transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Have you heard that menopause changes your metabolism, but no one's actually explained what that means or even what to do about it? And are you worried about your changing body, even though you're kind of doing all the things, you're doing everything right? Well then, this episode is for you, because today I talk with Dr. Siobhan Mitchell, who is one of the leading researchers on mitochondria and metabolism and women's health, and we get into why so much of what happens to our body in perimenopause and menopause comes back to your mitochondria and what you can actually do about it. And she explains what mitochondria is in case you're totally lost. Honestly, it's her jam, it's her expertise, and this is what I really want to dive into. And Siobhan is also the Chief Scientific Officer at MitoQ. It's a company and in full transparency, this company sponsors this podcast, but it's one that has integrity and really millions of dollars in research behind their products. And you can't imagine how many supplement companies come to me and how many I just have to say no to. But MitoQ has all the elements really for the Hack My Age Seal of Approval. Anyways, in this episode, we're not talking about MitoQ, we're talking about mitochondria and our metabolism. And our last episode with Siobhan was about the brain, mitochondria was so interesting. I got such great feedback that my expectations are really high for this one, and I did, it met my expectations. I learned so much. And I really think that this is going to be a game changer for anyone who is not taking hormone replacement therapy for whatever reasons. So before we start, I just want to remind you that we have a bone master class this Saturday, April 25th, 2026. And if you are concerned about osteoporosis or osteopenia, this is such an important master class. I really break down what to look out for, what to be concerned about, and what you can do to improve your bone density. What is science shown that actually does the trick? And if you show up live, you can get a free cookbook, My Eating for Longevity Cookbook. And I'll have a link to that master class in the show notes, or you can always go to my website, hackmyage.com, and it's always at the top. You will get a little bar at the top of the website, where you can register there. And if you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, also, while you're on the website, go and check out the newsletter. It is jam-packed with information, but I am tweaking this down more and more and more. I'm putting my voice into it. I'm not using an eye like I was sort of supporting, using that a lot to help me organize my thoughts and things. And now I'm just kind of making it more human. So and I want it to be skimmable and easy for you to read, so you can just grab the things that you want. So go to hackmage.com or go to the show notes here and have a link to the newsletter. And if you haven't checked out the YouTube channel, please go and do that. We have so many great guests who are, it's nice to see them in person. I am watching more and more podcasts myself on YouTube, just because there's other things that you see. And actually now, I'm talking to my editor now, if we can have a little pop-up of fact checking that supports what we're hearing from the guests. Because I always tell you, when I have a guest on, no matter how expert they are and whatever I say as well, we should take these things to the grain of salt. We don't know if the research that they're looking at applies to us. We don't know how true these things really are. So and maybe the science supports this today, but it doesn't support it tomorrow. So please do your due diligence with anything you hear on this podcast. But also I want to support you so you don't have to do the work by me doing the fact checking. So it's coming up. Hang in for there. That'll be on YouTube. And then also if you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, please do go to Apple Podcast or Spotify and click that follow button. And while you're there, rate and review the show. It makes a huge difference, a huge, huge difference for this podcast getting out to those who need to hear it. And if you don't do that, it's just we stay small and we don't get this information out. So please go and do that. If you can, it takes two seconds. And if you have already done that, thank you so much for your time. It is really makes a big impact. So thank you. And the last thing is that to remind you that we have a women's only menopause support group. This is called Biohacking Menopause. Don't be afraid by that word biohacking. I know it sounds daunting for some people, but you don't have to be a biohacker. I'm going to teach you how to be one in order to understand bioindividuality. So if you're struggling with your symptoms and you need support, and when research shows that 95% of the women who get support and do things as a group and has that motivation, they get to their goals faster and more often. So do consider joining the Biohacking Menopause membership group. I'll have a link to that in the show notes. So now let's start the show. Did you know that your mitochondria, which are those powerhouses of our cells, depend on estrogen? And that may be one reason why we are a little more tired and feel like we have less muscle in menopause. Because when estrogen drops, mitochondrial function can also drop. And mitochondria make energy for your muscles, your brain and your metabolism. So less estrogen means that they're not as good at making energy. And that's when we may be a little slower and muscle starts disappearing. And we know muscle is so important to make in middle life. And one compound you may want to take a look at for mitochondrial health is urolithin A. It does this thing called mitophagy. Your body's way of clearing out old, inefficient mitochondria so you can build stronger ones that work better. So after my hip surgery is just over a year ago, I started taking timelines Mitopur for urolithin A. It became just part of my recovery stack. And I noticed I bounced back faster. I maintained muscle and I got stronger. So I keep it in my longevity stack. And when they released the longevity gummies, I was so happy, not just because I was really starting to have full fatigue and they taste so ridiculously good, but because they're the only gummies that I really trust. They don't have any added sugar, no weird ingredients and has clinically studied urolithin A. And honestly, it's one of the few supplements I actually look forward to taking. So if you want to try Timeline's longevity gummies, go to Timeline, timeline.com/zora for 20% off. That's T-I-M-E-L-I-N-E forward slash Z-O-R-A. And then get back to me with your results. You are now listening to the Hack My Age Podcast, the show that brings you guests for the woman going through the menopause journey. I'm your host, Zora Benhamou, a gerontologist, certified sports nutrition, menopause and breathing coach. Now, if you're a woman in perimenopause or postmenopause, check out the programs and freebies on the Hack My Age website or the Biohacking Menopause private membership and Facebook group to optimize your menopause experience. Because menopause is inevitable, but suffering is optional. All right. Well, it's a real pleasure to have Siobhan Mitchell on the show again today. Welcome.

Speaker 2:
[07:42] Hi.

Speaker 1:
[07:44] It's good to see you again. I'm sorry. I loved our last conversation. It was on mitochondria. And you're such an expert in this field and really cleared up a lot of confusion. And I got such great feedback from that episode. I think everyone learned so much from you. And we talked also about more not only in energy, but also the brain. This time, I really want to kind of continue that conversation around mitochondria. But this is obviously your specialty. This is why I want you to phone in on that. But I also want to focus more on how mitochondria interacts with hormones and metabolism. Because pretty much a lot of women in my space in going through this transition say that I'm eating so well, they're exercising, they're doing everything right and something's off. And I know they are. I mean, I know they're putting in the work. There's people who don't, but I know there's someone really doing all this stuff. And that weight just keeps coming on. Energy is gone and nothing's just working like it used to. So I'd love to know that there's many reasons maybe why they're gaining weight or feeling tired. But based on your research, what do you think is going on in this phase of life?

Speaker 2:
[08:43] Yeah. Well, this is a field I'm also really passionate about is understanding how mitochondria affect metabolism, especially in women and what can we do about it. And so this is where, as you just mentioned, a lot of people are noticing as they get to their 40s that things are changing and they don't really know why, because it feels like, oh, they finally figure it out. I'm eating that healthy diet. I'm reading up on the exercise. And then it starts to just change in terms of the energy levels are just really fading. And yeah, they're starting to have fat around their middle that they had never seen before. And like, why is it there? And just that feeling of, yeah, my health, which I've been so careful about, doesn't seem to be as optimal. And so the thing that people always realize is, yes, this is the time of your life where you're start to have perimenopause, so changes in estrogen. And people usually think about perimenopause as like, oh, it's menopausal symptoms. It's like the hot flashes and night sweats. But I really want to emphasize that as you have estrogen fluctuations and then decline, you're going to have a lot of changes in your metabolism. So yeah, that's the thing I want to just clear up right now is that you have to be ready for those. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[09:52] Let's define metabolism, because when I think the first thing I usually think about when it's metabolism is like, oh, my metabolism is going slower, I'm gaining weight, everything's sluggish. But metabolism is more than that. So maybe let's define what you mean when you say metabolism.

