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.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
So our body's designed to do this. We know in the reproductive phase as OBGYNs, we start to see a change and a decline in egg quality and the ability to get pregnant spontaneously after the age of 35. Okay. And why do you think?
Estrogen and progesterone, which impacts what we're able to do with releasing that follicle, right? So our chemical messenger is not able to tell the ovary We're going to fire off an egg as readily, right? So it's like, I'm not doing it this month. Or the quality of the egg, not really going to be that great. And then testosterone is also taking a decline, although it is more subtle.
But that's where we start to see that drop in estrogen, which is some women, especially, I'm one of them who had kids later on in our age.
They use geriatric pregnancy. Yeah, what the... Who came up with that? I... Clearly not a woman. Not a woman. Yes. And so even I start to see a lot of my patients having kids later on in their life.
What happens is usually after they deliver, they start to experience the perimenopausal kind of symptoms, hot flashes, night sweats, mood changes, because they've kind of entered into that phase just like very quickly after delivering their children.
Well, what we do know is looking at it from a pregnancy perspective in the ability to get pregnant after the age of 35 versus after 40. And then 42 is another marker when we're thinking of fertility of when it really starts to drop off. And so the ability to get pregnant in your 20s
you know improvements in health and sanitation and medical research you know what we haven't accounted for that gap in life expectancy with now estrogen still gone and that's why we still see women living longer yes that's great i'm all for that but we're living life in poor quality of health and we're seeing these health measures of what women typically they have more dementia they have more osteoporosis they have more heart disease number one killer of women
is because that estrogen was gone, but we're still living longer.
51, 52.
So it makes sense biologically that estrogen is kind of tanked. Yep. And the life expectancy of what the body is able to do because estrogen is not there. 50 or 60 years ago. Is going to be. Not a problem. Not a problem. Makes sense. But now we have improved with science, technology, nutrition, sanitation to our 70s and 80s, but we have not accommodated the body to function without estrogen.
But isn't that the analogy that of what we're told to do. Just keep going. I don't care if you feel crazy. I don't care if your bones are breaking. Just keep going. And so this allows us, again, to take that step back and have more grace with our bodies. But it's because we now understand the biology of our bodies.
But there are ways that you can help your body do better things. In other words, optimize the ability for the body to do it even in the absence of estrogen and progesterone.
What are the most important things? I would say nutrition and exercise because those are fundamental things you can do every day or even if it's four times a week. But those are things that are giving our metabolic health and our mitochondrial health the best ways that they can function even in the absence or the decline of some of these hormones. So that's going to be...
Paying attention to decreasing your processed foods, your sugar, because your body just doesn't respond to it as readily as it did in 20s and 30s, which I would not advocate for people just because they're 20 and 30 to eat these types of foods, but then also exercise and weight training to be able to build that muscle up so it can utilize the glucose better so that your body's just not sitting with the glucose.
It's not necessarily that they're entering it earlier. It's that we do have a significant change of hormones in pregnancy. And what we do see is after pregnancy, so in the postpartum phase, you're going to have that shift again, trying to get back to homeostasis. What you have taught us, Dr. Shepard, you got to give your body grace. Give your body grace.
nine months to a year it could take till you feel like yourself again so if you think that's nine months postpartum nine months typically for a pregnancy that's almost like a year and a half time frame and so in that year and a half is where you start to see that now they're entering into the natural kind of fluctuation on the decline towards menopause and so it does seem a little jarring or quick but really the body was already on its way gotcha
And now we've kind of distracted our body or ourselves from what was happening because we were pregnant. And then after, your body's like, well, I was still going in this direction. I'm going to continue to go in that direction.
Well, that would be me. I'm perimenopausal, proud of it. But perimenopause has been more of a confusing term, I think, in what we've seen in this menopause surge, because menopause is very clinical in its definition. But perimenopause is confusing because it can last anywhere from three years, seven years, 10 years, because everyone's different in that decline and fluctuation.
But it's truly when our hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone are starting to go down and shift down and you start to have these symptoms here or there. Some people may not have symptoms. I mean, wouldn't that start when you're 35?
Some people, I have had patients, and I would definitely say, sometimes I'm like, wow, you are pretty young, but I'm never going to take that experience away from them, that they may start to experience symptoms of perimenopause. So...
Showing 101–120 of 254 · page 6 of 13
← Previous
Next →