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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And we know it's safe to start after the age of 60 and also more than 10 years after menopause, especially that last one I just said. Because what if you experience menopause at 42, 45, which is not typical, but what if you did? And now you're 55 hearing us today and you're like, well, it's 10 years. I can't start hormone replacement therapy. Absolutely.
You should be in your doctor's office saying, is this a possibility for me?
You know what might happen? You might feel better.
Yeah. There's so many women who, again, going back to the, I'm going to numb, not really feeling that, but you are. And so many women, once they get on hormone replacement therapy, that exact example that you gave, 55-year-old who maybe went 10 years.
Yeah. A lot of women don't understand how they could feel because we subject ourselves to feeling, I don't feel great, but I'm just going to keep going. And the other thing that we talked about, what do we say? Osteoporosis, heart disease. So it may not have the same effect. I will make that statement if you started hormone replacement earlier. Right.
I had a patient who came in and again, nuanced conversation. She was 67, but she was still having hot flashes, which is again, not typical because usually they'll wane and they'll go down, you know, in your 50s. She was still experiencing them to a way where it's impacting her quality of life. So I did have that conversation with her. She was very nervous. And I said, well, here's what we'll do.
Why not give yourself the chance to And what if we just trial and see how you feel after three to six months? She's still on it. How did she feel? She felt amazing. She was like, why was I living like this for so long?
And the diligence. And I think the conversations, because... Someone else could walk in behind her who's the same age or even maybe younger. And we're like, maybe you're not the candidate. But we had the conversation.
But if we're not having the conversation, then there's nothing to talk about.
I think that this is where, when I talk about grieving the loss of what we used to be, that's where the mind and body come in. And so being able to modulate how our body functions has a lot to do with what we give it. And so giving it that loving care with looking at our diet, but also alternatives, which I advocate for all of my patients, is things such as mindfulness, meditation.
How do we take the brain and allow it to not be as jittery and over-processed and over-stimulated? Comes with how we are able to teach it to quiet down. Acupuncture. Tai Chi has actually been shown in study to help decrease some hot flashes and night sweats, vasomotor symptoms for women.
And even if you think of the culture of Asians, Asian women, if you look at a study, they had their vasomotor symptoms and menopausal symptoms for a shorter duration and not as intense.
Oh, that's the fancy word for it? That's the fancy word for those two.
And so when you look at their- Sounds sexier too. Doesn't it? Yes. It doesn't like make it so, you're like, that doesn't sound, I'm having a vasomotor symptom. Is that they have shorter duration, decrease intensity. And a lot of that has to do with their lifestyle, their practice, what they eat, what they consume, but how they live their lives.
And also the practices that they do with movement of their body and being able to create the mind and the body throughout this whole transition.
No, it's kind of like you're hijacking and bypassing the actual decline in hormones, but using the other parts of the body to elevate those and to optimize those parts of the body to offset what's going on biologically with the hormones.
Right.
Right, because our dopamine and our serotonin, our neurotransmitters, which when we see depression, they are decreased. You just said when you exercise, you get that flood of dopamine, you get that increase in serotonin, which is going to elevate our mood in lieu of losing hormones.
I'll name three that are really categorical to sleep. And the reason why sleep is so important, let's lay the foundation, is that sleep actually is critical for our body in repair and recovery. And if our body's not able to do that, then it cannot function well.
So when people have sleep disorders or sleep issues, these are the people that we see later getting obstructive sleep disorder, heart disease, asthma issues. and also increase in obesity, right? So all things that are going to continue to decrease in quality of life.
Showing 161–180 of 254 · page 9 of 13
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