Peri & Pause The Podcast

In this episode of Perimenopause the Podcast, Jamie Gallagher tackles one of the most frustrating and misunderstood challenges women face during perimenopause and menopause: weight gain and inflammation that seem to appear out of nowhere.If you've found yourself eating the same foods, exercising the same way, and still noticing stubborn belly fat, increased inflammation, joint aches, brain fog, or changes in your metabolism, you're not imagining it—and you're not alone.Jamie breaks down the science behind hormonal changes, estrogen decline, FSH spikes, insulin resistance, visceral fat accumulation, muscle loss, and chronic inflammation. Most importantly, she explains why this transition is not a failure of willpower or discipline, but a biological shift happening inside the body.This episode is packed with practical insights and validation for women who have been blaming themselves for changes that are often driven by hormones, metabolism, and immune system changes beyond their control.00:00 – Introduction to today's Ask Us Anything episode00:45 – The frustration of midlife weight gain and inflammation01:20 – Why this isn't a willpower problem01:45 – The connection between inflammation and weight gain02:00 – Estrogen's role in metabolism and immune health02:30 – The body's "internal thermostat" explained03:00 – Why women feel puffy and inflamed during perimenopause03:15 – Understanding follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH)03:45 – How FSH contributes to belly fat accumulation04:15 – Why weight gain often begins before menopause04:30 – The vicious cycle of visceral fat and inflammation05:00 – How belly fat acts like its own endocrine organ05:20 – Insulin resistance and blood sugar changes06:00 – Why normal labs don't always tell the full story06:30 – Muscle loss and metabolic slowdown07:00 – Sleep disruption, cortisol, and cravings07:30 – Why you're not lazy, broken, or failing08:00 – The power of resistance training and muscle building08:20 – Why lifting weights helps fight inflammation08:40 – Changing your strategy, not blaming yourself08:55 – Preview of next episode: practical solutions

Women often hear conflicting information online about estrogen, progesterone, and hormone testing. Jamie explains why hormone levels fluctuate dramatically during perimenopause, why a single blood test rarely tells the full story, and why symptoms often provide more useful information than lab values alone.This episode also covers stopping birth control pills in midlife, hormone testing after pregnancy, when hormone testing is appropriate, and why some women may still benefit from lab work in specific situations.If you've ever wondered whether hormone testing can confirm perimenopause or menopause, this episode will help you understand what hormone tests can, and can't, tell you.00:00 – Welcome back to Perimenopause the Podcast00:25 – Listener questions about hormone testing00:55 – Should women routinely check hormone levels?01:15 – Why hormone levels fluctuate so dramatically01:40 – Understanding hormone changes during perimenopause02:00 – Why symptoms matter more than a single lab test02:15 – Stopping birth control in your 40s: what to expect02:40 – How birth control affects hormone testing02:55 – Could birth control be masking menopause?03:10 – Hormone testing after pregnancy and childbirth03:35 – When hormone testing may be appropriate03:50 – Testosterone monitoring and hormone therapy04:10 – New research on estrogen and bone health04:35 – Why hormone testing is trending online04:50 – The better question to ask about your symptoms05:15 – Final thoughts and listener questions

In this Ask Us Anything episode of Perimenopause the Podcast, Jamie Gallagher answers a heartfelt question from Tammy, a woman struggling to feel like herself after a total hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries and fallopian tubes).One and a half years after surgery, Tammy describes feeling like her hormones and body are "a wreck." Jamie explains the difference between natural menopause and surgical menopause, the health impacts of ovary removal, and why many women continue to struggle when the right hormone therapy has not been explored.This conversation covers estrogen therapy, long-term health risks, surgical menopause recovery, and practical ways women in rural communities can access menopause specialists through telehealth and professional networks.If you've experienced ovary removal, hysterectomy, surgical menopause, or persistent hormone symptoms, this episode offers education, validation, and hope.00:00 – Welcome to Ask Us Anything00:30 – Tammy's question: "My hormones are a wreck"01:15 – What is a bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy?01:50 – Why the reason for ovary removal matters02:30 – Understanding surgical menopause03:00 – Long-term health effects of ovary removal03:45 – Heart health, bone health, brain health, and libido04:15 – Why estrogen therapy matters04:45 – The hormone Tammy didn't mention05:00 – Why you don't have to accept feeling miserable05:20 – Finding menopause specialists through telehealth05:40 – How to use Menopause.org to find care05:55 – Why it's not too late to feel better06:15 – Final encouragement and closing thoughts

