Is Menopause All in Your Head? with Dr. Michelle Gordon

Having the right mindset can help you breeze through menopause and lose the stubborn weight. Dr. Michelle Gordon shares her experience with how she dealt with the weight gain, brain fog, and hot flashes and gives practical tips on how you can also come out to embrace the best time of your life.

7:24 Who experiences menopause symptoms
9:45 What type of oils give are good or bad
13:00 Top 5 issues that women suffer through during menopause and how it can be helped
15:45 Causes of the changes in a woman's behavior when going through menopause
24:33 What soy can do to help with menopausal symptoms

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Transcript

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 0:06

Hello, welcome to the Dr. Lam show. I have Dr. Michelle Gordon or known as Dr. G here with us, and we're going to be talking about menopause. Dr G is a surgeon, but currently is not practicing medicine. She educates women about menopause. And so we would love to hear about your life mission in the menopause movement. So welcome today, Dr. G.

Michelle Gordon: 0:35

Thanks for having me.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 0:37

I like to just ask, how your journey has gone and how you came to be doing what you love to do.

Unknown: 0:44

A few years ago, I started going through menopause.

Michelle Gordon: 0:46

I studied movement, what's the best way And it was rough. I felt like overnight I gained about 50 pounds, and I was crying at commercials. And I didn't understand what was happening. I couldn't remember the names of certain anatomical landmarks that all surgeons know. One time I went to write a prescription, and I couldn't remember the name of the drug. Forgot my DEA number and I was like, what the heck is going on? I asked my friend who's gynecologist, what's going on? and she said, well, you just got to suffer through it. It's just menopause. And I asked my wife, who's a doctor, and she suggested I try some hormones. And I'm like, okay, better living through chemistry, right on. And so we did a little bioidentical hormones, and I got a period. Earlier I used to have really painful periods which was so bad to the point that I took pills, which stopped my periods. So I'm looking at my life and wondering this is crazy. I'm super moody. I don't like myself, I look in the mirror, I say, I hate you, you know. What's going on here? And at all at the same time, I had this like, massive existential crisis. So I started doing research but the information did not make sense. So I looked for a course that taught me about menopause, and couldn't find one. That's when I realized I need to help educate women about menopause. That's kind of how the menopause movement got started. And we did a TV show back in 2015, aired in 2016, at FYI called Life Matters by Michelle Gordon and since became the Dr. Michelle ordon show. That's on the podcas, I've got that then I started t e Menopause Movement podcast, hich is on its 3rd year now. I tarted the menopause mo ement, because I wanted to start talking about menopause. It can't be this thing that we don't talk about. And, you know one of the offerings tha we have is this course we cal it a free course, it's beta cou se, we bring people in, an we teach women about menopau e. And during that course, I say chances are, when you had your eriod, you got sat down, you had a talk, you know, your body' gonna change, it's gonna happe. Then we have children and ou bodies changed and what's goi g to happen, and nobody te ls us like our whole, like, Gir parts are going to be complete y effed up from having babies, ight. And so then menopause hits and everything changes again And it's like, well, what, here's the where's the ducation on that? And when I irst started it, people though nobody's searching for meno ause, and I said, I don't care because we have to break th silence and talk abou menopause as if it's not a big stigma. So I started with basic lly, really just trying to put o t some education. And I did a l t of surveys, and I've surveyed over 50,000 women in menopause. o I really have a good hand e on what the actual issues a e. Number one is weight gain. T at's the number one external pr blem but after that, there are any internal struggles, like don't know who I am anymore, an why do I feel like an alien i being down and taking control f my body, my mind, my em tions, and my mood. You know, wh is that person who's yelling a the kids? So I started looking at that and began how can I m ke this work? I started applyin certain principles to mysel. I studied nutrition and hormo es. Now I understand how to at and the weight started fallin off. for menopausal women to move? And then I said, I'm really having this existential crisis, what is the best way to think? The system doesn't treat doctors or the patients well. And so I started looking into it. So we've got a program that we call the mental mastery Academy. It has four pillars and that's science, about how to eat move and think. When I applie these things to myself, teste and I stopped writing thing down, you know, and not only di I lose 50 pounds, I starte moving my body more than I wa ever able to do when I was teenager. I started loving lif again and realized that I ha created a life I didn't love an I didn't want to be doin medicine anymore. And then COVI hit and it triggered me to sto practicing. So I said how can I do something different, and that's how I really started the menopause movement. Trying to serve women in a more profound way and we have transformations.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 6:52

So you said, you've done lots of surveys and questionnaires to women going through menopause. Does every woman have to have the symptoms of menopause? Are there women that basically can come out unscathed? Is or is this something that has just recently happened like 30-40 years ago that women go through the same type of menopause symptoms?

