Episode Transcript
Speaker 0
Welcome to this is perimenopause, the podcast where we delve into the transformative journey of perimenopause and beyond. I'm one of your hosts, Michelle. And I'm your other host, Michelle.
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And we know firsthand how confusing, overwhelming, and downright lonely this phase of life can be.
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Join us as we share real life stories and expert advice to help you navigate this journey and advocate for your best health. We used to
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think menopause signaled an end, but really, it's just the beginning.
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Shirley Weir, the founder of Menopause Chicks is back, and she's here to tell us about what she's been up to since we last spoke. Man, has she been busy. We talk about Shirley's new app called The Nest, her work with the Women's Health Research Institute in British Columbia, and her list of fifty eight things she wants to see change in women's health in her lifetime. Things like saying goodbye to tolerating heavy bleeding, learning to honor and prioritize the vulva, and deploying out of the box thinking to fund desperately needed women's health research. Shirley also coaches us on how to speak menopause so that we can advocate for what we need in our medical appointments and get past the gatekeeping and dismissal that are all too common when women present with real symptoms and concerns. If you already know Shirley, you know why you don't wanna miss this episode. If you don't know Shirley, tune in and find out why she's one of our favorite people.
Speaker 1
Welcome, Shirley. We're so excited to have you on the show today.
Speaker 2
Thank you. How are you doing?
Speaker 1
Oh my gosh. It's been wonderful. It's been a while since we chatted.
Speaker 2
It's been a bit. Yeah. Time goes so fast, but what time goes fast when you love what you do.
Speaker 1
Absolutely. Tell us, well, for our listeners that don't know you, give us a little blurb and then tell us what you've been up to for the last little bit.
Speaker 2
Okay. Sure. My name is Shirley. I'm the founder of Menopause Chicks. I'm fifty eight years old. I reached menopause when I was forty nine, and I love what I do Yeah. Which is support women, with evidence based information and interpretation, menopause to postmenopause journey.
Speaker 0
Yeah. Amazing. And you were doing this long before it was cool. Are we is it twelve years, Thirteen?
Speaker 2
Cool now? Good. That's good. That's a good update.
Speaker 0
We're cool. Oh, surely. You don't know? We're cool. We're super cool. Just ask my children.
Speaker 2
You are super cool, and your kids know it for sure. Yes. Menopause Chicks will be thirteen years old this year. It started as a blog, and I hosted some events. And then the other day, I was on Facebook, and in the morning, they pop up an anniversary. And it's nine years this week since I started the menopause community on Facebook. Wow.
Speaker 0
And where are you at now with followers in your communities in your
Speaker 2
Nearly fifty nine thousand.
Speaker 0
That's amazing. Oh, and in in
Speaker 2
a private community. Yeah. So it's busy. It's full.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. That's gotta be a lot of work.
Speaker 2
It's a lot of questions, and it really like, at the end of the day, it just really solidifies. Like, this is not always me answering the same question over and over again, although there is a bit of that. It it's astounding, the number of unique questions and the individuals out there. I mean, it just underscores how unique our journey each of us.
Speaker 0
Can I also plug this a little bit? I just wanna say for our listeners who aren't really familiar or haven't run a group on Facebook or right. It it's a lot of work.
Speaker 2
It's a lot.
Speaker 0
But it's particularly a lot of work for you because there are Facebook groups and there are Facebook groups, and you are very particular about what information is running through that group and you're, you know, fighting the disinformation, the misinformation. And that is, you know, a huge, huge effort and a lot of work on your part. So thank you for doing that. And if anyone is thinking about, I'd love to join a face group Facebook group and just figure out what's going on. Shirley's is one you want to join because you're not gonna suddenly find yourself eating, like, tiger toad nails ground up into sorry. I'm being flippant. But you know what I mean? Like, there's a lot of stuff out there that's not safe and reputable.
