Latest / ShameOver - The Drink Less Podcast / Perimenopause or Burnout? Hidden Hormone Signs Every Woman +40 Needs to Know (Part 1 of 2)
Transcript
- Erica+ShameOver: Okay, before I let you go, one quick thing. So if you've been listening and thinking, okay, but what's actually going on with me and my drinking? I built a free quiz exactly for that. It's literally less than two minutes, no email spam, no shame, and you will not get the you have a drinking problem, never drink again. Nonsense, not for me. So you just answer a few questions and you'll get your your actual pattern that you may or may not be aware of. Like, are you a stress drinker, a social drinker? Welcome back to the Shameover Podcast. Today is part one of a really important conversation that I'm having with Terry Taitosan. And if you found yourself thinking that I just don't feel like myself anymore, this episode is for you. We are talking about the signs of perimenopause that so many women miss, myself included. This is everything from anxiety to rage to brain fog, ADHD symptoms, alcohol cravings, and simply feeling off. Woo wee! If that felt a little too relatable, just know you're not alone. biggest takeaway, hopefully, you're not crazy or lazy or broken. ⁓ body simply may be asking for something different than it did 10 years ago or even just a few years ago. So next week in part two, ⁓ are going to be talking about the three biggest game changers for women over 40. So this is strength training, protein, and the surprising role that alcohol plays in how we age. Erica And ShameOver: Hello and welcome back to Shame Over the Drinkless Podcast. I am so excited today to have a new guest, new to me. We are here with Terry Taitosyan and she's going to introduce herself and share a little bit more about her incredible story. So Terry, welcome. Thank you for being here. Terry Tateossian: Thank you, Erica, for having me. Yeah. So I am lucky to be on Erica's show. what ⁓ do ⁓ my gosh, how can I even describe it? ⁓ currently I work with women ⁓ are in perimenopause and menopause and I run yoga retreats that are specifically for ⁓ and perimenopause and women over 40, but that's not what I always did in the past. So I'm going to be 50 this year, looking forward to that. Erica+ShameOver: On the edge of being sobriety curious. Whatever it is, you'll know. It's at shameover.me slash quiz. It's super easy to remember. Again, shameover.me slash quiz. Go take it right now, actually. Like, pause this, go do it, come back. I'll wait. Okay, okay. That's it for today. See you next time. So if you've been blaming yourself, your stress, your kids for how you're feeling, you're not alone, this conversation may be exactly what you need to hear. So let's dive in. I'll see you then. Terry Tateossian: And yeah, here we are. Erica And ShameOver: Amazing. When's your birthday? Terry Tateossian: December. Erica And ShameOver: December. Okay, so you're end of year. I am turning forty in ⁓ just under two weeks. Actually, maybe two weeks tomorrow. Yeah. So there you go. Look at that. ⁓ big milestones for us. Yes. So tell me a little bit more about your story and how you got to working with women in this very ⁓ important chapter of our lives that is, I feel like, very much been Terry Tateossian: Amazing. Yeah, happy birthday. Mm-hmm. Erica And ShameOver: pulled the rug over, right? Like us as women, we're not supposed to age, we're not supposed to do any of this. And now finally, I feel like research is actually coming out. everything is finally like helping us to not feel like shit the rest of our lives, or at least in this big chapter of our lives. So how did you even get to doing this ⁓ important work? Terry Tateossian: let's see. Perimenopause knocked on my front door at thirty seven ⁓ then walked out at forty two. I discovered I was in menopause when I thought I was pregnant and it turned out I was not pregnant. I was in menopause. ⁓ And was whirlwind of a lot of fun. and yeah, and then I kinda got my act together because for ⁓ Erica And ShameOver: ⁓ well. Terry Tateossian: About twenty years before that, I was a business owner. I ran an agency, had multiple businesses between the ages twenty-five to forty, had ⁓ up gaining a lot of weight and trying to run a business and that caught up with me eventually. And was not fun when you're eighty pounds overweight. So I had to get my act together and figure out what the heck's