In Part 2 of the Meet the Founder series on Peri & Pause, Jamie is joined by her husband and co-founder, Stu, to discuss his background in international business and a 26-year military career, his transition into civilian life, and how mission, purpose, and service shape his leadership. They explore what Stu saw in Peri & Pause early on, the parallels between military mission-focus and building a menopause care company, and the persistent midlife women’s health care gap he witnessed through his mother’s experience and Jamie’s own perimenopause. Stu describes how perimenopause can strain relationships when symptoms are misunderstood, emphasizes addressing root causes rather than just symptoms, and encourages partners to show patience, seek help, and support women through care that can improve families, work, and overall quality of life.00:00 Meet Stu Intro01:33 Military Roots03:17 Leaving Service04:47 Vision For Peri Pause06:10 Mission Parallels07:47 Care Gap Reality09:32 Partner Perspective13:40 Mom And Family Impact17:39 Advice For Partners18:31 Thick Skin and Support18:55 Men Asking for Help20:39 Building Together Talk22:51 Napkin to Launch23:58 Balancing Risk and Caution26:17 Mission Bigger Than Us28:06 Scaling the Impact30:11 Gratitude and Outro------This podcast exists to normalize, explain, and elevate the midlife healthcare conversation—so women feel informed, believed, and empowered to demand better care for their bodies and lives.Visit https://periandpause.com for more info

Kristen wraps the nurse practitioner series and launches the founder series with Peri & Pause founder Jamie Gallagher, who shares what drew her into nursing, her critical care background, and why she became a nurse practitioner and later earned her DNP. Jamie explains how time limits, metrics, and fragmented, symptom-by-symptom care pushed her to rethink how midlife women are treated, especially after her own perimenopause experience revealed a major healthcare gap. She describes Peri & Pause’s model as relationship-driven, evidence-based whole-woman care through the perimenopause/menopause lens, including proactive prevention, collaboration with other clinicians, and referrals when needed. Jamie discusses misinformation and clinician shaming around hormones, the need for better clinician education, core values like integrity and humility, and her vision for continued growth to meet ongoing demand.00:00 Podcast Welcome01:09 Jamie Nursing Origins02:47 Becoming Nurse Practitioner04:46 Healthcare System Friction08:27 Perimenopause Wake Up Call11:13 Seeing the Bigger Pattern13:11 Biggest Care Gap14:20 Founding Peri and Pause18:25 Building Patient First Practice19:21 Whole Woman Care Approach20:20 Coordinated Care Promise20:46 Preventive Deep Dives21:56 Proactive Treatment Mindset22:19 Patient Wins That Matter23:12 Word of Mouth Growth24:12 Building a Mission Business25:41 Imposter Syndrome and Connection26:57 Misinformation and Clinician Shame30:00 Why Education Still Lags31:13 Values Purpose and The Future36:45 Closing Thoughts and Wrap Up

In this Meet the Nurse Practitioner episode of Per and Pause, nurse practitioner Jaime Davis shares how her background in primary care and labor and delivery shaped her patient-centered approach and her focus on midlife women’s care. She discusses how perimenopause is often missed because symptoms can look like stress or anxiety, and highlights early signs such as brain fog, insomnia, word-finding difficulty, and menstrual changes influenced by hormone fluctuations like declining progesterone. Jaime recounts her own experience of years of severe pain after a traumatic C-section that was initially dismissed, later diagnosed as subcutaneous endometriosis and resolved with a short surgery, underscoring the importance of trusting your body and finding providers who listen. She explains her commitment to connecting symptoms, tailoring plans to patient goals, and helping women feel heard, supported, and empowered.00:00 Meet Jaime Davis00:54 Labor and Delivery Lessons02:24 Path to Midlife Care03:50 Why Perimenopause Gets Missed06:47 Dismissed Pain Story11:08 Finding the Real Cause13:29 What Listening Really Means15:27 Beyond Rigid Guidelines16:56 Early Perimenopause Clues17:06 Brain Fog Sleep Anxiety19:46 Symptoms Are Connected21:29 Menopause Education Gaps23:45 Care After Dismissal25:10 The Peri Pause Experience26:15 Closing Thanks Farewell------This podcast exists to normalize, explain, and elevate the midlife healthcare conversation—so women feel informed, believed, and empowered to demand better care for their bodies and lives.Visit https://periandpause.com for more info

