Breaking the Silence: The Truth About Divorce and Menopause

Episode Description - The Truth About Divorce and Menopause

Divorce and menopause. Are they just two random events in a woman’s life? Or is there a connection between them?

In this podcast episode certified health coach and menopause specialist Denise Stegall explores how unaddressed menopausal changes can silently erode relationships. That’s especially true when couples stop communicating about intimate challenges like diminishing libido or the emotional upheaval that so often accompanies menopause.

Throughout this conversation, Denise tackles misconceptions about menopause, emphasizing that it's not a one-size-fits-all experience. She shares practical strategies, from tracking symptoms and optimizing hormones to managing mood swings, weight changes, and libido. 

All in all, while menopause may not directly cause divorce, when its symptoms go unrecognized and untreated, it can certainly contribute to it.

Whether you’re male or female, this candid conversation about a phenomenon that every woman will face will give you a depth of understanding that will help in your relationships with any woman.  

Show Notes

About Denise

Denise Stegall is a healthy lifestyle coach, international best-selling author, and culinary expert with over 25 years of experience in nutrition, mindset, and coaching. Armed with a professional plant-based certification, she empowers high-achieving women to navigate menopause and embrace vibrant, joyful living. Denise’s personalized approach blends nourishing whole foods, mental fitness, and overcoming self-doubt to create sustainable well-being. Her mission is to help women move better, feel better, and live better, making every moment of life rich with energy, purpose, and vitality.

Connect with Denise

You can connect with Denise on LinkedIn at Healthy Living with Denise Stegall and on Facebook at Denise Stegall and follow her on Instagram at Healthy Living With Denise and YouTube at Healthy Living With Denise.  To learn more about Denise’s work visit her website Denise Stegall and take her quiz Unlock the Key To Balance.

Key Takeaways From This Episode with Denise

• Denise Stegall is a health coach with 25+ years of experience, shares her personal journey with perimenopause that began unexpectedly at age 37, when doctors dismissed her symptoms or offered antidepressants rather than proper information.
• Menopause is technically just one day (the 12-month anniversary of a woman's last period), with perimenopause occurring before and post-menopause afterward; women typically spend about 30 years in post-menopause.
• Common symptoms include mood swings, sleep disturbances, weight gain (especially around the midsection), hot flashes, anxiety, fatigue, decreased libido, and vaginal dryness.
• Keeping a journal that tracks food, emotions, energy levels, and physical symptoms is crucial for identifying patterns and understanding what's happening in your body during this transition.
• Open and honest communication with partners is essential, as relationship issues often develop when women don't discuss their symptoms and experiences, leading to misunderstandings and disconnection.
• Sexual intimacy often decreases due to hormonal changes that reduce libido and cause painful intercourse, which can further damage relationships if not addressed openly.
• Hormone levels (especially progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone) begin declining around age 37 and continue dropping throughout perimenopause and post-menopause, affecting many bodily systems.
• The Dutch test can help women understand their hormone levels, providing a baseline to discuss with healthcare providers when seeking treatment options.
• Treatment approaches include traditional hormone replacement therapy (HRT), bioidentical hormones (which Stegall prefers), increased protein intake, and strength training to maintain muscle mass and bone density.
• Women should seek holistic practitioners, functional medicine doctors, or gynecologists who understand menopausal transitions rather than dismissing symptoms as "just a phase," and should advocate for themselves to get proper care.

Do you like what you've heard? 

Share the love so more people can benefit from this episode too!

Transcript

Breaking the Silence: The Truth About Divorce and Menopause

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

 self-advocacy, functional medicine, relationships, intimacy

SPEAKERS

Karen Covy,  Denise Stegall

Karen Covy: 0:10

Hello and welcome to Off the Fence, a podcast where we deconstruct difficult decision-making so we can discover what keeps us stuck and, more importantly, how we can get unstuck and start making even tough decisions with confidence. I'm your host, Karen Covy, a former divorce lawyer, mediator and arbitrator, turned coach, author and entrepreneur. And now, without further ado, let's get on with the show.

With me today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Denise Stegall, and Denise is a healthy lifestyle coach, international bestselling author and a culinary expert with over 25 years of experience in nutrition, mindset and coaching. Armed with a professional plant-based certification, she empowers high-achieving women to navigate menopause and embrace vibrant, joyful living.