Speaker 2:
[10:07] Yeah, you're right. People think about, all right, metabolism is just literally how much energy am I burning, right? Am I going to gain weight or not gain weight? And that's the whole story. When I think about metabolism, I think about one, that it's the key to your health. So people actually now think that metabolism is the thing that you need to track most of your health and know if you're going to have a healthy aging. And so what is that? That is literally how your body is using fuel and if it's using it efficiently, and how is that affecting your body function? So in terms of just to get concrete, like in terms of women as they get into their 40s, the things that they will notice about their metabolism changing is they're no longer regulating blood glucose as well. They're no longer regulating fat as well. The way that fat is being used in the body also changes. So it's being put in areas that they hadn't expected and is doing things they hadn't expected. And at the same time, your lean mass is changing as well too. So your muscles are changing. And this all affects your metabolism because your muscles of course are the main place where you're burning a lot of your energy, a lot of your fuel. And then even further into what metabolism can mean, it can also mean just how well are you getting all the nutrients you need to have your body running. So that could like actually implicate arteries. So how much blood flow is going to your organs and how much your mitochondria are working efficiently as well, which I'll go into in a little bit.

Speaker 1:
[11:30] There's so much more. We always just compartmentalize. Energy is just what we feel. Or the metabolism is just wait for it. It is every single thing that's happening in the body. It's this communication is why I like to explain it. It's just this, the body needs energy to communicate cell to cell and function and think and breathe and create things and break down things and that's it all. This is why so many functional medicine experts say it all boils down to mitochondria and how those are functioning. So we need to make sure that they're functioning well. And as we go through menopause, our mitochondria doesn't seem to be as revved up as they used to or they're not as healthy as they used to. And then we have the simultaneous drop in estrogen. And I know that they communicate with each other. So maybe you can explain a little bit that relationship between mitochondria and estrogen.

Speaker 2:
[12:21] And this is really interesting because there is a lot of connection with estrogen and mitochondria. So for instance, there are estrogen receptors on mitochondria that are helping regulate mitochondria. So as soon as you start losing estrogen, your mitochondria are getting affected by other things outside influences like environmental toxins or whatever things are doing in your body. But loss of estrogen makes it so your mitochondria are not going to work as well. And how are they not going to work as well? So for instance, estrogen is very important through mitochondria to turning on PGC-1-alpha, which is a cell signaling factor that turns on more mitochondrial biogenesis. At the same time, it's turning on more mitochondrial biogenesis, PGC-1-alpha is really important for us using glucose better, so helping with glucose transport. So when you lose estrogen, you're simultaneously now going to make less mitochondria, and you're going to have more trouble bringing glucose into your cells, particularly your muscles, which will make you more insulin resistant. So that's kind of like this double-edged kind of situation of just, yeah, you are now having less mitochondria efficiency, and you're also having less energy usage and kind of poor energy usage, and it can lead to all sorts of things that women notice that they feel sluggish, especially at the end of the day, they have more brain fog, their blood glucose starts to go in disarray. So all these things, blood pressure too, this is like another one that interestingly is controlled a lot by estrogen in the brain, so estrogen receptors in the brain, the hypothalamus, are very important for how we control blood pressure, and we lose that estrogen receptors that can go away. But back to the mitochondria, so then another thing that mitochondria are getting from estrogen is the ability to make antioxidant defenses. So mitochondria, of course, are making a lot of antioxidants themselves to protect them from all the oxidative stress that's being generated from the energy they're making, and without estrogen, they're now making less. And so this leads to inflammation. This can lead into changes in the way we're using fuel. So a lot of different things kind of roll into each other.

Speaker 1:
[14:27] Let me back up a little bit and try to explain in plain English too for some people who may not know what we're talking about. So the mitochondria actually covered this quite a bit and just find it in the first podcast episode, which I'll link to that if you want to take a deeper dive. But these are the powerhouses of ourselves, the little organelles that help us create energy to do all these other things. And you mentioned estrogen receptors on the mitochondria. It's crazy. So and that means a receptor is waiting for estrogen molecule to come and attach to it to send a signal and little text message, what do we need to do here? And without that message, without the receptor having that estrogen, it has causes problems. And this is natural part of life, but this is where we go into this gradual decline and we want to be able to combat some of these things. So if the mitochondria have these receptors, they're not getting the estrogen. And you said it was affecting this PTC1 alpha.

Speaker 2:
[15:17] This is PTC1 alpha. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[15:19] PTC1 alpha. And this tells the cell signaling to create more mitochondria. So mitochondrial biogenesis means it helps us create more because as we're aging, we tend to lose our mitochondria on top of that. So we definitely want to preserve this or make more. How do you make more? And there's many ways to make more. We talked about that in the first episode, but that's just to make that tie in with estrogen, helping us make more mitochondria. And then once you have the system running, and then you talked about regulating the blood glucose, and this is our blood sugar rising and falling. And if you have too much in the system, then that gets shuttled into fat and then causing these other problems. And you mentioned also, if there's less estrogen, then you have less mitochondria and less glucose functioning well, and less antioxidants and those defenses. And then that could lead to more inflammation. And the inflammation, you may thinking, oh, inflammation, oh, I must feel pain somewhere in my joint. And yeah, we can feel that. But then there's always this chronic low-grade inflammation that we don't feel that could be inside our bodies. And that's where these silent killers kind of come up, or these, we don't feel something, but it doesn't mean things are not happening under the hood. And this is why we take a little deep dive, or we take a little geeky here, just to try to understand what is happening inside the body. And I hope I correct me if I'm wrong in anything that I've tried to explain right now.

Speaker 2:
[16:34] It's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, thanks. I usually jump ahead to I feel like I got to get it all down. I am happy that is exactly what's going on. So yeah, we all recognize that, for instance, inflammation is bad for us and we tend to think about, oh, that must be pain or whatever. But there's a lot of information that is causing wear and tear on all our cells that we don't realize and it's actually accelerating our aging. So yeah, it's really important to keep that under control.

Speaker 1:
[17:00] I know our girls who are listening are really on it. But they know what you're talking about and use the big words. But this is an all-inclusive environment. So we want to make sure that the new people on board also are following and don't be discouraged if you're like, I don't know what mitochondria is, we're going to learn. The more you hear this information, the better you get at it. So let's tie all of this back down to the metabolism. I sent to you earlier information from Dr. William Lee because we interviewed him before and it was mind-blowing what he said, because he was citing a research study in the Science Journal and he said, this study looked at over 6,000 people across 29 countries from birth until death pretty much, and they found out that actually the metabolism is pretty stable from 20 to 60. He did explain things the way you kind of responded to me, but I want you to explain to people because they may remember that just like I did, but not exactly the nuance that he also mentioned, especially if you just saw that real, you won't get the whole thing. So why don't you explain, does our metabolism, is it really stable between the ages of 20 and 60, not changing in menopause?

