Hello, Hot Flash: Christian Menopause, Weight Loss, Hormones & Midlife Health

As a Christian woman navigating menopause, many of you have done the therapy. You have done the mindset work. You have read the books, taken the courses, journaled through the hard seasons. And perimenopause still hit you like a freight train. If that sounds familiar, this episode is not going to tell you to try harder. It is going to tell you why the approach you have been using was always missing half the equation.
Jen Aks is the author of Your Body Is Speaking and the creator of the Body Set framework — the somatic counterpart to mindset. She has given a TEDx talk, barefoot, because her body told her to take her shoes off before she walked on stage. That detail is not a quirk. It is exactly the point. The body knows before the mind does. And for women in perimenopause who have spent decades living from the neck up — thinking their way through stress, overriding exhaustion, pushing past what their body was quietly asking for — that gap between what the mind says and what the body knows becomes impossible to ignore.
In this conversation, Jen walks through her Body Set to Reset framework: a somatic practice that begins with placing one hand on the heart and one on the stomach, closing the eyes, and asking — without judgment, without shame, without the pressure to articulate it — what the body actually needs right now. Maybe it needs a nap. Maybe it needs food. Maybe it needs movement, or tears, or simply to be acknowledged. She also explains the science behind gesture — why the hands hold more cortical tissue than any other body part, how embodying an emotion through movement creates a feedback loop that interrupts the pattern, and how the body set to reset framework moves through recognition, embodiment, visualization, and transformation in seconds.
This episode is for "Donna". For every woman who has been so busy taking care of everyone else that she forgot her body was speaking to her the whole time. And for every woman who is ready, finally, to start listening.
What You Will Learn
Why mindset work alone is not enough during perimenopause — how decades of societal conditioning teach women to override their bodies, and what happens hormonally and emotionally when those suppressed signals finally surface in midlife
How to use Jen’s Body Set to Reset framework — the hand-on-heart, hand-on-stomach practice that uses gesture, visualization, and somatic awareness to recognize, embody, and transform difficult emotions in seconds
Why somatic intelligence is equal to cognitive intelligence — what it means to live from the whole body rather than the neck up, and how trusting your body’s signals leads to more authentic decisions, deeper relationships, and real freedom in the second half of life
About Our Guest
Jen Aks is the author of Your Body Is Speaking, a guide to body intelligence and somatic awareness designed to help people access the innate wisdom they have been conditioned to ignore. She is the creator of the Body Set framework and a coach who works with individuals and leaders on using gesture, body awareness, and somatic intelligence as tools for transformation. She has delivered a TEDx talk on the power of listening to the body — barefoot, because her body told her to — and her mission is to awaken body intelligence as the most underused leadership asset available to every person.
To learn more about our guest, click here:
https://hellohotflash.com/listen-to-your-midlife-menopausal-body-with-jen-aks
Website: jenaks.com
Book: Your Body Is Speaking — available on Amazon
Instagram and LinkedIn: @jen_aks
TEDx talk: search Jen Aks TEDx on YouTube
Additional Resources
Join me for an interactive workshop where together, we will map out a practical menopause meal plan using simple macro principles so you understand how protein, carbohydrates, and fats support energy, metabolism, and hormonal changes. You will also build a daily faith practice to help anchor your mindset, strengthen resilience, and stay steady through this season of transition.
https://hellohotflash.com/workshop
The limited-series podcast Christian Women and Menopause teaches what the Bible says about stress, anxiety, health, and confidence in midlife. Listen here:
https://hellohotflash.com/christian-women-and-menopause
Sponsor
This episode is sponsored by Reverse Health. Finally, a fitness and weight loss app for women 40+. Use promo code HOTFLASH for 10% off:
https://www.rgds43jd.com/G1S938/7XDN2/
This episode is also sponsored by Delta Dental. Protecting more than smiles. Visit the Delta Dental Institute to discover how they are advancing menopause care:
https://DeltaDentalIns.com
Learn more about menopause and oral health here:
https://www1.deltadentalins.com/wellness/menopause-oral-health.html