On Peri and Pause the podcast, host interviews women’s health nurse practitioner Amanda Maingi, who shares why she chose women’s health, her education at Georgetown, and how menopause and perimenopause received limited focus in training despite women spending a third of life in this stage. Amanda describes noticing gaps while working in a fast-paced traditional GYN clinic, where time constraints and protocol-driven care could miss the “whole woman” experience. She contrasts younger patients’ typically more straightforward visits with the complexity of midlife, highlighting under-research, life stressors, and chronic conditions. Common perimenopause symptoms often mislabeled as anxiety or depression include sleep disruption, heart palpitations, brain fog, irritability, overwhelm, and feeling out of control. The episode emphasizes validation, individualized high-touch care beyond algorithms, and addresses misconceptions that hormone therapy is inherently dangerous, stressing risk-benefit tailoring and comprehensive evaluation.00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro00:53 Why Womens Health02:17 Academic Journey Highlights04:09 Menopause Education Gap05:24 Clinic Reality and Missing Care08:57 Midlife vs Younger Patients13:14 Symptoms Mistaken for Anxiety17:43 Beyond Protocols Individual Care19:34 Patch And Pill Problem21:21 Telehealth Versus High Touch22:56 Layered Whole Woman Care26:03 Validation First Visit28:42 Hormone Therapy Myths30:07 New Patient Expectations31:53 Outro And Sign Off32:23 Recording The Closing Script34:16 Final Takeaway Message------This podcast exists to normalize, explain, and elevate the midlife healthcare conversation—so women feel informed, believed, and empowered to demand better care for their bodies and lives.Visit https://periandpause.com for more info

In this episode of Peri & Pause - The Podcast, the second in the “Meet the Nurse Practitioner” series, the host interviews nurse practitioner Nancy Chen about her path from studying exercise physiology at Meredith College to working as a personal trainer, then becoming a nurse and moving into critical care, urgent care during the pandemic, and traditional primary care. Nancy explains how limited appointment times and “moral injury” pushed her toward specializing in perimenopause and midlife women’s health, after seeing patients struggle with symptoms, chronic disease changes, and feeling dismissed due to gaps in training. She emphasizes the importance of education, validation, realistic expectations, individualized treatment, and helping women feel heard and hopeful, including reviewing complex medication and supplement “cocktails” and supporting women through the fluctuating “moving target” of perimenopause.00:00 Meet Nancy Chen00:53 Exercise Physiology Roots01:24 From Trainer to Nurse01:52 Critical Care Wake Up03:11 NP Path and Pandemic04:22 Primary Care Time Crunch05:58 Midlife Symptoms Puzzle07:32 Personal Perimenopause Realization09:42 Hormones and the Care Gap15:23 What Patients Need First16:22 Follow-Up Wins16:59 Building the Foundation20:59 Grace in Perimenopause24:08 Finding Your Care Team24:33 Medication Cocktail Reset25:35 Message to Midlife Women27:17 Thanks and Disclaimer

In this episode of The Peri and Pause podcast, Jamie Gallagher launch the “Meet the Nurse Practitioner” series by introducing Kristen Nawyn, a board-certified adult gerontology nurse practitioner and Menopause Society–certified menopause specialist. Kristin shares her path from ICU nursing through the pandemic to palliative care interests focused on goals, values, and quality of life, and explains how a family medicine preceptorship revealed the gaps in menopause care and shifted her career. She discusses limited menopause education in graduate school, her oncology research on chemotherapy-induced early menopause in premenopausal cancer survivors, and how sudden induced menopause differs from natural menopause. Kristin describes common “loss of self” experiences in perimenopause, the biology of hormonal fluctuations, the need for anticipatory guidance, and how she builds trust with patients, addresses long-term hormone therapy concerns, and advocates for whole-person, time-rich menopause care.00:42 Podcast Intro and Guest Spotlight02:08 Kristin’s Nursing Origin Story03:10 What Palliative Care Really Is04:35 From ICU to Nurse Practitioner05:52 Discovering the Menopause Care Gap08:43 Graduate School vs Real Menopause Care10:37 Thesis on Chemo Induced Menopause13:04 Losing Your Sense of Self15:05 Natural vs Induced Menopause16:52 Better Care for Cancer Survivors17:46 Staying On Hormones18:57 Risks Of Stopping21:02 ICU Lessons On Aging22:50 Earning Patient Trust25:52 Midlife Women Carrying It All28:24 You Are Not Crazy29:00 Whole Person Menopause Care30:43 Emotional Weight And Guilt32:36 Closing Thanks And Wrap------This podcast exists to normalize, explain, and elevate the midlife healthcare conversation—so women feel informed, believed, and empowered to demand better care for their bodies and lives.Visit https://periandpause.com for more info

