Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski:
We’re so excited to be able to talk with our HER mama friends. For anyone who hasn’t met us Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski, Nikki Fowler nurse practitioner, we work with Essential Health. We’ve get our cool logo so you won’t forget. But we wanted to talk with you all today about empowerment, our favorite topic for hormone balance.
We hear this so often from all of you, especially Mama’s and at any point really in your journey, whether it’s early, or Peri, or postpartum, or far into the future, and we’re looking at the perimenopause and menopause transition. But what we want to share with you today are tools that you can take for your own strong, healthy foundation, before you would come to seek our counsel for more advanced hormone balancing.
Nikki Fowler:
Yes, thank you. I think, you know, when we look at this, we have to look at this as a journey, right? And there’s different steps in each of our journeys.
And so when we’re looking at perimenopause, where do we start? That’s one of the biggest questions we get. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. My body is reacting differently. Things feel different things look different.” And we get that we hear you and we know it. We are you. Yes. Yes, we are. We are there, ladies.
So what are kind of some basic things that are applicable and for everyone that are starting points versus ladder in the journey, you know, looking at more hormonal replacement, or balancing or things like that. And so, these are very simple. They’re things that you know. The things that we love, but we really have to kind of step back and look, are we really optimal in these areas? And are we doing them effectively, efficiently?
We’re gonna see that we need to fine tune. And so those are gonna be, you know, kind of the pillars that we stand on for overall health: movement, diet, nutrition, stress management and sleep.
Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski:
We have to remember, knowledge is not the problem. You know what works for your body, and maybe it’s different now than it has been in the past. That’s certainly something and that’s where coaching can come into play. But my own Health Coach Dani, who works here with us, told me, “Elizabeth, knowledge is not the problem for you. You know enough.” But I still need coaching. Because there are times when I get overwhelmed by so many options.
I really want to remind you that those core pieces of a strong foundation are critical. We cannot skip that step. We cannot think I know all that, I’ve done that, it doesn’t work, we need that foundation.
What is also really important is I think, the perspective and for hormonal balance. How do I know it’s hormones? How do I know it’s something else? If you feel dysregulated, as a woman, the foundational things that have to change is anything that makes you feel not safe and not secure. Whether that is physical safety, or even something like cold plunging.
I love cold plunging for lots of reasons, but not for my hormonally dysregulated women. Not when you’re on your period. Not when you’re missing periods. Not when you’re very menopausal unless you are already on a good path to recovery, because anything that makes you more fight or flight, is not going to help your cost. So honor that. Take a long bath, take the sauna, take down a notch on your intensive exercise. You don’t need that. It doesn’t have to be.
We want you strong. We want you stable. We want you steady. Strong, stable, steady, safe, secure, those are the foundations. What’s going to help you as a woman feel your best, your strongest, your most stable with balance? And I think it’s like looking at those areas. Right?
Okay, what what what do I need to change? What do I need to cut back on? Where do I need to maybe give a little bit more, because it’s just like hormones. It’s a balance. We all know that right? All these pillars of health and foundation, it’s a balance and think starting in those areas and kind of looking where you’re at in those areas and evaluating what do I need to, to change to tweak a little bit, I think that’s a great starting point. And just know that you can do it.
Let’s do a quick thing in each of those four categories. And then we’ll call it a wrap and be here for our women and our mamas as they need us. What would you tell them for movement that is most supportive to hormones?
We want you strong. We want you stable. We want you steady. Strong, stable, steady, safe, secure, those are the foundations.
- Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski
Nikki Fowler:
The number one thing is, what is feeling good to your body throughout the month, right? And that may look different throughout your cycle. If you’re still cycling, movement is key we want we want movement.
And you know, ideally, I’d love to see weight training, where we’re getting some actual resistance. And that may look different for different people at different points in the month based on cycle based on fatigue based on Do I have a sick child, you know, is work really stressful right now. But I think more than anything, consistency is key. So just purposeful movement.
And then I think a big thing would be for a lot of women resistance training, because that seems to be one of the areas I think that we see overall that lacks. What would you say?
Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski:
I will laugh with all of you right? Now, rucking is very popular where people are wearing weighted vest and walking, trekking and like that’s called having young children. We do do that all day. For centuries, and we have to remind ourselves and this is key, this has been key in my journey, you’re probably doing more than you think you are. And you have to honor that right there.
