Wellness in Midlife: Menopause Mastery Conversations
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victoria byrd: [00:00:00] Thinness is a concern, but also just the loss of muscle mass. sarcopenia, which is, not having enough muscle mass is a big issue for women, especially as you get older. And your bone health is a big issue as well. So when you start to see that thinness, you're also increasing your risk of osteoporosis and.
Hip fractures of women in their sixties. I mean, in three years you have a 50% chance of still being alive. So I'm looking at women as saying, let's make sure you're not only living long, but you're living well and you're a functioning independent woman. So what can we do to make sure we're not going on the tooth thin side?
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Speaker 2: We have combined our expertise in medicine and nutrition to bring you the latest research expert insights and success stories of people on a mission to live a big life.
Speaker: So buckle up and get ready to learn how to live wildly well.
sheree beaumont: Welcome [00:01:00] back to another episode of the Wild and Well Collective. Today's guest is the beautiful Victoria Bird, a licensed pharmacist and integrative. Women's health coach who specializes in guiding women through perimenopause and menopause with clarity, confidence, and evidence-based care. With more than 20 years of pharmacy experience and advanced training in hormone health, nutrition, behavior change, and integrative wellness, she brings a unique blend of clinical expertise and compassionate coaching to the midlife space.
She's the founder of Woman Mastering Midlife and the host of Women Mastering Midlife podcast, where she works to remove confusion and overwhelm for women navigating hormonal shifts . Victoria helps women understand what is happening in their bodies, why their symptoms are changing, and how to support their health through personalized habits that feel doable in real life.
Her work bridges traditional medicine with holistic support. And empowers women to advocate for themselves, ask better questions, and build sustainable routines across nutrition, sleep, movement, and [00:02:00] stress as well as lifestyle. She believes that small changes can create a big shift in how women experience midlife, and we are definitely in agreeance with her here at the Wild and World Collective.
We cannot wait for you to dive into this episode where we'll be touching on all things perimenopause and menopause, and unraveling some of the confusion around what has now become. Quite a hot topic of discussion in most women's journeys.
Welcome back to another episode of the Wild and Wild Collective. Today we are joined by the beautiful Victoria Bird. Now I am super excited for this conversation. It's probably one of the most requested topics, so to be able to dive deep with an expert, all about everything, perimenopause and menopause.
Victoria, thank you so much for being here. We're really excited to have this conversation.
victoria byrd: Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
sheree beaumont: Amazing. Well, you've got quite an interesting background. You haven't always been on this path or even in like holistic or integrative wellness. I'd love [00:03:00] if you could share with our listeners exactly how you got here and doing what you're doing and really educating people about
victoria byrd: this space.
Sure. So, wow, a long time ago, I graduated from pharmacy school in about 2004. So my background is pharmacy and I was all in on prescriptive care. I was managing chronic care patients. There were a lot of disease states that the answer was always a pill or a patch or a cre. You know, there was always something to give somebody.
And. I took a step back to raise my kids and my daughters are now 14 and 16, and about five years ago I started thinking, how do I wanna get back into health and wellness? I didn't feel connected to pharmacy like I did in my twenties. I started to really feel like, you know, we're band-aiding the problem and we're not finding the reason the problem is occurring in the first place.
We're not finding solutions for the problem, we're just putting a temporary patch on it. And I wanted to find ways to help. People, especially my family initially, to [00:04:00] really dig into nutrition, nutritional theories, holistic wellness. And so I became a health coach. And that was around the time I turned 40.
And so, all the things, perimenopause started to creep up for me. I was having symptoms I didn't recognize. Part of perimenopause. 'cause five years ago it wasn't cool to talk about yet. So I was digging into trying to find care. I was going to multiple doctors to get answers. The answers they were giving me weren't things I appreciated or liked.
So I started educating myself on perimenopause and menopause prescriptive care and holistic alternatives, and trying to formulate a plan for myself and realizing that other women need to advocate for themselves as well in this kind of. In this medical field, in this realm, and they need the tools, they need the knowledge, and they need to be able to listen to their own intuition and kind of come at it as approach of, I've been in this body for three, four, maybe five decades.
I know what feels right to me, and taking that on and finding an approach that [00:05:00] suits them, given the resources that we have.
christa elza: I love where you came from. And where you are? I'm pretty similar. I was a nurse from the year 2000, worked in the er. I mean, you need medications, you need pharmacology, you need all of that.
And I think it wasn't really until I went back to school as a nurse practitioner and I realized primary care is what I got my degree in. And it was like a disaster. I'm like, these people are not getting better. We're literally just, I mean, learning guidelines of if this, then this medication, if this.
Than this medication and you don't have enough time to really talk about the lifestyle and all of that, that really correlates into the disease that they're now experiencing. So my process in my career is very similar to yours of like, you just wake up of like, wait, this is not, this isn't the answer.
Like, we're not really solving things. I think that bringing on the topic of menopause and perimenopause is very. Complicated and [00:06:00] nuanced in a way. I mean, you know, it's very much yeah, it's not a one size fits all approach. So I'm super excited to hear kind of how do you approach this and how do you do integrative?