Christian women talk a lot about what to do about menopause symptoms. What to eat. What supplements to take. What hormones to consider. What lifestyle changes to make. And all of that matters. But today I want to step back from the doing and ask a different question.
What is your body trying to tell you?
For most women in this season, the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause are not just a biological inconvenience to be managed. They are in many cases a communication. A signal from a body that has been carrying more than it was designed to carry, for longer than it was designed to carry it. And if we spend all of our energy silencing the signal without ever hearing the message, we miss something really important.
In this solo episode, Stephanie walks through four of the most common menopause symptoms — insomnia, emotional intensity, fatigue, and hot flashes — and offers a different lens for reading each one. Not a medical interpretation, but a human one. And a spiritual one. Grounded in 1 Corinthians 6:19 and the belief that the body is God’s temple, she makes the case that what your body experiences is not separate from your spiritual life. It is part of it.
She also introduces a concrete practice: the Question Journal. A small notebook on the nightstand. No agenda, no gratitude lists. Just one honest sentence written in the dark when you wake up at 2am: “Right now, in this moment, the truest thing I am feeling is...” Do that for two weeks. Read it back. And watch what becomes visible.
Your symptoms are not enemies to defeat. They are messengers. This episode is about learning to hear them out.
What You Will Learn
Why menopause symptoms — insomnia, hot flashes, fatigue, and emotional intensity — are not just biological inconveniences but potential communications from a body that has been carrying too much for too long
How to read each of the four most common symptoms through a human and spiritual lens — what 2am wake-ups, unexpected tears, bone-deep fatigue, and hot flashes may be revealing beneath the biology
The Question Journal practice — a simple, concrete nightstand habit that surfaces patterns over two weeks and opens the door to honest conversations with God, your doctor, your loved ones, and yourself
Additional Resources
Take the Hello Hot Flash Quiz — What Is Your Soul Trying to Tell You Right Now?
https://hellohotflash.com/quiz
Hello Hot Flash Workshop — faith and science for the midlife transition:
https://hellohotflash.com/workshop
Christian Women and Menopause — a limited-series podcast on what the Bible says about stress, anxiety, health, and confidence in midlife:
https://hellohotflash.com/christian-women-and-menopause
Sponsor
This episode is sponsored by Delta Dental. Protecting more than smiles. Visit the Delta Dental Institute to discover how they are advancing menopause care:
https://DeltaDentalIns.com
Learn more about menopause and oral health here:
https://www1.deltadentalins.com/wellness/menopause-oral-health.html

You stopped heating food in plastic, switched to a glass water bottle, and started saying no to paper receipts. Good. But if you are still dealing with urgency, leaking, or recurrent UTIs during perimenopause, the microplastics conversation is bigger than you may realize — and it is connected to your hormones in ways most providers have never mentioned.
Aleece Fosnight is back on Hello, Hot Flash for a second visit, and this conversation goes somewhere her first one did not. As a urology physician assistant with 15 years of experience in sexual medicine and women’s health, Aleece has spent her career helping women understand that bladder symptoms in midlife are not just aging, not just “three babies,” and not something you have to quietly manage with a panty liner. They are hormonal. They are physiological. And now, increasingly, they are environmental.
In this episode, Aleece walks through exactly what BPA, phthalates, and other endocrine disruptors do in a perimenopausal body — why she thinks of them as hormone impersonators adding background noise to an already chaotic hormonal signal — and how microplastic exposure can mimic, compound, and worsen the urgency, frequency, and bladder inflammation women are already experiencing. She also covers the November 2025 FDA decision to remove the black box warning from all estrogen-containing products, why vaginal estrogen cream may be one of the safest and most underused prescriptions available, and what Donna needs to say at her next appointment to finally get taken seriously.
If you only do one thing after listening to this episode, stop heating your food in plastic. But stay for the rest — because the conversation between microplastics, estrogen, and your bladder is one that nobody warned you about, and it is time somebody did.
What You Will Learn
How BPA, phthalates, and other endocrine disruptors act as hormone impersonators in a perimenopausal body — why women already navigating hormonal fluctuations are uniquely vulnerable to their effects — and the surprising everyday sources of exposure beyond the plastic water bottle
Why the FDA removed the black box warning from estrogen products in November 2025, what the Women’s Health Initiative study actually got wrong about estrogen and breast cancer risk, and why local vaginal estrogen cream may be the safest and most underused prescription available for midlife urinary health
The specific words to use at your next appointment to be taken seriously about bladder symptoms — including how to ask about hormones, request a pelvic floor assessment, and advocate for treatment options that go beyond continence products and “just live with it”
About Our Guest
Aleece Fosnight is a urology physician assistant based in Asheville, North Carolina, with 15 years of experience specializing in sexual medicine and women’s health. She practices at the Fosnight Center and is a passionate advocate for patient education and dismantling the stigmas around urological health. Her goal is simple: bladder symptoms may be common, but they are not always normal, and every woman deserves to know the difference.
To learn more about our guest, click here:
https://hellohotflash.com/the-plastic-detox-for-menopause-and-midlife
Find a urology provider near you: aeroflowurology.com
Patient education and provider locator: American Urologic Association patient education page
Additional Resources
The limited-series podcast Christian Women and Menopause teaches what the Bible says about stress, anxiety, health, and confidence in midlife. Listen here:
https://hellohotflash.com/christian-women-and-menopause
Sponsor
This episode is sponsored by Reverse Health. Finally, a fitness and weight loss app for women 40+. Use promo code HOTFLASH for 10% off:
https://www.rgds43jd.com/G1S938/7XDN2/

