Gennev: Let's talk about menopause

"Hit Play Not Pause," is the name of Selene Yeagar's podcast, and we think it's perfect.

While middle age and menopause mean changes in our bodies, aging doesn't mean physical activity — even at a competitive level — is behind us.

In this episode, Gennev CEO Jill Angelo talks with Selene about how post-menopausal women can continue to perform at a high level — or just be fit and feel good in their bodies, if that's the goal. 

Selene Yeager manages content for Feisty Menopause. She is also a top-selling professional health and fitness writer who lives what she writes as an NASM certified personal trainer, USA Cycling licensed coach, Pn1 certified nutrition coach, pro licensed off-road racer, and former All-American Ironman triathlete. 

Learn more about Selene and hear the podcast at FeistyMenopause.com.

Remember getting out of bed when you were 30? Nothing hurt, everything moved in the right direction, nothing was stuck or rusty or sore.

You can be that way again, says Dr. Vonda Wright, double-boarded orthopedic sports surgeon, internationally recognized authority on active aging and mobility, and an innovator focused on optimizing personal and professional performance at every age. 

Menopause and achy joints don't have to stop you from doing activities you love. You may need to approach activity differently, and (please don't shoot the messenger) cut back on sugar, but 50 and menopause don't mean your active life is over.

Have a listen to Jill Angelo, Gennev CEO, and Dr. Wright as they talk about movement, joint pain, and how to FACE the future.

Find Dr. Wright at DrVondaWright.com, check out her podcast Hot For Your Health, and be sure to find her books!

Gennev's #IAmThe Change campaign is a call to arms for women to speak up about how they’re transforming during their time of menopause. No more shushing women into isolation, I am the Change is meant to help us all feel a little more normal, a little more in control of this miraculous and sometimes challenging transition we’re in, and a little less lonely when the stress, sleeplessness, or relationship strain gets heavy.

We didn’t quite know where the women’s stories would take us, but we knew that it takes voices coming together to create change. The kind of change that materially changes how women will experience this menopause transition so many of us manage on a daily basis. Join us!

2020 was a tough year for women and wellness. In fact, 70% of us put our health “on hold,” pushing off preventative appointments and screenings. How is that impacting our health?

In this podcast, Gennev CEO Jill Angelo, CMO Dr. Rebecca Dunsmoor-Su, and Director of Coaching Stasi Kasianchuk discuss telehealth, menopause, and the incredible resilience of women.

Historically (and, let's face it, currently) society hasn't done a great job of valuing and centering women and women's issues. 

This lack of care and attention is compounded when the woman in question is older, Black or of color, LGBTQ+, disabled, trans, or at the intersection of two or more of these identities. 

Omisade Burney-Scott is changing that. Her website, Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause, is a sort of Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret for an older demographic -- intended to be a safe space for Black women to ask questions, get and give answers, and explore identity at any age.

In a society that values youth over age and rewards "anti-aging" over aging naturally, Omisade's site, podcast, and events are opportunities for women to individually and collective take back their power and identity. 

In this podcast, Omisade speaks with Gennev CEO Jill Angelo about women's obligation and honor to teach younger generations about aging and menopause. As Omisade says, it's important "to see the trajectory of someone's lived experience" and understand "there's no shelf-life on evolving." Older women have important information to give, about the experience of menopause, and so much more. It's up to us to find opportunities to pass that information along. 

About Omisade Burney-Scott: 

February is Heart Health month, and here are a few things you need to know but might not:

1. Heart disease is the #1 killer of women in the United States, far outpacing breast cancer.
2. Estrogen is protective of the heart - it relaxes arteries and promotes the "good" kind of cholesterol.
3. Ten years post-menopause, a woman's risk of heart disease is equal to a man's.
4. Women are more likely to die due to heart attack because our assumptions about what heart attacks "look like" are based largely on men's symptoms - not women's. So women often don't seek treatment or are misdiagnosed.

That's enough of the bad news. Here's some good news instead.

Nutrition, exercise, and attention to gut health can go a long way toward reducing your risk of heart disease (and this is true of everyone at every age).

