#245 – Rediscovery in Mid-Age: Navigating Perimenopause and Financial Wellness

Welcome to the Money Boss Parent Podcast. I'm Anna Sergunina your host. Today we're joined by Amita Sharma, co-founder of the NourishDoc to discuss rediscovery of the crossroads of mid age, perimenopause, and financial wellness Amita. His personal journey inspired her to create a holistic wellness platform for women navigating this stage of life. We explore how to manage financial and emotional challenges, maintain wellness and support our loved ones through this transition. Whether you're experiencing this transition yourself are helping family members. This episode is packed with valuable insights. So let's dive in. Hello, everyone, welcome back to the money boss parent podcast. I am excited to connect with you today. As I have a guest who's going to share some lights in the interesting topic. Amita welcome to the show.

Thank you super excited. I know. That's something you discuss on the other park as well. I'm super excited that you agreed to talk about it. Yes,

no, I am totally curious. And I think a lot of women are somewhat ashamed to talk about this topic, ask questions and share and you probably the one that knows more about but this is how you know because here on the money boss parent podcast, we're talking about how to navigate your finances as you go through life. And as as life happens to us our health changes and all of these things. So today we're gonna focus on paramount, perimenopause, and what happens to women as they go through this phase. So I am excited to connect that part of our living to our finances, because these things aren't separate. So that is my excitement for having you on today. But as we get started, tell us a little bit about yourself and what inspired you to start your current company nurse doc.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I was in the similar stage. When the perimenopause hit me, I was completely taken aback. I did not even know the word perimenopause. I had to look it up in the dictionary. And, and I was embarrassed, like you said, women don't want to talk about it. I was embarrassed to talk at work, talk at home, all my relationships, my finance, my work got affected because I was not able to concentrate. So all these things happened to me. And I was in this, like, millions of other women didn't want to talk about it. So so slowly, I started thinking about it that someone has to talk about it and do something about it. And my inspiration to start something because I was always very, into holistic wellness. And I was working for software companies, high tech companies, so I thought this could be something that I can give it a try and see where it takes me and here I am. Yeah,

that's exciting. Okay, so before we go any further because some listeners might be confused, well, what are we talking about here? So, can you define perimenopause, menopause as well so that we can kind of hit on what are we discussing here today? Yes,

yes. So first of all, menopause. Menopause is literally one day menopause is a day when you haven't had periods for 12 months consecutive. And then you are technically studying your menopause and after that is post menopause, meaning no periods at all can finished for your life. Your ovaries are retired, right? That's what the menopause is. Now perimenopause is the years before you hit menopause. And that can happen seven to 10 years even 10 to 14 years before you hit menopause. So menopause ages 51. Technically, anyone in the late 30s or 40s are stuck can start to get into the perimenopause phase. And perimenopause phase I can explain a little bit more what perimenopause is perimenopause, what starts happening is you start getting irregular periods, your periods are not regular like on the clock 20 days right, they will become shorter initially or they can become erratic or the flow can become more or bleeding can get quality, things like that your flow becomes irregular. That is what that is how you know that you could be entering perimenopause, if you're in your late 30s, early 40s Because 50 Man acid right minus 10 years or minus seven years or whatever, or even minus 14 it could be it could start happening in late 30s.

So, what so as our listeners are these women in 30s and 40s and you know, all of a sudden, like if you kind of go on through it, are you in the midst of it and you may not even realize right like how many of us wake up one day So I am in the perimenopause phase, I actually didn't even know that word existed, either until, you know, it started to kind of surface. I was like, what is that? Right? So what are like some of the signs that other than, you know, different, you know, variations in your period that you can start to experience that you might get a signal, it's like something is happening, a change is happening in your body. Yeah,