Do you do strictly holistic? Like how do you approach women kind of entering this phase?
victoria byrd: So I kind of. The first thing I like to do is, is listen to where they are, where I wanna meet them, where they're at. If they do want more a traditional Western medicine approach to menopause, then we go through like, these are the guidelines and this is what's available, and maybe we can find some doctors that can take care of it.
In this way for you? I focus on, from a healthcare coaching standpoint, I work with five pillars of health. So we focus on sleep, stress, mitigation, nutrition, lifestyle, and movement. And lifestyle is really, you know, do you have a community? Are you finding things that in, you know, some form of education, whether it be a craft or you're learning something new to keep your brain moving.
Do you feel connected? Do you have good, [00:07:00] healthy relationships with healthy boundaries? So it's kind of an all encompassing, approach to it. And we take small steps in little, in different areas to kind of decide what that big picture is gonna look like.
sheree beaumont: I love that. And I think that's really, you know, what the woman in front of you needs. So often, like we were talking about, that's very much like black and white, here's the answer. And when we're looking at medicine, and so I think it's really important that all aspects are looked at. One of the things that I know has been so interesting, Christian and I have been talking about this a little bit in the sense that the HRT conversation now, there was so much that was looked at around this that was.
Almost frowned upon in the holistic space, or, you know, integrative, even in integrative medicine, it was, you know, associated with breast cancers and different cancers for a very long period of time. And they've now just, and I might get this wrong, so correct me, but like they've removed the black box, is that right?
Essentially meaning that. No longer something that we need to be fearful of. I [00:08:00] mean, the movement into bioidentical hormones I think is being massive. So do you weave any of that into the work that you do? I know you take this more from a health coaching perspective, but can you speak to that? 'cause I think it's a huge part of this conversation.
victoria byrd: Yeah, so I was actually in pharmacy school in 2001, and I was working in a retail pharmacy at the time, so I remember hormone therapy just hitting dust on the shelves, like nobody was prescribing it anymore. And it was kind of this cliff we fell off of. There were a lot of women who were taken off of medications and I don't necessarily think that was the right approach.
And women just all started suffering and many of them suffered in silence. Some of them experienced hormone therapy and then had it taken away from them because it was deemed scary. So I. It was an interesting time in the early two thousands in looking at the WHI study that they based their findings on you know, they were using estrogens, conjugated estrogens, and they were using synthetic progestin.
So I'll talk a little bit about the term bioidentical, but they aren't the same chemical [00:09:00] compound that your body naturally makes. So from a chemistry standpoint, the hormones that we use today, estradiol and micronized, progesterone, chemically look exactly the same in the body as the hormones that we naturally produce ourselves.
So we were taking data from. D medications that we don't really use very often anymore. And we were using it in a population that were in their sixties. They had comorbidities, they didn't weed out people that already had diabetes, that already had cardiovascular disease and they were looking at it from that standpoint.
You know, there was the risk of strokes and blood clots. Well, if you use transdermal estrogen, you're removing that. That risk because you're bypassing metabolism that causes the clots to form. So there's a lot of nuance in the way that you approach the study. It was a great study. There's lots of data in it, but the extrapolation that they used was fearmongering.
And so now we're just starting to kind of. Peel that back. But there's still a lot of doctors who have a lot of fear around it. They, some pe some practice fear-based medicine, they wanna have the smallest amount of [00:10:00] risk and they don't feel comfortable yet, or they don't have the education yet to feel that it is safe.
But the term bioidentical really came to be something that was used regularly when the WHI study came out. And compounding pharmacies started saying, well, wait, we can make this bioidentical safe product for you. But it's technically the same chemical compound that it is, that is in FDA approved medications.
christa elza: I love that. I love that there's been such a push for the health and really it's not just, I think what's been so expansive about this is it's not just about the hot flashes and the mood swings, it's about your bones and your cardiovascular health and your brain health. I mean, really, and your metabolic health.
I mean, it's just crazy to me how much estrogen does in our body. And I always say this like, I will ask God one day, why? Why? Why do we not have estrogen throughout the entire life? Like, can't we just stop ovulating and still have estrogen because there's just in so many incredible benefits and need for [00:11:00] estrogen in the body.
But you know, there'll always be patients and clients that we see that aren't eligible for. Estrogen therapy, whether it is blood clotting disorders or breast cancer or what have you there, you know, cardiovascular risk. There's all sorts of reasons. I would say it's pretty safe for the majority of people.
I mean, most people, you did fine with estrogen when you were cycling and you'll do fine with it later. But I think two things that I wanna ask you about. Strategy around, I know you talked a little bit about this, but you know, the waxing and waning of estrogen and perimenopause. One day it's sky high and one day it drops off and there's really not a ton we can do to strong arm that outside of putting your on a birth control pill to shut it off.
Right. Sometimes we do have to ride that wave, but. You know, there's so much lifestyle and stress management and nutrition and sleep that we can really focus on there. That I think warrants even more conversation around because I think so many people are confused like, well, but I feel terrible. What do I do?