In this conversation with bariatric surgeon and gut-health expert Dr. Erika La Vella, Gennev Director of Health Coaching Stasi Kasianchuk asks the questions YOU need the answers to: how to maximize gut health to have a healthier heart.

You can find Dr. La Vella at lavellayourguts.com. You can make an appointment with Coach Stasi or any of our Dietitian Nutritionist coaches at Gennev.com/plans.

Resources for additional information:

I don't want to get too big. I can't lift. I'm too tired by the end of the day. I did it once but didn't see results, so I quit.

Resistance training may not be your thing, but if you're a woman over 40, you might take another look at it. 

It's great for so many things: building and maintaining muscle mass. Helping you sleep better at night. Helping you manage midlife and menopause concerns like weight gain, hot flashes, insomnia, fatigue, poor balance, and weakening bones. 

You know as you get older that your body changes: muscles shrink, metabolism slows, body can look and feel less toned. Resistance training, done right, can help with those things, as well as improve core strength for better balance and generally lift your mood and confidence.

In this podcast, Gennev Director of Health Coaching Stasi Kasianchuk speaks with owner and founder of Driven Fitness, Erica Roselius. A full-time fitness professional and coach for more than 13 years, Erica works primarily with over 40s to help them manage weight and increase muscle. 

Why is it so important for women to incorporate resistance training? How can they benefit, and what risks do they take if they don't move more?

Listen, then find Erica at Driven Fitness and Stasi at Gennev for more information. 

You've been having hot flashes for a while. You still have periods, but sometimes you might go a month or two with nothing. You haven't felt much joy lately, sleep doesn't come as easily as it used to, and you're tired all the way to your bones.

How long is all of this going to last?

There's no hormone test that will tell you where you are in your menopause transition. Unfortunately, in perimenopause when symptoms first start to appear, your hormones are fluctuating so much, you might test as menopausal today but not tomorrow.

That doesn't mean you just grit your teeth and hope it's not the "20 years" you've heard about from others. Gennev's unique menopause assessment looks at your symptoms, your medical history, and your cycles to help you understand where you are -- and what might be coming next.

Knowing where you are means you understand when the changes in your body are normal and when they maybe signal a need for some medical attention. Knowing means you can prepare for the symptoms that may follow. 

In this podcast, OB/GYN, Chief Medical Officer, and menopause specialist Dr. Rebecca Dunsmoor-Su talks with Gennev CEO Jill Angelo about the Menopause Assessment she created for Gennev. They discuss the science behind it, the benefits of the data collected for both the woman who took it and the women who are coming up to perimenopause behind her. 

They also take on the issue of privacy with personal data and the many ways Gennev can help women have an easier, healthier menopause.

Curious? Take the free Gennev Menopause Assessment and find out where you are in your menopause transition.

Sugar is bad for my health, therefore I can't have any and am a weak person if I eat a donut.

Well, no. Human beings are really good at holding seemingly mutually exclusive positions (sugar is bad/I love sugar) at the same time. We're also really good at then feeling guilty and flawed for holding both ideas simultaneously.

Women are often caught in this bind in midlife: our culture celebrates youth, therefore aging must be "bad." Except that aging brings a whole lot of good with it, including experience, wisdom, and frankly, caring a whole lot less what "culture" has to say about our value.

Holding two views at once isn't crazy or wrong or weak; it can even be empowering. There's a tension in the gray space between that can cause stress, but it's also often a source of creation, of reimagining, of growth.

In this fascinating conversation between Gennev Director of Health Coaching Stasi Kasianchuk and regular guest metabolic surgeon and gut health expert Dr. Erika La Vella, they explore the "tension of duality." 

It doesn't have to be either/or (either sugar OR good health), so learn to embrace your "and."

Discover more from Dr. La Vella on her website LaVellaYourGuts.com. Be sure to check out all of her podcasts with Gennev at Gennev.com. And if you're ready to take the next step to better health in menopause, connect with a Health Coach at Gennev.com/plans. 