hot flashes is one of the most common symptom, suddenly you start feeling hot. And that's what started happening to me, your face becomes all flushed, and you start sweating. Like with no warning sign, SLA, you're sitting in a meeting, and oh, my God, it's like a drip of sweat, that that's one of those things, hot flashes. The other thing is sometimes on, you don't know, you start gaining weight completely like you don't, you don't even you're exercising, you're eating well, and suddenly you start gaining weight, you know, that is also one of the signs your hair starts to panic. That's because in the beginning, when I talked about the irregular periods, we have two female sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone. So the first instance, progesterone hormone starts going down, and we have an estrogen that's higher. So that imbalance of estrogen progesterone creates all kinds of strange things in our body, like uncontrollable weight gain, then our mood swings can start happening, we suddenly angry, we suddenly tearful, we suddenly start crying near these kinds of things, or mood swings can go a little bit haywire. And with the mood swings, or gut health can also get impacted, we can get constipated because we know the gut and the brain connection is there. So it's the hormonal imbalance that starts happening in our bodies, when the irregular periods start happening. And that hormonal imbalance can also impact our productivity at work when we're working at right. Everything good is all connected to your finances, everything if I'm not able to concentrate at work, which was happening with me, suddenly, I'll forget brain fog will happen. Suddenly, I'll forget something. I was not able to concentrate, and it started impacting my work as well. And my productivity, and I'm too embarrassed to talk to anyone I didn't even know who to talk to, I didn't even know this existed, I thought something was wrong with me. So that's why there's awareness to women who are in their mid 30s or late 30s. It's very important because something like this has to happen. They'll say, Oh, they just ignore it. That's what I did. I ignored it.

That's a yes. Because you're because you're not quite aware. I know a lot of women are still at that age or having kids right or having their second or third. So it's like, how am i How can this be happening to me, you also might be seeing this with your moms Right? Like that, you know, and again, it's like, in my experience, this was not a conversation that was discussed, you know, until my mom actually was going through menopause. It was like, whoa, okay, I had no idea this was happening to you. Right? So it's like, I think it's time that we just have open conversations and share it what is happening 111 thought that I was having just in general about this topic is like how how do we connect this to the financial part is, I think what happens when you start observing symptoms about yourself, and the first thought you have is like, Okay, I'm gonna reach out to my regular doctor or my OB, and sort of present this and knowing what our healthcare system is like how like talk a little bit about the differences of what you could expect and you know, to receive there versus you know, what you've created because I suspect there's difference in that and yeah,

and that's that's a huge disconnect right in our system here and in fact all over the world for that matter. Now. Now the problem is that gynecologist typically will go women or women as women will end up going to the OBGYN and they are unfortunately not as well trained about this whole perimenopause and menopause and medical schools as they are for the fertility, infertility reproductive part of a woman's stage, not in that so more than likely there's a medication or they will give you some kind of a hormonal balance or, or the that's what I was given. I don't know what's happening now. Or it would be like, Okay, this is part of the aging process. There's nothing, you know, things like a standard kind of a thing. So, so it's like, I don't know if you want to be on hold. There's nothing wrong with being on hormone replacement therapy. That's not what I'm saying. But that also takes it depends on each person, even if you're on hormone replacement therapy, meaning they start replacing the hormone so that you know you're feeling the same way as you were before. But what we are trying to do what I'm trying to do With no shock is really emphasize the fact on awareness first, and changing your lifestyle making modifications to your lifestyle to your holistic lifestyle, taking care of your mind, body and soul. And that is important because if you do that with evidence, you can navigate the space. Right with with success with without any interruptions. But so that's kind of the difference because more than likely OBGYN, you know, our program put you on hormones or some kind of other medication. And we'll have the women will won't even know if they should go and see them. You know, all this so much disconnect right now.

Yeah, I think I think you're right on that. So, so talk a little bit about then this this, like holistic approach, right? Because and you've touched on a few areas, but like, what does that incorporate? Because again, when somebody's is like feeling down, or you know, having a bad day, and you're like, I don't know why this is happening to me, right? You don't necessarily connect the fact that there's hormonal changes going on. And you're just kind of pushed through, go through the day and get your stuff done. So like, yeah, like, how about we open the door to the holistic approach to, you know, overall health?

Yeah, so hormonal transition is going to happen to each woman, we know that that's a fact everybody's going to enter the perimenopause phase and then the menopause. Now, during this hormonal transition of 10 years, or whatever years a woman has, what we are seeing is embracing a holistic lifestyle. So what that means is really changing your entire lifestyle, changing your diet, changing, having a movement, you know, exercise, changing your exercise routine, learning about the breathing techniques, that can help you calm down because stress can exasperate all those things that we were talking about. You know, we are all stressed out, we know that our bodies are not meant to take so much stress, and then learning about simple herbs and simple supplements, but that all has to happen according to your body what you were going through, right? Not just like, Okay, everybody starts piling on all the supplements, which I started doing by