Michelle Gordon: 7:20

Anecdotally, my friend who does Chinese medicine said that there was no word from an appositive and in Chinese, up until recently. I've looked at that, and wondered why is menopause so much more disruptive now than it was maybe in the 60s and 70s? I'm going to be 57 years old next month. My mom had a surgical menopause and I don't remember her complaining that much. I mean, she was pretty moody anyway. But that was in the 70s. When you look back at pictures of people from the 70s or even earlier after the second world war, the rise of industrialism, people had improved their living through chemistry. I remember when Swanson put out the hungry man dinner and they felt awesome when we were children. That was the beginning of the American diet.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 8:59

The sad American diet.

Michelle Gordon: 9:01

We used to eat things like bacon and eggs for breakfast, right? And we started eating more processed food. As the corporation's got more leeway, there was less oversight. And we started using byproducts of other industries like corn, cotton and soy. And, began using harmful oils, which are cheap, odorless and tasteless. The food seems like they're really good, but fat is the building blocks of our hormones. And so if we're giving our bodies bad fats, and there are three S's and three C's, corn, canola, cottonseed and soy safflower sunflower. But those six oils, you'll feel a lot better because you're going to give your body much better building blocks. My go to oil is olive oil and avocado for higher heat. What you see in the population is that as the diet changed as we had this big food experiment, diabetes just kind of logarithmically goes up. And it's directly correlated with the use of seed oils. And of course, you know, more simple sugars in the diet. So we teach this in the menopause movement, the way of eating, to help decrease symptoms. Now we know that there are certain foods that are going to make your symptoms worse, spicy food, chocolate, red wine come to mind for especially for hot flashes. Right? If you want to sleep at night, don't drink, because alcohol disrupts your sleep cycle. But it's not impossible to lose weight in menopause, as many people have. It feels like it is because the weight comes on seems to come out so much easier. The problem is, that our metabolisms starts to slow down. There's an issue with our hunger hormones. So we have problems with leptin and ghrelin and the things that tell us whether we're full or not. And I know that I have to wait longer to, for my body to tell me I'm full.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 11:36

Stop earlier, like 70% 60%.

Michelle Gordon: 11:41

And give yourself 20 minutes before you eat. And that can be hard if you're super hungry, especially if you're using like something like an intermittent fasting and you're starving. Which is why I don't fast. Okay, not to say it isn't a good thing, because it's a good strategy. I really, truly believe that weight loss is an inner game, that if you want to lose weight, you have to be somebody different. You can't be doing the same things that person who gained all the weight does. You have to fundamentally change. You can start to deal with the inner game, the existential crises that come with just living life. The way we think matters. That's why we focus so much on the mental mate way of thinking in our program, because if you really want to make a change in your life, we can talk or complain all we want, but until we start to actually take steps, so you got to have accountability. And that's what the menopause movement helps with.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 12:43

What would you say are the five top issues that women suffer through or they have during menopause? And how you can actually help them through it?

Michelle Gordon: 12:53

We have the symptoms like hot flashes, mood swings, loss of libido, sleep disturbance, weight gain, which are all external, and then there's more. And that's where I realized tha we got to look at ur relationships, mostly t ourselves, like, how am I tal ing to myself? And am I being fo giving to myself, but we've go a problem. The other thing th t we see in menopause is we've got a problem with our mood, at itudes and emotions. We might no be relating as well, or being as good a parent as we used to e, or have patience or anxiety omes on. And so, I teach wo en how to manage their symptoms naturally. At the end of the d y, what women really want is o feel like themselves again, t at's just the underlyi g thing. Like how can I just fee like myself again, and also I w nt to look in the mirror a d like what I see. So we help omen feel like themselv s again, in eight weeks or less, without pills, potions, powders r patches, and a lot of that has to do with mindset. So it's rea ly important, and nobody w nts to look at that. That's the missing piece, my m nd is physically rig One of my survey questions was if there was a magic bullet, or magic formula, what would it look like? The answer is always a pill. And the thing is, and I hate to say this to your audience, but this is true. If you want to change your life, you got to do that work. You can't expect to get a change from coming from the same place where you are right now. Change, takes time and takes accountability. And that was the big wake up for me. It was like my business. It wasn't menopause, that caused my weight loss, it was my behavior. And once I took responsibility for that, asking what do I have to change in my behavior, to own up to that? And that was a hard realization.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 15:20

So do you say that all women have to change their behavior, meaning once they hit menopause, they have to change or this behavior is because they had bad habits previously?

Michelle Gordon: 15:35

I'd say the women who join my program are looking for a change in life. And I was looking for a change. I mean, I woke up in the middle of my menopause, hating my life, I was like, What did I do? What kind of life did I create here. And I started looking for ways to change it. So I just teach kind of what I did for myself. But it's not for everyone. And not everyone is going to have a horrible time or not everyone has misery. But if you look at most online forums about menopause, it's just been a lot of complaints, like menopause sucks. And it's taken away this taken away that. And to tell you the truth, if you think that menopause sucks, then you're giving menopause power over your life. There is no need to suffer, all we have to do is just start to look at things from a different perspective. And then we can end our suffering.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 16:32

That's a good way to look at it. The mind over body. So any other tips that you can give for changing mindset or behavior?

