Living Inspired - A Functional Approach to Women’s Health, Energy, and Resilience

There’s more conversation about menopause than ever, but knowing what to do with all that information can be difficult. More protein, another supplement, hormone therapy, gut health: what actually deserves your attention first?

In this solo episode, I walk through four areas I consider when working with women in midlife: sleep, blood sugar, digestion, and the nervous system. Supplements and hormone therapy can have a useful role. But we also need to understand what your body is experiencing and what daily life is asking of you.

We also talk about insulin as part of the hormone conversation, a food-first starting point, digestive symptoms you may have learned to tolerate, and why feeling overwhelmed deserves more attention than simply being told to manage stress.

The goal isn’t to leave you with four things to fix. It’s to help you choose one place to begin: a step that fits your circumstances and could make other changes easier.

In this episode

This episode is for education only and isn’t medical advice. Talk with your healthcare provider about persistent symptoms, appropriate testing, and treatment decisions.

So many women are walking around exhausted and treating it as normal. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Arwa Hussain, a clinical pharmacist and Integrative Health Practitioner who helps women understand fatigue, brain fog, and hormone changes, to talk about what may be behind that exhaustion and where to start.

Arwa shares her own story, from doing all the "right" things in her 20s without results to years of running on two hours of sleep as a new single mom, and the moment a health coach helped her see how much stress her body was carrying on the inside. We talk about why fatigue rarely has one cause, why normal labs aren't always optimal, and three labs worth asking about: ferritin, T3, and fasting insulin.

From there we get practical. Arwa walks through how blood sugar, sleep, stress hormones, digestion, and perimenopause affect each other, and shares the simple tracking habit that showed her patterns in her own energy across four months of her cycle. We also talk about how medication and lifestyle work can go together instead of against each other.

We close with The Energized Summit, the virtual women's health summit Arwa is hosting October 16 to 18, where I'm speaking on Sunday, October 18 about perimenopause and why so many of us feel more exhausted at this stage of life.

This episode is for education only and isn't medical advice. Please talk with your own healthcare provider about what's right for you.

Connect with Dr. Arwa Hussain:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drarwahussain/

Free Brain Fog Guide for Living Inspired listeners: Here

The Energized Summit, October 16 to 18, 1:00 to 3:30 PM ET. Save your seat here.

Go deeper with Living Inspired:
Download The Real Reason Guide: https://rachelcartarn.com/lastinghealth

Join my newsletter here.

Curious about the Living Inspired Life Lab? Let's Talk: https://rachelcartarn.com/lifelab

Your sleep has changed, your mood has shifted, your energy isn't what it was, and your labs still come back "normal." Then you start looking into hormone therapy and find more questions than answers. In this episode, I sit down with Lauren Caldwell, a board-certified family nurse practitioner and founder of Meridian Health and Wellness in Woodstock, Georgia, to talk through some of those questions.

We start with the symptoms that most often bring women to Lauren's office, and why so many of us were told to stay away from hormones for years. Lauren explains how the Women's Health Initiative shaped that fear, what the FDA's recent labeling changes mean, and the difference between bioidentical and synthetic hormones.

From there we get practical. Lauren shares why she treats labs as one piece of the puzzle, how she thinks about progesterone for sleep and mood (including for women who've had a hysterectomy), and why she checks free testosterone as well as total. We also talk about weight changes, brain fog, and whether hormone therapy can still help after menopause.

We close on something that matters to both of us: hormones are one tool, and they tend to work best when the foundations are in place. Blood sugar, stress, strength training, and the small daily choices you make all shape how your body responds.

This episode is for education only and isn't medical advice. Please talk with your own healthcare provider about what's right for you.

In this episode:

• Common signs that hormones may be part of the picture

• Why the Women's Health Initiative made so many women afraid of hormones

• Bioidentical vs. synthetic hormones

• How Lauren uses labs, and why ratios matter in perimenopause

• Oral micronized progesterone vs. progesterone cream

• Testosterone for women: symptoms, free vs. total, and dosing

• Weight changes and brain fog in midlife

• Starting hormone therapy after menopause

• Why blood sugar and stress affect how well hormones work

  
  

Connect with Lauren Caldwell, FNP:
Website: https://www.meridianhealthatl.com
Email: [email protected]

Mentioned in this episode:
Episode 72 with Brooke Davis

Go deeper with Living Inspired:

Mood Swings? Get the 5 minute audio to calm them now. https://rachelcartarn.com/sos

Do you want to understand more of what's changing in your body in midlife and get a few simple tools to feel better now? Get the free guide: The Real Reason You Still Feel Off.

Ready to Talk: Book a Clarity & Relief Session here.

Eat Well Made Easy Course

You floss, you see a little pink, and you rinse and move on with your night. You've pushed through the fatigue, the headaches, the feeling that something is off, because you've got kids and a career and aging parents and there just isn't room to stop and ask what your body is actually trying to tell you.

