Get Your Mojo Back! Reclaim your energy and Vitality with Dr. Mandy Marziaz

So I say little hinges, swing big doors, that's a big message. So it doesn't take that much. I have little practices, five minutes in between clients that I will do a quick little session so I can sit, just rub two fingers together, feel all the grooves and ridges. I can do that for two minutes and it puts me into that part of my brain that actually is where I perform my executive functions instead of being in my part of my brain. That's very primitive and responding to emotion.

Hey there, I'm Amy Connell. Welcome to Grace Health, the podcast for women who want simple and grace filled ways to take care of themselves. I am a certified personal trainer and nutrition coach who wants you to know. Your eating, movement and body don't have to be perfect, you just need to be able to do what you're called to do. A common, common, common complaint I hear from midlife women is I just don't feel like myself. I have had that same feeling and my guess is you have to. The things that normally sound exciting or just like bleh and energy is down and, as today's guest, dr Manzi Marzie, describes it, the mojo is gone. If any of this resonates with you, I think you are going to find hope. In today's conversation with Dr Mandy, we talk about what she calls reverse puberty, how the brain and body communicate with each other and how that impacts our energy, and Dr Mandy provides actionable, simple advice to women looking to get their mojo back. Dr Manzi Marzie is a women's health expert in helping women get their energy and mojo back. She is a professional speaker and educator on stress and burnout. She has extensive postgraduate training in the areas of biochemistry, nutritional endocrinology, neurodevelopment, functional neurology and functional medicine. I think she's well schooled. In addition, she has a nationally board certified health coach and functional medicine practitioner. She is the founder of Vital Wellness, a virtual practice specializing in integrative women's health. She's a pioneer in working with high performing women suffering from chronic fatigue, weight loss, resistance, autoimmune challenges, digestive difficulties and hormonal imbalances. I know you are going to gain so much from this conversation with Dr Mandy. Let's bring her on. Welcome, dr Mandy.

Thank you.

You have I mean talk about the credentials. I mean this is amazing All the respect and applause to the work that you have done on the background to lead up to what you are doing now.

Thank you, I'm proud to be out on this stuff.

We all have to have something that we kind of nerd out on. So I get that. I think mine is like the mini muscles, that's what I, you're like glute me, glute men. I think they're so underappreciated by the general fitness community. So we won't nerd out on that today, but we will nerd out on this. I mean I was telling you before we hit started or hit start, like this perimenopause, menopause phase. I have heard so many women say I just don't feel like myself anymore. Where did I go? And it might be energy, it might be. I mean, I had one client one time. She goes, I'm going crazy and my people are so tired of me and it can or it can be depression. I mean, there's so many things that we are dealing with. So I'm really thrilled and honored for you to share your time and wisdom with us, and we're talking about restoring our energy and getting our mojo back. But before we get into that, I would love to hear where your passion from this comes from, because often our, our purpose and our passion comes from a story or something that's happened to or with us.

