Top Gun franchise are the bookends to a certain bit of my womanhood.

JEANNETTE: Oh, I love that.

KATY: If you would.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, that's amazing. I love that you can remember that. Funny enough, Top Gun II was where I got COVID.

KATY: Okay, right, so.

JEANNETTE: My first night out after lockdown was to see Top Gun Maverick. And it blessed me with COVID. So there we go.

KATY: Well, we have a drive-in. We got to see it outside.

JEANNETTE: Oh! How nice!

KATY: So I not only went into perimenopause, but I did so COVID-free.

JEANNETTE: Amazing, much better than my experience.

KATY: Oh, sorry about that.

JEANNETTE: Okay, so should we dive in? We do have a question from a reader.

KATY: Yeah, and this question, people ask me about menopause a lot, and there's a lot going on with menopause. And some of it falls within the wheelhouse of movement. And that's what we're going to be talking about. We can certainly talk about our experiences, and we can talk about some of the biology and mechanics involved. We'll be talking about hunter-gatherer populations and Hadza and menopause too, which I feel comfortable talking about. But we got this question. I'll read it. This is the question: "I'm hearing so much noise, loud noise (in all caps) around lifting heavy shit two to three times per week, and do S.I.T - (SIT, which is a variation of HIT, which is high intensity interval training.) Do SIT cardio two to three times a week, and eat tons of protein, and take hormone replacement therapy, and on and on and on, when we hit perimenopause, postmenopause. And don't even get me started on the chaos, and fear-mongering, and outright information circulating regarding osteoporosis. I'm overwhelmed, paralyzed, and wondering how Nutritious Movement fits in with these new battle cries/guidelines. Thanks to Nutritious Movement my disdain for the gym has been validated. But now it feels like it's not enough. Thanks so much for addressing this." So first off, I just want to say, hopefully Nutritious Movement doesn't help with disdain for anything.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: That's sort of like opposite to what I'm about. I'm about understanding, and just clarifying. Because we're going to talk about, I think, gym movement, certainly weightlifting today. A gym is just like a grocery store. It's equal to a grocery store. It's a place to go to find the thing that you need that you are not really producing in your own life. It's where you pick and choose exactly what you want to have. And that really frees you up from having to think, and plan, and a lot of things, and that's all a gym is. It's a place where you can go pick out the movements that you want to do, that you're not growing them back in your own life. You got to figure out what to do with them. It's a clothing store. It's where you don't make any of your own clothes, but you shop a wide variety of things that you need to adorn yourself. So a gym, I don't have a disdain for a grocery or clothing shop, but I don't have a disdain for a gym either. It's a tool. I am all for recognizing that the grocery store, the clothing store, the gym is not the only place to find those essentials. They show up in many places. To the rest of this question, maybe we'll revisit the question and see at the end if we've addressed so many of these points.

JEANNETTE: I think we can address some of them. We won't address all of them, which don't talk to our expertise. But I think it's a question that you probably hear a lot, and it nicely encompasses everything. And thank you for the analogy. I love the idea of a gym being a grocery store. That's really helpful.

KATY: Yeah.

JEANNETTE: Okay, so where should we start?

KATY: Well, I think we start with where we tend to always start in books and in the previous podcast episodes, which is definitions. What are we talking about? So let's start with what are we talking about?

JEANNETTE: So the way I like to define menopause is, as you said, it's a developmental phase. But it is the time, and it's really a specific day, menopause.

KATY: Right.

JEANNETTE: It's hard to define because it's, in general, the cessation of menstruation and the move into the non-reproductive phase of your life. But how we define menopause is it's where you go into menopause 12 months after your last menstrual period. And they define it afterwards because you don't know if it's going to be your last menstrual period until you've gone those 12 months. So that's how menopause is defined. But in general, it's the cessation of menstruation, and you're in the post-reproductive phase of your life.

KATY: I love your way of talking about it as a developmental phase, and I also think of it as a maturation. You're maturing.

JEANNETTE: Yes, yes.

KATY: And we know that. Some people hate that word, like I'm a mature adult. But in the same way, my preteens and teens are moving into maturation, it just means we're in the next phase.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: And so we're maturing. This is maturing. Maturing is physiological changes. We'll be talking about some of them, but yeah. So I'm not. You are in menopause?

JEANNETTE: Yeah, so I have gone probably a bit over 12 months now. So I am definitely post-menopausal.

KATY: Yeah, and I am not.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, so we represent those two different stages. And we should say perimenopause is the stage where your hormones are declining and you're heading towards that phase, but it doesn't last a particular period of time. It can be quite long for some people. And it's usually the period of time where symptoms start appearing.

KATY: Yeah.. I think it's easier to tell when you're menopausal because it's something you can observe.

JEANNETTE: Yes.

KATY: It's very challenging for people who are not. You're not able to observe your hormones.

JEANNETTE: No.

KATY: You can only sort of observe a set of symptoms, often in hindsight, often after you're multiple years into it.

JEANNETTE: Yes. That's right.

KATY: And I think that is one of the trickier things about it is you don't really understand what's going on. Again, I'm going to harken back to puberty. And those years before maybe these more easily seeable things on the outsides of our body: hair, you've started a period or whatever, are these hormonal affects. And they can show up as emotions. And they can show up with just the way you feel or perform in your body, how much sleep you do or do not get. And those are hard to track. So just acknowledging that many women might be in perimenopause without realizing it yet.