Denise's personalized approach blends nourishing whole foods, mental fitness and overcoming self-doubt to create sustainable well-being. Her mission is to help women move better, feel better and live better, making every moment of life rich with energy, purpose and vitality. And I'll have all of that, thank you very much. So, Denise, you know, before we dive into all of the many things I want to ask you about here today, let's start with your journey. What brought you to work with women in menopause?

Denise Stegall: 1:49

So when I was 37 years old, I started to experience what I now know were perimenopausal symptoms. Back then nobody was using the word perimenopause. I'd gone to several doctors. Who says, oh, it's just a phase, you'll be fine. Oh, here, here's some anti-depression medicine, this will help you. Here's birth control. This will help you make the symptoms go away. Well, that wasn't answers. Those didn't answer the questions that I had. Well, why am I experiencing this? Is there something wrong with me? And it was really frustrating because, even though they were giving me options, they didn't seem like the right options. So I started to do a lot of research on my own and at 37, most women don't expect that they're in perimenopause. You know, we hear menopause and we just think it's kind of like that one time when you're 50, when you're 37 and you're going what the heck? Why am I experiencing these? You know these symptoms that old ladies have. You know, because when you're 37, you think 50 and plus is old. Now that I'm here, it's really not.

Karen Covy: 3:02

I know we do have a perspective shift around that. Absolutely Keep going.

Denise Stegall: 3:07

That's where it really started and my journey. I had ups and downs, really good years and some eh years because of course my body was changing and not really understanding what that really meant was very frustrating for me because I never really knew. You know what was I going to feel? I started to feel less attractive to my husband. Now he didn't say that, but I started to feel that way. I wasn't sleeping, so my cortisone levels were high, which means that I started to gain weight. And as an athlete, I just couldn't figure out what's going on. You know my background in cooking and culinary arts. I'm thinking what is really happening.

Denise Stegall: 3:53

So the more and more I delved in and did research and started doing research outside of traditional medicine. I started to put the pieces together and truly I decided that no woman should have to go through this one alone or go through this at all without somebody to give them the, not just the support but help them understand what's going on. And the interesting piece is everybody goes through menopause very differently. So, again, not knowing what this could be at 37 or 42 or however old somebody may be 55. I know a lady who's 55, who is nowhere near going through menopause. She's still very much in perimenopause, still very much in perimenopause, which isn't fair. But that truly is what started me down this path was my own journey.

Karen Covy: 4:53

So when you went down this journey, what did you find? What are the answers like? What should women be looking for and looking to do?

Denise Stegall: 5:07

Well, the first thing to understand, I think, is what is menopause? Menopause is one day of your life, literally. You know we think it's this whole big time. No, menopause is actually the 12th anniversary of the last time you had your menses. So that's it the one day. That's it. Now there's perimenopause that is going on until that day and then, from that day on, you're in post menopause. So most women are actually going to spend at least 30 years post menopause and again, we just call it menopause. So that's the first thing that I think is really important is to understand what it actually is.

Denise Stegall: 5:50

And yes, some people like me. I started at 37. I have a cousin who I found out a handful of years later, who started at 32. Wish I had known that when I was 37 would have been helpful. So it's a long. It's a long phase. You know when they, when the, when the doctor said to, when doctor said to me oh, Denise, it's just a phase. Another doctor who was a holistic practitioner said to me oh, Denise, this is going to be a long phase and that was not necessarily reassuring at the time, but it was clarifying. Now I knew that this was something I was going to have to deal with my whole life, so I better figure out what's really going on. What's going to work for me?

Karen Covy: 6:33

Yeah, I, I love that and as someone who has, let's simply say, reached that stage and since you, since you started at 37, we could both, both be young, we could both just be 40, right, not well, whatever, um so, but, but the point of it is that, you know, a woman reaches the stage in their life and I know when I like to think of myself as reasonably well informed. You know, I'm a fitness professional. On the side, I've done a lot of reading and research into health and nutrition and all the things, and there was a world of stuff that I didn't know, changes that were going to happen to my body that I didn't expect and I didn't know how to handle. For example, I thought hot flashes, okay, you have them for a couple of months, right? Nobody told me. Then I started talking to other friends and they're like oh, no, no, no, no, you can have this for the rest of your life. And I was like, oh, okay, wait, I did not sign up for this. Thank you very much.

