“All humans are meant to be in regulation but I believe that the dysregulation is big and it has a bigger cost in a female body.”
In this episode, I’m discussing with you how women disrupt and dysregulate their biology in seven key ways, by sharing my burnout journey and my need to prioritize health. I emphasize the importance of balance and control over your well-being in this fast-paced society, addressing metabolic, hormonal, nervous system, and emotional dysregulation with 7 practical steps that you can take.
In this podcast, 4 Female Dysregulations and the 7 Steps to Regain Balance, you’ll learn:
- How to honor your body’s natural rhythms for optimal well-being
- Explore the transformative power of human connection and spiritual growth
- How to join the movement towards collective empowerment and vibrational elevation
- To take proactive steps towards self-discovery and personal growth
- To reclaim your regulation and embrace a life of authenticity and joy
Empowering You to Believe in Yourself
In this episode, I bring you a concept that has been brewing in my mind for the past six months – and that’s the four ways in which we inadvertently throw our female bodies out of regulation and seven ways to regain that balance. Throughout this episode, I want to guide you back to a state of balance by opening up about my personal experiences and struggles and hope to empower you to take control of your own health.
Navigating the Path to Regulation
One thing I’ve noted that’s become evident is that our circadian rhythm and hormonal cycles have a ton of synergy with each other. By understanding the impact of light exposure, food timing, and our hormonal fluctuations, we can take proactive steps to honor our body’s natural rhythms. Embracing the cyclical nature of our female bodies and adjusting our lifestyle accordingly can lead to a harmonious state of regulation and vitality.
Co-Regulating for a Higher Frequency
Together, we have the power to co-regulate and elevate the vibrational frequency of the planet. By first regulating ourselves and then extending support to other women, we can create a ripple effect of positive change and empowerment. By embracing our authenticity and standing in solidarity with one another, we can pave the way for a brighter, more harmonious future.
Dr. Mindy
On this episode of The recenter podcast, I have got something really fun in store for all of you. Here’s the big concept I want to get across. And I’ve been really deeply thinking on this concept for about six months. And I finally feel like I have some language that I can give to you to explain it. And if you guys are, you know, I’ve opened up my heart, my mind and my life to you to help be an example of a Russian woman that says no more. And it’s been hard. So I, you may take a piece of paper and write these things down or go back. But I’ve, I’ve come up with seven ways that we throw our bodies as our female female bodies out of regulation. And I’m going to go through the seven ways, so that hopefully you can find yourself. As always, I hope this helps.
Dr. Mindy
Welcome to the resetter podcast, this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself. Again, if you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you.
Dr. Mindy
How it came about to be public about my burnout was at the beginning of the new year, I was so physically and mentally exhausted from letting the world dictate my pace. I call I’m good now calling it the patriarchal pace. And I’ll explain this in a moment that fast like a girl did so well. There were so many interviews, there were so many conferences, there were so many people that wanted to hear more that I got swept up in it. And about June, I actually started to realize that my nervous system was going into that freeze mode. I was reacting to stress very acutely, I was not a fun person to live with. And I was started to walk into airports, I was in an airport every frickin week traveling somewhere most of the time across the country. I knew the TSA people. That’s how that’s how common I was in my in my airport. And I would walk into the airport, I looked down when I was in security line in June and my hand was shaking. And my brain was like, I can’t do this. I can’t do this. And then it was like, why am I doing this? What am I doing. And it really, I’ve spent the last six months in a real deep reflection over how I want to show up as a woman that has a large platform as a woman who wants to change the health care of women, and a big mission, but also as a woman who doesn’t want to lose her health in the process. And so it’s taken me a lot of time to have language to it. It’s taken me a long time to be able to create steps to it, which is what I’m going to give you today. But what ended up happening at the end of the year is usually I bring in the new year like hey, this is my new goal. This is my my word for the day for the year. And I’m like perky perky Pelz we’ll just call her that I’m coming up with all these little funny lowdham called perky pals. perky pals, why did he come to you and and be like all positive, but about what I was going to create this year because there are a lot of interesting things in my life. But But I couldn’t be inauthentic to you. That is a real real value of mine has to always show up in my authentic self and always show up with congruency. And so I put a post out about a 90 day reset that I was going to take the first 90 days and repattern my life. And so I put that post on Instagram and Facebook and asked women if they were feeling very similar and 1000s within 24 hours, 1000s of comments poured on to our platforms, saying Yes, me too. So over the last 90 days, I’ve been really working on this. And I did a solo episode on my resetter podcast sort of sharing some of the mindset around it. So if you haven’t listened to that, go listen to that. But I have now come up with a phrase that I feel like explains burnout, better than anything I’ve ever heard. And I can’t take credit for this phrase, because I it clicked when I saw Dr. Sarah Godfried post about her birthday two days ago. She’s a friend and I admire her greatly. She’s one of the authors health influenced doctors that I feel like shows up with so much integrity. I love how the essence of this woman and I was noticing that she had a book that is coming out in a couple of weeks. And I was noticing that she wasn’t doing all the podcast circuits and that she wasn’t you didn’t see her all over social media. And I was like, What is she doing? She’s doing it different. How is she doing that. And on her birthday two days ago, she came out with a post saying that she has she’s 57 years old, she turned two days ago and that she has finally come to a place where she’s no longer willing to dysregulate her body. And the post is really beautifully said. So I def, I definitely want to give her accolades for that, because where my brain went was, Oh, that’s it. That’s how I’ve been feeling. I’ve been so dysregulated I keep telling my therapist, my breath work, or I’m like, I don’t recognize myself. I don’t know where she went. And what I realized is that the stress of really the last several decades, but the last year was the cherry on the top, totally dysregulated me. Now Sara has her version of it, I will share my version of it. I’m a word geek. And so I went and looked up what the definition of dysregulation means. And here’s what I found one of them, which is it’s an abnormality or impairment in the regulation of a metabolic, physiological or psychological process. So I started to think about that. And I was like, Wait a second, not being able to metabolically flex, that’s a dysregulation. If you can’t go without food. You are in a dis and you are you are hangry and not able to fast you’re in a metabolic state of dysregulation. perimenopause, Peri menopause, is built into it inherently a form of dysregulation because it’s you’re going from a regular hormonal cycle to no hormonal cycle. And so the actual process of perimenopause is a dysregulation of a normal cycle before a new cycle comes in.
