Intuitive Mentor Mom: Strategies for Life Empowerment, Self Love and Gratitude for Single Moms

23: Menopause, Heart Health, and Healing: A Wild Ride

• Tara Mychelle • Episode 23

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Navigating the complexities of menopause, heart health, and personal healing takes courage and self-awareness. My journey reflects a quest for empowerment as I learned to listen to my body’s wisdom. The episode discusses vital insights gained along this path and how we can heal through embracing our symbiotic nature.

• Discussion of body as a "Whole" symbiotic system 
• Personal experiences with menopause and POTS Syndrome 
• The importance of holistic approaches to health 
• Strategies for emotional and physical healing 
• Insights into dietary changes and their effects 
• Introduction to upcoming guest expert, Meagan Wempe, NP, on hormone therapy 

Join me as I share the profound lessons learned during this journey, including the importance of listening to what our bodies are telling us and the steps I took to reclaim my health. Discover how small dietary changes and emotional healing practices not only helped alleviate my symptoms but also empowered me to become the expert of my own body.

This episode serves as a gentle reminder that we are not alone in our struggles, and each of us holds the key to our well-being. Let’s explore these themes further, and don’t forget to tune in next week, where I’ll be joined by my nurse practitioner, Meagan Wempe,  to delve deeper into the world of hormones and holistic health practices. If you resonate with this journey, please subscribe, share with friends, and leave a review! Your stories matter, and I’d love to hear from you.

Looking for confirmation, guidance, or support in an area of life where you feel stuck, stagnant, or simply unclear of what to do next? Let's connect: book a complimentary Discovery Session with me, today!

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Speaker 1:

Today we're going to talk about body as symbiotic versus separate and the impacts it can have, aspects of the menopause journey and how it forced me to become the expert of my own body and some tools that can assist you in healing your heart trauma and feeling lighter and freer in your daily life. Buckle up and let's get started. Welcome back to the Intuitive Mentor Mom podcast, where we explore strategies for growing confidence, empowerment and gaining clarity for midlife moms. When life is happening for you and not to you, you can be living the life of freedom, fun and bliss. I'm your host, tara Michelle. Let's get to it. Welcome back to the show this week.

Speaker 1:

Everybody, I'm excited to be with you and excited about this topic, and it's really a precursor to next week's show, which I'm going to be bringing my nurse practitioner who I've been seeing for the last nine years, megan Wempey. She'll be coming and joining me on the show and we're going to be talking about hormones, we'll talk about menopause. We're going to talk about a lot of fun things, but today I wanted to share some things about my own personal journey and, you know, I think it's important to consider the context I'm about to talk about, because I think it plays an important role in how we experience ourselves and how we experience, you know, being and living inside of our bodies and as women, you know, in our culture. Currently, as you know I know this podcast gets out internationally, but I live here in America and so culturally, you know, from the Western perspective, we have a lot of interesting views of our body, from body dysmorphia, body image. You know all of that, and so I wanted to share some of the things I'm about to share today, really as a precursor to the next episode.

Speaker 1:

Healing, as I like to say, is a process. It's a process within and it can't be sought after outside of our bodies at all. And years of stress and daily mismanagement of diet, exercise can truly cause unnecessary oxidation on our internal systems, and the crazy thing about that is that it can be a slow, silent and deadly killer over time time, because there could be things going on in your body that you may not even know, and unless you're really in tune, you may not feel it, you may not hear it, you may not sense it until it's too late. So one thing I'll say is no, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a nutritionist. No, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a nutritionist. However, I have become, or I have continued to become, the expert of my own body and what it needs, but I've also learned in the last several years what it no longer needs or what it no longer can have.