Denise Stegall: 7:40

Nope, you were born into it.

Karen Covy: 7:42

That's just crazy.

Denise Stegall: 7:45

It is really crazy and that's why I think it's important for us to have these conversations, because we do. You know, our parents didn't talk about it. Whenever I, whenever I bring it up to my mom, she's like, well, I didn't, that didn't happen to me, I didn't go through that. And you know, mood swings, oh, I didn't have that. And my sister and I are like, yeah, you did for like two years. But sometimes when you're going through you don't recognize, especially if you're younger.

Denise Stegall: 8:13

So, mood swings, not sleeping as well, waking comes along with that, with not sleeping. So these are symptoms that, oh, you know, when you're in your 30s, early 40s, you're thinking, oh, I've got to go on another diet. Right, it's not about diet, it's your hormones. You know, you're basically all of your hormones are juggling around in your body, and so it's really important to have to have an idea, even at in, in your earlier 30s, um, to understand what could, what is coming. Because if you're starting to experience something and say you go to the doctor and they diagnose you with depression, like they told me, they wanted to put me on an antidepressant that really why? Because I had mood swings and that, classically, is part of depression, clinical depression. But I wasn't clinically depressed, I just had mood swings which I never had when I had my period when I was young. Never went through any of that Kind of came to me in a vengeance in menopause.

Karen Covy: 9:25

Well, you know, and what I wanted to talk with you about specifically, on the show too, is that it's like you said, there are all these changes that are happening in women's bodies that they may or may not recognize, depending on how prepared they are, how educated they are. And what effect, not only on someone's body, on a woman's body, but what effect does this have on her psyche, in her relationships? Because, to your point, all of a sudden, you started feeling like you weren't so attractive to your husband. Right, and if you had, you know, if you're like, if you had shut down or you had said, oh, there's something wrong with my husband, you and I would have been having a conversation a very long time ago, right, and so the. But the question is, when women are going through all these changes, how can they isolate what's a physical change from an emotional change, from a there's something wrong with my relationship? How do they figure all this out?

Denise Stegall: 10:25

Well, I think it starts with knowing yourself. And this is kind of stepping back, because you know you know your physical health, your mental health, your emotional health, spiritual health I'll even throw that one in there. They're all connected. So when something's off, they're all a little wonky, right, and you do need to kind of step back. And this is where I say get a journal, write stuff down, because you don't know what's really happening until you look back, like so, for two weeks I had a doctor who said this to me.

Denise Stegall: 11:00

She was actually a nurse with a holistic practitioner. For two weeks she said to me I want you to log what you're eating, how you're feeling, emotions, all of the things that you experience. I want you to do that for two weeks. And I thought, geez, one more thing to do. It was the best thing that we could have done, because when we went back to those two weeks, I noticed when my energy was dropping. I noticed the days when I had like more, when I felt it wasn't mood swings at this point, but it was feeling anxious and kind of angry Like that to me wasn't a mood swing, that was a real feeling and that is not typical of me.

Denise Stegall: 11:51

So, I started to understand that there was a pattern here, and you don't know that there's a pattern until you write it down. So that's the first place I think we all need to start, and with most of my clients we talk about that like with a food journal. So people have done this before. This isn't new. But what is new is adding your emotional, your emotions, and your physical, emotional and mental, because emotional and mental are slightly different. Yeah Right, emotions kind of just. You know, emotions come and go. Mental state is much is a bit more constant or consistent.

Karen Covy: 12:31

Yeah, that makes sense, so. So somebody would start by keeping the journal and then they see what are they looking for when they look back.

Denise Stegall: 12:40

They're looking for What are my moods? If did, do they notice at two o'clock in the afternoon, all of a sudden they're anxious or they're angry, or do they notice they're having, you know their, their mood swings, like they have a. They're really high or really low, like in the morning they feel really good and then by noon their energy is waning. But with that energy their patience is waning. They want to eat more. They eat a lot more snacky foods, kind of comfort foods. Those are telling. It's very telling, because it's not typically. It's not typically something that our body needs, right, it doesn't need all this extra stuff. Emotionally we think we need it Interesting. So a lot of that ends up being emotional eating.

