Ep 557: It’s Not Just Hormones: Navigating Midlife, Mood Swings & Mental Clarity with Theresa Lear Levine

If you’re a woman over 40 wondering “What is happening to me?”—this episode is your permission slip to get curious, not quiet. Dr. Jannine Krause and Theresa Lear Levine dive deep into the hormonal maze of perimenopause and menopause—from brain fog and bloating to ADHD symptoms and anxiety—and explain how these changes ripple far beyond your period tracker.

We talk hormone replacement therapy (HRT)—the myths, the magic, and the marketing of “bioidenticals.” We break down the often-missed links between gut health, detoxification, emotional regulation, and your hormone story. And yes, we talk about the things nobody wants to admit: the not so pretty results of various cleanses, the relationship between estrogen, binge eating and emotional outbursts, and why relational healing is hormonal healing.

This is the conversation your doctor probably hasn’t had with you—but your body is begging for it.

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✨ Notable Quotes:

• “All healing is relational healing.”
• “It’s not just about the uterus—your whole life changes.”
• “You can’t out-supplement a nervous system stuck in survival mode.”
• “It’s like cleaning out a sewer pipe—but for your hormones.”

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🧭 Perfect For You If:

• You’re in your 40s or 50s and feeling “off” but don’t know why
• You’ve tried diets, supplements, or HRT or Bio-HRT but still feel stuck
• You’ve been dismissed or misdiagnosed
• You’re craving clarity, connection, and a roadmap that makes sense

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Podcast Transcript

Chapters

00:00 Navigating Perimenopause and Menopause Conversations
04:40 Understanding Hormonal Changes and Their Impact
07:30 ADHD and Hormonal Connections
10:42 Gut Health and Hormonal Balance
13:46 Detoxing and Cleansing for Hormonal Health
16:44 The Role of Xenoestrogens and Environmental Factors
19:40 Weight Management and Hormonal Influences
26:55 Navigating Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Confusion
31:42 Understanding Bioidentical Hormones
36:46 The Impact of HRT on Mental Clarity and Focus
41:42 Emotional and Nervous System Health During Hormonal Changes
46:33 The Importance of Community and Support in Healing

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Dr. Jannine Krause (00:01)
Teresa and Janine here ready to talk about something that women over 40 sometimes even over 35 start to experience the fun stuff of perimenopause into menopause. Teresa, yeah, yeah, we have to talk about it. We have to talk about it, especially today. Like before we hit record guys, there was like so much fun banter of like what’s going on with you. And I think, you know, a lot of gals are starting to open up conversations about

Theresa Lear Levine (00:13)
You have to.

Dr. Jannine Krause (00:29)
What’s going on with perimenopause and menopause, but I don’t know. Are you talking with your friends about it? ⁓

Theresa Lear Levine (00:37)
I think it’s good to have, I love having a friend like you that I can talk about it with, that’s for sure. I

don’t think that people talk about it enough. I unabashedly bring it up in places where it might or might not be as welcome like it to be. But I just think, hey, you know what, even if I make somebody a little uncomfortable talking about what’s going on, I think it brings more awareness. And I think that’s exactly what we’ve been missing as women. so it’s part of the solution, make people a little uncomfortable.

and also introduce them to things they haven’t thought about. mean, when I look back even a year in my journey and I think about all the things I’ve done in the last year to improve the way my systems are functioning, to clean things up, to make things easier, and to try things so that I can combat these different symptoms and feel more like my somewhat younger self, I didn’t know all this a year ago.

And you don’t know what you don’t know until you know it. So these are the conversations that are really important so that people can go like, gosh, never thought about trying that or never thought that my liver and my kidneys or my colon could be affecting my perimenopause systems because that’s just my uterus or there’s so much more to the picture, right?

Dr. Jannine Krause (01:55)
my gosh, so much, so much. And yeah, that compartmentalization thing is real. We’ve been taught that through the conventional medical system, that this is one part experiencing that, that’s one part experiencing that. And thank goodness for, there’s a lot of conversations out there now about how perimenopause and menopause shifts, and I call it changing of the fuel, in the body is really affecting every part of your body. And it’s like…

Theresa Lear Levine (02:15)
Thank

Dr. Jannine Krause (02:22)
I mean, some days it’s comical, some days it’s frustrating, and because I’m experiencing it too, I feel like it’s, I guess if I was younger, I feel like I wouldn’t be able to relate to my ladies, and now I’m like, my God, I’m experiencing all these things. And even like you said, a year ago, I was looking back at some of the things that I was experiencing and was like, I had no idea that that was probably part of hormone shifts too, and just kind of the effect of the whole shift on my body.

It’s a while.

Theresa Lear Levine (02:52)
Yeah.

And do you relate with like the ADHD type symptoms yourself? Okay, I thought so, but I didn’t want to make any assumptions. I obviously do. And I knew there could be some overlap, but…

Dr. Jannine Krause (02:58)
yeah, yeah, yeah

Theresa Lear Levine (03:08)
I think that that is one of those things that is getting majorly overlooked when people are getting diagnosed. mean, looking at my own story, of course I know without a doubt that ADHD was part of my life since childhood. We weren’t really diagnosing it back then or doing much about it. I just have always kind of tried to embrace the upsides of it. But I would say that in my early 40s, it got a lot more challenging. And that is when I got my official diagnosis.