Yeah, so that's exactly what happened. So my story is in my late thirties, which is when I went back to school to become a chiropractor. I was in biomedical research before that. My adrenal was just totally crashed. You know, I'm on the floor, can't keep myself awake even though I'm drinking two pots of coffee a day, and with that my periods went out the window. So I was amenorrhea and they called it early menopause, but it wasn't because I got my periods back after a lot, a lot of work. You know, western medicine couldn't help me. I'm like I think there's a play time and a place for Western medicine. But they had no answers for me. They couldn't explain what was going on. They were just like take this pill or this hormone or something, but they had no answers to explain what was going on. And I was taking a yoga class and a natural path I was living in Portland, oregon at the time and a natural path said that she had healed herself from amenorrhea and managed to get pregnant and I was like I saw that. So I went and hired her and worked with her and it took a lot of years for me to come full circle because I was still in chiropractic school, which was my major stressor. But you know it was just the complete crash of my hormones. And here's the problem Nobody's talking about it. So I can go back in my history now that I know what I know and I can tell you I probably had endometriosis when I was young. All they offered me was the birth control pill for that. You know, my PMS was crazy in my twenties and early thirties. Like I can see all the dysfunction leading up to that point. And now that I'm in my late forties I hit perimenopause somewhere in my early forties and that was kind of another boulder coming down the hill. Right, I am a very active, outgoing person. I'm a marathon runner, I'm a high achieving woman and I couldn't get up off the couch Even to do the things I enjoyed. I think that's where the homojo thing comes from. Like I love running, I love going to the farmer's market, I love spending time with my dogs. I didn't want to do any of that and I was never a depressed person, so it wasn't like I tended to a depression or anything and it just came out of nowhere. And then you know all the things that go with it you're not sleeping, you're in perimenopause, your joints hurt with every workout you do and I'm like it felt like my body was failing me and I was only in my forties and I prodded myself on being someone who's healthy. I eat fairly well, I exercise, you know not a couch potato but yet these things still came up and got me, and no one's talking about it. So this is where my passion comes from. Metapause is not a disease, you know. I'm okay if Western medicine helps you with that, but we don't have to be on Western medications to learn to cope with this. But I think we need to be talking about it. We need to be empowering and educating women, and one of the foundations of my company is that I partner with you. I know a lot of really smart things, but you are the CEO of your own body and that's how it should be, and so I want to empower women to be able to make informed choices in their healthcare rather than being dictated to by a doctor.

I love that and I think being empowered and having the knowledge is really the very best thing that we can do when we are trying to figure our bodies out, like just learning, rather than going to a physician or doing something of like, okay, give me a pill, do me a deal, and rather than having this very simple thing it. You know, understanding that it's probably going to be a lot of different things, but understanding our body and learning that. I love that. You talk about being partnering with us on that, on our individual bodies, and I'm just putting myself in your shoes. I mean, you and I are about the same age and being laid out on the couch, not even able to do the things that you love to do, and I have to imagine the fear that came along with that, like, is this ever going to end? Is this, is this the rest? Is this the rest of my story? Is this how it's going to be and when you like, cognitively, you know what drives you and what makes you excited and the other side of that not being able to do that and putting all of that together. I just have to imagine that was a lot of emotions to playing into that, while you couldn't get up and do what you love doing.

Yeah. So I'm like this is something I've recently started being more vocal about because they think it needs to be said. You know, at the same time, because of the depression I was dealing with the suicide ideation, and so then it becomes I know all these things right, I know I'm supposed to eat healthy. I shouldn't eat ice cream before I go to bed but when you're having those thoughts, who cares? I'm like I'm not really trying to prolong my life right now, like is this what my life is going to be Like, laying on the couch, hating my life, not being able to do the things I enjoy, and it's really scary because it does come out of nowhere. And one of the other things is I specialize in working with high achieving women and for us, like, this is not our norm. You know, we kind of put a box over here and say you know women that are and not that we ever judge right, but women that are going through that. You know they've had all these things leading up to that in life and it just hits you out of nowhere in Perry and post menopause and it's like what is going on? And where is that? You know you don't recognize the woman in the mirror anymore, you know that's the right part.

Yeah, and I have to imagine too it's like wait a minute my track record is not aligned with how I am feeling right now and like I have done. I like how you talk about being high achieving women, like when you have done so much and accomplished so much that it's that's a hard thing to reconcile when it what you have done and where you know where some of your pride comes from, and all of that isn't aligned with how you are feeling internally as well. One of the things that you talk about I love this Perry menopause, menopause phase that I don't love. That be very clear. I needed to work on that sentence a little bit better. But I love how you refer to it as reverse puberty, which I'm like, oh, that totally makes sense. The problem is and we've had conversations with you know Amanda Thieb was on and about the multitude of symptoms that we can experience. I mean, some of them people are more familiar with, like the hot flashes and the mood swings and the weight gain weight gain, you know and then there's the low sex drive and the erratic periods and the brain fog. I mean there's just so many of those. So talk to us some about the hormone imbalances and I'm just going to assume that it's hormone. Some, a lot of it's hormone imbalances and or other issues like what else is going on that's contributing to all of that.

