Dr. Mary Claire Haver on the Menopause Toolkit: Nutrition, Strength & Stress

You're known for the Galveston diet and you're known for nutrition and exercise and weight gain and stress reduction, which I do want to talk to you about.

But I think it is interesting that you realize that there were so many people asking other questions about what is related to menopause, right? Because if I understand correctly, there are 34 common symptoms, but over 100 menopause potential issues that can happen during this phase.

And nobody knows that frozen shoulder might be related to some sort of hormonal change.

Is that really what you found?

Yes.

Every single organ system in our bodies has estrogen, progesterone, testosterone receptors.

And when those levels start tanking, we can see changes.

And Each of our expressions of our perimenopause and menopause are individual.

So where you might have had mental health changes and, you know, frozen shoulder, I had hot flashes, night sweats, and, you know, skin changes that affected me.

And it's really hard for medical providers to know all of these things because we're not taught anything.

You know, there's just such a lack of education and focus around menopause care outside of the hot flash.

And we just, you know, women are feeling like they're crazy.

They don't understand what's happening to their bodies.

Let's talk a little bit about actionable items.

I understand, obviously, that there are such a varied range of experiences, as you've said.

So one person's menopause is not going to be the same as another person's was this idea that without any changes in diet and exercise, you were seeing that people in menopause and perimenopause gain about three to five pounds.

Is that three to five pounds, just a solid three to five pounds? Or is that like every year? Because I feel like there, I've seen a lot of people with more weight gain than even that.

So that's on average pretty

much a year.

About three pounds a year is the average weight gain.

And a lot of the older studies just said, well, it probably has more to do with aging because the trajectory of the weight gain doesn't seem to change with menopause transition.

You just take 50-year-old, 55, 60, and the weight's going up.

What is changing, I think what is important for people to understand, is your body composition.

And so where and how you deposit fat, how much muscle you have starts changing dramatically with the menopause transition.

And that correlates more than just annoying weight gain that is cosmetically distressing, but a health risk.