There was enough going on at that point where I was like, maybe I do want to see if medication would help, or maybe I do want to know is this what’s really going on? And also several of my kids had been diagnosed, so just made sense. Like, don’t get the diagnosis, we’re all in this together, let’s see. And it strikes me so oddly now when I’m thinking about this, because that was like 42, 43. Now I’m 46, close to 47. And never.

along that journey? Did anybody say anything about hormones? It was just a diagnosis for the ADHD and I dabbled with Adderall for a bit, didn’t love it. It was great for a little while and then, so I was like, I’ll find other things. But still the symptoms and the kind of stagnation and the brain fog and the having a hard time with like productivity and following through on things.

got worse than I feel like it ever had been. It felt like a much more like uphill battle. And, you know, get to this later, but I feel like fixing stuff with my hormones has made a huge difference more than anything that was ever done to address ADHD alone.

Dr. Jannine Krause (04:50)
Hey, know, it’s interesting you mention that because so many patients of mine, because I think there’s more awareness on ADHD too, right? But I think so many more patients of mine have been diagnosed within the last, I’d say, couple years with ADHD, but then I’m looking at their ages and we’re, you know, late 30s, 40s. I am the same age as you, 46 going on 47. And yeah, I also like, you know, I never identified with ADHD. I was usually pretty focused, get stuff done, but then in the last couple years,

I found myself just like sitting there going like, what? You know, just like bizarre like behavior that wasn’t characteristic for me where I couldn’t focus on stuff, where I was pinging all over the place and had started all these different projects and never finished them. And I was like the one who would always like get something done, then move to the next thing and get something done. And then I was like juggling five different things and nothing getting done. And I’m like, that’s not me.

Theresa Lear Levine (05:48)
Right.

Dr. Jannine Krause (05:48)
And so I’m like, I never was like, I’m gonna go for ADHD diagnosis, I, you know, hearing you talk, hearing other people talk, I’m like, that was probably the start of the estrogen really starting to go on the roller coaster that I’m on and having those really big bottom outs, I think, are what, and what I’m experiencing now to like a more severe degree, I guess you could say.

Theresa Lear Levine (06:13)
Yeah. So for me, it really culminated last year. I was having a lot more ups and downs emotionally. I was having a reemergence of hormonal acne, cystic-type hormonal acne. The brain fog, like I said, was worse than ever. I was tired. I’ve been through times in my life raising young children and things where I was tired. But this was different and these feelings almost being like narcoleptic, like must take nap or I don’t know what’s going to happen.

of tired. And then the hot flashes. So for me, the hot flashes started originally about a year and a half ago, and I was able to take some supplements at that point that really helped. And I was like, cool, know, whatever, take care of this and no big deal. And then it was so good that I went off of the supplements like last summer and didn’t really have any problems until last December again.

with the hot flashes, but this time when they came back, the same supplement didn’t help. and one of my practitioners who I saw quite a bit last year had said, yeah, that’s kind of happened sometimes. Like what you respond to the first time doesn’t work when they come back a little stronger. But this time it was awful. Like I was having like 12 plus hot flashes a night where my sleep was majorly interrupted.

and I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep, so I don’t do well tired. Like I’m usually very good at protecting my time to rest. I go to bed when I’m supposed to to get like a good seven hours of sleep, which for me is optimal, but I wasn’t getting it. I was getting maybe like four or five between like all the waking up and everything else. So yeah, hot flashes and then like the libido kind of starting to tank and that’s not me either. So I was like, we gotta do something about all of this. Plus like just bloating.

and things like that that I just hadn’t dealt with before. And I think a lot of women don’t understand how all of these things go together. Do you see this a lot when you’re helping people with hormones?

Dr. Jannine Krause (08:15)
Absolutely, absolutely. mean, you know, the bloating, you know, because let’s face it, we have phases in the alternative medicine space where there’s parasites. You know, that’s kind of what’s hot right now. And back like a few years ago, it was SIBO. And back a few years before that, it was Candida. And so a lot of people are still stuck trying to do multiple gut protocols and thinking like…

Why can’t I any better? Like what the heck’s going on? And I myself, I would say that this was probably one of the areas that I was kind of trying to tease out for clients and myself because I’ve had some really like crazy gut stuff happen over the last couple years. And you know, I was doing all my protocols, right? Like got.

probiotics and the colostrum and the tributrines and the this and that and nothing was touching it and so I was like my god and then I think a lot of people too will take the bloating as weight gain and not you know then try to cut calories do that kind of stuff and not really realize that you know it may be worth it to look deeper and for a lot of women the other thing too is fibroids showing up and the fibroids causing that bloat that like you’ve spent a

bunch of money on all kinds of different gut protocols, nothing’s working. And then we do a transvaginal ultrasound and there’s this like softball size fibroid hanging out in there. And you’re like, oh. And so part of it, you know, I mean, I’ll be fully honest. Like I’m learning as I go here as a lot of the things I’m like, oh shoot, that was the hormones. But at the same time, yeah, you were mentioning like, you were mentioning like you were working on your gut, you used some supplements too. You know, I think we have to say that like,

Theresa Lear Levine (09:47)
Yeah, me too.

Dr. Jannine Krause (09:58)
and this is something I know you’re gonna dive into because we chatted about it before we hit record is that like you dialed your body in over the last year to help the hormones work better and the guts so much integral part of it so it’s not like it’s a waste spending the time on the parasite cleanse and the this and that it’s just more you know figuring out like what when to when to move on from that when to move from the next thing

Theresa Lear Levine (10:10)
Yeah.

Dr. Jannine Krause (10:23)
So I want to hear like what supplements, think a lot of people might be thinking like, Teresa, what supplement did you use at first for the hot flashes? And then what have you been kind of doing with your total body restoration or regulation or I don’t know what you want to call it. I’m throwing random words out. I’ll let you word that. Yeah.

Theresa Lear Levine (10:25)
Okay.