If you have ever sat in a doctor’s office and been told your labs are normal, your stress is the problem, and maybe you should try an antidepressant — this episode is the class you never got. Dr. LaKeischa Webb McMillan is a hormone specialist, Amazon bestselling author, and the kind of practitioner who will tell you exactly what is happening in your body, why standard testing often misses it, and what you can actually do about it. She is also refreshingly honest about her own story, her ADHD-wired brain, and the come-to-Jesus moments that changed her health from the inside out.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Dr. LaKeischa walks through the real definition of menopause (12 consecutive months without a period — nothing more, nothing less), what perimenopause can look like for up to 15 years before that, and why feeling anxious, exhausted, foggy, or just “off” in your 40s is not stress — it is real physiology with a real chemical explanation. She covers the organ system cascade that happens when estrogen and progesterone start shifting, why progesterone is the hormone most doctors overlook, and why your adrenals, thyroid, gut, and brain are all part of the same conversation.
She also goes somewhere most clinical conversations never reach: the physiological consequences of unresolved stress, what grounding in the grass actually does to inflammation in the body, how a sympathetic nervous loop gets trapped in your trapezius muscle and what releases it, and why her celebratory song is Walking on Sunshine. This episode delivers real education with real warmth. "Donna" — and every woman who has been dismissed, handed a prescription she did not ask for, or told her labs are fine while she feels anything but — this one is for you.
What You Will Learn
Why feeling anxious, exhausted, or unlike yourself in your 40s is a real clinical presentation rooted in changing hormones — not stress, not aging, and not something you are imagining — and the specific medical language to use at your next appointment to be taken seriously
How estrogen and progesterone affect the brain, adrenals, thyroid, and gut in a cascade that creates symptoms from brain fog and anxiety to weight gain and insomnia — and why there is no silver bullet, only a multi-layered, whole-body approach
Why normal lab results do not mean optimal hormone function — how inflammation pulls cell receptors inward so hormones cannot enter the cell even when blood levels look fine — and how to advocate for deeper testing that reflects how your body is actually using its hormones
About Our Guest
Dr. LaKeischa Webb McMillan is the author of the Amazon bestseller The Other PMS: Your Survival Guide for Perimenopause and Menopause, a concise, accessible guide to understanding this stage of life written like a girlfriend who happens to be a doctor. Through virtual consultations at talkhormones.com, she helps women make sense of symptoms, identify next steps, and get personalized support for hormone health. She practices functional and integrative medicine, combining lifestyle, supplementation, hormone therapy, gut protocols, and advanced testing to create layered, individualized care. She encourages every woman to think of herself as the CEO and expert of her own body.
Book: The Other PMS: Your Survival Guide for Perimenopause and Menopause
https://theotherpms.com
Virtual consultations: talkhormones.com
Social media: @DrLakeischaMD on all platforms
Additional Resources
The limited-series podcast Christian Women and Menopause teaches what the Bible says about stress, anxiety, health, and confidence in midlife. Listen here:
https://hellohotflash.com/christian-women-and-menopause

