What Every Woman Needs to Know About Menopause, part 1

Carrie Mapes: If you do get to a place where you feel good, this is an amazing time of life. It really is. I mean, you’re just, the wisdom [00:01:00] that you have, your outlook changes. Your energy level can change, you might have a little more time for the things that you like to do, and you also have changes of interest, and it’s just kind of a reawakening this time period, but you’ve got to take care of your body, mind, and soul.

Ellen Scanlon: Welcome to How to Do the Pod, a podcast helping you feel confident about Canvas. I’m your host, Ellen Scanlon.

You just heard from Carrie Mapes, the co founder of Hello Again, a cannabis brand designed for women in menopause. I wanted to start this series with Carrie’s quote because if menopause is talked about at all, it’s often in a whisper. What if we thought about it differently? What if instead of dreading it, we saw it as a time of possibility?

This is the first episode in our four part [00:02:00] series on menopause. My goal is to offer a fresh, informed perspective on a life stage that will affect every single woman. Recently, I read a New York Times Magazine article called, Why Gen X Women Are Having the Best Sex, by Muriel Silkoff. If you’re between the ages of 45 and 60, you’re part of Gen X, which means you’re probably navigating perimenopause or menopause right now.

For years, this phase of life has been framed by what sociologists call the misery perspective. Basically, the idea that life just gets worse as you age. I think that is an outdated story. Women today are rewriting the narrative around midlife. It’s not a slow fade. It’s a time of renewal and confidence and great sex.

That article reminded me of another New York Times Magazine piece I read in [00:03:00] 2023. Journalist Susan Dominus wrote a groundbreaking article called, Women Have Been Misled About Menopause. The article started a brand new wave of conversation. I shared it with so many friends and I started finding myself bringing up menopause with almost every woman I knew.

It wasn’t because I wanted to make anyone uncomfortable. It’s because so many women don’t even realize they’re experiencing symptoms. If you’re over 35 and suddenly feel like you’re struggling with sleep, sex, or unexplained weight changes, it may be your hormones. Menopause is not just about hot flashes.

They’re over 30 symptoms and it affects every woman differently. The good news is that menopause is finally getting attention. More doctors are being asked about it, more companies are investing in solutions, and women are [00:04:00] demanding better care. Here’s something you may not know. One in four women are trying cannabis to help manage menopause symptoms, especially related to sleep, sex, and mood.

That’s why I created this series, to share expert backed information about menopause and practical advice on how cannabis can help. I believe this is a topic that every woman should know about, without shame, without stigma, and with the best information. In today’s show, we’ll cover what menopause is and how to prepare yourself for its symptoms.

You’ll hear from women who have been through it, who offer tips about what they wish they had known a lot earlier. And I’ll share resources for how to find a doctor who actually understands menopause. Have you signed up for my Substack newsletter yet? I share podcast highlights, inspiring stories, [00:05:00] brand discounts, and four things that are inspiring me.

Last week, I recommended a book called The Queen of Dirt Island by Donald Ryan. It was my most recent book club pick. It is a beautifully written novel about four generations of fierce, resilient women in rural Ireland. This story is powerful, but it doesn’t feel heavy, and the isolated beauty of the setting in the Irish countryside feels like a quiet escape.

It’s a moving, really enjoyable read. I highly recommend it. Subscribe today at Substack or at DoThePot. com and get fresh ideas delivered straight to your inbox. And now with Substack, if you’re one of our 10, 000 plus newsletter readers, you can choose to upgrade to a paid subscription and directly support the show and my work.

Thank you for your support.[00:06:00]

Dr. Lauren Stryker is a clinical professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She’s an MD, a menopause expert, and a strong advocate for women’s health. I discovered her excellent podcast, Dr. Stryker’s Inside Information, because she has an episode about cannabis and menopause.

Dr. Stryker got curious about cannabis when she realized how many of her patients were trying it and finding relief for their menopause symptoms. Talking with her has given me a lot of for women entering this phase of life. Something she likes to say inspired this series. When women have good information, they make good choices.

I asked Dr. Stryker to talk about what menopause is, and [00:07:00] to explain a word you might not be familiar with yet, perimenopause.

Dr Lauren Streicher: When people think about perimenopause or even menopause, which is when your ovaries are completely done making estrogen, they think of grandma. You know, they think of someone who’s 60 years old, 70 years old.

So when women come to me in their early or mid 40s and give me the classic symptoms of perimenopause, missing periods, maybe not sleeping well, hot flashes, maybe a little vaginal dryness. And I’ll say, you know, this could be perimenopause. And they’re like, Oh no, Oh, no, that’s impossible. I’m only 46. And when I say, actually, you’re right in there.