Speaker 2:
[18:07] What this study was trying to show was, do we actually have cells' metabolism suddenly going awry, like not making as much energy, not using as much energy? And that's what they're really studying at that particular study of people from like age zero, all the way to age 90. And what they were doing is trying to understand, for instance, what is their basal rate of energy expenditure? So when I say basal rate, I mean, if you're just lying down and doing nothing, what is your body using in terms of energy just to run your body? And then they also looked at things like total energy expenditure, which is kind of like, all right, your body that's moving around and doing stuff, what would that look like? How much energy are you using just throughout the day? And so what they saw was that with total energy expenditure, this is where, yeah, people are just going about their daily routine, it looks like people are staying fairly stable in terms of age 20 to 60, in terms of the way their cells are working. But the important thing to know is that when they're looking at these people, they're adjusting these rates of energy expenditure according to how much body fat they had, how much lean mass they had. And this is really important because lean mass, so our muscles for instance, are energetically more active. They are actually expending more energy for us. And fat is also something that is making less energy or not doing as much in terms of energy. And they looked at how people change over time in terms of their fat mass and their lean mass, and they saw there are a lot of changes. So for instance, in your 40s, you are actually losing lean mass. And for instance, studies have shown that starting in your 30s, you're going to be losing 3-8% of your lean mass per year. And this is because, I will hate to say it, but this is actually because of mitochondrial decline and estrogen decline, that estrogen is very important for keeping lean mass. So there's lots of studies showing estrogen really helps us keep our muscles. And so what is happening in that study is that they are adjusting all these rates of energy expenditure according to the lean mass and the body fat. And so they're kind of basically saying, well, if you're gaining a lot of weight and you're losing lean mass, we've adjusted it. So we're seeing that if you take that stuff away, you're kind of having a same basal expenditure. So what does that mean? It means your organs are using the same amount of energy. Everything that's not lean mass or fat is using the same amount of energy. But it's not taking into account that your lean mass is changing your metabolism and your fat mass is changing your own metabolism. And interestingly enough, when they looked at basal metabolic rates, so how much energy you are making or using when you just sit there and do nothing, they saw that there was actually a real decline at around age 46, which is kind of around when we get perimenopause. Yeah. So there is something going on for metabolism. It's just subtle. And I don't think anyone will deny that women do go through a lot of changes during perimenopause. And personally, and also accounts I've heard, a lot of people are noticing changes in the way their body is working. So I think that's fairly understood, but just the nuances of it have to be kind of understood better. And so the main thing, the main message I want to give to people is like, yeah, energy expenditure of like your basic tissue, your organs is probably not changing that much from 20 to 60. But you are changing the way you're using your lean mass and how much lean mass you have. You're changing in how much body fat you have. And that is really important to your metabolism. And that's what you notice during perimenopause.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[23:58] Yeah, it's good.

Speaker 1:
[24:00] I do, but I have to feed it a lot. I need a lot of quantities of good food in order to make them grow and stay there. It's expensive. And if the body doesn't need it, if you're not making this muscle and let's just get rid of it, it's too much. Let's use the energy for something else. And that's where you've explained it makes sense. And Dr. Lee also, throughout the podcast, he's like, we're getting fatter. And then it's that more fat that's causing this shift in metabolism. And among many other things too, but that's kind of where he was going to. So let's then bring in the estrogen piece, because as we're going through this transition, estrogen starts to decline. Well, it goes up, goes down, fluctuates and then it just kind of bottoms out. And we have to have very, almost barely detectable levels. So what specifically do you think is changing in the body? So maybe walk us through what's happening metabolically and why that fat seems to seem like. Some women say it just like shows up over night and they literally feel like it's that. And it's, where is this coming from?

Speaker 2:
[24:58] Yeah, I know. I was wondering that too. And I started to notice that like my tummy was getting a little bigger because like I'm, I'm pretty thin anyway, but I'm like, that doesn't seem fair. But it's only accumulating. But it actually makes sense when you start to understand what's happening in your body. So for instance, estrogen is really good at helping women take up fat from our blood and put it somewhere. And so before menopause, we're using most of that into our subcutaneous fat, so the fat that's closest to our skin, and especially around our thighs and our hips, to give us that kind of womanly kind of curve, right? As you go into menopause and you have this estrogen dip, the body is still trying to make estrogen somehow. And as your ovaries start to make less and less, the body's like, where else can I make estrogen? And you can make a different form of estrogen called estrone, it's not as potent as estrogen, which is like the main estrogen in our body that is kind of doing all the usual things for us like things I just mentioned. But it does work. So what is happening is the estrone that you can make can be made by fat instead of the ovaries. So if you're losing ovary function, you're now going to start to make estrone through fat. And so your body's now saying, oh, we should make more fat. It's a good way to get estrogen. But at the same time, estrogen normally is telling you not to put it on your belly. And the reason why is there's this special protein, the lipoprotein lipase, which is the protein that kind of tells you where you're going to put fat. It's low in your belly fat. So it's just not going to put belly fat onto you as much as onto your hips. As you lose estrogen, that lipase activity now starts to get heightened in your belly. And so now you're going to put a lot more fat in your belly. And in a way, you're kind of turning into more of a male kind of metabolic profile. Because men, as you know, accumulate a lot of belly fat. And that's because they don't have all this protective estrogen to help them out.

Speaker 1:
[26:55] It's not just the belly, is it? No, it's not. I mean, you said the belly, but it's visceral fat, right? And that's the fat around the organs.

Speaker 2:
[27:03] That's another good way of terming. So visceral fat is like the, I would say more scientific term for belly fat. And it's basically meaning fat that's accumulating around your organs. So it's kind of inside your abdomen. So for instance, subcutaneous fat like on your belly is something that you can kind of pinch off of your belly. The visceral fat is inside your abdomen. You can't really pinch it, but you can sort of see it protruding. So that's really what I'm talking about with belly fat. So thanks for explaining that better.

Speaker 1:
[27:33] We just had the reverse. Yeah, I wasn't sure. Maybe I was wrong because we have the belly. I mean, there's belly fat that is just belly fat. It's subcutaneous tissue, but then we have the visceral fat, which is around the organs, which is the dangerous fat. And even when you're skinny, you can have this visceral fat and that's, it's no good because obviously as we're aging, we need our organs to function well. But if there's this big layer of fat around it, it sputters. It just can't, it can't do what it needs to do. So I really wanted to highlight that, that this is an important part of metabolism. It just kind of sucks that your body may go, wow, we need more estrogen. Let's make more fat.

Speaker 2:
[28:07] I know. Yeah. And make it on your belly where it's now going to cause more inflammation. This role of fat, yeah, that kind of inside belly fat has been shown to increase risk of cognitive issues, so dementia, cardiovascular disease. It's really a problematic fat. And so, yeah, as we lose estrogen, and we're having, for instance, more of that blood glucose control, just getting more and more messy, like this is now also contributing to our belly fat as well, too. So all that extra glucose in your blood is now going to get collected as fat into your belly fat. And then lastly, the other thing that's happening a lot during midlife is that we're super stressed out, right? So we have cortisol flowing through us constantly as we try to juggle our day, because I think, yeah, especially in your late 40s or early 40s too, I guess, there's so much going on. You've got like kids and career and you're eating parents, maybe you're trying to deal with it. And the other thing that estrogen is doing is it's helping regulate cortisol. So, yeah, and so once you lose estrogen, cortisol can have a lot more havoc on you, including putting more of that visceral fat on. So so many different ways that the way that you're distributing fat is going to change during perimenopause. And, yeah, I'm just particularly attuned to where the fat is going, because I just feel like that's the thing. It feels like a little bit out of control. Like why is this happening? Like why is it not staying the same? And that really will actually change as you get older. A lot of people do put on the belly fat. You have twice as much belly fat, visceral fat after menopause as you did before. That's just kind of on average for women.

