For two decades, women were warned away from hormone replacement therapy on the strength of a single study. In this episode, certified hormone specialist Karen Martel joins Leah to separate the headline from the data — where the fear came from, what the reanalysis actually showed about estrogen versus progestin, the benefits women were rarely told about, and how to advocate for real care when your doctor isn't trained in menopause.

In this episode:

• Where the modern fear of HRT really came from

• What the Women's Health Initiative found — and what the headlines left out

• Why estrogen and a synthetic progestin were treated as the same thing

• The bone, brain, skin, and metabolic benefits women rarely hear about

• Why so few doctors are trained in menopause — and how to find one who is

• Bioidentical vs. synthetic, compounding pharmacies, and a caution about pellets

• Podcast: The Hormone Solution | Menopause, Perimenopause, & Women's Midlife Health — 500+ episodes on hormones, HRT, and midlife metabolism. New episodes Tuesdays and Saturdays.

• Free hormone quiz — personalized results based on your symptoms and stage of life: Take Karen's hormone quiz

• Cosmetic hormone creams — 10% off for listeners with code LEAH10: karenmartel.com. The line includes a progesterone cream, a low-dose estradiol, and a Biest face cream. A companion ebook walks you through deciding whether these may be a fit for you. Ships to the US and Canada only.

Disclosure: The cream link above is an affiliate link. If you purchase through it, Leah may earn a commission at no additional cost to you — and you still get your 10% listener discount. She only shares products she'd point a friend toward.

Resources & links:

• Free 5-Day Energy Reboot — starts Monday, July 13 (runs Jul 13–17; the easiest place to start)

• Clarity: Understand Your Metabolic Sweet Spot — the 5-week coaching program that uses your own real-time glucose data. Cohort #2 starts Monday, July 20. Doors are open now.

• Inner Circle membership — the twice-monthly community

• Women Aging Powerfully on Spotify · on YouTube

• Join the mailing list: leahvachani.com

If you’ve been bloated for years and nothing has worked, this episode is for you. Most midlife bloating isn’t a food sensitivity — it’s a combination of insulin spikes, cortisol, and estrogen fluctuations that don’t show up on any food panel. In this episode I bust the seven food myths I see keeping more midlife women bloated and stuck than almost anything else — including the ones being sold to you as healthy. We get into the actual mechanism (yes, including how your kidneys are part of the story) so you can finally understand what’s happening in your body, not just follow another rule. In this episode• The 2021 study that proves your metabolism doesn’t actually slow after 40• What insulin resistance really is, in plain English — with a noise-canceling headphones analogy you’ll remember forever• Why fat was never the villain you were told it was• How estrogen decline changes your response to oatmeal (it’s real)• The kidney-sodium-water mechanism behind blood sugar bloat• Why elimination diets fail — and what to look at instead• Dr. Lisa Mosconi’s “brain energy crisis” — the menopause brain story• Why willpower will never fix stress eating (it’s a cortisol problem)

Full Show Notes here.

🔥 Resources/Links Mentioned:

Dr. Ben Bikman — Why We Get Sick

Dr. Robert Lustig — Fat Chance and Metabolical

Dr. Christopher Palmer — Brain Energy

🎙️ Submit YOUR⁠ podcast question here⁠ or via written format⁠ here⁠.

💌⁠ Leah's Mailing List⁠

💚⁠ FullScript Dispensary⁠ (My community gets a 15% discount!)

💚 AG1 Greens - With my⁠ special link⁠, you will receive an exclusive subscription introductory offer worth $205 for only $79!

Connect with Leah...

✨ Follow Leah on⁠ Instagram⁠ for more value-packed content, tips, and lots of laughs! ⁠ ⁠

✨ Subscribe to Women Aging Powerfully on⁠ YouTube⁠ for more free content. ⁠

✨ Join the free Women Aging Powerfully⁠ Facebook Community⁠

✨ Listen to the Women Aging Powerfully⁠ Podcast⁠

✨ Lose that stubborn belly weight, reclaim your energy ALL day, sleep better, and feel amazing with Leah's signature⁠ course⁠

The information provided during this podcast is for educational purposes only. The speaker may be a licensed medical professional and may present case studies of actual patients or refer to patients' treatment during the program. Please be reminded that the Scope of Practice for Holistic Nutrition Professionals prevents us from diagnosing, preventing, treating, curing, prescribing, managing, or healing disease. Holistic Nutrition Professionals are not licensed in any state and work with clients, not patients.

