And I'm really thrilled to be talking about this topic that is nontech, but I can assure you this very much affects all women, especially women that work in technology, fast paced, high pressure, incredible, incredible environment.The one thing that is incredible is that women peaking in our careers, right, in our forties, right, in our fifties, well, 25% of the tech workforce that are women are actually leaving leaving this beautiful industry or cutting back because they can't cope anymore. And it's not because of the responsibilities. It's not because of the stress. It's because of what is going on from a biological standpoint with us. Right? So lots of stigma still in our society around perimenopause and menopause. In fact, sixty percent of women at that stage of life, peri and postmenopause, they report that it has a negative impact on their work. Sleep, anxiety, fatigue, just not being able to cope, brain fog. Right?

So that's an overwhelming number of us that are really, really struggling to keep up with the demands that are let's just be honest. Right? Your workload is not going down. It's going up. The stress, the demand, the deadlines, it's not going down. It's going up. Meanwhile, your body is struggling, and it's really challenging. So what is going on? And I like to talk about the fact that this is not a failure of your character. It's not because you are becoming weaker overall. It's because there is something called what I call the master conductor that is affecting your whole body. And that hormone master conductor is estrogen. Yes. Estrogen is not just a sex hormone, ladies. Estrogen is a master conductor affecting many other hormones in your body.

In fact, this is what's always shocking is that you have estrogen receptors throughout your entire body from head to toe. So in your tissues, in your muscles, in your bones, your GI tract, your heart, your brain throughout your whole body. I like to say that menopause is a full contact sport, and this is why. So this is one of the reason why this is one of the reasons why at menopause, we have such weird random symptoms. I have only a few here showing you, but there are 34 that have been identified by the menopause society. I can promise you though that within the next ten years, that number is no longer gonna be thirty four. It's gonna be way higher.

But these are the official ones. Right? And I want to share with you that at perimenopause, so the stage that precedes menopause, which can last up to seven to ten years, nobody nobody yell at me. I'm the bearer of bad news, but it can be that long. But at perimenopause, we are not looking at symptoms of hot flashes and weight gain. At perimenopause, I'm talking in general terms here, what we see the most are cognitive symptoms. Anxiety, depression, anger, massive mood swings, right, fatigue. Those are the top that we see, these top five symptoms that are within the perimenopause journey. And everyone will be different. Every menopause journey is unique. So these are averages, but that shows you how it can affect us, of course, in our professional lives.

Had a client not that long ago who told me, you know what, Annie? I think they're gonna fire me. And I was like, what are you talking about? High ranking person in a bank, big position. And she was like, you know, when I sit in meetings now, I have no patience for any of the BS that talk that that people talk about. I'm just like, can't stand this anymore. And that's perimenopause for you. Right? So you can see that the impact on our body is unbelievable. Right? So all of this is affecting our body. And, of course, not we are not going to have all 34 symptoms. Each and one of us will have different things, but these are all very normal. And as estrogen levels drop, there is this domino effect. Right?

And let me just tell you about three hormones that are very much influenced by this because we only have twenty minutes. We'll have to keep it short. Number one I wanna share with you today is serotonin. So when estrogen levels drop, what we see is serotonin, this hormone that brings us beautiful sense of well-being, happiness, serotonin levels drop. You make serotonin yourself in your gut. This is why gut health is so important at midlife, but this is why we see so many cognitive issues happening. It also happens to impact your thyroid, which secretes hormones. And what we see is drop of estrogen. It can affect our thyroid. It can affect our met metabolic impact. Right? How we burn energy. This is why we see a lot of fatigue as one of the many reasons. And the last one is insulin.

This master very powerful hormone that helps sugar get into your cells. Right? So this is one of the reasons why a lot of women will say, I don't know what's happening, Annie. I I'm active the same way I've always been. I'm eating the same, and now I'm gaining weight. What the hell is happening? That's because estrogen used to help insulin do its job, and now insulin is, you know, working on its own, so we need to really help it. And you'll see some strategies to help you with that as we as we move into this presentation. So it's clear that you can see that this biology changes, right, of course, affects us in our day to day life. It affects us at work.

It affects our mental resilience. But there are many things that we can do, and we don't have to sit silent. So three tools today. Number one tool, obviously, I'm a nutritionist. I have been supporting women in midlife for ten years exclusively perimenopausal to postmenopausal because it is such a unique time of life. Estrogen is the master anti inflammatory hormone. So you can imagine that now with this inflammation in our bodies, which is often why women will feel joint pain, muscle pain, all kinds of things, We need to help it. We need to help it with an anti inflammatory diet like we see, and I know everyone will know when I say Mediterranean diet with loads of vegetables, a lot of legumes or beans. Soy products can really help as well. We need to have more fiber, which I call the thirty thirty rule.

30 grams of protein at each meal to sustain the energy and protect our insulin, 30 grams of fiber per day. So 30 grams of protein per meal, 30 grams of fiber per day. We're helping our insulin. We're helping our blood sugar levels stay nice and even. We are also helping our energy. That's going to make a massive difference. It's gonna decrease your inflammation as well. Because look at what happens in the brain. So doctor Lisa Buscone has done this beautiful research. And when we eat with the Western diet, which you see on the right, there is less red, you know, and that means there is less brain activity. The Mediterranean diet on your left just shows all these highlighted areas. We are feeding the brain properly.

