Latest / Age Like a Badass Mother / Ep. 86: Have We Been Wrong About Menopause All Along? The Untold Power of Women After

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Ep. 86: Have We Been Wrong About Menopause All Along? The Untold Power of Women After · Age Like a Badass Mother

• 0:00
  Here's a bold question.
• 0:01
  What if the people best equipped to lead the world are women after menopause?
• 0:08
  My guest today made a documentary that examines cultures where post-menopausal women ruled with compassion and clarity, and the world was better because of it.
• 0:18
  Find out what happened that flipped this power dynamic.
• 0:22
  Today's interview confirms that menopause isn't the end of relevance.
• 0:26
  It's the beginning of influence.
• 0:29
  You can watch this documentary at bingeable dot net slash Wise Women.
• 0:35
  The link will be in the show notes.
• 0:37
  If you'd like to add more plant based meals to your life that are packed with fiber and nutrients.
• 0:42
  You can download my free cookbook at, well, elephant.com after the show.
• 0:47
  I have adapted some of your favorite foods like lasagna, pasta salad, and honey mustard dressing to make them whole food plant based, oil free and low fat.
• 0:57
  And if you're really ready to take control of your health and heal your body the way that I did, check out my online class is Plant based eating while you're there.
• 1:06
  Once again, thank you for listening.
• 1:08
  You mean the world to me.
• 1:10
  Okay, let's get on with the show.
• 1:13
  Hi, friend.
• 1:14
  Are you looking to age healthfully, confidently and vibrantly?
• 1:18
  Then this podcast is for you.
• 1:19
  Smart, slightly salty, irreverent, and thought provoking.
• 1:24
  I'm Lauren Bernick and this is age.
• 1:26
  Like a badass mother.
• 1:30
  Dominique De Bru is a producer, entrepreneur, and nutritional chef who's redefining what it means to thrive after menopause.
• 1:37
  Her new documentary, Wise Women Humanity's Untold Origins, reveals how post-menopausal women were the original leaders who built human civilization, and why it's time for women to reclaim that role today.
• 1:52
  She advocates that your post reproductive years are the most important phase of life.
• 1:58
  And I have a feeling this conversation might get a little salty.
• 2:01
  So if you're not up for language or very frank conversation, this might not be the episode for you.
• 2:08
  I am a little bit fired up after watching this documentary, so please welcome Dominique.
• 2:14
  Welcome. Hi. Hi.
• 2:16
  How are you?
• 2:18
  Hey. I just I already love you because when we got on, you were fanning yourself like the hot flash. So.
• 2:26
  Hey, I'm now 60, so, you know, a solid.
• 2:32
  Almost ten years after menopause, which is the 12 months without a period.
• 2:39
  And I'm still getting them.
• 2:41
  You're still getting hot flashes?
• 2:43
  Yeah.
• 2:44
  Shit.
• 2:47
  They they've been my teacher.
• 2:50
  Excuse me?
• 2:51
  They really have.
• 2:52
  Because they happen mostly when I have an emotion that I'm afraid to deal with, be it anger or, you know, I was fanning myself because I was getting myself all ready with the microphone.
• 3:08
  It's a new system.
• 3:09
  And so the thought came up, oh, am I doing this right?
• 3:15
  Am I good enough to do this? And boom.
• 3:18
  And if the minute that I felt it and I'm like, you know what?
• 3:23
  I'm fine.
• 3:24
  It's going to be fine. Then it subsided.
• 3:26
  Wow. Yeah.
• 3:28
  Oh, I mean, I think that you're.
• 3:31
  You're right.
• 3:32
  It is a teacher, and I have to, I'm actually having the opposite experience this morning.
• 3:40
  If you can believe this.
• 3:41
  I'm 57. I'm still getting my period.
• 3:44
  And I have my periods so bad right now that I, It's like a raging river.
• 3:52
  You know, I'd apologize for TMI, but we're here for TMI, and, And, not only I have a tampon, a pad, I have a washcloth in my pants, and I'm sitting on a towel because I'm like, well, I'm going to be here an hour.
• 4:04
  Where the hell knows what's going to happen?
• 4:06
  So I'm actually having the opposite, you know, end of that coin right now or the end of the spectrum.
• 4:12
  And, you know, I'm just thinking about your I was just thinking about one thing from your documentary that struck me where, like somebody said, when a woman wakes up in the morning, she has five people on her mind a dog.
• 4:28
  She has her list of everything she has to do.
• 4:30
  And, you know, on top of that, I'm thinking about my period and you know how I'm going to handle that.
• 4:35
  And then a man wakes up in the morning and he's she doesn't say this, but he's probably scratching his balls and he's thinking, oh, I'm awake.
• 4:42
  You know.
• 4:44
  Yeah.
• 4:44
  And and she and so this is one of the gynecologist and she's a wonderful, Excuse me.
• 4:53
  She's a wonderful doctor.
• 4:55
  And she was being kind.
• 4:56
  She's like, yeah, he's thinking about maybe he's got to get dressed or something else to do.