Yes, and I love that you've brought up the reverse puberty piece, because that's the thing like in teenage years it's normal to have these mood swings and oh, you're just going through puberty, right, but then we get into Perry menopause and we are going through kind of a puberty type of you know hormone fluctuation again, and but it's not normalized. Like it's not okay for me to have a bad day and say, you know, I'm peopled out today. So I love that we're talking about this because I think, again, this needs to be normalized.

Yeah, well, and if I can interject real quickly, because people think, well, you're a grown woman, you should know better, you should be able to have be in control of your feelings or your stuff, and so, yeah, I love that connection that you've made. I'm sorry to interrupt, go on. No, that's, that's good and yeah.

So hormones you have to remember hormones are more than just estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. There's cortisol, which is your major stress hormone. There's DHEA, which is the precursor to cortisol and your sex hormones. There's insulin, which is part of your blood sugar. There's thyroid hormone, right, so there's all these hormones. And hormones, I like to say, are like a web. They all play together and it's like a game of dominoes when one falls down, they all fall down. So cortisol is going to be your main driver. And I always tell women like your brain and nervous system are really not concerned with your happiness. The brain and nervous system is concerned with your survival, and so if your nervous system senses some sort of threat or you're in that part of your brain that just senses everything as a threat then cortisol is going to be raised. And when cortisol is raised, your body will stop making sex hormones, because we don't need sex hormones to live. We may need it to live well, but we can play live without our sex hormones. So then we're already in perimenopause, where the hormones are doing this right. They're up and down depending on the day, and now you get that piece. So what midlife woman is not stressed out, especially in today's modern world. We've been putting ourselves last for the last 20 or 30 years. It's finally catching up with us. So you've got that piece insulin. So we do become more insulin sensitive at this age. In perimenopause, because of estrogen dropping, we see more blood sugar issues. So insulin is another hormone that can drive that show. And then a lot of women are dealing with thyroid imbalances and that can drive the show. So it's an interplay of all of the hormones and they all need to be optimized. So often when women come to me they're like I just want to get evaluated, see if I need some HRT or something, and you may need it. But if you think of healing like a pyramid, like sex, hormones are at the top, hrt is at the top. You got to work on the base. First you got to get your cortisol lined up. You got to get your blood sugar lined up, get thyroid optimized and build from there.

Oh, I have so many questions I might ask in response to that. I guess one of these and I didn't really prep you with this, but so I hear you in like optimization and understanding and having these. You know, I know that you do some testing, which we'll talk about here in a second. You know a lot of my community. We want to find that balance between eating and feeling ourselves and putting the foods in our body that make us feel well, but not being controlled by it and not feeling like, okay, this is, I have to do this and this and this. And that's one reason why I think we all loved Amanda Thiep so much is that she had a very just, a balanced and realistic way of doing that. And so how can we, like you, talk about insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance? I know I'm not super well educated on that, but I understand what you're saying with basically, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it's more, like you know, rather than having that insulin kind of stabilized, that when we eat it may jump up a little bit more, it may be more reactive, even if we're having the same thing that we used to have 10 years ago. So how can we manage that while at the same time not letting it control our life.

Right, and I love that you bring that up because it's kind of a two-part question. So, number one, I'm great at meeting clients wherever they are at. If your goal is that you have to fit in your skinny jeans, then we can work on that. But guess what? You have to be 95% compliant. Or do you wanna have a little wiggle room and do you wanna have the brownies on Saturday night? And for me personally, would I love to have my 20-year-old body back? Of course I would, but it's not gonna happen. Like, I'm still an athlete but my body composition is different and I'm okay with that. I tried to embrace that. I also try to get underneath. Like what's really driving that? Like 90% of the women I work with, there's a self-confidence issue that goes with that. We're not going. You think you're going to feel more confident at your goal weight, but that's not gonna solve everything. There's underlying drivers there and so we really have to drill that down. But the other piece of that is like we can't make yourself so crazy worrying about food. So I always come back to like for me personally, it's my why I do not wanna be on the. You know we watch our parents right Taking handfuls of pills with every meal. I don't want that life because there's side effects that go with that If I have to have something because bun genetics, whatever, and it's just not gonna be avoided. But I wanna try to control what I can control. So I pay very close attention to my blood sugar because that's something that runs in my family. Do I never have dessert? Have a spoonful of ice cream every night? To be perfectly honest, I love it, but-.