going on and lose the weight, get in shape. Erica And ShameOver: Mm. Terry Tateossian: You know, start lifting weights, figuring out my protein intake, figuring out my nutrition, which was a a very big deal, especially if you're in perimenopause. yeah, ⁓ out my sleep, optimizing my schedule, ⁓ no to a lot of things, right? So relearning how to be completely from scratch. Erica And ShameOver: God, that's huge. And I'm sure that was ⁓ the hardest part of it, but the most important part of it. Just learning to be. Terry Tateossian: Yeah, like we're trained to go, go, go, go, go, go, go, right. If if you're not productive for one millisecond of the day, your day is shit, right? You did nothing today because you missed those five minutes of productivity, right? And so that's the way I was, right? Just go, go, go, go, go. And then perimenopause really forces you to rethink that whole thing because ⁓ button. starts to turn and flash red and your system starts to pun intended, ⁓ ⁓ know, everything starts to break down all of a sudden because we are constantly running on empty and we're not replenishing our energy. We're not working with our body. We're not listening to our what our body actually is needing intuitively. We're just pushing through, right? So we're a culture in a society of pushing things through. Erica And ShameOver: Mm. Terry Tateossian: And that's how we pat ourselves on the back and ⁓ was now working out for me. Erica And ShameOver: Yeah, and it any of us. And I mean, like you said, we're conditioned that way. And I mean, so many of the women I work with, like I realize very quickly, not only for myself, but especially everyone else now, sense that alcohol is essentially that reward at the end of the day because it's finally the moment that we've taken for ourselves that we're actually like putting putting the pause button on. And we know it's counterintuitive, but it has proven to be effective and more quickly and consistently works every time. So yes, I feel all of that. Before we get into that. How did you even figure out that you were in perimenopause? Because I know 37 can seem on the younger end from at least what we're taught. you know, especially going in, like I was thinking I was pregnant and oops, guess not. It's something else. So how did that even come to be? Terry Tateossian: On this journey of trying to get my act together because I was literally on the edge of falling into alcoholism. Right. So I started noticing a lot of behavior changes, like what you just described. know, ⁓ it's my reward at the end of the day. Have a glass of wine. Well, guess what? That turned into two, then three, then four, then the whole bottle was gone. And then it still wasn't enough because. Erica And ShameOver: Yeah. Terry Tateossian: I was I didn't feel any less stressed after a bottle of wine. So then the vodka started coming out, you know, and then ⁓ three vodkas later, we're ⁓ you know, calmed down. But then ⁓ and months and months of this and ⁓ I started waking up and hm, do I have another vodka in the freezer? I wasn't thinking like, ⁓ I better go get my workout in or, ⁓ you what do I gotta do for my job or you know, no, I was thinking about alcohol first thing in the morning. And so that awareness of that, I caught it. I caught the shift. I caught that I was slipping in a place I did not want to go. And so I had to cut it all out. And and you know, that's when the sugar cravings started coming in. So I cut the alcohol out. The sugar cravings I didn't know that. So then I was start I was I was devouring like everything. Erica And ShameOver: Hm. ⁓ yeah. Terry Tateossian: dar Nutella I could find every chocolate mousse cake and you know all this ice cream every night, pints or not even pints, sometimes whole gallons of ice cream. Okay. And so just started really, really all the wheels were coming off at one point. ⁓ I ⁓ really I had to stop. I had to stop and take inventory of my ⁓ Erica And ShameOver: Yeah. Terry Tateossian: what was driving that behavior? Why was why was I doing this? Why was I in such ⁓ denial over ⁓ whatever was going on in my life? ⁓ how can I unpack that? ⁓ so in the middle of all that, I was in perimetopause ⁓ the same time. And yeah, by little I started cutting all those things out and finally realized that my lifestyle, my expectation for what I was supposed to be doing the societal expectation that as a woman I should be able