• 5:02
  And my husband, who's the interviewer and the documentarian who made the film, he's like, no, no.
• 5:09
  Too complicated. I'm hungry.
• 5:11
  I'm like, that's right.
• 5:13
  And that's brilliant.
• 5:14
  Oh my gosh, one thought is enough.
• 5:16
  One thought in that funny.
• 5:18
  And so, yeah.
• 5:20
  And actually, here's my husband's one thought every morning I think, like, I was getting out of the shower as he was getting up and he's like, and I was naked.
• 5:27
  I walk past him, he's like, oh, all right.
• 5:29
  I was like, oh my God, I'm going to freaking kill you.
• 5:31
  You have no idea what's going on right now.
• 5:33
  Just got I was like, really?
• 5:36
  Really?
• 5:38
  Yeah.
• 5:39
  Oh my God. And so, you know, you mentioned your husband Chris, and he did such a great job.
• 5:46
  This documentary is amazing.
• 5:49
  And, yeah, I guess it started because I think he wanted to help you go through menopause.
• 5:55
  Was that right? Yeah.
• 5:58
  Yeah, yeah.
• 5:58
  Basically, when I started going into perimenopause and, pretty soon after full menopause, or what we call menopause, stop.
• 6:11
  Right?
• 6:12
  Right.
• 6:12
  It's not right.
• 6:14
  Exactly.
• 6:17
  I was going through a lot.
• 6:19
  The symptoms both physical and emotional, were a lot.
• 6:25
  But I think the worst part of it is that I didn't have something to look forward to.
• 6:33
  What?
• 6:34
  I was getting the message from society at large, the media, everything is that it was time for me to recede.
• 6:42
  I was becoming invisible.
• 6:44
  I was no longer as necessary.
• 6:46
  It was happening at the same time that I was seeing the ageism in the fashion world, because I was a fashion executive for many years.
• 6:55
  And what I saw there and what I saw in the rest of society was all matching up that your passing, your reproductive years there, you're kind of done right.
• 7:07
  And so it was making any kind of symptom much worse, because emotionally I was going into this like doom and dread feeling.
• 7:18
  So he was seeing what I was going through.
• 7:21
  He, as a guy was trying to help me, like bringing me solutions.
• 7:26
  And I read this and I look this up, etc.
• 7:29
  and it so happened.
• 7:31
  So he's a documentary filmmaker and he had been hired to do interviews with menopause doctors right at that same time.
• 7:41
  Oh, wow. So I was like, would you just ask him questions?
• 7:43
  Because remember, this was about, ten years ago, 10 to 9 years ago.
• 7:50
  And you see how much has changed in the conversation of menopause and 10 to 9 years ago or 9 to 10, there wasn't a conversation about menopause, so I wasn't finding good situations.
• 8:04
  My Ob-Gyn had been my obstetrician for my daughter's birth, and he was awesome, but he really didn't know a lot.
• 8:15
  So I was just not finding answers to the basic physical symptoms, right?
• 8:22
  And so I was like, just ask him questions.
• 8:25
  And the answers that were coming back were just not very fulfilling, even to the point that one doctor said, well, we have to treat menopause because it's nature's mistake.
• 8:36
  And that was like it sent me off.
• 8:39
  And him, he's the type.
• 8:41
  He has the type of mind that if something doesn't fit a story and doesn't make sense, he cannot let go of it until it makes sense.
• 8:50
  And that's what sent him down a rabbit hole of research, which inspired me to research along with him.
• 9:00
  And that's where we saw that the perspective that the medical field has, that it's a recent happening that we go into menopause because we outlive our fertility is not true at all.
• 9:14
  And anthropologists have known this for a while, that we have had post-menopausal females all the way back to before we were Homo sapiens.
• 9:23
  And then the film takes through how it is that those post-menopausal females helped us grow our brains and become the humans that we are.
• 9:35
  And we were matriarchal for a good long time.
• 9:39
  And then we had this mistaken thing that happened that switched it over to patriarchy.
• 9:45
  And right now, I think we would do much better if we at least balanced it out.
• 9:51
  If not, went back to women who care about the community, caring about all of us.
• 9:59
  And when you're post-menopausal, you have all that nurturing and caring intrinsically.
• 10:06
  Then you've had your lifelong experiences and wisdom, and then you're not up and down and all being tugged around by the hormones and worried about the reproductive stuff.
• 10:20
  So all your.
• 10:21
  Family and all the things you have to take care. Of.
• 10:24
  Yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 10:27
  So that's why I call it one of the most important parts of our life, because we take everything that we've learned and we can give back to the greater whole.
• 10:39
  So now you said 9 to 10 years ago you didn't, you weren't doing these interviews.
• 10:44
  Were you doing these interviews 9 to 10 years ago.
• 10:46
  Because you guys look. No that's.
• 10:48
  That's when that research started.
• 10:50
  That's what it all and then finally, we were trying to raise the money to be supported to do this documentary.
• 11:01
  And then finally we're like, look, it's sad to say, but the both the corporate world and the Hollywood machine still doesn't see the importance of older women.