Speaker 1:
[29:41] Oh my goodness. Okay. But we can do things about it.

Speaker 2:
[29:44] We can do things about it. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[29:46] It's not all doom and gloom.

Speaker 2:
[29:47] No, it's not all doom and gloom.

Speaker 1:
[29:49] I follow all these women on Instagram with their looking amazing in their 70s, and there's no belly fat, or there's a tiny bit. It exists. It's possible. I want to share. But some of these women are actually turning to GLP-1s. These are these weight loss peptides, or weight loss medications, or appetite suppressants. They're not eating enough, I guess, but they're losing the weight. I would love to know your perspective as a scientist. Are these tools actually solving the problem, or are we just putting a band-aid on a bigger issue? What is this doing to our mitochondria and metabolism?

Speaker 2:
[30:20] Yeah, so I think GLP antagonists like Ozempic definitely have their place, and they've helped millions and millions, and people will call them a lifesaver, and I totally get why. So I'm happy for people to think about this, is I have tried to lose weight in many ways, and this is the only thing that's really working. But I also feel like you have to understand this probably won't be forever. You need to change the way that you eat, and the way that you're living your life while on the GLP-1s, because as we all have now heard, that as soon as you go off the GLP-1s, you are now going to gain a lot of that weight back, because the food noise is back, or your appetite comes raging back. And at the same time, while you've lost all that weight, you've lost a lot of lean mass, so muscle, which is that energetically expensive part of you. And now it's going to be even more likely you're going to gain more weight because you've lost that muscle. So I'm fine with trying to lose weight on that, but at the same time, you need to figure out your diet. You need to have a lot more fiber. You need to make sure you're having the right nutrients. I was reading a study that, yeah, people who are on JLP-1s are actually very micronutrient deficient. So for instance, vitamin D, potassium, and you need these types of nutrients, for instance, to keep your mitochondria running. And at the same time, I think for sure, there's a lot of other things about your metabolism that get fixed by JLP-1s. And insulin resistance, I think, is like a really big one that people see that their blood glucose goes back in control. And I think that's great. But you need to figure out your blood glucose after you're done with them. So that's the main thing. And I don't recommend people saying, oh, I'll start it and then I'll stop it and I'll seesaw, because that's just going to make your metabolism go even screwier. So, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[31:55] So then with the mitochondria, imagine if you're losing muscle mass, there's loads of mitochondria in muscle, as I understand. And so if you're losing the muscle, you're probably also losing mitochondria, which are so important for all the functions that we just talked about.

Speaker 2:
[32:08] Oh, yeah, exactly. And for sure, these mitochondria, especially in your muscle, are one of these kind of indicators of overall health. And once you start having more mitochondrial dysfunction or just less of them, it's hard to bring them back as easily.

Speaker 1:
[32:21] So you mentioned estrogen also helping with our glucose control, like moving blood sugar out and helping it go into the muscle and all that. And so it's important, I guess it helps with building muscle too. But what about phytoestrogens? These are plant estrogens. We're not talking about homotherapy because they get a lot of tension as a quote unquote natural alternative. But there's also confusion and there's a lot of fear around it, especially like when we talk about soy. So where does the fear around soy come from and what does the science actually say about it?

Speaker 2:
[32:49] Yeah, so phytoestrogens I think are really misunderstood and it came from a lot of the fear of hormonal replacement therapy, HRT. So as we all know, there's this big study of the Women's Health Initiative that made a lot of doctors think, oh, if I'm going to prescribe HRT to someone, I might be increasing their risk of cancer or cardiovascular disease. And at the same time, women were looking around like, oh, so estrogens bad, maybe phytoestrogens are bad. But I can tell you, I've looked through a lot of studies. Phytoestrogens, especially things coming from soy, that's one of the main sources of phytoestrogens for most women, aren't really doing anything bad in terms of increasing cancer risk. In fact, they seem protective many times. Of course, the joy is all out. Everyone keeps on doing more and more studies. But the main thing is like there's really nothing to fear. And we can just look at the fact that Asian women, so Chinese, Japanese women, have been taking a huge amount of soy, and so have men. And it's not like they have any increased risk of cancer or anything like that from them. So it seems like they're totally fine. So yeah, I think it's really important to understand that. And then one more thing that's really important is that, as we're talking about metabolism and things like, yeah, controlling your blood glucose and the fact that estrogen is declining in your 40s, you should think about how to replace that estrogen, because that's the root cause of why your metabolism is changing. GLP-1s are not the root cause, right? They address your appetite and a little bit like the insulin, but they're not addressing all this mitochondrial function, for instance, that I think is really important. I think it's the key to aging, of course, mentioned to you before. So, phytoestrogens, if you don't want to take HRT, are a really important way that you can get that estrogen activity. And I would say they are even better in some ways than blindly taking, like, a birth control pill because they're kind of more selective estrogen activity. So, for instance, a lot of the phytoestrogens from soy, so these isoflavones like genistein and indecine, and also this really important metabolite, S-Equal, are acting on estrogen beta receptor. And that, I would say, is the more important receptor for kind of maintaining your mitochondria, maintaining your metabolism.

Speaker 1:
[34:58] I agree on the soy thing. Like I've interviewed several people now who are experts in nutrition and research, and they also say soy is so good for you. And Dr. Lee, he studies angiogenesis, and he says, and I remember his book Eat to Beat Disease. He had the top 10 foods to eat to beat any kind of disease, and including cancer. And number one was soy. And I was like, that was the first time I was like, oh no, I thought soy was bad. What is he talking about? He shifted me completely. But I think what the other fear that people have as well is with the soy, the GMOs genetically modified, or that there's pesticides in there and things like that. But we can get around this by GMO free soy too, right?

Speaker 2:
[35:38] Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's lots of organic soy. There's lots of GMO free soy. So and for sure, it's a great protein source, and you need protein to maintain that lean mass. So it really makes a lot of sense to add soy or diet. And I can go into a lot of studies that have been done of Asian women who are thinking of soy and how much it benefits them. But yeah, you can just wait.

Speaker 1:
[35:57] And I have plenty of anecdotal experience with the women who in my community who would say they drink soy milk or put soy milk in their coffee or something. And they're like, yeah, my hot flashes are much more controlled with that. So there's plenty of anecdotal evidence too. I mean, if you want to try it. But the thing is, you mentioned if the soy has phytoestrogens, if we're looking to regulate our metabolism, can we just eat more tofu and edamame or something?