I

used the first time my one of my doctors had recommended and it’s called femgard hf and it’s ⁓ I don’t have like a thing with let’s see I can look it up tell you what the main ingredients in it. It had taurine spruce lignans gamma orisanol vitamin e isomers and something from Japanese sofora extract fruit.

Dr. Jannine Krause (10:47)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Theresa Lear Levine (11:07)
I don’t know, none of that means anything to me, but it worked. So ⁓ yeah, if anybody is kind of dealing with it on a beginning kind of level, I highly recommend it was really helpful. It took about seven to 10 days before it really worked. So stick with it. You’d probably wanna invest in a bottle or maybe two to make sure that it’s doing its thing. But I found that to be really helpful. And then, ⁓ I do think there’s like an energetic component in like balancing out the body. And that’s what I really wanted to be responsible about doing.

Dr. Jannine Krause (11:15)
you

Theresa Lear Levine (11:37)
as I kind of went through these different protocols. So I worked with a bioenergetic practitioner and we ⁓ did hair testing to kind of see what was going on in my different systems, which is kind of like a quantum lie detector. So where you can kind of see what’s going on and we noticed a lot of different things where…

Like, my different organs could use a cleanup.

That was kind of the first line of attack was looking at things with my liver and my kidneys. Had me doing like gallbladder liver flushes every like five or six weeks pretty much. And I don’t know that that seemed to make a bit of a difference. Now I’m also not just bloating, I definitely have weight gain. Like over the last few years, I’ve probably put on like 40 pounds. So pretty significant weight gain for me. ⁓ Being that even like before

And after the weight gain, still like, work out, I lift weights, I walk, I get a lot of steps in, I’m very active, I have four kids. So not a whole lot changed. And I eat very well and very healthy, I think too. I, throughout the last four years as I’ve gained weight, I tried different things, know, more high protein, kind of keto style. I tried eliminating different things. In fact, when I started doing these protocols last summer and we did the hair testing, there were allergies showing up to things like chicken, pork.

turkey, dairy, trying to think what else we eliminate. We eliminated a lot for several months. So for several months, I wasn’t eating a lot of those different things that I would typically eat as protein sources. It was a lot of steak, beef around here, and eggs. But then when we redid the tests a few months later, and with the different remedies and things that we did to clean up different systems, I was no longer showing allergic reactions to those things.

Dr. Jannine Krause (13:23)
Wow.

Theresa Lear Levine (13:37)
So I’m back to being able to eat those things again. The dairy is still kind of like hit or miss as far as like I’ve replaced a lot of the things that are dairy with other things because it does seem like my body does not love like the dairy and the cheese. But other than that, I’ve been able to add everything else back in and dairy and cheese are just kind of at my own peril. So they’re not like necessarily like making anything horribly bad, whatever. So yeah, we did a lot of cleanup as far as the diet and the gallbladder, the liver. ⁓

I did things like the Zen cleanse for my colon to get rid of the mucoid plaque and things like that. You can probably speak better to that than I can. But the idea in cleaning up the systems, the organs around the uterus and things is that all those things are really close. It’s not like anything’s that far apart inside of your body. So if there’s a bigger, you know,

Dr. Jannine Krause (14:13)
⁓ tell us more about

Theresa Lear Levine (14:33)
load of toxins or things to clean up in a system that’s, mean, your colon’s right up against your uterus, you know? So, and yeah, if you look up mucoid plaque and pictures of that in the colon, there’s some really interesting and pretty gross images to see. And that’s pretty much, do this cleanse for 24 hours, which is very easy. It was very easy to do. And then ⁓ your body releases this plaque over the course of the following days. And ⁓ it’s kind of like cleaning out a sewer pipe.

Dr. Jannine Krause (14:39)
Yeah.

Nice, nice, without having to do a colonic.

Theresa Lear Levine (15:04)
So…

Right, now coffee enemas were also something that was recommended during this journey too. So it’s like, I have tried the whole gamut of things over the last nine months or so. And that also, you know, kind of to see if that would help with both energy and kind of cleaning out toxins and things like that. ⁓ Anything to add from you on any of these things that were recommended for me or how or why they might work.

Dr. Jannine Krause (15:31)
You know,

I mean, I think it runs the gamut depending on the person and like, yeah, coffee enemas, they’ve been around for eons to help cleanse. And so, yeah, absolutely something that could be beneficial. You know why it may work? Well, coffee is America’s best laxative for a reason. And it does pull out a lot of stuff because it’s gonna trigger a good squeeze, let’s put it that way, on the gut and the stimulant there. So, you know.

Theresa Lear Levine (15:50)
I’m

Dr. Jannine Krause (16:00)
That the mucoid plaque, mean, getting any stuff that’s stuck to the inside of your colon is amazing for you and just really helping because one of the things that gets confused as we get older is the reabsorption of estrogens. And that’s something that I’ve dealt with for, I would say, much of my life and didn’t know it in my 20s. And I’m guessing that’s probably why my mom ended up with breast cancer that was estrogen positive. think.

she just struggled with gut stuff. She was more on the constipated side. I’m more on the opposite side of that department, but it still plays in for something called beta glucuronidase. Now, did you do any testing like GI map or GI effects with Genova or did you guys do any of that or was it more just hair?

Theresa Lear Levine (16:36)
Right.

So we did the hair testing and we also did a bunch of blood work in labs, just instead of my doctor’s like, A-okay, everything’s fine. We had a different viewpoint on it where it’s like, this can be way better. So we did find things through both of those tests that showed like congested liver, gallbladder and colon that showed viral loads like Epstein-Barr type stuff that showed… ⁓

Dr. Jannine Krause (16:50)
Okay, okay.

