The Hotflash inc podcast

🌿 The Peri/Menopause Game Plan starts November 16
Everything I’ve learned about perimenopause in one live, four-week experience. It’s practical and balanced, it doesn’t take sides, and it’s designed so you leave with your own plan. There are six sessions on Zoom, Mondays and Thursdays at noon ET, from November 16 to December 7, with no session on American Thanksgiving. You also get resource sheets, a WhatsApp community, a member portal with replays the day after each session, and special guests. It’s a small group, so spots are limited.
👉 Details at https://go.hotflashinc.com/-perimenopausegameplan

This is six things I wish someone had told me in perimenopause. Any of them can really mess up this stage of life, and honestly, a few of them are still messing with mine. I talk about the phone you reach for before your feet hit the floor, and the fun thing everyone’s going to be mad at me for bringing up.

This is a big-sister conversation for women before, during and after menopause, and for anyone who cares for them. Let me know in the comments how this landed – and if you have any additions.

Quotable
“Hormones aren’t the root cause of this, even though they prompt it. The recession of hormones reveals what’s going on.”
– Ann Marie McQueen, journalist and founder of Hotflash inc

Mentioned in this episode
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski (2019)
Dr. Annice Mukherjee, endocrinologist and past Hotflash inc guest
The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy: Substack

Connect with Hotflash inc
TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause
Instagram: @hotflashinc
X: @hotflashinc
YOUTUBE @hotflashinc
Facebook: @hotflashinc
LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen

Disclaimer
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

🌿 Be first to find out about the Peri/Menopause Game Plan. My new live experience is coming very soon. Get on the list and you’ll hear about it before anyone else. Join the list →

🔥 Missed the Hotflash inc Summit 2026? Catch up on all 22 sessions with the All Access Pass. Get your All Access Pass →

📘 Want the condensed version? The Hotflash inc Summit 2026 Book of Knowledge has every tool, tip and takeaway from each session, plus all the studies referenced and the best quotes. Order the Book of Knowledge →

Your heart health starts BEFORE your first period! An exciting new framework for women's health changes the game.

I wasn’t planning to come back to the podcast just yet, but this news was too big to sit on. Four major US medical organizations have just published three coordinated papers in Circulation: the American Heart Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, ACOG and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Together they lay out a new framework for cardiovascular health in girls and women. Right in the middle of it are puberty, periods and perimenopause, now formally named as cardiovascular life stages.

In this solo episode, I walk through the four stages of the framework and why pregnancy is treated as a “cardiovascular stress test”. I explain why your menstrual cycle is now being called a vital sign. Then I get to the part everyone wants to know about: what this means for hormone therapy. Short answer: it’s not all about the estrogen.

This is joined-up, life-course thinking in women’s health, and it’s about damn time. I’m also kicking off a new run of shorter solo episodes, where I pull together what I’ve learned from more than 300 expert interviews, the research, and all of you. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Highlights
02:44 – Periods and perimenopause as cardiovascular stages
03:37 – The four stages of the new framework
04:09 – Pregnancy as a cardiovascular stress test
04:30 – How medicine splits us into parts
05:30 – The clues have been there for decades
05:57 – Your period is a vital sign
06:35 – Anovulatory cycles and missing progesterone
07:09 – Heavy bleeding, iron and long-term health
07:39 – Preeclampsia, early menopause and risk
08:09 – Hormone therapy is not a magic pill
09:10 – What cardiologist Dr. Kathryn Lindley told me
09:41 – My own cardiologist’s surprising answer
10:51 – Treating symptoms versus preventing heart disease
13:52 – Why it’s almost never just one thing

Keywords: women's cardiovascular health, perimenopause, menopause, menstrual cycles, hormone therapy, cardiovascular disease, pregnancy complications, life course medicine

Connect with Hotflash inc
TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause
Instagram: @hotflashinc
X: @hotflashinc
YOUTUBE @hotflashinc
Facebook: @hotflashinc
LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen

Disclaimer
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

🌿 THE HOTFLASH INC SUMMIT IS COMING BACK IN SEPTEMBER! Get on the newsletter to be the first to hear, so you can sign up the moment doors open. You do not want to miss this year. Get on the newsletter → here.