So purposefully doing it on purpose is important. So you don’t injure yourself, but honor how much you are doing. Because sometimes the answer is just recovery. Not, I need to do even more. You might not, might not.
Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski:
In terms of sleep, and this is always a touchy one, because they’re like, Okay, yeah, whatever you say, Dr. E, How am I supposed to do that? Do what you can, six and a half hours is a must minimum. If you’re getting less than six and a half hours, hell or high water, you have to fix it. You need more sleep than that. Most women need eight to nine hours, eight to nine hours.
You need a lot of sleep. Do not feel bad about this, do not feel guilty about this, it is a “you need it, let’s figure out how to make it happen.” And if you can’t get it, right now, wherever your life is, whatever support you do or don’t have, then honor that you aren’t getting one of the core pillars that you need, right? And then do less and the other areas because you know that that cup is not full, right? So sometimes it’s what do I do? Then honor that while you can. And when you can get more
Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski:
I think diet is always a touchy one. But here’s the thing for women, low carb is not your friend. It’s not your friend! Low sugar, right, we can talk about process things and things that are spike and drop and that flexing your blood sugar is not great. And Nikki sees this all the time. But this whole, “I ate 30 grams of carbs today,” your universe hates that. Stop, please eat some carbs.
Nikki Fowler:
And I think we want to think too, high protein does not equate to low carb. It does not have to be that. And that’s I think another thing we see a lot of protein deficiency. When ladies really step back and we don’t want to by any means say “oh, you need to track your food, and you need to look at all things.” But if there’s anything to look at and evaluate and track, I think it’d be protein and looking at that.
Are you getting protein at every meal? Is it substantial? Is it quality protein? I think those are some big things and like not thinking oh, because I’m high protein, I have to do low carb, no, no, no.
Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski:
Stress. But okay, but what do I do about it? We have some favorites in the house. But I think the biggest key is “release before you relax.” That is my favorite quip. How do you release in your household?
Nikki Fowler:
So we do, lower the lights in the evening. There’s not a lot of (if we can have younger ones), but we try to keep it a little calmer. Like we’re not going to run and scream. No. We’re calming down. And we’ve kind of set this tone for, hey, we’re winding down. This is now our downtime. You just ran outside for like the last hour and played in the yard. And we got all that out. And now we’re going to come in and we’re going to dim the lights, and we’re going to do our bath and we’re gonna you know, do those things.
And I think a big thing for parents and children is the screens trying to unplug from that a big thing in our house is reading. But really bringing everything down. Everybody, right? We want to get into that kind of rest and relax.
Because I think that we talk about this all the time with women. We have so many things to do. So many. Yeah. And at night, it’s like, Oh, I’ve got to do all the things for tomorrow. Your body cannot go go go go go. And then you expect to hit the bed and I don’t know why I can’t go to sleep. We haven’t given the body the time it needs to really come down and relax and get into that proper sleep. And that’s a big thing.
Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski:
All that stuff that you’re trying to get done at nighttime. You will be more efficient. You will be faster, it will get done better, in the morning. Yep, that’s when your cortisol is up. That’s why you have no resources at night. No resources. You’re not supposed to have any.
So yes, in our house, there is the screaming yelling jumping. I have started doing that with them. We now jump off the couch safely. Really! All on the poof, do the running around do the hula hoop do the dance party. My almost four year old (I don’t know how that happened) now she says I come home and she has cute music and it’s just it’s great. It helps us it helps everybody. So get it out first and then stop the input. Stop the stimulation. Bring it down. Allow release.
We love you. And we are here for any of your questions at any point we are honored and happy to be part of the HER community. Always enjoy!
Nikki Fowler is a Family Nurse Practitioner at Essential Health located in Raleigh, NC. She emphasizes collaborative goal setting and building trusting and supportive relationships. Her areas of special interest are women’s health, regenerative medicine, hormones, gut health, overall health optimization, and aesthetics. Nikki’s areas of focus at Essential Health include hormone balancing, thyroid management, peri-menopause and menopausal health, gut health, health optimization for longevity, and aesthetics.
Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski owns and practices at the Essential Health – Raleigh, NC location. She is triple-trained in family medicine, integrative medicine, and functional medicine and has practiced from coast to coast. She joined the Essential Family with the opening of the Raleigh location in 2017. Her clinical focuses are advanced lifestyle medicine, cellular nutrition, gut health, hormone balancing, chemical-free anti-aging, adrenal and stress health, and thyroid imbalances.
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