• 11:17
  Right.
• 11:17
  That we watch a tremendous amount of movies.
• 11:21
  We are some of the most, biggest consumers, right?
• 11:29
  Be it across the board, beauty, fashion, food, cars, etc..
• 11:37
  Everything. Real estate. Yeah.
• 11:39
  And so it was really challenging to raise money.
• 11:44
  So we're like, we got to do it ourselves.
• 11:46
  And he started, looking for the anthropologists and, you know, like making all the relationships about four years ago and started research and started interviewing about three years ago.
• 12:00
  And it took about a year to do that and then edit.
• 12:05
  It's incredible.
• 12:06
  And, you know, and also I want to say, Margaret Cho is one of the producers.
• 12:12
  And she was incredible.
• 12:13
  I love her, she was so good in this to so honest.
• 12:17
  And okay, so let's go back to the when can I tell you personally?
• 12:23
  Yeah. She's as great as she seems.
• 12:25
  So I figured that she's a she just seen she's just like one of those women who seems very supportive of other women.
• 12:34
  And very smart and frank.
• 12:37
  And if you want to know what she thinks, you just ask her.
• 12:41
  Right, exactly.
• 12:43
  And funny. Let's not forget. Yeah.
• 12:46
  So, you know, you brought up something that I thought was really important that, we medicalized, menopause doctors medical.
• 12:56
  Mostly because it was probably for a long time men in charge of medicine.
• 13:00
  And, you know, your husband asked the question, is menopause a mistake?
• 13:07
  Because one of the doctors, I guess, said menopause is a mistake.
• 13:11
  So what?
• 13:12
  Like, what do you say to that? What?
• 13:14
  What is the answer to that?
• 13:20
  Excuse me.
• 13:21
  I'm getting over a cold, so.
• 13:23
  Yeah. Of course.
• 13:26
  What I say to that is.
• 13:30
  Science needs to come together.
• 13:33
  If the medical school would walk across the campus to the anthropology building and have a little conversation, they would find out that their belief of average lifespan, you know, their whole idea is, oh, in the 19, you know, in 1900, the average lifespan was like 48.
• 13:54
  So you just didn't live much post.
• 13:57
  Well, that's an average.
• 13:59
  If you take out all the infants that died, if you take out all the mothers that died in childbirth, just those, then you realize, boom, the average goes much further up.
• 14:09
  Right?
• 14:10
  And that's what, anthropological biology would tell them.
• 14:15
  So if they change their perspective, then all of a sudden they would think about researching more.
• 14:23
  Okay, why do we go into menopause?
• 14:25
  What's the importance and how do we support women to be the best of themselves in menopause?
• 14:32
  And there are so many more treatments could come out of it looking at it that way then, just what's happening now?
• 14:43
  And nothing against HRT because it can be a hugely amazing for the women who can take it and where it works.
• 14:52
  But it's one thing and it's thinking backwards.
• 14:55
  I like to think, why is women forward?
• 14:59
  Yeah.
• 15:00
  And what?
• 15:02
  Okay.
• 15:02
  So you're I think the whole point is that women used to rule the world matriarchy.
• 15:10
  And I say run the world because I.
• 15:14
  You're right.
• 15:16
  When we come into a powerful position.
• 15:19
  I've seen this in corporate life so many times that if it's a woman, most of the time, she would bring around a council and hear everybody's ideas right?
• 15:32
  Instead of ruling, which is one going up at the top and telling everybody else what to do.
• 15:39
  That is a very good distinction.
• 15:41
  Thank you.
• 15:42
  Yeah.
• 15:43
  I'm used to the patriarchal language and and so women used to run the world and because and the post specifically post-menopausal women because they were great leaders, you know, with the caring in the organization.
• 15:59
  And like you said, the council, they were attentive leaders.
• 16:04
  And so I guess your findings are that, well, I could talk about the anthropological aspect because I found that incredibly fascinating.
• 16:16
  Like when we got fire or when, you know, humans discovered fire and they could cook their food and the size of their jaws changed, and then, you know, their brains expanded.
• 16:29
  Can you talk about that part a little bit?
• 16:31
  Because I found that fascinating. Sure.
• 16:34
  And it was an article that I saw, years ago, because I'm a nutritional chef.
• 16:40
  It came into my feed because anything that has to do with food and cooking and nutrition, etc.
• 16:49
  and it's a finding that anthropologists started looking at the fact that when, you know, pre Homo sapiens, our groups before that found fire and were able to cook food.
• 17:03
  Then all of a sudden the huge muscles that we find for instance, in gorillas and chimps, etc., because of how much they have to chew their raw food, started easing up.
• 17:16
  And that could possibly allow for the brain to grow because those muscles were actually keeping the skull flatter.
• 17:25
  Right?
• 17:25
  So I brought that to Chris and he's like, wait, wait a minute.
• 17:29
  So he started to talk to anthropologists that dealt with fire and how we found fire and how we started using it.
• 17:37
  And here's the interesting thing for anyone who's gone camping, if you think about the challenge of keeping a fire going in different climates, and then also deciding, okay, who's going to sleep around the fire, how are we going to keep predators away?
