TRUE Wellness with Dr. Z

A woman sat down across from me and said, "I don't feel like myself anymore." Then she apologised for it, because she'd tried saying it to a doctor and watched him write something down and move on.

It isn't vague. It's the most precise thing a woman can say about what's happening to her. There just isn't a test for it.

In this episode I walk through the four things that add up to that feeling, and what's physically happening underneath each one:

• Exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix. 
• Fog, and losing your words mid-sentence. 
• Weight that stopped responding to everything that used to work. 
• And being wired and anxious at eleven at night after being tired all day.

They're not four separate problems. They're one process showing up in four places — and that process is your body protecting you, not working against you.

There's no protocol here and nothing to buy. This isn't medical advice and it doesn't replace care from your own doctor. It's one conversation about what's actually going on.

📥 FREE GUIDE: https://go.southbaywellness.com/5signs

⏱️ CHAPTERS 

0:00 "I don't feel like myself anymore" 

3:00 The tiredness that sleep doesn't touch 

6:45 Losing your sharpness 

10:15 The weight that stopped responding 

14:00 Wired, anxious, unable to settle 

17:30 What all four have in common 

20:30 What actually helps 

23:00 You're still in there

I'm Dr. Z, a functional medicine and nervous system practitioner. I work with women in midlife who've been told their labs are normal and still don't feel like themselves. New episode every week.

#perimenopause #womenshealth #nervoussystem

FREE GIFT: The 21-Day Nervous System Calibration is designed to help you begin shifting out of survival mode and back into a state of regulation.  👉 go.thisisdrz.com/nervoussystem

Schedule a FREE discovery call with Dr. Z and our team: https://go.southbaywellness.com/schedule-call

Thanks for listening to T.R.U.E. Wellness with Dr .Z, follow us on social media for more wellness inspiration.

Watch the full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisIsDrZ
Instagram: ThisIsDrZ
Facebook: ThisIsDrZ
YouTube: @ThisIsDrZ
LinkedIn: ThisIsDrZ
TikTok: @ThisIsDrZ
Website: www.SouthBayWellness.com

The information in this episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Dr. Z and her guests share perspectives and suggestions, not diagnoses or treatment. Always consult your own qualified provider.

Grab a copy of the Survival Tax Guide: go.southbaywellness.com/thesurvivaltax

If you’re over 40, doing what used to work, and your body still feels like it’s working against you, there’s a reason for it. Join me live as I explain what I call the survival tax.

When your body has been under stress for years, it starts protecting you by slowing things down and holding on. That can show up as afternoon crashes, weight that won’t move, restless nights, or a shorter fuse than you used to have. Even with normal labs.

In this live, I’ll walk you through how the survival tax works, why it hits so many women in perimenopause and menopause, and what it looks like in real life. Bring your questions. I’ll answer as many as I can.

Want to go deeper? I'll be giving away The Survival Tax Guide.

About me: I’m Dr. Danielle Zanzarov, PhD, CNS, a functional medicine, nervous system, and mindset specialist. I work with women in through my Body-Led™ approach at South Bay Wellness do transform their health and take back control of their bodies.

Find me at @ThisIsDrZ on Instagram and Facebook.

This live is for education only and isn’t medical advice. Talk with your own provider about your health.

#perimenopause #menopause #womenshealth #functionalmedicine

FREE GIFT: The 21-Day Nervous System Calibration is designed to help you begin shifting out of survival mode and back into a state of regulation.  👉 go.thisisdrz.com/nervoussystem

Schedule a FREE discovery call with Dr. Z and our team: https://go.southbaywellness.com/schedule-call

Thanks for listening to T.R.U.E. Wellness with Dr .Z, follow us on social media for more wellness inspiration.

Watch the full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisIsDrZ
Instagram: ThisIsDrZ
Facebook: ThisIsDrZ
YouTube: @ThisIsDrZ
LinkedIn: ThisIsDrZ
TikTok: @ThisIsDrZ
Website: www.SouthBayWellness.com

The information in this episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Dr. Z and her guests share perspectives and suggestions, not diagnoses or treatment. Always consult your own qualified provider.

Perimenopause symptoms can start 8 to 10 years before your last period, while your cycles are still regular and your labs come back "fine." If you're in your 40s and something has clearly changed but nobody will name it, this is the root-cause explanation most women never get.