Speaker 1:

Over the last five years, I've been on a roller coaster journey of healing my body from the inside out and I've had days where and some of you may be able to relate to this I've had days of absolute neuropathy pain like through every fiber of my body, to where it was aching and throbbing, to the point of where I couldn't even move and it felt like knives, knives coursing through my veins and especially when I would try to get out of bed in the morning, it just it was debilitating and I even had a blood vessel burst. I'd gotten a call from work and a blood vessel burst in my eye. I'd in a call at work. I was getting my hair done. I answered the phone, I was stressed out by the call and my hairdresser looked at me and she said oh wow, are you okay? And I looked at her and I said why. She said you must be under a lot of stress because you just burst a blood vessel in your eye that in that moment. That was a huge wake up call for me, because in the moment of that conversation I was frustrated by it, but not at the level to which I felt like I didn't even feel that happen in my eye, I didn't even feel it at all. But my body responded in that moment. Now that's just one of the things that for me was like oh my God, there's something going on in my body. But I also was at this point where I was wondering if my heart was going to stop in a moment's notice. There were times where I called a friend because my heartbeat and my blood pressure like I could literally feel it pounding through my skin and my blood pressure was so high and I was scared. I was scared at the time that my system was just going to shut down and I was going to shut down just altogether.

Speaker 1:

Now here's another interesting syndrome. I don't know if any of you have heard of it, and maybe you have or maybe you've experienced it POTS syndrome, which stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, aka POTS. It affects the autonomic nervous system. It can cause excessive increase in your heart rate when standing up, symptoms of dizziness or lightheadedness. You can also have palpitations. And when you have these symptoms, or, if you want to call it this syndrome, pots, it requires you to change your lifestyle and for some people it actually could require meds.

Speaker 1:

And so during menopause this was something that I was diagnosed with and as I share with you. Earlier, my body began to go through a number of different things. There was mineral deficiency, potassium deficiency, I had things going on with my thyroid. I had things happening with my heart. My thyroid was, you know aspects of the symptoms going on my thyroid, which was then beginning to attack my heart. I had liver, kidney things going on. There were all kinds of things happening when I went through, when I went through menopause. And you know something interesting about POTS is it occurs in one and three million people person, one in 3 million people, and the interesting thing is it's more commonly found in women. Get this from 15 to 50 years of age. That's right. I said 15, as early as 15 years old to 50 years of age. So I cured this.

Speaker 1:

I did cure the POTS syndrome that was moving through my body and I did a number of things, but one of the things I did was increasing my potassium. I had a adrenal cocktail that one of the nutritionists that I was working with, that she had given me a recipe which was amazing I swear I did. I did that immediately and my body had probably I'm going to say a 40 to 50% turnaround in symptoms. Like I got better so quickly in just three days of taking that. So potassium mineral intake was starting to add salt to my coffee and salt to my diet and sea salt. So I still do sea salt in my coffee every morning, sea salt. So I still do sea salt in my coffee every morning and I make a yummy coffee drink which it's two scoops of vanilla protein, about a teaspoon of sea salt. Sometimes I'll throw butter in, not always, but I'll put cinnamon in.

Speaker 1:

Now I used to do coffee, coffee, but I no longer do caffeine and so I do decaf coffee or I'll just do dandy blend, which is a chicory root type coffee, and I mix it all up but it tastes like a caramel, a vanilla caramel latte, salted caramel latte, and I love it. So that's something I do. But you know I had to increase my potassium. I had to, and then I oh, then I I overdid it a little bit on my potassium and started shooting up my, you know, the, the, the potassium being too much started then causing me to have kidney issues.

Speaker 1:

So, really, when you're, when you're working through these things, you want to work with your provider because you you need to make sure that you're doing everything properly. But, amongst other things, as I mentioned, I was implementing all kinds of things during this chapter of healing. So and again I cannot stress, please, you know, what works for one person may not be the thing that works for others or for you. So be sure, as you start dabbling in various things, if you're trying to heal your body or you're working I don't want to say trying or you're working to heal your body make sure you're working with somebody, whether it's a nutritionist, a nurse, practitioner, your provider, so that you're monitoring and making sure that you're managing everything effectively and efficiently, because everybody's body is different, delicate and intricate and needs to be managed properly so you're getting the most effective results. Okay, and also maybe hopefully not causing any other harm in your body, because you never know, know and so, looking back, so much of my own journey through that time was the impact and result of years of mismanagement of diet and exercise and a lack of knowledge and awareness of my whole body system, not to mention and I already said this, but not to mention I was also moving through menopause. So, when talking about the whole body system, what I'm about to share is from the context of our current conditioning here in the US. So hold on, because it's you'll. It just follow me along here, follow and then you'll. You'll know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1:

So often we're taught to look at our symptoms and we're taught to look at our symptoms as separate from one another and then to take a pill for that one symptom, not paying attention to the fact that that one symptom is actually the result of another symptom. That symptom is, is also a result of yet another symptom. Now, if you treat that first symptom, the original one we were talking about, without addressing the others, you're surely going to damn the river for a little while right and put a Band-Aid on it. Yet that pill that you now take, that prescription medication, it has side effects and if you're not aware of how that medication metabolizes through your body, you could then be causing new symptoms. But let's get back to that root symptom.