Karen Covy: 13:41

Let me ask you another question then. Let's say this hypothetical woman is having, she's experiencing what you know is menopausal symptoms, but you're saying, okay, track what you're eating, track how you're sleeping, you're feeling, all the things. If she is also, at that point, having relationship issues, should she track something about that and if so, what?

Denise Stegall: 14:07

The relationship issue comes down to one important piece communication. It sounds like it's nothing, but it's huge. When you're going through something, your partner's going through it too. Whether you believe that or not, trust me, they know they're going through, they know you're going through something because it's affecting their life, and so to be honest and open with what you're feeling good, bad and indifferent I think that's really an important part, and it's something that we don't focus on almost until it's too late.

Karen Covy: 14:47

You know, we start to get to a point where you know I'm, you know you've kind of you know, crossed the Rubicon and like there's no going back with a lot of therapists over the years just because of the work that I do, and a lot of therapists will say to me that by the time people go to marriage counseling, their relationship is so degraded that it becomes extremely difficult to pull it back off the cliff. Right, and so if people would simply and I think it's like anything else, for example, cancer treatment right, If you go to the doctor when you're stage four, that's a very different experience than if they catch a cancer at stage one, So it sounds like that's what you're saying. It's like get things early.

Denise Stegall: 15:39

Yes, now, when I first went to see the doctor, my husband said to me he pulled me aside one day. Actually, we were in the hallway at the house and he just stopped me and he spun me around, he looked me dead in the face and he said Denise, we've got to figure out what's going on with you, because there's something going on and you're driving me crazy. And you're driving me crazy and, yeah, ouch, but I hadn't, I had been feeling stuff but I didn't express it no-transcript, right, when we, you know, we get busy in life, right, if you have kids, you have a spouse, whatever busy job, we get busy. And we're I hate the word busy, four letter word busy but what? Our schedules are so full that we're constantly at some point just kind of going through the motions and you get up, you go to, you know you have breakfast, you go to go to work, do your thing, pick up the kids, go, do, drop them off at whatever home.

You know, it just is this one big cycle, right, and there doesn't seem to be time for a conversation and we get to that point where we're starting to feel crappy through these days and through these years.

Denise Stegall: 17:02

But we don't pinpoint it until it gets to kind of be the oblique moment where you know there's been a blow up or something's happened, very similar to when clients come to me because they've been diagnosed with type two diabetes and now they have to change their diet. Well, it's a lot easier to do something because you want to do something than when you have to do something Right. So, when you're feeling, you know when you're, you know feeling these challenges and they're they are challenges. You know opportunities challenges no, they're a pain in the neck, you know menopausal symptoms are a pain because there are so many of them and they come at you in different times when you're not expecting it. So, being aware and this is why I really love the law being aware of what's going on with you personally, professionally, mentally, physically, emotionally if you're aware of what's going on, you can have that conversation with your spouse or your partner and even your kids, because, trust me, your kids are even affected by this.

Karen Covy: 18:09

Well, yeah, it's like you said. You and your sister knew your mother was having mood swings, but that makes so much sense. Let's, if we can, talk about another one of the menopausal symptoms and how it affects not just the woman but her relationships, and that's libido. Oh yeah, how does that play into menopause?

Denise Stegall: 18:32

So with when the hormones are dropping, progesterone and estrogen are the two big ones. Testosterone does also play a bit of a link in there, but really it's the progesterone and the estrogen. What happens is we actually start losing progesterone when we're 37. Yeah, I know, Nobody tells you that either right? Progesterone and estrogen are. You know they're kissing cousins, they need each other. So what ends up happening is when we have this estrogen dominance, as they say, because there's more of it, and then even then that starts dropping. Our whole body is just kind of going. It's kind of saying to us okay, I don't know what's going on, there's too many things going on.

Denise Stegall: 19:20

There's three types of estrogen, but estradiol is the big one and that's the one that we want to make sure when we're looking to have children. You know, we need to know where that is. When that drops, you know because, think about it estradiol, pregnancy, babies, you have a lot more sex than, or the way our bodies were meant to. What we're built is that's when we were supposed to, um, really have this high level. That's dropping. Our need for the libido essentially goes away. Because when you think of it as biologically, after you're through your childbearing years and you get the kids out of the house, you know biologically, you know you're kind of obsolete, right, we know, we know we're not.