You used to be a great sleeper. Nine, ten hours, no problem. And then somewhere around your 40s, something shifted. Now you are wide awake at 2am or 3am, staring at the ceiling, asking yourself what is wrong — and no amount of sleep hygiene, magnesium, or melatonin seems to make a difference. If that is Donna, this episode is for her. And it is for you.
Dr. Maria Guzman is the founder of Dream Life Medicine and Wellness and a sleep physician who has spent her career helping women understand what is actually happening in their bodies at night. She is also refreshingly honest about the fact that being a sleep doctor does not make you immune to bad nights — and that the answer is rarely more effort, better habits, or a higher sleep score.
In this conversation, Dr. Guzman walks through the real physiology behind 2am and 3am wake-ups in perimenopause and postmenopause: why sleep pressure drops overnight, why REM sleep in the second half of the night is more fragile, why fluctuating estrogen and progesterone directly affect how easily you wake — and why midlife women are at significantly higher risk for undiagnosed sleep apnea that a standard home sleep study will likely miss. She also explains the role of cortisol in early morning waking, what to actually do when you cannot fall back asleep, and why obsessing over your wearable’s sleep score may be making things measurably worse.
Her message — rooted in her Coming Home series — is both practical and compassionate: sleep is not something you force. It is a state your body has to get into. And the most powerful thing you can do in that 3am moment is not try harder. It is come back to yourself.
What You Will Learn
The real physiology of 2am and 3am wake-ups in perimenopause — why sleep pressure drops overnight, why the REM-heavy second half of the night is uniquely fragile, and why fluctuating estrogen and progesterone make awakenings more likely for midlife women specifically
Why midlife women face a threefold higher risk of sleep apnea or disordered breathing — how standard home sleep studies can miss it entirely, what symptoms to look for that do not match the classic picture, and when to ask for an in-lab sleep study
What to do in the 3am moment — why staying in bed and trying harder makes it worse, how a consistent wake time is the single most evidence-based sleep intervention available, and the simple nervous system practices that interrupt the panic spiral without requiring anything external
About Our Guest
Dr. Maria Guzman is the founder of Dream Life Medicine and Wellness, a sleep physician specializing in mind-body approaches to insomnia and sleep disruption in midlife women. She leads free monthly sleep workshops using a mind-body approach and offers telemedicine care in Georgia and Florida. Through her Coming Home series, she helps women work with their nervous systems rather than against them — prioritizing self-compassion, body awareness, and sustainable self-care over technology, optimization, and willpower.
 
Website: https://dreamlifemedical.com
 
Additional Resources
The limited-series podcast Christian Women and Menopause teaches what the Bible says about stress, anxiety, health, and confidence in midlife. Listen here:
https://hellohotflash.com/christian-women-and-menopause
Sponsor
This episode is sponsored by Reverse Health. Finally, a fitness and weight loss app for women 40+. Use promo code HOTFLASH for 10% off:
https://www.rgds43jd.com/G1S938/7XDN2/