Speaker 2:
[36:22] Yeah, I mean, that's the interesting thing is that, yeah, like it does seem that these phytoestrogens are really abundant in soy. But as I was saying, there's been a lot of studies looking at women who are eating soy and trying to see like, where are the benefits coming from? Who are getting the most benefits from soy? And what they saw with a lot of these soy intervention studies is that only a certain subgroup of women were getting the most benefits, like really getting much less hot flashes or having improvements in blood glucose. And over the last 20 years, when only scientists were trying to understand like, why is soy so differential in the way it works? They found out that some women can produce this metabolite from soy, isoflavones called S-Equal. And this particular kind of phytoestrogen, S-Equal, is very potent and it's highly bioavailable. So it can really get into the body and it can stay in the body, while some of the other soy isoflavones, so genistein, dadesine, are not that bioavailable, they're not staying that long in the body. So when they start to just look at these women who can make S-Equal, and so just to explain how they make S-Equal, they can make S-Equal through their microbiomes. So some women have the right kind of bacteria that can metabolize dadesine and turn it into this more potent, more bioavailable S-Equal. And scientists have looked at this for decades and decades because it's so clear from a lot of epidemiology studies that if you can make S-Equal through your microbiome, you're having huge amounts of benefits. So better glucose control, better blood pressure, less risk of cognitive issues, more, I would say, better lean mass and more kind of mood, sort of, I would say balance, for instance. Just the benefits go on and on. But the ones I think might be most interesting for this podcast is that they saw that S-Equal producers have less body weight, less body fat and overall sort of better control of their appetite, for instance, like less ghrelin, less hunger hormones. So it seems that S-Equal is really important for regulating these women's appetite and metabolism in a way that benefits their health. So that was very exciting to see all that kind of data. And now it's sort of like, how do we get more women to make S-Equal in their microbiomes? That was the big thing that was something I had known about and was interested in 20 years ago. But now really is only being understood and yeah, I can tell you the details, but maybe you have more questions.

Speaker 1:
[38:46] I want to cut it back up a little bit. You said S-Equal is a metabolite. A metabolite of what? Usually metabolite is a byproduct of something.

Speaker 2:
[38:54] Yeah, of Dadezine, which is a soy isoflavone. So when you have a serving of tofu, for instance, you might in that serving have maybe 5 milligrams, 10 milligrams of Dadezine. So this isoflavone that's a phytoestrogen that then goes into your gut and then into your intestine and then your microbiome basically breaks it down in a certain way. If you're lucky, if you have the right microbiome, and just to be clear, about 20 to 30 percent of women in the West, so European, American women, have the right microbiome, but the rest of us, the other 80 percent, we can't make S equal. Like our bodies just don't do that. So we're not going to get any benefits.

Speaker 1:
[39:29] Is that genetic?

Speaker 2:
[39:30] That's what they're trying to figure out. What is it that makes people special in that way? And so they spent, as I said, decades looking at, is it soy intake? If we give people a lot of soy, will that make them make S equal? It doesn't seem like that works all the time. Like sometimes it works, but like very rarely. They looked at what kind of diets these women had. It seems like they're more likely to be vegetarian but not always. Looks like they have more green tea, but not always. They eat more fiber. So a few of these kind of indicators, but what they're really trying to do is make people with S equal producers, they have not done successfully. So that was a real issue of just like, there's all these benefits and we can't get them. So what has been cool in the last few years is they have now discovered a way to ferment S equal from soy and you can now just buy S equal from a fermentation, like a natural fermentation process that does the same thing. So you can just buy it and deliver it to your body and have that kind of health effect.

Speaker 1:
[40:27] But it has to be fermented, right? It's not like-

Speaker 2:
[40:29] So this is the way they're making it, is they're fermenting it with the same bacteria that you would naturally have in your body, but they're just like, all right, we can't make you into an SQL producer. We're just going to make the SQL an artificial microbiome in a dish. So yeah.

Speaker 1:
[40:43] So I understand that 20 percent of the women in the West can actually produce SQL naturally. So what's the deal with the Asian women? What can they make more SQL than Western people?

Speaker 2:
[40:53] Yeah, they can, but not as much as you would think. So Asian women, so for instance, Japanese women can make about 50 to 60 percent of Japanese women can make SQL. So not everyone. And what they've decided or what they can propose is that it could be that you just have to have a lot of soy when you're younger. So maybe as a child. And that sets up your microbiome because we're all aware that your microbiome is really set up as you're an infant in terms of the way it's going to operate. So yeah, so that's where a lot of these studies, especially the epidemiology studies showing at least these benefits of s-equal, if you can produce it, have come from is these women that have a high percentage of making s-equal.

Speaker 1:
[41:32] I wonder if then the Asians who live outside of Asia, if they would be making the same amount of s-equal or not, or maybe depends if they left in childhood or if they stayed on. It'd be more studies to do that we have plenty of money to make more of this stuff, right?

Speaker 2:
[41:48] Yeah, no, it's interesting because this is, I think, like a real problem in Japan where I think people are less able to make s-equal because they're turning away from soy and they're like, that's not good. So s-equal is a real thing in Japan. People are really into it there. It's very popular. It's really well understood. It's only starting to get to America, I think, now or the Western world, I should say.

Speaker 1:
[42:08] Isn't it always like that? They always ahead of us in some things. So what I want to know is how am I an s-equal producer or not? Is there a test or something I could see if I'm good at it?

Speaker 2:
[42:18] No, unfortunately, there's nothing that's really clearly like, okay, you go to your doctor and you say, all right, find out my s-equal. I think they're starting to develop it. I think in Japan, for instance, you can, but not here. So yeah, the only thing that I would say is maybe for the woman that you know that had an amazing effect of eating soy and their menopausal symptoms, maybe they are making s-equal and that's why it had a huge effect because I've also had friends tell me like, oh, I tried to have a lot of soy and I didn't see any benefits from it. So, or it's all smaller benefits. It wasn't like overnight, night sweats were gone. My sleep was great. So that's, I think what is really interesting about, yeah, understanding if you have it.

Speaker 1:
[42:54] So, okay, so that's why, that's where this is coming from because you do hear this anecdotal evidence that people are saying, yes, it's been helping me. But then also the people who would like you to know, it didn't do anything for me. And then the research showing that some people benefit, some people don't, it's not like HRT where it's pretty targeted. But I would like to know then. So if the way I understand it is it's not so much the estrogen and the phytoestrogen, but it's the S equal that's quite helping with the symptoms. And so I want to dive a little bit more into the S equal. Does it have the same benefits as, say, bioidentical estradiol? Can it help with rebuild bones and stop hot flashes, improve our skin and joints, pain, lower cardiovascular risk and these kinds of things?

Speaker 2:
[43:34] Yeah, so it's not bioidentical, it just has a similar structure. And so it's not nearly as potent as estradiol. And estradiol works on all estrogen receptors, so estrogen alpha, beta, I can go and tell these receptors what they're doing. But the main thing is S all equal is really only working on the estrogen beta receptor.

Speaker 1:
[43:53] What's the difference when you explain alpha and beta receptors? What does that mean?

Speaker 2:
[43:57] Yeah, so alpha receptors are expressed more often on reproductive tissue. So your ovaries, your breasts, your uterus, and they have that job of more kind of proliferation and growth of those reproductive areas. So like, for instance, when you notice your breast kind of getting a little bit larger during that time of month, that's probably estrogen alpha receptor activity, making them feel a little bit bigger. And so that's fine. That's very important. The estrogen beta receptors are expressed more on places like your brain, your bones, there are a lot in your fat and your muscles. And so they seem to have a lot of activity there. So for instance, yeah, you're mentioning bone health. Estrogen beta receptor activity, and this has been shown through Sequal, can actually help maintain bone health as you go through perimenopause. So studies have shown that Sequal can help with bone mineral density. It can help with bone maintenance. It can help with a lot of these other sort of metabolic things we just talked about. In a study about 12 weeks, it was shown to improve blood glucose, sort of keep it kind of more normal, and also help with LDL, and also help with blood pressure. So it's got a lot of different things. It can help with bone arterial flexibility, so like how flexible your arteries are, so how much blood flow. So it can have a lot of the same benefits as estradiol, but just in a different way. So I think that's the thing to really note, is that it can have all these good effects. If you don't want to do HRT, if you don't want to go into a synthetic hormone kind of situation.