Theresa Lear Levine (17:10)
some parasitic frequencies and that also showed that like my adrenal glands were pretty stressed out and those inflammatory food responses, I guess it wasn’t like allergies, it more inflammatory. But it’s kind of like no wonder I felt like crap because my body was like in defense mode.

So that’s a lot of what we found. And we started with things like berberine and artemisia to clear bacteria and parasites. We added in things like psyllium husk as kind of like a gut sweeper. We added in milk thistle to detox the liver. We did a bunch of different types of binders so that we could trap those released toxins. And throughout a few of my different protocols, we would add in

⁓ to clear like excess estrogen or xenoestrogens. Can you explain xenoestrogens better than I can and how they show up for people? I’m just like, okay, I listen when people explain stuff to me, but then I usually it gets released and I don’t remember exactly how to explain it very well anymore.

Dr. Jannine Krause (18:09)
True.

That’s a great question. Yeah, Xenoestrogens often come from plastic in the environment. ⁓ One of the most common things that we don’t think about as adults, because we’re so used to having this stuff around, is like we go and get the to-go cup from Starbucks, and it’s got the plastic cup on top, and we’re sipping on that plastic. Or we may have our like to-go mugs that we sit in the car and we’re commuting to work with, and they have plastic on the top. You have a very good example there. looks like the Yeti is this thing.

Yes, silicone and stainless steel there. And you’ve got your stainless steel straw too, which also…

Theresa Lear Levine (18:52)
just has a

silicone tip on it I like to chew on it. can’t stand a hard straw or a paper straw. It’s got to be that in between.

Dr. Jannine Krause (19:01)
Huh, interesting. You know, the thing about the paper straws, they melt before I finish drinks and that just grosses me out so much, because I’m like, what is in that paper? ⁓ yeah, I can’t do it. But here’s the thing, a lot of people will go and mix up the coffee or the tea and it’s like a plastic stick there. So now we like plastic ourselves like four times. And if you go to a restaurant, chances are that they’ve heated things in plastic. You know, we might have scrapes on our pots and pans, all of that stuff. And if you’re doing…

Theresa Lear Levine (19:18)
great.

or

we purchase, you know, the convenience store or whatever.

Dr. Jannine Krause (19:31)
Right, right, the clothes we wear has

plastic and it gets washed in hot water sometimes. know, we can’t avoid plastics. Like know people are saying like, oh, you got to detox all the microplastics, but I really don’t know how. Like my, was like, I don’t know how we’re going to get that all out, but Xenoestrogens really truly, for most people are coming from plastics. We also have the ones that are getting converted from pesticides and the chemicals in the air. You know, it’s everywhere.

Theresa Lear Levine (19:58)
Thanks.

did things

to detox the microplastics as part of my protocols and obviously that’s just not something that lasts. That’s something that, you know, if we’re going to detox those kind of things, we need to do it regularly, like every, you few years or something like that so that we can really have that benefit last for longer. But yeah, the way that it was kind of explained to me as I was kind of getting into these protocols was that like the liver is kind of like a hormonal processing plant. And if it’s sluggish, then you can’t metabolize the estrogen.

Dr. Jannine Krause (20:04)
Mm-hmm.

Theresa Lear Levine (20:29)
and fat doesn’t burn efficiently and toxins back up in your bloodstream. it’s like everything gets worse if stuff in the liver is not in order. And I don’t think that typically gets addressed with any, know, with a typical like primary care physician or somebody who you’re going to see about your hormone imbalances or your perimenopause symptoms.

Dr. Jannine Krause (20:52)
No, no, unfortunately it’s really cool right now to be like, I work on hormones, but really it’s I give you hormones and then you maybe take some supplements that counter it, but nothing’s ⁓ customized and there isn’t the prep beforehand. Because I’ll be honest, I’m the one that sees people when things go south with the hormones, when they can’t tolerate them, we need to microdose them, we need to go back to basics and clean the body back out.

Yeah, the biggest thing that’s being overlooked, I think, when it comes to figuring out hormones for women is who’s got fatty liver going into this and who’s got the start of fatty liver going into this because that is one of the biggest issues that I see happening. Estrogens start to come down as a whole. Chlostrol goes up. Well, cholesterol is where it’s getting processed through that dang liver of yours. And if you start to see your liver enzymes going up and your weight’s going up,

you can do calculations to see what’s up. There’s something, I mean the BMI, I do not love it because I’m always overweight on it based on my muscle mass. But it does help in using the BMI, find out your BMI and then calculate something called the hepatic steatosis index. And every single one you guys out there right now could literally type in hepatic steatosis index armed with your BMI calculation, which you can also get online very easily.

plug in, go to your labs at the comprehensive metabolic panel and you can plug in your AST and ALT levels right there and you’re gonna get your index. Anything over 36 is considered fatty liver. Anything between 30 and 36 is inconclusive and what I call probably pre fatty liver time to really do something. If you’re way under 30 then I’m not worried about you. I’m like okay, you’re doing all right in that department. So.

That’s a big one that like I’m looking at, man, I should have looked at that 10 years ago on myself because I’m pretty sure this process was happening 10 years ago.

