Gennev: Let's talk about menopause

Ada Calhoun's Book Why Can't We Sleep? was an instant New York Times bestseller. 

Gen X women are finding it hauntingly and painfully and upliftingly familiar. 

Gen X women are ... unhappy. Not all of them, not all of the time, but certainly there is more of a cloud over this generation than others. Sandwiched eternally between the much larger, much louder Boomer and Millennial cohorts, Gen X has been overlooked and ignored like the latchkey kids we so essentially are.

And that's doubly true of the women of Gen X, who are now aging into "invisibility" - those supposedly unsexy years after 40. 

Ada Calhoun wanted to know why we're such a miserable bunch, so she started asking. Two hundred interviews with Gen X women later, she's got answers, and she shared them in this fabulous podcast with Gen Xer (and what an irony that my computer's spellcheck doesn't recognize "Xer"), Gennev CEO Jill Angelo.

Hear their conversation about the price of trying to have it all, what it's like to be the first generation not to do better than our parents did, and why perimenopause and menopause are making it even harder on the women of the forgotten generation.

Spoiler: it's not all bad news. But there is some. 

Jeannie Ralston has, literally, done pretty much everything and been pretty much everywhere.

From hiking the Great Wall to introducing her kids to the Arab Spring to hanging out in Morocco with famous people (and not really enjoying it much), she's been there, written about that.

At 60, not only does she show no signs of slowing down, she's not really sure why anyone would expect her to. She's as vibrant, energetic, and curious as ever, and she's sharing that energy and optimism with women globally.

"We can be very proud of being women and of being women this age," she says, and we are very proud to know her.

Have a listen to this fantastic conversation between Gennev CEO Jill Angelo and Next Tribe founder Jeannie Ralston, then come find your Next Tribe for your awesome next chapter of life. 

Also, if you're interested in participating in the writing workshop she spoke of in the podcast, learn more: https://nexttribe.com/book-publishing-workshop/

About Jeannie

Jeannie Ralston is the co-founder and CEO of NextTribe, the digital magazine and community for smart, engaged women over 45.

NextTribe’s mission is to inform, promote, and connect women who are determined to “Age Boldly” (NextTribe’s tagline).

Ralston’s work as a journalist has been published in National Geographic, Life, The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Allure, and many other magazines. Her years growing lavender in rural Texas was the subject of her memoir, The Unlikely Lavender Queen, published by Broadway Books; her e-book, The Mother of All Field Trips, was about the three years she and her husband homeschooled and traveled with their sons.

She lives in Austin, Texas.

What's the link between your gut health and your emotions?

It's a tighter combination than most of us realize, meaning perhaps more of our mental and emotional health is in our control than we previously thought.

We know that our emotions can have a direct physical result: stress, depression, anxiety — all of these can show up in our bodies and in our guts. Upset stomach, loss of (or increase in) appetite, body aches and pains can all result from emotional distress.

But the impact travels both directions: the health of our microbiome can also dictate a great deal of how we feel, physically and emotionally.

In this podcast, Gennev Director of Health Coaching Stasi Kasianchuk talks with metabolic surgeon, gut-health expert, and owner of LaVellaYourGuts.com, Dr. Erika La Vella, about the intersection of nutrition, emotion, gut, brain, and menopause.

There's long been a gap in the quality of care men and women receive. Women's bodies are less understood, their health issues less researched, their solutions have frequently been "treat women as small men," their pain poorly treated or ignored, and on and on and on.

That discrepancy in care is exponentially worse if the woman is Black or a woman of color; worse if she's poor, worse if she's a transgender woman; worse if she's past reproductive age.

There are women, men, and organizations out there that feel like part of our family — the family that's working to improve health care for women. Denise Pines is one of that family. 

She is is the co-visionary and head task master for Tea Botanics, a company that makes tea for hot flashes, among others. An award-winning marketer and serial entrepreneur, Denise has participated in 10 startups. She is founder of WisePause, a pro-aging health and education platform and FemAging 2020, a report that introduces a new industry sector, FemAging Tech.

Denise cofounded Women in the Room Productions who produced the award-winning film PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in School. Denise is the current President of the Medical Board of California.

In this conversation with Gennev CEO Jill Angelo, Denise and Jill talk about the discrepancies in care and how many in the medical community are starting to recognize and close the gap.

The largest organ in the human body isn’t actually in the human body – it’s on the outside. To be even more accurate, it is the outside.

It’s our skin. And it does more than keep the rain out and our insides in.

Our skin is a pretty good barrier against much of the outside world, but it isn’t perfect. Sun damage happens. And the products we use on our skin may be doing us more harm than good.

Kari Gran and Lisa Strain started the Kari Gran company based, as it often is for women, on a need that no one was meeting.

Kari herself was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder in her late twenties. That diagnosis, after years of not feeling well, led her to consider the impact on her insides of the products she used on her outside: creams, lotions, soaps, makeup, etc.

We know what we put on our skin can affect us systemically — it's the way nicotine patches work, after all. So we need to be thoughtful about the products we use on our skin, especially as we get older.

Kari, who describes herself as a "diehard beauty junkie," made healthy alternatives in her kitchen to give to friends as gifts. Lisa pushed her to turn her amazing formulations into a business, and there's been no looking back.

Guaranteed free from endocrine-disrupting parabens and other harmful ingredients, the rich, lush, cleansing, hydrating, restorative serums, soaps, oils and more are protective and nourishing.

