Stop Guessing About Perimenopause with Dr. Tiffany Lester

Description:

This episode is sponsored by Function.

October is Menopause Awareness Month, and every time we talk about midlife bodies on this show, what you write back to me isn’t really about hot flashes. It’s about being dismissed. Walking into an appointment, saying something feels different, and being told it’s normal. Dr. Tiffany Lester, a board certified integrative medicine physician and the Women’s Health Medical Director at Function, has built her career on refusing that answer.

We get into the wellness trend she went all in on and walked away from (and why so much of the research behind it was built around men), the moment her own lab results told her perimenopause had arrived, and what a standard annual physical tends to miss. She explains why markers like ApoB and fasting insulin matter so much in our forties and fifties, whether knowing this much about your body makes you healthier or just more anxious, and where the line sits between owning your health data and needing a doctor across the table. I share what happened when I brought my own results from Function to a new doctor, and we talk about who gets left out of conversations like this one and why health equity is so personal to her.

Thought-provoking Quotes:

• As Dr. Stacy Sims likes to say, we’re not little men. We are separate. And that’s okay, it’s not a bad thing. (Dr. Tiffany Lester)
• I knew intellectually that this transition was coming. But I still wasn’t ready for it somehow. (Dr. Tiffany Lester)
• We have in some ways been conditioned to accept the bare minimum. (Dr. Tiffany Lester)
• It’s much harder to dismiss a woman when she’s there with black and white data. (Dr. Tiffany Lester)
• We do not have to just grin and bear it. (Jen Hatmaker)
• A lot of people don’t even know what they don’t know. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it. (Dr. Tiffany Lester)
• It starts with knowing your numbers and not guessing, because you can’t manage what you don’t measure. (Dr. Tiffany Lester)

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Function - https://functionhealth.com/FortheLove: Join and use code FORTHELOVE25 for a $25 credit
• The work of Dr. Stacy Sims on women’s physiology

Guest’s Links:

Website - https://drtiffanylester.com

Instagram - https://instagram.com/drtiffanylester

Substack - https://drtiffanylester.substack.com