to do all these things. Well, I had to kind of sit down and be like, no, I'm not. need a minute. Yeah. Right. Erica And ShameOver: Or ten. So did you ⁓ you figure it out on your own? Did you go to the doctor and get testing to, you know, blood work or anything like that? Or how did you really understand like, okay, I'm officially in pyramenopause. ⁓ what do I do? And then started making those changes. Terry Tateossian: When I did not get my period for a year, that's when you're officially in menopause. So everything before that is perimenopause. You could be in perimenopause for ten, fifteen years. You can start perimenopause at thirty-five. You don't have to be fifty or forty, right? So you could I know a lot of clients that started perimenopause symptoms started showing up. Erica And ShameOver: ⁓ well, okay. Okay. Terry Tateossian: Before you see it in the blood test, right? So even if you do go and you get a blood test and you check your estradiol, your estrogen, your progesterone, your testosterone, they could all look fine, right? Quote unquote. But really what you want to pay attention to is the feelings. How are you feeling, right? there, there isn't like a universal list of perimetopausal symptoms that gonna get, right? So everybody's very different. ⁓ And Erica And ShameOver: Okay. Sure. Terry Tateossian: feelings and how you feel is dependent on your own biology, your own personal levels of hormones. Like for example, my current testosterone level for a postmenopa eight year postmenopausal woman who's 50 years old is 44. And so that is a very high number compared to general population. The my question is, what was my testosterone when I was 25? Right. So I might have, I don't know, because I never tested. But it's still high for an eight year postmenopausal woman. that could be genetic, that could be you lean muscle tissue ⁓ proportional to rest of me. ⁓ It be ⁓ just my had naturally high testosterone in the first place, right? ⁓ And could that could be considered my Erica And ShameOver: Mm-hmm. Terry Tateossian: Postmenopausal testosterone level as normal. But for most women that have been postmenopausal for eight plus years, their testosterone is what I'm seeing directly with women that I work with is 1.5, 5, 9, Erica And ShameOver: And years is at forty four. So that's a drastic difference, obviously. Terry Tateossian: It's very different. It's across the board, right? Some people are at 20, right? Some people are at 70. Right. And so everybody's very different. so it's important to have a baseline for your blood work to do it at least once per year. Because ⁓ didn't do that. So I have no idea. I had no idea. ⁓ now they make it so easy to get your blood work. I mean, you literally you can go on Quest.com. They're ⁓ The blood draw company, the lab, you can sign up and you can go get a blood blood test in any location. You don't even need a doctor ⁓ go get your blood test, right? ⁓ so for somebody that starts feeling off something is going on, like you just don't feel like yourself. Go by the symptoms rather than your blood work because your blood work ⁓ is gonna tell you everything and there's you know lots of things that it's not gonna show. Erica And ShameOver: Lab, yeah. Terry Tateossian: Right. So go by how you feel. Observe your your general well-being ⁓ right? So check for your ⁓ Are you sleeping well? Are having a hard time falling asleep? Are you waking up at three o'clock in the morning and not able to go back to sleep? Are you up feeling ⁓ rested or you waking up feeling tired? Right? So pay attention to all these things. Pay attention to how much alcohol you're consuming too, right? 'Cause that could affect your s your your that could affect your ⁓ sleep quality. Right. So taking the environment into account, try to optimize your environment as much as possible. Try to cut down on alcohol, try to figure out your protein intake, do the basics first and then pay attention to how you feel. And then based on that, take action. Erica And ShameOver: Very much. Yes. And I I know you mentioned some of them, but if you want to elaborate on any more of of the things you should look for, your biggest thing is feeling off, like not feeling like yourself. I know for me, I was feeling off for a very long time and it was just I have two young kids. So I'm like, this is just what feeling like a mom with two young kids is like. And then the longer it