Speaker 2
No. Thank thank you for saying that. It's, it's on Facebook because that's the social platform of choice for the demographic that I serve. And so I get that, but thank you so much for acknowledging that because it's not like other Facebook groups. In fact, I had an individual just a couple of weeks ago who runs a gardening group, and she couldn't understand why her question hadn't been approved. And I'm like, well, there's guidelines, and I'm not talking about gardening. And so and I don't mean to be disrespectful to that because, of course, there's so many subjects there, but I just think it's really important that you have acknowledged the fact that no one is going to say, you know, Sally said this. They're going to say I heard on menopause checks. And so every time that brand is mentioned, I want it to be mentioned in the context of, you know, that it's backed up by research. It's still gonna get misinterpreted every now and then, what I say or what I write, but at least I can always trace it back to
Speaker 1
the The evidence.
Speaker 2
Yeah. The the source the source.
Speaker 1
Amazing. Thank
Speaker 0
you. Yep. So in addition to that group, tell us about all the cool stuff you've got going on.
Speaker 2
Well, I did launch an app, earlier this year, with a smallish group of my members. It's called the nest, and it's intended to be a soft place to land away from social media. I created it because people were asking for it. A lot of, you know, a lot of people will be like, my sister's not on Facebook. How can she get the information? Or I really found at the beginning of twenty twenty five, I was getting a lot of indications that folks were turning away from some social platforms for maybe other reasons other than, health and menopause. And so I just wanted to create a place that's like you can set your own notifications. The information is not driven by an algorithm. It's your choice to be there and to show up, and it also allowed me to house a lot of the directional. Like, I point people to a lot of resources, videos, books, etcetera, websites, etcetera. And, when you come to the nest, you have a library that's already curated for you.
Speaker 1
And vetted, which is And vetted. Which is important too. Yeah. And and you also did, something with, in BC called Her BC. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Thanks for bringing that up. So as you know, we're all huge, fans of research, and there is an abysmal amount of women's health research. Like, seriously, doctor, Lisa Galea just announced this morning that it's less than seven percent of all research dollars in Canada are allocated to women's health. So let me just say that again. Less than seven percent of all research health research dollars are allocated to women's health research. And here's what she and her colleagues have found after reviewing all of the data. That number has not changed in thirteen years. Jesus.
Speaker 1
Wow. And, sorry, when you say women's health, you're not just talking menopause. You're talking about women's health.
Speaker 2
We're usually talking cancer and arthritis and, I mean Fertility and fertility. I mean, you know what didn't even make the list were things like endometriosis and PMDD and PCOS. I mean, it's abysmal.
Speaker 0
It's
Speaker 2
abysmal. Anytime that I have a chance to highlight or celebrate research that is happening, I love too. So thanks for asking. As you know, in twenty twenty three, the Menopause Foundation of Canada released a report around women menopause and women in the workplace, and that, shone a light on what unmet health needs are are costing us. And when I say us, I mean society as a whole. And then last year in twenty twenty four, I had the good fortune of working with the Women's Health Research Institute here in BC, and we have published a study called the HEER BC, and HEER is for like, the h and e is for health and economics. Mhmm. So kind of along the same line. I would say that what, the findings have shown us, mirrored what we learned about other women in Canada, but health care decisions are made provincially. It was really important to do it at the provincial level even though the findings will benefit, you know, women across Canada and throughout the world. So
Speaker 1
Was the goal of that part of the goal of that to get a billing code for menopause, or do you you don't have that in BC currently?
Speaker 2
No. We don't have a billing code for menopause. That's so funny. That's on my wish list.
Speaker 1
Oh, good. Yes. Oh, can't wait
Speaker 0
to get to that too. Are there other things coming out of this report that are being worked on, or was it really the the sort of the, hey. We have a problem. Somebody pay attention.
Speaker 2
It's interesting when we talk about health research because on one hand, maybe you don't lay awake at night thinking about this, but I do. A lot of research sits on a shelf. Yeah. A lot of research that does get funded and approved doesn't get actioned or doesn't have accountability factors built in or doesn't have the means to action it. It. And that's really concerning. And that I came late to that, conclusion as well. Like, just recently, as you know, I've been, I every day, I speak to a piece of research called the in her words dot c a study, and that was about how women, experience health care. And what we found was that fifty four percent of women in this demographic experience dismissal and disappointment at their health appointments. It's even higher for women of color, and the top two reasons for their visit in the first place was related to menstruation and menopause. And so I am trying to provide some action for the women in my community because their experiences mirror what the data says. A lot of the, work and interpretation that I do for members of the menopause chicks community, it kind of ends with a punctuation point where my doctor said blank, period. And then they don't know what to do with that or how to respond to it. So yeah.