JEANNETTE: That's right, that's right. I think that's a very good point. And it's only now when I look back that I think, oh, right. Because I seemed to go quite rapidly. My transition was pretty rapid. Some people have a number of years where they have unpredictable cycles, whereas I wasn't like that. I was regular, regular, regular. So I wasn't really aware that I was in that phase and now it makes sense. I just want to go back to one point of why I like to call it a developmental phase. And that's because I see it's not a pathology.

KATY: Right, like pregnancy.

JEANNETTE: Yes, it's an inevitability. Every adult female that gets to a certain age that lives long enough is going to go through it. So it's not a path. And I think it's often talked about as a pathology. And I think that's unhelpful for everyone to talk about it in that way.

KATY: I was thinking about that.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, it's not to say there aren't health issues that go along with that time. But in and of itself, it's not helpful, I don't think, to consider it pathologically.

KATY: Well, and that's interesting because we're mostly going to talk about it in terms of symptoms, because that's how people think about it. And it would be interesting to also talk about benefits.

JEANNETTE: Right, yes, absolutely.

KATY: And I think that list might be shorter right now because, again, they're not as easily measurable or seeable. But maybe when we get to that part, we can come up with some.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, and I think we might get into this later, but there's also a lot of these things that happen during menopause due to low estrogen are actually adaptive when you're in the reproductive phase, when you're actually breastfeeding. The low estrogen state ... and some people might experience menopausal symptoms when they're in that postnatal lactation stage of life. But they have adaptive effects at that life stage. So that's also something to consider, that these things are not just random and pathological.

KATY: No, no, I mean, oh my gosh, this could be a multi…

JEANNETTE: I know, I know, yeah.

KATY: Okay, so humans are outliers in the fact that we have this physiological process of menopause. So let's talk comparative biology.

JEANNETTE: Yes, yes, so actually we are the only terrestrial mammal that has been robustly demonstrated in a natural situation to have this prolonged post-reproductive life, menopause.

KATY: Right.

JEANNETTE: Now there's been some studies on captive mammals. But right now that's the current held belief. And then there are five toothed whales that show menopause: killer whales, false killer whales, belugas, narwhals, and a shortfin pilot whale. And so it's really us and them.

KATY: Yeah, and actually I was reading, I think a couple giraffes.

JEANNETTE: Oh, interesting.

KATY: Yeah, and an elephant.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, the Asian elephant is - that data is not quite so robust.

KATY: Not 100%? Not like it is for whales.

JEANNETTE: Not like it is for whales. And there's been a recent paper suggesting that chimps might too. But it's not as clear-cut.

KATY: Yeah.

JEANNETTE: For sure. I would feel confident with the whales. The others…

KATY: Well, what's so interesting about orcas too, and just because I live in a place that's orca rich. And there are different orca cultures here. There are salmon-eating orcas, and then there are mammal-eating orcas. And they're taught the foods they eat by the grandmothers. So it's very matriarchal as far as the cultures go. And as we're having salmon problems, like the whole planet really, they're starving more. They're not switching over to eat different foods because it's not in their culture to do so.

JEANNETTE: That's fascinating.

KATY: It is. I mean, we'll talk about grandmothers. The role of grandmothers. So let's do that. But it shows up in other species too, which I think is interesting.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, that is fascinating. The interesting thing about killer whales as well is that the females live so much longer. It definitely seems to be a life extension for those. You can get orca grandmothers that live to 90. Males never more than 60. So, yes, that's interesting. So grandmothers, yeah, the importance of grandmothers. There are lots of theories about the evolution of menopause, but definitely the one with most robust evidence and support is one based on what they call kin selection. And it's this idea of intergenerational support and a reduction in conflict. And what that really means is if you have grandmothers around who are not reproducing and you're a social animal, they can provide support to their daughters or their sons and their children. And also if they are not themselves reproducing, they're not competing for resources. So that's the idea around the grandmother hypothesis.

KATY: The introduction of that hypothesis was in contrast to the previously held belief that women living longer and having this thing happen, the cessation of being fertile, was somehow against nature.

JEANNETTE: Yes, that's right.

KATY: Rather than it being, this is just how humans do nature. This is how humans need to be to survive in nature given our particular physiology, brain function, way we develop society. So it just, it's fairly new, relatively speaking to, since like the Darwin times where we're broken. We're like this weird ... we are outliers, but we're not outwitting nature in this way.This is just the hand we've been dealt.

JEANNETTE: No. That's right. I think there was a lot of these throwaway comments, well, we have menopause 'cause really we should all be dead by 50. There was that idea. And that's been totally debunked. I mean, we know that in natural human populations, there were always post-menopausal women who live at least two, three, four, even decades after menopause. So yeah, that's really important. It's a trait of human beings.

KATY: Right, it's a trait. Okay, so let's answer this question. Because the question is coming from what I imagine many people are experiencing, which is an unprecedented amount of information about what you're supposed to do. And then of course the confusion that comes with maybe information and conflict, but then perhaps it's not even the confusion. I'm not confused on any of it and I can't see how integration of it is possible. I think that that's maybe more the feeling that comes up.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, especially for older women who are quite a bit post-menopause. I think there's also a worry that they should have done something different. You know, there's that kind of looking back. It's causing a lot of stress, that's for sure.

KATY: It's like a parenting book that comes out when your kids are 40 or 50 about the one thing that you don't wanna not do. And then you're like, "Oh my gosh." So yes.

JEANNETTE: Yes.

