Dr. Jessica Shepherd
speaker
254 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Dr. Jessica Shepherd’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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But just like after pregnancy, we always want our bodies to kind of be perfect like eight weeks after. But our body doesn't function like that. And so even in the perimenopausal phase, going through these changes, we need to give our bodies more grace and time. to do the thing that it's designed to do, but we can't push the agenda as quickly as we would like.
So three to six months, usually I would say, give it that timeframe. And when they come back in, I'll be like, well, where are we? Because remember, it's a gradient. They may see that they're improving over three to six months, but maybe not getting all the way back to where they were. And so maybe we can push out time a little bit more.
Yeah. You aren't going to see... Changes. And a lot of that has to do with we were not used to seeing what the body was naturally doing for that long. So now when you're exposed to it, you're like, this is off-putting or this is weird. But really the body may be like, oh, I was kind of doing this all along. We just weren't really aware of it because we had some suppression.
So that can be changes in how your cycle comes back. People may experience that it's heavier or maybe they are having longer cycles in duration. And that may be because the birth control is kind of not doing what it wanted to do. You also may see changes in skin. You may also see changes in hair. What changes do you see in hair?
So hair, you can start to see that maybe they're gonna have more thinning or falling out of their hair because it's the shift in the hormones, right? So it's not that there's something wrong all the time.
When there is a lump of hair in your hands, it does feel so wrong. What the body is trying to do is get back to that homeostasis, right? But why are you losing hair? Because it's the shift, right? So you were suppressing your hormones with this birth control. And now that you're lifting it off, it can skyrocket back to what it wanted to be, right?
It's like, oh, well, no one's kind of keeping me down. I'm going to come out. And the hair cycle is impacted by hormones, right? So how our hair goes through cycles and phases of growth, when it falls out, when it's going to be what it wants to be within the cycle. Those can all change due to what our hormones are telling it, right? Hormones are chemical deliverers.
Absolutely. There are estrogen receptors all over the body. You know, in Generation M, there is like this. I was like, this diagram has to go in this book because we have typecast estrogen and progesterone just to the pelvis. Just to the pelvis.
I know it's talking to your brain. It's talking to your muscle, your heart, which is exactly why we see when estrogen goes down after menopause, what do we have? We have heart disease. Our bones are weaker. Our brain goes through this fog. And that's because estrogen receptors are there. So if it's not able to deliver the message...
then that area of your body is like, I'm not going to function the way that I used to or would like to because estrogen is not there.
You know what I say is the most fascinating is the brain. And you know why? Because even as an OBGYN, it's like you know it, but you don't know it. I don't think I realized how much of an impact that estrogen makes on the brain until maybe five, 10 years ago. So what impact does it make on the brain? It has an impact on mood.
It has an impact on cognition, how we're able to function, how we're able to use our prefrontal cortex. We become more limbic in our responses. What does limbic mean? Limbic means that emotional, right? That kind of jump to the, right? And what do we hear? That women who are in their perimenopausal phase are more moody, right?
Absolutely.
It's a drop, so it's the fluctuation. It may go down, then come up really quick. But unfortunately, in perimenopause, it's going down, but it's not really coming back up. It's like, I'm really going down, and I'm not coming back up. And so that's why you start to see in between the ages of 45 and 55, we have the most diagnoses of anxiety and depression. It makes so much sense.
Because this is when estrogen, our key response, our key hormone in how it interacts with the brain is going to be impacted because our mood, our neurotransmitters, our dopamine. After menopause, we start to see that dopamine receptors are 30% less. And so if that's our hormone that's going to be around to make us feel good, and now it's not there anymore, what do you think is going to happen?
And so this is why it's so crucial that people understand the mind-body connection is so important. And you are not alone during this journey. You are not the only one who's experiencing this. And the more that we can look inward and say, I'm going through this, I'm going to be okay, but I also understand why, wouldn't that make someone feel better?
Do you see how it impacts careers? It impacts relationships. Your personal life. Yeah, you're feeling you're going through just like this. And that's what women used to come in and tell me because they couldn't put their finger on it. They would say, I don't feel right. Something's off. I feel like I'm just so emotional. I can watch TV and cry at a commercial or someone can say one thing to me
and I will snap. And they feel as if it's an out-of-body experience. They're literally watching themselves have these responses.
Mel, this is why this conversation is so important for a 20 and 30-year-old.
So let's bring it back to the reproductive phase, right?
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