Am I completely outta control? And [00:12:00] then alternate like also into menopausal women, the risk factors and like, what do you do when somebody is not eligible for. Hormone replacement for whatever reason outside of safety, because I know there is so much that we can do to at least blunt some of the bouncing around rollercoaster that comes with these fluctuations.
victoria byrd: Yeah. So progesterone typically is the first to start declining, and that's when you start to, and I was actually just talking to a doctor today about what he sees with his patients and most of the time it's. Anxiety, mood, depression, that creeps in first. So you don't even know that it's really hormone related.
And then the answer is given an antidepressant or something, and that's not really what they need. So I would say estrogen being all over the place. A lot of times estro, estrogen replacement is not the best option for women in perimenopause, especially in early perimenopause because you're right, it's all over the place.
And so putting a patch on. That is even a low dose. If you're in your, if you're in your spikes, you're gonna have [00:13:00] breast tenderness, you're gonna have the nausea and all of the side effects of having too high, of estrogen. A lot of times I've said to women, talk to your doctor about starting on a progesterone first and letting the estrogen kind of ride its wave.
But we talk about things like sleep. You know, a lot of women, they say, oh, I, you know, I. My bedtime is fine. I sleep. I sleep, okay. But let's talk about your routine. Like what are you doing before you go to bed? Are you looking at your phone? Are, do you have all the lights on in your house? Is your room hot?
Did you take a hot shower right before you went to bed? All of these things can come into how you're falling asleep at night. And then. When you wake up in the middle of the night, are you, do you have a notepad at your bedside that you can jot down the crazy thoughts that are racing or do you get on your phone and start to doom scroll?
So all of these little habits that you don't necessarily know you're, the crimes you're committing against your sleep are all things that you can kind of tweak and alter to get your sleep under control. And a lot of times when the sleep is much better. A lot of other things fall into place. It's a kind of a great foundation, in my opinion, to [00:14:00] start with, and then working on stress mitigation, because when you don't have the estrogen, there's something about estrogen that helps you be more resilient to stress.
So it's not that I've seen that women have less stressors or more stressors than they did in their twenties. You know, when we were in college, we were stressed about getting through school. There's always something stressful in life. A lot of the women I talk to just feel like they don't have the ability to be resilient around stress anymore.
And so we talk about mitigation techniques. What kind of breath work are you doing? We can talk about all different kind of breathing techniques and finding the one that works best for you. We talk about, you know, are you meditating? What does that look like? Have you looked at your, you know, your parasympathetic nervous system?
Are you in fight or flight? We need to calm the nervous system. So there's a lot more of a holistic approach you can take with those kind of things. Stress, mitigation and sleep, especially you know, are you eating inflammatory foods? Working on, you know, we don't necessarily need to track our macros to the gram of protein to have a good [00:15:00] life.
But are you eating? High fiber. Are you eating foods that are not causing inflammation? Do you have dairy sensitivities and gluten sensitivities? Are you drinking alcohol? That's a big thing. If you wear any kind of wearable device to track how your body is is sleeping at night. I could tell you I have four years of aura ring data, and I can tell you every time I had a glass of wine, I mean, it's so, it impacts your sleep whether or not you can pass out from alcohol.
Doesn't mean you're getting good quality restorative sleep. So we have an alcohol conversation and you know, are you moving your body? Yes, picking up heavy weights is really important, but for a lot of women, they've lived sev sedentary lives. So let's talk about starting off with getting up and walking a couple minutes every hour.
Can you do 10 minute walks after each meal and start there, and then we can build into resistance training or Pilates or Zumba. Things that bring you joy when you're moving your body. Those are all things that will impact how your body handles. [00:16:00] Menopause and perimenopause symptoms. You know, being very conscious and journaling, even what you're eating.
If you're eating spicy foods, does that increase your hot flash occasions? There are correlations to those things. So really being self-aware of how you're treating your body will also in turn help with your symptoms. If you. If you're looking for menopause care in a prescriptive realm that's not a hormone therapy because you can't take it, there are medications that are available to reduce site symptoms of hot flashes and night sweats.
There are antidepressants that have been found to be helpful in menopause. If that's a route you wanted to take. There's medications. Like for nerve health that have helped with hot flashes and night sweats. So there's a lot of alternative prescriptions if that's a route that, that someone wanted to take in addition to taking a better lifestyle approach.
sheree beaumont: I think you just mentioned something so important there where we can quite often jump to, I need to do all of the things all at once in the sense of the training and [00:17:00] even like you said, with the macros, a huge part of this. That I just wanna highlight for our listeners is like you said, understanding your body and bringing a level of self-awareness to what foods am I eating?
Because a lot of the times we can be unconsciously consuming a lot of inflammatory foods, a lot more sugar than we realized, or like you say, drinking a lot more alcohol. But I really love that you brought in. And it's not necessarily just a gentle approach, but it's almost like a compassionate or a kind approach.
If you have been sedentary, it's not having that expectation. We need to jump to doing five strength training sessions a week. It's not having that expectation that, you know, you are gonna cut all these foods out of your day-to-day diet. It's actually looking at, okay, where am I at? What kind of support do I want?