Speaker 1:

New symptoms, but let's get back to that root symptom, the one that we didn't even address the one that caused that initial symptom that you took the pill for. How are those symptoms going? Oh, you don't know, because you're not even aware that it's there, because that root symptom expresses in a way that you can't see or feel in your body. So how's that going for you? And, oh, by the way, now that you're taking that pill, are you feeling better? Are you really feeling better or do you now have new symptoms you're needing to manage? And now you're trying to treat those because they have a pill for those too. Okay, so, and that's goes on and on and on and on. Right, does that sound like our good old system here in the US? So your dam is going to eventually break because the root symptom that is still flowing and going unaddressed and everything's now going to bleed out and cause all new symptoms, and the pill or pills you are now taking are now allowing other symptoms to arise.

Speaker 1:

This is how the average American lives their life, okay, and we've almost lost complete sight of our whole body as a symbiotic system. Our whole body, it's this beautiful tapestry and woven network of cells that are living in harmony and community, and we've been deeply conditioned to disregard this one pure fact of our bodies and what they truly are Our bodies are a living and breathing organism that can do miraculous things. I'm going to say that again. Our bodies are a living and breathing organism that can do miraculous things, so much so is. It can heal itself from just about anything, but we have been conditioned to believe otherwise.

Speaker 1:

So, as I began diving into understanding my body because of all these symptoms right, all these symptoms I was having that I was experiencing, and I don't know if I shared this I don't think I shared this yet. I think I shared it in the. It'll be in the episode coming but I saw three different nutritionalists. I was working with my nurse practitioner. I had two trainers at the time because I was going to a CrossFit gym, a strength training CrossFit gym Plus I was using. I was working with a dear friend who's a trainer, kendi Malat, who's actually in some of the previous episodes, where we did some great interviews and talked a lot about health and wellness.

Speaker 1:

But I began diving into understanding my body because, all of those symptoms that I was experiencing, I began to see my body differently. I was starting to see it as whole and symbiotic in its nature. And how that was is you know when I would get all the testing that I did? I'd go through all of this. You know the results, then realizing, oh God, well, this one thing is happening because this other thing is out of whack. And oh, and that's out of whack because this other piece is out of whack, and now I have to actually work on this piece before I can actually get that piece to go back to where it needs to be. So that was really the first time that I saw myself and my body in that way, because I've been so programmed over the years and conditioned to focus on the one thing that may be hurting. Well, that one thing is hurting because there's something else going on behind it, okay, and so I would venture to say many of you can relate to that.

Speaker 1:

So earlier I'd mentioned that I had to look at my body and my lifestyle and I had to make changes. I absolutely had to make changes to continue moving through not only that process of menopause but really embracing and accepting that, hey, I'm not 25 anymore, my body is in its 50s, it's had a child and you know it has years of impact, of mismanagement, whether it was food, diet related, supplement related, whatever. Like I didn't take great care of my body when I was a young person. I was always healthy and somewhat fit, but I, you know, I can't say I ate all the best foods. You know I was drinking sodas, all the things right, all this stuff. So during this journey that I've been on this chapter of my life, I've really had to take a look at what works, what doesn't work.

Speaker 1:

Here are some things that I have to live without. I have to live without caffeine. Caffeine is a kicker through menopause, through triple the stress of my life with it, all the things I have to manage. Caffeine I had to cut out and it made a difference. Alcohol I had to stop drinking, and so when I go out and have a great time with my friends, I typically don't drink, and if I do drink, I choose to only have one drink, because that one drink I can fully feel in my body.