KATY: So let's talk about it in terms of the way it's often framed which are health concerns. Or awarenesses - where we wanna be mindful. Things that we wanna know are part of our physiological hand that's being dealt now and how it plays out with lifestyle.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, perfect.

KATY: Bones. Bones is probably going to be - that's our passion.

JEANNETTE: That's our passion, so it's always top of my list for sure.

KATY: And I will just say that you and I will probably do a full bone episode later because it could absolutely fill a podcast episode if not a book.

JEANNETTE: Okay, so the risk with osteoporosis and bone density is that estrogen is what we call an anabolic hormone. So it actually stimulates and maintains bone remodeling and density. Right around the menopausal transition, you lose that estrogen. And then there's this rapid rate of loss in bone that's unique to women. You have an age-related decline in both men and women that women have on top, but there's this specific loss of estrogen that results in that bone mineral density decline. So that's very important for women when we're considering the morbidity of, particularly hip fracture, we wanna be very mindful of that.

KATY: Right. Yeah, hip fracture is, when we're talking about morbidity. It is the hip fracture that is the most risky. I think akin to breast cancer. I think death from hip fracture. Basically being bedridden for that year after, usually in much older populations though.

JEANNETTE: Yes.

KATY: And breast cancer, because there's so much early intervention and good treatment for breast cancer now that it's about 50/50, I think between those two things. Where I think more people would be concerned about breast cancer and not be thinking about hip fracture. Because hip fracture is something that is in the future. It's really challenging to think about those things in the future.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: It's not like as soon as you are post-menopausal, your hip's going to snap. It's not that.

JEANNETTE: Yes. And I think it's really important that, like you said, this tends to be in much older people that it becomes that real.

KATY: Much more frail, much more frail. Okay, so let's move on to muscle loss - decrease in muscle mass.

JEANNETTE: So the decrease in muscle mass - It's similar to menopause, you're losing these anabolic hormones, estrogen, testosterone too, that make your tissue is more responsive to whatever you're doing.

KATY: Yeah.

JEANNETTE: So whatever movement you're doing, your tissue is more responsive to it, and it can grow more tissue more easily.

KATY: And I think that right there is something I want everyone to put a pin in when we talk about movement for this next part. It's not so much like programmed muscle wasting, as much as it affects the relationship between how hard you have to work for the muscle that you're going to get. I think that that's a really important distinction.

JEANNETTE: Yes.

KATY: Okay, any more muscle?

JEANNETTE: And just to say that muscle and bone kind of go hand in hand too.

KATY: They really do.

JEANNETTE: Because obviously, your muscles were pulling on bones. So you lose muscle. You lose the tug on the bones. It's kind of a cycle.

KATY: Right, so many of these things are interconnected, literally and figuratively.

JEANNETTE: Of course.

KATY: Cardiovascular issues is another big one for women.

JEANNETTE: Right, so the premenopausal are more protected than men for cardiovascular issues. And that's, again, the hormones are protective. Your physiology is just set up in a slightly different way, but you lose that protective, female hormone protective element when you go through menopause. You actually join men in that kind of risk.

KATY: In their risk.

JEANNETTE: Yes. And like I said earlier, some of these things that we experienced, it's like higher fat levels in blood, higher sugars in blood ... those were things that are good when you're lactating and when you're pregnant. And they become just more of a liability when you're older.

KATY: They just don't have as much of a purpose...

JEANNETTE: That's right.

KATY: ...any longer. And so body composition changes, that's essentially the parts that we're talking about with what's circulating in your blood. And then pain. Pain is another big one.

JEANNETTE: Yes, yeah, pain is huge. And I often think this is the one that's not talked about. We hear a lot about hot flashes. We hear, I think there's a lot about bone. And I don't think there's as much noise about pain. But this is often the thing that's most ... I think that many women go to their GPs about is actually pain, whether it's frozen shoulder or wrist tendons or pelvic pain, neuropathic pain. All these things seem to, and there's good reason, there's a mechanism behind that. We know that estrogen is very important for modulating pain. And I read something fascinating, which was that for pain nerves, they all ubiquitously express estrogen receptors. Every single one of them. And that makes a lot of sense that when we have this perimenopause or changes, we start getting these pain conditions.

KATY: Yeah, and again, pain is often put into musculoskeletal realms.

JEANNETTE: It is.

KATY: Now I think there has been a movement to put pain more into neurochemistry. And then now that gives a little space for recognition of the role of estrogen, again, in the way our nerves and chemistry are interacting with each other. And if it happens to show up in your musculoskeletal parts, so be it. But it doesn't mean that there's an underlying musculoskeletal problem per se.

JEANNETTE: Right, yes. And I think this is ... yeah.

KATY: Well, I do think it's still interesting though that it can be local. I could understand sort of a general all over pain if it was purely estrogen. So it makes me wonder about the state of the body that we bring to menopause.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a very interesting point. Because certainly in my experience, pain has been the biggest symptom of mine. The other issues have not been hot flashes, migraines, not been terrible at all. The places I feel the pain are either places I've had an injury in the past or that, yeah, it's definitely, for me, it's abdominal pain. And I think there could be multiple things. Maybe it's partly gut as well. But I definitely think I can say, yeah, I think maybe these things started as injuries and the perimenopause and menopause on top of that has resulted in this thing. So I don't think it's always arbitrary.