You are the one who handles it. You make the appointments, manage the medications, answer the phone at 11pm, and smile when you walk in the door because she needs calm, not panic. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, you stopped sleeping. You stopped eating real meals. And what nobody told you was that your body was keeping score the entire time.
If you are in the sandwich generation — caring for aging parents, children, grandchildren, and everyone in between — while also navigating perimenopause or menopause, this episode was made for you. Chronic stress and declining estrogen are a brutal combination. Cortisol is supposed to be a short-lived survival tool, but when caregiving stretches across months and years, it stays elevated and begins interfering with sleep, weight, mood, memory, and immune function. Meanwhile, dropping estrogen — one of the hormones that keeps cortisol in check — is doing the opposite. These two things compound on each other in ways most women never recognize because they are too busy caring for someone else to notice what is happening to themselves.
Lori La Bey lived this for 30 years. As the founder of Alzheimer’s Speaks, recognized by Oprah as a health hero and by Maria Shriver as an architect of change, Lori built an international advocacy movement out of her mother’s 30-year journey with dementia — and out of her own decades of self-neglect along the way. In this conversation, she is candid about what caregiving quietly did to her body, the traps she fell into, and what she wishes she had known far earlier.
This is not just a dementia episode. It is an episode about what happens when women carry everything for everyone else and call it love. Lori’s message is clear: caregiving should not mean self-erasure. Every moment is another chance.
What You Will Learn
Why the sandwich generation is a perfect storm for midlife women — how layered caregiving responsibilities compound hormonal changes, elevate cortisol for years, and quietly destroy the caregiver’s own health before she ever recognizes what is happening
The traps caregivers fall into — trying to fix the unfixable, pursuing perfection, doing everything alone — and why shifting from a crisis mindset to a comfort-first approach preserves both the caregiver’s health and the loved one’s dignity
Practical steps to protect yourself while continuing to care — including how to find support when you are isolated, why connection is not optional but medical, and the three questions Lori asks before every caregiving task that changed everything for her
About Our Guest
Lori La Bey is the founder of Alzheimer’s Speaks, an international advocacy movement focused on dementia education and caregiver support. Her work is rooted in personal experience — her mother lived with dementia for 30 years, and Lori spent about 30 years as a caregiver connected to that journey. Recognized by Oprah as a health hero and by Maria Shriver as an architect of change, she is a powerful voice for caregivers and everyone affected by dementia. Drawing from her own experience of neglecting self-care, she now encourages others to care differently, prioritize progress over perfection, and reclaim their own lives.
To learn more about our guest, click here:
https://hellohotflash.com/episodes/alzheimers-speaks-lori-labey
Visit Alzheimer’s Speaks: alzheimerspeaks.com
Global resource platform: Dementia Map
Additional Resources
The limited-series podcast Christian Women and Menopause teaches what the Bible says about stress, anxiety, health, and confidence in midlife. Listen here:
https://hellohotflash.com/christian-women-and-menopause
Sponsor
This episode is sponsored by Reverse Health. Finally, a fitness and weight loss app for women 40+. Use promo code HOTFLASH for 10% off:
https://www.rgds43jd.com/G1S938/7XDN2/
This episode is also sponsored by Delta Dental. Protecting more than smiles. Visit the Delta Dental Institute to discover how they are advancing menopause care:
https://DeltaDentalInstitute.com
Or learn more about menopause and oral health directly here:
https://www1.deltadentalins.com/wellness/menopause-oral-health.html

If you have ever left a doctor's appointment feeling dismissed, handed an antidepressant you did not ask for, or told your labs were "normal" when you knew something was wrong — this episode is the conversation you deserved to have in that exam room. A recent survey found that 40% of women felt they were misdiagnosed during perimenopause. Stephanie spent over $20,000 and visited 18 doctors before getting answers. This is not a personal failing. It is a systemic one — and Dr. Bruce Dorr is here to explain exactly why it happens, and what you can do about it.
Dr. Dorr is a board-certified OB/GYN with over two decades of specialized experience in menopause care, a certified practitioner through the Institute for Functional Medicine, a Senior Medical Advisor at Biote, and a primary educator for the organization. He sees up to 12 new patients a day — most of them women who have been told there is nothing wrong with them — and he has devoted the last decade of his career to the root cause, whole-body approach to hormone health that most of the medical system has never been trained to offer.       
In this conversation, Dr. Dorr walks through the full picture: why perimenopause is so hard to diagnose, what the 2002 Women's Health Initiative study actually got wrong and how it derailed hormone education for an entire generation of providers, why testosterone is the most abundant sex hormone women produce and why most women have never been told that, what bioidentical hormone therapy actually does and does not do, and the specific labs and markers you can request at your next appointment to finally get real answers. He also explains why lifestyle — diet, sleep, stress, detox pathways — must come before hormones for treatment to actually work.
As Dr. Dorr put it plainly: how far south we go is dictated by how we take care of ourselves now. This episode gives you the tools to start taking care — with information, not guesswork.       
What You Will Learn                 
Why perimenopause produces more than 70 different symptoms across the body — from panic attacks and joint pain to bladder issues and brain fog — and why so many women are sent to cardiologists, rheumatologists, and neurologists before anyone asks whether hormones might be the common thread
The four root causes of hormone imbalance — production, transport, receptor, and detox pathway problems — and why identifying which bucket a woman falls into is the only way to create a treatment plan that actually works
What specific labs to request at your next appointment, why testosterone is critically underaddressed in women's health, and what bioidentical hormone replacement therapy can and cannot do — including the real data on estrogen and breast cancer risk that contradicts what most women have been told
About Our Guest
Dr. Bruce Dorr is a board-certified OB/GYN who has specialized in menopause care for over two decades. As Senior Medical Advisor and primary educator for Biote — the bioidentical testosterone and estrogen organization — and a practitioner at Littleton Wellness Center in Denver, Dr. Dorr brings a functional medicine approach to hormone health that addresses root causes rather than symptoms. He is a certified provider through the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM certified 2025) and holds affiliations with both the North American Society for Sexual Wellness and the Menopause Society. He is passionately committed to educating healthcare providers to better recognize, diagnose, and treat the symptoms of hormone imbalance caused by perimenopause and menopause. 
Follow Dr. Dorr on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbrucedorr/
 