Theresa Lear Levine (22:51)
Yeah, that’s fascinating and thank you for the resource. That’s definitely helpful. I’ve never actually looked at that either. So I’m gonna be hopping over there after we’re done to see where my levels are. Yeah, and there’s just, there’s so many different components and I’m still trying to figure out the weight part of it. And I do think that what I’m doing now is going to help. Cause like I said, I feel like whenever I have experts on and we talk about like the things to do when you’re in perimenopause to, you either lose weight or maintain muscle and weight and stuff, like I’m already doing all.

of those things. So, yeah, and we, as we kind of went through these different protocols, you know, we looked to see, you am I, am I pre-diabetic? How am I processing insulin? I even wore one of those, you know, things on the back of my arm for a month to like, you know, check how my body was responding to different foods and things. That wasn’t a problem. ⁓ We even went so far as to look at like leptin because apparently like your leptin levels can have, and the way that you’re like exposed to different lights and Lord knows we’ve got a lot of weird light sources and things that affect

Dr. Jannine Krause (23:33)
you

Theresa Lear Levine (23:51)
that these days can make a huge difference on the weight that you put on or don’t release. So my leptin levels were fine. My insulin and the way I was responding to stuff when I was wearing the continuous glucose monitor were fine. And it was at the point where the guy that I was working with was kind of like, I don’t know, maybe you just start working out like twice as long or whatever. And I’m like, that sucks, but I mean, I’ll try it. And I even started doing heavier workouts and things and still like…

It’s like I’m not budging. So that’s been the biggest mystery. That’s been the biggest mystery, the weight and everything else. Cause it feels like, okay, all my systems are pretty clean right now and things are good and meat healthy and still like, still not coming off. So I think I’m gonna have, I’m hoping I’ll have the answers to that somewhere in this year’s things that I try out and experiment with. But yeah, there’s just so many things that aren’t thought about like,

these strategies that nobody gets taught or the way that estrogen supports dopamine and progesterone calms your nervous system and testosterone fuels your drive. So when you crash in perimenopause, your mental health might suffer and nobody’s putting it together in a way that makes sense to most people.

Dr. Jannine Krause (24:59)
Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Theresa Lear Levine (25:19)
So it makes us all feel like we’re kind of being like gaslit all the time. And then I think I talked to you about this too, because so the thing that’s been working for me right now, the best has been HRT or BHRT. But.

I had so much confusion when I went, I went first to my primary care physician, because I had talked to Jason Persaud, who I was working with on all the other protocols, and he gave me some final protocols to try, and he’s like, oh, you we can try doing like the bovine placenta and the different organs and things, and we can try more DIM, and we can try this, and we can do that colon cleanse, and I did all of those things. I still wasn’t getting anywhere. And he’s like, or you can kind of.

press the easy button and go get some HRT. And I was like, but there’s part of me that felt like I needed to like try all the other things to see if I could fix it in a different way first, which it’s like, if I had known how good this was gonna be, I probably would have skipped a lot of the other stuff. But I also feel like what we said before, like I set myself up right by doing those things. So I went to my primary care physician first and you know, it was just a tele-visit.

and she was perfectly willing to prescribe the estrogen patch and the progesterone to take at night and give that a go. But I was confused because I was like, is this bioidentical or is this not? And so I went and she also told me that no matter what, she would not prescribe testosterone.

So it’s kind of like, hmm, interesting, but also like whatever, mean, that’s the way you do things, that’s the way you do things. So I wanted to get somebody else on my team that would at least test and give me options for that if I needed it down the road, and also would prescribe something bioidentical, because my doctor’s telling me this isn’t bioidentical, what she’s prescribed, and also telling me it’s not necessary, it’s whatever, but if you want to do that, you can go to a compounding pharmacy and you can get it. It’s like, okay, and also I’ve heard the other side of it, so I’m confused now more than I already

Dr. Jannine Krause (26:49)
Mm-hmm.

Theresa Lear Levine (27:15)
I go to see another doctor about it who prescribes bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. And what do you know? She prescribes the exact same thing that my primary care physician prescribed and told me wasn’t bioidentical. And then I reached out to you, I remember, and I was like, what the fuck? Basically, like, what is this? it’s just a marketing term. It’s just a marketing term, but like…

They make, it was so frustrating. I’m like, extra, extra copay, extra visits, extra research, all this stuff. Like, could nobody just say, it’s just a marketing term.

Dr. Jannine Krause (27:57)
You know, it comes from the days of some of the old school stuff that’s still out there that is ⁓ like 100 % synthetic. so, but most people nowadays are gonna prescribe bioidentical patches. That’s what they are, bioidentical for everyone out there. Bioidentical does not mean natural. It is all synthetic. And that’s where people are saying that too. And I’ll get a lot of patients coming in and saying like, I want the natural hormones. And I’m like, so you want herbs?

And they’re like, no, I want a patch and I want this. And I’m like, that’s not natural, it’s all synthetic. But it works like you’re saying, it works like the Dickens, you know? I don’t have, like I tell people, I don’t have anything natural that is as strong as these things. And they work, amazing. If the body is primed beforehand. If they don’t, and I’m the person, like I said, I’m the person people come to when stuff’s hitting the fan and they’re like, my God, I don’t know how to do this. And so we do kind of crazy microdosing.

things to figure it out and sometimes blend the herbs, but with the bioidenticals. But yeah, bioidentical really is, I mean, for lack of a better term, like yes, they look more like your hormones are in the body, but really it’s micro, I mean, it’s marketing now because we’re mostly using, even in the conventional space, the…

bioidenticals and it’s usually and just to get this out there because for folks who are like, oh, maybe I want to just try what my doc has because it goes through my insurance. Most of the time they are programmed to prescribe you 200 milligrams of progesterone and a 0.05 patch. That’s what you’re going to get. And that’s like the standard because the research shows that the 200 milligrams of progesterone orally is the best protection for the uterine lining. And the 0.05 patch is kind of like the middle of the road.

Theresa Lear Levine (29:27)
Mm.

Hmm.

