Welcome to Menopause Taylor on Insight Timer.
I'm Dr.
Barbara Taylor,
A gynecologist on a mission to give women the menopause education they need.
Insight timer.
Is all about.
Mindfulness or full-mindedness,
Depending on how you prefer to label it.
But menopause is all about mindlessness or empty-mindedness,
Depending on how you prefer to label it.
I call it Minnow Fog.
It includes forgetfulness,
Confusion,
That tip of the tongue syndrome,
Minnow fog,
Brain fog,
Disorganization,
Difficulty learning new things,
And difficulty focusing your attention.
Meadow fog is when you have all sorts of difficulty remembering things.
Sometimes it's just the simple little things like names or basic words.
And other times it's bigger things that really create a bunch of havoc in your life.
In my menopause education.
I teach about forgetfulness as one of the terms of estradiol deficiency at the time of menopause.
And as merely a symptom,
Forgetfulness doesn't sound like such a big deal.
But I also teach about all the diseases that are due to estradiol deficiency at the time of menopause.
And Alzheimer's disease.
Is one of them.
Unfortunately.
.
.
If you extrapolate all those single episodes of forgetfulness over the long term,
They add up!
To Alzheimer's.
Alzheimer's disease is,
Quite literally,
Brain shrinkage.
You see?
Extra dial.
Is fuel for your brain.
Your brain has parking spots all over it for estradiol.
And as long as you have estradiol,
Your brain has the fuel it needs to function beautifully.
When you lose your estradiol at the time of menopause,
Your brain loses its fuel.
And it starts to shrink.
So I think it's very important to know that your brain experiences both short-term and long-term.
Long-term consequences of estradiol loss.
At the time of menopause.
Your forgetfulness is the short term symptom that your brain uses to warn you about the fact that it has no fuel.
If you ignore that warning,
The long-term disease for failing to heed the warning is Alzheimer's.
Simply put,
If you have short-term forgetfulness as a symptom of menopause,
You are on the road to long-term Alzheimer's as a disease of menopause.
Is the menopause journey.
So,
Before menopause,
Your brain is big like this.
If you have forgetfulness while you're going through menopause,
Your brain is already shrinking like this.
And if you don't,
Do anything effective about it.
You'll be down here with hardly any brain at all.
Statistically,
Alzheimer's is more common in women.
Than it is in men.
In fact,
At every single age,
There are twice as many women with Alzheimer's than there are men.
And this is due directly to the fact that we women lose all of our estradiol,
Whereas men do not lose all their testosterone.
It's very simple.
Women completely lose their brain fuel.
Men.
Do not.
The big problem with Alzheimer's is that there's no going back.
Watch,
Your brain is gone.
In fact,
The earliest diagnosis of Alzheimer's occurs when you've already lost 40.
40,
40% of your brain.
And Alzheimer's is 100% fatal.
The problem is that it can take 20 years for it to kill you.
So how do you prevent Alzheimer's?
Well,
It's simple.
You replace your lost estradiol and you replace it to the extent that your brain functions as well as it did before you ever started your journey through menopause.
And in addition to taking adequate estradiol,
You also need to do things with your brain that are new,
Different,
And difficult.
Quite literally make your brain hurt and work by ditching the familiar and adopting the unfamiliar.
So your brain talks to you.
Your job is to listen.
And that's why I wanted to give you this education about minnow fog here on Insight Timers.