I love that you mentioned that there are different alternatives, even if HRT isn't what you wanna do and really looking at this again holistically. One of the things you mentioned was around nervous system, and I think that's such a big part of the conversation. You know, a lot of women aren't even really aware what is [00:18:00] going on hormonally in their body.
I know you mentioned progesterone slowing down. I know that that affects our sleep, which is a huge part of the conversation. But even the idea, the understanding that, you know, it is your ovaries shutting down that communication between your brain and your ovaries. So can you talk to that a little bit and how.
The cortisol conversation or the stress conversation kind of comes in, 'cause you mentioned the stress resilience, which I think is a huge piece here.
victoria byrd: Yeah. So, you know, I've talked about a little before when we were having a conversation in another panel about how when progesterone is on the decline naturally on a normal cycle in the evening, your progesterone will diminish and your cortisol will rise in relation to that progesterone dropping, and that's your wake up.
So cortisol has this, you know, there's a lot of talk about. Minimizing cortisol, reducing your cortisol, but it's actually something your body needs. It's a hormone that that has a purpose. And so when it's supposed to wake you up in the morning at 6:00 AM 7:00 AM on a normal cycle, when you have less progesterone in [00:19:00] your body, your body's response when it's dipping is to wake up.
Is to wake you up. So that's a lot of times what can cause the 3:00 AM wake up is that that low level of progesterone. And so then you're having higher cortisol earlier in the day. And then if you're maintaining that, that. Constant level of stress if you're not grounding yourself. A lot of times I tell women, have you gone outside?
You know, have you taken 10 minutes? Just walk around outside, take your, you know, take your decaf coffee, which is I love, and go stand outside and walk around in the grass and get some fresh air and some vitamin D. Those are all big components of a natural circadian rhythm. And I think it gets completely out of whack when you have your hormones all over the place.
And so trying to support your body in a way that's as natural as it can possibly be at this time, I think can be really beneficial. You know, and we've talked about estrogen being. Multifunction hormone and there's receptors all over your body. So when you are having that shutdown of your ovaries, [00:20:00] or I kind of think of, I'm still in perimenopause, so I think of mine like, like it's like chugging off that like last few miles up a hill.
Like it's struggling and sometimes it might spurt out and be helpful and sometimes it's like, no, I'm taxed. So. That's a lot of what perimenopause is. So you get those occasional bursts of estrogen, or you get huge surpluses of estrogen, but your receptors are everywhere. They're in your brain, they're on every tissue, they're everywhere.
And so when you don't have that estrogen, your body is used to it and is craving it. So it's constantly trying to find it somewhere else. And that's sometimes we see, I'm gonna go off on a little bit of a tangent, but that's why you sometimes get that midsection weight gain, because that. Middle section fat is what produces a different form of estrogen for your body.
So Estriol, or not Estriol, but there's a different estrogen, sorry, estriol is for pregnancy. I'm like losing my brain a little bit. But there's a different form of estriol that is produced in belly fat and that's what your body is using to try to replace in the receptors that are all over your [00:21:00] body as well.
So that's another thing. It's a little side tangent, but when you get that midsection fluff. That's your body's response to not having estrogen as well. The body, the fat deposits differently. So that's something that women have asked me about as well
christa elza: in terms of like fat conversation. I thought this was an interesting insight and I think that there's so many benefits to GLP ones.
I think that I've seen drastic. I mean, if there could be one medication that's gonna change. The trajectory of life. I think it's probably hanging on the GLP one hook because there's just so many benefits to it. However, we have to do them responsibly, but also women are losing, which they like losing some of that fat.
But I'm curious your take on that, how if women are getting too thin. Whether or not they're on GLP ones, I just brought that up because there's a lot of women who are on there because it's frustrating in that perimenopausal slash menopausal phase where you're gaining fat in weird places, but that serves a purpose.
So in [00:22:00] the perimenopausal phase, I'm just wondering what are your thoughts on that? If women are getting too thin in that stage? Are we making the perimenopausal rollercoaster a little more challenging?
victoria byrd: So. So first for GLP ones, I've not, I'm not as versed as I want to be to have a GLP one conversation.
I think that peptides are going to be the new pharmacy science that we're gonna start digging into. There's a lot of peptide science coming out, but I am always worried about long-term. Side effects or long-term ramifications of anything that's new. So I just, I haven't really dug into it, so I kind of look at it from a perspective of how can I help somebody who's interested in them?
And I mostly try to work with them on, you don't have the appetite, but we still need to eat. Right. So let's look at while you're on this. What does your diet look like? Let's make sure we're getting enough fiber. Are we eating dark leafy greens? Are we eating the rainbow? Are you getting enough protein because you do have muscle [00:23:00] waste when you are on a GLP one.
And so. Thinness is a concern, but also just the loss of muscle mass. Sarcopenia, which is not having enough muscle mass is a big issue for women, especially as you get older. And your bone health is a big issue as well. So when you start to see that thinness, you're also increasing your risk of osteoporosis and.
Hip fractures of women in their sixties. I mean, in three years you have a 50% chance of still being alive. So I'm looking at women as saying, let's make sure you're not only living long, but you're living well and you're a functioning independent woman. So what can we do to make sure we're not going on the tooth thin side?