Dr. Mindy
When we we can’t sleep, that’s a dysregulation of a circadian rhythm. When we are I actually, again, this is like fresh off my brain. You know, as so many of us are playing with by identicals and HRT, I want to make a really bold statement here, that is a dysregulation, when you look at what other countries are doing, they don’t go into HRT, to the degree that we do the reason we have to go into these bioidenticals and creams and trophies. And the reason it’s such a hot topic in the United States, is because we’re so freakin dysregulated we are living in this patriarchal pace that I will talk about here in a moment. You know, in Japan, it’s like 4% of women go on HRT, there’s a reason that they don’t have to go on HRT there is some kind of regulation they’re doing that we’re not doing. Our food system is dysregulation, our ability to access information is creating dysregulation. So we find ourselves in these moments wherever you are along your journey of life. And when we’re not enjoying how our brain is thinking, or we’re not able to sleep, or we can’t get into a fasted state and drop weight, or all of a sudden, it seems like every relationship in our life is really tough, which I’ve been there, we have to or we’re so burnout, that we can’t even like we go on a vacation and we get sick or we sleep all the time, that is all dysregulation and your feminine body cannot keep up with that. And when we look at all the diseases that women get, like autoimmunity, you know, 80% of autoimmune problems happen to women, not men. And 50% of women going through menopause end up with a thyroid problem. And I talked about how the decade most common decade for a woman to commit suicide is 45 to 55, this is all a dysregulation and it is a dysregulation of four different systems. And it for each one of us those systems may be different. So the first will system that is dysregulated, for many people is the metabolic system. So this goes to that quote that only 12% of Americans are metabolically fit. Yes. If we can’t go without food, if we can’t do an eating window and a fasting window, we can’t fast for 13 to 15 hours. You’re in a dysregulated state because your metabolic switch was meant to go in and out. So for me in my burnout moment, in November, I put a CGM on a nice started to see that my blood sugar was unusually high. And that was the beginning sign that I realized I was physiologically breaking down, that my body was going into a dysregulated state. Now, here’s the clincher. This is really tricky. My, my blood sugar was high, because I had cortisol too high. And I was just in this constant state of stress. So guess what wasn’t my tool. Fasting, it was not my tool of the moment. So I didn’t heed my own advice, and start to look at, okay, what then would be nourishing to my body. And that’s when I started going into more leafy greens and I went into fiber and protein, those became my, my focus, I made sure with every meal, I had some kind of salad. And I can add that I made sure I was going into the one gram of protein for every pound of body weight. So that became something very, like my guiding light. Because I couldn’t go into I mean, I was I wanted, like, there’s a part of me still, even as I’m feeling better, it’s like, I can’t wait to do a three day water fast. But I’m gonna wait until I feel really grounded and back in in some type of regulation. Before I do that. So keep in mind that if you’re under a tremendous amount of stress, and you can’t get your blood sugar under control, you may need to change your focus to food and look at the quality of food that you’re eating. Oh, the other thing I got off of, and have been really working. I mean, I’m not gonna lie, it was a hard one was alcohol, the glass of wine at night calmed me. And I was like, this is not this isn’t good for bringing my blood glucose up. And it’s not good for my nervous system. So I’ve been slowly bringing it down, and now I’m effortlessly off of it. So it that was just something that I found when I looked at that metabolic dysregulation. Hormonal dysregulation is the second one. And again, I go to, I’m having this really acute understanding that why perimenopause and menopause is so tough for so many of us in the States. And I know we have a lot of people from Europe, I know we have a big audience from Australia. And I know everybody’s paces a little different. But the pace here in the United States is stupid, fast. And I in my 40s was a stress monger. And I just I did everything to the extreme. I worked to the extreme, I worked out to the extreme, I fast into the extreme. And what I’m realizing now is one of the greatest tools for perimenopause and menopause is chill the eff out. Calm yourself down there, hormonally you will struggle in those moments. If you keep the same pace you did at 20 and 30. You are it’s a slowing down those Peri menopausal years is are a slowing down as your body regulates to a new rhythm. So in that transition time, if you are skimping on sleep, and you are stressing all the time, and you are going to be on a wild hormonal ride. And like I mentioned, I really believe right now that this is why we are having to lean into HRT and bioidenticals. Because good old fashioned rest is not happening for so many of us. