Natural approaches for supporting hormone balance with Jennifer Moore

Lisa: Hey everyone, welcome back to Pushing the Limits. This week I have a lovely, lovely lady for you. I have Jennifer Moore with me. Welcome to the show, Jennifer.

Jennifer Moore: Thank you for having me.

Lisa: It's exciting. We've just been chatting like old girlfriends, like we've known each other for 20 years, for the last 20 minutes, and I said I've got to stop here because this is gold and we need to put this on the podcast. So Jennifer, you have a background in health, wellness, beauty. You were an editor in a magazine, and now you're doing new things which we're going to get on to in a minute. But can you just give us a little bit of your back story? Because we were sharing war stories, really, and we got on and loved ones and health journeys and stuff. Give us a little bit of background, where you come from and what you do and all that.

Jennifer Moore: Okay. Well, I come from probably a 20-year career in magazine publishing, and I became a beauty editor. I have a beauty background. I started off my career with beauty, and then I was actually over in the UK and Northern Ireland, and I came back here for a summer and I ended up just taking a couple of temporary jobs. And Mum was on a magazine and I ended up staying, because I looked at the people doing the beauty and the fashion and realised they had no experience in it. So that became my goal. It looked like a good thing to do, and I'd always written naturally, so that became my goal. And that was a new idea, a weekly magazine at the time. And so I got that, and we ended up moving — I ended up moving into the beauty role, and then we were all made redundant.

Lisa: It's a very volatile industry, isn't it?

Jennifer Moore: Yeah. And then, Next magazine — if you remember the Next magazine?

Lisa: Yes, absolutely.

Jennifer Moore: Going there and really filling out the role, I suppose, with a lot of support. And I had amazing editors, first of all Lindsay Dawson and then Liz Parker, who was quite incredible. And so I was able to grow the beauty role to beauty and wellbeing, which wasn't common at the time. Wellbeing wasn't the thing it is today.

Lisa: No.

Jennifer Moore: And I had two sisters that had cystic fibrosis. One died when she was a baby and my other one was 16 years old when she died. So I knew there was another side to life, and I wanted to be able to have the media support there in some way. And that was long before cause-related marketing, it was a pioneer. I don't know, it was just an idea. And so I actually contacted the Cystic Fibrosis Association, but I didn't hear back — and bearing in mind too, cystic fibrosis was, and probably still isn't, a very well known disease. And then I was over in the States for work and I saw one of the magazines, Redbook or Self magazine, one of those, had a special report on breast cancer. And I thought, wow, that would be perfect for our market, for Next magazine.

Jennifer Moore: Came back and said that to Liz, my editor, and she was kind of on board, but you had to go through all the layers and nobody was really that keen. But my advertising manager then got behind it as well, because her sister died from breast cancer. So we got the go ahead as long as we could get sponsorship for eight pages, I think it was. And it was funny because a couple of the beauty companies at that time were supporting breast cancer, but we couldn't get sponsorship from them. But the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation was a fairly young organisation and they came on board. So we created this breast cancer special report and it was only ever meant to be a one-off. But women wrote in and said it saved their lives, or that they'd gone and got a mammogram, and doctors let us know that they were printing it out and giving it to their patients. So that was amazing. And it ended up being an eight-year annual thing.

Lisa: And I remember actually, I think — yeah, I've been in Next magazine a few times over the years, and was in the Next magazine Woman of the Year.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, it was a finalist.

Lisa: Didn't win — there were far better women there for me. That's amazing, yeah. Something after my time.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah.

Lisa: Oh God, yes. Well, now I don't even know what year it was, probably eight or nine years ago. But yeah, cool magazine, cool people, and it was cool to be a part of that. And now Jennifer, you just sort of discovered at that time — and losing two sisters to a terrible disease must have made you, like you said, you were very familiar with death. Did it make you go into this health and wellness space and want to be more and more involved in this? How did you get into the role that you're doing now?