Speaker 1:

The very next day. I feel it that night. I feel my whole body begin to shut down. I feel my kidneys don't work well, my liver doesn't like it. Like I can literally feel the organ system, my endocrine system. I can feel it because I am that sensitive. Now I feel the shift and the change. So I just pretty much took it out. Now certain types of exercise I had to remove from my body. I had to remove my strength training CrossFit program because it was too rough on my body, because I become very competitive in that space and I do things that my body's not ready to do and I think, oh, I can lift that level of weight and I can do that and I'm pushing myself and my body's saying no, but I want to keep up. I want to keep up with the class. So I had to change that.

Speaker 1:

Irregular sleep patterns, really hard on my body. I didn't pay any attention to that and what it was doing to my adrenals. Irregular eating habits, not having the proper amount of protein, fats and carbs in the morning and burning the oil till midday. And then my body crashing in ways where you know. I learned that I was anemic. I learned that not the happy way, not the great way, like on the freeway and my body starting to have an anemic attack.

Speaker 1:

You know I had to cut sugar, sugar out. Sugar started doing things to my body. Not only was it um, not only inflammation, but certain aches and pains and arthritic types of pains. So those were things that I had to begin to live without and or at least lessen. You know I'm not fully sugar-free, no, but I'm. I probably eat 75% less the amount of sugar a day than I was before. So what are things that I've I've had to put in and that I savor and that I relish about my life, that help my body be stronger, that help my body repair and restore faster? And again, I mentioned this is about becoming the expert of your body and really tuning in and listening to your body. You know what is your body saying. I also want to, before I go into this list here of what I do, as I was working on the notes for this podcast episode, it dawned on me again just keep having all these realizations.

Speaker 1:

You know, in the last episode we're talking about the mind being the garden and the heart being this beautiful bulb, right, the seed of that garden. And when you think about that, you know seeds need nurturing, they need conditioning, they need love. Right, when you put them in the soil, you don't just throw them in any kind of soil. Typically, when you're planting garden, you like conditioned soil, you know, depending on what kind of what kind of seeds you're planting, you know you, there's certain soils and there's also soils with nutrients, or soils with fertilizers, or there's soils with compost, right? So you're trying to create the perfect bed for this seed. Well, what's the perfect bed for our mind, garden and our bulb? Our seed? It's our body, right, it's the body. The body is this beautiful, conditioned community. Well, we'll get into the cells and the community of cells that it is, but it's this beautiful space, right.

Speaker 1:

So, again, and really, when I talk about, life is happening for us, you know, and it's the mind, is this beautiful, rich place where you're creating and manifesting. But you want to be careful. What you're manifesting, right, you want to clean out any pain, sadness, trauma that you may have. You want to remove these not so great conversations you may have about yourself. But this is where it all begins. It all begins because we are a symbiotic system the mind, the body, the spirit, the heart, all of it.

Speaker 1:

So, back to the things that I was putting in to my life, implementing uninterrupted sleep. I started sleeping more. I had to use a cortisol supplement for a while to even out my cortisol. Cortisol will create interrupted sleep a lot, so I had to get on a supplement to help with that. I'm now finally at six hours straight which is awesome of uninterrupted sleep and I'm working to get towards seven and eight. Sometimes I hit seven and that's like a huge thing. It's like woo, get excited.

Speaker 1:

I also had to go towards a more balanced macro diet. Again, we have all these diets. You have to figure out what your body needs and again, I would say, work with a nutritionist with that, because it's really, really helpful to understand, based on where your body's at. When you figure out what's my baseline today, when I'm not feeling that good, what's my baseline right now? And then you have to look at. You have to look at do I need more calories? Do I need more protein? Do I need less carbs? You know I had to figure out what was right for my body at the time, right now, right now, my body thrives on something more macro, where I have an even portion of protein, fat and carbs and it's all balanced and that's what my body responds to right now.

Speaker 1:

Regular exercise, minimum four days a week, minimum. Have to have it for my mindset and for my body. Strength training super important. Do it all the time, love it. I love feeling stronger, but that's what my body requires. I do daily salt in my coffee, as I shared with you earlier. I have to drink more than 63 ounces a day of water. That's important to stay hydrated for me. A day of water. That's important to stay hydrated for me.