We just fell in love with you more, by the way, go on.

Yes, even as a doctor I am not perfect, but I try not to do all the things, so I try to be. You know, in our 20s and 30s we probably could be 70 to 80% compliant with our food choices and still, you know, hit those goals. Well, at this age it's probably closer to the 90% compliant. But you know it's making the choices, the healthier choices, when we can, and still allowing ourselves treats and allowing ourselves what I call live life. I tell my clients, the most important vitamin you're gonna take is vitamin P, and P stands for pleasure. And if you are gonna go out and have that dinner like I don't want you to sit at dinner going, every spoonful I take this is gonna be terrible. My digestion's gonna be a mess. I'm gonna gain weight, like then you're eating in a stressed out state, which helps nothing. So enjoy it, savor it. When I have that spoonful of ice cream every night, I savor it. It's what I only really need one, even on a bad night, three spoonfuls. I don't eat the whole pint because I'm not like. I'm just okay, I'm gonna enjoy this, allow myself to have it. So I think you know you have to find that balance and find what your goals are. And a lot of what I do when I work with clients is not only do I do blood testing but I do some genetic testing to find out what predisposes us. You know, like I have a long line of heart disease in my family so I know that makes me a little bit more vulnerable. I have to be a little more careful of certain things. But I will also tell you like keep going in tangents, but like I nerd out on the blue zones the people that live to be over a hundred and in the research seven out of the nine markers in the research have nothing to do with diet or exercise. They have to be happy having a community. So there's so much like I have worked with women on their blood sugar where I put them on a continuous glucose monitor and what stress does to your blood sugar or a lack of sleep is worse than what the piece of cake did.

Oh, that's so good. Thank you so much with that. Yeah, and I love how you're talking about how the, the compliance, it kind of changes as you get older and I think that that is for me personally, that's really freeing, because nothing has changed and yet my body comp has changed lately and so I'm going through a lot of kind of mindset work with like, okay, how do I feel about this? Do I care about it, do I need to? All of that kind of stuff. But yeah, that is such such good wisdom, so thank you for that. Okay, so one of the things that you educate women on is how the body and the brain communicate with each other, and this is something that we over here in the Grace Health community have loved learning about. I would love for you to talk about that high level of the body and the brain communicating with each other, and then also how that relates to our energy, to that mojo, to how we're feeling today, this week, this month, all of that.

Yes, so called the hypothalamic pituitary axis. Your hypothalamus and pituitary gland are in your brain, and then when you have your adrenals, which sit on top of your kidneys, and so that kind of goes back to that when I was in complete adrenal fatigue it's kind of an oversimplified term, but what basically happened was the brain wasn't communicating with my adrenal glands anymore, and so my body wasn't getting the message to make cortisol. So your body has to constantly be in this feedback loop talking, and that can get broken down by a lot of things. One of the biggest things, like in that example, is this chronic stress that we live in. We are designed to be exposed to a stressor and then we come down off that stressor and that's normal. Stress gets a bad rep. But if you had no stress, that wouldn't be good for you either. Exercise is a perfect example. That's a good stress. But if your stress bucket is already overloaded, going and doing that hit workout may not be the best thing for your body today. So in our modern world we're just chronic stress, chronic stress, right, we live at this level of stress that becomes normal to us. So most of the women I work with are like I don't even know that I'm stressed out Like that's really scary, because it just read your intake form and I am stressed out reading that. So and I was the same way when I crashed in my late 30s I wouldn't have told you I was stressed. I was just that special kind of superwoman that could do everything at a higher level than everybody else, right, until it caught up with me. So you know your brain and your body have to be constantly communicating about that and remember your brain's wired for survival. So again, your brain is gonna prioritize you being alive versus your happiness or your sex hormones or any of that. And in that axis, because the precursors to make cortisol and sex hormones are the same. That's why your body will steal the resources for cortisol. So if you're constantly living stressed out, that's it. You're not going to be making the sex hormones. And then the double whammy for us is when we hit menopause and our ovaries stop producing sex hormones, the adrenal glands take over that production. So if they're already kind of taxed out and tired and not doing their job, they're not going to be able to produce those sex hormones. So I always say like if I could just do one thing, it would be to work on this chronic stress that we're under.