• 17:56
  All of that?
• 17:57
  It's very complex social structure.
• 18:00
  It's not just I'll go hunting, you go gathering, it becomes a much more social complexity.
• 18:08
  And that's another belief in anthropology that that's what helped us grow our brain.
• 18:14
  Because, as we say in the film, we had a very fast brain growth, you know, in the geological time frame, where our brain grew five times the size in 200,000 years, which is a tiny bit of time when we're talking millions.
• 18:33
  Right? Right, right.
• 18:35
  And that's probably where it started.
• 18:40
  Now, the social complexity, the females and especially the post reproductive females were much more capable at holding us together.
• 18:52
  At that time, when we stopped around the fire.
• 18:58
  Were and the men were compliant as far as you know.
• 19:02
  Or was it just were they just leading the women or the whole tribe or the whole group?
• 19:09
  I think it was, as we can see in some matriarchal, native cultures that still exist in the Amazon, in Australia, etc..
• 19:22
  It's not compliancy.
• 19:24
  It doesn't need to be compliancy.
• 19:26
  Whoever is better at doing whatever job did it and they were celebrated for that.
• 19:32
  Guys.
• 19:33
  Just like, I can't even just listen to my lineage.
• 19:36
  Like I can't even wrap my head around this.
• 19:39
  Like getting men to listen to it.
• 19:41
  Like the men just went along.
• 19:45
  It it does.
• 19:46
  It's so out of my thinking.
• 19:50
  Yeah, this just happened that, oh, they were the better leaders and did a great job.
• 19:56
  And so everything was good and people just went along with it.
• 20:00
  Look, I use this, very easy example because, both men and women that I've given this example to get it right away.
• 20:10
  If there is a friends and family Thanksgiving get together to organize, is it going to be the man or the woman who's going to do it better in the couple or in the friends, etc.?
• 20:25
  And my husband.
• 20:27
  So the director and auteur of this film is a genius.
• 20:32
  And I don't mean that just I love him.
• 20:34
  He's actually, you know, on paper in numbers, a genius.
• 20:38
  I could. Kind of get that from. Him. Yeah.
• 20:40
  And he has organized film sets, you know, he has done multiple days of, film production, etc..
• 20:49
  So it's not that his organizational skills are in question, but if I put to him, okay, we've got all sorts of different friends, different family, different diets, different emotional needs, different ideological needs, and they're all coming in.
• 21:07
  We've got to find a place to stay exactly what we're going to make, try to make everyone happy.
• 21:14
  You can see that his eyes just go into panic mode right?
• 21:19
  And he would run it extremely well.
• 21:22
  It would be on time.
• 21:24
  Everybody would get fed, but it would be vocalized because for him to deal with it, it's like, no, no, just this much food, just this, just that.
• 21:34
  And people would have an okay time.
• 21:36
  Not a problem.
• 21:38
  But what I could create, people would feel like, oh, I've been heard, I've been seen.
• 21:45
  And that's the difference in being.
• 21:47
  And that's what we're not seeing in our leadership right now.
• 21:50
  Right.
• 21:50
  And if you take a look at Iceland, you've seen it there.
• 21:54
  If you take a look at New Zealand, you've seen it there, you've seen it in Germany.
• 21:58
  So any place where females have come into a leadership role that has been able to have this, you've seen that.
• 22:08
  Yeah, that is a very good example.
• 22:10
  I mean, it really is.
• 22:11
  And yeah, my head, it's always we always have a huge Thanksgiving here.
• 22:17
  That's a great example.
• 22:18
  I probably have 20 to 30 people every year.
• 22:21
  It's a huge to do.
• 22:23
  And usually like the day before, my husband will be like, did you do this?
• 22:28
  Did you did like I'm like, okay, thanks very much.
• 22:33
  Thanks for thinking about that the day before Thanksgiving.
• 22:36
  I appreciate that, and it's like you said, my husband is also brilliant and can do a he's an amazing man.
• 22:43
  But you're right.
• 22:43
  You know, it's a different maybe a different skill set.
• 22:46
  And, yeah, I think that's a good way to explain that.
• 22:50
  I think that your husband, I just want to talk about him for a second because he just.
• 22:56
  Yeah.
• 22:57
  You could just tell how much he loved you, loves you, and wanted to help you and how, how he really does respect women and really wanted to get to the bottom of this.
• 23:13
  And I really have to give him, like, kudos for that.
• 23:17
  Yeah.
• 23:18
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 23:19
  And I have to say that through the process of making the film, I kept wanting him to soften some of the like, you know, down with patriarchy or men have a simpler brain, etc..
• 23:35
  You've got to you know, because I love him and I love men.
• 23:40
  Yeah.
• 23:40
  I, you know, I have six older brothers, so, you know, etc..
• 23:46
  But for him, he has seen how, how patriarchy has kept him down and has given him a box to fit into that he does not fit into, and how other male friends are kept down by it.
