Chapter 3 - Your Body's Invitation To Heal

Your body isn’t betraying you, it’s communicating. If perimenopause has brought night sweats, brain fog, heavy bleeding, mood swings, anxiety, weight gain that won’t budge, or that eerie “impending doom” feeling, we slow it all down and translate what those symptoms can actually mean. We hold the line on one message: you’re not broken, and you’re not “just stressed” or “getting old” you’re experiencing a natural biochemical shift, and the signal is worth listening to. 

We walk through the symptom patterns that often point to perimenopause, then get practical about why so many women stay stuck even with seemingly perfect hormone advice. A major theme is healing order: when foundational health is offline, especially gut health and the microbiome, the body struggles to respond. That’s why our hierarchy starts with repair, healing and sealing the gut, so hormones and metabolism have a chance to rebalance in a way that lasts. 

We also tackle the confusion around hormone replacement therapy and why perimenopause is not menopause. We explain why the blanket “HRT” label can lead to mismatched treatment, how oestrogen dominance can show up in perimenopause, and why progesterone-focused support may be more appropriate for that stage. From there, we zoom out to behaviour change that actually works: microchanges over all-or-nothing, “nearly perfect” over perfection, and patience with a true cellular timeline rather than diet culture promises. We finish with body literacy tools, from circadian rhythm basics to cycle tracking, plus a grounded take on cravings, food triggers, and how to figure out what your body is really asking for. 

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Transcript

Your Body’s Signals, Not Failure

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Chapter 3 Your Body's Invitation to Heal Let your heart break so your spirit doesn't. Andrea Gibson. You're not imagining it, beautiful. The way your body may no longer feel like your own. The way your energy seems to vanish, the moods and emotions that catch you off guard. It's not that you're broken or losing your mind or getting old before your time. As you listen on, remember that what you're experiencing is a natural biochemical shift in your body. This may be a good time to do the perimenopausal symptom quiz in the resource section. Once you've completed the perimenopausal symptom quiz included in the additional resources I've provided, the results are probably still swirling in your mind. Maybe you feel relief finally having some answers to whether you're in perimenopause. Maybe it's confronting to see your symptoms laid out so clearly. But here's what to remember. Your body isn't betraying you. What you're feeling is your unique biochemistry sending you signals. Every night sweat, every moment of brain fog, every sudden rush of emotion is your body's way of saying, hey, something's out of alignment, please pay attention. Your symptoms are actually your body's warning signals that something isn't quite right. Sadly, many of us brush these signals off, telling ourselves it's just stress or age. And so we allow these problems to escalate until they become serious chronic issues. Instead, I want to make a pact with you right now to embrace your symptoms for what they are. Important messages from your beautiful and wondrous body, asking for your attention, your care, and your respect. In the stormy season of perimenopause, those signals can feel loud and relentless. And yes, they can be exhausting. But they're also an invitation to understand the shifts happening in your hormones, your gut, your nervous system, and your metabolism, encouraging you to get curious about what your body needs now, today, to best support it and not what might have nourished it five or ten years ago. In this chapter, we'll unpack those physical and emotional hurdles together, so you can start working with your body and biochemistry and not against it. From here, now we start your healing. Let's

The Symptom Pattern That Adds Up

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start by looking at the symptoms you might be experiencing. New onset of heavy and or longer bleeds, shorter menstrual cycles, less than 26 days, sore, swollen, or lumpy breasts, mid-sleep waking, increased menstrual cramps, premenstrual night sweats, new or markedly increased migraine headaches, new or increased premenstrual mood swings, weight gain without changes in exercise or eating. If you have three of these nine symptoms, you are most likely in perimenopause. If you're anything like the beautiful woman I see in my clinic, these symptoms may be showing up in ways that feel deeply personal and at times overwhelming. Exhaustion that no amount of sleep can touch. Anxiety that seems to appear out of nowhere, shortness of breath and heart palpitations, a vague, unsettling feeling of impending doom, feeling blah like the sparks gone from your life, aches and pains in your joints, heavy bleeding, borderline hemorrhaging for some, severe bloating, zero sex drive, weight gain that makes no sense, even when your diet or physical exercise hasn't changed. Snapping, feeling moody, or being short with the people you love most. Mum rage. These are the real lived symptoms women share with me every single day. The ones that can disrupt your joy, drain your energy, and make it harder to feel like yourself. As we move forward, know you are not alone in this, and there is a clear way forward. My hierarchy of healing is designed to guide you step by step so we can resolve not only the physical challenges, but also the deeper, more personal challenges that may be standing in your way. Together, we'll work to reclaim the most vibrant version of yourself, one that feels whole and resilient, so you feel at ease in your body once again.