Okay, well, let's get into that, because I would love I mean, that was one of the questions that I wrote down as you were talking is like how can we support a positive? You called it the feedback loop. I mean, what are some actionable things that we can do to help mitigate that stress and maybe kind of get that functioning a little bit better?

Yeah, so this is what I travel around the world lecturing on. So I say little hinges swing big doors, that's a big message. So it doesn't take that much. I have little practices five minutes in between clients that I will do a quick little session I call. I follow a program called positive intelligence, which is what I take my clients through, and they have these little PQ sessions, sessions they call them in their sensory activities. So I can sit and just rub two fingers together, feel all the grooves and ridges. I can do that for two minutes and it puts me into that part of my brain that actually is where I perform my executive functions, instead of being in the part of my brain that's very primitive and responding to emotion. So if you read an email and you're in this part of your brain, your executive function, you will read it and it will not be as polarized. And if you are in that emotional part of your brain like you will be like this person's attacking me. They're really not. So it really is what part of the brain you're in. So, yeah, like, some of the things we can do is just building up that resiliency and they have to be practices. I tell my clients you need to do these every day, even when you're feeling good, so that when this stuff hits the fan, you have resources in your body that you can use to calm that nervous system down. And then the other piece of it that I love to do with my clients is we kind of need to do a stress audit, like how many things are on our list that don't need to be? How many things are we saying yes to that we don't need to or we're just doing them to this degree they don't? Dumb is better than perfect, right? Like we don't need. You know, if we're having a kid's birthday party, maybe we don't need to hand make all the decorations. $100 starts okay. Nobody really cares that much. And I think, as women, you know, we put this pressure on ourselves and then we put ourselves last. So you know, I tell women, especially in midlife, like, take out your schedule, put you on that schedule first. Like if you don't schedule yourself in, then you're not going to be able to take care of yourself. But it's doing these little things that just help us get out of this chronic stress state.

I love that idea of a stress audit. I cannot tell you how many times this situation has happened to me. I hear about somebody maybe having a crisis, going through something and in my head I think, oh, I need to do this for them. So I need to make them dinner. I need to. You know, I do stuff in the kitchen right, like I need to make them a bunch of little bitty, you know like grab and go breakfast and stuff like that, and then I don't get around to doing it and I have told no one. I have not said this to the friend, I have. Nobody knows that. This is what's going on in my mind. And then I'm stressed out because I'm not doing the thing that only I thought about maybe doing and kind of increasing that that, like that anxiety and the stress, and like, oh my gosh, I really need to do that, when nobody knew I was going to do that in the first place. So, yeah, that's a great example and the rubbing of the finger. You know where my mind went. Of course, I've got this book coming out for young women and it's kind of a holistic whole thing, but I thought that what a wonderful tool to teach your children Like, okay, we are all up in arms, let's just, let's just take two minutes and set a timer, and I love that that's and again doing it together just to kind of pull everybody back down. That's a great idea. One of the things that I wanted to learn a little bit more about and I think you started to allude to this, but this whole test, don't guess. Explain that to us.

Yeah, so I'm a very analytical person and so I love data and numbers, and so I believe in testing and not guessing when it comes to our health. So I like to run, I always run. You know blood labs. I have some functional medicine labs that I use also, like saliva testing and urine testing, just to get that deeper dive to see you know where do we need to focus on first, and we can start with you know protocols and throwing things at it, but you know we might be guessing, we might be getting things wrong. So really, I'm using the data to show us you know what we need to, what's most important to work on and then build from there.

