Body image issues. Wrecked sleep. Struggling with slowing down. Midlife and menopause can send us into some seriously turbulent waters. This week’s guest, Lisa Alfano, manages to keep from going under by riding the waves–literally. Lisa is a surfer and triathlete who has married her passions in her business Tri2Surf, a community for women ages 50+ who want to reset or discover their active selves and claim their power and passion.

Lisa has battled body image issues her whole life. Menopause and midlife magnified them, and also ushered in poor sleep, anxiety, hot flashes, and a host of symptoms that were pulling her under and threatening to upend her sense of self. At age 50, she found salvation in triathlon, which gave her a sense of community and turned her life around. At age 57, she gave herself another midlife boost by taking up surfing, which she says brings her “joy and peace no matter what is happening.” We talk all about surfing, triathlon, and finding passion in menopause and beyond. You can learn more about Lisa and Tri2Surf at https://www.tri2surf.com/

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Eat less. How many times have you seen and heard that message? As a generation that grew up steeped in diet culture, most of us have it deeply internalized…often to our detriment. Underfueling among active women is extremely common and puts us at risk for low energy availability (LEA), which can lead to relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S), a condition that not only hurts performance, but also can cause irreparable negative health consequences. LEA/RED-S can be especially difficult to spot in midlife women because the symptoms mirror those we experience during perimenopause. We dig into all of it this week to help you avoid LEA/RED-S and get the fuel you need to feel and perform your best with Heidi Skolnik, MS, CDN, FACSM of Nutrition Conditioning, LLC, and author of The Athlete Triad Playbook.

Heidi is a sports nutritionist, exercise physiologist, and thought leader in her field. She has been part of The Women’s Sports Medicine Center at Hospital for Special Surgery for over 20 years and oversees the nutrition program at The Juilliard School and the School of American Ballet. Heidi has sat on the Board of The National Osteoporosis Foundation for ten years and currently sits on the Medical Advisory Committee of The National Menopause Foundation. She is also the co-author of the NYTimes Best Selling The Whole Body Reset (Simon & Schuster and AARP). You can learn more about her and her work at heidiskolnik.com

 

Resources:

https://athletetriadplaybook.com/

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.640621/full

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October is breast cancer awareness month, an annual campaign to raise awareness about the impact of breast cancer. That’s especially important for women in the menopause transition and beyond because the risk of breast cancer rises with age. Most breast cancers are found in women who are 55 and older. This week we sat down with marathon runner and breast oncologist Amy Comander, MD, at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center to discuss how we can manage our risks no matter our family history, genetic makeup, or time of life. 

Dr. Comander is Director of Breast Oncology and Cancer Survivorship at the Mass General Cancer Center in Waltham and at Newton Wellesley Hospital. She is Medical Director of the Mass General Cancer Center in Waltham and the Director of Lifestyle Medicine at the Mass General Cancer Center. She is an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is board certified in Hematology and Medical Oncology, and she is also board certified in Lifestyle Medicine.

Resources

Katie Couric’s article on her breast cancer.

Research on exercise and breast cancer survival. 

Breast cancer risk calculator 

Link to the PAVING workbook

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The good news: we are finally talking about menopause! The not so good news: we still have a long way to go, especially in the realm of research, says this week’s guest Dr. Stephanie Faubion, who is on the tip of the spear leading the way forward as the Medical Director of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). When it comes to dealing with menopause openly in our culture, especially in the workplace, Dr. Faubion believes we are where we were with pregnancy 30 years ago. And she has some ideas on how we can all help accelerate progress and bring our doctors and culture up to speed. 

Along with her role as Medical Director of NAMS, Dr. Faubion is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, and Director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health. Her expertise is in women’s health, clinical research, education, and clinical practice. You can learn more about her and her work at mayo.edu.

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We are celebrating our 100th episode…and the fact that we have surpassed one million downloads in just two years’ time! Our community is growing by leaps and bounds and you’re the reason why. So this week, we are also celebrating YOU! 

Host Selene Yeager sits down with Hit Play Not Pause producer Carrie Barrett to share listener messages, talk about what we’ve learned, our hopes for the future, and to give you a little peek behind the curtain on how this show comes together week after week. We hope you enjoy it! Let’s shoot for another 100 and millions more!

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Bloating, hot flashes, night sweats, disrupted sleep, irritability, restlessness, brain fog…this week’s guest Michelle Hay treats them all, as well as the stress that can exacerbate them, with acupuncture. This week’s show is all about this Traditional Chinese Medicine practice, how it works, what to expect, and the specific benefits for menopausal women.