This was one of my favourite talks from last year's inaugural Hotflash Inc Summit, recorded back in mid-2025. My guest is Dr. Roxanne Prichard, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of St. Thomas, where she's built a career studying the science of sleep and mental health. She's designed popular courses on sleep and dreaming, led workshops for college professionals on sleep, and served on the NCAA Taskforce for Sleep and Well-being. Her TEDx talk, Addressing Our Children's Sleep Debt, was featured in the lecture series Transforming Education, and her research has been covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Teen Vogue, and USA Today, among others. What makes this conversation so special is that Roxanne is a true scholar of sleep.

Highlights

02:57 – Why women sacrifice sleep more than men

04:44 – The biopsychosocial model behind perimenopause sleep loss 05:52 – The three most common sleep changes in menopause

08:18 – Sleep apnea isn't just a "men's disease" — and it's underdiagnosed in women

09:02 – How to test for sleep apnea from home

11:13 – What parasomnias are and why they happen

12:30 – The dementia risk of untreated sleep apnea

13:25 – The history (and risk) of sleep medications, from barbiturates to benzos

16:14 – The melatonin problem

19:04 – The science of morning light and your circadian rhythm

20:36 – How your circadian rhythm controls half your genes

20:54 – Roxanne's number one sleep tip for perimenopause

21:58 – The truth about sleep trackers, wearables, and "orthosomnia" 25:21 – What the research says about hormone therapy and sleep

30:27 – Reframing sleep as resistance

32:15 – Roxanne's parting wish for every woman listening

For more from Dr. Roxanne Prichard:

TEDx Talk, Addressing Our Children's Sleep Debt

Ms. Magazine, Sleep Is a Feminist Issue: Why Women's Rest Is Political LinkedIn: Roxanne Prichard

Connect with Hotflash inc TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause

Instagram: @hotflashinc

X: @hotflashinc

YOUTUBE @hotflashinc

Facebook: @hotflashinc

LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen

Disclaimer This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

THE HOTFLASH INC SUMMIT IS COMING BACK IN SEPTEMBER! Watch this space, get on the newsletter, or follow us on socials to find out more. This is one of our most popular talks from last year's inaugural event, recorded in mid-2025.

Dr. Aviva Romm is a Yale-trained MD, board-certified family physician, and world-renowned midwife and herbalist who's spent four decades studying women's health from every angle – obstetrics, gynecology, pediatrics, and integrative medicine. She's a longtime home birth pioneer and birth activist, and the bestselling author of Hormone Intelligence (2021), who has never been afraid to challenge the status quo in medicine. In this conversation, recorded for the very first Hotflash inc Summit in September/October 2025, she brings all of it – the decades of clinical experience and the humility of living through this transition herself.

It's easy to see why people who attended the summit online loved this interview so much: Dr. Romm doesn't do fear-based menopause content, and she doesn't do "just take the hormones and move on" either. She does nuance – which is exactly what this moment needs.

Highlights

03:54 – Why nature gets left out of the menopause conversation

05:11 – The historical roots of dismissing women's bodies (and nature) 09:41 – Is hormone therapy the icing, or the cake?

10:36 – The three questions every woman should be asking herself

13:26 – Why so many of us never learned to ask them

14:31 – Should you take hormones to prevent future disease?

19:21 – The most overlooked fix: vaginal estrogen for recurrent UTIs

21:11 – The good, the bad, and the unregulated: herbalism and botanicals 25:04 – Yes, herbs can have side effects too

30:44 – "This is the third way"

30:57 – What the research actually says on pine bark extract

31:42 – Her go-to herbs for sleep and hot flashes

38:13 – Where are the midwives and nurse practitioners in this conversation?

40:24 – The"alarming" entry of GLP-1s into menopause care

48:53 – It's not just pharma – the whole wellness industry sells fear

50:16 – Why checking your hormone labs in perimenopause is often pointless

57:57 – Fear as a marketing tactic

Connect with Dr. Aviva Romm

Website: avivaromm.com

Instagram: @dr.avivaromm

Facebook: @AvivaRommMD

X: @avivaromm

Connect with Hotflash inc

TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause

Instagram: @hotflashinc

X: @hotflashinc

YOUTUBE @hotflashinc

Facebook: @hotflashinc

LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen

Disclaimer This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

🌿 The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy — I mapped what's actually happening in our bodies, the 12 different (and often conflicting) approaches to prescribing hormone therapy that are on offer – YES 12 – answered the tough questions, pointed out the gaps and so much more so YOU can feel good about what you decide and how you choose – or whether you even choose hormone therapy at all. Know why you are doing what you are doing – and get regular updates as things change. Find out more 👉 here

🔥 Free: The Fix-It-Fast Perimenopause List — And if hormone therapy definitely isn't for you, 👉 here is a really good list that will help you find some relief.