Jennifer Moore: You know, you would think it probably would, and certainly that was part of the driving force, I'm sure. But I actually didn't look after myself very well back then. I would go through phases, but I worked a lot, and I would go through phases where I'd do my running and I'd do very well, but then there were other times when work just took over and that went out the window. So it wasn't until a bit later — I can't remember exactly when — but I started feeling quite unwell, and it turned out that I couldn't do my morning walks or my morning runs, and it turned out that I actually had lung clots. And yeah, it nearly killed me. But there was a lot going on at that time, and there was so much more going on with that, because I also got a kind of a systemic chronic inflammation. And they said the closest thing to it was polymyalgia, which is related to fibromyalgia, as I'm sure you know. But they couldn't really diagnose it. And there were all sorts of things going on: mood swings, I left my partner, I put on 20 kilograms. I was all over the place, right? And I did not know what was going on, but I knew that the doctors couldn't give me a diagnosis and I needed to get to the root of this. So I started looking into integrative healthcare. I didn't want to do what I'd done anymore.

Jennifer Moore: Little did I know that this was perimenopause, because I don't think I'd even heard of perimenopause. Of course, we were going through fertility treatment, and I remember them saying that after 35 it's more difficult to get pregnant, etc. But I don't ever remember the word being perimenopause.

Lisa: No, no. I never heard it until, I don't know, five years ago, six years ago maybe. That's crazy, isn't it?

Jennifer Moore: And then my partner needed me to sell my house that we both owned, so I did that. I went to Europe, I came back, and I was judging an award for the Cosmetic Formulators Association, a beauty award, and I met a biochemist called Peter Lehmke.

Lisa: Our lovely Peter, yes.

Jennifer Moore: And I was chatting to him and saying — I don't know why we were talking about what I wanted to do, but we were — and I was saying I still want to make use of my life, work with women and to help them and to help their health, etc. And that's when he told me about Meno-Me, and that was a product called EstroG-100 that he brought in to help manage women's menopause symptoms. And he said, maybe you should come and work with us. And then I was talking to him again, and it turned out one of the partners was Lee Kite, who had actually known my entire beauty career. And I was talking to her one day and she said, I went through menopause and I felt like I was going mad. And that's when the penny dropped for me. What I really was dealing with these last few years, I had been in perimenopause, and that's why I felt like I was going mad, and why I didn't want to do anything, and actually why it was linked, because I was so sick. And then it's only more recently that fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue have actually been linked with that too. But who knew?

Lisa: Yeah, like you wouldn't, hey? Women's health has been completely neglected. I've done a series of interviews with different testing companies like DUTCH clinical educators, and doctors on hormones and menopause and hormone replacement therapy, which I am a fan of, but I think that not everybody can and should do that. Some should, some shouldn't. And when I came across Meno-Me, actually through Peter — I was speaking at the Natural Health Summit conference, I was one of the keynote speakers over there, and met Peter the night before. And then got talking to one of the other guys, a mutual friend, Greg Macpherson from SRW — I've had him on the show as well, fantastic guy. And we got talking, and I got to meet Lee when I was over there just very briefly, you know, hello at the stand type of thing.

Lisa: And I thought, oh, that's a really interesting product, I need to look into that and get you guys on and talk about this, because not everybody can go on hormone replacement therapy. And while I am on hormone replacement and I love it, and I think there's definitely room for looking into that, not everybody can. And certainly if you've had breast cancer or things like that, you need to not go down that route. So when you said there's these elements — Meno-Me is a company that's producing these menopause-related products that can help women through this horrible time, which is often horrible, not for everybody. Some people just sail on through. But menopause brings up things like nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, hot flushes, vaginal dryness, a lack of libido, vertigo, fatigue, weight gain, unexplained weight gain, thyroid issues. And these can also have a combination of other things going on at that time too, where your hormones are starting to go south, but also you might have some autoimmune, you may have been under stress for a long, long time, your adrenals aren't working — whatever the case is, it's a complicated picture. But offering women some products and some things that they can do to support them on their perimenopause journey was definitely something that I wanted to talk about. So can you tell us a little bit about Meno-Me and how they started to develop the products, and why the ingredients that they've got in EstroG-100 and the Enzo — I can't say it properly — Enzogenol?