Speaker 1:
[45:26] Okay. So this makes me think of the woman who's not going to do HRT, and she decides that she's got low bone mineral density, or osteopenia, or maybe osteoporosis, and maybe some even heart issues. But yet, she can take this as an alternative. But also, if she takes this, she doesn't have to take progesterone because her uterine lining is going to grow and become a breeding ground for a variant.

Speaker 2:
[45:53] Yeah. That's the uterine lining thing. That's an alpha effect. So yeah, you don't have to worry.

Speaker 1:
[45:57] Yeah. How interesting. So this is interesting to know who this is actually for. I think that's the one thing. Wondering about joint pain. Would it help with that?

Speaker 2:
[46:06] Yeah. So interestingly, it's been shown to help with joint pain, which is I think a menopausal symptom that should get more attention. It's one of the first things that women actually notice often. They're late thirties, they're getting more joint pain and they think it's just that I've exercised too hard or something like that. But that can be an estrogen mediated effect or lack of estrogen. And so Sequal was also shown in a study to not only help with menopausal symptoms that we all think of like the hot flashes and the night sweats, but also improved joint and muscle pain, especially around your shoulders and your back, which I think are the ones that really bothered me the other day. I'd be like, what's this?

Speaker 1:
[46:41] So yeah, this is the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause, where it's kind of, I don't know, this joint pain came out of nowhere, there's no injury, no accident, and it's just you don't understand it. This is where estrogen can help a lot. If you choose not to take estrogen, then this is actually a really interesting experiment to do to resolve some of that joint pain. And then I'm guessing that it's also lowering inflammation and oxidation as well or not.

Speaker 2:
[47:03] Yeah, no, it's lowering inflammation and it's even affecting mitochondrial function. So studies have shown that Seql producers, for instance, have more mitochondria in their white blood cells, so their immune cells. So it's sort of helping with our very basic metabolism as well too. So yeah, and then very importantly, because we just talked a lot about belly fat and all that. So women who are not only Seql producers, but if you're also taking Seql, we'll see that their belly fat will basically be lessened by it as well too. So it seems to have that particular effect as well. So yeah, there's a lot of, I think, benefits to Seql and I would say there's really no drawbacks. Like there's very few side effects, like maybe your stomach is a little bit upset, but really nothing compared to HRT, for instance. And then the safety profile of Seql is great. So it's got a self-affirmed grass in the US, so that means it's been recognized as a food, it's gone through extensive safety testing, and it's also just been used by millions of Japanese women. So just a lot of use there.

Speaker 1:
[48:08] How long has the research been around on Seql? Do we know how long?

Speaker 2:
[48:11] Yeah. So I was intrigued by Seql over 20 years ago, because I had read about all these epidemiology studies, like if you can produce it, you have all these benefits. And so this is even for younger women too, like they saw that Seql producers have less PMS symptoms, they have like better mood, like that kind of stuff. So I was really fascinated. And at the time, there just wasn't any good understanding of like how do you become an Seql producer. So I feel like I've waited 20 years while people were developing that Seql kind of supplement to see what it could do. And now, yeah, there's over a dozen studies showing that has all these benefits. So now I'm like, okay, yeah, the time is nigh to really get people excited.

Speaker 1:
[48:50] Yeah, no, I like that. There's a big strong safety profile. First of all, it's really important and it's efficacious. It helps with hot flashes as well, because if it works, I don't know if it's a beta or alpha receptor when it comes to hot flashes.

Speaker 2:
[49:03] Yeah, no, it helps with hot flashes as well. And night sweats, which I think are the most indicative ones that people really complain about. But at the same time, it's also improving quality of life. So just kind of generally making you feel a little bit more stable as you go through this challenging time.

Speaker 1:
[49:17] Super cool. I think it's really interesting how it gets all these benefits similar to estrogen, but without any sort of those risks. It's a plant and it's a food and it sounds a little bit, I've heard of this molecule called DT56A, and it's a selective estrogen receptor modulator, it's a CIRM, and it mimics estrogen. I don't know much about it, but I know it helps with hot flashes. How is S equal different to that?

Speaker 2:
[49:43] Yeah, that's an interesting one. So DT56A, that was developed in Europe as a sort of selective estrogen modulator from soy. So they basically took soy and they kind of fermented it in different ways and did a bunch of enzymatic processes on it, and then we're like, okay, end result is this is more potent. I don't know if they ever really figured out exactly how it is, but they did do a few studies showing that, for instance, it's helpful for menopausal symptoms. Though I will say that the one study that was looking at menopausal symptoms, it was an open-label study, so women knew they were taking this supplement, it wasn't a surprise.

Speaker 1:
[50:21] It's a placebo effect.

Speaker 2:
[50:22] Yeah. It was also a very high dose that need to be taken twice a day. It's hard to say what the mechanism is because when people try to look at that mechanism of a whole array of things in soy, so not just the isoflavones, but lignins, which are also somewhat phytoestrogenic, it's not clear exactly how it's working, though there's a bunch of, for instance, rodent studies showing that it can have effect on estrogen signaling. So yeah, that's what we know right now. But just not nearly as much data as Sequal, which even the last day I looked at Sequal, it was on skin health. This is kind of funny that they looked at how women's skin, in terms of hydration and wrinkles, changed with either 10 or 30 milligrams of Sequal for about 12 weeks, and they saw that it was actually improved as well in terms of skin hydration, in terms of how many wrinkles they had. So, you know, not like overnight, like bowtops. Don't get me wrong here. It's just a little bit lessened, like a little bit more sort of smooth. So, I was like, that's kind of cool because estrogen, of course, is really important for our skin. You've probably talked about that in this podcast of how much we need estrogen to keep our youthful skin kind of collagen and all the rest.

Speaker 1:
[51:30] Yeah, it helps with so much in hydration and it's so great. So, it's a really cool molecule. You always bring interesting molecules to me. And last time we talked about mitoquinol or MitoQ, and you spoke well about the work that it does for our mitochondrial health. And now MitoQ, that brand is having a targeted hormonal metabolic health product. And I've already been using MitoQ for probably about a year now and sharing it with my community and I always get good feedback, thank God. It's so good because when you have something new, you're like, I don't know, I hope it works for other people, not just me. So I'm trusting that this new product is going to reach my expectations. So what is the connection between estrogen, mitochondria and metabolism? And then why did MitoQ decide to go into this metabolic space?

