Hello and welcome to another episode of “WTF Happened to My Body?” I'm Natalie Garay, I'm your host. I'm going to share with you a bunch of shit that I've been learning about lately.
This is season two. I'm excited because in season one, I talked about the things I've been talking about for the last 20 years as a Pilates instructor.
All the things that I've shared with my clients about how to strengthen and rehabilitate their body after having kids. Now I have said this a bazillion times and I'm going to say it over and over again for the rest of my life. It's never too late to rehabilitate. So, the main audience that I'm trying to find and target is the mom who's somewhere around her forties who's finally going, what the fuck happened?
Because we've spent all of these years putting ourselves kind of last, basically, taking care of our kids, taking care of our projects, our work, whatever it is. And then suddenly we have this time to come up and breathe. And we're noticing aches, and we're noticing fatigue, and we're noticing brain fog, and we're noticing that we're peeing our pants when we laugh, and sneeze, and whatever, or we have a separation in our abdominal wall, or you have a C-section that you never rehabilitated. And now your body hurts, your back hurts, your hips hurt, all of that.
So that's all of season one. You're going to find all of the tools, all the information, all the stories about how Pilates is the best way to rehabilitate and how I've helped all of my clients rehabilitate after having kids using Pilates and basic simple exercises. But season two is exciting to me because we're going to go into a little bit different territory here.
It's not entirely unrelated, of course, but it's something that I've become extremely passionate about in the last couple of years. I'd say probably 21’, 22’, maybe a bit before that, in those years. And that all started with my mom being diagnosed with dementia and experiencing her years of decline, watching her decline over the years with her diagnosis and going with her to her functional medicine doctor and seeing how they looked at it and how they wanted to treat it and just really getting to the root cause of everything, looking at the brain.
And from that, I was intrigued. I was fascinated by what they looked at. They did brain scans. They did extensive blood work to see what she was deficient in. We looked at her food. We went through a long list of information to look into what's going on, and to figure out how to support her.
Around 2022, I decided to go back to school. I decided that the information that I gained from going with my mom to her appointments and what I learned in those appointments was so intriguing to me and so fascinating that I thought everybody needs to know this shit. I want to be the one that's helping people know this shit.
And so I went back to school to become a naturopathic doctor. Now, for those of you who don't know, I am not a science buff. I am not a science nerd. My degree from UCSB was in dance. I went to UCSB, I had no fucking idea what I wanted to do, but I thought, let's take a dance class. And from there I decided to audition for the program, I got in, so, all that to say that I have a BA in dance.
So what does that look like when I decide that I want to go back to school to be a science major? It looks like a year and a half of prerequisites. And I started off taking a math class, which I failed, and then I retook that math class last summer and eventually got a B in that class.
I then started taking chemistry classes and biology classes and physics classes. And the first chemistry class I took was a Pre-Chem class, which I did fine in. And Chem 1. I took Chem 1 at the same time as a Bio 1 class. Failed the Chem 1 lecture, got a B in the lab.
Anyhow, I'll be taking that class again over the summer. So, basically, just to show you that this shit's not easy. I'm struggling my way through it, but I'm so fascinated by all of it. I am so close to being done with my prerequisites. I am down three classes with three classes to go.
And then I will be transferring to a school here local in San Diego, called Bastyr University. They also have a campus in Washington state. But mama doesn't do rain, and so I decided to move down to San Diego for that. I cannot be more excited to get into this program and to dive into what is going on beneath all of this, what's going on with our bodies and how I can support my clients further beyond the physical means of Pilates, the physical rehabilitation work that I've taught for the last 20 years.
And what my hope is, is that as I go through it, I share all the information that I learn with you guys, because I know that a lot of you that have been with me for the last 20 years as clients, or just even my friends- we're going through it.
Oh God, we're going through it. So I will be 48 in two months, a month and a half, give or take. And let me rewind a bit. So after my mom passed and she had this cognitive decline. I thought oh shit, well, let's do what I can do now in order to slow down that process if that's inevitable for me. Delay it or completely avoid it.