Jennifer Moore: How do you love that? Enzogenol.

Lisa: That's it, yeah.

Jennifer Moore: Certainly. Peter has since left the business, although he has a factory that still encapsulates our products and things. So it's Lee, D and I, and we have an amazing team as well. And so it's really important to us that all of the products have been through clinical trials or have been scientifically validated.

Lisa: Yeah, that's not easy, I know.

Jennifer Moore: Which is amazing. And EstroG-100, which Peter had found — he was over at one of the expos, one of our health expos once, and he listened to the doctor that had formulated it, called Dr J Kim, who's from Korea. Now Dr Kim had gone through seventy-one combinations of herbal extracts before he...

Jennifer Moore: ...came across these three. Are you ready for the names? And I probably don't say them properly. So they're Cynanchum wilfordii, Phlomis umbrosa and Angelica gigas nakai. The Cynanchum's a climbing vine, the Phlomis is a type of sage — it's a Jerusalem sage — and the Angelica is well known as a flavouring in culinary circles, but all three of them have been used in traditional folk medicine. And so that forms EstroG-100, which has been through pharmaceutical-grade clinical trials which have shown it to help with at least ten of the twelve main symptoms of menopause, and also to be very, very safe.

Jennifer Moore: And it works quite differently to a lot of other supplements, in that we have estrogen receptors all over our bodies, all through our bodies. Estrogen just has such a regulatory role for so many things, and it comes back really to the HPATG axis — do I ever get that right?

Lisa: Yeah — hypothalamus, your pituitary gland, your adrenals, your thyroid. And you're missing one there.

Jennifer Moore: It's the whole thing, which is why it's so important to nurture your nervous system.

Lisa: Yeah, and things at this time.

Jennifer Moore: So what it is able to do is it works on those estrogen receptors, and it's called a selective estrogen receptor modulator. Some of those drugs are targeted for chemotherapy, for breast cancer actually. So what that means is that it has the ability to work with your body's natural hormonal metabolism to bring some sort of equilibrium naturally and gently and safely.

Lisa: So it modulates. Because what happens in perimenopause and menopause is that you're fluctuating — you're up and then you're down, and this is why your moods are really up and down and you're irritable, and marriage breakups. God knows how many marriages are broken up because of menopause.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, yeah.

Lisa: You just — it changes your personality and you can go through all these sorts of things, and the hot flushes of course, when your estrogen really drops and then you get hot flushes. So something that's going to modulate without actually adding in a hormone — which, as we said, is great for some and not for others. So if you're wanting a way to modulate it without putting in estrogen, then this would be a great help for a lot of those symptoms.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, definitely, especially because with EstroG we've got 40 Plus and 55 Plus. So 40 Plus is pure EstroG-100 and we say that's formulated for perimenopause, because from around 35 — a lot of people don't realise that it happens so early, around 35, which is another reason why they say you can't get pregnant.

Lisa: Yeah, this is why it drops off.

Jennifer Moore: So your progesterone drops first and then your estrogen drops a bit later, but it doesn't go in the linear fashion that progesterone does. That's when it goes on that roller coaster that you're talking about, the highs and the lows. So it's about bringing back those ratios, and even healing that balance.

Lisa: Because I'm working with a lot of women and even younger women — I'm seeing women in their late 20s and 30s and their progesterone has dropped off a cliff. And that's often something that we can look at — they're maybe not ovulating — and then we can do something about that. But when the estrogen drops, it doesn't drop at the same level, so the progesterone drops much faster, so to speak, than the estrogen. And your progesterone of course is very much an anxiety reliever, it's calming, it's the GABA receptors, especially the alpha metabolites, depending on which way you put it down the hormone pathway. What's that — nature's Valium?