Dr. Z walks through six of the most overlooked signs of perimenopause: sudden rage, anxiety that appeared out of nowhere, waking at 3am, brain fog, weight gain around the middle, and aching joints. Underneath all six sits the same pattern. Hormones lose their rhythm, and they land on a nervous system that may have been running in survival mode for years.

What you'll learn:

1. Why progesterone often declines first, and how losing that calming "brake" can change how you react to everything.

2. How estrogen swings may contribute to perimenopause rage and first-time anxiety in your 40s.

3. Why so many women wake at 3am, and the role cortisol timing can play in disrupted sleep.

4. What perimenopause brain fog usually looks like, and why word-finding is often the first thing affected.

5. Why stubborn belly weight and joint pain that comes and goes can show up together, and why eating less and training harder sometimes backfires.

This episode doesn't replace a conversation with your doctor about hormone therapy. It adds the nervous system half of the picture that usually gets skipped.

FREE GIFT: The 21-Day Nervous System Calibration is designed to help you begin shifting out of survival mode and back into a state of regulation.  👉 go.thisisdrz.com/nervoussystem

Schedule a FREE discovery call with Dr. Z and our team: https://go.southbaywellness.com/schedule-call

Thanks for listening to T.R.U.E. Wellness with Dr .Z, follow us on social media for more wellness inspiration.

Watch the full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisIsDrZ
Instagram: ThisIsDrZ
Facebook: ThisIsDrZ
YouTube: @ThisIsDrZ
LinkedIn: ThisIsDrZ
TikTok: @ThisIsDrZ
Website: www.SouthBayWellness.com

The information in this episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Dr. Z and her guests share perspectives and suggestions, not diagnoses or treatment. Always consult your own qualified provider.

You're exhausted in a way sleep doesn't fix. You've gained weight that won't come off. You lose your words mid-sentence, you snap at people you love, and your labs keep coming back fine.

Those aren't separate problems. They're one thing showing up in seven different places, and it's why everything you've tried works for a few weeks and then stops.

This is the full explanation of survival mode: what it is, what it does to cortisol, blood sugar, and your nervous system, and why your body is doing every bit of it to protect you.

I walk through each symptom and show you the same root underneath it:

Exhaustion that rest doesn't touch. The 3pm crash and the sugar craving you can't talk yourself out of. Being wide awake at 11pm after being tired all day. Weight your body won't let go of. Brain fog and losing your words. Snapping at people you love. And losing your desire for sex, which is the symptom women apologize for before they'll even mention it.

Nothing here is a diagnosis, and nothing here replaces care from your own doctor. There's no supplement to buy and no meal plan at the end. This is an explanation of the mechanism, and what actually moves it.

📥 FREE GUIDE: 5 Signs Your Body Is Stuck in Survival Mode: https://go.southbaywellness.com/5signs

FREE GIFT: The 21-Day Nervous System Calibration is designed to help you begin shifting out of survival mode and back into a state of regulation.  👉 go.thisisdrz.com/nervoussystem

Schedule a FREE discovery call with Dr. Z and our team: https://go.southbaywellness.com/schedule-call

Thanks for listening to T.R.U.E. Wellness with Dr .Z, follow us on social media for more wellness inspiration.

Watch the full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisIsDrZ
Instagram: ThisIsDrZ
Facebook: ThisIsDrZ
YouTube: @ThisIsDrZ
LinkedIn: ThisIsDrZ
TikTok: @ThisIsDrZ
Website: www.SouthBayWellness.com

The information in this episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Dr. Z and her guests share perspectives and suggestions, not diagnoses or treatment. Always consult your own qualified provider.

Tired all day, then wide awake the second you get into bed? That's not two problems. That's one — and it means your body is stuck in survival mode.

Survival mode is a real physical state. Your nervous system has a gear for handling danger. It's built to switch on for a moment and then switch off. But when you've been carrying everything for years, your body stops treating that gear as an emergency setting and starts treating it as normal. It isn't malfunctioning — it's protecting you. It just hasn't been told it can stand down.

In this episode I go deeper on the three signs from my short video:

1. Tired and wired — you're exhausted and you can't switch off
2. No buffer — small things set you off, and then you feel awful
3. You can't be still — you finally get quiet time and you're up in ninety seconds

For each one: what your body is protecting you from, and why the usual advice (sleep hygiene, "be more patient," "just relax") backfires. Then the simplest thing that actually helps your nervous system come out of it.