There's something about. The cushion of a body as you get older, when you fall, if you're thin and you have brittle bones, you're more likely to have those fractures. So those are things I want women to be aware of when we're chasing skinny over chasing strong. I don't. That conversation is a hill, I will die on that.
Skinny should not be [00:24:00] the goal at the end. It shouldn't be , the trophy. It should be strong. And I hope that, you know, having two younger daughters when they get older, they're having a strong conversation as well. Because there's a lot of benefits to having body fat and there's a lot of benefits to having that insulation as we age.
And so. I don't have a positive or negative view on GLP ones. I have a negative view on prescribers that give GLP ones without any nutrition education alongside it. And sometimes I feel like we hop on bandwagons a little, like a little quickly, and we are not fully versed in how to do that. And so there are great providers who know peptides and are doing it the right way, and then there are some who aren't.
And so those are the cautions I have around them.
sheree beaumont: Yeah, and it's, again, it's because it's so trending, it's important that we weave it in just like the HRT part of the conversation. Like everything can and does have its place like you hit the nail on the head. In my opinion. We have. Making sure that you're actually getting that nutritional support or you are weight training.
'cause [00:25:00] you know, there are clients that I've had come to me, they're eating like 800 calories a day and that's not sustainable. We also gotta look at it as the sustainable long term, are you wanting to be on it long term? And I'd love to kind of bring the conversation into the space. It doesn't necessarily have to be around HRT, but.
When we're thinking longevity, when we're thinking, okay, what does it actually look like to carry ourself through the changes? You know, in my experience, a lot of the times if I've worked with, a patient or a client, they are coming in ideally before even perimenopause hits, right? And so it's putting in a lot of the stuff that we're talking about preemptively, and then menopause actually isn't, from what I've seen, such a bad situation to go through.
That being said, it's gonna hit everyone differently. There are a lot of factors that we have to take into account. There's genetic factors and everything like that as well. So when someone's in the midst of it, or maybe someone comes to you and they're, everything is flared up, the weight won't shift. The [00:26:00] hot flashes are a nightmare.
Their sleeps pour. I know we've talked about a lot of the really foundational pieces. But is there anything that you do to really pull someone outta that absolute chaos that maybe be a, like, maybe it's something a little bit different that people haven't heard before? Or, you know, just a reminder for them on how to kind of soothe themself through this journey and knowing that there, there's like an end sight.
victoria byrd: Yeah. Well, so I think in perimenopause you have to give yourself a lot of grace because your, your moods are all over the place. Your hormones are all over the place. Your body's completely out of control. It's. And it's kind of cruel that you do it almost the same time as your teenagers are going through puberty because it feels very much the same.
So you have out of control teenagers and out of control women in the same house but understanding if they do wanna go the hormone route. What are the options? What does that look like, knowing that it's not gonna be a perfect fit right away? I know from my personal experience, it took over a year and a [00:27:00] half for me to get a hormone dose that was right.
And it's three months here and then you need to make an adjustment and it's three months there. And I was put on a high dose estrogen patch and a low dose of progesterone. And I was miserable. I had breast tenderness, I had weight gain. I had, I still had sleepless nights. And so. We did the adjustment and we lowered my estrogen and we raised my progesterone.
Then it was like, oh, I feel like I'm coming back. So there and then there could still be more fluctuations because until you reach menopause where things kind of level out, you might still need a dose adjustment here and there I was. I've just realized the last few days for myself, I've been waking up in the middle of the night with hot flashes, and I haven't had that in six months.
So you have to remember that it's. It's a constantly moving target at that point and to just be aware, monitor your symptoms, track your symptoms, be the more you pay attention to what the day before looked like, what the, you know, the few days the week before looked like and maybe kind of trace some patterns back and [00:28:00] see if there are adjustments you can make to your lifestyle, but also.
If you're miserable, talk to your doctor. You don't have to wait for your six month checkup. You don't have to wait for your annual. You can call and say, I really need to talk to somebody about my dose because I don't think this is right. We haven't, we don't have a lot of people who prescribe testosterone where I am.
There's a few clinics that will do it either in a compounded cream or in a pate form. But I don't have anybody here that I know that is a hormone doctor that will dispense testosterone very freely. So that's not even really on the conversation with a lot of the local women I talk to. But making those tiny adjustments and.
They say you don't need to have lab work done to know that you're in perimenopause or to treat your symptoms. But I think that having a baseline and having, you know, if, you know there are certain points of the cycle when estrogen should be low your doctor can test. I, my experience was I was five days after my period had my blood work, so I knew that my estrogen should be very low at that point, and my estrogen was like 200.
[00:29:00] So it's, it's like we need to get off of the estrogen for a little while and let everything. Play out. So there ha there is something to be said about, it takes a little while. It's not, HRT isn't a magic bullet and it's always, it's not always gonna be perfect either.
christa elza: I agree. It's definitely, it's those clinics that are like one size fits all do this. Also, the clinics that do focus heavily on testosterone, there is no stage in your life that your testosterone should be a hundred or higher. Like there's just no phase in your life as a woman. That it should be that high.