Speaker 0
Well, you developed, I speak menopause. Maybe tell us a little bit about that, and then maybe you could run us through A coaching session. Michelle and I have endless exam personal examples that we could provide you that really need some help. So, yeah, let's, let's do that.
Speaker 2
So there's kind of two sides of the speak menopause method. One size is one side is really to focus in, increase awareness around the agency that we have over our health decisions. Sometimes, a lot of the time, we need a reminder that we are the driver of our health bus. It's not someone else making a decision for our health. It's a team that we surround ourselves with who we hopefully can lean on and, and pull from their experience, their education, and their expertise to help us make the decision that's best for us. So examples of how that might translate into your doctor's appointment could sound like, thank you for that, but that doesn't sound like it will work for me. Another example might be, I was hoping that you wouldn't have a one word answer to my question, but that you could maybe describe two or three choices that are I have available.
Speaker 1
Oh my god. I love, love, love. So good.
Speaker 2
I know. It's way easier for me to sit here and throw out these examples than to practice in real life, but the keyword is practice. When you practice it, it really is empowering. And I saw saw the look on your face, Michelle, and it's like it's like that.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
I use a lot of analogies, so I like I like to remind, your listeners and members of my group, you know, think about when you go into your hair the hairdresser, when you even go into a mechanic's shop, you don't be like, do whatever you like. You know, I'll be back. I'll be back. Whatever you decide's fine. Right? Yeah. No. We actually go in with a goal. So that's the second part of the speak menopause method is just to prepare your script and there's two things I'd like to say about that. One is in the preparation and this actually came out of my own experience I'm going to admit you know, you make an appointment and then three weeks go by and it pops up on your calendar and you, like, maybe drop off the kids or you're driving and you're leaving work early and you're driving and you're parking, you get in the elevator and you go up and then you're like, why am I here again? Right. Oh, right. It's because of my insomnia because, you know, I've been dealing with that for the last six months of my life. So your doctor walks in. Hi, Shirley. And and you're like, oh, yeah. No. Good. Yeah. No. Oh, yeah. They're growing really fast. Yeah. Oh, I can't believe how fast time flies. Right? How are your kids? And then boom. Five minutes have been eaten up with niceties. And I'm okay with niceties. I love my doctor. Just move shift them to the end if you have time for them. There's two acronyms that I use. One is GAP, g a p, and the other one is SPEAK. So GAP is goal of the appointment. That's not your symptoms. That's I want you to imagine how you wanna walk out of that appointment. So I'm here today to talk to you about a solution for my insomnia. As you know, I'm fifty eight. My last period was in twenty sixteen. Then you speak to the symptoms. My symptoms are that I wake up every day at three AM, and I cannot get back to sleep. This has been happening consistently five to six times a week for the last six months. Give them the data because they are scientists and they love data. And we have to stop assuming that our caregivers know what our lived experience feels like. The p is for impact. Impact. We forget this. We often talk about symptoms, whether it's basal motor symptoms, insomnia symptoms, heavy bleeding, and we expect the person to read our minds. Our doctors are not mind readers. You have to tell them the impact. This is impacting my work. I looked at my calendar and I realized I am missing three to four days of work or productivity a month. I can't afford that. Now, bam, your doctor has the data plus the impact. Because you're telling a really good health story and they're starting to form the lit the menu of solutions in their head, but you don't stop there. E is for education. Say, I've been investing in my own health education recently. I've been looking at the data for insomnia, and I realize it impacts one in eleven Canadians, and it's impacting women in in this, phase of life even more. Oh, okay. That doesn't sound like I've printed off nine hundred pages off of doctor Google, and I brought it in for you. It doesn't sound like that. It sounds like someone who's really taken an invested effort to prepare for the appointment. The a is for affirmation. I know that I am meant to sleep for seven to eight hours a night. I know that I deserve to feel amazing. I know that I am not meant to scream at my kids for the first two hours of their day every day. K is okay. Now I'm inviting you to help me find the solution that's right for me.