the eye, okay, yeah,

I pile I started piling on all things that you could think of, I'm like, Oh my god. So and then also using learning about aromatherapy, essential oils, learning about acupressure points, learning about some massage oils, helping yourself massage your head, you know, the hair thinning, I talked about taking care of your skin, because your skin is going to loosen up a little bit your hair can start getting and so yoga, yoga, certain postures in yoga, certain breathing techniques are very good. And taking care of your pelvic health, all these things, you can do it using all these holistic therapies, right? It's like an orchestra. So it depends on what the problems are, and how do you go about doing it one at a time. And also your cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, CBT, what we call it, making sure your emotions are, you're not you're digesting your emotions properly, you're not keeping any negative thoughts in sight, keeping it out, bring it renting it out, right? This is very, very important, because mental health becomes almost 50% of the women during this age, have anxiety and depression. Mental health becomes very important. So it's important to seek met counseling if you need it. You know, most of us need the counseling at this time, along with what I talked about all the other things. Acupressure is very good. Acupuncture is good. So it's certain herbs like Are you ready kerbs, even traditional Chinese medicine, you can you know, of course with the consultation with the proper constitution and the natural path, you can take some of these to help yourself to navigate this journey. So that's what I'm talking about. And then in self care, right, you need to take care of yourself, take some time for yourself, don't most of us are always taking care of others, whether our kids or husbands or moms or dad or whoever. Women are built like that we don't take care of ourselves. And this is the time to really rediscover yourself. Does your self confidence your self worth your self love? This is what I'm talking about?

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of things to kind of hit on one of the things that I do talk about a lot here on the podcast and just in to clients in general because, you know, particularly when we like put a financial plan together, it's all focused on how much money do I save and like what's in my budget and what would my portfolio grow to but like, I think like it's sort of like taking a step back and looking like who are you as a person? What are you going through? Like what is your life trends? Are you just having a family? Are you in this mid life? And like, in looking at that, because all this money we're making and saving and investment is supposed to simplify our life? That's right. I, the category that I'm referring to, which I think will really well align with what we're talking about here is like the self care. And you kind of said that a few times, I was like, This is it like, it could, it could be on all of these different areas that you discussed, right? Like taking some time for yourself, and it doesn't have to be like, allocating dollars specifically, you can and it's great if you have that in your budget, but simple things like, like you said, diet movements going out for a walk. Those things could be, you know, free and hope practically free. Right? It's already been incorporated in your overall financial plan. Because I guess, to follow up a question on this, like, what happens if you don't address these things? Like, what are the ramifications?

Oh, my God. So that data is actually quite scary. I don't mean to scare you, I really honestly don't mean to scare younger women, you know, in their late 30s. But if we don't take care of ourselves as women, the data says 80% of the women over age 55 have one chronic condition. Chronic Condition, like could be heart issues, could be diabetes, could be osteoporosis, could be cancer, right? These kinds of things could be dementia, because if you look at the data, more women have all these things that are talked about all these chronic conditions than men. And the data speaks because of the hormonal shifts or motor transition that's happening. We talked about that earlier. Right? And and, you know, like osteoporosis, we know that the bone density, bone density starts going down after we are 30. If we don't start taking care of our bone density, you know, the chances of women specifically women, the hormones are depleting. And if they don't take care of themselves, having the chances of you know, other things that are happening at a later stage go higher. Right. So all even dementia, more women have dementia, more women have heart issues, believe it or not men? We don't I didn't know.

I didn't know that. I didn't think about these, like you said scary things. But I mean, you hear you know, about the, you know, the the health challenges that people are having, but yeah, it's real. Yes,

yes. So that's so I mean, hormonal balance has a lot to do with it. You know, some people, some doctors might say that every woman should start taking HRT, but you know, depends on what each and every woman's situation is. But if you, if we take care of ourselves, using what we're talking about the holistic lifestyle is really making a conscious effort to to take care of what what is needed, after you're turning 40 Or after you're entering the perimenopause phase, you know, that is what we are trying to do at nourish talk is really create an awareness that women should at least understand what they're going to enter, you know, how we write notes for each and every little thing, especially.