This episode is for the woman who has been managing her symptoms instead of listening to them. My guest, Christine Horton, is a dental hygienist and health coach with a specialty in PCOS and PMOS awareness. She was diagnosed with PCOS at seventeen and has spent decades since connecting a field most of us have never heard of, oral systemic health, to the hormone and metabolic symptoms so many women are told to just live with. If you've ever wondered why your gums, your gut, and your hormones might actually be having a conversation with each other, this one is for you.

In This Episode

• The recent PCOS to PMOS name change, and what polyendocrine and metabolic reveal about the condition that the old name never captured
• Oral systemic health, the field connecting what's happening in your mouth to what's happening everywhere else in your body
• The bidirectional relationship between your gum health and your blood sugar or A1C numbers
• Bleeding gums as a warning sign, and what that little bit of pink when you floss is actually telling you
• The overlooked connection between mouth bacteria and gut health
• Pregnancy gingivitis, and what it reveals about hormones and tissue sensitivity even in women with excellent oral hygiene
• One in eight women living with PCOS or PMOS, and why most of them don't know it yet
• Christine's actual nighttime oral care recommendations, and why individualized care beats any one size fits all protocol

Find Christine Horton

• Health coaching: fusionhealthcoach.com

• Social media: @pmospcosglowhygienist on Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest

• PCOS Awareness Association: pcosaa.org — including the monthly support groups she co-hosts on second Wednesdays

• PCOS CON: September is PMOS/PCOS Awareness Month, and the one-day virtual conference with experts from around the world is at pcoscon.org

Listen to the full episode of Living Inspired, and if this was useful, share it. Women's health progress right now is grassroots. We get better care by passing the information to each other.

More Resources

Mood Swings? Get the 5 minute audio to calm them now. https://rachelcartarn.com/sos

Do you want to understand more of what's changing in your body in midlife and get a few simple tools to feel better now? Get the free guide: The Real Reason You Still Feel Off.

Ready to Talk: Book a Clarity & Relief Session here.

Eat Well Made Easy Course

What happens when you already know a lot about health, you’re trying hard to take care of yourself, and you still don’t feel like yourself?

In this episode, I’m talking with my friend and client Johanna about what changed when we stopped looking for another plan and started looking at the whole picture.

We talk about anxiety, grief, perimenopause, overwhelm, nervous system load, and why healthy habits are so much harder to follow when your body is already at capacity.

Johanna also shares one of my favorite shifts from our work together: seeing her past attempts at change as practice instead of proof that she had done something wrong.

If you’ve ever thought, “I know what I should be doing, so why can’t I just do it?” this conversation is for you.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why we didn’t start with food

• How stress, grief, and hormonal changes can stack up

• Why more discipline is not always the answer

• What it means to treat healthy habits like a practice

• How small experiments can work better than another complete overhaul

• Finding your way back to yourself in midlife

  
  

  Mentions from the Show:

  • Lizard Toes Yoga: facebook.com/lizardtoesyoga

  • Runaway Stroller: facebook.com/runawaystroller

  • Johanna’s album, Why Would I Sing?: available on major streaming platforms.

  • Episode 36: Shift Your Mind, Change Your Life: Chris Chitty's Inspiring Health Transformation

  • Secrets to Authentic Happiness: by Rachel Carta

  
  

  More Resources:

  Mood Swings? Get the 5 minute audio to calm them now. https://rachelcartarn.com/sos

  
  

  Do you want to understand more of what's changing in your body in midlife and get a few simple tools to feel better now? Get the free guide: The Real Reason You Still Feel Off.

  
  

  Ready to Talk: Book a Clarity & Relief Session here.

  
  

  Eat Well Made Easy Course

Some mornings you feel completely like yourself. Other mornings you don't recognize your own body before your feet hit the floor. If you're exhausted, not sleeping, or thinking "I don't feel like myself anymore," this one's for you. Rachel breaks down why the hormone-only conversation leaves so much out, and introduces the Living Inspired Life Lab, a small group opening September 21st for Perimenopause Awareness Month.

In this episode:

• The moment Rachel's fourteen-year-old daughter put words to something most women spend years trying to explain
• Why "get the patch and you're good" misses most of the picture
• The Three Roots framework and the terrain underneath a hormonal transition
• Why two women with the same hormonal shifts can have completely different experiences
• The real link between a client's headaches, her digestion, and a workday with zero transition
• Why a nightly dessert habit was never about discipline
• The Vital Six: sleep, movement, nutrition, hydration, relationships, stress resilience
• What's inside the Living Inspired Life Lab and who the September group is for

Resources

• Living Inspired Life Lab (12-week group, begins September 21st )
• RachelCartaRN.com
• Instagram: @peaceinperimenopause




Rachel's Free Resources:

Mood Swings? Get the 5 minute audio to calm them now. https://rachelcartarn.com/sos




Do you want to understand more of what's changing in your body in midlife and get a few simple tools to feel better now? Get the free guide: The Real Reason You Still Feel Off.