This is not medical advice and it doesn't replace care from your own provider. It's one conversation about what's happening in your body and why.

▶️ Watch the short version first:  https://youtu.be/R7szZ6g0j14

If this is the kind of thing you want more of, subscribe. I break down what's actually happening in your body, one video at a time.

#survivalmode #nervoussystem #perimenopause

FREE GIFT: The 21-Day Nervous System Calibration is designed to help you begin shifting out of survival mode and back into a state of regulation.  👉 go.thisisdrz.com/nervoussystem

Schedule a FREE discovery call with Dr. Z and our team: https://go.southbaywellness.com/schedule-call

Thanks for listening to T.R.U.E. Wellness with Dr .Z, follow us on social media for more wellness inspiration.

Watch the full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisIsDrZ
Instagram: ThisIsDrZ
Facebook: ThisIsDrZ
YouTube: @ThisIsDrZ
LinkedIn: ThisIsDrZ
TikTok: @ThisIsDrZ
Website: www.SouthBayWellness.com

The information in this episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Dr. Z and her guests share perspectives and suggestions, not diagnoses or treatment. Always consult your own qualified provider.

Day nine. She's standing in the kitchen at four in the afternoon, eating crackers out of the sleeve, and the sentence in her head isn't "I'm hungry." It's "what is wrong with me."

She'd been perfect for nine days. That's the fourth diet this year. She's fifty-one.

In this episode I want to explain what was actually happening in that kitchen — because it was not a failure of character, and it wasn't close to one.

A body that doesn't believe conditions are safe holds on. That's not a malfunction. That's the job. And five things had been telling her body exactly that, for years: the restriction itself, an alarm that never switched off, sleep that wasn't restoring her, exercise stacked on top of an already-loaded system, and twenty years of evidence she'd handed it in good faith while trying to get healthy.

Who this is for: 
women in their forties, fifties and sixties who have done every plan properly, lost it, watched it come back, and been told the problem is discipline.

A note: nothing here is medical advice, and nothing here tells you to stop a plan you're on or change anything your doctor has advised. This is one conversation about mechanism.

If this is the kind of thing you want more of, subscribe. New episode every week.

FREE GIFT: The 21-Day Nervous System Calibration is designed to help you begin shifting out of survival mode and back into a state of regulation.  👉 go.thisisdrz.com/nervoussystem

Schedule a FREE discovery call with Dr. Z and our team: https://go.southbaywellness.com/schedule-call

Thanks for listening to T.R.U.E. Wellness with Dr .Z, follow us on social media for more wellness inspiration.

Watch the full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisIsDrZ
Instagram: ThisIsDrZ
Facebook: ThisIsDrZ
YouTube: @ThisIsDrZ
LinkedIn: ThisIsDrZ
TikTok: @ThisIsDrZ
Website: www.SouthBayWellness.com

The information in this episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Dr. Z and her guests share perspectives and suggestions, not diagnoses or treatment. Always consult your own qualified provider.

Dr. Z sits down with leadership coach and former RAF pilot Will Steel to unpack a claim that stops most people in their tracks: that we're not authentic at all — we're pretending, and pretending that we're not pretending, without ever realizing it. The conversation moves from the "I'm fine" performance so many high-achieving women live inside, to why willpower is the wrong tool for lasting change, to the real fix — building external structures (calendars, accountability, promises to yourself) strong enough that you can't talk yourself out of who you say you are.
 
Will and Dr. Z dig into habit stacking, the self-sabotage that shows up right before a breakthrough, and the childhood decisions that quietly write the rules we live by as adults (including stories from both of their own lives). Will closes with the concept of Fitra — the pure, unforced essence of who you already are — and a single question worth sitting with: what do you really want?
 
 Will Steel is a former Royal Air Force pilot and recipient of the Leadership Trophy at the Royal Air Force College Cranwell. He went on to spend more than two decades as a senior leader inside a premier global personal-development organization, delivering transformational programs to tens of thousands of people — over 90,000, per his website — across 26 countries in 18 languages.
 
Today Will is the CEO of Free to Lead and the author of the #1 international bestseller Free to Lead: Unleash Your Hidden Leadership Genius, which uses an ontological coaching approach to help clients uncover the hidden beliefs and automatic patterns that quietly run their lives. His coaching clients range from first-time managers to CEOs and global entrepreneurs, many of them across the Middle East.
 