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that when I go through the seven areas to look at in your life here in a moment. The third, the third thing dysregulation that happens to us is the nervous system dysregulation. And I will tell you that I am a huge fan of Steven Porges says polyvagal theory because when I learned that I was like oh my god, this explains every teenager in my practice, and I was so I had a family practice where we talked a ton about lifestyle. I mean my mom that has been my jam for years and years and years and and we did everything in my practice from nutrition to detox to fasting to biohacking, oxygen, chiropractic massage, like you name it. We brought it in to support families and living a healthy lifestyle. And when I learned the polyvagal theory, I was so excited about it. I literally pulled out a roll of white butcher paper, and I sat down and I drew out and I’m not a good I’m not a good artist, although I’d like to change that I’m going to work on not telling myself that over and over. I’m learning to become a good artist. And I’m at the at the beginning, but I mapped it all out and showed what happens when we are in a constant state or fight or flight well The polyvagal theory says is it says from at that point, if we don’t relax, we move into the freeze state. And it’s a whole new nervous system that’s been created in humanity. That is where we just tip out of fight or flight. And we go into a locked freeze nervous system. This is where I was in June when I walked into my local airport and my hand was shaking, that that inability to relax that the nervous system on on overload, that was like a real common sign. The other common sign as I was I was having in June, lots of nausea, that’s another physical sign that the body is tipped into this freeze nervous state. But what’s so interesting about the freeze nervous system is that you start to withdraw, you withdraw, you numb yourself with alcohol, drugs, social media, whatever your flavor is, Netflix series, whatever it is, and you go into a withdrawn, numbing state. And so I was so like blown away by the symptoms of the freeze nervous system back in my practice that I drew it all out. And I put it on the wall. And I can’t tell you the number of parents of teenagers that came up to me and my practice, and they’re like, this is my son, this is my daughter. And I’m like, I know, I know, we’ve got to come up with a collective way to help these kids. But when you’re a junior in college, trying to get into, you know, a good school, like there’s no room for a balanced nervous system, we haven’t we are a country of, you know, at least here in America, and it may be the same in other other parts, we’re a country of a dysregulated nervous system that has put the whole world in freeze mode. And this was before the pandemic. So one way you know your nervous system is in a state of dysregulation is when you cannot relax. When you are shaking, when you are nauseous. When you can’t think straight. When you can’t sleep, when you are just on the edge all the time. When your heart palpitations, that was another common thing. I was like, I could feel my heart pounding so hard. And I was sort of watching myself and going, are you really are you really going to do this? Are you going to continue this pace and teach the women they need rest are you going to actually take your own advice, but it was that nervous system agitation that woke me up. And trouble sleeping was a huge one too. The last dysregulation, I think that happens to us is an emotional dysregulation. And I think there’s a lot of pieces to this emotional dysregulation. For me, it was I just was reacting to stress in a really horrible way. And you can ask my loved ones. It was it was like any thing that was a little stress was a big deal to my brain. And what happens in emotional dysregulation is you’re locked in your amygdala. And you’re not in your prefrontal cortex. Now we’ve talked about this on some of the coffee chats, we’ve talked about it on some of the fat burner reset calls. But when you’re locked in your amygdala, and you’re seeing life from your amygdala, everything looks like a threat. Because the job of the amygdala is to make sure that you don’t get injured. So if we use me in June and July, I was like, who’s coming at me next? What’s going to be what what appointment do I have next out, you know, when you travel, I think one of the challenges with travel is you have you have to be on a tight timeframe, you got to get to the airport at a turn certain time you got to get to the car, you got to get to the hotel, and then you add a speaking engagement into that. It’s like everything is on this time frame. And so what with emotional dysregulation, we’re not able to filter stress in a healthy way. We also start misinterpreting what everybody is saying. And we take things very personal. And emotional dysregulation could look like anxiety or it could look like depression, or it could like look like you bounced back and forth from those two things. And last summer that that was really me. That was absolutely where I was. I would have days of like I’d sit down I’d be like, I feel like something horrible is gonna happen. I feel like I missed it. I was like, I forgot something. I forgot what did I forget? And then I had to remind myself, Oh, it’s because I’ve been constantly going what’s next? What’s next? What’s next? And I have a day where I don’t have any what’s next. But the brain was stuck in the amygdala, telling me what’s next. What’s next. What’s next.