Karen Covy: 20:17

But in that respect, right, you're not going to have more

Denise Stegall: 20:28

So the loss of libido is one thing, but then, of course, there's the dryness and the painful sex. All of that drops your libido even more. So you don't have the desire, and the lack of libido is the desire. Now, I mean, most women would still, you know, oh, okay, my husband wants to. You know, have a little fun, why not? But if it hurts and it's hard to do, it's painful, who you don't want to do that? And again, then there's the conversation. This is where you have to have a conversation, honey. This is painful, something you know. We need to talk about this because, again, the husband doesn't really know what's going on in your body and now he thinks it's something to do with him. He's doing something wrong, right, right. And so then there's this, this negativity when it comes to the intimacy between the two people. Well, of course, we know now there's lots of things we can do for libido, for dryness and painful sex. I mean, there's lots of lubes and creams and all sorts of pills that actually work.

Karen Covy: 21:34

That's good. The fact that they work, that's important. They work, yes, but so a woman. What do you see? You've worked with a lot of women and let's say she's having the mood swings or the hot flashes, or the different symptoms. Her libido is dropping. What happens to her relationship if she doesn't have the conversations with her husband because, or he doesn't want to have the conversations with her for whatever reason, they're not happening? What's the effect on the relationship?

Denise Stegall: 22:08

yeah, um, you know we always say as women, you know, sex isn't everything in relationship, but it is a big part of a relationship really, the intimacy piece. When you think of you know being with your partner, I mean you can't, you, you can't get any closer than that, right You're kind of connected. You know body, mind and spirit. Let's just say so when. But if the woman is feeling all of these symptoms and her libido's in the toilet, kind of gone on permanent vacation, it's not permanent ladies, and they're not having that, they're not having sex, they're not having that intimacy. The longer that they go without, the further apart they actually are.

Denise Stegall: 23:04

I always think of in midlife. You know you want to be walking down the same path as your partner, right, and what happens when we're not having these conversations and you know we're not having sex with our partners? You know, all of a sudden we're, you know we're kind of going down two different roads, right, and are they going to merge again? Maybe, but if, if they keep going farther and farther apart, you're looking at different. You know you have different desires and whatever that might be, you're going in two different directions.

Denise Stegall: 23:39

Yeah, how do you bring that relationship back Right? It's almost like you said before you know, by the time people go to counseling, it's almost too late, and so that's why I always encourage my clients, no matter what, always have open communication with your partner, because if you don't, you won't have that partner. And I hate to, I hate to say that, lady, it's not all on you, it's not. You know, it is about a conversation, because you are the person who are, you know who's feeling the feelings and experiencing the symptoms. So it is a bit on you. But if you have that conversation, then it's on both of you, Right, and it brings that relationship to a different level, brings that relationship to a different level.

Karen Covy: 24:25

Yeah, and I think you're so right. And what you know? Just statistically I don't know if you know this because it's not your wheelhouse, but statistically speaking, the biggest demographic, a growing demographic of people who are getting divorced, are middle-aged people right, it's the whole gray divorce phenomenon and there's a reason for that. And sometimes, you know, because I work with women, I work with men, and sometimes the men will just say to me I don't know what happened, my wife has gone crazy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They don't know what to do with it.

Karen Covy: 24:56

And sometimes that's true, and sometimes the woman had the wife has just been keeping her mouth shut for a very long time and she's like no, no, no, no, this isn't menopause, this has been going on for a decade, but she just hasn't said anything about it, right? So it's hard to separate what's what. But you know, women get to a point and if they, they don't. I don't think we as women often recognize how important sex is to a romantic, intimate relationship. Because once that to your point, once people start walking down those separate roads, I've had people, both men and women, say to me we're living like roommates.