Okay, and one of the things I saw on your website was that you utilize the Dutch test. I haven't ever heard of that. Can you tell us what that is?

Yeah, so the Dutch test is a dried urine hormone test and for everybody who runs to their MD, what MDs and their MDs say, this is a garbage test. So I'm going to say I love Western medicine has its place, as I said, but the reason that they are telling you that is because they've not been trained on it. So there's three types of testing you can do for hormones. You can do blood testing, you can do saliva testing and you can do urine testing. Blood testing in perimenopause I find it kind of useless. I do tell my clients if you're working with your medical doctor and you're on HRT, they are going to use that to guide them. So you know you're stuck with that. But in perimenopause our hormones are like this when in this roller coaster did you test? It's one day, it's one snapshot. So to me it's not really giving me good data. Saliva testing I do like that. It does give good data and some of the companies out there you can do an entire cycle so I can see every day where your hormones are, which gives us a lot of good data, especially if I didn't guess that right date of your high progesterone day, because that's harder to guess than irregular perimenopausal cycles. But then the Dutch test, which is the drag urine test, takes it a step further, because in urine we can see metabolites of the hormones. So especially if you are on HRT like I'm not just interested in if you're producing enough hormones, are you metabolizing them? For instance, estrogen has three doors. It goes down and you know, in the literature a lot of years ago estrogen got a bad rap right. Well, if you take estrogen you're going to get cancer. And it's not true. There's only one of the three metabolites that it's known for damaging DNA and increasing risk for cancer. So I want to know, like, if that's the pathway that your body is pushing, we can support your body to go to the more favorable pathways. So I like being able to see what those metabolites are doing and the Dutch test will show me metabolites of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. It also shows cortisol metabolites. So maybe you're producing enough cortisol but you know, are you? Is your body using it up because you're under so much stress? Then we can look at that. And the Dutch test will also give me that DHEA number which, as I said, is the precursor to the, both cortisol and the sex hormones, and it also gives a few markers like vitamin B status, some antioxidants, melatonin, which is your sleep hormone. So it gives a little deeper dive into all of this stuff and can really help see where we need to support and I use it in both, you know women that are in their 20s and 30s and women that are, you know, in that perimenopause stage. I don't often use it in post-menopause unless again you're on hormone replacement therapy and I'm trying to see how are you metabolizing them, because once you hit menopause, you all your hormones should be low. You know that's what we expect.

Sure. So is that just like a one-time urine, like peonastic type thing, or is it over a course of several days weeks?

Yeah, so the Dutch has. You can do the whole cycle or you can do just the snapshot, which would be like you start at the night before and you finish it the next day. It's about 24 hours of different times of the day that you'll be taking the samples. Okay, Can you do it at home and send it in? It's so easy.

Oh, okay, okay, that's good to know. I haven't heard about that. Thank you, okay. So I know that you provide individualized clients and it's so funny. I mean, you're talking about the data. I have a girlfriend who is a total data nerd as well and I'm like, oh, she's got to listen to this, because I love how you take that data and individualize it to all of us, rather than just saying, okay, well, you're in perimenopause, this is what your regimen needs to be. But I'm wondering if you could just give three pieces of advice to women who are just kind of looking to get their mojo back, you know, to kind of circle back up to this top one, because we've kind of gotten into a little bit of the nitty gritty. But you know, we all love applicable things, and so I was. You know, what kind of general suggestions can you offer us to just help us feeling better?