Dr. Mindy
It was It is the crazy experience. If any of you have experienced that where you finally get a slow and you’re like I can’t have a day off and the brain is constantly telling you get up, go do something and you’re like, I It’s like I went into my therapist. One day, I was like, can you just turn this thing off? I just need it to like, can we turn it down? Because it was just I even hired a meditation expert. I’m like, teach me teach me I need to know how to turn this thing down. So that was my emotional dysregulation. And I think we all have different versions of them. So those were the four dysregulation that I was experienced experiencing in this burnout process. I think when we look at broad statements that you see a lot like chronic step stress leads to chronic disease. I think that is a very accurate statement that most doctors would agree with. But how does that help us? Like when you see somebody say, like, chronic stress leads to chronic inflammation leads to chronic disease? Then you’re like, Well, what do I do with that? I don’t know what I how do I take that information? And so by chunking, this down into asking myself, like, what needs nurturing right now? Does my metabolic system need nurturing? Do I, does my hormonal system need nurturing? Does my nervous system need nurturing? Or do I need to just work on my emotional system? Now, I’ve been really transparent about the depth of therapy, I’ve been in this this year, because I realized that some of the old traumas in my life were contributing to the emotional dysregulation. And so I took that whole emotional dysregulation, and I handed it over to a professional who did EMDR, I interviewed my, my therapist on my podcast, you can go listen to that, about what EMDR is. So those were the those were the four things that I that I looked at. So the four again, were metabolic dysregulation, meaning your hemoglobin a one C is really high, you out, you struggle to fast, you can’t lose weight, hormonal dysregulation, meaning you’re just you can’t get progesterone, testosterone, and estrogen imbalance, nervous system dysregulation, meaning you’re struggling to sleep, you are can’t relax, you feel your brain is just always on the go, or emotional dysregulation, meaning that you are really finding yourself easily agitated. You’re taking things personal, your reactions is over exaggerated. So Okay, with that in mind, what I have been working on is y’all know how I love checklists. So here’s my checklist for regulating ourselves for getting out of dysregulation. And how do we bring ourselves back into balance. And I do believe that all humans are meant to be in regulation and it with their own bodies. But I believe that the dysregulation is big it is more has a bigger cost and a female body, because the way our hormones operate, we are not meant to stay in a dysregulated state too long or we start to see the hormonal, you know, dysregulation really take over. So so I you know, this is going to be a checklist that’s really geared towards women. But if you have a man in your life who’s super stressed out this, some of this may be helpful. Okay, so the first thing that you can do to get yourself back into regulation in this I learned from a book called burnout by Emily Nadal ski, and Amelia Nadal ski, they’re sisters that are both scientists is when you have a stressful event, complete the stress cycle. This one is really interesting. And I read this book burnout years ago, and I was like holy cow, I never looked at stress as something that needed to be completed. I looked at stress as something needed to go away. And yet what she means by that what they mean by that is when you have a stressful event in your life, cortisol come surging into your system, you have to do something with that cortisol, otherwise, it starts to saturate your tissues and your tissues get the alarm bells that you’re still under stress, even though the stressor is over. Think about that for a moment. You could have had a major stressor 10 years ago, that initiated a cortisol response that saturating your tissues and it never got completed. So the cortisol keeps coming. This is why I decided when I went and it was actually the Nick kowski sisters that got me thinking about this, where I was like this is why we have to go back and look at our traumas and and really unwind some of those traumas. And this is why I think the body Keeps the Score is one of the most brilliant books that was ever around because it talks so much about how your body has a memory. Another language for that would be that you never completed the cycle of stress when it happened. And so it’s still running you.
Dr. Mindy
I’ve been transparent about my near death experience that happened at 37, I am very clear that I didn’t have the tools to complete that stress cycle. And I’m 54 years old, the last two years, that’s been a big piece of what of a stress cycle, I’ve been unwinding. And that took deep therapy and a lot of breath work, and some psychedelic experiences to really unwind because it was such a profound stress response for my body, when your body thinks it’s going to die, literally, it sees that you’re going to die, and then you stay alive. If you don’t figure out what to do with all that cortisol rushing through your system, if you don’t need if you don’t figure out how to tell your body, everything’s okay, you’re alive, you will have a very dysregulated system. And that was me from 37 until this moment. So that was my trauma, that one of them that I really had to go back and figure out on on a day to day, completing the stress cycle, what this looks like, is twofold. When you have a stressful moment, I cannot emphasize enough that you need to go and move your body. Cortisol was meant to make us move. So if you’ve got a situation where somebody you get in a fight with somebody, you I mean, one of the things I did in the airports is I walked the airports or if I got to a hotel, and I was like, Oh, I don’t want to be here, I’m so stressed, I would walk I go, you know, walk around the hotel, go to the gym, move your body. Because what you do is you tell your brain that you’re running away from the stress. And your