Most women have been told their pelvic floor problems mean they're weak. Pelvic floor and Pilates expert Jana Danielson is here to set the record straight: most women are too tight, not too weak — and the kegels we've been doing for years may have been making things worse. In this conversation, Jana breaks down the real anatomy of the pelvic floor, the symptoms that connect back to it (leakage, painful sex, bloating, constipation, even jaw tension), why breath and posture matter more than another exercise, and the three-minute daily practice that can change everything. If you've ever quietly accepted any pelvic floor symptom as "just part of aging," this is your wake-up call.

Full show notes here.

→ Watch on YouTube: @WomenAgingPowerfully

→ The CGM Metabolic Makeover — my flagship program for understanding your blood sugar in real time

→ Join the mailing list at leahvachani.com — episode summaries, recipes, and the things I'm learning

→ My FullScript Dispensary — special community discount on practitioner-grade supplements

Connect with Jana

→ Website: bloombetter.life

→ Instagram: @jana.danielson

→ Facebook: The Cooch Ball

→ Substack: The Jana Danielson

→ Free download: Healthy Pelvic Floor eBook

→ Join us: 21-Day Belly Bloat Challenge (June 9–30, 2026)

Mentioned in This Episode

→ The Cooch Ball — Jana's pelvic floor fitness tool

→ Joylux vFit — red-light intimate wellness device referenced for vaginal tissue health

🔥 Resources/Links Mentioned:

🎙️ Submit YOUR podcast question here or via written format here.

💌 Leah's Mailing List

💚 FullScript Dispensary (My community gets a 15% discount!)

💚 AG1 Greens - With my special link, you will receive an exclusive subscription introductory offer worth $205 for only $79!

Connect with Leah...

✨ Follow Leah on Instagram for more value-packed content, tips, and lots of laughs! ⁠ ⁠

✨ Subscribe to Women Aging Powerfully on YouTube for more free content. ⁠

✨ Join the free Women Aging Powerfully Facebook Community

✨ Listen to the Women Aging Powerfully Podcast

✨ Lose that stubborn belly weight, reclaim your energy ALL day, sleep better, and feel amazing with Leah's signature course

The information provided during this podcast is for educational purposes only. The speaker may be a licensed medical professional and may present case studies of actual patients or refer to patients' treatment during the program. Please be reminded that the Scope of Practice for Holistic Nutrition Professionals prevents us from diagnosing, preventing, treating, curing, prescribing, managing, or healing disease. Holistic Nutrition Professionals are not licensed in any state and work with clients, not patients.

Melanie Avalon — host of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast — joins Leah to bust the myths around intermittent fasting for women over 40. They cover the infamous rat study behind most of the fear, what recent research on postmenopausal women actually shows, what really breaks a fast (it’s probably your morning coffee ritual), the protein lever most women are missing, and two supplements that pair with fasting.

Full Show Notes here.

About the guest

Melanie Avalon is the host of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast and The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast, author of What When Wine, founder of the supplement line AvalonX, and creator of the food sensitivity app Food Sense Guide.

Connect with Melanie

• Website: melanieavalon.com

• Find Your IF Style — Melanie’s quiz: melanieavalon.com/ifquiz

• AvalonX supplements (code LEAH for 10% off): avalonx.us

🔥 Resources/Links Mentioned:

🎙️ Submit YOUR podcast question here or via written format here.

💌 Leah's Mailing List

💚 FullScript Dispensary (My community gets a 15% discount!)

💚 AG1 Greens - With my special link, you will receive an exclusive subscription introductory offer worth $205 for only $79!

Connect with Leah...

✨ Follow Leah on Instagram for more value-packed content, tips, and lots of laughs! ⁠ ⁠

✨ Subscribe to Women Aging Powerfully on YouTube for more free content. ⁠

✨ Join the free Women Aging Powerfully Facebook Community

✨ Listen to the Women Aging Powerfully Podcast

✨ Lose that stubborn belly weight, reclaim your energy ALL day, sleep better, and feel amazing with Leah's signature course

The information provided during this podcast is for educational purposes only. The speaker may be a licensed medical professional and may present case studies of actual patients or refer to patients' treatment during the program. Please be reminded that the Scope of Practice for Holistic Nutrition Professionals prevents us from diagnosing, preventing, treating, curing, prescribing, managing, or healing disease. Holistic Nutrition Professionals are not licensed in any state and work with clients, not patients.

Waking up at 3 AM and can't fall back asleep? You're not imagining it, and you're not alone — sleep maintenance insomnia affects roughly 40 to 60% of women in perimenopause and menopause.

In this episode, Stanford-trained behavioral sleep medicine specialist Dr. Sarah Silverman, PsyD, breaks down what's actually happening in your body, why melatonin is probably the wrong tool, and the evidence-based approach (called CBT-I) that has the strongest research behind it.