Talk to Meg Mathews for 30 seconds, and you'll know you're in the presence of a force.

Known for her work in marketing, music, fashion, and design, she is a highly accomplished woman with a big life and a big energy to sustain it. Now she's putting that drive and savvy behind educating the world about menopause.

Her new book The New Hot is a must-read for anyone dealing with menopause (and their partners). She takes on the taboos with common sense, humor, and a brook-no-BS born from years of being a celebrity. 

In this conversation with Gennev CEO Jill Angelo, Meg tells her personal story, and how the lack of good information and advice around menopause drove her to become a resource for others needing help.

Meg is a powerful advocate for women and trans individuals dealing with symptoms; she is also dedicated to helping others learn to advocate for themselves.

Meg Mathews is an icon of the nineties Brit-pop scene, a former music industry executive, and the ex-wife of Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher. In 2017, she launched Megs Menopause, a platform dedicated to breaking the stigma around menopause. In 2018, she held her first annual conference for menopause information and discussion. That same year, she was awarded the Inspiring Public Figure Award by the Inspiring Leadership Trust. She lives in London.

Learn more about Meg Mathews at her website, megsmenopause.com, or follow her on Twitter, @MegMathews, or Instagram, @megmathewsofficial_.

Follow Gennev at gennev.com, on Twitter @MyGennev, and on Instagram, @MyGennev. 

Ada Calhoun's Book Why Can't We Sleep? was an instant New York Times bestseller. 

Gen X women are finding it hauntingly and painfully and upliftingly familiar. 

Gen X women are ... unhappy. Not all of them, not all of the time, but certainly there is more of a cloud over this generation than others. Sandwiched eternally between the much larger, much louder Boomer and Millennial cohorts, Gen X has been overlooked and ignored like the latchkey kids we so essentially are.

And that's doubly true of the women of Gen X, who are now aging into "invisibility" - those supposedly unsexy years after 40. 

Ada Calhoun wanted to know why we're such a miserable bunch, so she started asking. Two hundred interviews with Gen X women later, she's got answers, and she shared them in this fabulous podcast with Gen Xer (and what an irony that my computer's spellcheck doesn't recognize "Xer"), Gennev CEO Jill Angelo.

Hear their conversation about the price of trying to have it all, what it's like to be the first generation not to do better than our parents did, and why perimenopause and menopause are making it even harder on the women of the forgotten generation.

Spoiler: it's not all bad news. But there is some. 

Jeannie Ralston has, literally, done pretty much everything and been pretty much everywhere.

From hiking the Great Wall to introducing her kids to the Arab Spring to hanging out in Morocco with famous people (and not really enjoying it much), she's been there, written about that.

At 60, not only does she show no signs of slowing down, she's not really sure why anyone would expect her to. She's as vibrant, energetic, and curious as ever, and she's sharing that energy and optimism with women globally.

"We can be very proud of being women and of being women this age," she says, and we are very proud to know her.

Have a listen to this fantastic conversation between Gennev CEO Jill Angelo and Next Tribe founder Jeannie Ralston, then come find your Next Tribe for your awesome next chapter of life. 

Also, if you're interested in participating in the writing workshop she spoke of in the podcast, learn more: https://nexttribe.com/book-publishing-workshop/

About Jeannie

Jeannie Ralston is the co-founder and CEO of NextTribe, the digital magazine and community for smart, engaged women over 45.

NextTribe’s mission is to inform, promote, and connect women who are determined to “Age Boldly” (NextTribe’s tagline).

Ralston’s work as a journalist has been published in National Geographic, Life, The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Allure, and many other magazines. Her years growing lavender in rural Texas was the subject of her memoir, The Unlikely Lavender Queen, published by Broadway Books; her e-book, The Mother of All Field Trips, was about the three years she and her husband homeschooled and traveled with their sons.

She lives in Austin, Texas.

What's the link between your gut health and your emotions?

It's a tighter combination than most of us realize, meaning perhaps more of our mental and emotional health is in our control than we previously thought.