Yes. So I know this first one is kind of a loaded one, but sleep is a big one and I understand in perimenopause I'm right there in the camp with you ladies Sleep can be an issue and I have found ways to try to help with that. But prioritizing sleep. So most of us in our 20s and 30s, right, we were like, well, I could sacrifice on sleep, restrict more coffee tomorrow. This is not the time in your life to do that. And just, you know, having some good sleep hygiene routines and things like that, they can help you, but making sleep a priority. The second one I would say is you know stress and grounding your nervous system. So you know whether it's something like I do with the positive intelligence things, or you know keeping that nervous system in the state of calm as much as possible. And my third favorite one is rest. And I always tell women, especially in midlife but I think we could start this much earlier we need to, you know, train for rest like we're training for a marathon. So you know this as a personal trainer, right, we need those rest days, and I was. I was an athlete that was like I don't take rest days, maybe the day after a competition, right, but I don't take rest days and now I have to really prioritize those rest days because that's where the magic happens. Even if you think about it from an exercise standpoint, that's where our growth happens. It doesn't happen when you're weight training. It happens the next day when you rest from weight training. That's when your muscles grow and it happens right after you know, when you eat your protein and things like that. Well, it's the same thing in perimenopause, like, for instance, I got COVID in February of this year and it brain fog, like all my perimenopause symptoms that I had calmed down came back. Brain fog was a big one, which is really hard when you're a doctor to be having brain fog. I posted notes everywhere so I wouldn't forget anything. But another one that I had symptom I had was 24 set, well awake time nausea. I didn't have it when I was sleeping, but when I was awake I was nauseous and it was a mentor of mine that said I think it's your nervous system. So I took five minutes out of my afternoon and I laid down with my legs up the wall and then like yoga pose and I put on a meditation and my nausea went away and it never came back Because it wasn't resting enough. I was just doing too much. So that's what I say like prioritizing rest, and it doesn't have to be big. It's not like you need eight hours of laying in your pajamas watching Netflix and do that if you want. But but you can be simple. Little things like just having some more rest or breaks in your day could be very helpful.

That's incredible. Okay, I have heard this thing about laying up against the wall with your feet up, but I don't know a lot about that. What are some of the benefits? Like, talk to me physiologically excuse me physiologically about what is happening when we do that.

Well, first of all, like you know you're laying down, so you know you're breathing, you're calming your system down, but most of us are either sitting all day or standing all day and blood's flowing down. So this helps get the blood, you know kind of flowing, the lymph and everything flowing back to the heart, which is, you know, good for getting rid of waste and stuff like that. It's just a very restorative pose. That was one of my tricks when I healed in my late 30s. Was restorative yoga. It's not just stretching. That's what I thought when I started it. I'm like I sit in class 10 hours a day and then I go to a studio and I stretch. But it's not exactly what it was. It's just it's telling the nervous system to get in that state of calm.

I so wish I would have understood the benefits of yoga when I was in my early 20s. I remember going. I was a member of the YMCA and I would go there and take all of the boxing classes. I loved them and the you know the I don't even know what we called it then, but the power pump and the high intensity, I mean I loved it. I was like 26 years old and it was just I loved it. And so I went into a yoga class, not really knowing what that was, and and I was. I was like I'm never doing this again. This was a total waste of time because, of course, in my mind this was before the learning process began, but in my mind I was like, well, I didn't burn any calories and I wasn't breathing hard, so that's a waste. And now I think, man, if I would have incorporated that, I just feel like I could have treated my body so much better.

Yeah, yoga was something I only did when I was injured from running because I couldn't do any other exercise. So let's do yoga. Eventually I became my friend and now I do that a lot. I probably, in midlife, focus on more on mobility, just because sometimes getting in those prolonged stretches doesn't feel really good for my body and holding them for a long time. But definitely mobilizing like that is the mobilizing and lifting heavier the things I never miss. Unless I'm sick, I'll skip lifting heavy. But mobility I definitely focus on. Especially as a runner I'm doing things that do not make me mobile.

Exactly, exactly, no, I think it is the secret sauce to everything, and I incorporated a lot of ability in my signature class called be complete, because it's it's so important to get our bodies moving in so many different ways. So, yeah, mobility, I have just loved doing that, okay. So if someone is interested in working with you, how does that work? Can they do that? I know you are you live in Colorado, like, are you licensed to work with clients online everywhere? I mean, talk to us about how we can do that.