Michelle P. Hay, is Co-Director of Acupuncture at Boston IVF in Waltham, MA.  She has been working in women’s health since 2006 and is committed to helping women improve their quality of life by using Traditional Chinese Medicine. Her previous career as a respiratory therapist allows her to take an integrated approach to healthcare understanding both Eastern and Western Medicine.  https://thehayclinic.com/

Sources: BMJ study on the benefits of acupuncture for menopausal symptoms here

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Most of us, even if we’re very active, are not moving our bodies the way nature designed them to move. We exercise plenty. We also sit plenty. We wear shoes that don’t help keep our feet strong or our posture properly aligned. That can set the stage for aches, pains, and injuries, especially during this time of life when our joints are more vulnerable. This week we talk with movement coach Petra Fisher about the small daily adjustments we can make and exercises we can do to enhance mobility, decrease pain, and improve performance.

Petra is a movement coach, body nerd and recovering lawyer. She is certified in Restorative Exercise, MovNat and Functional Range Conditioning. Petra’s mission in life is to help women reconnect with their bodies so they have less pain, more joy & get to do more of what they love for the rest of their lives. You can learn more about her and her work at www.PetraFisherMovement.com

Resources from this podcast: 

Free Your Feet - free foot program to get started restoring healthy foot function - here

Step-by-step guide on how to transition safely and well to barefoot-style footwear - here

Joints For Life 2.0 - foundational CARs joint mobility program - here 



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Heavy lifting, HIIT training, and explosive exercises like plyometrics do a menopausal body good. So, CrossFit can be the perfect workout for women in this stage of life…provided they scale it to their needs. That’s because CrossFit also has elements that may not work with our physiology and can leave us feeling tired and beat down instead of strong and built up. That’s why this week’s guest, CrossFit coach Shawna Norton of Competitive Female Training created “Level M” CrossFit programming for women peri and post-menopause. We talk all about the benefits of CrossFit, how to scale workouts to work with your physiology, and how to fuel it all for the best results. 

Shawna is an L1 Certified Nutrition Coach through Precision Nutrition, with a B.S in Kinesiology. She holds her L1 with Crossfit and actively coaches athletes through her women’s only coaching program–Competitive Female Training. She loves helping women fuel their training and focus on what their bodies can do! You can find more about her and her work at competitivefemaletraining.com/level-m/

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What would happen if you tossed out all your premenopausal notions about how you are “supposed to” eat and train for your best performance and tried some new tricks to work with your changing physiology? If you’re like this week’s guest, you might just win a gold medal. Ashling Smith is a runner from Ireland who recently won a gold medal at the World Masters Athletics Championships in the 4 x 400 relay. She also ran to a career-high 4th place in the 1,500-meter race at the same event. She did both shortly after turning 50, recovering from Covid, and as she puts it being “smack bang in perimenopause”. How did she do it? Lifting, sprint training, plyometrics, and changing her relationship with food. We dive into all of that, her newfound love for being a menopausal woman, and more this week.

Along with being a competitive elite runner, Ashling is a personal trainer, a Pilates instructor, and a deep tissue massage therapist. She helps women pursue sustainable fitness for life and have fun with their body at every age. You can follow her here. You can read all about her gold medal run at the Independent.ie. The research on iron supplementation we discuss can be found here. 

 

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How do you know if menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) is for you? What should you expect if you start hormone therapy? How long does it take to work? What should you do if you don’t feel like it’s working? We dive into the ABCs of starting MHT this week with menopause doctor Heather Hirsch, MD. This is a good one for active menopausal women whether or not you are taking or plan to start MHT because we speak to all the things we should be doing, such as taking inventory of how we’re feeling and being proactive about our care, to feel and perform our best. 

 

Dr. Hirsch is board certified in internal medicine and completed advanced fellowship training in women’s health at the Cleveland Clinic. She performs menopause consultations at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston Massachusetts and is faculty at Harvard Medical School. Her practice has a focus on perimenopause and menopause symptom reduction, hormone therapy, genitourinary syndrome of menopause, sexual health, breast, and bone health. Her academic work centers on enhancing midlife women’s health education for fellows, residents, and medical students. Dr. Hirsch also teaches at the local, regional, and national level on various midlife topics. You can learn more about her and her work at www.heatherhirschmd.com/

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