Jennifer Moore: Yeah.

Lisa: Yeah, it just chills it. I'm on hormone replacement, I take progesterone, and I have a few days off a month to try and mimic a cycle, type of thing. And those few days that I go off, by day four I'm climbing the walls and yelling at everybody. So in the meantime I often take a GABA support, just to take the edge off. But yeah, this is how influenced we are by our hormones. And then you get a lot of women, of course, who are complaining, "I've put on 20 kilos and I don't know why. I haven't changed my diet, my exercise regime. I don't know what the hell's going on." And it's a very panicky feeling to be out of control of your weight when it's not your fault. When you've eaten wrong, you deserve what you've got, so to speak, but there's a whole lot of people out there — women and men — at that time of life where they're just going, "What the hell is happening to my body?" and desperately trying to find the answers. And while it does maybe involve thyroid and other things as well, that whole axis there, we can get to the bottom of it, and it does take some digging, but this is part of that too.

Lisa: Did your weight stabilise and so on when you started to use Meno-Me and things?

Jennifer Moore: It sort of stabilised, because I put on the 28 kilograms and then it dropped about ten once I came back into normal life, and it went back to a set point. But I was still carrying too much weight, and then once I trained as an integrative health coach, I actually run a 21-day hormone detox, and I was taking a group of women — I took five groups of women through that that first year.

Lisa: Wow.

Jennifer Moore: And I did it every time myself. So that's actually how I stabilised a lot of it, along with 40 Plus and with the food component and the breath work and the mindset.

Lisa: Calming the nervous system into it.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, the calming of the nervous system. It just dropped off, and it actually reset my weight.

Lisa: Yeah. Isn't that amazing? So you've cracked the code, in other words — the code that so many women are looking for.

Jennifer Moore: They are, and I hear their pain. Some people say, "Well, I just have a couple of glasses of wine every night, so it's nothing that I'm eating." But that wine will be contributing. I always call the weight gain that comes with age and menopause — and really it's not so much to do with menopause, it's to do with growing older and also that excess that we were talking about. And the one that I forgot, and there was insulin.

Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Moore: And I tell them that's a really complicated biological process. Some women start starving themselves and over-exercising, which is the worst thing you can do, because that's going to make your body hold on to the weight for you.

Lisa: Yep.

Jennifer Moore: So we do need to tweak our lifestyle usually, and some people don't like that, because let's face it, the refined sugars and the carbohydrates are addictive. The pre-packaged processed foods, they're so addictive and they're so easy. And what it calls for is actually prepping and cooking whole foods, doing your own, sprouting, growing your own vegetables, doing your own cultures. I do all of that, and badly, but I do it.

Lisa: On top of running your businesses.

Jennifer Moore: On top of everything.

Lisa: Looking after families. It's a hell of a load, isn't it? And then you're meant to be relaxing at the same time.

Jennifer Moore: I know, exactly right. With the way that the world is, and what I think also contributes is the constant fear-mongering that we're exposed to. That's why I don't watch television, I don't watch the news, nothing that's live.

Lisa: It's true, yeah, because my nervous system's already under attack constantly with family situations and all the stuff that we all deal with. So I don't need that. If it's important enough, the information will get to me somehow. And I pick my news sources.

Jennifer Moore: I pick my news sources, and try not to, because the media is very much clickbait. It's about getting eyes on, and they don't care which way they do that, and of course it's usually with negative stories, because that's what sells.

Lisa: Which makes total sense, but you don't need to buy into that on top of the other stresses that you have going on. And so it is very common. It is the hormonal changes that are happening, it is the thyroid that's often implicated in that as well, which is your whole basal metabolic rate. Then we've got things like muscle loss happening, which — I'm a huge proponent of women doing weight training, whether that's in the gym or outside the gym, I don't care, as long as they're lifting heavy stuff appropriately, with someone, learning how to lift properly, and building muscle. Building muscle is huge for metabolic rate and weight control and stuff.