• 24:02
  So for him, when he started realizing all of these things about post-menopausal women, he was like, oh my God, we have to exalt him again because we have to get out of this shit show that we're in.
• 24:17
  I knew you could really get that from him.
• 24:20
  And so, I, I want to ask you I want to come back to the film in a second, but I want to ask you, what did your menopause experience look like?
• 24:33
  And what did you do?
• 24:35
  Did you take hormones or anything like that?
• 24:39
  Sure.
• 24:40
  So my menopause experience was, my perimenopause, it might have been longer than I knew.
• 24:52
  But at the same time, I was dealing with a very bad case of Lyme disease that had gone neurological.
• 25:00
  So I was dealing with that.
• 25:01
  And when I got better from that, it was a very short time that then other symptoms started showing up.
• 25:08
  So I could have been perimenopausal even through that, but not knowing.
• 25:12
  And when the perimenopause happened, it was just wild emotional swings.
• 25:19
  Lots of bleeding.
• 25:21
  You know, to the point that there was a suggestion of a hysterectomy, which luckily I didn't have to have, but all that kind of stuff.
• 25:29
  And then, boom, you know, the stop the men, a stop and lack of sleep, muscle pain, joint pain.
• 25:40
  So kind of the whole range of stuff.
• 25:43
  I had some of everything, some worse, some better because, and this is why I'm a nutritional chef.
• 25:52
  So I've had a cancer journey and a lyme's journey and nutrition and, the herbs I take and the supplements I take have been hugely, amazingly important.
• 26:08
  Through those journeys, I went down the same road because, you know, eight years ago, I was told you can't take hormone replacement because of your cancer and your family's cancer.
• 26:24
  Then just two years ago, found I had found a new doctor, you know, some years prior.
• 26:32
  And she said, look, all of the data is changing, right?
• 26:36
  And that's what we've been hearing.
• 26:38
  So you can try HRT.
• 26:40
  And I had really, solved just about everything.
• 26:44
  Yeah.
• 26:45
  I still have some hot flashes, except for the sleep.
• 26:48
  So for the sleep, I was like, yeah, I'd like to try it because it would be awesome to be able to, like, sleep through the night again.
• 26:57
  Didn't work.
• 26:58
  I would have to have a full hysterectomy because I have fibroids, so hormone replacement just made me bleed all the time again.
• 27:07
  But that couldn't even be a solution because I am a testosterone forward female.
• 27:14
  That meant that my body took the estrogen and made it into testosterone, which I could use some, but because I'm a female, I couldn't use all.
• 27:23
  So it was becoming free testosterone.
• 27:25
  I was losing my hair, I was having anxiety, so that didn't work.
• 27:30
  So I just went back and I looked more deeply at what I need to do for sleep in terms of an herbal level, etc., and supplement level.
• 27:41
  And now I'm I'm doing really well.
• 27:46
  That's good.
• 27:47
  Can you kind of when you say you're a nutritional chef, are you doing this for other people who have this issue or.
• 27:55
  Yes. And can you also share what it is specifically herbal wise that you do?
• 28:00
  Sure.
• 28:01
  So first of all, lifestyle, okay.
• 28:04
  When you go into menopause, it is not that all of a sudden you have to change your lifestyle that you never did before.
• 28:14
  What it actually means is all the stuff that you really should have done for your health and wellbeing before.
• 28:20
  You just don't have an excuse anymore.
• 28:24
  You don't have the key.
• 28:26
  You know the life force to overtake that.
• 28:29
  The hormones aren't there to kind of mask it.
• 28:32
  So what does that mean?
• 28:34
  That means protect and take care of your sleep, the right kind of diet for you.
• 28:42
  And it's different for everyone and move in the right way.
• 28:47
  Right.
• 28:47
  So we should always be exercising and moving our body.
• 28:51
  And when we get post-menopausal, we just have to pay attention to certain things like muscle building and jumping for bone building that we didn't before.
• 29:01
  Right?
• 29:02
  So lifestyle is first, then there are supplements and herbs that can help you, and each person is a bit different.
• 29:12
  There are some that kind of go across the board.
• 29:15
  The biggest thing is magnesium, magnesium, magnesium for sleep.
• 29:21
  Right.
• 29:22
  It's for three things.
• 29:24
  So there's different types of magnesium.
• 29:26
  So I take L3 and eight which is the one that passes the blood brain barrier.
• 29:33
  It's great for cognition and also calms my mind and calms my emotional ups and downs.
• 29:42
  Citrate helps me move, helps my digestion much more.
• 29:51
  And citrate sorry citrate for the digestion and glycine eight for the muscles.
• 29:57
  And that's the one that relaxes the muscles and can help you sleep.
• 30:01
  Wait, are these all forms of magnesium or.
• 30:04
  That's three separate things.
• 30:06
  It's a separate form of him.
• 30:08
  Yeah. Okay.
• 30:09
  Can you say that one more time?
• 30:10
  Magnesium L3 and eight is the one for the brain.
• 30:16
  Citrate for basically keeping you regular and glycine eight for your muscles.
• 30:24
  Okay.