Jamie, founder of Peri & Pause—the Menopause Center—and a board-certified nurse practitioner, explores why many women feel dismissed during perimenopause and menopause, emphasizing it’s often rooted in history and training rather than lack of care. She explains how menopause was long framed as a “normal” transition not requiring intervention, despite wide-ranging effects on brain, sleep, mood, metabolism, and cardiovascular health. Jamie highlights limited menopause education in medical training and how normal lab results can lead clinicians to default to stress or mood explanations. She details how the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative study—often misinterpreted, focused on older women and specific hormone formulations—drove widespread fear of hormone therapy, shaping practice for decades. She notes newer, more nuanced evidence is slowly changing care and previews upcoming episodes introducing the clinic’s nurse practitioners.00:00 Why Women Feel Dismissed02:14 Menopause Is Natural Not Simple05:40 Training Gaps In Menopause Care07:43 Defaulting To Stress And Labs09:46 WHI Study Changed Everything10:50 Who WHI Actually Studied12:24 Hormone Types And Nuance Lost14:05 Breast Cancer Risk Explained15:31 Aftermath And Reassessment19:23 Where Menopause Care Is Now20:24 Next Series Meet The NPs

The episode explains that while stress in midlife is real, many symptoms blamed on “stress” are actually driven by perimenopause physiology. The speaker describes how perimenopause and menopause affect far more than periods and hot flashes, impacting brain function, sleep, mood, energy, focus, and emotional regulation. She reframes perimenopause as a neuroendocrine transition, noting estrogen’s role in brain energy, neurotransmitters, sleep regulation, stress response, metabolism, and glucose use, and explains that early progesterone changes can worsen mood and sleep. Common experiences include unfamiliar anxiety, brain fog, word-finding issues, emotional reactivity, rage, and fatigue. She emphasizes that “normal” labs can be misleading due to hormonal fluctuations, and encourages symptom-based care, self-compassion, and preparation to advocate in healthcare in the next episode.00:00 Stress vs Physiology01:08 Band-Aid Advice02:17 Perimenopause Brain Shift03:43 Early Symptoms Explained04:35 Reframing Stress Tolerance05:12 Why Labs Look Normal06:11 Symptom-Based Support06:50 Recalibration Not Breakdown07:46 Closing and Next Steps

In the first episode, Jamie Gallagher, a nurse practitioner certified in menopause care, introduces a podcast focused on thoughtful, non-flashy conversations for women who feel something is off—especially those exhausted, confused, or told their labs look normal while they don’t feel normal. She describes common midlife experiences she sees in clinical practice—fatigue unrelieved by sleep, brain fog, weight changes, mood shifts, anxiety, and feeling unfamiliar in one’s body—and explains why these symptoms can feel scary, especially with family health histories or misinformation from online searches. Jamie emphasizes that not everything is menopause, that good clinicians listen and evaluate thoroughly, and that midlife women need context, language, validation, and clear explanations. She shares how gaps in her own medical training led her to research and synthesize scattered, sometimes contradictory information on menopause, shaping her clinical work and inspiring the podcast to widen access to these conversations. The show will cover perimenopause and menopause topics like hormones, brain health, metabolism, sleep, sexuality, identity, and emotional shifts, along with relationships, parenting, aging, grief, loss, finances, and empowerment, featuring solo episodes, colleagues, trusted experts, and real stories. She clarifies the podcast is educational and not personal medical advice, encouraging listeners to advocate for themselves, and closes by reframing midlife as a transition that deserves guidance and inviting listeners to subscribe, review, share, and follow the show on Facebook and Instagram.00:00 Welcome: This Podcast Is for the Women Who Feel “Off”00:55 What I Hear in the Exam Room: “I’m Doing Everything Right—So Why Do I Feel Like This?”01:36 Dr. Google, Real Risks, and Why Not Everything Is Menopause02:30 Why This Podcast Exists: Context, Language, and Being Heard03:37 Meet Jamie: Menopause-Certified NP + Why I Started Digging Deeper04:35 The Research Rabbit Hole: Scattered Science, Nuance, and Listening to Women05:28 What This Show Is (and Isn’t): No Fixing, No Trends, No Panic05:49 What We’ll Cover + Who You’ll Hear From07:05 Important Disclaimer: Education, Not Personal Medical Advice07:31 Midlife Isn’t Failure—It’s a Transition That Deserves Guidance08:10 Your Invitation + Closing: You’re Not Alone, You’re Right on Time------This podcast exists to normalize, explain, and elevate the midlife healthcare conversation—so women feel informed, believed, and empowered to demand better care for their bodies and lives.Visit https://periandpause.com for more info

Welcome to Peri and Pause, the podcast where midlife women get real answers about their bodies, their health, and what's actually changing because every woman deserves this conversation.