KATY: No, right, I feel like there's something that we're bringing to the table. Obviously, I like that perspective because I'm an endless optimist. And I think it's really challenging when you get messaging around your physical experience as being something that's not affectable. Is that a word? Affectable: Changeable because of it's your age, it's your stage. And I just think that when you have something that's in a spot, it's still relating to what you're bringing to the table. And there are malleable elements there. So I always like to focus on the malleable elements so we don't get into the mindset of this is a permanent, throw up your hands. There's nothing to be done here. Nor do I want people to endlessly spiral trying to solve something that is a temporary stage but to have a healthy relationship with both.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, those are both very good points.

KATY: Okay, sleep.

JEANNETTE: Sleep.

KATY: How's your sleep? We chuckle.

JEANNETTE: My sleep used to be good. I would think through perimenopause, not too bad. And then in the last year, not great is how I've experienced it. And I think that's more related to being uncomfortable because my pain tends to show up when I'm still rather than when I'm moving around.

KATY: Sure, for everything.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, so getting to sleep can be challenging. Yeah, so I definitely don't feel that I sleep as well. That's for sure. I think lots of people are disturbed by getting, you know, from hot flashes as well. So how about you? How's your sleep?

KATY: It definitely is affected. But the way that it shows up for me is, well, a couple things. One was I never had to pee in the middle of the night before. So that's been a thing. And it's, you know, there's so many variables going on. Like you're trying to drink more water.

JEANNETTE: Yeah yeah.

KATY: And so I'm not sure if that is it. I'm such a light sleeper that once I get up to do something, I tend to just sort of stay awake. And then the other thing is when I was on a regular menstrual cycle, I would always have one day before my period where I'd be so fatigued, I'd go to bed at 8 or 8.30. But then I would wake up at two and be wide awake.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: Like I had slept a full night and from two to 4.30, be completely wide awake and keen and interested. And that is sort of a pattern that I am noticing that I was getting into all the time. That normal one day in my cycle. So I don't know if my hormones on that cycle were sort of matching where my hormones are now.

JEANNETTE: Oh interesting.

KATY: But you know, my dad, my dad who was in his 90s, he would always, almost was 90, he had all these peculiarities about what he would eat. I can't eat honey. I can't eat cucumber peels. And what he had just done was figured out how these had affected his body in some way and that he could function. I find myself really doing the same thing. Like I cannot eat after maybe six o'clock if I wanna sleep well. I can't have anything sweet really after one or two o'clock if I wanna sleep well. So I do think that urination and blood sugar and the role of estrogen and insulin, these are all at play. And so I'm learning how to be in this body. Like I'm just learning my new self. So I'm not trying to do the same things I always did and being like, why can't I do the same things that I've always done? I'm just recognizing that I have different physiology now. And I need to adjust my behavior in some ways so that I am getting my needs met and sleep as a need.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, for sure.

KATY: It's important to me.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, so sleep. And what else do we have?

KATY: Mood.

JEANNETTE: Mood, yeah, mood.

KATY: Can we talk about mood or can we talk about brain function? I mean, there's some very lovely things that I've read around neuroscience and the transition through puberty, pregnancy, and menopause. Not everyone goes through the pregnancy part. But different parts of your brain are dominant at different times. Like in your younger, the risk-taking part of your brain is bigger than the parts of your brain that sort of moderate that.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: And you going through the process, your brain changes. You are developing your brain. Your brain is maturing to a place where both parts can sort of come to an agreement about the best course of action.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: And you actually lose a lot of your brain.

JEANNETTE: It's pruned, it's pruned. Things are pruned.

KATY: It's pruned for efficiency. It's pruned for efficiency. And then you go through pregnancy for those that do go through pregnancy. And again, your needs are different during that time. And different parts of your brain are activated and other parts of your brain are, well, let's say deactivated. And I think that there's such a strong relationship. And I know it's difficult always to listen to a conversation about evolutionary biology. And it's not to say that the purpose of women is to have children.

JEANNETTE: No.

KATY: But so much of our hardware is informed by a different time, you know, where...

JEANNETTE: Yes.

KATY: So we have to also honor, recognize that so much - this was the thing that I read that really helped me. So much of our ovaries are tied to brain function, like organization, knowing where things are, planning.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: That's how you tend to children. Yours or even maybe other people's too. You have to be so aware and have such a different planning style. It's not so in the immediate like it is when you are in the juvenile period, when you're going, you know, pre-children, when you're in that puberty going through, then your brain changes. And then you go through menopause. And so those child-rearing attentions ... you go through another pruning, again, to get a leaner, more streamlined brain. It's a way of letting go what is no longer necessary.

JEANNETTE: That's fascinating.

KATY: And it was fascinating and it was really so helpful for me because it's very easy to get stuck into negative thinking. What's wrong with me? Instead of going, no, you are the more streamlined, efficient version of yourself now.

JEANNETTE: I love that. I just wonder whether as, you know, as a Western culture, we're now, you know, having children later, whether that's really some of the brain conflict, because some people going through the menopause have still got pretty young children. Does that make sense?

KATY: Yes, except I was thinking about it. And if we look at hunter-gatherer populations, they're still having children. In hunter-gatherer populations, it's much more challenging to track menopausal age because of lactation amenorrhea. So what happens is their last child, which is in their forties...

JEANNETTE: They seamlessly go into menopause from that...

KATY: Yeah, they never start menstruating again. And so they still have children in their forties and someone, we're in a friend group and someone had popped off saying something like, you know, we all should have had our children, more according to our natural rhythms that like when we were 19. And I said, but that 19 year old who had a child would have also had a child when they're in their forties.

JEANNETTE: Yeah true.