Speaker 1
That's powerful. I've I look super and and so basic and so so easy. Can I ask, do you have any tools that you, promote with within your group for to for this tracking? Or is this pen and paper?
Speaker 2
Yeah. I don't promote tracking. The visceral reaction I have is that when a man shows up at the doctor's office with erectile dysfunction, he's not sent home and asked to track it. We just believe him and point him towards the solution. Touche. I had a member who, really prepared for her appointment around vaginal dryness. And let me just make it clear that vaginal dryness is not the same thing as erectile dysfunction. It's an apples to oranges comparison. But she got on the call. It was a virtual call with a nurse practitioner, and she was asked to prove it. What? Yeah. So that's an extreme example, but we need to be aware of the fact that if a woman tells you she has vulva and vaginal dryness, let's just believe her.
Speaker 0
Sorry. I can't let this go. Why to prove it?
Speaker 2
Can't prescribe something until I see you in person and do a physical exam. Oh my god. It's scary, actually. The
Speaker 0
the gatekeeping when it comes to prescribing women's solutions is abhorrent. So let's talk about your list.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Let's jump into this list.
Speaker 2
Thank you for responding to my post. On my birthday, I went for this long, beautiful walk along the Squamish River here in British Columbia, and I was, like, getting my phone out, making the notes. And I was like, damn. I bet you I could come up with fifty eight things, like, in no time. And so I did.
Speaker 1
And and listeners, just so you know, we're getting a sneak peek. This is, like, behind the scenes.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I haven't put it anywhere yet. It's still, like, in handwriting.
Speaker 0
So yeah. So so Shirley just mentioned she had posted about her list of fifty eight things she wants to see change in women's health in her lifetime, which you've given yourself, forty two years to
Speaker 2
I just turned fifty eight. So I figure that I can be optimistic with forty if I live for another forty two years. It's
Speaker 0
perfect. I am we're right there with you. We're gonna be with you. And and I said, oh my god. Yeah. Please share the list and tell us how we can help. So here we are. And, to get the sneak peek, Shirley is gonna pick randomly from the list she's cut up and put into a vase and tell us about item number Oh, it's a big one. Oh, good. Yay.
Speaker 2
Let's see. Okay. So that I hope that in the very near future, we can do a significantly better job in helping women understand risk, personalized risk, and true risk.
Speaker 0
Let's dive into that beast, please.
Speaker 2
Comes up a lot. Usually comes up, in my community from individuals who are like, my mom had breast cancer, so I can't use vaginal estrogen. And I'm like, okay. Wait a second. Back in Let's unpack those two things. And, I think the root cause is the fact that we've done a lousy job at helping society understand that incidence rate is not the same thing as personalized risk. So the risk the risks for getting breast cancer include having breasts, age, happens to one in eight of us if we live to be eighty five. Our personalized risk is less than one in eight if we are under the age of eighty five. The third thing is of one degree or first degree relative who has had breast cancer. Then you need to employ a genetics counselor and go through an individualized risk assessment. And the big I mean, that's a biggie. But the big bucket that doesn't get unpacked enough is that there are modifiable risk factors that we know as human beings and they include alcohol weight and movement and it's modifiable is that word that needs to be underlined because we have control over that. Absolutely. We have control over whether we have two glasses of wine a day versus per week.
Speaker 1
It's funny. I knew I knew where you were going. I was like, oh, don't say it. Don't say it. But no. It's true. It's true.
Speaker 0
It is true. Right? And that that's that is a and most people don't realize that that two glasses of wine or whatever, the two alcoholic beverages a day is a higher risk factor than menopausal hormone therapy.
Speaker 2
Well, menopause hormone therapy is not a risk factor.
Speaker 0
Well, it it Right.
Speaker 2
That's the that's
Speaker 0
the one that I'm trying to say. I said that incorrectly. The incidence of
Speaker 1
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 0
Yeah. Yeah. Good point.
Speaker 2
Definitely higher. Yeah. Yes. So the incidence rate of a woman getting breast cancer while taking hormone therapy for five years is three in one thousand, which is point three percent, which is less than one third of one percent. And going back to my list, she's five years older.
Speaker 1
So Go up.