• 30:25
  And relaxing your muscles for sleep.
• 30:27
  Okay.
• 30:28
  So what else? So that, my most important things that omega three creatine.
• 30:40
  Big time.
• 30:41
  So I do 4 to 5g a day in my tea in the morning, and I just, sipping this through the morning.
• 30:49
  And then what works for me for sleep is I eat some, freeze dried tart cherries, because the juice is too high in sugar.
• 31:04
  At the end of the day, they're a great snack.
• 31:06
  Anyway, and I do take a tiny bit of melatonin because it seems like I'm just not creating enough.
• 31:14
  And jujube is what works for me. Yeah.
• 31:18
  What is that?
• 31:20
  It is a, It's a plant that has been used in Asia for a tremendous amount of time, and I do a tincture of it.
• 31:30
  And I do 20 drops, and I.
• 31:35
  Oh, man, that's good.
• 31:36
  And that helps you sleep through the night. Yes.
• 31:39
  And and I still.
• 31:41
  I still wake up, but I wake up and I go right back to sleep.
• 31:44
  So I still get good, solid sleep. Good.
• 31:48
  And so I asked you.
• 31:49
  So you do this for other people being a nutritional chef.
• 31:53
  Yes. So how I work I'm not a trained nutritionist, although with I do have a nutrition minor from, university because that's when I had my cancer situation.
• 32:08
  So I kind of, delved into a bunch of learning there.
• 32:12
  And then my entire life of nutrition information for myself.
• 32:18
  But I do not have a nutrition degree.
• 32:22
  But what I do have is the ability to take your diet.
• 32:26
  Let's say you have just lately found out that dairy is just not good for you, and your, comfort food.
• 32:36
  One of them is mac and cheese.
• 32:38
  I'm going to create a great nondairy mac and cheese for you.
• 32:42
  That you can start switch switching into, and that becomes your comfort food, because the most important thing is keeping a long term, healthy lifestyle in the diet area is that you feed your soul with it.
• 32:59
  You know those foods that make you go, and that remind you of something deep that you can't even fully explain.
• 33:08
  They just make you happy.
• 33:10
  So that's what I do.
• 33:12
  I have gone much more plant based, as I've aged.
• 33:18
  And that's because that's how my body works best.
• 33:21
  So, I started a company called Altro Food, and it's a partnership with an Italian company that started this.
• 33:32
  And then we made different ones together.
• 33:35
  And these are pea protein mixes that you can use to make burgers.
• 33:40
  Little veggie balls, loaves, cutlets.
• 33:43
  And I get to do all of my favorite foods like Bolognese cutlets, Marsala cutlets, piccata, you know, stuffed peppers.
• 33:55
  I'm Italian if you can't tell, with plant based stuff.
• 33:59
  So that's an example of something that I do.
• 34:02
  Oh, well, you're speaking my language because, yeah, I, I do, I don't do that.
• 34:09
  Like, I haven't created a company like that, but.
• 34:11
  Yeah, I definitely try to take any kind of thing that I used to eat before I went whole food plant based and make it a, you know, just.
• 34:20
  You can.
• 34:20
  That's what I love about eating that way is, you know, you could eat a healthy version of anything that you used to love.
• 34:27
  Yes. Before that. So. Okay.
• 34:30
  I love that.
• 34:31
  And I like that you, took control of of your situation.
• 34:37
  Have you ever heard of Jane Hardwick?
• 34:39
  Colin collings?
• 34:41
  No. Oh, we had her as a guest, maybe close to a year ago.
• 34:47
  And she does like these.
• 34:49
  It's a y. She's actually called.
• 34:52
  She calls her thing wise women retreats as well.
• 34:56
  And she talks about wise going through menopause, the wise woman way, and what you just said before.
• 35:05
  Like, if you haven't taken care of yourself, this is now, you know, there's no excuse that this is the time you have to take care of yourself.
• 35:12
  And she she largely said the same thing.
• 35:16
  And she said, this is the autumn of our lives.
• 35:19
  Like we're, you know, kind of reaping what we've sowed.
• 35:24
  So whatever we did in our life to take care of ourself or not take care of ourselves, it's showing up.
• 35:32
  And now we have to pay attention because it's getting our attention, like grabbing us by the, you know, where you cannot ignore it.
• 35:41
  And, I'm just I and it's so funny to me that you're both saying these wise women things and and we are having to, as a tribe, tell each other, you know, this is what you do.
• 35:57
  This is what you can take, girl. This is.
• 35:58
  You know how I'm doing it.
• 35:58
  This is what's helping me.
• 36:01
  And it's not going to help everyone.
• 36:02
  But, you know, we have to have that information, that dissemination of information so that we, you know, we have to do this for each other.
• 36:13
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:14
  And learning about adaptogens like Lion's Mane and Ashwagandha, you know, it's it's now as we are in the wise Women phase, it's also time to use that wise women energy and learn and grow.
• 36:30
  And for me so here Chris was trying to help me with the smoothie.