KATY: You know, and that's true of ... it's very hard to track number of pregnancies. So I hear what you're saying, but I do think you would still have, I mean, in Hadza, they will still have a child in the forties.

JEANNETTE: True.

KATY: So here's what I was thinking though. When I was walking through my house, I misplaced my keys this morning before I came here. And I'm thinking about this episode and I have 10,000 things in my house. Right? These are the children that I'm minding.

JEANNETTE: Oh! That's ... yeah!

KATY: And so I feel like, I feel like I'm minding way too many things. I think that I could probably have gotten by minding my children. I could have weaned off, you know, that lean me and awareness is not maybe toddlers. Oh, another thing was the change in your brain to be able to read nonverbal communications because you're having to communicate with not ... like all these amazing things. And I think it has a lot more to do with stuff, projects, tasks, and they're not being a weaning of that.

JEANNETTE: Yes, I love that. That makes so much sense that we're not really ... the brain fog and the sense of we're not coping is not really the children. It's actually just that we have thousands of children that we're trying to…

KATY: Thousands of children.

JEANNETTE: ...juggling, whether it's, yeah, work, home. Yeah, no, that's fascinating.

KATY: You know, as I was bemoaning, like, why can I remember where I did this? And it's like, I just, I've got too many pieces I'm trying to manage. And I do think a lot of how we're going through menopause, we have to talk about the environment. We have to talk about ...

JEANNETTE: That everything is just too much, really.

KATY: It's the landscape, yes. So one, it's a sedentary landscape. I mean, we're going to talk about movement here. But I also think that we've got this "too much", whether it's things or tasks, it's too much. And instead of trying to bio-hack our way to figure out how to continue to deal with the 10,000 things, I think it is also reasonable to prune. If our brains have been pruned for more streamlined - to prune stuff. To prune, whether it's on the schedule, on the calendar, that is also a way of training yourself to be successful.

JEANNETTE: And aligning your brain with actually what it can manage.

KATY: Yeah, yeah.

JEANNETTE: Okay, so we've gone through symptoms. I mean, there's also kind of gut things and migraines, but rather than going in, should we get into movement?

KATY: Let's just get to movement.

JEANNETTE: So we really wanna look at movement and that can potentially influence those things that we were discussing.

KATY: All right, so let's talk about movement and all of these things. Bone and muscle is probably the easiest to talk about. I know everyone everywhere seems to be talking about heavy lifting, weight lifting, lifting weights at the gym. That's what the original question was asking. And so what are my thoughts about that? We are going through a sedentary version of menopause. And so what we didn't really talk about is, and we won't talk about it much more, is are the bone losses that we see the same as cultures that are much more dynamic? I mean, for starters, we know that hunter-gatherer remains show much more robust bones. There's no bone density tests on current tribes or remains to look at. But we know that that lifestyle, if we think of My Perfect Movement Plan and that movement pyramid of sort of high volume, very light to moderate activity created more robust bones, not just more dense, but actually just bulkier bones in general. And those that are most at risk for fracture are going to be smaller framed, white-skinned ...

JEANNETTE: White-skinned, yeah. Or Caucasian.

KATY: Smokers.

JEANNETTE: Yep.

KATY: And so you definitely want to prioritize strength-developing movement practices. Whether or not those have to be weightlifting is up to you. I mean, that's the point of having a movement plan is you get to figure out how you want to get those types of movements.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: There's a lot of way to get big body movement. Strength training is one of them. But you could also pick something like garden work, lifting heavy things. There's a lot of ways to get heavy loads, but again, there's a lot of ways to get food too. But it's easiest to go to the grocery store and do a quick shopping and then get back out again. So you can get into the gym and get those movements done, picking up something heavy.

JEANNETTE: Right, backpacking.

KATY: Backpacking, rucking. These are the things. But we were talking about doing less.

JEANNETTE: Yes, yes.

KATY: And so instead of adding more, it might work for you to be like, well, what I really need is more outside time, less noise. So I'm going to put on a weighted vest and head out or a backpack and head out. Or I'm going to hold my body up a hill. Or one of my favorite ways for strength training is I still like to physically play with my now 120 pound, 125 pound kids and doing acro-yoga type things. Doing leg presses with them on there because it gives me a slower version. It's more connected. But I'm still doing the same thing. I'm still trying to maintain my muscle mass and my bone density to be able to do the things with my body that I want to do in the future.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, great. One of my things I've started - we have a big property with lots of garden. And I have a lawnmower now with no - it used to have an automatic drive. But it no longer has an automatic drive. It broke and we just decided not to fix it 'cause actually it's a great strength training for me to push this thing up and down. And it's cardiovascular too. And it needs to be done, right? It has to be done somehow by someone.

KATY: Why not you? That's labor.

JEANNETTE: Why not me? Yeah, why not me?

KATY: Well, and menopausal women in the hunter-gatherer tribes, they're often, we didn't talk too much about this, but they do more work, almost the most work in a tribe.

JEANNETTE: That's right. Yeah, they do more food acquisition work than I think any group apart from adolescent boys.

KATY: And they consume less.

JEANNETTE: Yes, so they're so valuable.

KATY: I mean, I think that is one thing too, just to recognize the decreased need for food. Food is such a ... you need to eat to sustain yourself, but you don't need to really eat more than that, and food is such a pleasure. It activates some of the dopamine parts of our brain to really be like, oh, I don't need this much food any longer. My body is not taking this much. Maybe my brain pruning is a big part of why I don't need to eat so much, Because the brains are expensive.