Michelle Gordon: 16:46

So if you start looking at the things that you think about, right, so we dive into this. I really focus on behavior change, which is what really I focus on, is, you know, why would I go into the science of behavior change. A surgeon would remove the gallbladders, when people have a gallbladder attack, because it is a necessity. So looked into what are those deep seated beliefs that I have, maybe from growing up for the first seven years of my life? And are they still true? And I'll tell you, one of them was that I had to be a doctor to be able to make any money. And so at five years old, I formed this belief that the only way I could make money was to be a doctor. My mum had uncles, and a couple of my brothers, were doctors, and they made a lot of money. My mom made some sort of a statement, they're doctors, they make a lot of money. And so my five year old brain wanted to please my mom. And so I had this subconscious programming running, and I entered medical school at 31, at age 31, because the only way I could make money was to be a doctor. And I mean, it worked. I made money, but I it wasn't for me. So I spent some time looking at my unconscious belief, and what are those unconscious beliefs that are driving my behavior? And how are they causing me to feel? And so this is deep work. I just had this opportunity in menopause where, I needed to look at everything I believe in. And is it true? Because in reality, a belief is just a sentence, we say over and over again, in our head. What's true gravity. Gravity sucks at 9.8 meters per second squared, that we know for sure. Right? So there's been a lot of adversity in my life. And what happened was my marriage broke up, my husband left, I'm alone. I have this job, but I can't go all the time as my son's getting chemo. So I put in medical school because why not?

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 19:28

Yeah, because you can make money,

Michelle Gordon: 19:31

Because that's the only way to make money. So you know, so I've got this kid who's getting chemo and he had three years of treatment. I'm newly divorced, and single parent and I applied to medical school and I get in to the school in Pomona the only school that's close. I applied to Loma Linda too, but it was pretty far away. And so I got in the school five days before school opens. So I was waitlisted. And then I got in and it was really great because I was living in Claremont at the time and I'd ride my bike take my son up to babysitting, ride my bike to school ride my bike back. So I get a lot of exercise. So yeah, so it's been it's been a really interesting life and looking at it from a my mindset set perspective. Now, I like to look back at my life and say, what specifically did I manifest from my thoughts back then? And how is that affecting me now? So I'm sure you didn't expect to talk about menopause and have this come out.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 20:35

No, that's great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. G. Tell me a little just, you had a little blurb about soy.

Michelle Gordon: 20:44

Yeah, so soy is it's really interesting because soy is filled with phytoestrogens. There are some schools of thought that will say take soy to decrease your hot flashes. And then there's some schools of thought that say stay away from soy because it's going to disrupt your hormone production. I don't like soy because it's almost all 100% GMO, that's the reason I don't like it. When the GMO seeds kind of flew over to the grazing land of other animals, those animals died when they ate it. And so I don't think I want that in my body. So I stay away from it just for that reason, I mean, I don't have any other science behind it. But for that reason I stay away from it because I don't want something that is resistant to a pesticide in my body. But there's a whole science. I did a podcast with Dr. Kate Shanahan, and we talked about oils, specifically seed oils, and how there is a whole arm of science, dedicated to only making soy safer for humans. Now, if we have that, you know, why can't we just eat coconut oil? I mean, I know it's more expensive, but, you know, at least Coconut oil is not gonna, mess you up like that.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 22:12

Or grow your own soil. Soy from non GMO. We've talked a lot about menopause. And thank you so much for your time, Dr. Gordon, and sharing your experience as you've gone through your life, and you've gone through menopause and how you came out of it. If people want to meet, if people want to help with their menopause, how would you show them?

Michelle Gordon: 22:37

You can go to menopausewomen.com, we've got a quiz there to what's your slimming type, your menopause type and we'll tailor some offerings to you just for your specific type. Women in menopause want to lose weight. So that's what we start with, we really can help you lose weigh, we've got a whole weight l ss side. And then when you're re dy, we can help you create a l fe you love. And that's what it s all about. What I've noticed, s I've, as I've, you know, kind of, we're fledgling, and we're getting started. But a the women come through my pro rams, I've got women who say hings like, I would have spe t five times as much to see th s much change in my life. And i's not just about losing weight, it's about creating a bet er relationship with yourself. That's what I found so power ul in this training. We c n talk about mindset all da long. But I want to wake up eve y single morning, and be gratefu for the life I have and be re dy to go and want to live. And w en I was doing surgery, that' not the kind of life I had.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 23:46

I can understand that.

Michelle Gordon: 23:49

That's why I retired from clinical medicine in 2020.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: 23:53

It's great. Thank you so much for sharing. Like I said, if people want to find you definitely follow Dr. Michelle Gordon, and hit up their menopause movements. So if you've liked this episode on the Dr. Lam show, make sure you like, share and subscribe and we'll see you next week.

Unknown: 24:16

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