Speaker 1:

I chose to do hormone therapy replacement and there's some really good books. If you haven't read them, find them. You can find them on Amazon, but you can also find them on Audible. There's a book called what your Doctor Never Told you About Menopause, and then the other book is what your Doctor Never Told you About Perimenopause Brilliant books. You might find a lot of interesting information in there. I also incorporated daily meditation and daily time just to stop, breathe and just relax into my body and release that stress. So much stress, right, ladies, can you relate? So much stress every day, so much stress. It's okay to just stop and breathe.

Speaker 1:

So on the next show I'm excited to bring, as I mentioned, my nurse practitioner, megan Wempey. She works at Trinity Balance Family Healthcare here in Texas. She is amazing and I just love her. I've been working with her for nine years. She helped me discover when I was pre-diabetic nine years ago and other doctors could not find it. You know she did particular workups on me and was able to target and figure out exactly what I needed to do, and within two weeks I had shed 20 pounds, my A1C went down by four points and I was really able to get my body back on track. And little did I know that I was heading down a path that I didn't even. I thought I ate good, I was eating healthy, I thought everything was fine, but it wasn't.

Speaker 1:

So we'll discuss more in depth health and hormones and we're going to dive into various aspects of that menopausal journey. And today I just really wanted to share with you a little bit of my experience. And you know the journey I've been on and I'm still on, because it's a forever journey. Right, your health and wellbeing is forever. But topics we'll discuss on the next show is when do you start managing or being concerned about hormones? You know a lot of people think, oh, you don't have to worry about it until you're older. We're going to talk about that because it's very important.

Speaker 1:

We're also going to talk about the safety of hormone replacement therapy. I think a lot of people are afraid of it and I think if you do your due diligence, do your research and find out all the options that are out there. Don't be afraid of it. There are a lot of good things that Megan's going to talk about that can really come from hormone therapy Life with it and life without it. We're going to talk about that too, because there are some people that choose not to go that route. They choose to really focus on managing and balancing their hormones through diet, and absolutely you can do that. I believe you can do that. I chose not to. I chose to do the therapy because I think my body was at such a state that I needed help right away. Can I reverse all that and do it completely by food and diet? Possibly, but right now I'm on the journey of hormone replacement therapy with food, diet and exercise. I'm doing my best to stay off any medications for as long as I can, because I do believe I can heal my body.

Speaker 1:

So, after hearing much of this show, I would really like to hear from you. You know what are you hearing for yourself? If your health journey has been, however, it's been hard, easy, tough, strenuous, non-existent. What is it Like? Are there things relatable in what I've shared here? Some of the symptoms maybe you know.

Speaker 1:

Have you experienced POTS. If not, is it something you're experiencing? Hopefully not, but you know, take a look at that. It might give you some insight for some people. And also, please share with me in the comments how did you overcome any of the imbalances or what is your journey currently, today? What are you doing right now to take charge and take action within your health and wellbeing? And are you the expert of your body or are you relying on others to tell you what's going on in your body? So, when it comes to feeling good, are you actually listening of your body or are you relying on others to tell you what's going on in your body? So, when it comes to feeling good, are you actually listening to your body? Are you listening to it? Are you seeing it as a whole system, or are you relating to your body as separate? It's separate from you, the symptoms are separate from another, or are you really seeing it that it's a whole system, a whole system situation here? So comment below, share with me what you're hearing, feeling or sensing in your body, your mind and your heart. Also, if you're liking the show, please be sure to show your love and support through our five-star ranking system. There'll be some five stars there somewhere and you can write a review on the podcast. So I would absolutely love to hear from you.