JEANNETTE: That's true, that's true. I hadn't thought of that. You always think about the activity or the muscle, but yeah, I hadn't really thought about it, that as a declining brain need.

KATY: Yeah, our brains are expensive to run.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, very much so, interesting.

KATY: And of course, I'm not talking about brain waste from dementia.

JEANNETTE: No, no, no, no.

KATY: And you can't eat to keep the mass up of your brain.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: And well, one of the other things that I'm doing too for strength training is something called a VIPR. And I just have a friend who happens to be a VIPR teacher. And it's a weighted ... so it still falls in the category of exercise. It's still leisure time activity. But it is a weighted tube. It can be anywhere between 16 and 45 pounds. And you basically have these flowing routines and you're picking it up and you're bending it and you're twisting it. And so it resembles a lot more like - if I were unloading hay. It has that like where you're twisted and you're lifting something heavy and you're twisting it and you're setting it down. And so it's a compound movement. And so I'm very much, again, I'm not after chasing just strong bones, just muscle mass. That's such a reductionist point of view as to what we're after, which is the fluid movement. I've also found it really helps with pain.

JEANNETTE: Oh, interesting.

KATY: Because I think of this. You're getting this load in all these different positions, so it's really smoothed out my strength and mobility. So that's just to say there are other modalities out there in the movement, gym, fitness realm that might be more pleasing to you.

JEANNETTE: That's right. And I also think I'd like to just make a nod to odd impact movement. A lot of these lift, when you're lifting heavy, you're doing something in one orientation repetitively. So you're getting strong in a particular way. Odd impact movement, where you're kind of maybe jumping, in different orientations, you're getting lots of different strengths in different orientations, which is wonderful for bone. And odd impact sounds a bit odd. But what it really means is, I'm talking about sports. You know, soccer.

KATY: Asymmetrical.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, tennis, you know, which you might love. And that's great for bones. You know, games don't seem to play into this. But racquetball, squash, all those things where you're landing on your feet with a higher impact than just walking. And it might be what you love, you know?

KATY: Yeah, and so if you're thinking of your Perfect Movement Plan and plots, that's agility and bone loading. You know, it's not just going and jumping...

JEANNETTE: That's right.

KATY: ..in place, not just going to a place to get your jumps in. You can blend it with friends. Blend it with skill. Blend it with outside time. Blend it with agility and side to side. Soccer, you know, family soccer for us is big. And again, it speaks to that connectivity for us with family, with other families, with other values of doing things in a larger group, multi-age, multi-skill level, accommodating other people. Like, there's a big landscape for getting some of these movements. But again, what you're often seeing is fitness people trying to solve, why is my fitness regime not working for me in the way that it used to work? And that's often the conversation you're tuning into when people are discussing about how to continue to train at this age. They're talking about being a lifelong trainer in a particular sport almost, and recognizing that they had to change their programming within the construct of fitness already. And the way we're hearing it is everyone needs this fitness prescription at this stage of life. And so I'm just clarifying; it's not to say that what you're hearing is wrong, but it's a very particular conversation and people that you are listening to. And so you have to know enough to know, oh, I can understand the principle of what's being said. My estrogen is no longer at a place where I can not move for a week and get right back to it. I have to do daily maintenance. And that daily maintenance can look quite different from person to person. You get to pick it. We all need bone load and joint and muscle load, and it needs to be at a certain volume, and it needs to be at a certain weight. That's for us to determine based on where we are and where we wanna go. But again, the modality is open. So for the person who was originally asking, do I have to be doing these things? No. But the principles, yes, those are there.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, right. And with extension to the cardiovascular part of that question, HIIT and SIT, which maybe I think you defined at the start, but it's high-intensity interval training. And then SIT is sprint interval training, which is kind of shorter and harder. It's like a more amped up version of HIIT. And again, that's within this fitness world that this has come out. But we do need to consider our cardiovascular health in menopause. So can we maybe talk about how we could reframe those modalities in My Perfect Movement Plan type framework?

KATY: Yeah, so it's the same thing if you're doing the heart and lung movement section and you're looking for that high intensity or maybe higher intensity. For yourself, soccer is great for sprints, right? Beause you have a lot of downtime and then you have this agility and sprint. Sports can do that. Also a static dance, you know?

JEANNETTE: Yes!

KATY: Like maybe dance and music is your thing. There's plenty of ways. Martial arts, you know. Maybe you want to take a jujitsu class for people of your strength and skill level, you know, where you're picking up someone heavy or doing flips where you're seeing spikes in your cardiovascular function.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: That's what you're after. What you're after is a big change in shape of these parts for a short period of time. You can get there a lot of ways. You could just run up and down a set of stairs listening to your favorite music if you want to. There's lots of ways to get it. And of course you can go to the gym grocery store and pick out exactly what you want to be, like that might work for you better on some days. And I also just want to do a nod to fatigue.

JEANNETTE: Yes.

KATY: So with sleep changes, you know, and you're getting to know yourself, you're going to figure it out over years. You know, you're not in a limbo because you're here every day, but you're sort of rapidly changing. Think about kids, think about yourself going through puberty and how many phases of yourself. And how some days you could be one way and another day you'd be a different way and give yourself that same grace. My early morning routine of walking, you know, four or five miles sort of kind of all fell apart for my friends and I, as we were like, I didn't sleep at all last night, I can't come, you know. Like that sort of thing. And so we found that evening walks might work out a little bit better. And I just noticed like no one even planned it. It was just sort of a slow crumbling.