Denise Stegall: 25:37

Yeah, yeah. Well, what also happens during this time when women aren't feeling well and we're gaining weight and not doing the right things about that, because that's something again, you know, I was a person who I was a size two forever. Right, I'm not a size two anymore, but you know, I never struggled with my weight until I did. And then, you know, with my background, you would think that I would know how to fix that. I know now what to do, but at one point, like I mentioned, like I kind of felt like I wasn't as attractive to my husband because I had gained some weight and you know, that's not the woman he married. No, granted, we're never, I'm never going to look like I did when I was 30. I'm 54, almost 54. Right, but what happens to too many women is they just kind of go This is just my new body. I'm aging. You know I'm aging, I'm getting older, or I'm getting old Ladies, we're never getting old. We're getting older. Okay, you know, when you're old, the day you take your last breath, then you're old and then you're that's, that's to me. That's old, right. But if you're still alive and breathing and have, you know, life in you, you're just getting older, right. So it's important for us to for our mental and emotional health to still, you know, get our haircut some makeup on, you know look good for you. Yeah, sure, you know my husband. You know he has a benefit of me. You know, looking good, but I look good for me. It makes me feel good about myself. It gives me great confidence Right now. I'm five foot tall. I'm not a supermodel, but I feel good about who I am and I feel good in my body, as imperfect as it is at 54.

Karen Covy: 27:29

Yeah Well, I don't know for those of you who are listening and can't see Denise, she is looking very good. I have to say you are beautiful. But the point is, even though you look beautiful on the outside and every woman I know has been through this, myself included it's about how you feel on the inside, because if I feel like I look like a schlub, it doesn't matter what I'm wearing. It doesn't matter if my hair's done or, you know, I'm wearing makeup or not wearing makeup. I still I carry myself different, I have a different energy and it starts to affect a lot of different aspects of my life. So the question that I have for you is let's say, a woman is starting to feel her body changing in a variety of ways and she figures okay, it's perimenopause, it's menopause, it whatever is going on with her, what can she do? What can she do so that she doesn't end up going into a doctor's office and having somebody try to prescribe antidepressants for her? What are her better alternatives?

Denise Stegall: 28:38

A couple of things. So one of the things that I did was I actually went to a bioidentical maybe she wasn't a bioidentical hormone specialist, but I think that's what she was and what I wanted to find out was where my hormone levels were. Now, hormones fluctuate, you know, during the day. You know every day they're a little different, but they're not going to be really high one day and then really low the next. So this test it's called the Dutch test and you can order it online. It gives you a report. It's a pretty interesting because it will test your estrogen and progesterone, testosterone, cortisol. It'll test your adrenals. So a lot of times, adrenal fatigue is real.

Karen Covy: 29:28

What is adrenal fatigue?

Denise Stegall: 29:30

for those who might not know, Adrenal fatigue basically is when you have been dealing with stress, like long periods of stress physical, emotional, mental work stress for so long that your body basically just collapses. It just gives in. Now, for, interestingly, it's not a medical term. It is a medical term but it's a diagnosis. Okay, but they test the adrenals and they say you know you have this adrenal dysfunction, say you know you have this adrenal dysfunction. So that's, that's a real thing. So we want to make sure that we don't get to that point. Okay, I may have lost. I may have gotten so excited, I lost the question.

Karen Covy: 30:17

No, the, the. The question is okay. So what can people do? And you were talking about starting by getting this test to find out where are you at hormonally

Denise Stegall: 30:29

Right. So the Dutch test, and it's so. When I took mine the first time, the way they measure the hormones is, or the way they show it on the results, is like your gas tank in your car, full or empty, and that even tells you where you know, depending on your age, where you kind of should be. Well, let me tell you, all of mine were down and empty. So all of my, my progesterone, estrogen, testosterone all in the tank, at the bottom of the tank. Well, of course, that's why I felt so bad. Now, when I took that to my regular gynecologist, she kind of poo-pooed it because, well, you know, your hormones change, blah, blah, blah. They're starting to talk more the nontraditional physicians and more medical. They're starting to talk together. But now you have to be an advocate for your own health. So the reason I like this test is because it gives you a baseline right when you go to the gynecologist they don't necessarily give you this test.

Karen Covy: 31:31

Okay, so let's say you take the test. Do you need a prescription to get this, or there are places you can get it?

Denise Stegall

No, you can just buy it online.

Karen Covy

Okay, so you go online, you take it's the Dutch test. Okay, you, you find a place to do this. You go order one and you get the results back and every all of your gas tanks are on empty. All of your dials are on. You know they're lower than they're supposed to be. What do you do with that?