move it’s any forward movement tells the brain, we understand we got the signal. We’re a tiger is chasing us. And so now we’re moving away from that. Now I have found some other really interesting things on this one topic that I’ve been looking at patterns of our brain. And I realize that when I’m on at the end of the day, if I’m on my phone, scrolling social media, which is a whole saturated stress saturation moment, but when my eyes are going up and down, that eye movement actually amplifies the stress response. Where is if I can pick up a book, and I can read left to right, left to right and go back and forth. What that does to the brain is the same thing you would do if you were in the cave person days, scanning the horizon. It’s when we look left and right and left and right. There’s a whole premise about EMDR. When you look left, right, left, right, you calm your brain, or reading a book was a much better choice at the end of my day than scrolling social media. It’s a really, really interesting thing that I want to I want to point out because there’s so many ways we can complete the stress response. And for those of us that have very stressful lives, it may have to be done in multiple ways. The other one that I think is really interesting is deep breathing. There’s been a lot of interesting thoughts on to two breaths in through the nose, four breaths out through the mouth. So a shorter inhale, with a longer exhale is one of those ways that you tell your nervous system like, Okay, calm down, calm down. Other science based tools, yoga nidra very awesome tool, because it basically is where you are guided through a meditation that puts your awareness at different parts of your body. And one of the symptoms of burnout is your brain and body are disconnected, you’re no longer feeling your body. And what I have said for so many years, is that when I would get with a patient that was in a healing crisis, the number one thing I noticed is they were numb to their body. They didn’t they didn’t they didn’t know the disease was building in their body. They couldn’t feel it, because they were so disconnected. So yoga nidra brings that back. Tapping is another great way. So there’s a lot there’s again, the list is long, but for this, we’ll dive into it more but for this one, you got to stop that stress cycle. So when a stress cycle happens, pick something that I said, if it’s a stressful day to a yoga nidra at night with some breath work, go for a walk at sunset. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Okay, number two in how we regulate ourselves. And this is a big one. This one’s a very personal one that I am hoping in the coming years to be a better example of. And it’s stop the patriarchal pace. We are as women in a very interesting moment in time, because we can do anything we want, right we have access to we can be working, we can have a family like we have. So I mean, the world is at our at our fingertips. But just because we can do everything doesn’t mean we should do everything. And what I that I was a poster child for that statement last year, there were so many fun, interesting things to do, and interesting people to meet that I just said yes to everything. And I found myself caught in this patriarchal pace. And there’s a couple of different ways I came up, I came up with a handful of ways that for me, I found my cut self in the in the pace of production. That’s what the patriarchal pace means to me, it means you’ve got to keep producing, you’ve got to keep keeping up with whatever your co workers doing, or your friends doing. I mean, the patriarchal, patriarchal pace, it could be an exercise, it could be in fasting, it could be in dieting, it’s like the more more more and more more and more like the feminine body doesn’t frickin do well with more. And I’m going to be really, really opinionated today. But I am really distraught at what I’m seeing in some of my fellow health influencers, or whatever you want to call us, where we sit up there with perfect bodies and perfect faces, and tell you how to do health, I promise you, I will always stand up in my imperfection. And just show you as a 54 year old woman, how I’m trying to keep balance and sanity and health back to my life. And I don’t think I’m supposed to have a body fat of 12%. I know I’m not supposed to. In fact, I’m doing some research on what is healthy for the feminine body, what is our body fat percentage, but I tell you, once you identify it, it’s not the body fat percentage that’s going to give you a lot of likes, and follows on socials. And I also have to tell you, and I’m not meaning to keep going after Botox, but I’m really exhausted with trying to have a human connection with women that are Botox, I can’t see if you’re understanding my words. I don’t know if what I’m saying is, is landing on you when your face is frozen. I can’t understand or find your humaneness. And so this is my humaneness. I think a lot, I smile a lot, I laugh a lot. And all of my wrinkles are going to show you that. And so when you are in conversation or with me, or you’re listening to me, I want to show you that I’m making a hard line to use every lifestyle AI tool I can to age as slowly as possible at 54 years old, but I am not willing to freeze my face to make you think that I’m beautiful. I know I’m beautiful. I love me. So I don’t need your approval of me. I also am 54. And I’m supposed to wrinkle. And that’s how it’s supposed to look, I’m not going to do that anymore to please a system that doesn’t even care about me.
Dr. Mindy