We know that our emotions can have a direct physical result: stress, depression, anxiety — all of these can show up in our bodies and in our guts. Upset stomach, loss of (or increase in) appetite, body aches and pains can all result from emotional distress.

But the impact travels both directions: the health of our microbiome can also dictate a great deal of how we feel, physically and emotionally.

In this podcast, Gennev Director of Health Coaching Stasi Kasianchuk talks with metabolic surgeon, gut-health expert, and owner of LaVellaYourGuts.com, Dr. Erika La Vella, about the intersection of nutrition, emotion, gut, brain, and menopause.

There's long been a gap in the quality of care men and women receive. Women's bodies are less understood, their health issues less researched, their solutions have frequently been "treat women as small men," their pain poorly treated or ignored, and on and on and on.

That discrepancy in care is exponentially worse if the woman is Black or a woman of color; worse if she's poor, worse if she's a transgender woman; worse if she's past reproductive age.

There are women, men, and organizations out there that feel like part of our family — the family that's working to improve health care for women. Denise Pines is one of that family. 

She is is the co-visionary and head task master for Tea Botanics, a company that makes tea for hot flashes, among others. An award-winning marketer and serial entrepreneur, Denise has participated in 10 startups. She is founder of WisePause, a pro-aging health and education platform and FemAging 2020, a report that introduces a new industry sector, FemAging Tech.

Denise cofounded Women in the Room Productions who produced the award-winning film PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in School. Denise is the current President of the Medical Board of California.

In this conversation with Gennev CEO Jill Angelo, Denise and Jill talk about the discrepancies in care and how many in the medical community are starting to recognize and close the gap.

The largest organ in the human body isn’t actually in the human body – it’s on the outside. To be even more accurate, it is the outside.

It’s our skin. And it does more than keep the rain out and our insides in.

Our skin is a pretty good barrier against much of the outside world, but it isn’t perfect. Sun damage happens. And the products we use on our skin may be doing us more harm than good.

Kari Gran and Lisa Strain started the Kari Gran company based, as it often is for women, on a need that no one was meeting.

Kari herself was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder in her late twenties. That diagnosis, after years of not feeling well, led her to consider the impact on her insides of the products she used on her outside: creams, lotions, soaps, makeup, etc.

We know what we put on our skin can affect us systemically — it's the way nicotine patches work, after all. So we need to be thoughtful about the products we use on our skin, especially as we get older.

Kari, who describes herself as a "diehard beauty junkie," made healthy alternatives in her kitchen to give to friends as gifts. Lisa pushed her to turn her amazing formulations into a business, and there's been no looking back.

Guaranteed free from endocrine-disrupting parabens and other harmful ingredients, the rich, lush, cleansing, hydrating, restorative serums, soaps, oils and more are protective and nourishing.

Learn more about skin care and Kari Gran — the company and the woman it's named for — in this podcast with Gennev CEO Jill Angelo. 

"Fatigue" does not equal "tired." Fatigue is something else, and it can be exponentially worse. It isn't solved with "just get more sleep," and day after day of it can really wear you down.

Fatigue — real fatigue — is a common symptom of menopause. It makes work hard, exercise impossible, even thinking straight can feel like it takes all your resources.

The kind of fatigue we're talking about can be a result of less estrogen to "feed" your brain. If you have some brain fog, forgetfulness, are easily distracted and occasionally confused, it's all part of the same process: your brain is trying to adapt to less estrogen.

While this part of perimenopause and menopause is temporary, it can last a year or two or longer. And if you don't know what's happening, it can be frightening. We hear from women all the time that they were terrified they were developing early onset dementia or that they'd been to a round of doctors to deal with "chronic fatigue." Finding out it's likely a (temporary) result of menopause is a huge relief.

Even worse than the symptom itself is that often, no one even mentions the culprit could be diminishing hormones, leading women to get expensive tests, waste time on incorrect diagnoses, and live in fear over a totally normal process.

There are things you can do to fight the fatigue: the right nutrition and exercise are powerful tools, and there are medications that can help while your brain and body adjust to the new normal. 