Speaker 2
Goes up with age. And in this conversation, we don't know what her alcohol weight, or movement or her genetic, predisposition. So I the societal message is we've just done a lousy job. And and this, like, is in the individual basis too. Like, when you're in the doctor's office saying, you know, I'm here to get vaginal estrogen, for example, if we can come back to that topic, and you're not getting it because breast cancer risk. Like, there's such a disconnect in terms of, interpreting what personalized versus incidence means.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Okay. Let's let's pick another one.
Speaker 2
Oh my god.
Speaker 1
Drum roll.
Speaker 2
Okay. So this one says heavy bill bleeding, saying goodbye to tolerating it. Again, I think it's another, case. It happens to so many individuals. It might also, to what our earlier comment, be included in conversations where tracking comes up. So woman shows up at her, physician's office to talk about heavy bleeding, maybe hasn't articulated it in the, you you know, using the script tips and that physician says, we'll track it, see what happens next month. Meanwhile, the the person sitting there is not only dealing it sounds inconvenient to someone who's never experienced heavy bleeding. This is way more than a story about inconvenience. This is about iron deficiency, which can show up as fatigue and exhaustion and hair loss and a whole bunch of other things that impact her quality of life, and it's impacting her ability to show up for her family and her work and for her community. So we have to elevate the conversation around the impacts of bleeding and heavy bleeding.
Speaker 1
Well and even Mikkel has a close friend who had to go to the hospital twice, to the emergency room twice before they dealt with her heavy bleeding. Like, she was bleeding out. And That's
Speaker 2
that's so sad. And, unfortunately, I mean, our ER doctors don't even have like, they have less than probably the, education or exposure to that.
Speaker 1
Fair. Okay. Dig in. Alright.
Speaker 2
This one says, that we are going to honor and prioritize the vulva. Yay. Yay. For the vulva. The the backstory on that is and we've already done it today. It's very common to talk about the vagina. Some people refer say the vagina in reference to everything below the belt. That's not true. But at a treatment or a prevention level, a lot of the research and data and health professionals still continue to refer to the vagina as the be all and vaginal hormone therapy, vaginal moisturizers ignore the vulva. Yeah. Leaves it out of the dialogue and leaves it off the table in terms of women being able to interpret that, oh, this is should be a priority for me. To take that to another level, I want I do want you to think of women in your life who are older. If you are ignoring the vulva, you might also be missing the urethra, and the urethra gets shorter and smaller with lack of hyaluronic acid and lack of estrogen and makes it more susceptible to UTIs. So we have this chronic reoccurring UTI situation, especially in older women, and they don't know why and they don't know how to prevent it or solve it.
Speaker 0
Mhmm. Are they taking antibiotic after antibiotic? If they're even getting care and treatment, it's something that is not the right thing.
Speaker 1
My mother was on antibiotics for UTIs for years. Like, it seemed like every time I talked to her, she had another UTI. I was like and I I didn't know at the time. I was in my thirties. You know? I was like, what do you what? What? How much sex are you having, mom? Now I know maybe.
Speaker 2
Yes. My mom had that same experience. I didn't know what I didn't know. I couldn't help her, and she was also being treated in the last couple years of her life for dementia. And when she got Oh. When we got the autopsy reports back, there was no brain decline, no decay, no shrinkage. Wow. It could have been. We'll never know, but it could have been part because UTIs can show up in a with a in a silent way and it can show up as confusion and it can look like dementia. Yeah.
Speaker 0
Because because the in the back Bacteria becomes systemic. Right?
Speaker 2
Wow.
Speaker 1
Oh my god. You just blew my mind. I had no idea.
Speaker 2
So, for everyone listening, if this is happening to a loved one, and you end up hopefully accompanying them or advocating for their health, make sure it's such an easy thing to test. You can test at home. You can get a strip and test at home, but then go to your doctor or go if you're going to the ER and just ask to check for UTI first. And that, can be in both genders, male and female.
Speaker 1
My grandmother had dementia. I and I'm I'm I live in fear that this is going to happen to me. I am definitely, like, writing somewhere and telling my husband and my son, like, if I start going down this road, please check me for a UTI. Oh my god.
Speaker 2
Until we solve that, we all should, like, get those, you know, those health ID braces. Yeah. UTI.
Speaker 1
A medical alert check for UTI. Oh my god. Yes. That's gonna be your Christmas gift. No problem.