And when I look at all of the women out there that are losing themselves to that, my heartbreaks. Now, I’m not saying if you do book Botox, and you look in the mirror and you feel really good about yourself, I’m really happy for you. I’m sharing with you my own personal ethos. This is how I believe and how I would like to show up. And I’m also trying to be an example for all other women that can’t afford Botox. They can’t afford plastic surgery, they’re not getting their breast implants. They’re not going to put on the patriarchal mask. They’re going to do it their way and I think that one each time one woman stands up that way we free all the other women. So it the beauty world is is so big on this yet many of you are going to hear my podcast interview with LeAnn Rimes on that we are putting out about her healing journey. I adore this woman for so many reasons. But maybe one of the greatest is she spends when you don’t see her on some kind of tour or some kind of show or some kind of place where she’s been, you know, put up as LeAnn Rimes at home. She’s in her jammies. She’s in her her sweats that women wear sweats more than any human I’ve ever seen on the planet. And if you follow her on Instagram, you’ll see her in her sweats. And these aren’t fancy sweats. They’re just sweats. And she shows you that she’s a normal human. So but then we have a whole system that wants to reorganize itself to try to look like the version of her when she’s on stage. And she’s just an example, who has been willing to be that example. So you can do that with every single, you know, every single woman out there. So that’s got eyeballs on her right now. Okay. Couple of other things that I want to say about this patriarchal pace is that in the patriarchal pace, we put we become people pleasers, we put other people’s needs ahead of our own. I’m going to again, tell you that, in my in my emotional journey, this last year, both my breath worker, and and and therapists have asked me well, what do you want? How do you want to create your life? And you know, I couldn’t find that answer. Because I’ve spent so much of my life pleasing other people serving other people reorganizing my life around other people, that here I sit at 4054 years old, and I’m like, What do I want? Nobody’s asked me that. I never asked me that. And I’m having to really dig deep and ask, okay, I don’t I don’t I my kids are grown. My practice is has been closed. I’m writing books, I’m doing videos, like, what is it? What is it that I want? And that’s a real depth into my soul that I haven’t been able to fully answer yet. And some of you may resonate with that. But we have to get out of the people pleasing, we have to get out of the knots speaking our truth. I want to tell you something really interesting that actually Leanne taught me, which is that the vocal cords in the cervix were the same tissue in utero, and then they separate. But if you look at a picture of human vocal cords, and you look at picture of a woman’s cervix, they look very similar. And I think there’s something interesting about every time we don’t use our voice, we are harming our reproductive system. Now I can tell you how that works through hormones, but holding back and not speaking our truth is absolutely damaging us. So I’m coming back to what do I need? And what do I want to speak? And can I speak it without, with knowing that if I speak it, it’s going to upset people, and I’m going to be okay with that. So that was a big one. And then the pay could patriarchal pace. I didn’t, I didn’t have a downtime. All of a sudden, Monday through Friday, the work week became Monday to Sunday, there was no no downtime. And so I had to learn to build downtime back in and I had to start to look at my life as there are go periods and there are rest periods. So if I look like I’ll tell you right now, I’m in a in like a six week go period. So I’m already looking ahead and saying what after that, where does downtime come in? Where do I get to take some weeks off and slow the pace? And that one I’m still working on? Okay, number three of this list is we we are not honoring our circadian rhythms. And this one is what I’ve been talking about, you know, we went is is we have to get ourselves back into rhythm as a female. You are a rhythmic human, you are way more rhythmic than the male body. And you have a daily rhythm even though we don’t talk about it a lot. It’s a call to circadian rhythm and you have a monthly rhythm rhythm and even if you’re postmenopausal you have a monthly red rhythm. So I’m not going to go into the all the details on this because I’ve talked a lot about the you know, where we start to cycle food and fasting. If you want to rebuild your circadian rhythm and your monthly rhythm. The best way to do it is through food and fasting. The second best way to do it is through light and movement. But let’s talk about melatonin alone. Melatonin is an incredible example of an end and how we don’t mind melatonin and when we don’t mind, melatonin, we gain weight and we have trouble sleeping. Melatonin is meant to kick in when the sun goes down. It takes two to three hours after the sun goes down for melatonin to be in her full glory. Between two and four in the morning. I found a study this morning on this melatonin hits her peak. So she actually peaks at two to four but it takes a couple of hours after the sun goes down for her to start to ramp up. As melatonin ramps up you are more insulin resistant. So if you are eating in the dark, you when it’s dark out that excess that glucose, that food is more likely to get stored as fat because your cells are naturally insulin resistant. When we wake up in the morning, the minute we wake up and we see light that registers melatonin to shut off, if you wake up with the sunrise, a hypothesis hypothesis I have right now I’m looking into the science is that you would have this gradual shutdown of melatonin because the sunrise is red light. And when when melatonin goes down in the morning, it signals cortisol to go up. The research shows that cortisol goes up about between 30 and 60 minutes after you wake up. But what causes melatonin to shut off is red light and white light. So a theory that I have is if you wake up slowly, and you turn on red lights in your room, or you wake up with the sunrise, you’re going to have a more gradual exit of melatonin, giving you a couple of hours to slowly like hang out in a morning vibe that might feel nurturing. And you can read books and meditate I’ve, I’ve talked a lot about how I do my morning time. And then once it’s full laid out, go move because cortisol is meant to make you move you’re the workout you do in the morning will be more fat burning than the workouts in the afternoon, you have testosterone in the morning and you have cortisol in the morning use her.