This week Ann Marie is going solo – and getting straight to the point. If you're going through perimenopause or menopause, she says, you have exactly one job. It's not losing the weight, fixing your hormones, saving your marriage, or finding the perfect supplement.

Ann Marie talks candidly about the health crisis that sent her looking for deeper answers and why she's suspicious of anyone – however well-meaning – who's selling a single fix for a complicated transition. It's a call to stop outsourcing the question of who you are, and start trusting what you already know.

Highlights

• The blame-game buffet: hormones, gut, patriarchy, cortisol 
• What if this decade is for questioning everything? 
• Breaking down fear, shame, and expectations 
• The real job (and it’s not fixing yourself) 
• Wishing someone had told me THIS in my 40s 
• Everyone’s selling their solution as THE solution 
• The heroine’s journey: the descent, the meat hook, the dark night 
• Your one job today 
• Why it’s worth the trip to find out

Connect with Hotflash inc

TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause

Instagram: @hotflashinc X: @hotflashinc

YouTube: @hotflashinc

Facebook: @hotflashinc

LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen

Disclaimer This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

🔥 The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy – get the guide that cuts through the noise on HRT

Simon Salt spent four years watching his wife get dismissed by doctors – told it was UTIs, bad diet, lack of sleep, anything but perimenopause — before she finally got a diagnosis. He spent another year and a half after that figuring out it wasn't happening to her, it was happening to both of them. Now he's a certified menopause coach and the writer behind The Quiet Transition, a publication helping men in midlife support their partners through peri- and post-menopause with actual empathy instead of good intentions and bad timing.

Highlights

8:29 – The slow erosion: loss of intimacy, and filling the silence with stories

18:20 – The yogurt tub story – and what those irritations really mean

22:46 – Renegotiating intimacy when what used to work stops working 29:00 – Simon's framework: sit, listen, believe

34:12 – Why releasing control is so hard — and so necessary

40:22 – The new wave of men writing about menopause, and what Simon makes of it

42:58 – "There is no man who doesn't know a woman going through this"

Quotable

"Perimenopause doesn't usually cause cracks in a relationship. It reveals them." – Simon Salt, certified menopause coach, The Quiet Transition

Connect with Simon Salt The Quiet Transition:

Substack: https://www.thequiettransition.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonsalt

Connect with Hotflash inc

TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause Instagram: @hotflashinc X: @hotflashinc YOUTUBE @hotflashinc Facebook: @hotflashinc LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen

Disclaimer This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

🔥 Breaking news! Get The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy – it's out now! This is a digital guide to help women and the women who care for them to navigate the chaos.

Anissa Nova spent years in corporate tech before retraining as a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, acupuncture, herbalism and energy work. Now she runs Pure Alchemy in Sydney, Australia, where she blends strength training, breathwork and rest with acupuncture and energy alignment to help women reconnect with their bodies.

Highlights

02:04 – The Yellow Emperor's Classic and the 7-year cycle

03:52 – Yin, blood, and turning inward

06:59 – The liberation of no longer being "fertile"

09:05 – Hormone therapy isn't the only solution

10:30 – "We weren't built incorrectly"

12:06 – Helping women transition off HRT when it's not working

17:23 – The energetic nature of herbs

21:43 – What medical qigong actually is

26:12 – Mind, emotion, and energy shaping reality

28:31 – Applying a modern model to ancient medicine

29:47 – Why clinical trials don't reflect real-world treatment

31:06 – Where science's gold standard falls short

31:48 – Appreciating the placebo effect

36:11 – Emotions are energy — clean up now or later

37:30 – Acupressure vs. acupuncture

38:41 – Those electric zaps during acupuncture, explained

Connect with Anissa Nova

Website: Pure Alchemy

LinkedIn: Anissa Nova

Instagram: @Purealchemytcm

Pure Alchemy — Sutherland Shire, Sydney, Australia

Connect with Hotflash inc

TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause

Instagram: @hotflashinc

X: @hotflashinc

YOUTUBE @hotflashinc

Facebook: @hotflashinc

LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen

Disclaimer

This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

🔥 Need help right now? Hotflash inc has got you: The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy is a clear + comprehensive guide to understanding the entire landscape of prescribing approaches – at least 12 – to empower you to make the right decision, for you. The free Fix It Fast Perimenopause List offers quick, practical non-hormonal relief options. Or cover all your bases and get both!