They are shocked. So the only thing that’s predictable about perimenopause is that is unpredictable. And the big surprise for a lot of women is how soon it can hit. So perimenopause is when you’re Estrogen levels are unpredictably up and down, and menopause is when your ovaries are out of [00:08:00] business. And that can sometimes happen for some women surgically, if their ovaries are removed.

It can happen as a consequence of cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery. And then, of course, it can happen spontaneously, naturally.

Ellen Scanlon: If you take one thing away from this series, let it be that perimenopause can start at a much younger age than you might expect, and perimenopause can last a long time.

Dr Lauren Streicher: Perimenopause is all over the map. Some women, it’s honestly not even something they notice. They’re menstruating regularly and then they stop getting a period. And that’s it. They’re never buying another tampon again. And other women, it can go on for four, five, six, seven years. It is unpredictable. But strictly speaking, the medical definition is when you’ve no longer had a period for 12 months, then you are officially post menopause.

But that definition is [00:09:00] It’s highly problematic. And the reason is, is because almost half the women in our country no longer get regular menstrual periods, even if they’re making estrogen. Maybe because they’ve had a hysterectomy, or they’ve had a uterine ablation procedure, or they’re using an IUD that causes their periods to stop.

They’re not in menopause. They’re still making estrogen, but they’re not getting periods. Menopause is until you die, because by definition, if menopause is that your ovaries are no longer making estrogen, it’s not as if they’re going to start making estrogen. But what happens is a lot of women will say things like, I’m through with menopause.

And what they’re really saying is that they are no longer having symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes. or insomnia. But it’s important to know that the repercussions of no longer making estrogen are lifelong because we know that you have estrogen receptors in every single organ in your body, in your bone, [00:10:00] in your brains, in your vaginal tissues.

Menopause symptoms can

Ellen Scanlon: vary widely and it is going to affect every single woman. So how can we prepare ourselves? Dr. Good information early matters.

Dr Lauren Streicher: Women are desperate for good information and they’re listening, so start to get good information before you have the symptoms and then find a menopause expert who can really do the deep dive and figure out not only why you’re having symptoms, but what you can do about it.

Anyone that says to you, oh, this is no big deal, just tough it out, dress in layers, get a fan, don’t walk away from that person, run away from that person.

Ellen Scanlon: When I talk to women about menopause, the first thing I ask is how are you sleeping? Because for so many women, trouble sleeping [00:11:00] is a first sign that your hormones are shifting. And as you’ve heard and will hear throughout the series, not sleeping can set off a cascade of negative effects. mood swings, weight changes, low libido, the list unfortunately goes on.

I am very protective of my sleep and I’m grateful to have tools that help me. CBD is an essential part of my nighttime routine. I think of it like a sleep vitamin. If sleep has been elusive for you, I want to share what works best for me. Before bed, I take one Lazarus Naturals CBD plus CBN sleep capsule, which helps me stay asleep all night.

If I wake up, I have a Lazarus Naturals sleep oil tincture ready on my nightstand. You just put a dropper under your tongue and hold it for about 30 seconds. One of the reasons I’ve been waking up recently is because of my 10 year old [00:12:00] Maine coon cat. He is vocalizing in the middle of the night. It’s brutal.

When he wakes me up, I take a dropper of CBD sleep oil and I give him one too. We both fall back to restful sleep in about 10 or 15 minutes. Sometimes women tell me that CBD doesn’t work for them. Its effects can be subtle at first. It takes consistency. You’ll need to take it for at least two weeks before you’ll feel the full benefits.

But please know that if you’re struggling with sleep, you do not just have to power through. Try Lazarus Naturals, which is offering How to Do the Pot listeners 20 percent off with promo code DOTHEPOT. Go to LazarusNaturals. com today. Get the sleep support you need and wake up feeling like yourself again.

What is Dr. Stryker’s [00:13:00] advice if you’re starting to feel symptoms?

Dr Lauren Streicher: Your experience is always real. It is real to you. It has an impact. It makes a difference. The challenge is determining what has caused you to have that experience because you can’t begin to solve what the issues are unless you know what’s caused them.

And that’s challenging because is it midlife? Is it menopause? Or is it all of the above? And in most cases, quite frankly, it is more than one thing. And then the challenge is, okay, well, What do you fix first? As an example, if a woman comes to me and says, I have no libido, I have zero interest in sex. I would really, really, really like to have one of those drugs that is FDA approved to help with libido.

But then if I find out that she has pain with sex, no amount of drug is going to help her libido. If I find out that she hasn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in a month, that’s not going to help her libido. [00:14:00] So my approach is to say, Number one, we get rid of the pain. No pain is acceptable. And number two, we get you a decent night’s sleep, and then we’ll see how your libido is.

