Are you waking up at 3:00 in the morning wide awake? Are you putting on weight around your middle when nothing has changed? Snapping at your kids over stuff that never used to bother you? And when you bring it up, do you get told, "Well, it's just your hormones," or worse, "It's just your age"? Gee, thanks, right?

Your hormones are a part of it, but estrogen and progesterone are only part of the story. So today we're talking about what else is going on in perimenopause and what we need to look at.

First, we're gonna talk about how your stress and your hormones are connected. Then, why this season is when everything seems to catch up with you. And then where to start working on it.

If you're not in this season yet, stick with me anyway. What you do in your 30s, or really even your 20s, is what you'll carry into perimenopause later on.

As I've shared a lot on the podcast, when I was 41 or 42 (I can't remember the exact age), I realized something was going on that shouldn't have been. I was too young to be feeling the way I was feeling, and I knew something was off.

After digging into my own health and running some very specialized tests, I found out that some things were not as they should have been. It was the result of basically my whole life of making choices about my food and lifestyle, thinking it really didn't matter. It did, and I was finally paying the price.

I'm writing about this because I don't want you to end up where I was. Or if you are where I was, I want to help you see that there is a way out of it.

The same part of your brain that runs your stress response is also sending signals to your ovaries.

Cortisol is our stress hormone. It's the one that tends to go up when we're stressed in our day-to-day lives. Cortisol has a natural curve it's supposed to follow throughout your day. It's supposed to be high in the morning (that's what wakes you up, believe it or not), and then slowly taper off through the day until it's at its lowest at night, when you go to sleep and rest.

When cortisol stays high all the time because of stress, that daily rhythm gets thrown off, and those signals to your ovaries get affected. You feel it in your cycles, you feel it in your sleep, and you feel it in your mood.

So you can't separate how stressed you are from how your hormones are behaving. They go hand in hand. Your brain is managing your stress and your hormones at the same time, and when it's busy putting out fires all day, your hormones don't get its best attention.

How do you know? Here are a few things I want you to think about and notice.

Are you wired but tired? By that, I mean you're exhausted all day and then wide awake at night when you're trying to go to sleep.

Are you waking up in the middle of the night and not able to go back to sleep?

Do you notice weight gathering around your midsection, even though you haven't changed your diet or your exercise or activity?

Do you find yourself craving sugar and carbs?

Do you find yourself feeling anxious, or flat and unmotivated? When I say flat, I mean kind of like, "Eh, I don't really care."

Do you find yourself getting sick more often than you used to?

Now, not every one of these means it's cortisol. A lot of things could be causing them. But if you're running on fumes all day and then lying awake at night, that's a pattern I want you to pay attention to, because it may mean your cortisol is off.

As we head into perimenopause, there's less room for error. Here's what I mean by that.

In our 20s and 30s, our bodies cover for a lot. We're quite resilient. We can skip meals, have short nights, run on coffee, and push through stress, and we get away with it. Or at least we think we do.

But as the ovaries slow down and we get a little older, that cushion gets smaller, and all those years of choices that maybe weren't the best start to show. Blood sugar often gets harder to manage in this season, too.

Perimenopause doesn't always create the problems. A lot of the time, it just stops covering for them, so this is the point in your life when you start to notice them. It's not that all these years you were dealing with things just fine and now you can't. It's that all those years, they were having an impact, and now you're seeing it.

This one might step on some toes, but stick with me.

Grief, bitterness, unforgiveness, hurts you've carried for years. Those keep your body on alert. Your body responds to a hurt you've carried for 20 years a lot like it responds to a stressful day. It stays on guard.

So again, all those years you thought your activities didn't really matter, or the way you were living and the things you were carrying didn't matter, they did, and now you're seeing the results.

Galatians 6:7 says, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap."

I'm not saying that to pile on guilt. That's not what this is. I'm saying it because some of what you're feeling in your body may be tied to something you've never laid down, and God is so good to offer us forgiveness and healing and a fresh start.