And so I decided to do the full gamut with the functional medicine doctor that my mom went to. That was blood work, that was brain scans, which included food sensitivity tests, micronutrient tests, hormone tests. Like I said, brain scans to see what's going on with the brain, if there's any low activity in certain parts of the brain. Is there any hyperactivity in part of the brain?
I’m sure there’s a little. They said it was normal, which, you know, okay. I'm not sure that that's true. But I decided to really focus on my health. And it changed a lot. It changed my body a lot. In 2020, I weighed my most, weighed the highest I've ever weighed in my life, which maybe most of us did at that point because we were in the lockdown during the pandemic. Although I think there are some people who went the extreme and really, really focused on their fitness at that point. I was not one of them. I sat on my ass. I gained weight.
From 2020, I gradually started to increase my activity, my physical activity from walking, swimming, walking to the pool to swim and walking back. So it was quite a process from 2020 until 2022. But in that time from that three year period, which I didn't start seeing the functional medicine doctor until the end of 2022, I lost about 40 pounds.
That's the point of my story there. So it was a three year period. I'm not going to say it happened, you know, obviously overnight, it was a progression of increased activity. And then once I started changing my food, shit changed. And on top of that, it increased my energy level, my brain, my awareness, my cognition, which I needed because as I was going back to school, going from a dance major to a science major. I needed all the brain power I could muster, everything I could get.
And it did, it changed, it helped me, I had more energy, I was able to focus more, my body changed like I mentioned. But here's the thing, things are shifting right now and I'm in the process of diving deeper into what's going on and my guess is that I'm going a little bit more into that perimenopausal, menopausal zone.
I think I was tiptoeing in the edge of it, earlier this year - not this year, or maybe it was late last year. Because I did go see a naturopathic doctor once I moved to San Diego and did a little bit more blood work to see what was going on, what's the latest a year later. Am I still needing these specific supplements or am I gonna need other ones? Do I need to start taking any hormones?
And I did, I shifted my supplementation a little bit. I shifted into a little bit of hormone supplements and lately just probably in the last couple of months. I've noticed some shifts. My period has been wonky. I want to say, I haven't had one since February.
So that's a telltale sign that my hormones are shifting. Also lately, I've started to wake up in the middle of the night around that three o'clock time. Which they say, you wake up around three in the middle of the night, it's usually because your liver is trying to detox. Which, I know it's true but at the same time, I feel like it's something else.
So I signed up to get some more blood drawn. I'm doing that next week. I'll get the results soon and then I will share what comes up. But I've changed a lot of my eating habits. I've eliminated alcohol for the most part. I don't remember the last time I had a drink and I'm not saying I will never, but I just have no desire for it, it doesn't taste good to me anymore, it makes me feel like shit.
So, going back to the liver detox thing. I'm not drinking before bed, if that's the case, but I know that the liver detox is more than just alcohol. So this is going to be interesting, and I know that there's so much to learn about this. So much too that we can do in order to prevent feeling like shit and prevent waking up in the middle of the night because I love my sleep and I am very protective of my sleep.
To the point where I annoyed the shit out of my girls, because I go to bed at a certain time, I get up early, and I have a whole bedtime routine. I have a whole morning routine, and I just know how important sleep is, not only for my daily function, but just for my brain health in general. And I know that my mom's sleep habits were shitty.
And I think her lifestyle contributed to her cognitive decline. Her dementia wasn't necessarily that she was predisposed to it. It was a bunch of lifestyle factors that all came, you know, to a head, I guess you could say. And, it's just something that we are now learning so much more about, we're learning that we can prevent it or prolong it.
And, I mean, she was 67 when she passed. And so, I just went full steam ahead. I was like, this shit's not happening to me. And there's so much I want to learn. There's so much I want to learn and share. There's so much I still want to do. And 67 is just way too fucking young. And on top of that, like I said, there's so many more studies and science coming out about how to avoid it.