Ready to Talk: Book a Clarity & Relief Session here.

Nervous system regulation can help you feel calmer, but is calm the same thing as healed?

In this episode, I’m joined by psychotherapist and yoga educator Kim Saunders to talk about the difference between regulating the nervous system and processing what may be underneath the reaction. We discuss somatic work, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, old belief patterns, and why the same reactions can keep showing up even when you’re doing all the “right” things.

If you’ve been working on your nervous system but still feel stuck in familiar patterns, this episode will help you understand why.

Connect with Kim:
TheLiftYouNeed.com
Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/kimuplift/

Connect with Rachel:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peaceinperimenopause/

Rachel's Free Resources:

Mood Swings? Get the 5 minute audio to calm them now. https://rachelcartarn.com/sos

Do you want to understand more of what's changing in your body in midlife and get a few simple tools to feel better now? Get the free guide: The Real Reason You Still Feel Off.

Ready to Talk: Book a Clarity & Relief Session here.

Eat Well Made Easy Course

This episode is brought to you by the Living Inspired Life Lab, my group coaching program for women who want to feel better, understand what’s driving their symptoms, and make sustainable changes in stress, sleep, nutrition, movement, relationships, and more. Doors are opening soon.

Brain health is not only something to think about later in life. What we do in midlife may influence the brain we have in our seventies and eighties, and many of the same habits that support long-term brain health can also help us feel better now.

In this episode, I’m breaking down what women in perimenopause need to know about blood sugar, ultra-processed food, movement, strength training, sleep, relationships, mental health, and the modifiable factors connected with dementia risk.

This conversation is personal for me because my dad developed dementia, and watching how much it changed him made brain health something I care deeply about.

Most importantly, this is not about fear or trying to fix everything at once. It is about understanding where you have influence and choosing one small place to begin.

In this episode:

• Why brain health matters in midlife

• How blood sugar and metabolic health connect to brain health

• Why movement, strength, sleep, and relationships matter

• What ultra-processed food actually means

• How to focus on one realistic change instead of doing everything at once

  
  

Find Rachel on Instagram: @peaceinperimenopause

Dr. Mark Hyman's episode that was referenced in today's podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dr-hyman-show/id1382804627?i=1000784321249

Mood Swings? Get the 5 minute audio to calm them now. https://rachelcartarn.com/sos

Do you want to understand more of what's changing in your body in midlife and get a few simple tools to feel better now? Get the free guide: The Real Reason You Still Feel Off.

Ready to Talk: Book a Clarity & Relief Session here.

Eat Well Made Easy Course

If you have caught yourself holding onto a version of you that no longer fits, this conversation is for you.

Barb Wojahn, who is 93 years old, has volunteered as a bird bander for 52 years, held leadership roles in her church for decades, and is only now handing off a seniors program she has run for almost 30 years. This is not a conversation about how to live to 93. It is a conversation about how to keep asking who you want to be, no matter what stage of life you are in.

In This Episode

• The interest inventory that told Barb she was suited to be a housewife, and what it took to build a life beyond that

• Letting go of activities and identities that no longer fit, and why that is harder than it sounds

• Learning to say no at 93, and what her husband used to tell her about being in two places at once

• The advice Barb's mother gave her about friendship that shaped her entire life

• Why connection is one of the six vital inputs your nervous system reads every day

  
  

You already know the feeling. The plan falls apart, the day turns sideways, and you are left standing in the wreckage of your own expectations, wondering why you could not just stay calm this time.

In this episode, I sit down with a woman who spent decades in the cockpit of major airliners, flying everything from a small four passenger plane to a 787 across oceans, and who is now retired and figuring out what comes next.

This conversation is not just about flying. It is about what happens in your body before the crisis ever shows up, and whether you have trained for it.

In This Episode

• An unconventional path into a forty-six-year flying career, and the one conversation that started it.
• What it took to build a career in a field where only a small percentage of pilots were women.
• The exact moment an engine failed midair, and why the response was calm instead of panic.
• Simulators, checklists, and the real difference between talent and training.
• Calculated risk versus recklessness, and how to tell which one you are actually taking.
• The fine line between fear and excitement, and how to use it to make better decisions.
• What retirement actually looks like eighteen months in, and who would not let the dream sit unfinished.
• Why a hobby that hits more than one of your values will carry you further than one that only hits one.

Rachel's Resources:

- Mood Swings? Get the 5 minute audio to calm them now. https://rachelcartarn.com/sos

- Do you want to understand more of what's changing in your body in midlife and get a few simple tools to feel better now? Get the free guide: The Real Reason You Still Feel Off.

- Ready to Talk: Book a Clarity & Relief Session here.

- Eat Well Made Easy Course