• 36:36
  And rather than bringing like, you know, any of the nutritional or lifestyle stuff I found on my own, but what he brought me with this information and with all of the interviews that he did with these scientists, is that, no, no, I'm not meant to back up.
• 36:56
  I am not irrelevant. I am not invisible.
• 36:59
  And I am not not important because I'm not in fertility anymore.
• 37:05
  I am actually more important.
• 37:07
  So now that's my motivation, because how are you going to take care of yourself and be disciplined about being good to yourself?
• 37:17
  If you're not motivated, you know, if you're feeling like, oh, well, I'm done, I'm invisible.
• 37:24
  I'll just stay home and eat cake.
• 37:25
  You know?
• 37:26
  I'll eat cake and die early because I'm not necessary.
• 37:31
  Right.
• 37:31
  But that didn't also fit with how I was feeling inside.
• 37:35
  And so it gave me that, you know how your instinct is.
• 37:39
  You're right. Keep going.
• 37:41
  Yeah, I yes, I agree with that so much.
• 37:45
  I feel more powerful, more ready for life than I ever have.
• 37:53
  And I love I love this phase of life.
• 37:56
  I mean, it's really interesting.
• 37:59
  And so I want to talk more about that and be like, what?
• 38:02
  What are we supposed to do with this information?
• 38:05
  But we mentioned this before, the mistake that happened and that why, things changed from a matriarchy to a patriarchy.
• 38:14
  Can you talk about the mistake?
• 38:16
  Because I also found that fascinating.
• 38:18
  Yeah. So, Anthropologists look at this, that it's about 10,000 years ago that we domesticated, both plants and animals.
• 38:32
  Plants first and then animals before we domesticated animals, we, We believed that babies came from the heavens, basically.
• 38:47
  And at most, sex was something that opened up the woman to receive the baby.
• 38:54
  And we talked to a phenomenal anthropologist, Holly dones Worth, who actually wrote about this and coined the term, reproductive consciousness that we as humans know that we're going to die and know that where babies come from, that sex and babies are connected and that came with domesticating animals and kind of watching the sex happen, and then watching the female get bigger and then a baby came.
• 39:30
  So at that point, the mistake was that the males went, oh, it's us, because in the act of sex, there's only one thing that before heavy duty microscopes came about that you could see.
• 39:46
  Right, right.
• 39:47
  So the belief came that they planted the seed in the female, like you plant a seed in the soil and they're like, oh, all right.
• 40:02
  Then we got to step up and take care of this and control this.
• 40:08
  And that's what happened.
• 40:09
  And so with when males stepped up and it wasn't something mean or anything like that, it was just their stepping up.
• 40:20
  I'll take care of the big Thanksgiving and what needed to happen.
• 40:25
  Things, you know, simplified because then we can take care of it and we can control it. And, you know, things became more step like and more pointed in patriarchal terms.
• 40:41
  Yeah, I found that really interesting.
• 40:42
  So that once they got all involved, then I don't want to say it all went to shit. But and then the last thing I want to talk about it before we really talk about, okay, what are we supposed to do with this information is, the bonobos.
• 40:59
  I thought that was also really so fascinating.
• 41:02
  Can you talk about that just a little?
• 41:04
  Absolutely. So we are in the process of making the film and kind of late into it, we were given the book The Bonobos Sisterhood, and it's, Diane who wrote it, is a professor at Harvard, and she has been, as a lawyer, she has worked largely pro-bono for women who are in violent situations, who get misrepresented as the, you know, basically helping women and.
• 41:44
  What she puts forward is that bonobos as, as a society have, basically taken away male sexual coercion on females.
• 42:01
  And the way that they've done that is that if any female feels herself in danger at all, she makes a sound.
• 42:10
  E and any other female that's around, whether they know her anything, if they just hear the sound, they come running high and they push off the aggressive male.
• 42:23
  And if he won't go off, there's, you know, been times that they've been quite violent, biting off a toe, etc., but push them off and basically send them to, to have some alone time.
• 42:36
  Time out. Exactly. Time out.
• 42:39
  And if he comes back and is apologetic and nice and he's let back in, if he doesn't, then he is now ousted from the society.
• 42:48
  And in that, if you read the whole book, it's a phenomenal book.
• 42:52
  So read it.
• 42:54
  It shows how patriarchy is actually quite simple to get around by us all just coming together because patriarchy divides us, right?
• 43:06
  Love the nuclear family, but we are not meant to be living in small little nuclear families.
• 43:13
  We are much more tribal.
• 43:15
  And when you have more women together, they stand up for what is necessary for the community and they do not allow themselves to be addressed or coerced.
• 43:26
  That just almost makes me want to cry.
• 43:28
  I mean, I'm tearing up just thinking about it.
• 43:30
  I mean, okay, so what do we do with all this information that we're in the most powerful phase of our life?
• 43:39
  We have to band together.
• 43:41
  We are the ones who are the good leaders, who are the benevolent leaders.
• 43:48
  And how do we kind of change what's happening in this world?
• 43:53
  Do you have any ideas?
• 43:55
  Yes, I do. Two main ideas.