Will lives by the coast, where he surfs, walks his dog Bubbles on the beach, and keeps to a strength routine he's followed almost without fail for over two decades — proof, he says, of what's possible once you build the right structures around yourself.
 
Will Steel Links
Website: https://willsteel.com/
Free To Lead Book: https://willsteel.com/freetolead.php
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/will-steel-business-coach-high-performance-transformation
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/willsteelcoaching/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willsteelcoaching/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@willsteel
Schedule a 15min Call (to see if and how I can help you): https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/booking/LOmkl6JnKkjSJJAt9Csm

FREE GIFT: The 21-Day Nervous System Calibration is designed to help you begin shifting out of survival mode and back into a state of regulation.  👉 go.thisisdrz.com/nervoussystem

Schedule a FREE discovery call with Dr. Z and our team: https://go.southbaywellness.com/schedule-call

Thanks for listening to T.R.U.E. Wellness with Dr .Z, follow us on social media for more wellness inspiration.

Watch the full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisIsDrZ
Instagram: ThisIsDrZ
Facebook: ThisIsDrZ
YouTube: @ThisIsDrZ
LinkedIn: ThisIsDrZ
TikTok: @ThisIsDrZ
Website: www.SouthBayWellness.com

The information in this episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Dr. Z and her guests share perspectives and suggestions, not diagnoses or treatment. Always consult your own qualified provider.

Ever been told to "just breathe and relax" when you're running on empty and it didn't work? In this episode of TRUE Wellness with Dr. Z, Dr. Danielle Zanzarov sits down with breathwork and meditation teacher Andrew Keaveney (Art of Living Foundation) to unpack why meditation feels so hard at first, how breathwork physically shifts your nervous system out of "go mode," and why rest not more hustle is the missing piece for burned-out, high-achieving women.

Andrew spent 4 years living in an ashram in India and has spent the last 17 years teaching breathwork and meditation even though he couldn't meditate himself while chairing the Buddhist club at Stanford. He's helped launch a retreat center in North Carolina and made a documentary following people using breathwork in addiction recovery. In this conversation, he leads a live guided breathing exercise and walks through the research on how breathwork affects gene expression, cortisol, anxiety recovery, and impulse control.

In this episode:

1. Why meditation feels like opening Pandora's box before it feels peaceful
2. How to stop "compartmentalizing your happiness" for later
3. A live guided breathwork practice you can follow along with
4. What the research says about breathwork, stress hormones, and the nervous system
5. How breathwork gave people struggling with addiction back their sense of choice
6. 3 practical steps to start a daily practice, even with 10 minutes

Follow Andrew Keaveney: Instagram @andrew.keaveney and Substack | Art of Living USA: Instagram @artoflivingusa or artofliving.org

FREE GIFT: The 21-Day Nervous System Calibration is designed to help you begin shifting out of survival mode and back into a state of regulation.  👉 go.thisisdrz.com/nervoussystem

Schedule a FREE discovery call with Dr. Z and our team: https://go.southbaywellness.com/schedule-call

Thanks for listening to T.R.U.E. Wellness with Dr .Z, follow us on social media for more wellness inspiration.

Watch the full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisIsDrZ
Instagram: ThisIsDrZ
Facebook: ThisIsDrZ
YouTube: @ThisIsDrZ
LinkedIn: ThisIsDrZ
TikTok: @ThisIsDrZ
Website: www.SouthBayWellness.com

The information in this episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Dr. Z and her guests share perspectives and suggestions, not diagnoses or treatment. Always consult your own qualified provider.

Stress. Hormones. Perimenopause. Anxiety. Thyroid. For a lot of women, those five labels are really one missed diagnosis — sleep apnea — screened by a test built around how it shows up in men. In this episode, Dr. Z sits down with dental sleep medicine expert Dr. Layne Martin to talk about the eight hours nobody's been looking at: the airway you breathe through while you sleep, and what it's quietly doing to your energy, hormones, brain, and long-term health.

If you're doing all the "right" things — clean eating, workouts, cold plunges, meditation — but still wake up exhausted, this is the foundational piece most people skip.