Lisa: And as a chronic over-exerciser myself — and I still have to be careful because I'm addicted to exercise and obviously come from an ultramarathon background — that was not conducive to weight loss. I got fatter doing ultras than I've ever done. I lose weight more if I do weight training and yoga and a small amount of cardio. I'll go for a 5K run, but not a 50K run, not a 40K run, not a 30K run, because those things — not to say that you can never do that, and if that's your athletic goal, fine, but not constantly putting your body under that pressure.

Lisa: And then there's a genetic factor as well. So this isn't easy, and being an integrative health coach, it's peeling back the layers of the onion, and so it can take six months when you're working with a person to actually get to what that person's problem is. Is it microbiome? Is it hormones? Is it a parasite? Is it a virus? Is it a bacteria? Is it all of the above at the same time? Is it a methylation problem? Is it your genetics? And often I think people come in and they expect you to function like a doctor that comes in and goes, "Oh, you've got a sore head, here's a painkiller." The way we work doesn't work like that. It's a six-month odyssey, and sometimes even longer, while we dig deeper into the weeds of what's going on. Have you experienced that with your practice and what you do?

Jennifer Moore: Well, I actually am involved with Meno-Me a lot of the time, so that's mainly with women coming on and asking questions, so I help them in that way. In terms of taking it further, that would be my other work that I do, and as I say, I generally run those programmes. I wouldn't work with people like you do, whereas you do more one-on-one, whereas mine is probably more group and education.

Lisa: That's gold actually, because then you're reaching more people, and I'm often trying to change the model, the way I operate, because you just reach the limit so quickly on one-on-ones.

Jennifer Moore: I know. That's a lot of energy, too.

Lisa: Yeah, it does. But groups have a lot of prep and time and sale.

Jennifer Moore: And sale, yeah. So sometimes it's just easier than...

Lisa: ...the next person that comes in, the next consult, the next consult, and it's like, I'm getting around to that, I'm getting around to that, and it never happens. We do do groups and certain things, but whichever way you decide to work, you're working quite intensely, and it is a layer-by-layer peeling of the onion process, taking people through.

Lisa: And Meno-Me, what I like is that you're also local to Taranaki, or some of you are, which is my home province of course. I'm hoping to meet you personally shortly, and to have Meno-Me products in my store, which I'm working on, so that would be really great. So look here, around down below, in the show notes for links, affiliate links, or it'll be in the shop, so make sure you do check that out as well.

Lisa: But taking some supplements that can really support us — what else is in it? So you've got the EstroG, you've got the Enzogenol, which is a pine bark extract. Can you explain a little bit about Enzogenol?

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, absolutely, and how that works. So the 40 Plus, as I said, which is designed for perimenopause, is the pure EstroG. Then there's 55 Plus, which is designed for post-menopause, so that contains the same amount of EstroG as the 40 Plus does, but it also contains marine magnesium — and you know how magnesium, oh my God, magnesium is just everything — and that comes from red algae off the coast of the North Atlantic Ocean. And then there's vitamin D3, which is also hugely important. And also with the EstroG as well, during those clinical trials, what came out is it's really good for bone density as well, so that's another bonus.

Lisa: Wow, okay, because this is one of the things — like with hormone replacement therapy, I know very beneficial for brain health, for cognitive function, for cardiovascular, for bone density, but it brings certain risk factors as well. But bone density is a huge risk factor. I've obviously said this three or four times on the podcast, but one of my teachers is an orthopaedic surgeon, and she said that when you're over 65 and you break your hip, you fall, you hit your pelvis, your hips, you've got a 50 per cent chance of dying within the next 12 months. It's not a risk factor to underestimate, osteoporosis, and it is very, very connected to your hormone levels. Even the young women who are missing a period, missing months in their cycles, amenorrhoeic, are impacting their bone density. So not having your progesterone and your estrogens in the right ratios and so on can really cause that. So to find a supplement that's been clinically shown to improve bone density — I didn't think it was even possible.