Dr. Mindy
So that’s one way we throw our circadian rhythm out is we don’t look at the timing of light. And we don’t look at the timing of food. And so we end up in this dysregulation with our circadian rhythm. Okay, fourth thing that we need to look at to get regulated again, is we need to look at our monthly hormonal cycle. So this is for my cycling women. This is everything I’m teaching, there’s nothing new to say on this I other than a new book that I’m writing for you. So it is that we have to go high carb, low carb, long, fast, no fast, long, fast, short, fast, no fast, we have we are rhythmic women, we the female body is rhythmic. And if you’re doing the same workout in the same food in the same fast in the same everything, every frickin day you are in dis regulation. So I’ve talked about this, and this is everything on from fasting to food to fitness, like to how you’re working out. Like, if I still had a cycle again, I would like push my aerobic Cape capabilities, day one through 10 I would lift heavy weights day 11 To day 15. I go back to some hit training. And I would do that like day 16 To day 19. And then I would start in day 20 It would be yoga, and hiking. And rest. Maybe I did many years I did Pilates, I would do all that the week before. And I would repeat that cycle that if I had a cycle again, that’s how I would do it. But we can do the same thing with our social calendars you can be really, you can put a seven day work week in and the first part of your cycle, no problem, even all the way to day 15. Remember day 10 To day 15. You’re like a superhuman, so you should use that intelligence with all those hormones to go and actually work hard. And then as you move into your back half of your cycle, especially the week before your period, you should cut back on work, you should learn to say no, we can do the same thing with our social calendar. Like how do we how we can power up on our social calendar and the first half of our cycle and then say no in the second half. So that’s an example of a hormonal monthly rent rhythm. The fifth one is what I call the aging hormonal rhythm. So in the new book, I have something where I call it the the wind up the main the main act and the wind down. It’s like how I see our hormonal system. There is a winding up when you hit puberty where your body takes many, many years. This is a misconception it takes 10 years for your hormonal system to fully mature. Just because you’re seeing blood doesn’t mean you have a matured nervous system, which is why I’ve talked about this before that we are when I put fastonic A girl out into the world. I was shocked at the number of 20 and 30 year olds that don’t have a cycle. And this isn’t because birth control manipulated it although some of it is but what I’ve discovered is this, this this younger generation is under so much stress, they’re so dysregulated As this monthly hormonal regulated system is supposed to, to mature, it takes 10 years for it to mature. It’s not like oh, now you’re you got your menstrual cycle. So we’ve got these kids, I call them kids teenagers that are like flowing in to their 20s. And they’re infertile because they’re so their, their hormonal systems are so dysregulated because they didn’t get the opportunity that our hormonal systems got, when we were in our teenage years, we didn’t have the expectation that they now have of what college to get in. We didn’t have to speak five languages and play for sports and do theater, you know, every other every other month be in a play in order to get into a college, we didn’t have social media telling us we’re not good enough all day long. That that is a massive issue for this younger generation. And then the main act, the reason we’re so we’ve got so much infertility is because we’re now seeing the wave of dysregulated women go into the main act into their fertility years. And they’re trying to find their way. But they’re, they don’t know what to grab on to, I believe these four types of dysregulation could be a piece of it. And then the wind down, perimenopause, menopause is a 10 year process. If stress is high, and your nervous system is in freeze mode, that’s a bumpy ride. And so, you know, in the menopause reset, I spoke about the five different lifestyle changes that need to happen at 40. What I didn’t know in writing that is those are all forms of regulation. They’re all forms of putting you back into a regulated state. So you can do perimenopause in a much more efficient way. So that’s number five is our aging, hormonal rhythm. And I probably shouldn’t say it’s all ages. So it’s not just a Jane, because puberty is a big part of that as well. And then, number six, and this is a big one. And one thing that I’ve really been doing a lot more of, and that is we are not prioritizing human connection. And I really am going to add to that live authentic human connection where you are in the presence of loving people who support you, as as my friend Dr. Karen Gordon would say, middle chair, people, if you’re not familiar with the middle chair, concept, go listen to the podcast I did with her. You need to surround yourself with middle chair people who are so excited for you, when you when I have recently discovered the power of these middle chair people. They are some really successful women that are in my space. And one of the women, two of the women actually now three of the women are you know them, they have very, they have really popular podcasts are a big presence when I hit a million subscribers on YouTube, which was a very big moment, because I’ve poured my heart and soul into that channel. I sent texts to those three women and I was like, You’re not gonna believe what happened? And do you know that all three of those women set me back massive, cheering me on excited for me as excited as I was for myself. And I stood back and I’m like, Oh, wow, this is a beautiful example of successful women supporting successful women. But what we end up doing a lot in our in our culture is we compete with other women, we don’t lift other women up. And it is time for us to lift each other up. When another woman wins, you win. And if you want what she has, the best thing you can do is get in her vibration. And the best way to get into her vibration, is to genuinely be happy for her. The minute you look at what somebody else has, and you and you feel uncomfortable about it, and you push it away, by ridiculing it, you have now taken yourself further away from that. So when we if nothing else, do it for yourself. But think about all women right now if we could build each other up and and cheer each other on and support each other in the winds and lift each other up in the lows that would regulate all of our hormonal systems. So So there’s an example of that. And then the last one and and this is also another one that I’m greatly working on this is I am a work in progress. It’s not I it’s it’s not my expertise, but it’s prioritizing or when we’re burnout. We’re not prioritizing, however you want to phrase these will probably put them in the positive is prioritizing spiritual connection. And I mean that however that looks to you. For me, I believe there’s a truth in all religions, I believe that there are so many great examples of spiritual leaders that I want to learn from. And I also believe that the universe has got my back. And the universe continues to put things in front of me that to prove that. And when I’m dysregulated, I forget that, when I’m dysregulated, I think I have to do it all on my own. I feel like I have some control over this life of mine. But when I’ve been regulating myself, I start to see, oh, wait a second, everything’s worked out, okay. For me, even the tough stuff, I learned it stuff in, and I start to like, come back to more faith, whatever that is for you. For me, it’s just trusting that the universe has a plan that there’s something magically unfolding here that is all in my highest good. It’s coming back to different spiritual teachings and, and reading different spiritual texts, and listening to different spiritual leaders. So I can come back to grounding myself in the spirituality that works for me. So these, these seven are ways we find our home our way back to our home frequency. And our home frequency is regulation. And I believe so clearly right now, that the reason so many women are suffering with their mental and physical health is because they are dysregulated. And they haven’t taken the time to sit and really think these seven thrill. I’ll repeat them here in a moment. What I’m hoping is that this will become a guiding light for you.