And the last little tip here is to make sure that you are getting enough good fats, healthy fats. Your brain loves good fats, specifically omega threes that we find in cold water fish. Cold water fish, salmon, tuna, sardines, mackerel, or you can also go to omega three source fats in plants, which are chia seeds, flax, hemp, walnuts, olive oil. Right? So make sure that you get those. Very, very important to support the brain and to thrive now because that cognitive issue is real. So we need all the help that we can get. Tool number two. Who remembers the OG? Jane Fonda herself. Right? Eighties, loads of aerobic. We are going for big, long, sweaty sessions, and I am Mayor Cooper. I have done that myself as well.

And the problem is is that these long cardio sessions, they're no longer helping you. They're actually depleting you. They're increasing your cortisol levels. Cortisol is a stress hormone. We don't want these long sessions because cortisol will stay elevated for too long. What do we do instead? We want to focus. We wanna focus on strength training because as of our thirties, our muscle mass starts to decrease. And as the muscle mass decreases, you're actually less efficient taking up insulin, believe it or not. The more the the the stronger your muscles are, the more efficient your body is at using glucose. So not only when you're strength training, you're helping, obviously, reversing something that is very dangerous, loss of muscle mass, and it also helps you metabolically burn more calories, be more efficient with your blood sugar levels.

That's massively important. It also helps you maintaining your bones, which, of course, is really, really important. That movement at midlife is critical for our energy levels, but we don't wanna do super long. So two sessions of strength training, twenty to thirty minutes. Amazing. And then you want to embrace more shorter, more intense type cardio. People have been getting into, you know, HIIT sessions. Right? High interval intensity training. Boxing is one of my favorites. Right? Shorter, thirty minutes, higher elevated cardio, good a good sweat, but within about thirty minutes, and we are done. Two of those, you know, a week. And then more walking. Walking is really good. Thirty minutes every day is what I recommend. Right? So this is going to help you increase your energy.

But the other thing that it's going to do, ladies, is that it's going to give you clarity and it will help you with anxiety. It will help you decrease your stress. Right? It's going to improve that brain health because nutrition alone is not gonna do it. We need that movement to help us. This is one of the most powerful you know, it's almost as good as drugs when it comes to antidepressants. Right? Many women are being put on antidepressants at midlife because of what I explained with the drop in levels of estrogen. But I promise you that with the right diet and movement, a lot of us don't have to go on on antidepressants. But for some, it will be the correct avenue. It's not for everybody. But this is nonnegotiable now. Right?

And I know that it can be challenging, but I can tell you that the stronger you are, the better it will be. We are not looking to become mini mini versions of ourselves. Right? This skinny trend that is going on right now is really bad for us. Right? What we wanna make sure is that we are the strongest, healthiest version of ourselves. This is gonna pay you back forward over the next decades, I promise you. It's going to make you feel so much better. It's going to increase your resilience, your immune system. So I can tell you how important that is. And you don't have to have like, if, you know, a few of you are going like, Annie, oh my god. Like, you know, I don't necessarily have all that time, and I get you. You're busy. So there's something, a little hack that I like to call exercise snacks.

I know that all of you have fifteen minutes in the morning, and then all of you have at least fifteen minutes in the evening. If you're working from home, maybe a fifteen minutes at lunchtime. Right? You can do little bit of this at you know, in portions. And that gives you half an hour, maybe forty five minutes, maybe an hour when you put all these things together. So you may not have these big swap of time. I get it. But you can break it down, and that will be very, very efficient for you. Last toolkit. Yes. Sleep. Oh, Good sleep. We love our sleep. This is when we need to be ferocious about protecting our sleep. Midlife, this becomes even more important. And for a lot of us at perimenopause, right, the sleep gets disturbed. So very important to have great sleep hygiene.

And I would say that it's just also not just sleep, but I will call it rejuvenation. Right? That r and r. You want time to decompress away from technology. I recommend to all my clients, go for a walk without your phone. And I know some of us get a bit of anxious, like, woah. I'm gonna be disconnected. This is one of the best thing that you will be able to do for yourself. Managing the stress level is going to get you through that menopause journey in such an easier way regardless of what your menopause journey is, how benign or how challenging. No stress levels are going to decrease by taking time for yourself. More boundaries, like reading a good book, having a hobby, whatever it is for you, this becomes really nonnegotiable. Because let me put it this way, ladies. Right?

We have 33 to live after natural menopause. But these are our best years where we are at the top of our competence games. Your skills are amazing. You are amazing at what you do. Good career. Right? Confident. You cannot afford to just white knuckle through this phase. This is why I am going to invite you to have the most powerful menopause journey. Anyone who is interested for this event, right, for the first nine, I will offer a complimentary call. You can just grab the lovely QR code there on your screen because you cannot afford to be part of the bad statistics of women who cannot have an optimal journey through this and compromise your career, compromise your relationships. You just have too much too much of amazing opportunities in front of you.

So make sure to grab this QR code, and I will stop sharing in a second so that we can also, maybe answer one or two questions. And you can also follow on Instagram at viv underscore wellness. It was a very quick presentation today.