Dr. Jannine Krause (29:48)
And this is your blanket hormone stuff. And that is hands down what people will get when they go to a doc who’s taking a couple classes on bioidentical hormone.

Theresa Lear Levine (30:00)
Interesting. I was prescribed like less

than half of that.

originally and we’ve been like working on tweaking things. ⁓ Now of course my primary care physician didn’t want to work on tweaking anything until June. The other doctor is already like working on like a month into a hormone replacement is already like, hey, let’s raise this up a little bit. Let’s leave this where it is. Let’s add in some estrogen cream. Let’s like see. And she’s a little bit more, I’m like, why should I suffer for like an extra few months if we can make this better?

Dr. Jannine Krause (30:11)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No.

Exactly. And what you’re describing is exactly what happens. So the second person you went to is more well versed to know to start low, go slow, adjust, you know, as, you’re going in and then adding possibly a vaginal cream because dryness, because people have pelvic floor dysfunction. We may need more than just Estriol because Estriol is kind of like great for the tissues. I’m like soon we will have lotion for the whole body with Estriol.

because we’ve now discovered that it’s great for all of our skin. But Estrella’s not strong enough vaginally for someone who is having prolapse and the exercises aren’t doing all the thing and the radio frequency. So radio frequency treatments for pelvic floor, by the way, game changers for people. It’s spendy. It’s about three to four grand for ⁓ a package and I think it’s like maybe four to six sessions. don’t know, I don’t wanna get exact on that.

Theresa Lear Levine (31:27)
sit on the

thing? No.

Dr. Jannine Krause (31:28)
No, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Theresa Lear Levine (31:38)
How does this work? OK, like an internal wand.

Dr. Jannine Krause (31:58)
We were giggling the whole time because I was like, my god, it feels like you’re doing a massage of my vagina, but like not in a sexual way. I’m like, this actually feels like it’s loosening like all this tension that I’ve had for years. And like, no joke, her one session got rid of a back pain that I had had for ever since that disc herniation a couple years ago. And it’s not, that pain has not come back to this day. It’s come back differently.

but not that same deep right-sided like no one can get to it with the massage kind of pain. And that radio frequency, that little wand just went and it just went.

Theresa Lear Levine (32:37)
So what kind of places offer this?

Dr. Jannine Krause (32:39)
Mostly med spas. And

the device is a Morpheus, is what it’s called. And it’s also used for like skincare too. So they have a Morpheus 8 that has micro-needling, but you can micro-needle your vaginal tissue, which may sound terrifying to people, but don’t worry, there’s a numbing agent. It’s not that bad. And I have not had it done because I don’t have severe prolapse, but I have patients that have. Yeah.

Theresa Lear Levine (33:05)
through way worse things. I’ve never understood

why this slang for one is used as an insult because I’m like, they are some tough things. they can handle some microneedling.

Dr. Jannine Krause (33:15)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and obviously with the numbing agent, but like the truth is, like, I’m seeing great results with those. And you know, depending on how severe, like there are some cases where it’s not gonna help because it’s so severe, but everyone that I’ve sent over there has had benefit. And this is empowered MedSpa and Tacoma. If you go to their website, you will see what it is. It’s RF radio frequency treatments, and then Morpheus 8 is what they’re using.

And I mean, just like, MSL, don’t waste your money. Don’t do the sitting thing.

Theresa Lear Levine (33:50)
Yeah,

no, I wasn’t planning on it. I wasn’t sure if that’s what you were talking about or not. I will try this though. I will definitely look for places near me that do that because I did pelvic floor therapy with my PT after my now eight year old was like a year or so old and had really good results with it. But then I feel like it’s gotten worse over the last couple of years again and the same things aren’t fixing it. So.

Dr. Jannine Krause (33:54)
Uh-uh.

Yeah. Yeah.

Theresa Lear Levine (34:18)
this could be a good alternative and sounds like it’s pretty awesome so I’ll give it a try. Yeah, yeah all these things that yeah people just don’t even know about because they’re not the kind of things that regular doctors are talking about but I gotta say that

Dr. Jannine Krause (34:25)
Yeah.

Theresa Lear Levine (34:36)
as soon as I started the HRT, like less than 24 hours in, I slept better the first night, even just with, you know, the first night taking the progesterone along with it. My focus, like I knocked out my to-do list that first day. And I, like I mentioned before, when I was diagnosed with ADHD, I did try Adderall and I had really good response to it at first. Like I had a few like really great weeks on Adderall where I was like, this is amazing. And then it wasn’t amazing anymore. ⁓

but with the HRT I was like, wow, this is like better than Adderall was. Like I felt good, I had good energy, I was like in flow, I was motivated, my productivity was like soaring and yeah, literally it was better. So it felt like to me when that happened that I was like, ah, I have found the missing piece, not just for my brain, but for my whole being and that felt really good.

Dr. Jannine Krause (35:31)
I get so many texts or voicemails of like, why did I wait so long, know, kind of stuff. And that’s the beauty of it. Like it really does benefit, but I have to stress like you put in the work ahead of time. And this is where I have a lot of people who will try things and say, my God, I feel worse. Everything’s terrible. And this is where it’s like, right, we gotta go back.

to basics and I don’t let people suffer. I will put microdoses of hormones on while we’re working on the back end of things, but I’m not gonna throw in like the 200 milligrams of progesterone with the like 0.05 patch. it’s not gonna help a lot of people that haven’t done the pre-work and that’s where I’m at personally is trying to do my pre-work before really loading myself up. I mean, I use progesterone half for like 10 years.

Theresa Lear Levine (36:00)
Right.