JEANNETTE: Everyone kind of was like, okay, everyone's going in the same direction.

KATY: Yeah, and you just recognize, like do you need to sleep tomorrow morning? Where, yeah, I need sleep. Great. Do you want to walk in like, can we do something at eight? And do like an evening neighborhood walk? Like we just be flexible. What you used to do might not work anymore.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: It's not that you're not working anymore. And it's not that what you were doing wasn't right. But be flexible about it. It might have to shift. You might have to shift the what, maybe you have to go a little shorter.

JEANNETTE: Shorter.

KATY: And then also maybe you have to step it up a little bit. My mood is very much moderated by the amount of movement, the amount of intense movement I get now. It used to be intense movement. It needs to be intense movement now. And I keep thinking about, we've got it sort of backwards. We've got it backwards where here we think about children being the most dynamic, settling down into middle age and not moving at all in your older age. But if we look at hunter-gatherers, it's really the opposite.

JEANNETTE: Right.

KATY: It's kind of play robust movement to prepare you to develop the endurance and strengths for middle age movement. And then here you are menopausal and then you're going to keep laboring.

JEANNETTE: You're going up. Yeah.

KATY: You're going up. And in doing so, the biofeedback is you get to do it all longer and better. I think of muscle of just the feedback of you're moving it so that you can move tomorrow. You don't move today, you can't move tomorrow. I didn't make the rules, but that's how it works.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, yeah, brilliant.

KATY: All right, so these are general thoughts on movement. If you have more questions, just send them. Send them to [e-mail] and we can maybe do a follow-up episode of maybe just a mailbag, a menopause and exercise mailbag. I'm totally open to doing that.

JEANNETTE: That would be wonderful.

KATY: What tips or tricks have you, what have you figured out for yourself that's just Jeanette specific?

JEANNETTE: So I have figured out, and I'm lucky that my work is perhaps more flexible than some people's, but I have to break up my day much more than I used to. So because for me, discomfort is the issue. I try and not do the same thing for as long periods of time as I would do. So I try and if I am doing computer work, I will schedule my day so there's some computer work, then maybe I then have a movement break, or I schedule the dog walk for middle of the day. And I'm lucky that I can do that. But that's, I think, how I can keep my brain kind of clear and I can keep my body more comfortable. So it's definitely about the structure of my day. And less coffee.

KATY: Yeah. And I should say, right, so menopause and alcohol, menopause and cigarettes.

JEANNETTE: Oh, oh, that's a very good point. I actually stopped drinking - not went teetotal. But one of the first symptoms I had was dry eyes. My eyes were so sore and dry. And I found if I even had one glass of wine, the next morning, my eyes would be on fire. So I had to cut that.

KATY: Yeah, so I don't drink and I don't smoke. And I think that those are like the low hanging fruit. Not that it's easy. But in terms of menopausal symptoms and even age of going into it, these are factors. And luckily I gave up caffeine, I mean, four or five years ago now too. And so I think I did it knowing I didn't wanna have any vices sort of compounding issues. So I could see clearly where I was because I'm just all about that. What was I going to say? See, that's a good menopausal…

JEANNETTE: Menopausal moment.

KATY: ...menopausal moment, what was I going to say?

JEANNETTE: (laughing) So do you have any other tips?

KATY: I don't even know if this is a tip. I started with the headaches.

JEANNETTE: Yeah.

KATY: And I have found - this might only apply to me - but I make tahini milk.

JEANNETTE: I have not heard of tahini milk.

KATY: Right, no one has.

JEANNETTE: They're full of calcium too.

KATY: And magnesium.

JEANNETTE: Yes.

KATY: So I started making tahini milk because alternative milks are expensive and full of packaging.

JEANNETTE: Yes.

KATY: And so I get like a can of tahini or a jar of tahini and I can put in like a quarter cup to a whole blender. I have a big blender full of water. And I'll add sometimes a date and some cinnamon. And I'll put it on high which emulsifies it. And then I keep it in a jar and so we would always have this alternative milk. And I started always making it during my period when I would always get a hormonal headache. And it knocks it out every single time. I make a giant mason jar but I would drink a smaller mason jar of it in that day and it would just knock it out. Where I would drink a thing of water and it wouldn't. I would try electrolytes and it wouldn't. But this, I don't know if it's the fats or the minerals, I feel like it's the minerals.

JEANNETTE: Minerals, yeah.

KATY: The minerals in it and it was like creamy and delicious.

JEANNETTE: Because actually, I think that's the first line.The first line kind of treatment for migraines is magnesium.

KATY: So that for me knocks the headache out and I have not had hormonal headaches since.

JEANNETTE: Amazing.

KATY: I'm not a dietitian, I don't know anything about it and I don't even know how, I think I read it in a Persian cookbook and it was a little bit more elaborate. It had rosewater and dates and cardamom. And I'll make a tahini cooler drink in the summertime with rosewater and a little more sweet. And then in the wintertime, I'll add more spices and heat it. And it has become an elixir for me. It's just an easy way to get a big dose of...

JEANNETTE: I'm going to try that. Bcause I make almond milk but that sounds probably way more nutritious. I'm going to try it.

KATY: Who knows, try it. I'm going to start a phenomenon. It's really easy to make yourself. I mean, it takes minutes. No packaging. It's great. And it's inexpensive because one thing of tahini will make so many gallons of tahini milk.

JEANNETTE: And you don't need to soak the nuts overnight or anything like that.