Speaker 2
Okay. This one says that there will be fewer TLAs. T TLA stands for three letter acronym.
Speaker 1
Oh.
Speaker 2
So What? I'm I have Love it. I also have a visceral reaction to a lot of the acronyms that get tossed around and immediately shortened. And I think, you know, the root of this wish comes from I want to improve communication in the doctor's office. And those conversations can become clouded anytime we use a brand name instead of the real name of the treatment or anytime we shorten something, like the WHI study showed that HRT you know? And you start talking, and you can see the eyes glaze over, especially if you're in person with someone. So fewer TLAs.
Speaker 1
I love it. Next one, please.
Speaker 2
Okay. I would like to eradicate the use of the word premenopause. A lot of doctors will say premenopause. I think that it's it's counterintuitive. I mean, premenopause represents our reproductive years. And because the term perimenopause is so new, it was only coined in nineteen ninety six. We have puberty, then we have our reproductive years, then we have perimenopause, then we have postmenopause. But if we continue to use premenopause, women will continue to interchange the two terms, and they mean very premenopause is very different from perimenopause as you know.
Speaker 1
Love it.
Speaker 2
Okay. Eliminate off label prescribing when there are approved treatments.
Speaker 1
Go deep. Tell us more. Yeah.
Speaker 2
What I'm referring to there is that I hope that we can see a significant shift going forward where someone is not given an off label treatment, let's say, for vasomotor symptoms. So an example of that would be, here's a prescription for gabapentin. You know, that's an off label prescription. Gabapentin is a medication that's designed to treat, mental health condition, and the side effect is that it can treat your vasomotor symptoms. We don't want we want women to get the approved treatment for vasomotor symptoms as opposed to taking something else that simply has an off label benefit.
Speaker 0
Yeah. So so when you roll up and you're you say you have hot flashes and night sweats and your doctor says, well, here's some antidepressants. Wait a minute. Why am I not getting the gold standard as per all the global guidelines, which is mental causal hormone
Speaker 2
therapy. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, kind of speaks to the, therapy. Pad math. Pad math. Have you heard of Pad math?
Speaker 1
No. But I'm in straight pipe. No.
Speaker 0
But I think I know where you're going with this. I'm very curious. Yeah.
Speaker 2
You know where we're going? Yeah. Pad math is adding, in this case, adding up the cost of paper based incontinence pads over your lifetime. So the motivation here is that if you are currently leaking urine when you don't want to, light bladder leak light bladder leakage and you choose not to take any action, it likely will not get better with time. And the paper based incontinence market in the US this year is sixteen billion dollars.
Speaker 0
Oh, sixteen Wow. Billion US. Dollars.
Speaker 2
But if you take that down to the individual level, it's I think this is kind and generous. It's probably thirteen hundred dollars a year for someone who might be wearing two to three pads a day, which if you're older, maybe in a nursing home, that would definitely be the case. Yeah. If you're incontinent for forty years, that's fifty two thousand dollars.
Speaker 1
Oh my gosh. And in my like, in my case, I know that there are things that I can be doing, I e, vaginal estrogen has helped. I could be doing pelvic floor therapy. Yes. And it's not necessarily my Kegels. It could be you know, that could it could be other stuff going on. So I I I'm hearing you. I I know I need to do something about this. It's just finding
Speaker 2
We all do. We all do. We have to think of it as a as a priority. And, and pads are great. They're but they're temporary. It's like a band aid. When you cut your finger, use a band aid, but you don't wear it forever.
Speaker 1
I hear you, Shirley. Tell me more.
Speaker 2
Okay. So this is a bit of a I mean, I'm a word nerd, and so I speak about language a lot. So this is about replacing the phrase menopause and perimenopause symptoms with the actual root cause. I would love to stop hearing the phrase perimenopause symptoms. I would prefer to hear symptoms of progesterone decline or symptoms of iron deficiency or symptoms of estrogen fluctuation and or decline. So, that really I think it gives us agency over what's happening. The term menopause and perimenopause, they're very nuanced. And if I say even the research that we spoke about earlier today, those participants in the survey were asked to rate or comment or give feedback on their menopause symptoms. So that could be interpreted in a thousand different ways and buried within that data that we now are getting on menopause, which is the good side of this the research story. Buried within that is data that's actually speaking to symptoms of iron deficiency, symptoms of insomnia
Speaker 0
Right.