I want my daughters to be able to know how to avoid it. I want their daughters to know how to be able to avoid it because it affects women twice as much as it affects men. And as I'm reading a new book lately by Dr. Lisa Mascone, it's because of the hormone shifts that we experience. She talks about puberty, pregnancy, and I think the other P was perimenopause. Could be wrong.
But we're twice as likely to experience early onset dementia and cognitive decline, or Alzheimer's disease in general. And her whole study is about how that is and how that takes place and how menopause is not an OBGYN issue. It's a brain issue. And a lot of the people that we go to, excuse me, a lot of the practitioners we go to for this are the OBGYNs who have no information about that.
They have no information about menopause or perimenopause. And so women are left to struggle, and feel dismissed. Feel like they are going crazy and that there's nothing that they could do about it. And the more they study the brain and the hormones in the brain, they're realizing that's where it's coming from.
And so, you know, the fatigue, the brain fog, the irritability, the sleeplessness. The moodiness, sudden onset of tears. All of these symptoms are brain related and hormone related. And I can't tell you how excited I am to read this book, to learn about it. And when I discovered that she was heading a program or science program back East, it really interested me.
So I'm hoping that I can work in some sort of setting like that with the research and really be involved in learning what is actually going on. So if you, like me, are experiencing these changes and you have questions, show up for the podcast, listen to the podcast, share with your friends, because, oh my God. I imagine every woman, anyone who is experiencing this will want to know and need to know.
So they don't feel like they're going batshit crazy. And that there is something that they can do about it. Just the same thing I was telling my clients all these years about the physical symptoms that they're experiencing. The incontinence, the back aches, the shoulder aches, the neck aches. Like, there is something you can do about it.
You might not be pinpointing it to when you had kids, you know, 20, 30 years ago, and you may be chalking it all up to getting older or being in your forties and being in your fifties, but I call bullshit on all of it. And it's nothing that you can't start supporting now. If you want to, of course, it's always a choice.
And the choice is the first step to making these things happen. It's a decision that you make to being like, yeah, I don't want to feel like this anymore. I don't want to feel like shit. I want to feel good. I want to have energy because maybe, like me, you are slightly delusional and want to start a whole new life at 48, or 46 is when I started, but now I'll be 48 soon.
And I don't know why I just think it's intriguing and funny, but you know, age is just a number. Who gives a shit? It's gonna be fun and fascinating and my main goal is obviously to share all this with you. My main excitement about all this is to get to learn and to just blab about it and share it with you guys so that you have all the information, all the tools that you need to do whatever it is you're excited about and inspired to do throughout the day, throughout your life, the second half of your life. To me, as a dancer, I'm looking at this as my second act. This is the second act. This is the second half of the show. I did the raising of the kids, although they're only in their early 20s and they're still going to need me and need mothering, but less so obviously.
And that means it's just me and whatever I want to do. So I'm going to do it. But, like I said, come back, join that podcast. If you have questions, send them to me on Instagram. I would love to chit chat with you. And if you ever want to come on the podcast with me and share about your symptoms, and we can work it out together, and I can show you the resources that'll give you the information that you need to go get after it and feel better.
I'd love to do that too. Also, check out the website because I'm going to be sharing a lot of this stuff in what I'm calling the Wellness Library at the moment. I don't have a name. I haven't come up with a cute, clever name for this thing yet, but basically it's just going to house the Pilates videos that I make.
The friends I bring in to teach yoga classes, or sound healing, or Reiki, or, physical therapy, acupuncture, whatever it is, the tools that I've used, or the tools that I know that will be helpful- they're all going to be in this library, and it's going to support women in their perimenopausal years and up.
We're talking midlife, people. Here we go. Second act. Let's do it. Thank you so much for joining me. Go check out the website, share this with a friend of yours and be like, here you go, sister. This is meant for us. This is our time. Let's get after it.