Jennifer Moore: No, I mean, yeah.

Lisa: And that's an actual supplement that you can take, and there was clinical research done on that.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, absolutely. And so with the 55 Plus you've got that from the EstroG, you've got it from the vitamin D3 as well, and then that helps activate that. And then the Enzogenol, that comes from a water extraction process from pine trees. And the company that produces that, they do clinical trials all the time and there's some amazing data behind it for heart disease, vascular health, so blood pressure, hypertension, etc. Also for glucose tolerance, blood sugar, for migraines and headaches, and longevity.

Lisa: Amazing.

Jennifer Moore: They keep doing clinical trials. They were a bit impeded by that in 2020, 2021, I think, but yeah, it's got some incredible data behind it. So much goodness that comes on from that for your overall wellbeing.

Lisa: Yeah, I mean, I've heard of pine bark, and even for the virus that shall not be named and stuff, that was used in some of the protocols that I've looked at. And I'm sure I've come across pine bark extract too for anti-cancer, but don't quote me on that one, I'm just trying to remember what I'd read about it. Okay. And the other one was Angelica gigas nakai.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, that's the Cynanchum, the Phlomis and the Angelica.

Lisa: Okay, so that's part of that 40 Plus formulation. And those are the two main players that you've got.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah. And then we've got Locks and Locks, which is one of my favourite products.

Lisa: Is that why your hair's so beautiful? It's just amazing.

Jennifer Moore: So that's made from an ingestible keratin, which is Keratin IV, which comes from the sheep wool, I think in the South Island, sustainably sourced. The animals aren't harmed — I'm very pro animals, so I wouldn't be taking it if any animals were harmed. And it also contains biotin, which is part of building hair. So those two together, amazing. And it's just a two-ingredient supplement. And it also triggers your collagen four and seven in your skin, and it's also amazing for your nails. We have it for the hair density, because hair thinning and hair loss is very common, hormonally driven hair loss in menopause, so that's why we have it. But we also have some other exciting products.

Lisa: Okay.

Jennifer Moore: One launching in June, again based on scientifically validated ingredients.

Lisa: Could you tell us anything? Anything out of the bag?

Jennifer Moore: I would say that it's very helpful for those HPAG, you know...

Lisa: Yeah, we're stopping at the three letters, right? I know, I can manage HPA, and then the thyroid, we're just adding the thyroid. And because also, where we have the gut — so gut health is so important to this menopause process too. And funnily enough, I just wrote about that this week. Have you heard of the estrobolome?

Jennifer Moore: Yes, yes, yes.

Lisa: Supports regulation of estrogen in the gut. So the beta-glucuronidase and things like that.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lisa: Oh, brilliant. Because this is like phase three of the detox process of your estrogen. So you've sort of got your phase one mostly in the liver, where you get all these nasty metabolites actually, and then phase two where you're starting to make it water-soluble and getting it out into the body and into the digestive system. And then you're reliant on your microbiome, your estrobolome, your beta-glucuronidase and things not to be too high, so that it actually can get it out of the body as well. Once you have hormones, you want them to do their job and then you want them to bugger off, because you don't want them to be backing up in the system, as you'd all end up estrogen dominant and having all sorts of problems then. So this is why the methylation and the detox that you talk about and the process that you go through... What are some of the things that you do on your detox programme, and when's your next one?

Jennifer Moore: The other thing too would be estrobolome and the detox process too — it's getting rid of those dirty estrogens.

Lisa: What a cool name, dirty estrogens.

Jennifer Moore: The xeno-estrogens from personal care and cleaning products and the environment, the plastics, etc, etc. So on my detox it's really just basic simple living. Of course, it is removing dairy, because dairy can be very problematic. It's removing gluten, because that is well known to be quite problematic for hormones.