Dr. Jannine Krause (36:22)
and it’s helpful for sleep, for sure. But estrogen I can’t do consistently like we were saying yet because my, not because I get periods by the way, a lot of women have been told, and I don’t know if you were told this, when you were still getting your period, that you couldn’t do estrogen. Were you told that?

Theresa Lear Levine (36:27)
it.

No, no, ⁓ no. mean, my periods just started getting like really irregular in the last like six months and then like I haven’t had one for a few months. So it wasn’t that far out from not having one when they put me on HRT. So it’s like still I could have had one any day. ⁓

Dr. Jannine Krause (36:43)
Okay.

Yeah, and that happens.

Theresa Lear Levine (37:06)
Yeah, I still could. mean, who knows? And I think just the idea of perimenopause and menopause in general sometimes gets misunderstood too. I remember it being like a really big eye-opener for me when I think I was reading, ⁓ what is the book about perimenopause? I think it’s like Menopause Brain or something.

I’m gonna look at my audible library so that you all know what it is and you can look at it if you want to. Menopause Brain, yes, by Dr. Lisa Mosconi. So she talks about the different stages and she talks about all the different angles and things and that was really helpful. know Megan Swan, who was on my podcast, recommended that book when we were talking about perimenopause on my show. But she talks about how it gets really misunderstood that…

You’re in perimenopause up until you have 12 consecutive months without a period. And then people always talk about, I’m in menopause now or whatever, but menopause itself is a 24 hour event. Which is like, oh, I was like, I never heard it explained that way. And I was like, oh, that makes total sense. And then you’re post menopausal for the rest of time thereafter. So.

That was interesting to me. And then anything that should set that back, know, maybe six months without a period and you have one, then you’re back to that 12 month counter again, waiting for that one day and then postman puzzle. So there’s just, there’s so much that nobody talked to us about. This is not stuff that my parents or I don’t, haven’t found anybody who, you know, grew up, maybe, you know, Kate Northrup, whose mother was like, you know, educated in this. You know, you don’t hear about a whole lot of people who grew up with.

Dr. Jannine Krause (38:37)
Yeah. ⁓

Theresa Lear Levine (38:44)
an education around their cycle or what happens when their cycle stops or anything. And this is like, it’s a huge part of our life. know, perimenopause through postmenopause is like 50 % or more of our life. It’s a long bit of big chunk of it.

So understanding how to manage it and make the best of it seems really important. And I know I talked about the stuff I did kind of physically to clean things up, but quite literally the work that I do with my clients is also work that I do with myself. And that’s super important also for, know, nervous system regulation is really important for hormonal harmony. So yeah, it’s.

Because it’s inherently this time of like physiological change, which can feel like internal chaos. And we have a lot of emotional reactivity, a lot of mood swings, and even a lot of people will have, you know, increased panic or anxiety tied to these fluctuations. things like I do with EFT tapping can be really, really helpful to calm the amygdala, that stress center in the brain, to regulate the cortisol and the stress hormones.

and

to reduce the fight-flight dominance that can happen and really create more emotional safety in a time that feels really unfamiliar, therefore unsafe to the nervous system and create more of like a fertile internal environment for hormone healing to occur. So I think that’s really important too, along with subconscious reprogramming because you go into this part of your life and all of a sudden beliefs and things come up to the surface like,

I’m not enough or I’m losing control. I’m aging. It’s all downhill

my body’s betraying me, all of these things, these beliefs will surface and that can really create a lot more resistance to healing and feeling the way that you want to. So when you can learn to powerfully visualize or to use hypnotherapy, you can access that subconscious part of the mind that’s controlling that. You can reprogram all of those fear-based loops and then you can reinforce the empowering beliefs around worth

and confidence and femininity and aging because it really is a beautiful process and it’s not going away. And then you can have more acceptance. You can have more trust in your body and you can have more fun. So I think it’s really important to mention that the subconscious and the nervous system are really important when it comes to ⁓ weight release, when it comes to sexual confidence, when it comes to feeling safe to be seen still or again. ⁓

Those things are really important.

Dr. Jannine Krause (41:39)
so huge, so huge. And I think for a lot of people, ⁓ if it’s that they’ve been healthy most of their life and they’ve done a lot of the, I get a lot of women who, they’re like, I’ve done all the cleanses, I maintain a very clean diet, I work out all the time, what is my problem? I’m like, it’s your nervous system.

because you’ve done all the other things. And I think a lot of people forget that we’re switching fuels. We go from ovary fuel to adrenal fuel, because your adrenals are what take over for your hormones after your ovaries are like, yeah, I’m done, we’re done. And if your adrenals aren’t balanced, that’s the biggest problem. And I think for me, yes, my gut, but I think my other biggest, just so that folks can kind of hear my side of it, I think for me, that’s where things went off the rails is my adrenals started to have.

Theresa Lear Levine (42:17)
Yeah.

Dr. Jannine Krause (42:30)
such a hard time keeping up with the businesses, but also keeping up with like my monkey brain of the thoughts and yes, the not enough and the I’m not smart enough where, you know, blah, blah, blah. This is probably more than all the info out there right now. I still think we haven’t hit on this enough.

Theresa Lear Levine (42:58)
I mean, and so many perimenopausal symptoms are just exacerbated by unprocessed emotions and trapped energy. know, like if you have grief that you haven’t processed, that can often show up in insomnia or in like a feeling of tightness, whether it’s in your chest or somewhere else in your body. If you’re dealing with repressed anger, and most people are in one way or another, that’s liver congestion.

And that can be a problem there. If you’re afraid of change, then you can have real resistance to the hormonal shifts that are going to happen one way or another. yeah, when we can learn to process these things on another level, not just through physically changing things or taking a medication or a supplement or a protocol, then you can really ⁓ heal things on an even deeper level.