This is a note to ourselves to

ourselves, we need to prepare, we prepare so much we have all kinds of to do list here, you know, we we have to do anything, we just have a proper planning, you know, plan here in the society nowadays. So this is one area which I thought that underserved, unplanned and shocking, the women don't even know about it. And suddenly, you know, we know our health system, but I don't go there. But to tie back into your financial things. The loss of productivity for employers is costing already billions right now, because of the lack of awareness and lack of really talking about this at work. And I'm talking about bigger companies or smaller companies, you know, if women are going through all this, they don't talk about it, they don't open up and the productivity goes down and they don't they feel ashamed and absenteeism goes up and things like that. Right. So it tie in the end, it's tying into the money part. And a lot of women also think of quitting work because of this if the symptoms are so aggravating that they can't take care of themselves at work, and they feel they don't feel supported. So there are there's a lot of data and research that has been done that lack of support for women in 40s because of the three, perimenopause. Yeah,

yeah. And I mean, one thing I keep thinking is like, Okay, well, we're, you know, you're, there's an impact of what you do during the day. Well, what about you Family, right? Like, what about your loved ones, right? Your significant other, like, if you're on feeling your best, I suppose you don't show up your best. And so that's, that could show up. And you know, that can have a whole lot of ramifications all together. The one thing that I was, as you kind of describing these, you know, the scary symptoms, or, you know, the realistic this is what's happening in our society today. One of the things in financial planning is like always thinking long term, right? Like I'm gonna save for retirement. And part of that is like, making sure you have proper health care, not health insurance, I'm not just talking about health insurance, we all have health insurance, that's, you know, given and available to everyone, but more about like, okay, old age, and, you know, having enough resources for that. And as a younger person, and I've been, you know, I started, that's all I know how to do is financial planning, that's all my career. And so like, I remember, you know, in my 20s thinking, like, Why do I really need to think about, you know, the old age when I'm 20, right. And I was like, well, when, when I was 30, I was like, Okay, well, that's, you know, that's what you need to do, this is part of a holistic plan. And I'm not dismissing that you we have to have that component in our overall financial plan. But I'm coming to realize more and more that as we live our lives as we age, right as, like, our bodies change, everything changed, like, we should have component of our fine finances allocated to the self care, you know, call it health care, whatever you want, but this, you know, exact thing that we're discussing today. So it's like, I don't want to wait until I'm old and sick. Yes, you know, to use my finances and, and what what good, is it at that point? Yes, it helps. But as you're living your life, I think, at least that's how I'm feeling about this, like, at least, I'd love to be open and have the self care budget allocation for myself, whatever that means, right? In this context,

yeah. You don't want to be spending your retirement money for sickness, right for taking care of your sickness. Right. That's what you're saying. And if you look at the data, and majority of the Americans are doing that right now, you know, spending the last years of their life, retirement money going into the hospitals in the sickness and taking care of the sickness, rather than living a really good life. Right. And, you know, healthy quality of life is what I was saying. Right? Yeah. And of course, I don't know if you're familiar with this blue zone and right, you know, people over there, they live up to 100. Well, you know, we can't live like that without any tension or without any stress. But on the other hand, given the fact that we live in metros, we live in the Bay Area, you and I, we can still incorporate the holistic lifestyle when we are younger. So that as we age, you know, it's like aging, right. Healthy Aging and Longevity, what we talked about it so many times people are talking about it, at least the aging part is with the Healthy Aging, not with the sickness aging.

Yes. Yes. Agree. You mentioned Blue Zones. So I just recently watched, there's a documentary on Netflix. I don't know if that's the one. Yeah,

that's what I meant. That's what that yes, that's yeah,

it's a really, really interesting documentary. For those of you who haven't watched it, I'll include a link in the show notes. But it's, it's been really eye opening just to, to kind of realize, you know, how people live, what they eat, what they do with their life. I mean, to be to, to be frank, like, there is a blue zone here. And in United States, it's not just like these, you know, as you would think, exotic places. Now, it's, it's not but you right, like the this holistic approach to all components of your life. Do you know do come together when you focused on it that way? So how, like, you know, maybe you hearing us talk about this today, but you're not quite in that phase yet. How can you like support your mom, right? Or your older sister like, what what do you like? It's a such a, I mean, wouldn't you agree it's still such a taboo topic, you wouldn't just come up to somebody and say, Hey, are you like, having a Haida? Yeah, so like, how do you start this conversation? It's sensitive. It's