Lisa: And I agree.

Jennifer Moore: So there is a vegetarian and an omnivore menu. It's basically a lot of whole foods, some fermented foods if you're not histamine intolerant. It's basically good whole food living, which can be a shock to your system if you've been living on a traditional Western diet.

Lisa: Yeah, it's huge, it's a huge transition, just prepping all that food and so many vegetables, because that's such a problem for us these days too, is not having enough fibre.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa: And the lack of fibre is behind so much chronic disease, including getting rid of your hormones out of your body.

Jennifer Moore: Exactly, exactly. So it's just packed with nutrients and packed with fibre, and none of the problematic-for-some-people things.

Lisa: Yeah, like gluten and dairy, which are well known. And doing a phase of that — some people can tolerate more than other people, but when you're doing a detox, to actually help it all clear out. Because there are just so many toxins that we're exposed to on a daily basis, from our shampoos and our conditioners, to our makeup, to our cleaning products, to exhaust fumes, to sitting in the car behind another car in the traffic, to the glyphosate that's unbelievably still sprayed everywhere by the councils. If you're listening, oh my God, for God's sake, the world knows that glyphosate is killing us. Please stop that. It really is beyond me that they'd still be doing that. And then all the other stuff that is spread around and used and so on. But that glyphosate is just — you know, Roundup. Please, people, don't put Roundup in your garden. It's not just a little bit bad. "Oh, but it saves me the weeding." It's just not an option, it just should not be an option. Here, get on my soapbox.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah.

Lisa: But it's proven, like Australia's apparently banned it, which is really amazing.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, that's what I heard.

Lisa: But we haven't. And every day I go past council workers spraying the hell out of our city and our parks, and our children are running around in those parks. And now we go to the park for our beautiful time in nature and we're getting glyphosated up the wazoo. So we are exposed to this, we can't influence that, because we can't control what they do. So we'd better be detoxing hard out and supporting methylation and trying to eat right. And you don't have to be a saint — I'm certainly not a saint — but if you can do 80/20, the 80/20 rule, to make it doable.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, yeah.

Lisa: 80 per cent of the time you try to live really well, and if you have treats and you have occasions where you blow out, fine, you've got to live too. There should be no miserable 150-year-olds.

Jennifer Moore: Exactly. No, that's my thing too, you've got to live in life in the 21st century as well.

Lisa: Exactly. And there's the whole — things which I've done podcasts on, light and circadian rhythms and how all that mucks us up. So all of these aspects are part of this bigger whole picture that we're trying to put together. But there are so many sick people, there are so many people suffering, and there are so many things, and they don't think or know what to do. And here are some answers for some of the people that may be going through menopausal symptoms. This may be something that you want to look into, Meno-Me, and to look at the products, the quality products that they're putting out, and see if that helps you, see if that's part of the picture that you're doing. And if Jen is doing another detox, do let me know. Have you got one planned at all this year?

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, I was just talking about that yesterday with a woman who wants to do it. So I just need to get a webinar out there and get another — selling the idea and getting another group together, which takes time.

Lisa: And energy, doesn't it?

Jennifer Moore: It does, it takes a lot of energy.

Lisa: But oh my gosh, it's amazing, that group force of these women all doing it together.

Jennifer Moore: Absolutely. And quite often, as long as they're committed — it takes commitment. But the women that are committed, it's really interesting, the different types of people that we are. And sometimes it's not the right time for people either, so they find it hard to commit. But for those who have committed, their symptoms minimise, but they also lose about four to 4.5 kilos. Everyone does.

Lisa: Which is quite significant, isn't it? Yeah, huge. And you know what, it just shows the way forward. When you learn and you break habits and you do it in a group format where there's a bit of peer pressure and there's a bit of, "I'm accountable and I've committed to this thing," it gets the train rolling. And you're going to have to carry on the journey, but if you've learned a lot, you've made some progress there and then you're going to be hopefully on your way to better health overall. And even if you don't 100% follow every rule that Jen puts in front of you for the whole 21 days, you're going to come out better. It's always like that analogy of the person who's running very slowly is still lapping the person on the couch.