• 44:00
  First of all, come together, get in community, bring together friends, join support groups.
• 44:09
  Community groups just come together as women.
• 44:14
  Number one and number two, the most important and maybe, more difficult is listen to your deep in instinct.
• 44:26
  And the reason why I say more difficult is you brought up, the bonobo part that we have in the movie.
• 44:35
  So in the movie, there's a section that Chris would call Men Behaving Badly, basically, when he asked all the scientists, how do you think we're doing?
• 44:42
  It's like, oh, not good, not good.
• 44:44
  And he shows wars, garbage heaps, you know, ice melting, etc.
• 44:56
  and as he was doing that edit, he would ask me, what do you think?
• 45:00
  Do you think we should put more?
• 45:02
  And I was going through and no, along the line, did I ever talk about sexual violence.
• 45:09
  Right.
• 45:09
  Which is a horrible thing and something that affects one on five women, supposedly, because I think it's more in the US and one out of four and sometimes one out of three worldwide.
• 45:23
  Right?
• 45:24
  And once something like that has happened to you, it really changes you, right?
• 45:29
  So it affects your entire life.
• 45:32
  I didn't bring it up because I had internalized that so much.
• 45:37
  Right?
• 45:37
  I walk out of my house, I am like in my carapace.
• 45:42
  Sorry. Like my shield, right? Yes.
• 45:45
  And it wasn't until we were given the Bonobos sisterhood book, and I'm reading the book, and halfway through I start sobbing because I'm realizing how much I'm holding it in.
• 45:59
  And that's when we went to interview Diane.
• 46:03
  And so we, I suggest to everyone and, and this is women of any age do the inner work and see how much of the gaslighting you have internalized and sucked it in to yourself, where you're not speaking out, where you're not joining groups and making a difference.
• 46:29
  And so when I say leadership phase of life, I don't mean that everybody should be a politician.
• 46:35
  Have a business, etc.
• 46:37
  it's whatever that means to you.
• 46:39
  Maybe you're going to be the most amazing matriarch in your family and change what's going on there.
• 46:48
  Maybe you are going to start a business.
• 46:50
  Maybe you're going to change the corporate thing that you're in.
• 46:55
  Maybe you are going to become an advocate or go into politics, go into leadership.
• 47:00
  It's whatever is important to you.
• 47:02
  Stop limiting yourself and shoving yourself down.
• 47:09
  It's funny that you said you started sobbing during the book, and I just said I almost started crying just talking about it.
• 47:16
  It is such a unspoken, unconscious thing that we carry around, you know, no matter what.
• 47:25
  Like, it's just is a really small example, like, we go walk our dog at night, I'll go with my husband, and he always wants to go through this dark, big parking lot, and I'm light and there's cars there, and I'm like, no, no, I don't feel safe.
• 47:42
  And he's like, why?
• 47:44
  And it's like the fact that you have to ask me why says everything.
• 47:49
  You have no idea what it's like to be a woman, you know, in that you feel unprotected in a way that you're scared of what's going to jump out of that car and attack you.
• 48:03
  And he never thinks about it.
• 48:06
  Exactly, exactly.
• 48:08
  Because. Yeah.
• 48:10
  Nothing's going to come out and attack him. No.
• 48:13
  Yeah.
• 48:15
  Yeah.
• 48:15
  It's really interesting I, I really like your suggestions.
• 48:20
  That's, they're very good.
• 48:23
  Do you. Okay.
• 48:25
  So how and where can we watch this film.
• 48:28
  And again it's called Wise Women Humanity's Untold Origins.
• 48:32
  Where can we watch it.
• 48:34
  So on a new platform, it's called Bingeable darknet.
• 48:39
  And we'll get you, a link in that.
• 48:45
  You can put it in the description, and people can just use that link to go and rent the movie.
• 48:51
  Okay. Awesome.
• 48:52
  And pass that link on to friends.
• 48:55
  And this is really, we're all of the age where you're probably going to remember a shampoo commercial.
• 49:02
  I told two friends and she told his friends in London.
• 49:06
  So so on.
• 49:07
  Yeah, this.
• 49:08
  Is really how the message is going to get out by women telling each other, telling their men and just passing the conversation on like that.
• 49:19
  It's so good.
• 49:20
  And you did such a good job.
• 49:22
  I'm so proud of you, and I'm so glad that I got to meet you and and they know you.
• 49:27
  And, you know, I just, What I always ask at the end of the interview, what is your best piece of advice for aging?
• 49:36
  Well.
• 49:41
  Take care of yourself and come to know yourself.
• 49:48
  That's good advice.
• 49:49
  Yeah.
• 49:50
  Thank you so much, Dominic.
• 49:51
  You've been a treasure.
• 49:53
  And thank you to Chris, too.
• 49:55
  He did a an amazing job. Thank you.
• 49:58
  Lauren, thank you for putting all of this information out into the world.
• 50:02
  It's awesome.
• 50:04
  All right, take care. Bye bye.
• 50:05
  Thanks for listening, friend.
• 50:07
  From my heart to yours, be well until we meet again.