Learn more about skin care and Kari Gran — the company and the woman it's named for — in this podcast with Gennev CEO Jill Angelo. 

"Fatigue" does not equal "tired." Fatigue is something else, and it can be exponentially worse. It isn't solved with "just get more sleep," and day after day of it can really wear you down.

Fatigue — real fatigue — is a common symptom of menopause. It makes work hard, exercise impossible, even thinking straight can feel like it takes all your resources.

The kind of fatigue we're talking about can be a result of less estrogen to "feed" your brain. If you have some brain fog, forgetfulness, are easily distracted and occasionally confused, it's all part of the same process: your brain is trying to adapt to less estrogen.

While this part of perimenopause and menopause is temporary, it can last a year or two or longer. And if you don't know what's happening, it can be frightening. We hear from women all the time that they were terrified they were developing early onset dementia or that they'd been to a round of doctors to deal with "chronic fatigue." Finding out it's likely a (temporary) result of menopause is a huge relief.

Even worse than the symptom itself is that often, no one even mentions the culprit could be diminishing hormones, leading women to get expensive tests, waste time on incorrect diagnoses, and live in fear over a totally normal process.

There are things you can do to fight the fatigue: the right nutrition and exercise are powerful tools, and there are medications that can help while your brain and body adjust to the new normal. 

In this podcast, we hear from Gennev Director of Health Coaching, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Exercise Physiologist Stasi Kasianchuk and Naturopathic Physician Dr. Wendy Ellis on how to handle menopause fatigue. 

When Team Gennev went looking for the right face to put on our website, we had a good idea what we were looking for: a face that showed the strength, resilience, beauty, and energy of a woman in midlife and menopause.

It can be hard to find images of mature women doing anything besides fanning themselves and looking annoyed.

Happily, we finally found lots of incredible choices on the Ageist website: active women over 50 living their best lives, overcoming challenges, and full of the "zest" Margaret Mead was talking about.

We went a little crazy with the credit card, purchasing the rights to use these wonderful images of real women. 

As Ageist founder David Stewart said in his podcast with Gennev's Jill Angelo, we just don't see ourselves in the typical, commercial images of people our age. So when you come across a treasure trove of representative images, you take advantage.

One of the images we loved was that of Aliza Sherman — we loved it so much, she graces Gennev's home page with her wide-open smile. You can just feel the hum of energy and life flowing through her. 

Not long ago, @AlizaSherman tweeted, "Yes, that’s me. Apparently I’m the happy face of menopause." Team Gennev had been wanting to reach out and ask her to do a podcast; this was the nudge we needed. What follows is that conversation.

Learn more about Gennev and how we help women thrive through menopause and beyond at Gennev.com.

I think we can safely say that 2020 has been an above-average year for just about everyone — in terms of stress, anyway.

For women dealing with perimenopause and menopause symptoms on top of everything else, the stress can seem unmanageable. And because 2020 has been harder on women, it's no surprise many women are looking for relief from stress.

One relatively new avenue for many is CBD, the non-hallucinogenic compound found in hemp. While research is still underway, many women have found CBD helps relieve stress and joint pain and promote sleep.

In this conversation, Gennev Director of Health Coaching Stasi Kasianchuk talks with naturopathic doctor Aimée Shunney about the potential of CBD and how to choose a CBD supplement that's high-quality, safe, and contains what it claims on the label.

Take a listen, then check out Gennev's high-quality CBD supplements, tincture, and Sleep System. 

With Halloween just behind us and Thanksgiving straight ahead, it's official: we've entered the Season of Sugar. 

And it's not just sugar, of course: it's salt and saturated fat and stress and alcohol and stress and parties and not enough sleep and stress.

If you think your head aches after a night of too much indulgence, just imagine what your poor gut biome is going through. 

And as we get older, our gut biome changes, loses diversity, isn't as able to handle the demands we put on those poor friendly bacteria, especially over the holidays.

Fortunately, there are experts like metabolic surgeon and founder of LaVellaYourGuts.com, Dr. Erika La Vella.

In this conversation with Gennev's Director of Health Coaching, Stasi Kasianchuk, Dr. La Vella talks about how to preserve your gut through the holiday season and stay healthier all year 'round. 

Culturally, we have this idea that life slows at 50. Children are grown and gone, we're looking into retirement, our days of doing new things and surprising ourselves are over. Life past 50, if you look at the marketing for this age group, is mostly about fear: fear over health, fear over finances, fear of the future.

Nothing could be further from the truth, says David Stewart of the AGEIST. People in the 50-plus age group are doing all sorts of amazing things. Women especially are "figuring out life 2.0," says David.

AGEIST's message is that culture and brands really misunderstand this age group — it's not a time of fear, and messaging to the 50+ that way won't resonate with a lot of the over-50s. Many in this cohort feel "at the peak of their powers," David says, and if you want to reach them, you need to understand that.

David Harry Stewart is the founder and face of the AGEIST and the host of the SuperAge podcast. He is a passionate champion and leading authority on the modern 50+ lifestyle, and the mindset and aspirations that drive this influential demographic. Prior to launching AGEIST, Stewart enjoyed an award-winning career as a photographer whose advertising work included Nike, Google, American Express and others, and his magazine work includes Esquire, GQ, Interview, RedBull, Time, and many others. 

Hear his conversation with Gennev CEO Jill Angelo, and check out both Gennev and AGEIST for much much more.