Speaker 2:
[52:17] Yeah, I can tell you, I have been kind of preparing for menopause for 20 years because I think we even mentioned this last time that I was so aware that the importance of estrogen for mitochondria, for metabolism, for things that I really care about like brain health. And I worried about how menopause would hit me and what would I do. So as I went through this kind of feeling of what are the answers, S-equal seemed to be one of these things that seemed really, really potent and had a lot of the benefits that I wanted to see to help me through perimenopause, to get me to the other side of menopause in a healthier state. So that's the real idea that we had was like we were wanting to help women during this time that I would say this is like a window of opportunity for women. Like we kind of made a little bit like, oh, everything's going to change your metabolism. But you can get to the other side, like extremely healthy if you have the right support. So we feel like S-equal will have that right support. And then while we're designing this product, we also thought there's no real solution for women's metabolism at this time of life. There's lots of menopausal symptom products, nothing that really fits this kind of like all over body kind of care that I think is really important and is overlooked. So yeah, so we have S-equal in there, but we also thought the other area that women start to neglect as they go through primary menopause is their guts. So yeah, that's the other thing that happens is that your gut also changes without estrogen maintaining your gut lining, you're going to be more likely to have leaky gut, you're going to have more bloating, so all these things that we don't like. And so we thought it'd be really important to put a probiotic into this product as well, too, to help maintain your gut. But at the same time, like, it's interesting to realize that a lot of probiotics can have estrogen activity in themselves. So that's like another emerging area of research that I think is really cool that people are not aware of. I think people think about probiotics as like, oh, it just helps your stomach, maybe helps the bad bacteria go away, and you've got more good bacteria, but literally probiotics can help it so that you're recycling estrogen better. And I think that's really fascinating because this is like a whole area of research called the esterbolum, and it's starting to be better understood. But the main mechanism is that you're using estrogen in your body, and then at some point when it starts to get ready to be disposed, it goes into the liver and gets tagged for disposal. And then it gets taken into your gut, like a terrier, and basically ready to be gotten rid of. But your microbiome can basically recognize that estrogen, and then take that tag, which is usually a glucose tag, and break it off and make estrogen activated again. And so then that estrogen can now go back into your body, get reabsorbed through your pleural vein, and start to be used again as estrogen, which is really important as you're going through perimenopause. So some of the probiotics that we see that can help activate, that estrogen, are bifidus probiotics. So the phrobacterium brev, which is one probiotic that we have in this particular sort of hormonal metabolic control product that we've made, that we felt would be the right kind of support for seqal. So helps give you a little bit more estrogen for this estrogen recycling, helps manage your gut. And interestingly, B-brev has been shown to also have a lot of, I would say, overall metabolic improvements as well, too, in terms of body composition. And also helping with some of these metabolic biomarkers, like blood glucose. So yeah, that's what we're excited for.

Speaker 1:
[55:43] Well, it's hit so many targets. And actually, I just did a podcast interview with, I think it was called Dr. Cynthia Thorlow. She's a nurse practitioner. She wrote a book called The Menopause Gut. So it's so fascinating. And so it's amazing. So if I understood this correctly, this bifidobacteria brev is recycling the estrogen, keeping it more active or helps you so it stays longer or that your body can, I guess, recycling, I don't want to say produce it, but you're just recycling some estrogen so it's not gone away.

Speaker 2:
[56:14] Yeah. So you're just not getting flushed out. And yeah, as we're just talking, like your ovaries are making less and less estrogen, you can't really place it as well. Now, this is a nice way to keep that estrogen from not getting shut it out, but being taken back up again so it can do all these nice things for our mitochondria and our muscles and all the rest.

Speaker 1:
[56:32] I wonder then, this would be interesting because then it seems to me that it would be a bit more of an even flow for your seq, let's call it, it's like the metabolite to be functioning like estrogen. And so you may not have as many fluctuations. And would this be a good product for a woman going through perimenopause, who's sometimes making her own estrogen but needs some support and doesn't want to use estradiol for them? Could she take this? And would it be helping?

Speaker 2:
[56:58] Yeah, kind of even things out. This is exactly how I think about it. The thing about Seqal is kind of like a hormonal adaptogen, right?

Speaker 1:
[57:05] Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I'm praying that it's like that.

Speaker 2:
[57:09] No, that is the way it's going to work, is that it's really just focusing on these one type of estrogen receptors, so not like this full kind of onslaught of changes that estrogen can bring. And at the same time, it's also like, I'm not going to go into this too much. It's also helped managing your androgens as well too, so that you're not going to have like androgen dominance as well. So, I think that's why I think it is an adaptogen, it's just kind of keeping everything at an even keel. Yeah, it's true, like when we start to really see these terrible menopause symptoms, like the night sweats, it's usually because of a lot of changes in estrogen that are happening very, very quickly. So you want to smooth those out.

Speaker 1:
[57:46] It's amazing, plants are amazing, and our body uses these things too. So we're talking about, MitoQ has a new formula. It is the name called Hormonal Metabolic Control.

Speaker 2:
[57:57] I know it's a mouthful, but we're like, we have to explain what it is. It's, I think, one of those products that, like, is this missing solution for a lot of women, but it needs education. It needs to be explained about, like, yeah, your metabolism is changing, you feel like, oh, maybe I should just run for GLP-1, but, like, I say, go towards the root cause and try to address the root cause, which is the hormones affecting your metabolism. And then, yeah, we also just knew that it wasn't like, we're going to bring you back the way HRT is, it's just kind of keeping things at a more even keel. So it can be used with HRT, for instance. It's not like it'll overload your system. It's just kind of that extra nudge in the right direction.

Speaker 1:
[58:34] Oh, interesting. Yeah, that was one of my questions, is if you are already on HRT, why would somebody want this because it's not working or as much as they would or they just like benefits? Why would you take it in a tandem?

Speaker 2:
[58:46] Yeah, I think mostly because of those estrogen beta receptor kind of actions that I think that are more beneficial for us. It's just that extra boost. And I will say that, yeah, that HRT like, it's sometimes tricky to kind of use. You're using a patch and what's starting to kind of fade is you use it over time. And if you're not, you're using an oral kind of situation. You might also go off it a little bit and kind of see that all your symptoms are coming back. And what's nice about SQL is you could just keep taking it throughout. And I can tell you I've been taking SQL for quite a while. Like when I really started to hit Perimenopause and I was having terrible sleep, for instance, I found that SQL was really the answer for my sleep and that was a game changer for me. So, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[59:28] It's really amazing. I'm impressed that it helps with the bone and the heart and the sleep and the muscles and the fat and the metabolism. That's pretty cool in the sense that I didn't think it was that powerful, but I want it to have a short name like MitoQ.

Speaker 2:
[59:41] I know.

Speaker 1:
[59:42] I want it to be like the HormoQ or something.

Speaker 2:
[59:45] Yeah. Maybe you can think of a quick way of saying it because, yeah, I agree, it's a huge mouthful. But the main thing is just that it really works. It's not going to be like instantaneous. I don't want to promise anyone like, overnight, you're going to have everything balance out. But at least in two to three months, you should start to feel really different.

Speaker 1:
[60:01] So then, in the ingredients in here, it's S equal, the bifidobacterium brev. What else is inside there that we need to know about? What's the full?

Speaker 2:
[60:10] Yeah, just things that we thought would provide like a good synergy or sort of some extra boost. So we included chromium. And chromium is really important because that helps with insulin sensitivity. Because yeah, like I could get on my pillar and tell you how much I think we need to manage glucose. We need to manage glucose at all times. For not managing glucose, it can really accelerate our aging. So yeah, I just felt like let's just make sure that goes well. And if you can manage glucose, you can manage a lot of things. For instance, I just recently read a study. There's always that kind of debate of like, does low blood sugar really make you hungry? And there's never been any conclusive proof. But a recent study actually showed that this is true, that people had high blood glucose kind of spiking and kind of prolonged blood glucose really were hunger. Yeah, so I was just like, oh, okay, they finally showed that. So let's get it under control. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[61:03] So I'm curious on why they chose to put chromium instead of say berberine or inositol, inositol, which is kind of the first go-to when I think about blood sugar control in a molecule.