Denise Stegall: 31:58

That's when you have you have a decision. You can take that to your gynecologist, your regular doctor, and say, hey, this is what I've been feeling, this is what I'm experiencing, this is what I believe is the problem. I'm this age, I'm dealing with these symptoms, which we know are menopausal symptoms. What would you suggest? Now? Your regular doctor is probably going to suggest hormone replacement therapy, so that is an option, and there are pros and cons to that. What I think is a better option, and this is what I chose. So, of course, this is depends on the person. I went, I decided to take bioidentical hormones based on my hormone levels, and there's, there's a couple of companies that I, that I just I really have true good faith in, and so that was, that was something that, or that's one of the pieces. The other piece, though, is I always say it's important to work for at least for a short period of time, with a nutritionist and a physical, a personal trainer, because your body is changing, your body composition is changing, as we're losing our estrogen and progesterone and testosterone, our bone density is decreasing. So we don't want to lose our bone density. Our muscle mass is decreasing. We want to make sure that we have muscle mass, not just to look good Well, that's, you know, a benefit but really to think about.

Denise Stegall: 33:32

You know, your old grandma who, like, couldn't get out of the chair, you know, without using our arms and struggling right, that's not normal. It happens a lot, but you know our we don't need to do that. We don't need to get to that point where we're so weak, we have so little energy and muscle strength that we can't get up out of a chair. A test that I give to a lot of my clients I tell them to sit down on the floor and then get up without using their hands. 90% of them can't do it. They don't have the strength in their legs, in their glutes, in their core. And if you work with a nutritionist one, they're going to tell you to up your protein, because we need protein at this stage in our life. Yes, carbohydrates give us energy, but if you really want to make sure you're going to keep muscle mass, it's protein. Protein is king.

Karen Covy: 34:36

Does that mean that vegetarian diets are out, or is vegetable protein enough?

Denise Stegall: 34:43

Now for me, I've tried that. I've tried going vegetarian. It didn't feel well. I felt very weak when I did it. Now there are definitely people who are vegetarian, who are bodybuilders and who are athletes. These are people who know exactly how to measure and cook a certain way to make sure they're getting enough of the proteins. Cook a certain way to make sure they're getting enough of the proteins. And I'm not talking, you know, the fake meat proteins. I mean real protein. You know it's a lot of quinoa, it's a lot of beans, it's a lot of carbohydrates. So you're still having a lot more carbohydrates than you are protein on a vegetarian diet. Okay.

Karen Covy: 35:23

So let's say so somebody they do the journal, they get the test they start working with like a nutritionist like you and or a personal trainer. Is that enough, or are they going to need some sort of hormone replacement, whether it's bioidentical or whatever the doctor gives you?

Denise Stegall: 35:48

What I understand with losing progesterone and estrogen. Now think about this. I'm 54,. I'm three years post-menopausal.

Karen Covy: 35:56

Okay.

Denise Stegall: 35:56

My progesterone is still dropping, my estrogen is still dropping, it's going to continue to drop. So my hormones are going to continue to just be all over the place. What I'm noticing more and more and I have to do a little bit more study about this when your hormones are off, like estrogen, estrogen works with your thyroid, Estrogen works with your thyroid. So again, all of these are, you know, kind of kissing cousins. They all work together, Right, and that's why we say hormone balance. What happens with a lot of women is, all of a sudden they start to have thyroid issues, hormone problem, right. They start to have other hormonal challenges as we get older. So what I have learned is that we always need to have a balance of estrogen and progesterone. It's not going to be as high as what it was when we were 30. But what I have experienced and what I have learned through not just personal but really reading and researching, is that bioidentical hormones you can be on for a long period of time, Traditional hormone therapy they want to take you off after a few years.

Denise Stegall: 37:13

Why? Increase of breast cancer, cardiovascular you know estrogen is important for cardiovascular, for heart health also. But if they're taking you off now, you don't have that protection. Bioidentical hormones are plant-based derivative and actually work along with your natural hormones. HRT is not. I hate to say this, but it's kind of yucky. It's made from horse urine. Oh yeah, I know it's kind of gross, but and it's, it's pregnant. It's actually pregnant mares. Yeah, I know.

Karen Covy: 37:56

They don't tell you that either.

Denise Stegall: 37:58

Yikes, just knowing that, I was like, yeah, I don't want to take that.