We cover the 2 AM cortisol spike, sleep apnea in fit perimenopausal women that often gets missed, chronotypes, and the single most important thing you can do for sleep — which has more to do with your wake-up time than your bedtime.ABOUT THE GUESTDr. Sarah Silverman, PsyD is a licensed clinical health psychologist and Stanford-trained behavioral sleep medicine specialist. She is a former Stanford Sleep Medicine Clinical Fellow, former Director of Behavioral Sleep Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, and former Director of Behavioral Sleep Medicine at Tampa General Hospital. Her practice focuses on helping women — especially in midlife — sleep again without medication, using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I). Find her at drsarahsleep.com.CONNECT WITH DR. SARAHWebsite: drsarahsleep.comFree Sleep Masterclass — 3 Steps to Up-Level Your Sleep Confidence Get the full show notes at: https://leahvachani.com/post/why-waking-up-3am-perimenopause-sleep-055
🔥 Resources/Links Mentioned:

🎙️ Submit YOUR podcast question here or via written format here.

💌 Leah's Mailing List

💚 FullScript Dispensary (My community gets a 15% discount!)

💚 AG1 Greens - With my special link, you will receive an exclusive subscription introductory offer worth $205 for only $79!

Connect with Leah...

✨ Follow Leah on Instagram for more value-packed content, tips, and lots of laughs! ⁠ ⁠

✨ Subscribe to Women Aging Powerfully on YouTube for more free content. ⁠

✨ Join the free Women Aging Powerfully Facebook Community

✨ Listen to the Women Aging Powerfully Podcast

✨ Lose that stubborn belly weight, reclaim your energy ALL day, sleep better, and feel amazing with Leah's signature course

The information provided during this podcast is for educational purposes only. The speaker may be a licensed medical professional and may present case studies of actual patients or refer to patients' treatment during the program. Please be reminded that the Scope of Practice for Holistic Nutrition Professionals prevents us from diagnosing, preventing, treating, curing, prescribing, managing, or healing disease. Holistic Nutrition Professionals are not licensed in any state and work with clients, not patients.

Should you stop eating fruit after 40? In this solo episode, Leah Vachani — Certified Nutritionist, Menopause Specialist, and Metabolism Coach — answers the question she hears on nearly every coaching call right now.Using what hibernating bears reveal about insulin resistance as a survival feature, what our ancestors actually did with fruit, and how declining estrogen changes the metabolic equation, Leah walks through a clear six-rule framework for eating fruit in perimenopause and menopause.Topics covered:Why "is modern fruit sweeter?" is the wrong questionThe bear story — and why insulin resistance can be a feature, not a bugWhy our ancestors ate fruit on a seasonal rhythmWhy estrogen decline changes your glucose response to fruitThe six-rule framework for eating fruit after 40How to use CGM data to write your own personal rules📖 Read the full deep-dive article: Is Fruit Healthy After 40? https://leahvachani.com/post/is-fruit-healthy-after-40-perimenopause-blood-sugar 🎧 Full show notes: https://leahvachani.com/post/is-fruit-healthy-after-40-054 🔥 Resources/Links Mentioned:

🎙️ Submit YOUR podcast question here or via written format here.

💌 Leah's Mailing List

💚 FullScript Dispensary (My community gets a 15% discount!)

💚 AG1 Greens - With my special link, you will receive an exclusive subscription introductory offer worth $205 for only $79!

Connect with Leah...

✨ Follow Leah on Instagram for more value-packed content, tips, and lots of laughs! ⁠ ⁠

✨ Subscribe to Women Aging Powerfully on YouTube for more free content. ⁠

✨ Join the free Women Aging Powerfully Facebook Community

✨ Listen to the Women Aging Powerfully Podcast

✨ Lose that stubborn belly weight, reclaim your energy ALL day, sleep better, and feel amazing with Leah's signature course

The information provided during this podcast is for educational purposes only. The speaker may be a licensed medical professional and may present case studies of actual patients or refer to patients' treatment during the program. Please be reminded that the Scope of Practice for Holistic Nutrition Professionals prevents us from diagnosing, preventing, treating, curing, prescribing, managing, or healing disease. Holistic Nutrition Professionals are not licensed in any state and work with clients, not patients.

If willpower keeps letting you down around food, this conversation is going to feel like an exhale. Emotional eating expert Tricia Nelson joins Leah for a real, honest look at why most diets fail, how to tell the difference between emotional eating and food addiction, and what to actually do about it. From her PEP test to the 24 personality traits underneath every binge, Tricia hands you a completely new way to think about why you eat the way you eat — and what real healing actually looks like.