Dr. Jannine Krause (43:52)
This is why

I have often, and probably annoyed a lot of people in my practice, that I don’t do as many supplements as I used to. One, because I think there’s a point at which your body can’t handle that many, and I don’t wanna, it’s just too much. I think people in my profession do outdo what someone could actually handle. But also, I think a lot of it is energetic, and that’s what drew me to you when we had our first podcast. And I was like, I have to work with Teresa because this is what has been.

underlying everything for me and so I wanted to share with folks you know how important it is to look at your nervous system. You know yeah I’m an acupuncturist, yeah I’m supposed to be super zen but like truth is we all have our crap. Like we have it and I’m you know only now really processing a lot of things I was super angry about you know like losing my mom so young. You know those kind of things stick with you and so I think you know for a lot of women

going through this time in life, but also if you lost your mom, you’re looking at the age when she passed and you’re going, my God, I’m almost there. And we know like cancer starts 10 years before it’s supposed to show up. My mom died at, got her diagnosis at 52, died at 62. And I was 26. And you may say, okay, someone who’s 26, they’re old enough, they can handle, yeah, right. I was a baby. I didn’t have the emotional processing.

even though I was almost done with naturopath school. But the truth is for so many women they’ve lost their moms or they’ve been estranged or mom didn’t talk about things. I mean, there’s a lot of family dynamics that I think are a lot of the underlying of why we struggle when we go through this time in life. And I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing.

Theresa Lear Levine (45:41)
that you’re doing what you’re doing too. Because people need somebody like you that can actually like look at their labs and give them the feedback that they need instead of just the basic stuff they’re getting at the doctor. They need somebody that has alternatives because most people don’t want.

the stuff that’s being recommended right off the bat and don’t wanna accept certain answers and they don’t need to. You you’ve been really helpful at helping me sort things out and helping my family sort things out. So, you your wisdom is much needed as people navigate this time in their life. And it just happens to be that we’re navigating it too. And it’s like I always say when I’m helping people with whatever it is that they’ve come to me for, it’s like, we’re all walking each other home. None of us have all.

the answers, but we do have pieces to the puzzle. And we also have the ability to hold space and energetically support and guide each other in ways that we can’t do on our own. I do truly believe that all healing is relational healing.

the things that kind of get messed up in us ⁓ happen in relationship and they also heal best in relationship. So when we have people to support us along the journey, that’s the most important thing. And, you know, when it comes to the work that I do, the nervous system is the container that holds these hormones and things that we’re talking about today. And if it’s dysregulated, then like even the best supplements, if you want to take supplements, aren’t going to work because

the mind body part of it is what is really the game changer. And that’s what you facilitate in your work, even though it’s with acupuncture needles and minds with more like tapping those spots. Like we both kind of do the same thing in a different way that helps to get the mind and the body in sync and balanced.

Dr. Jannine Krause (47:32)
so huge and definitely something to think about and not ignore, you know, those of you out there who are like, hmm, you know, what do I need to be focusing on? I’m always asked that. Where to focus first? What do I do first? And honestly, I do think getting your relationship with yourself right first is a really good step and then going into gut and those kinds of things, your relationship with yourself is ongoing. It’s not like, you know, you fix it.

And then you’re done and I think the same goes for hormones too. All of this is an ongoing process and knowing that it’s a work in progress, it’s not a set it and forget it.

Theresa Lear Levine (48:08)
Absolutely. So I guess what I would say to anybody who’s listening, if…

you’re feeling a little stuck with your health. If you’re feeling like somebody kind of stole your sparkle or you’re gaining weight despite doing everything right, or maybe your libido is tanking and your patience is thin and your brain just doesn’t want to focus the way that it used to, just please know it could be something much more than just like your mindset. It could be your hormones and there’s so much that you can do to support yourself. Seek out the answers.

questions for me or for Janine, reach out. I’m always happy to share things I’ve tried or names of products or whatever else might be helpful for you. And we can all help each other and walk each other home on this journey.

Dr. Jannine Krause (48:58)
That’s where it’s at. That’s where it’s at. Tracy, thank you so much for meeting up with me today and sharing all of your story with us. Let’s tell folks where they can find you and ⁓ connect with you, especially.

Theresa Lear Levine (49:12)
Absolutely. The best place to connect with me is in my free school community, which ⁓ I will give a link for for the show notes. If you’re on school SKOL, you can go to the discovery page there. So school.com forward slash discovery, type in my name, Teresa Lear Levine, you’ll see the becoming more me community come up and you can request to join. I have all of my best resources in there. And it’s the place where you can kind of get free coaching from me interact with other amazing people kind of on the same journey.

and that’s the best place. Otherwise, you can find me on Instagram at Theresa Lear Levine. How about you, Janine? Where’s the best place for people to find you?

Dr. Jannine Krause (49:50)
Find me on my podcast, The Health Fix. Of course, we’re working on trying to get a community together. We’ll see how that goes. It might be a joint venture with my new practice in Wisconsin, so stay tuned for that. And then drjkrausnd.com is my website. And then of course on Instagram, you’ll see me here and there, at drdrause. And yeah, those are the best spots to find me. And if you’re in Wisconsin or Washington, you can see me in person.

Theresa Lear Levine (50:01)
Nice.

Oh, I hope to be someday. Or wherever you are. It’d be fun to be able to meet up in person and give you a big hug and all of that. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of your wisdom today too, Ginny. Appreciate you.

Dr. Jannine Krause (50:20)
Thank you.

Yes.