Speaker 2
And more. Maybe even symptoms of blow like, low blood sugar or, you know, understanding all the other things that that can happen. So let me know when you want me to slow down or quit here.
Speaker 1
No. This is great. Let's do a couple more, and then, and then we'll wrap it up.
Speaker 2
Oh, we already spoke to scientific research. So this one says that we need out of the box solutions for investing in scientific research.
Speaker 0
Yes.
Speaker 2
Out of the box, meaning that when we hear that discussion around there is only seven percent of all research dollars contributed, focused on women's health, that we do not sit back and go, somebody should do something about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is what we hear all the time.
Speaker 1
Mhmm. What and I have a a little bone about this, like and I've said this maybe to you even, Shirley, but, and you might disagree, but I feel like there's a lot on social media, there's a lot of polarized views, and there's a lot of conflict, and women are fighting. And I keep thinking, like, instead of fighting with each other, let's agree that we don't have the answers because there's not enough research, and we haven't done the studies. So let's fight together to get that research done instead of bickering on social media.
Speaker 2
Fight together. I'm gonna get a sticker with you. I I love that. And I was even thinking today, imagine k. So first of all, I have a sense of humor, people. I do. However Yeah. You do. When it comes to menopause being the punchline of a joke
Speaker 0
Mhmm.
Speaker 2
Or the subject of a comedy or a musical going on Broadway, I have resistance to that. So what if every time a comedy or a joke was made or funded, that in order for it to get approved, an equal amount of production dollars had to go to to research.
Speaker 1
Oh my god. Brilliant. How do we make that happen?
Speaker 2
Yeah. Right? I don't know, but I hope somebody listening has the answer to that.
Speaker 1
We need, Ryan Reynolds' producer, or he's gotta be a producer himself. Hey, Ryan.
Speaker 2
The swear jar except it's Oh my god. Yes. You're walking around, and if somebody makes a joke about a women's health experience, they have to contribute to the to the jar.
Speaker 1
I love it. Oh my god. I love this. So good. Okay. Let's do one more.
Speaker 2
It's too much merch. We could come up with the wrong
Speaker 1
I know. I feel like we've just, like, we've just Yeah.
Speaker 0
Maybe we're funding this with merch.
Speaker 2
You guys probably already know this one, but this is, two other terms that I want to eradicate. So I I would like the terms hot flashes and night sweats retired and replaced with vasomotor symptoms because it is a cardiovascular event, and it's time that we stop using slang to describe it.
Speaker 0
And it's a cardiovascular event that may present increased risk. So we also need, right, to have language that allows people to take it more seriously.
Speaker 2
We need this open invitation. So you and I might say, it's not that bad. I can tolerate it. Right? But if that attitude is preventing you from investigating and or investing in your future heart health and your future bone health, then we're not serving women well. I was just gonna say
Speaker 1
we should fit almost finish that statement, Mikael, that it increased risk, but we all knew you meant in heart attack or stroke. But we we kinda have to finish that sentence too that I don't remember how you started it, but it was really good. Yeah.
Speaker 0
Yeah. The the vasomotor symptoms may indicate an increased risk for CBD. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Vasomotor symptoms do not mean that we have cardiovascular disease. Does not mean that. What it means is that either now or soon, we will probably see an increase in cholesterol and blood pressure, and that puts us at greater risk. And the root cause of those two things is the fluctuating or declining hormones.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I think we have time for one more.
Speaker 2
Okay. Okay.
Speaker 1
Let's pull it out.
Speaker 2
Alright. Hope it's a gooder. I hope it's a gooder. I think I said this already today too, but I want to keep endometriosis, PMDD, which is premenstrual, disorder, PCOS, which is polycystic ovarian syndrome, and perimenopause high on the agenda.
Speaker 1
Amen.
Speaker 0
Oh, let's get it on the agenda, and then let's bump it up real high because I know endometriosis, the average is eight years to get a diagnosis.
Speaker 2
And how many and how many doctor visits?
Speaker 1
And eight years of severe intense pain.