Additional Resources
Join me for an interactive workshop where together, we will map out a practical menopause meal plan using simple macro principles so you understand how protein, carbohydrates, and fats support energy, metabolism, and hormonal changes. You will also build a daily faith practice to help anchor your mindset, strengthen resilience, and stay steady through this season of transition. https://hellohotflash.com/workshop
The limited-series podcast Christian Women and Menopause teaches what the Bible says about stress, anxiety, health, and confidence in midlife. Listen here: https://hellohotflash.com/christian-women-and-menopause
 
Episode Sponsor
This episode is sponsored by Reverse Health. Finally, a fitness and weight loss app for women 40+. Use promo code HOTFLASH for 10% off: https://www.rgds43jd.com/G1S938/7XDN2/        

Full Show Notes
What are you afraid this season means about you? Not about your health. Not about your symptoms. About you — your identity, your worth, your place in the story God is writing.
That is the question Stephanie opens with in this solo episode. And it is the right one. Because underneath the hot flashes and the sleepless nights and the frustration of a body that feels like it has stopped cooperating, there is often something quieter and more personal: a fear that the most vibrant, most needed, most productive season of your life is somehow behind you.
This episode offers a different frame. Not a pep talk. Not a list of steps to push through it. Something older and quieter than that — the spiritual logic of slowing down.
Scripture is full of a pattern that rarely gets airtime in Western culture: God does His deepest work in seasons of reduction, not expansion. Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness before he was ready. Elijah collapsed under a broom tree and was met not with a new strategy but with bread, water, and rest. Paul’s letters are saturated with the language of weakness, not competence. The people God uses most significantly are almost always the ones who have first been brought to the end of their own strength.
Menopause, Stephanie argues, may be one of those seasons. The ground is shifting. The certainties you built your routines around are suddenly unreliable. And into that disruption comes Psalm 46:10 — not as a promise for your vacation, but as a command issued in the middle of chaos: Be still and know that I am God.
This episode also introduces a summer practice — 15 minutes outside, no agenda, no prayer list, no productivity. Just one question held in the quiet: God, what are You doing in this season that I have been too busy to notice? It is a small practice. And it may be the most important thing you do all summer.
What You Will Learn
Why God consistently does His deepest work in seasons of reduction rather than expansion — and how the stories of Moses, Elijah, and Paul speak directly to the woman who has spent decades performing at full capacity and is now being asked to slow down
What Psalm 46:10 actually means in the context of menopause — why “Be still and know that I am God” is not advice for peaceful moments but a command issued in the middle of chaos, and what it looks like to receive it rather than resist it
Why this season is not decline but clarity — the difference between the first half of life (building the container) and the second half (discovering what it is for), and a simple 15-minute summer practice to help you begin listening for what God is doing
Additional Resources
The limited-series podcast Christian Women and Menopause teaches what the Bible says about stress, anxiety, health, and confidence in midlife. Listen here:
https://hellohotflash.com/christian-women-and-menopause
Join me for an interactive workshop where together, we will map out a practical menopause meal plan using simple macro principles so you understand how protein, carbohydrates, and fats support energy, metabolism, and hormonal changes. You will also build a daily faith practice to help anchor your mindset, strengthen resilience, and stay steady through this season of transition.
https://hellohotflash.com/workshop
Sponsor
This episode is sponsored by Delta Dental. Protecting more than smiles. Visit the Delta Dental Institute to discover how they are advancing menopause care:
https://DeltaDentalIns.com https://www1.deltadentalins.com/wellness/menopause-oral-health.html