Dr. Mindy
I actually, for me, what how I know I’m on the right path for me, is, I’m starting to laugh again, a little bit more, I’m starting to joke around a little bit more. I’m starting to like remember, like old patterns of thought are popping in my head. I’m like, Oh, I remember I used to think like that. Oh, yeah, I remember I used to love to garden and afternoon. Well, yeah, I remember I didn’t always think I had to perform at this level, like I’m, I’m, like rediscovering myself, like old parts of my thinking are emerging. And I feel like that interference of all the things I just talked about, when I remove them, I come back to who I truly am. And that’s what I’m here to do for me is really find my true essence of who I am. And I believe that at the core and I know a lot of spiritual teachings teach this, the core of all humans is love. And that fear and hatred is a learned behavior. And so all the limiting beliefs that still exist in my brain, I’m really focusing on on breaking those apart. So I can live in the most authentic, regulated, loving, playful, happy version and healthy version of me. And you may resonate with that you may not, I’m not here to tell you how to be you. I’m here to share a journey that I’ve been on, that feels like a coming home. And it’s it’s better than any amount of money I made about better than any, any amount of following or like I ever got any book deal I ever got, it’s better than anything to feel like you’re being your true, authentic self and have the clarity of that. Yeah, that is the greatest, I paid a billion dollars for that any single day. But that takes work. So the seven things are you need to handle the stress stop the I’m sorry, let me start again. The number one is complete the stress cycle. That is how the Nagurski said it I want to say it their way, you have to complete this the stress cycle number two, is you have to stop the patriarchal pace or slow it down. Number three is you want to honor your circadian rhythm. That’s through the light, movement, food and fasting. Number four is you need to honor your monthly hormonal rhythm. If you’re a cycling woman, this is really leaning into knowing these different hormones. Number five is you need to honor your aging hormonal rhythm. This is for my menopausal friends. But if you if anybody’s listening to this that has a daughter, you know from like 13 to 20 We got to get them learning how to honor their age appropriate hormonal rhythm. Number six is we have to start prioritizing human connection. And number seven is we need to stop start prioritizing spiritual connection. You know, kudos to to Sarah Godfried, who is who gave me that word dysregulation. And you know what’s really interesting I said to several friends I’m like you know what the problem with women that are standing up for being in regulation with those four different systems I talked about You can’t find them anywhere, because they’re resting, and they’re taking care of themselves. It’s like, there’s no examples of it. So we can’t change the patriarch, the patriarchal pace, because all the women on social media that we’re looking at are stuck in the patriarchal pace. So I promise you, I’m looking at how to be an example of it, which is why I wanted to come to you, and just share what I’ve been going through in the most authentic way. And my feeling is, if we can all do that, if we can all stand up and reclaim our regulation, that we can show by example, to the younger generation, what this looks like. And back to Sarah’s post, and I’ll finish on this, she could she her final line, go read it, her final line on I saw it on Instagram, she said, let’s all co regulate together. And I get I give her credit. I think that is a beautiful statement. And I I leave you with that thought. You start with yourself. I love Gandhi’s Be the change that you want to see in the world. I want to seek regulation of women. So I need to start with myself. And as each woman regulates her own four systems, we start to come together as women in CO regulation, and we can raise the frequency the vibration of this planet, if we make the decision to regulate ourselves first, and then teach it to the women around us. If that moves us if you’re if it if it’s going to take you out of disarray, get out of regulation to teach it then don’t do it. But vibrationally we can change the suffering on this planet if we come back individually into regulation first, and then we look around and link arms and say how do we co regulate together. So that’s what I got for you today. I hope as always it helps. But, you know, let’s take this concept and start working it and support each other in it and standing in our authentic self and our authentic self is a regulated woman that regulates with other women and raises the frequency of the planet. Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.
// RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
- Fast Like a Girl
- Reset Academy
- I Can Do It 2024
- My Journey Out of Burnout (and how you can too)
- How to Use EMDR Therapy for Emotional Resilience with Kambria Evans
- The Secrets to Building Thriving Relationships with Dr. Karyn Gordon
- Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Hello,
I just wanted to say thank you,
Your books are here next to me and I am so grateful for all this important information,
Emanuela
Good morning Thank You for sharing I continue to follow you. I will in the near future become a member!
Dr Mindy! This episode WOKE me UP! It really spoke to me and had me take a hard look. You put word to what I had been feeling and could not identify. I am a 56 year old woman and I have spun out over the last 5 years. I feel optimistic that now I know what steps to take to start to regulate myself and my life so that I can feel better and be a better model for my 24 year old daughter. I am sharing this episode! (I share many 😊) Thank you for all you do!
Loved the podcast. You are amazing. Thank you. 😘🍎
You are amazing Dr Mindy! You talk so much sense and so much of what you feel resonates with me too.
I wish everyone could listen to you and reclaim their lives and not have to live up to unrealistic (un -natural) expectations from others and themselves 🫶🏼
OMG! You on Botoxed women is hilarious.