Speaker 1:

So, before I wrap up this episode, in the last episode I had shared with you about the mind garden right, the bulb is the heart. But I also discussed three things to be aware of when wanting to heal those aspects of your heart. And in that episode I also talked about how I would share with you how I move through trapped and stuck uncomfortable emotions within my heart. Now, as I discussed in the last episode, the three things that I pay attention to, to be aware of, discussed in the last episode, the three things that I pay attention to, to be aware of is when I'm in a situation or a conversation with somebody, am I triggered? And if I'm triggered, that's my warning sign, that's my red flag of there's an emotion in there that needs to be handled. There's some energy in there that is sitting in there that has nothing to do with this situation and the root of that situation, the root of that pain, is coming from somewhere and it's just showing up in this conversation because it's unresolved. So that's my first trigger. I also, once I recognize that, I will sit in the emotion. I recognize that I will sit in the emotion.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes you can't do this in the heat of the moment, right, sometimes you can, but not always. But what I try to do is I try to sit with it in that moment and I breathe through it and I try to release all story or attachment to that emotion. And then I like to ask my heart what do I need in this moment? What do I need in this moment? And then I try to fulfill on whatever that need is. It could be speaking up to that person, it could be doing nothing, it could be cry. It could be ask for a hug. It could be get in your car, your car go drive. It could be go sit out in the sun. Whatever it is. I ask my heart what it needs and I try to provide that for myself in that moment.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to leave you with another very cool tool and one that I've been working with lately and a dear friend of mine had reminded me because he too had been working on some stuff for himself and he reminded me that he had written a letter to his mother, his mother's past. But he's working through some stuff around his mom. That reminded me, oh yeah, oh yeah, I could write letters because I was working through some stuff with my dad, who was also passed. It's's like I could write letters to him. I could write a letter to him and I started that letter. I fell asleep writing that letter, which is classic, but I've done a lot of work on it and I think I'm actually. I do feel it's complete the thing that I was working on there. It's complete. I feel the forgiveness from my father and me to him and him to me. But journaling or writing letters is really a great way to process out that emotion and you can write as many letters as you may need.

Speaker 1:

And then what I also like to do is put it in a God box. Put it in a God box If you don't have a God box. You know, years ago I used to go to Al-Anon and my sponsor at the time taught me to create a God box in the top of the God box. It's like a cute little box. I went to the dollar store, bought like a little box, you know, like a box you wrap things in, and it was sparkly. It's like sparkly and red. And I cut a little top like sparkly and red and I cut a little slit in the top and I taped the top on and when I would have frustration and anger or sadness or fear, I would scribble it down on a posting note, fold it up and I'd stick it in the God box and the idea of that is, when you hand it over to God, it relieves you of that pain and that pressure, and that became like a ritual for me and that shit works Okay. So I want to leave you with that tool journal about it. Burn it, burn the, burn the journal or if the once you fill it, you know, burn the letter, put it in a God box. Whatever you need to do, write it out Something I will say also that I had been working on for myself in the last few weeks around this stuff with my father and some stuff that I've been, you know, really moving through in terms of avoidant and anxious attachments, because I have my own stuff going on that's very much triggered from a situation with my father when I was a young person, and not only my father but my grandfather and my mother.

Speaker 1:

So all those three of those relationships, I had a huge revelation and aha, this week that those three relationships were relationships that were not safe for me on many levels, and there was one person who was really safe. But, as a result, there are some behaviors and patterns that I'm working through in the area of my romantic relationships and so you know this week when things would come up, I would write it down, I would write it down on my notes and then I would collapse it out of my system. So that's something that I do through body regeneration method, which, if those of you are looking for some healing, some support, I have a link below. You can schedule time with me. I do one hour sessions with people energetically and I can work with removing blocks of energy and stuck energy in your system and we can work through pain and things of that nature. But that's what I've been doing is pulling up these energies out of my heart, pulling them up out of my spiritual, etheric space, my orc field, however you want to call that, and collapsing it out and then refilling it with whatever is needed and required at that time. So that's another way that I do work in healing my heart and something I would love to share with those of you who are ready to do that type of work, so that is what I want to leave you with today.

Speaker 1:

I really want to thank you for sharing this time with me this week. As I mentioned, next week we will get to spend some time with Megan Wimpey. We're going to do a deep dive on hormones, hormone therapy, replacement, health and healing of your body, and we're going to have a lot of fun. So until then, it's been a blast being with you today. Thank you again. I love you all and have an awesome rest of your week. See you soon. Thank you for coming on this healing adventure today. If you're starting to see how everything is falling into place for you, consider rating the show and sharing it with one of your friends. Keep that spirit alive and join me next week. Same place, same time. Have a great week.