And more times than not, her libido’s just fine. So we all fall into the trap of treating the symptom that might be at the top of someone’s mind. You sometimes have to go a few layers down to find out what caused that symptom, and then that symptom takes care of itself.

Ellen Scanlon: In creating this series, I’ve asked a lot of women questions about menopause.

I’ve noticed the stories had something in common. Women said they, kind of suddenly, stopped feeling like themselves. Whether that’s not sleeping when you’re normally a great sleeper, losing interest in sex, extremely heavy periods, or having memory issues. In retrospect, they all saw this as a [00:15:00] sign that their hormones were starting to change.

At the time, it just felt confusing. Carrie Mapes, who you heard from at the beginning of the show, didn’t realize that it was perimenopause that was causing her brain fog and memory issues.

Carrie Mapes: I had a lot of brain fog, and I had actually driven myself to a memory institute, and I didn’t tell my friends, didn’t tell my family, because I was scared to death.

We have some Alzheimer’s and a few other issues in our family, and I thought for sure this was an early onset of something more along those lines. I found out that it was menopause. I think I was probably about 42. And so for me, that paramenopause time period really did last that kind of quintessential 10 years that people say that it can last.

It did for me. I spent a lot of time worrying about my cognition because I would get to the end of the sentence and not be able to. Pull out that last word that made it all make sense. And then I’d be talking in circles to [00:16:00] kind of course, correct, because I couldn’t find my words. I was forgetting whatever I went to the grocery store to get, you know, mom, I told you that was kind of a constant mantra at our house.

That was not like me. That wasn’t something that I struggled with before. So. That was on my mind a lot, and the spin off of that was I was distracted and worried a lot of the

Ellen Scanlon: time. California based Joan Irvine is a sexual health advocate and a cannabis educator. You’ll hear more from her throughout this series.

She remembers feeling a lot of confusion when her periods became much more frequent.

Joan Irvine: I was in my early 40s. And I noticed some changes happening in my body. For me, that was my periods were coming more frequent instead of every 28 days, it was becoming every 21 days. And then even every 14 days. I had horrible periods, used to be 28 days, I’d have my period where I’d have a little bit [00:17:00] of bleeding for a few days, and then it would subside.

Now all of a sudden it was flooding for a week. And it was taking over my life. But what happened is I had never heard of parent menopause before. So I wasn’t expecting menopause until my early 50s. So you can imagine my shock and my confusion. I mean, I just didn’t know what was going on.

Ellen Scanlon: And that confusion combined with the stigma of the word menopause, its negative association with feeling old, can often lead younger women to ignore their symptoms and try to just carry on.

Carrie Mapes and her co founder Patty Pappas were longtime friends who were curious and decided to check out a cannabis dispensary together one day. When they got to the store, they [00:18:00] realized it was menopause related symptoms that they were both trying to solve with cannabis.

Patty Pappas: When we went in, we, not having been cannabis users before, we started talking to the staff at the store and realizing there were so many things that they were saying that cannabis could help address that we were feeling ourselves.

It was the first conversation that day that we had that we were both feeling a lot of the same things because I think women don’t talk about their symptoms necessarily to other women. They, everyone thinks they’re going through whatever they’re going through on their own. So that was really liberating to know that we were.

Both going through the same thing and then to find out that there was some natural solution, a plant based solution that could help us sleep through the night, get our memory back a little bit, help with our focus, our anxiety, our mood or inflammation. It was a game changer for us.

Carrie Mapes: I think that’s part of what people suffer from when they’re suffering from menopause in menopause because it can be very isolating.

Also, I think people,

Patty Pappas: there’s such a negative connotation with [00:19:00] menopause that it’s end of life. And it happens when you’re much younger than you think it’s going to happen. So I was in my late 30s, early 40s when I started sweating at night through the sheets and having hot flashes. My doctor kept telling me, no, you’re not a menopause yet.

I didn’t know what was happening, but you just accept it and you move on like women do. But I think to remove that stigma around menopause so that it’s not an end of life disease or, you know, problem that women have. It’s just something that we have to work through to feel better and take charge of our lives.

It really set us down this path that, also as women in menopause, to have this new life. It also brought us this entirely new chapter in our life, which was great.

Ellen Scanlon: For Minnesota based Michelle Courtright, the founder of cannabis brand Jane, it was breast cancer treatment that caused early onset menopause.

She says that looking back, finding a community would have really helped her. So please, take this [00:20:00] as a sign to talk to your friends if you’re experiencing any symptoms.

Michelle Courtright: I just wish I had girlfriends at that point that had experience with menopause. I had early onset menopause because I had breast cancer and the chemotherapy had essentially knocked my ovaries out and it was terrible.