went, I'm like, I I don't think that it should be this way. So then I very much took matters into my own hands to be like, I'm doing the blood work, I'm doing extra, not just like the the recommended annual panel, but like let's dive deeper into it and see what's really going on. ⁓ for me, I found out that my ferritin, which is not on all the blood work that you do, ⁓ might be, but not necessarily the ferritin. my ferritin was almost non-existent. And you know, so like a big thing that here I was for five years thinking that just feeling like shit and having no energy is just part of being a mom with young kids. Yes, that is a little part of it, but there was so much more to the story that had I not advocated for myself, I would have never gotten there and learned that. So what are some of the other symptoms that might be coming up that you just know that, you know, you're you're not you type thing. Terry Tateossian: Mm-hmm. Anxiety. Severe, chest anxiety. Right. And so it has ha there's a lot a lot of factors here that ⁓ play into this, But progesterone and estrogen are part of the call, they're like calming to the body. ⁓ And so when start fluctuating, all of a sudden you get. Erica And ShameOver: Mm, yes. Terry Tateossian: I mean, I I'll never forget it. The first panic attack I had was ⁓ I went into the hospital because I thought I was having a heart attack. It was that severe and it just came on really fast. And it was chest pains and shortness of breath and just unable to get a breath in. And it feels like a real heart attack, but it's actually a panic attack. And that was at the very, very beginning of my Perimetopause, it was about 3738. And it happened twice. And so I had no clue it was hormone related. I thought it was going crazy because it was just of nowhere, right? ⁓ so that's another one, just extreme And then ⁓ also right? depression is another interesting ⁓ symptom. Erica And ShameOver: Sure. Terry Tateossian: everybody experiences, but you know, a lot of it. you n having no interest in social connections. Right? Not a common one, but it does happen. ⁓ Having interest in socializing whatsoever. Just becoming antisocial. What when you a whole your whole life were a social butterfly. You love people, right? You love people, you love talking to people, ⁓ you energy, you get energized by being around people. All of a sudden, You don't wanna talk to anybody. You don't wanna go anywhere, you don't wanna talk to anybody. People annoy the heck out of you. ⁓ an ⁓ Erica And ShameOver: Whew wee. Have I felt that one? Yes. Terry Tateossian: rage. Like the kind of rage that you you can like set things on fire with the energy that you're feeling. Just right? Like extreme anger. Those that's those are hormones, ladies. ⁓ Erica And ShameOver: No. Well, and I'm so glad you brought that up because I feel like and I've learned this just about myself, like w we especially as women, might have been told how to label our feelings or emotions, but never feel them. And I feel like as my hormones have just gone crazy out of whack, ⁓ I have severe PCOS, so I've lived most of my life with crazy hormones anyway, ⁓ ⁓ is the rage that kind of comes out of nowhere and ⁓ thinking that it's because we never were able to really show negative emotions. So they're they're in there. It's just trapped energy and finally it is forcing its way out. And it's like, you can't live like this. I got to get out somehow. So is that something that you've experienced or a lot of the women that you work with really feel that is a big, big thing for them? Terry Tateossian: Yeah, absolutely. Like unleashed ⁓ is right? And so finding a way to first of all be aware that you're feeling it, ⁓ observing naming it like, hey, I am I'm feeling rage, right? ⁓ And okay. Be make that it be okay. You're having an internal tantrum. I I was just talking to somebody earlier ⁓ and You know, we exactly what you said. We're conditioned to allow these ⁓ feelings to ⁓ you know, out there and we're suppressing them. We're not even allowing ourselves internally to recognize and be aware of them. ⁓ so what what did they do? They get even ⁓ enraged. ⁓ get Erica And ShameOver: Yes. Terry Tateossian: has to progressive, right? And so they're gonna bust out. They're coming. They're coming out somehow. Erica And ShameOver: Well, and it's all the negative emotions because I know women, girls, whatever, we let girls cry even