KATY: You're not doing anything, you just put it in and so you can, I'm sure you could add honey if you wanted to make it a little sweeter. So yeah, so that was a completely ... I have no authority in giving that tip but it works for me.

JEANNETTE: Perfect.

KATY: Great. Okay, so thanks everyone for listening. If you like the show, maybe please ask that you subscribe to it, follow it.

(Theme Music)

JEANNETTE: Yes, follow or subscribe.

KATY: Follow it. Leave a review. Send us an email. We appreciate you listening.

JEANNETTE: Yeah, and just a reminder, if you have questions, just send it to [e-mail].

KATY: Thanks everybody.

JEANNETTE: See you next time.

(MUSIC FADE - ZIP)

KATY: Hey there, podcast listeners. I was just leaving the recording session for this episode that you're listening to right now when I realized Jeannette and I did not talk about the benefits to menopause, which are so important. So I'm walking, you can probably hear that I'm just recording this on a memo on my phone but I think they're important so I'm going to add them in. One, you made it, congratulations. You are in a category with orcas. It is us and the orcas and we get to live beyond our reproductive years. Congratulations, you've nailed it. You made it. You made it here. And I have so many friends who did not make it. And so I always like to keep that ... It should be obvious, the gift of aging. But it's maybe not as obvious so I'm calling it out. Let's talk about those brain changes. We seem to be able to be more focused on ourself. And I'm not sure if that's exactly the right way to say it. But if part of your wiring is to be more outwardly aware. And I'm not talking about current events. I'm just talking about monitoring maybe the behaviors of people close and immediate to you, tangible to you and that recedes a little bit. Perhaps you're better able to be listening to yourself, paying attention to yourself. Other benefits are seemingly like renewed interest in life. Maybe that means connecting with things that you as an individual find valuable, would like to be able to do. There are reports of more happiness, better happiness. Now I do wanna say there's a caveat there. There's a lot of I think media attention to study on women in their later menopausal years as being more happy, more content than they were in earlier stage of life. There's also literature on the transition of menopause triggering more depression, more anxiety. But that seems to be related to also what's going on within one's life externally. And also maybe what's going on internally to that person. So it might not be a hormonal trigger as much as a hormonal trigger plus life. There might be some skills that can still be developed there. But I just wanna say it's not always roses and kittens for everyone.

I just wanna say a little bit more about that ovary-driven brain remodeling. Dr. Lisa Mosconi I think is the lead researcher in this phenomenon. She's a brain scientist. She has a book we can link to it in the show notes. Brain pruning as Jeanette was referring to it - Pruning feels like cutting away. And I think especially in the age when we're talking about memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer's, loss of mass is certainly not really what we're talking about here. Although with pruning there is perhaps a loss of mass - pruning of a tree. It's more about remodeling to a shape that's more beneficial. So like when you're pruning a tree, you're not just cutting away from a tree. You are removing limbs or branches that are not necessary so that something can continue to grow. So we are looking for growth. We are looking for green stuffs, fruits, flowers. And so pruning is a really important piece of that. And it's not like you're losing the ability to plan and track things. It's more like you're pruning away all the things that you don't need to track and prune anymore. So if there's projects that you wanna work on, you're picking just the ones that are most important to you. You're able to track those. The way I think about brain remodeling, whether it's in puberty or whether it's in perimenopausal or menopausal time is very similar to how I think about strength training. If you go and you lift weights and here you are, you're doing something to end up being sort of stronger on the other side. An improvement, if you will, improvement of performance, of function. The next day, you can be so sore that that limb barely functions at all. There's this stage in muscle remodeling that you kind of lose function, right? You're so achy, like I can't walk. I can't pick anything up. My legs are so sore. y butt muscles are so sore. My arms are so sore. And it seems to be almost a paradox. How could something that ends up giving me body parts that function more in a way that I would like have this debilitating quality along the way? And that's what I think of as the stages, as people are moving through puberty and are moving towards menopause, I think that's the stage that we're in. We're in the rocky waters of that super sore muscle day where nothing is coordinated. And with our brains, I'm not a brain scientist, but this is the way that I think about it. Because I know that when I got through puberty and had that perspective from the other side and could look back, I am appreciative of the transition. But I was not appreciative of the transition before or during. It was just a mess. And so I have faith that what's happening right now is similar. That when you get through the other side, we talk about benefits, you've matured. And you've matured and you have the wisdom of going through that to look back and recognize that that hellish part was just the journey to get to this place. I'm so glad I went through teenage puberty. And I feel strongly that I will feel the same about menopause.

So that's all I wanted to say about the benefits. I'm guessing that it's going to be great because I am in the rocky waters of perimenopause with many of you who are listening to this. But I have a lot of older friends. This is why intergenerational friendships are so great. And I can find from discussing with them these bits of wisdom and the way that it's talked about is so much more like the way I think about my teenage puberty. So anyway, thanks for listening to this end cap, if you will. Keep on moving. You're going to do fine.

(Theme Music)

Hi, my name is Laura Houston and I'm a Nutritious Movement Certified Restorative Exercise Specialist and an older budding naturalist currently living on Duwamish land in Seattle, Washington. This has been Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman, a podcast about movement. Hopefully you find the general information in this podcast informative and helpful, but it is not intended to replace medical advice and should not be used as such. Our theme music was performed by Dan MacCormack. This podcast was produced by Brock Armstrong. And the transcripts are done by Annette Yen. Find out more about Katy, her books and her movement programs at NutritiousMovement.com.