Jennifer Moore: It is very much that. And I think slow progress is still progress. Maybe baby steps, because it can be a big ask to sort of change overnight. But if you do baby steps, that's more doable. And learning along the way — they learn all about the liver and the detoxification, the two detoxification pathways and things, and about the xenoestrogens and things like that. There's a lot of — it's quite information-heavy as well.

Lisa: That's great. I think that's important, the education.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, and I love to combine it, because obviously I come from that holistic viewpoint, combining it with the Meno-Me. But the other thing with Meno-Me that I think is fantastic is because we stand by our products, they have a 60-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked.

Lisa: Yeah, that's right. So there's no risk for people.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, have a go. If it helps you, send them — if it helps you feel better. And yes, there is no one size fits all. Everyone's journey — it's funny, I always say you're a peach, I'm an apple and Mary's a cherry. We're the same, same but different. So everyone's menopause, perimenopause — and let's differentiate perimenopause and menopause and postmenopause as well, because they are different — but everyone's journey is going to be different. It's like 80% of women — 60% will experience moderate symptoms, 20% will be like you were talking about, they sail through.

Lisa: Oh yeah, that wasn't me.

Jennifer Moore: And then 20% will get severe.

Lisa: Yeah, it wasn't me either. I was — yeah.

Jennifer Moore: So we're also different. So we know there's no one thing that's all. But if you do lifestyle first and back it up with proven — there's a wonderful woman called Dr Linda Dear, a Manawatū doctor, and she calls it the menopause buffet. We choose from the menopause buffet and take what you know works for you.

Lisa: Yeah, that's very true. And I love this, we need options, we need all of the options on the table so that people can get the right combination of care and things that they need for them, and products that they need for them, to help ease this process. Because if you think about it from nature's point of view, when you're no longer able to reproduce, you might as well bugger off. And we're not ready to bugger off, I'm sorry. We're going to fight to stay here a bit longer.

Lisa: And this is why these topics are very important to me. We can age better, we can function better, we can stay more functional longer and we can have a better quality of life. Not decline so quickly, not lose our bone density, our brain health, our heart health, all of that sort of stuff as quickly as we otherwise would if we don't intervene and do nothing. So not doing anything is also making a choice. I just want you to be cognisant of that. Whether you decide on hormone replacement, whether you decide on Meno-Me and hormonal support products, whether you decide on the lifestyle stuff, or you decide to do nothing — they are all choices. Just because one doesn't require action doesn't mean it's not a choice.

Jennifer Moore: Yeah, it's quite profound, really, wasn't it? That is very true.

Lisa: Hey Jen, you've been absolutely wonderful. I've so enjoyed yakking with you today.

Jennifer Moore: Thank you.

Lisa: Let's do a cup of tea sometime, or a coffee sometime, when you're in the neighbourhood.

Jennifer Moore: I would love to do that.

Lisa: And let us know when you're doing the next detox round and I can let my audience know about that as well, and stick that also in the show notes.

Jennifer Moore: Absolutely, yeah.

Lisa: So get yourself together, get your links right and send them over and we'll stick them in the show notes. Jen, thank you very much. Thank you to Meno-Me and the team for producing these wonderful products. I love finding great companies doing great things. And I'm not connected with Meno-Me, there's no thing here — although in future I do intend to be, because now I know about it, I'm like, oh, well that — so yeah, just check their stuff out and all the links will be in the show notes, guys. Thank you very much for your time, Jen. Been absolutely wonderful to have you.

Jennifer Moore: Thank you very much for having us. Yes, it's an "us", it's a nice ladies team.

Lisa: Lovely. Okay, Jen, thank you. Bye.