Adele Wimsett spent 20 years working in the criminal justice system before a health crisis of her own – her period stopped due to "healthy" habits like fasted training and keto – sent her down the rabbit hole of gender bias in medical research. She retrained as a women's health practitioner, and after her own ADHD diagnosis at 41, turned her science-nerd brain toward a question almost nobody was asking: what do hormones actually do to the ADHD brain?

Highlights

10:06 – The "perfect storm": ADHD plus declining progesterone

12:26 – The problem with medicine's obsession with estrogen

18:35 – Organized at work – trauma connection

19:37 – The hidden cost of decades of masking

23:26 – Estrogen and testosterone through a neurodivergent lens

31:08 – Is an ADHD diagnosis essential?

35:57 – 3 practical daily tools

Connect with Adele Wimsett:

Instagram: @adele_wimsett

Free SKOOL Community ADHD & Hormones

Connect with Hotflash inc

TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause

Instagram: @hotflashinc

X: @hotflashinc

YOUTUBE @hotflashinc

Facebook: @hotflashinc

LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen

Disclaimer

This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

🌿 Get The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy — my complete guide to the confusing world of HRT. 5 videos, 5 PDFs, get through it in under 3 hours. It's currently $47 — price goes up July 15. Use code STACY10 to get $10 off.

Today I'm sharing an interview done with me — about The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy — from an Instagram Live I did this week over on Stacy London's channel.

Stacy is the stylist and TV personality who, with Clinton Kelly, spent an iconic decade making TLC's What Not to Wear. These days the two of them have reunited for "Why'd They Wear That?" — their creator-owned web series and podcast where they rewatch iconic movies and TV. It followed their Amazon series Wear Whatever the F You Want.

Stacy has also been in the menopause fight for years, and she's one of the few people in this space who genuinely wants women to have more information, not a party line — which is exactly why this conversation happened.

We got into the whole reason I built the guide: Everyone's making it sound like you're going to crumble into dust without hormones, and the truth is a lot messier and a lot more hopeful than that.

Highlights

• Why Stacy still wants to talk about menopause

• The wheel: at least 12 different approaches to prescribing

• The testing gap, explained

• Why the "hormones or no hormones" framing is harming women

• Observational studies, healthy-user bias, and how"it prevents dementia" is running ahead of the evidence

• Progesterone vs. progestin

• Peptides and GLP-1s stacked on top of hormone therapy before we've even figured out the basics

• Why nobody who's 100% sure should get your full trust

• The belief systems underneath it all

Connect with Hotflash inc

TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause

Instagram: @hotflashinc

X: @hotflashinc

YOUTUBE @hotflashinc

Facebook: @hotflashinc

LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen

Disclaimer This content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

🔥 The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy is here — my guide mapping 12 different approaches to hormone therapy, built from 250+ practitioner interviews and six years of research. $47 until July 15th, then $97. 👉 The Hot Truth

Eve Simonsen is a certified psilocybin facilitator and microdosing guide based in the US. We get into why it works, microdosing vs. macrodosing, real side effects and contraindications, what a retreat looks like, and why you should never get your information about this from mainstream media.

Disclaimer

This podcast is for informational purposes is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making decisions. Psilocybin remains illegal under federal law in many countries, including the US and in most jurisdictions outside of regulated state programs.

Highlights

07:29 – Why perimenopausal women are drawn to this work

10:33 – Full journey vs. microdosing, explained

19:02 – Real side effects and contraindications

25:39 – Who actually shows up for this work

29:40 – The real fears that hold people back

38:58 – Where to actually go for good information

Go deeper

• Eve's own research available via her Linktree.
• Psychedelic Passage is a referral network that connects people to vetted facilitators.
• MAPS is a nonprofit that's been funding psychedelic clinical research for 30+ years.
• Hystelica is a UK-based nonprofit specifically studying psychedelics and female biology.
• Deva Collective is a women's-health-and-psychedelics research nonprofit.
• Double Blind and Lucid News for responsible journalism.

Connect with Eve

Website: cycle-alchemy.com

Connect with Hotflash inc

TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause 

Instagram:  @hotflashinc

X: @hotflashinc 

YOUTUBE  @hotflashinc

Facebook:  @hotflashinc

Linked in:  Ann Marie McQueen