Speaker 2
Like It's absurd. You know, everything on this particular list, on this wish list point is related to hormone health. And so if we talk about root cause and understanding, what the roles and responsibilities of our hormones when cycles are regular, then it puts us in a much better position to make decisions around all of these, experiences no matter what our age and stage is. I I did have another one in here, and it was just like, we need to start talking to ourselves the way that we would talk to or about our children or even our pets. Good point. I I lost I lost my dog last year. He was he was thirteen, and he had Addison's disease, which is a hormone condition.
Speaker 1
My dog had that too.
Speaker 2
Oh, really? Yeah. So, you know, medication and treatment extended his life, but we didn't take Baxter to the vets. And the vet didn't say, oh, yeah. No. That's just part of being a dog.
Speaker 1
He'll just need to deal with it. No. My vet showed up at my house to say on the long weekend to say, oh my god. He needs this right now or he's not making it through the weekend.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Life saving treatment. Absolutely. So, you know, forgive me for my analogies, but we do need to talk about women's health, and make it more of a priority than our pets. Sorry.
Speaker 0
Yeah. Don't apologize, please. You're absolutely right. And most of us don't realize we're doing just that, not prioritizing ourselves, but going to the ends of the earth for our pets and our children and our family members and
Speaker 1
Not ourselves. Here we are.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And, you know, we're all human beings trying to be human on this journey that many of us have never well, none of us have ever navigated this particular moment in time before. So, it's easy to get on a podcast and talk about all the things that are wrong or all the things that we'd like to see, and point the finger. And I think by doing this list and just by doing this work that I it it's given me an opportunity to continue to point the finger at me. What can I do?
Speaker 1
What can I do?
Speaker 0
Yeah. Yeah. So we need to talk more about how we contribute to this list.
Speaker 2
Okay.
Speaker 0
And and that's part of why we do what we do because we believe we're going to get there faster in the context of changing women's health and the narrative around midlife for women if each of us becomes informed and gets educated and asks for better. Because if we're all asking for better, we're a lot harder to ignore.
Speaker 1
Mic drop. Amazing. So good. Before we go, Shirley, I don't even know. I think you probably have a million things you would love our listeners to know. But and I I can't quite remember what it was last time, but I feel like we were brought to tears. Is there one thing you want every woman to know about perimenopause?
Speaker 2
I did read what I said last time. I think the one thing that I want everyone to know about perimenopause is that it is a legitimate phase of life. It is not an excuse and that it is never too early to prioritize our health. So if you're listening to this and you're in perimenopause and, yes, we talk a lot about treatments and hormone therapy at Menopause Chicks, you might not be there yet, but that doesn't mean that it's an invitation to just press pause and come back in a decade or so. It's actually an invitation to learn how your hormones work and to figure out how you can put your own name at the top of the list today.
Speaker 1
I love that.
Speaker 0
Amazing. Shirley, thank you. As always, so amazing, invigorating. You charge us up every time we talk, and, let's let's do it again. And let's very sincerely think about ways we can contribute to making this list happen. We've got forty two years, but that's gonna go quick, so let's get on it.
Speaker 2
Let's get on it. Thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me, and, yeah, let's get around get around a table or a whiteboard and do it.
Speaker 1
Love to. Absolutely. Please. Yes. I'll have to come out west. How's that?
Speaker 2
Yeah. Come out west.
Speaker 1
Okay. Done and done. Love it. Thank you, Shirley.
Speaker 2
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1
Thanks so much for listening to the show. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate and subscribe to our podcast. When you do this, it helps to raise our podcast profile so more women can find us and get a little better understanding of what to expect in perimenopause.
Speaker 0
We also read all the reviews, the good, the bad, and the ugly to help us continuously improve our show. We would love to hear from you. You can connect with us through the podcast, on social media, or through our website. Our information as well as links and details from our conversation today can be found in the show notes. This podcast is for general information only. It's designed to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey through perimenopause. The information and opinions on this podcast are not intended to be a substitution for primary care, diagnosis, or treatment. The information on this podcast does not replace professional health care advice. The use of the information discussed is at the sole discretion of the listener. If you are suffering from symptoms or have questions, please consult a qualified health care practitioner.