That might mean sitting down with a Christian counselor you trust, with your elders, or with a godly friend, someone you can work through these things with and finally let them go. As long as you hold on to them, they'll keep having an impact, and as you get older, that impact may be more and more noticeable.

Everything I've just listed is part of the picture, but there's still more to it.

Insulin resistance tends to go up during the menopause transition. Thyroid problems get more and more common. And as if that's not enough, we also lose muscle mass as we get older unless we work really hard to keep it. That matters, because muscle helps your body handle your blood sugar.

So if the only thing anybody has checked on you is your estrogen, you're missing a whole lot of the story. If all we're looking at is your hormones and HRT (and so many people just want to put you on a medication or write you a prescription), we're missing a whole lot of what's actually affecting how you feel. That's one of the reasons so many women who try HRT don't get the results they're looking for. Some do, but those are probably the women who didn't have the other underlying issues. When it doesn't work, it's often because other things that are playing into the picture aren't being addressed.

So where in the world do you even start? Here are things you can do right now.

Eat steady meals with protein. Your body has to have protein to keep regenerating cells, and as you get older, you need it even more. Your muscle tone and your hormone production rely on protein. If you're not getting at least 20 or 30 grams per meal, you're going to come up short, especially at breakfast, because that's what starts your day. Start your day with a healthy dose of protein to give your body what it needs to do its job.

Go to bed at the same time every day, even on your days off, and give yourself a little wind-down routine that tells your body it's time to rest. Make sure that time isn't really late. You really need to be waking up pretty close to when the sun comes up. I know that's hard with them changing our clocks and all the crazy stuff that messes up our schedules. I get that. But at the very least, pick a consistent time to go to bed and wake up each day so your circadian rhythm can help regulate your body's functions.

Move every day, and add some strength training a few times a week. I'm not talking about heavy lifting. That's not needed for women. I'm talking about lifting and moving the kind of weight we all used to move in our day-to-day lives. Exercise really just replaces the activity we used to get from everything it took to run a home. With so many of us working in offices and behind desks, that activity has waned, and our health has paid the price.

Even if all you have is some five-pound weights, or a gallon of milk, you can do curls. You can lift them over your head. You can do different movements that work your muscles and help build the muscle tone you need.

Air squats by themselves will help improve your blood sugar. I tell my coaching clients that one of the best ways to get them in is to do 10 squats every time you go to the bathroom. If you're staying hydrated, you're probably going every hour or two, so you'll be getting up, walking, and doing squats all day long, and that will improve your blood sugar balance.

Cut back on caffeine and alcohol, especially later in the day. I know a lot of people think that afternoon coffee is no big deal. But if you're relying on it, that's a sign in and of itself that something's off. And caffeine has a very long half-life. Even if you're able to fall asleep, it's going to affect the quality of your sleep.

Spend time in prayer and in the Word. I should have put this first, because it's the most important thing. It will give you a peace nothing else can, and it will keep you grounded in what matters most.

As you think through what God's Word teaches us and how we're to treat the people in our lives, take the time to face what you've been carrying. Go through it with God. Go through it with somebody you trust.

You don't have to fix everything this week. You've been carrying it a long time. Pick one or two, maybe three. Just pick somewhere and start.

Write these things down. There's a connection between physically writing with your hand and remembering. I thought about making you a little handout with all of this on it, but then I'd take away the very thing that helps you remember it and actually make a change. So get out a piece of paper, write these down, and pick one or two to get started.

If you've been told your labs are normal, or that it's just your age, I would love to help you look at the whole picture. My Health and Longevity program does just that. We build a plan together to get you from where you are and how you're feeling now to where you want to go and how you want to feel.

You'll find it on my Menu of Services, or you can always email me at lori@morriswellnessservices.com. Tell me where you are in your life, and I'll point you in the right direction.

This season can be a turning point for so many women. It's not too late to get back to the way God designed you to live, and I hope today's episode helps you do just that.

Thank you so much for spending some of your time with me this week. You can listen to or watch the full episode of If Mama Ain't Healthy (Ain't Nobody Healthy) at the top of this page.