Yeah, so I work virtually with clients. I actually sold my chiropractic business in 2021. So I could just focus on the actual medicine and health coaching piece. And I work virtually, so I have clients. I have a client in Hong Kong. So all countries, all states. And yeah, and right now I'm working one on one with clients, but I will be in January launching a membership group, so there will be options like that and people can find me through my website, which I think you're going to drop in the show notes, correct? Yes, absolutely.

And do you just work with women or do you work with men as?

well, I do work with men and I also work with younger women. Yeah, actually I just got a new client and he's dealing with some long COVID symptoms, and so also my marketing is geared towards women going through menopause. But yes, I work with all ages and ranges.

Good to know and I want to point out a couple things that you have available. So you do have a free PDF and we will put the link in the show notes, but five ways to get your mojo back and I have to imagine that some of it is the things that we covered today, and then there's probably some other juicy content on there as well. And then you also were so kind and offered $100 off an initial visit by mentioning this podcast, for. So if you are interested, you guys listening, if you're interested in working with Dr Mandy, then call her up, have a consult, $100 off the initial visit, and thank you for offering that to us.

Like I said, my mission is to educate and empower women, and so I really want to help more people. Yeah, that initial consult is always the most expensive one, so that helps get that down a little bit for you, but with the, you know five ways to get your mojo back. So one of my core values is simplicity. You know things have to be sustainable for our lives, which is why I love that you know small things can can move mountains. So all five tips in there are very simple. You could implement them today.

Perfect, oh, that's so good. Okay, I have a few questions I ask all of my guests. One of them has to do with tattoos. I love learning about tattoos because I have found that when people put them on their body for the rest of their lives, they often have a meaning behind it not always, but often so do you have any tattoos and, if so, would you mind telling us what it is and the meaning behind it? And if you don't, but you had to get one, what would it be and where would it go.

So I do have a tattoo on the back of my right shoulder. It is a red rose with my mother's initials in it and the meaning behind that is my mom died when she was very young. She died at age 36, probably why I'm in health care too. Yeah, yeah, massive heart attack at 36. And so the rose was kind of an inspiration and funny, I got it while I was in chiropractic school, so kind of to honor my mother and to remind myself of that inner healer. And my mother was a nurse, so she was also a healer and probably had. She had a lot more patients and I don't mean like patients, like the people, I mean she was a very calm president. She worked with nursing homes and stuff, with people that were kind of, you know, losing their minds and so you know she often got juice thrown at her and pills thrown at her and people throw stuff at you all day and you just come home smiling. I don't think I would be that calm, but my mother, she was amazing. So it's a constant reminder.

Oh, I'm so sorry you lost her so young, because that that means, I mean, I have to imagine you were really young as well when that happens, and I love that you are able to remember her through your tattoo and you know. Going back to when you were talking about our why, I mean, it sounds like this is a big why of your personal like why you take care of yourself and remembering her and honoring her too at the same time. What was her name? March March, oh, I love that. That's such a great name. Well, thank you for sharing that with us. Okay, just in case people are listening and they want to know how to connect with you, can you say that? And then, of course, we will put all of them, all of your contact info, in the show notes as well.

Yes, so my website is wwwdoctordrmandymarzazcom. It should be shorter for times like this. Yeah, so then there are. All my other info is on my website.

But yes, that's SEO compatible. So you got to get your name out there and we will have that on the. We will have that in the show notes as well. Okay, final question you get the last word. What is the one simple thing that you want my community to remember about our conversation today?

Little hinges, swing big doors. That is such a big one, you know it, doesn't we? I think we over complicate our health, right, like I have to do all these big things and then I get overwhelmed, then I don't do any of it and just start small. Even the small things make my five minutes. Legs up the wall took away my nausea from COVID, I mean, who would have thought that five minutes? So whatever small thing you can do today to move that needle will be helpful.

I think I'm going to go have to try that. Okay, that is all for today. Go out there and have a great day.