Speaker 2:
[61:14] Yeah, I think chromium has just had so many decades of showing that it really works, and it's also a small dose. So berberine, I think you're probably aware you need like 500 milligrams, a thousand milligrams. We didn't want to burden people by saying now you have to take like four capsules to get the effect. So yeah, that's that way we're thinking.

Speaker 1:
[61:34] Oh, cool. So you've got that. So you've got the chromium for the blood sugar control, then you've got the probiotic for the gut, and then you have the S-Equal for everything else. I'm excited to try it, and it's coming out I think right when we launched this, more or less, this episode. And so if people want to get it, I'll have a code. I think it's Zora or Hack My Age. I'll have the link in the show notes to get it at a discount. But I want to know, are there any contraindications to this? Is there people who should not be taking it?

Speaker 2:
[61:59] Yeah, so that's a good question. We always get asked that. And the main ones are like, are there things that would stop you from taking HRT? Like clotting issues? Would that prohibit you from taking this? And I will say that I would probably hesitate if you have clotting issues. I would probably think about it, maybe discuss it with your doctor. But I can say that, for instance, if you've had cancer in the past, and you're kind of worried this is going to be like some sort of cancer bringer, like that there's been no data showing that Sequal brings back cancer or has any kind of like effect in that way. Obviously, if you have cancer, talk to your doctor, think hard about it. But then the other things that I think you'd want to talk to your doctor about if you have, for instance, cardiovascular disease or diabetes or other metabolic issues, I would say this can only help, but I have not heard of any kind of contraindications. So it's very safe. Sequal can be taken by all sorts of populations and has been taken by all sorts of populations. So diabetics and all the rest, and it seems fine.

Speaker 1:
[62:59] That's good. We always say, ask your doctor first if you have any kind of issues, for any supplement for that matter. But this sounds like it's going to pass the test. The only thing is if you have probably had a soy allergy, I'm guessing you can't or can you?

Speaker 2:
[63:13] Once again, I would be cautious. This is a pure molecule that we're giving, so it's not like it has all the other things that you would get in a soy food, for instance, but you never know. So just be cautious.

Speaker 1:
[63:26] Okay, so my last question, I'll let you go because I'm going to hang out here forever. So we kind of all want this magic pill right now, and maybe we want to skip the diet and the lifestyle, but can we just use Hormonal Metabolic Control or do we actually have to do other things to support our metabolic health as well?

Speaker 2:
[63:41] Oh, God, we all want that magic pill, but no, you cannot just depend on the one thing. You have to think about your health. Much as I explained that how I think of GLP-1s is, yeah, seeming to solve your problems, but maybe only making your problems worse. You always have to think about your diet. You always have to think about how much exercise, especially your sleep. It's funny for me because I think the exercise and diet stuff is like, the easy part, I happen to like fruits and vegetables and all that.

Speaker 1:
[64:10] Tell us about your routine. What do you do? What does your day look like in terms of regulating your metabolic health? You look like you're in very good shape and you're going through this transition pretty well. So what's your secret?

Speaker 2:
[64:20] It's interesting because I recently used a continuous glucose monitor and my obsession with glucose, like what's it doing to my body? It was fascinating to realize that a lot of the stuff I thought was relatively okay for my body, like whole wheat pasta or oats or whatever, was actually making my blood glucose spike. That can be just an individual thing. You never know if like maybe my metabolism just can't handle those kinds of carbs. But I've now made it so that I eat protein or fat with everything. So I never have just a pure carb snack or a meal anymore. So I wake up in the morning and I have like an avocado with some olive oil. And then I might have some oatmeal.

Speaker 1:
[65:00] We dress our carbs. We dress with some protein and fats.

Speaker 2:
[65:04] But yeah, throughout the day, like I will tell you, like I actually am a snacker. I love snacking. But I just snack a lot on fruits and vegetables and I find it really easy to like bring a bag of carrots or have a whole bunch of nectarines that I'm kind of like chomping on. So I love doing that. And I think it's really important. This is something that a lot of women miss is that it's really important to feel filled up, right? So like, yeah, you can try to take away the food noise with the GLP-1. But if you're feeling full all the time, that does a lot of good on its own, especially if it's full of fiber. So I really emphasize fiber. I love berries. Berries are really good for your brain. So I'm constantly throwing frozen berries on everything. I'm like, why not? It's like really good for my brain. Lots of fiber. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[65:47] Yeah. Oh, I do too. We always have batches of it. I would try to eat seasonal, but when it comes to berries, I'm like, no.

Speaker 2:
[65:53] No, it's just frozen. It's fun. Put it in yogurt, put it in a cup and eat the cup like a little treat. I don't know. It's just perfect. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[66:01] So when did you start taking, I don't know if it's either Sequal or actually the product?

Speaker 2:
[66:06] We just invented the product. So this has been a labor of love for the last year. But I, as I said, had read about Sequal 20 years ago. And then when I started going to Paranmenopause, which unfortunately was pretty early for me, like in my really early 40s, I was like, I think Sequal might be the thing. I know it has all these benefits. And yeah, like I couldn't control sleep. I could control diet and all that. But I was just having the worst sleep ever. So I bit the bullet and I ordered from Japan, because that's what you have to do to get the Sequal. And so then, yeah, I took it for a while to really help with my sleep. And then at some point, it was hard to get from Japan. I think this was like maybe during COVID. So yeah, this is where I'm really happy. It's now much easier to get. So especially combined with all these other things I love, like probiotics, like I feel like we all should be taking some probiotic, just kind of manage things almost like insurance. And so yeah, I think there's a real service energy with them together.

Speaker 1:
[66:58] Oh, I love it. You've got your own experience too. So I'm going to try it myself. I'm going to share it. If anybody wants it, go to mitoq.com/hack my age. You can use the code Zora. You're going to get 20 percent off and give me your feedback, please. This is how I know these things are working or not working for most of us. And I'd love to have your feedback. And if you want to learn more, just mitoq.com. They also have an Instagram. And if somebody wants to reach out to you, Siobhan, and has questions about mitochondria or metabolism, how can they find you?

Speaker 2:
[67:28] Yeah, they can email me. My email is smichael at mitoq.com. So yeah, if you have any questions about MitoQ or this, yeah, kind of hormonal metabolic control or SQL, I'm happy to answer.

Speaker 1:
[67:40] Oh, wonderful. And there's no MitoQ actually in that new product.

Speaker 2:
[67:44] It's really like, we felt like SQL was just really perfect for the job. So yeah, I'm really excited for people to also tell me what they feel they've gotten for this product. So yeah, let me know.

Speaker 1:
[67:54] Oh, so exciting. Thank you so much Siobhan for your time. I always, you have so much patience with me and you're very good at explaining the science and it's just the right balance because we need some science, but we also need a little bit of explanation. And I'm just so grateful that for the work that you're doing, you've got loads of decades and decades of information of experience and research as well. So keep doing what you're doing. And I'm excited to hear the feedback. Thank you everyone who's reached the end of the podcast for without you were nowhere. So we really need you to keep listening. Thank you and have a good day, good night, good morning, wherever you're at. And thank you Siobhan for your time. And I hope to talk to you again very, very soon. Take care.

Speaker 2:
[68:29] Yeah. And thank you. Thank you for everything you do.

Speaker 1:
[68:33] Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[68:33] Bye bye.

Speaker 1:
[68:34] Hey, did you enjoy the podcast? Don't forget to subscribe to be notified of all the new episodes and leave a. Comment below and we will see you next time.