So at that age, none of my friends had experienced perimenopause or menopause and you know, first I wish I would have reached out to some support groups or at least found a podcast on menopause like this one. I just went through it alone and that is hell by itself because you have no idea what to take or even just to vent about it, about all the weird symptoms you get.

Ellen Scanlon: I asked Carrie and Patty what they wish they had known about menopause.

Carrie Mapes: If your kids are annoying you, your spouse is annoying you, your friends are annoying you, maybe it’s you. And, you know, that maybe that needs to be on the list. And I would, I would also say that we should be treating ourselves like we take care of our kids.

I mean, if my [00:21:00] kids had had Long term irritability or hot flashes or sleeplessness. I would have taken them to the doctor, but I didn’t do that I didn’t care for myself in the same way. I would have cared for my my own family

Patty Pappas: I just wish that I’d known what I was going through that it wasn’t gonna last forever That was a big thing.

Like is this my life now? Am I just gonna be sweating as I’m standing there talking to people? I wish I’d known that there was a plant based solution and not to turn to pharmaceuticals or alcohol to try to calm me down or make me think that I felt relaxed.

Carrie Mapes: I wish I’d known that it was going to last 10 years because I would have gone to a doctor.

You know, you always think you’re going to feel better tomorrow or next week, or this is just happening right now because it’s a really busy month or whatever. You know, I wish I’d known not to kind of explain it all away. I wish I’d known to take care of myself better. I wish also that I just kind of had the outlook on life that I have now.

That I had been, um, [00:22:00] I’ve just been a little bit more comfortable with my own skin and um, a little kinder to ourselves. Yeah.

Ellen Scanlon: Finding a doctor with expertise in menopause is a great way to be kinder to yourself. Dr. Stryker shares how to find one.

Dr Lauren Streicher: The message I really want to let women know is that there is help, there are experts, there are people who do know about menopause and can give you real solutions to whatever issues you’re having.

There’s an organization, the Menopause Society, menopause. org, and if you go to the find a practitioner link, you can put in your zip code, which will lead you to people in your area. who are truly experts. And in order to be a certified menopause practitioner, not only do you have to pass a very hard test, but you have to do continuing medical education in menopause [00:23:00] specifically.

So help is out there. You know, if you give someone good information, they’ll make good choices, but you have to steer someone to get good information.

Ellen Scanlon: Dr. Stryker knows that talking to your doctor about cannabis can be intimidating. She has some advice for how to get the best care.

Dr Lauren Streicher: When you talk about approaching your physician.

to talk about cannabis. And you find that he or she is just not knowledgeable and open to that discussion. I would say the same thing as I say to women who are trying to talk to their physicians about menopause and find that they’re not knowledgeable or open about to that discussion. And what I tell those women is, is just because your clinician can’t help you, doesn’t mean that help isn’t out there.

But you may have to take it a little further. You may have to find someone else. You may have to go out of state and do a tele visit with somebody who’s knowledgeable. Too many women just assume that if their own doctor can’t help them, that there is no help. [00:24:00]

Ellen Scanlon: Talking with Dr. Stryker has really inspired me to believe that menopause does not have to be a terrible time in a woman’s life.

And that information is power.

Dr Lauren Streicher: My mantra, if you will, is if women are given good information, they will make good choices. And I really made that my call to action because I know that women are smart. They’ve always been smart. And women are the ones that make healthcare decisions, not only for themselves, but for their families.

So I’ve really made that my mission is to give women The facts, the data, the good information, because I know after decades of working with women that if you give them the right information, they will thoughtfully and objectively make choices that are the right choices.

Ellen Scanlon: I hope you feel more educated about menopause.

Stay tuned for the next episode in the series. We’ll hear from [00:25:00] Dr. Stryker about hormone therapy and estrogen. Learn about a Harvard study on menopause and cannabis and find out what women have learned about menopause from their moms.

For lots more information and past episodes, visit DoThePot. com and that’s also where you can sign up for my Substack newsletter. If you like How to Do the Pot, please rate and review us on the podcast platform that you use for listening. It really helps more people find the show. Thank you to our producer, Nick Patry.

I’m Ellen Scanlon and stay tuned for more of how to do the pot.

Support for how to do the pot comes from Lazarus Naturals. Are you struggling with sleep issues? I take Lazarus Naturals sleep capsules. For me, it’s like a sleep vitamin. I [00:26:00] also keep a CBD oil tincture on my nightstand for those middle of the night wake ups. It works. Lazarus Naturals makes potent, effective CBD.

So you actually feel the benefits. Please prioritize your sleep. It really affects everything. And I have a promo code for you. Visit LazarusNaturals. com and use the code DoThePot for 20 percent off. I’ll add a link in the show notes with all the details.