What you'll learn in this episode:

1. Why women's sleep apnea hides behind labels like perimenopause, anxiety, and thyroid — and why a standard sleep test can miss it entirely.
2. What your teeth reveal about your nervous system: why nighttime clenching and grinding is often a fight-or-flight (sympathetic overdrive) signal of an airway problem, not just a "get a night guard" issue.
3. The sleep–brain connection: how breathing at night drives the brain's overnight "cleaning" (the glymphatic system), and how poor airway shows up as brain fog in adults and developmental issues in kids.
4. Why how you sleep matters as much as how long: how back-sleeping collapses the airway, and how positional therapy became the Open Air Pillow.
5. Nose vs. mouth breathing: the role of nitric oxide, why mouth taping can backfire, and where a simple oral appliance fits alongside — not instead of — CPAP.

About Dr. Layne Martin

Dr. Layne Martin is a Diplomate of the American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine and a specialist in orthodontics and craniofacial orthopedics, focused on airway health, snoring, and sleep-related breathing disorders in both children and adults.

A former restorative dentist on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, he sold his practice at 42 to retrain around the root cause he'd been missing for years: the airway. Today he treats sleep-disordered breathing, teaches other dentists to screen for it, and helped develop an FDA-cleared oral appliance for mild to moderate sleep apnea. His research into why oral appliances and CPAP so often fall short pointed to one overlooked factor — sleep position — which became the Open Air Pillow, designed to support healthier sleep posture and make existing treatments work better. As co-founder of two sleep-health companies, his mission isn't just adding years to life — it's helping people live healthier, sharper, and more fully.

References mentioned:
• Open Air Pillow — positional therapy pillow: https://www.openairpillow.com/
• FDA-cleared oral appliance (Airvata) — www.airVata.com and patients can find a provider there too! You can contact their support at [email protected].
• Contact Dr. Martin: [email protected]
• Sonu Sense / Sonu headband (nasal patency, third-party tool referenced in-episode)

FREE GIFT: The 21-Day Nervous System Calibration is designed to help you begin shifting out of survival mode and back into a state of regulation.  👉 go.thisisdrz.com/nervoussystem

Schedule a FREE discovery call with Dr. Z and our team: https://go.southbaywellness.com/schedule-call

Thanks for listening to T.R.U.E. Wellness with Dr .Z, follow us on social media for more wellness inspiration.

Watch the full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisIsDrZ
Instagram: ThisIsDrZ
Facebook: ThisIsDrZ
YouTube: @ThisIsDrZ
LinkedIn: ThisIsDrZ
TikTok: @ThisIsDrZ
Website: www.SouthBayWellness.com

The information in this episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Dr. Z and her guests share perspectives and suggestions, not diagnoses or treatment. Always consult your own qualified provider.

She went in because her heart was racing at 3am and she was too exhausted to get out of the car after work. Fourteen minutes later she left with a prescription and a word.

The word was anxiety. She believed it for six years.

In this episode I walk through five labels women get handed — anxiety, depression, insomnia, health anxiety, and the last one that isn't a diagnosis at all: "this is just where you are right now." For each one: what believing it cost her, and the question nobody in that appointment asked.

Because there's something all five have in common, and it took six years to see it.

This is a follow-up to "I've Tried Everything" — that episode was about being told nothing is wrong. This one is about being told the wrong thing, which in some ways is worse. Being told nothing's wrong leaves the question open. A name closes it.

Who this is for: women whose lab results keep coming back normal, who've been told it's stress, hormones, anxiety, perimenopause or "just your age," and who know something is still not right.

An important note. Nothing in this episode says mental health diagnoses aren't real, and nothing here is medical advice. Anxiety and depression are real, treatment helps enormously for many people, and nobody should change or stop a medication because of a podcast. The argument is narrower than that: a label can be accurate and still not be the whole answer. You're allowed to accept treatment and keep the question open.

If this is the kind of thing you want more of, subscribe. New episode every week.

FREE GIFT: The 21-Day Nervous System Calibration is designed to help you begin shifting out of survival mode and back into a state of regulation.  👉 go.thisisdrz.com/nervoussystem

Schedule a FREE discovery call with Dr. Z and our team: https://go.southbaywellness.com/schedule-call

Thanks for listening to T.R.U.E. Wellness with Dr .Z, follow us on social media for more wellness inspiration.

Watch the full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisIsDrZ
Instagram: ThisIsDrZ
Facebook: ThisIsDrZ
YouTube: @ThisIsDrZ
LinkedIn: ThisIsDrZ
TikTok: @ThisIsDrZ
Website: www.SouthBayWellness.com

The information in this episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Dr. Z and her guests share perspectives and suggestions, not diagnoses or treatment. Always consult your own qualified provider.