Karen Covy: 38:02

Oh, all right. So let me ask you a question. Let's say that there's a woman who's listening to this who is post-menopausal, so that ship has sailed and she wasn't taking hormone replacement therapy. And I know that in the medical, the traditional medical route, if you don't take HRT you know at the time that you need it then they're just like okay, too late, you can't do this. Is the same thing true with bioidentical hormones?

Denise Stegall: 38:32

No, that's the nice thing about it. So I would you know this, and this is this is where I think it's important to find a doctor who is going to work with you on this, because you know my, my levels are going to be different than your levels.

Denise Stegall: 38:47

Right, my levels are different from my sister's levels, my sister's 50, and she's like barely having any trauma, any symptoms. Again, not fair. So, again, you know, our levels are going to be different. And working with certain companies or certain types of doctors, you know, will definitely help you to figure out where you are, what's right for you, and that's this is where this individualized medicine concept comes from right. What, what works for me is not going to work necessarily for you. Right, you know it's not a one size fits all, and there are some companies that you know, bioidentical companies that kind of start you off, like everybody at the same, because they're not testing. Right, but hey, if you go that route and it works, God bless, but okay.

Karen Covy: 39:44

So a couple more quick questions. One is like if a woman wants to go down this road of nontraditional medicine, what kind of a practitioner, who's she looking for?

Denise Stegall: 39:58

She's looking for a holistic practitioner, potentially a gynecologist, who is also a functional medicine doctor. Functional medicine is an important kind of covers a lot of things. So functional medicine, holistic naturopath, one of those type of doctors and again, a regular gynecologist, may be very supportive of this route as well. Now I would say in my experience the younger ones still didn't kind of get it because they hadn't been through it. But a female gynecologist was definitely a lot easier to talk to about this than the head of gynecology that I spoke to one year who told me it was just the phase. Oh, okay, well, he wasn't so good.

Karen Covy: 40:50

Well, he kind of was right, it is a phase. It's just different than what he meant. It sounds like Just a long phase. Yeah, just a very long phase. You know, Denise, thank you so much for sharing all the wisdom. If you had to leave the audience with one nugget of wisdom that you haven't already shared and you've dropped a bunch of them what would you say? If a woman is not feeling herself, whether she's in her thirties, forties, fifties or beyond, what would you say to her?

Denise Stegall: 41:22

If you are feeling different than you have in the past, you're not crazy, you're not broken. There is something going on. Be your best advocate and go and do some research. You know, connect with me. I can help point you in a good direction. Right, but take your health seriously, because the you tackle this and get on a good path, the easier it is going to be for the long haul. And when we talk about life, you know we're thinking longevity, we're thinking like I said. You know, at 54, I'm looking at least another 30 something years post menopause, 30 something years post-menopause, starting at 37, or if you start early and understand what can you know can happen, you can go through the phases a lot easier. Not that it's going to, you know, be without. You know bumps here and there, but you can manage the transition and navigate it so much smoother.

Karen Covy: 42:23

Yeah, that makes so much sense and you know, my takeaways from this are our number one. Knowledge is power and that people you know women need to talk with someone like you and other practitioners who have experience, because we've kept our mouths shut for too long it and they don't talk to their spouses about it, and communication is also important. So, Denise, thank you for sharing everything that you have with our audience. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, where's the best way for them to do that?

Denise Stegall: 42:57

They can always go to my website, which is denisestegall.com, and I'll give you the information for the show notes. But you can also find me on social media, LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm there quite a bit with some nuggets here and there, and there you can find me at Healthy Living with Denise.

Karen Covy: 43:18

That's wonderful. And, for those who are listening, everything is going to be linked in the show notes. You'll be able to get to Denise's website, to all her social medias, to all the places where Denise lives. So except her house, that's kind of awful.

Denise Stegall: 43:32

That's okay.

Karen Covy: 43:34

That's probably a good thing. So thank you again, Denise. I've really appreciated it and, for those of you who are watching or listening, if you've enjoyed today's episode, if you'd like to hear more content, just like this, do me a big favor. Like the episode, subscribe. Subscribe to the podcast, to the YouTube channel, give this a thumbs up. It makes a huge difference. So, thank you, and I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thank you.