at a young age, where boys we teach them not to. But it is amazing because every I shouldn't say it amazing, it's fascinating and ironic, but every call that I've ever been on, whether it's a one-on-one or group call, as soon as The woman starts getting emotional, crying, tearing up, the first thing she does is apologizes. And I'm like, no, no, no. We do not apologize for that. Like, let it flow. But it's amazing that we were even taught that crying is okay up to a certain extent. Yet the second that we do, we apologize for it. Like, and I'm just sharing this because every time I see it, it's just so unbelievably fascinating to me that this is like, just as women, we are apologizing all day long for just being. Terry Tateossian: Mm. Yeah, because somewhere down the road somebody taught us that our emotions were a burden to them. Right? So we're, you know, big emotions, because are emotions are big, they're powerful, and they're beautiful. Someone out made her feel that it was too much and they couldn't her her beauty, right? And that's what makes human. You know, as far as I know so far for now. I don't know if AI has feelings, maybe it does, I don't know. But you know, they're beautiful. They're they're what makes us human and somehow we're taught to suppress and be apologized for that. yeah, I mean, I guess rage is a good one to apologize for, in my opinion. ⁓ you know, some of them, ⁓ of them, ⁓ I'm sure is, you know, another one ⁓ Erica And ShameOver: Exactly. Yes. Terry Tateossian: deserves an apology, but for for maybe for the impact that it has, not for the fact that I feel it. Right? 'Cause if Erica And ShameOver: ⁓ That's exactly it. Yeah. And we anger is a very normal emotion. Anger turns to rage when it's not dealt with for so long. Terry Tateossian: Yes. Yeah. Another symptom is ADHD, ⁓ Erica And ShameOver: Interesting. Cause yeah, this has come up so much. Like I used to have like be super focused and now I totally feel like I can't focus on anything. So talk talk more to that because that comes up all the time with with my group. Terry Tateossian: Mm-hmm. Yes. So this was of another funny story. I've got I've got a lot of funny stories with this whole thing. So I had was recording a podcast with a on my show and she's an therapist who's also going through pre ⁓ menopause. ⁓ And we we were chatting, we're chatting, we're chatting. ⁓ Erica And ShameOver: I love those. Terry Tateossian: And she starts naming all the symptoms of ADHD. And I'm like, I'm s I'm, you know, I'm sitting there, I'm like, check in my head. Check, check, check, check, check, check, check. And then I was like, wait a minute. Amelia, I think I've just diagnosed myself with ADHD. And she goes, Yeah, ⁓ to her, it was obvious that I, you know, that I have it. Erica And ShameOver: Yeah. Terry Tateossian: And she goes, and that explains why your perimenopause was so rocky. It w because I thought I was losing my shit. I was going nuts. Okay. I was able to manage before, So some of us with ADHD are able to mask and manage. And it it's actually a Erica And ShameOver: Yeah. Terry Tateossian: A superpower almost, right? Especially if you're in the entrepreneur space, a startup, founder space. You need ADHD a little bit. You need a lot of ADHD because you need to be able to multitask really quickly, jump from one thing to the next, not really lose a beat, boom, boom, boom, have like ten different conversations at the same time. You need that. It works for you. It's it's a good thing you know how to manage it, obviously. which a lot of exercise, weightlifting, good nutrition, all that stuff. Right. But then perimetopause hit and it just exploded. It was I couldn't function. Right. So the way that I used to be able to function, I couldn't function anymore. And it's so interesting because she explained it on the podcast that during per perimenopause, so many things changed that whatever you were able to manage before, you can no longer manage because there's so many other processes taking place in the body and the brain and the chemistry and the hormones and all this all these things that you just you're Your bust, okay? a for temporary, for a little bit of time, things kind of jump around ⁓ then they settle down. And it's okay. It's okay. But if you did have just even a little bit of ADHD before you got into perimetopause, it's gonna amplify. Erica And ShameOver: Mm. Yes, a hundred percent.