very sensitive, because I think we women think that we are getting old, right? I mean, if you go and talk to anyone and sell by the way, you're going to menopause and like, Oh, my, like, this is like something. But I think the way to approach this topic would be hormonal imbalance would be more I think, rather than saying menopause, I started saying hormonal imbalance or it could be like abdominal bloating or the weight gain and you can get rid of Because of the middle age, right? A lot of women in the you know, my age group, they will say, Oh my god, I can just I just breathe air and I put on weight. Right? A lot of women start talking like that. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I think I think it could, that could be a way to approach your older sister or your mom, that, you know, weight gain is very common. Generally, hair thinning is very common. Mood swings are very common. abdominal bloating, like I said, is very common. So these are very common symptoms and you feel see if you pay it and look at some of the older women, you know, the hair becomes very thin, right? If you and I could never understand before, like, Why suddenly, many men start losing their hair. So do women near the hair becomes very thin. It's because of all the hormones. So I think the way you could approach is taking some of the symptoms and approaching it like that and saying it's because of the hormonal imbalance or the hormonal transition that they're going through. And that could be starting a conversation.

Yeah, so those by observing so how so talk a little bit about nurse doc, because I think it's a, it's a different approach to what you like exist right now. Because that could be something that if you're here, and you're observing somebody's going through it, because I know like, it's also like, asking somebody, how much money did you save for retirement? Right? It'd be like, No, go talk to Anna, because she, you know, she talks about all that stuff. So sort of, like remove yourself is like, here's the things you need to do. So yes, it's Share, share a little bit about what nurse Doc is all about. Yeah,

so we, you know, as I said, I started off a couple of years back by interviewing some of the holistic experts from all over the world. And then, and having some workshops. But now what we're doing is we're actually coming out with the app a couple of weeks, mid of June, sometime, which by the time it airs, it would be out. And the idea was I really wanted to bring this knowledge and awareness, and I wanted to make it affordable. That was my key point. So when I when I talked about it earlier, you know about this whole perimenopause, menopause. And if I, let's say, I didn't want to go see a regular OBEDIA GYN, I want to go see a functional medicine doctor or an integrative medicine doctor or naturopathic, the by the time you get your testing done, you're all these you know, the details. I mean, the cost can be horrendous 1000 $1,000, which is not covered by insurance, because insurance doesn't cover some of the things that we were talking about. So the idea was with nourish talk, you create a holistic wellness platform for awareness. Women should understand from credible sources, what is it that they're going to go going through? What kind of issues they can have post menopause, which we talked about earlier? The risk impact associated with it, and how can they start taking care of themselves slowly, day by day. And so that's what the nourish Doc is trying to do is what we've done is we've created about 2021 programs based on the symptoms like some of the symptoms we talked about earlier. As exact for an example mental health, gut health, bloating, weight, hormonal imbalance, perimenopause, right, even by the way, lost low libido is one of the other symptoms that happens to as part of the menopause perimenopause and that is something no one talks about it at all that is like a such a taboo

taboo know that yes.

And and you wonder some of the men why they end up marrying younger women I mean, that was a joke but you

know, you've read you right on point here Yes, you

know, so women so so we even talk about the the sexual health even the pelvic healthy and you know with that part of the body we just forget that exists and we never want to talk about it. So the idea is to learn about all these based on the symptoms a woman has she can go through step by step bite size information into the what kind of a diet you should have, what kind of movement what kind of a yoga pose what kind of breathing all that is put into this app, which women can have access to literally be priced less than $10 a month

Wow, that's very that's very very awesome because you right, there's I was curious just knowing that we're gonna have a conversation I have Kaiser as my as my insurance, right. But I mean, I didn't look at other health insurance website. So it was just curious, like I just went logged in and like what's available? Just as a as a comparison, right. And I mean, there are resources for sure, but it's it's Not like this holistic piece is, at least for me, I don't know, I like holistic financial planning. I think I like holistic everything else too. So, this really intrigued me to, you know, just understand and have a awareness about it and you know, help people women go through this. I love that about what you know what you're doing with this platform? For sure. So as is we're closing on for today. How can our listeners connect with you? Yeah,

they can go to our website for now, www.nourishdoc.com. And like I said, the app is going to come out very soon. So we will have a link over there where women can download the app. Or they can just get in touch with us as well, if they have any questions. So go to our website. That's the easiest way and also check out check us out on all the socials, we are everywhere. So that's the best way for anyone who wants to connect with us has any questions? We can we are everywhere. Thank

you so much. And I'll include all of this in the show notes for sure. Any last minute thoughts before we go? Yes,

self care, self love. I think women deserve we deserve that we owe it to ourselves. And that's what I would like to say to all the women that you owe to yourself.

I love it. Thank you so much, Amita for coming on today.

Thank you