So for that to be the solution to me, and don't get me wrong, five years ago I was in a clinic where we were doing it and I was prescribing it, and oh, women feel better when they're a hundred to 300 in their testosterone. And then I thought, why are people, why are we putting women in their thirties on testosterone?
This is not physiologically normal ever. There's gotta be something else. It's kind of driving this fatigue. And I think a lot of it does come down to stress and the unsexy lifestyle [00:30:00] habits. I wanted to shift gears a little bit because I think, you know, when you say that, you know, how did you feel the day before?
How did you, I think that there has to come with a little bit, a higher level of giving yourself grace and self-love. That's one thing that I've really realized is so important in your forties because there's a lot going on, and I think if you're mentally dealing with. Still those old patterns of I'm not good enough.
Why is my body broken? Like ruminating on that, you're really doing yourself a disservice because to, in my opinion, what I share with my patients too, you've gotta trust in your body. You've got to love your body and say, Hey, my workouts aren't gonna look like they did in my twenties. And that's okay. A lot of things aren't gonna look like they did in my twenties, and that's okay.
And my body is not broken and we're gonna get through this. And literally sometimes it's just one day at a time. 'cause one day you could feel different than the next day. Oh yeah. And so it's really stood out to me the need [00:31:00] to be willing to give yourself grace during this and kind of roll with it.
What is your take on that?
victoria byrd: Well, I think our generation was the generation that was taught. You can be, you can have it all. You can be it all. If you wanna be president and or and mom and you know, go to the moon. You can do it all. But nobody told us how. Nobody said it's okay to ask for help and nobody told partners.
That they need to help pick up the slack. And so I think that we're still in this, this sandwich generation of, we have to take care of our parents now. We have to take care of kids, we have to be CEOs of the house and CEOs at work, and we just weren't given the resources. So a lot of women just need permission to rest.
They need somebody else who's not in their house, who's not their spouse, who's not their mom to say, put it down and just. Understand which balls are glass and which ones can bounce and prioritize that and say, you know what? Today all I have the bandwidth to do [00:32:00] is to put on a blanket, have a hot cup of tea, and watch a Netflix movie, and that's okay.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna be okay with that. The dishes may not get done. The house might be a little dirty. Maybe I didn't strap on my weighted vest and eat my protein stick while I'm walking up a hill to the gym. I mean, there's, we put so many expectations on women. That are just unrealistic and are unfair, and we need to kind of deconstruct that person by person so that there is that grace.
sheree beaumont: One of the things I see, and I think it kind of comes into this conversation is the high functioning burnout. You know, a lot of us, because of that projected, you can have it all. I've kind of taken on this role of I must be product like productive all the time. I have to be the best mom. I have to be the best, like you said, the CEO at work and at home, and I have to do all of the things.
And there's almost guilt or shame around not having all of that, or not being the Instagram mom when you're trying to run a [00:33:00] business or like, there's just so much expectation. But on the flip side of that, that I'm really seeing is even if you give women the permission to risk. Even if you tell them it's okay to slow down, they're sitting there going one.
I feel incredibly guilty for doing exactly what you just said, letting the house be a little bit dirty, watching Netflix and sitting down to a cup of tea. But even further than that, they're going. I don't feel comfortable in this rest. I don't even know how to rest. And the, I see it. We, we work with a lot of high performing people and it's like, that is one of the biggest issues that I feel like I'm coming across right now with women.
And so. Are there any tools? I know you've mentioned like that stress resilience really, but if someone is going, I'm struggling to have compassion with myself, I'm struggling to not feel guilty for slowing down, and then when I do slow down, I don't know how on earth to be Okay. In that slow down. Like what, what can they do?
victoria byrd: Yeah. I mean, we've made lazy a four letter [00:34:00] word, right? Like that's what you feel like if you're not hustling. You have to be lazy if you're resting, you're lazy. And so a lot of times it's asking women open-ended questions of what would feel good for you if, you know, if you had an hour to yourself on Sunday, what would you like to do with it?
And allowing them the space to think like, oh gosh, like, what would I do with an hour? And letting them decide. Like it could be organized like, oh gosh, I really like, if I had an hour, I would organize my pantry. Okay, then that's restful for you. And so it looks different for everybody, but just being active, listening and asking those open-ended questions and giving the space to be creative with your time.
Granting yourself permission. And sometimes it's a hard pill. Like sometimes it's, okay, we're gonna look at your week and you're gonna block off. An hour for yourself. And that's usually where we start, because you know, goodness knows we can't have like a whole Saturday, but if it's just an hour, what could you do with [00:35:00] that time and make it a priority and hold them accountable to it?
So just as we hold people accountable to eating a vegetable with two of your three meals a day, we hold them accountable to resting. You know, you told me that you were gonna take your hour and sit and read a book you've been dying to read. Did you do that this week? And just having that accountability to somebody else.
