Four phases of Perimenopause with Dr. Lara Briden

The Simplicity Sessions

Welcome back to The Simplicity Sessions, I'm delighted that you’ve joined us today. My name is Jenn Pike, your host, registered holistic nutritionist, medical exercise specialist, the best-selling author of the Simplicity Project, and the creator of the women's revolutionary health program, The Hormone Project.

This is a conversation with Dr. Lara Briden, naturopathic doctor, women’s health activist, and best-selling author of Period Repair Manual and Hormone Repair Manual which provides practical solutions for period and hormone problems. Lara is also lead author of a 2020 medicinal journal peer-reviewed paper which we will link in the show notes.

Her newest book, Hormone Repair Manual delves into Perimenopause, how to prepare your body and how to understand the changes that you're going to go through.

Lara is currently consulting in Christchurch, New Zealand, working to provide solutions for conditions such as PCOS, PMS, Endometriosis, and Perimenopause.

You can find links to Dr. Lara Briden’s multi-platform publishings, as well as social / websites below in the ‘Connect with us’ section of the show notes. You will also find below-linked info about our partners and recommended products to try.

If you have a question for me and my team, send it on over to [e-mail] or via Instagram at @jennpike and I'll do my best to share helpful insights, thoughts and advice.

Here are the main topics of today’s episode:

• Introducing our guest, Dr. Lara Briden
• Jenn’s seasonal recommendations
• What is Perimenopause? and the emotional terrain
• Puberty perceptions - ‘Age is but a number’
• Four phases of perimenopause
• Natural cycles, contraceptives and hormone therapy
• Hormonal vs copper IUD
• How we can support ourselves through each phase
• Recommendations

Connect with us -

Thank you for joining us today. If you could do me the honor of hitting the subscribe button, leaving a review and sharing this podcast with a friend or on social media tagging me when you do @thesimplicityproject on Facebook, @jennpike on Instagram, @simplicityjenn on Twitter, I would be forever grateful.

To connect with Dr. Lara Briden and find direct links to read her books, Period Repair Manual and Hormone Repair Manual, as well as her peer-reviewed paper, go to her website https://larabriden.com. To follow Lara - Instagram @larabriden and Twitter @LaraBriden

You can connect to this episode on iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher by searching The Simplicity Sessions, or visiting www.jennpike.com/podcast.

Join our growing community via Facebook The Simplicity Sessions Community.

Online work with Jenn:

Register for my signature program The Hormone Project and work with me 1:1 to support your health, hormones, and more via the following link www.jennpike.com/thehormoneproject.

Sign up for The Synced Program to learn how to tune your body to the lunar cycle and acquire a multidisciplinary approach to balance your body in less than 30 minutes a day!

Interested in registering for the upcoming Audacious Women program? Send us a message via our website at https://jennpike.com/contact/

To learn more about the products mentioned in this episode, visit the link I’ve shared on my Instagram @jennpike. There you can discover where you can purchase these products and how you can start to make them part of your everyday simplicity approach.

Learn more about the products I recommend and some of our amazing partners

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Quotes

• “Perimenopause is what I call in my book, Second puberty as it's a time of transition...It's temporary, It's not about aging. It's actually just a hormonal event that we're hardwired to do.”
• “I look at these transitionary years - perimenopause into menopause as being some of the wisest that we could be living with the most wisdom of our bodies and really like how much we can gain from that.”
• “The test for premature or primary ovarian insufficiency is a high FSH reading on a couple of, at least a month apart, two readings over 40.
• “Having your uterus removed, doesn't bring menopause. There's no periods, obviously, because there's no uterus, but there's still all this PMS or definitely women still go through the normal high estrogen phases of perimenopause, even if they don't have a uterus, which I think is an important part of the conversation because a lot of women have this surgery and are not actually told that that is the case.”
• “ Phase One ...The assessment for perimenopause is to have three out of nine symptoms (listed in my book) because there is no blood test or otherwise that can diagnose perimenopause.”
• “Phase Two is when you start to get irregularity, more than usual in your cycle”
• “Phase Three is when women start to have their first big gaps, like they might go at least 60 days without having a period that's phase three and each phase can last a few years.”
• “Phase Four is when you've had what you think might be your final period.”
• “The first two phases are a time of basically high fluctuating estrogen and very little progesterone or relatively little progesterone. And then phase three and four, the phase of more lower estrogen and also lower progesterone and a shift to insulin resistance”
• “...the official guidance, and I think this is accurate is if you've been more than a year without a period, and then you do get some bleeding, you should check with your doctor”
• “ How we actually can be supporting and setting our bodies up for moving through these different phases and the transition feeling more supportive, as opposed to like somebody just pulled the rug out from underneath us, which I think is what happens unfortunately, to so many women. And so you talk in the book about insulin resistance, about supporting our nervous system, our relationship to our circadian rhythm and, too light and dark,and really taking care of ourselves, food wise and with supplements.”
• “So in the later phases of perimenopause when estrogen starts to go down in phase three and four, we, most of us shift to reduced insulin sensitivity, because estrogen in particular enhances insulin sensitivities. It’s just part of the process.”
• “ Now is the time actually, especially in the later phases of perimenopause, now is the time. If you have any capacity to do it, you know, to carve out some more space for movement, for sleep, for rest, because if you do it now, then you improve your chances of having vital health into your fifties, sixties, and seventies”
• “Reducing, removing the alcohol is really important”
• “The circadian rhythm part of the brain, which is a part of the brain in the hypothalamus is affected very much by menopause and perimenopause. Which is one of the reasons sleep disturbance is common in perimenopause.”
• “I would say the combination of magnesium tarring, bright light in the morning and no alcohol for 50% of those women, that's all they have to do. They don't even have to go as far as progesterone or estrogen or anything like that. So the results can be quite dramatic actually. With just a few simple interventions and lifestyle being the base and the foundation of that”
• “Dementia starts around the time of our last period. And it's really to do with this rewiring of the brain. It's an energy crisis of the brain when estrogen drops, our brain energy drops by 25%, which sounds bad, it doesn't feel great. So the different ways to mitigate that, I think estrogen can mitigate that to some extent, estrogen therapy. Also other ways would be to not have insulin resistance, like to identify it and reverse it. I really can't emphasize enough now is the time to do that. And it's for brain health, long-term potentially plus for all the other things, but that's, for me, that's a big motivator.”
• “ What can happen with perimenopause is actually about the recalibration of the immune system and the loss of progesterone and how that increases our risk of auto-immune disease, similar to postpartum flare of autoimmune thyroid disease.”
• “ We want to make sure that we are actually feeding and nourishing and supporting our bodies.”
• “Magnesium and taurine is my baseline. That's part of what I call the basic action plan for the rewiring of the brain. Beyond that, of course, it's going to be other things looking at B vitamins, especially B12, in which B12 deficiency is not uncommon and really needs to be identified. I talk about zinc and its benefits for particularly the hippocampus and the stress response system.”