In This Episode We Cover

• How Tricia first realized she was an emotional eater (the sister story everyone relates to)

• Why avoiding tempting foods isn't a real strategy in modern life

• Emotional eating vs. food addiction: where you might fall on the spectrum

• The three real drivers of overeating: emotions, stress, and habit

• Why nighttime eating is so common (and what's actually driving it)

• Tricia's PEP test — Painkiller, Escape, Punishment

• The 24 personality traits behind emotional eating

• 
  
• Why people-pleasing leads straight to the I-deserve-it binge

• • The real solution: slowing down, three-meal magic, and community
  • Why support isn't shameful — it's the fastest way through

  Resources from the Episode

  • Tricia's website and free emotional eating quiz: healyourhunger.com

  • Tricia's TEDx talk (over 2 million views): Emotional Eating: What if Weight Loss Isn't about the Food?

  • Tricia's book: Heal Your Hunger: 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now

  • Tricia's podcast: Confessions of a Binge Eater

    Tricia on Instagram: @tricianelson_

  Resources/Links Mentioned:

  🎙️ Submit YOUR podcast question here or via written format here.

  💌 Leah's Mailing List

  💚 FullScript Dispensary (My community gets a 15% discount!)

  💚 AG1 Greens - With my special link, you will receive an exclusive subscription introductory offer worth $205 for only $79!

  Connect with Leah...

  ✨ Follow Leah on Instagram for more value-packed content, tips, and lots of laughs! ⁠ ⁠

  ✨ Subscribe to Women Aging Powerfully on YouTube for more free content. ⁠

  ✨ Join the free Women Aging Powerfully Facebook Community

  ✨ Listen to the Women Aging Powerfully Podcast

  ✨ Lose that stubborn belly weight, reclaim your energy ALL day, sleep better, and feel amazing with Leah's signature course

  The information provided during this podcast is for educational purposes only. The speaker may be a licensed medical professional and may present case studies of actual patients or refer to patients' treatment during the program. Please be reminded that the Scope of Practice for Holistic Nutrition Professionals prevents us from diagnosing, preventing, treating, curing, prescribing, managing, or healing disease. Holistic Nutrition Professionals are not licensed in any state and work with clients, not patients.

In this solo episode, Leah unpacks one of the most confusing questions in women's metabolic health right now: is keto actually bad for women in menopause?

Drawing from the work of Dr. Ben Bikman, Dr. Lisa Mosconi, Dr. Jason Fung, Dr. Mindy Pelz, and Dr. Ralph DeFronzo, Leah breaks down what keto actually is (and isn't), why this conversation matters more in midlife than at any other stage, and the middle-path framework she uses with her clients to get the benefits without the burnout.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• What keto actually is, in plain language

• Why insulin resistance gets worse as estrogen declines

• How ketones may help fuel the menopausal brain

• When strict keto can backfire (cortisol, thyroid, stress)

• Why metabolic flexibility beats metabolic rigidity

• A practical framework you can start using this week

PROGRAMS & RESOURCES MENTIONED

• CGM Metabolic Makeover program

We've been told for decades to build our diets around carbohydrates. But what does the science actually say — and does the answer change for women going through perimenopause and menopause? In this solo episode, Leah Vachani unpacks the history of the low-fat movement, explains what carbohydrates do in the body and why insulin is the hormone you need to understand, and dives deep into how declining estrogen changes your carb metabolism in ways most doctors never explain. Drawing on research from Dr. Ben Bikman, Dr. Robert Lustig, Dr. Jason Fung, Dr. Lisa Mosconi, Dr. Ralph DeFronzo, and Dr. Mindy Pelz, this episode offers a clear, practical framework for how to eat in a way that actually works with your hormonal reality — not against it.

In This Episode

• The history of the diet-heart hypothesis and how Ancel Keys shaped decades of nutrition advice

• Why carbohydrates are not classified as an essential nutrient

• How glucose, insulin, and fat storage are connected

• How estrogen acts as an insulin sensitizer — and what happens when it declines

• ZOE PREDICT study: why post-menopausal women have dramatically higher blood sugar responses to the same meals

• Dr. Lisa Mosconi's brain imaging research on glucose metabolism and the menopausal brain

• Why brain fog, 2am waking, hot flashes, and cravings can all have a blood sugar component

• A tiered carb framework: ketogenic / low-carb / moderate-carb — with actual numbers

• The kindling vs. log analogy for understanding metabolic fuel switching

• Which lab markers to ask for — and why fasting insulin matters more than fasting glucose

• How CGMs make all of this personal and actionable

• Teaser: next week's episode — Is ketosis bad for women in perimenopause and menopause?