They don't expect that when they come to a health coach, they think that I'm just gonna just like lay out a map of fixing everything for them. But they do start to recognize, and then it becomes a habit of, no, I'm entitled to rest and I'm entitled to have these moments to myself. And then it becomes a little bit easier.
christa elza: The biggest thing that stands out to me, especially with the patients that I work with that are high achievers, they're ashamed of how they feel, they're ashamed that they can't operate 'cause of brain fog, whatever, at the level that they did. And you brought up a good point, having that accountability, kind of planning your week around.
Like already setting, I'm gonna work out here, I'm gonna organize here. I'm [00:36:00] gonna tell my employees like, this is my hour to do X, Y, Z. Because that feeling of overwhelm, that feeling of piles in your bedroom, piles on your work table. I mean, it really can affect you psychologically that, that everything is just building up and it's, it feels so overwhelming.
And to the point that you said prior. With estrogen being up, up and down and wonky, it gives you less resilience to face those things and say, okay, cool. One bite at a time. I think it is useful to have providers who tell you, and yeah, it's not coming from your spouse, it's not coming from your mom.
It's a provider saying, you've got to set some time aside because those things do need to be managed, and they're kind of driving this overwhelm, this inner anxiety, and so. I recently was just really thinking about this of how it's so important for us on a weekend to kind of map out and say the schedule has to work around these non-negotiables because your nervous system regulation is [00:37:00] so, so important at this phase of your life, right?
I mean, we know the adrenals produce some of the estrogen, so when it senses. The ovaries kind of pooping out. They're like, yeah, even more stressed. And so when they're, or when your adrenals are just constantly in that fight or flight, it can feel really overwhelming. So I love that you kind of mentioned that too, the accountability.
And I think it's hard for us to change. It's hard for anybody to change a habit. You just get in this routine of like, this is what I do every day, and I give, give, give, give, give. And at some point you have to say, wait a minute. Like, I've gotta prioritize all this. And then we'll work around. The non-negotiables for my own health, whether that's yoga, working out a nap, acupuncture.
Yeah. Digging into those piles. Right. I mean, I think that's a really good, good tactical thing that every woman should hear.
victoria byrd: Yeah, and it's a lot of talking. I mean, if you're stressed because your house is completely cluttered and you need time to yourself, then maybe it's getting out of the house and going to a coffee shop and sitting and having a cup of coffee outside of the space so you're not [00:38:00] sitting, you know, if sitting on a couch or sitting in a chair in your house makes you overwhelmed by looking at everything that is around you.
Then get out of the space, you know, maybe go for a walk outside and get away from all of the piles and the lists. You know, it's like when we ask somebody to start a workout routine. I have worked out for years and I still will be like, Ugh, I have to get it done. And like, I dread putting on my clothes and I say, okay, I'm gonna give myself five minutes.
Of working out, and if after five minutes I still don't wanna do it, I'll quit. And at that point, the, like, the adrenaline's pumping, your endorphins are kicking in and you're like, okay, now like I'm already here. I might as well finish my workout. It's kind of the same thing with if you need to force yourself to schedule rest, you're not gonna love it.
You might feel guilty, it might be something you feel forced to do, and then it becomes a habit that you enjoy.
sheree beaumont: Such a helpful like spin and perspective shift and I love that. I always use that with workouts, but I'd never thought about that with the wrist. It's like there's always, you don't realize [00:39:00] there's so much resistance to the wrist until you're actually sitting in it.
So that's a beautiful way to just, I think, get started and remove any of those objections that people may have. I'm curious because there is, we've, you know, we've talked about this idea of stress and I think. Like you said, we have stress regardless of what age we're at, whether it's when we're at college, whether it's, you know, nowadays I'm like the stress of career change and there's so much changing in even the younger ones now and.
Even I myself, I'm like, I'm hopefully a while away from at least perimenopause and menopause. I've still got children to have, so fingers crossed. But if you were to give some advice to people, because I do think what we do now or in our younger years really can help shape how we go through that transitional phase.
Is there any specific advice you'd give to people listening that are in their early, even early twenties and are in early thirties to make this the, I guess, easiest route possible through menopause?
victoria byrd: Learn how to breathe if you can start working on breath work. If I [00:40:00] was in my twenties in pharmacy school and I understood what, if I knew about breath work, like there's so many things that would've been easier you know, and, and meditating.
My dad is 67, so not he's younger. My parents are younger, but he mentioned to me, I was really stressed the other day and he's like, have you tried meditating? And I'm looking at him like, you were the most high strung man I've ever met in my entire life when I was growing up and you're meditating now.
Like what my life would've been like if my dad would've meditated when he was raising us. And so I think. Understanding that it might feel weird at first. Your brain might race, you know, you might be thinking it's a waste of your time, but really establishing breath work and meditation or journaling, whatever, that, that space to get the brain to calm down is knowing that for yourself and developing a practice it's never too early.
I'm trying to tell my tea, my daughters in their teen years to breathe and not in a condescending, take a deep breath kind of way that you hear. I used to hear that in my life and I'd be like, don't tell me to take a deep [00:41:00] breath. But like understanding the importance of breath work, I think is probably the first thing I would say.
christa elza: I think, perfect advice because going back to that conversation around the adrenals and the ovary and what can happen and our lower resistance or lower resilience to to anxiety and stressors, I think that's amazing. And one thing I do tell my patients too is to get into the habit of breathing is.