In this podcast, we hear from Gennev Director of Health Coaching, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Exercise Physiologist Stasi Kasianchuk and Naturopathic Physician Dr. Wendy Ellis on how to handle menopause fatigue. 

When Team Gennev went looking for the right face to put on our website, we had a good idea what we were looking for: a face that showed the strength, resilience, beauty, and energy of a woman in midlife and menopause.

It can be hard to find images of mature women doing anything besides fanning themselves and looking annoyed.

Happily, we finally found lots of incredible choices on the Ageist website: active women over 50 living their best lives, overcoming challenges, and full of the "zest" Margaret Mead was talking about.

We went a little crazy with the credit card, purchasing the rights to use these wonderful images of real women. 

As Ageist founder David Stewart said in his podcast with Gennev's Jill Angelo, we just don't see ourselves in the typical, commercial images of people our age. So when you come across a treasure trove of representative images, you take advantage.

One of the images we loved was that of Aliza Sherman — we loved it so much, she graces Gennev's home page with her wide-open smile. You can just feel the hum of energy and life flowing through her. 

Not long ago, @AlizaSherman tweeted, "Yes, that’s me. Apparently I’m the happy face of menopause." Team Gennev had been wanting to reach out and ask her to do a podcast; this was the nudge we needed. What follows is that conversation.

Learn more about Gennev and how we help women thrive through menopause and beyond at Gennev.com.

I think we can safely say that 2020 has been an above-average year for just about everyone — in terms of stress, anyway.

For women dealing with perimenopause and menopause symptoms on top of everything else, the stress can seem unmanageable. And because 2020 has been harder on women, it's no surprise many women are looking for relief from stress.

One relatively new avenue for many is CBD, the non-hallucinogenic compound found in hemp. While research is still underway, many women have found CBD helps relieve stress and joint pain and promote sleep.

In this conversation, Gennev Director of Health Coaching Stasi Kasianchuk talks with naturopathic doctor Aimée Shunney about the potential of CBD and how to choose a CBD supplement that's high-quality, safe, and contains what it claims on the label.

Take a listen, then check out Gennev's high-quality CBD supplements, tincture, and Sleep System. 

With Halloween just behind us and Thanksgiving straight ahead, it's official: we've entered the Season of Sugar. 

And it's not just sugar, of course: it's salt and saturated fat and stress and alcohol and stress and parties and not enough sleep and stress.

If you think your head aches after a night of too much indulgence, just imagine what your poor gut biome is going through. 

And as we get older, our gut biome changes, loses diversity, isn't as able to handle the demands we put on those poor friendly bacteria, especially over the holidays.

Fortunately, there are experts like metabolic surgeon and founder of LaVellaYourGuts.com, Dr. Erika La Vella.

In this conversation with Gennev's Director of Health Coaching, Stasi Kasianchuk, Dr. La Vella talks about how to preserve your gut through the holiday season and stay healthier all year 'round. 

Culturally, we have this idea that life slows at 50. Children are grown and gone, we're looking into retirement, our days of doing new things and surprising ourselves are over. Life past 50, if you look at the marketing for this age group, is mostly about fear: fear over health, fear over finances, fear of the future.

Nothing could be further from the truth, says David Stewart of the AGEIST. People in the 50-plus age group are doing all sorts of amazing things. Women especially are "figuring out life 2.0," says David.

AGEIST's message is that culture and brands really misunderstand this age group — it's not a time of fear, and messaging to the 50+ that way won't resonate with a lot of the over-50s. Many in this cohort feel "at the peak of their powers," David says, and if you want to reach them, you need to understand that.

David Harry Stewart is the founder and face of the AGEIST and the host of the SuperAge podcast. He is a passionate champion and leading authority on the modern 50+ lifestyle, and the mindset and aspirations that drive this influential demographic. Prior to launching AGEIST, Stewart enjoyed an award-winning career as a photographer whose advertising work included Nike, Google, American Express and others, and his magazine work includes Esquire, GQ, Interview, RedBull, Time, and many others. 

Hear his conversation with Gennev CEO Jill Angelo, and check out both Gennev and AGEIST for much much more.