 Get the full show notes here.

🔥 Resources/Links Mentioned:

🎙️ Submit YOUR podcast question here or via written format here.

💌 Leah's Mailing List

💚 FullScript Dispensary (My community gets a 15% discount!)

💚 AG1 Greens - With my special link, you will receive an exclusive subscription introductory offer worth $205 for only $79!

Books

Why We Get Sick — Dr. Ben Bikman (2020)

Fat Chance — Dr. Robert Lustig (2012)

Metabolical — Dr. Robert Lustig (2021)

The Obesity Code — Dr. Jason Fung (2016)

The Menopause Brain — Dr. Lisa Mosconi (2024)

The XX Brain — Dr. Lisa Mosconi (2020)

Grain Brain — Dr. David Perlmutter (2013)

Fast Like a Girl — Dr. Mindy Pelz (2022)

Connect with Leah...

✨ Follow Leah on Instagram for more value-packed content, tips, and lots of laughs! ⁠ ⁠

✨ Subscribe to Women Aging Powerfully on YouTube for more free content. ⁠

✨ Join the free Women Aging Powerfully Facebook Community

✨ Listen to the Women Aging Powerfully Podcast

✨ Lose that stubborn belly weight, reclaim your energy ALL day, sleep better, and feel amazing with Leah's signature course

The information provided during this podcast is for educational purposes only. The speaker may be a licensed medical professional and may present case studies of actual patients or refer to patients' treatment during the program. Please be reminded that the Scope of Practice for Holistic Nutrition Professionals prevents us from diagnosing, preventing, treating, curing, prescribing, managing, or healing disease. Holistic Nutrition Professionals are not licensed in any state and work with clients, not patients.

After a celiac diagnosis forced her to rethink everything she ate, Anna Vocino didn't just figure out how to feed herself — she built a food company. Today she's the founder of Eat Happy Kitchen, a bestselling cookbook author, and co-host of the Fitness Confidential podcast, and she's spent years helping others find joy in eating well without sacrificing flavor.In this conversation, Anna and Leah dig into low-carb strategies, the truth behind food labels, what happens to insulin sensitivity when estrogen declines, and the emotional complexity of changing how you eat during midlife.

What We Cover

• Anna's story: from celiac diagnosis to clean food entrepreneur
• Why insulin resistance increases as estrogen declines — and what to do about it
• Simple low-carb swaps for pasta, rice, pizza, and comfort food classics
• The 30-to-60-day taste bud reset and why it's worth the discomfort
• Meal planning strategies that hold up on real, tired weeknights
• How to read food labels — and what brands are legally allowed to hide
• Why "net carbs" can be misleading and what to focus on instead
• The emotional and cultural relationship women have with food during midlife
• Navigating wine, celebrations, and social eating without guilt
• Voting with your wallet and supporting clean food brands

Full show notes here

🔥 Resources/Links Mentioned:

Eat Happy Kitchen

Anna's Cookbooks: Eat Happy | Eat Happy Too | Eat Happy Low Carb Italian | Eat Happy Cocktail Hour (2026)

Connect with Anna on her website

Anna on Instagram @annavocino

Chlorella supplement mentioned by Leah | code 'LEAHV' to save 20%

🎙️ Submit YOUR podcast question here: https://www.speakpipe.com/LeahVachani or via written format here.

💌 Leah's Mailing List: https://leahvachani.com

💚 FullScript Dispensary: https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/lvachani (My community gets a 15% discount!)

Connect with Leah...

✨ Follow Leah on Instagram for more value-packed content, tips, and lots of laughs! ⁠ https://www.instagram.com/leahvachani/ ⁠

✨ Subscribe to Women Aging Powerfully on YouTube for more free content. ⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@WomenAgingPowerfully

✨ Join the free Women Aging Powerfully Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/womenagingpowerfully

✨ Listen to the Women Aging Powerfully Podcast: https://leahvachani.com/podcast

✨ Lose that stubborn belly weight, reclaim your energy ALL day, sleep better, and feel amazing with Leah's signature course: https://leahvachani.com/cgm-reset-register-now

The information provided during this podcast is for educational purposes only. The speaker may be a licensed medical professional and may present case studies of actual patients or refer to patients' treatment during the program. Please be reminded that the Scope of Practice for Holistic Nutrition Professionals prevents us from diagnosing, preventing, treating, curing, prescribing, managing, or healing disease. Holistic Nutrition Professionals are not licensed in any state and work with clients, not patients.