You know, don't do it just when you're stressed out. Like start to make it a habit. Maybe set a timer for a couple of weeks to remind yourself just to take that deep in deep inhale hold, slow, exhale. And notice how you feel in your body. And I think when you're starting to make a habit of doing it when you're driving or then you start to be in tune of like, Ooh, I'm feeling really tense right now.
Let me just go to what I know to do. Right? Like, the time to start the meditating and the breathing is not when you're overly stressed. So I love that you suggested that early on in life. Because I do, and it's free, and it's free. Breathing is free, [00:42:00] and no one even has to know you're doing it. Yeah. If I would've had those tools with my toddlers I think I would've been a happier person.
victoria byrd: Yeah, I think I was listening to a, to Brene Brown once talk about box breathing and how it's what the Navy seals use to calm down their nervous systems when they're getting ready to do something that we don't know what they're doing, but whatever it is the Navy seals do. And then I was like, wow, if a Navy SEAL can box.
It must not be too woowoo. Maybe I could give this a try. And I fell in love with box breathing because it, I'm thinking of the count. I'm focusing on holding, I'm focusing on my exhale 'cause and I'm focusing on my inhale. Making sure, you know, is your belly extending at the right time? Like, are you like allowing your, 'cause a lot of women don't like to have bellies, so they, you know, they don't recognize that extending your belly is actually the appropriate way to breathe.
And so really digging into that. I would've been so much better off when I was younger.
christa elza: Yeah. Well, and it really, doing it during the [00:43:00] day is so helpful for when you wake up in the middle of the night too, because it really helps you focus on trying to get back to sleep versus your mind racing because you're kind of doing that meditation in terms of like counting the box of the breathing.
And then also physiologically just kind of slows you down. Can you share with us kind of the steps really quickly so that our listeners know what is a box breath? And how, how easy is that to do, and can people even tell that you're doing it?
victoria byrd: Sure. So it's count to four. So you inhale for four, and then you hold for four.
You exhale for four and hold for four. And you rinse and repeat and you keep doing it over and over again until, you know, for a minute or two minutes. And I mean, if you wanna be dramatic, I'm sure you could breathe. Like you can inhale very hard and you can exhale very hard if you've got kids around you that you wanna make a point that you're breathing through whatever they're doing to you.
But it is something you could do on your own, at work or in the car. And I, that's one of my favorites. I also think single nostril [00:44:00] breathing, you know, holding a nostril close and breathing. Really is really beneficial as well. So that's another one you could do. I mean, if you're worried about looking like this at a, you know, at a stoplight, then maybe do the box breathing in your car.
But I find that one to be beneficial too.
sheree beaumont: It's such a simple tool. And I think the other thing to I always remind people of is that it puts you back into a parasympathetic state, right. And to your point, like. Even just getting people to acknowledge where are you breathing? Are you breathing into your chest or are you breathing into your belly?
And knowing that it's actually okay to allow the diaphragm to expand, that's what it's meant to do. Just like how a uterus might get a little bit more inflamed and it might poke out a little bit at the bottom when you're leading up to your period, it is a natural part of being a woman, or in this case being a human.
You need your belly to expand. To your point as well about doing it at the traffic lights, I think is, or in the car, sorry. I love to remind people to do it at the traffic light because if you're stuck and you know, sometimes we're working with road rage as well, it's actually a really great way to calm the nervous system down or before your meals [00:45:00] so that you're actually optimizing digestion.
So it can have a whole lot of flow on effects and just getting to the point where it just becomes a really regular way of breathing. Such a tangible, simple, free tool that if you're not already doing it, guys, you need to be adding this into your daily routine. I even find it helpful. With meditation, like you're saying.
'cause sometimes you can be, you can sit there and there's a million things going through your head, but to focus, and I even, I normally draw the box in my brain, you know, draw the first line for four, hold in the corner for four, draw the second line as you exhale for four, hold in the corner. And that just gives me even more to kind of ground and hold onto.
If your mind is running a million miles a minute, then the idea of meditating is like, absolutely not. That is not gonna happen. Yeah. I would love for you to share where people can find you. I feel like you're just such a wealth of knowledge and I really appreciate everything that you've shared with us today on the podcast, how people can work with you and if they just wanna reach out, what that looks like.
victoria byrd: Oh, thank you. So my [00:46:00] website is women mastering midlife.com. My podcast is Women Mastering Midlife, so I try to keep things very simple and you can find me on Instagram. All of the links to all my socials will be on my website too, so that's probably the easiest place to find me.
christa elza: Amazing. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing your nuggets of knowledge.
I know women in the state of perimenopause and menopause can feel really desperate and feel like where is the help? And sometimes they're not getting that from their providers. So thank you so much for being here and allowing our listeners to hear that there's other sources and there's help.
Help out there. So thank you so much.
victoria byrd: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3: If you love this episode, be sure to leave us a review, download, and subscribe. If you know someone that could also benefit from this conversation, please share. That's how we Spread Empowered Health. We'll see you again for another episode of the Wild and Wild Collective.