Why Healing Must Start With Gut

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These are the obstacles I see most often in a woman's healing journey. Your healing out of order. If you recall, in the tumultuous season of perimenopause, a woman's body needs to heal in a specific order and follow a specific timeline. My healing protocol is designed to restore your cellular health step by step, because when your foundational health isn't strong, the body can't fully respond to healing. For example, in my clinic, a woman will sit in the chair across from me and share that her hormones feel completely out of whack. She can't focus or think clearly. She's deeply frustrated by unexplained weight gain that doesn't respond to anything she tries. I listen intently and validate each of her concerns, because I understand her symptoms are real. Then I'll gently ask, are you experiencing any gastrointestinal symptoms? Almost without fail, she'll nod and share her symptoms bloating, alternating bowel movements, or a suspicion she might have irritable bowel syndrome. And yet, in her hand she holds what appears to be the perfect hormone replacement prescription, and still her symptoms persist. This is where I pause and explain something that might surprise her. What she's been told is hormone replacement therapy HRT might not actually be replacing anything at all. In fact, if she's still in perimenopause, her body might already have plenty of hormones. They're just wildly out of balance. This is why I've joined other progressive practitioners in moving away from the blanket term HRT for everything. Instead, we're advocating for more precise language that actually describes what's happening in a woman's body at different life stages.

Rethinking HRT Language And Fit

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Because here's the thing. Perimenopause isn't menopause, and the hormone therapy for each phase should be as different as the phase themselves. Let me explain what I mean by breaking down these new terms that are gaining recognition in women's healthcare. Why I don't use the term HRT anymore. The term hormone replacement therapy has become a casual phrase that creates confusion and can lead to inappropriate treatment. Here's what I use instead. Female hormone therapy FHT a progressive term for all hormone treatments that support women at different life stages. Not all hormone therapy is about replacing missing hormones. Sometimes we're rebalancing what's already there. Perimenopausal hormone therapy. Hormone therapy designed specifically for perimenopause, usually focusing on progesterone to balance excess estrogen. During perimenopause, you often have too much estrogen, not too little. So replacement doesn't make sense. Menopausal hormone therapy MHT A treatment designed for after true menopause, when your body may genuinely need hormone support. This is when true replacement may become relevant. Why this matters to you? If you're in perimenopause experiencing estrogen dominance, and someone tells you that you need HRT, you might receive more estrogen. Exactly what you don't need. The right terminology ensures you get the right treatment for your specific stage. But when a woman's symptoms persist, it tells me she's out of order in her healing process. Most likely, her GP didn't start by bringing her foundational health back online first. In many cases, that can mean her doctor didn't order the correct full blood evaluation, a test that provides a deeper look into what might really be happening beneath the surface of her symptoms. For each woman in my clinic, we start by healing and sealing her gut. I will talk in great depth about this process in chapter 9, but for now, know that if you do not begin with repairing the gastrointestinal tract first, nothing else will work. If your microbiome is not spot on, or your detoxification, elimination pathways aren't working properly, you're not digesting and absorbing in a way that gives you access to the nutrients your body needs, then even the most perfect PhT prescription will fail. Your healing begins with getting your foundational health in order first. This is the reason the first phase of the hierarchy of healing is repair. Simply stated, repair means healing and sealing your gut. When a woman begins her journey implementing my healing protocol, a healed and sealed gastrointestinal tract is the only way she can move on to address and resolve her hormone imbalances and do the work to bring her metabolism back online. Sustainably, for good. To reclaim the most vital version of herself. Exactly the result I want for you. The all

Microchanges Beat All Or Nothing

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at once overwhelm. As you listen, you're about to navigate a great deal of information, especially in part two, when I share the hierarchy of healing. Taken all at once, it may feel overwhelming. As women, we often choose the everything all at once approach rather than making micro changes over time. However, as I share my process, I want to caution you. When a woman tries to implement everything she learns all at once, she can quickly feel defeated, throw up her hands and say this is too hard. And then unfortunately, she does nothing. That's the exact opposite of what I want for you. We already know, and it's backed by psychologists worldwide, that change is one of the hardest things for us to do. Welcome to being human. You're not a robot, and I don't expect you to act like one. My healing protocol is designed to support you in a way that allows you to be gentle with yourself. So when you're not doing everything perfectly or all at once, you can choose compassion and forgiveness instead of guilt. My healing protocol is rooted in making small, manageable changes, because those micro changes add up over time. I tell my patients it's nearly perfect, not perfection. Then I encourage them to fail fast, but most importantly to take the next step. Start again. Every choice is a fresh chance to begin again. No single moment defines your whole day or your progress. So, there's no need to stagnate in the idea of I've failed. Instead, think about the fact that you can always begin again. For example, let's say you started the morning beautifully with your power cupper and green shake. We'll talk more about my power cupper later. The perfect most delicious way to start your day. You headed out the door to Pilates. After class, you went out with your girlfriends and you couldn't resist the smell of that cinnamon bun dripping with frosting. Of course, your girls encouraged you shamelessly. You have to taste these. So you did. But then on the drive home you found yourself spiraling and beating yourself up, convinced you've undone all the good choices you made that morning and tossed them out of the window. As women, we are so used to our inner critics sneaking in with why even bother trying? You've got no willpower. We all know our inner mean girl too well. But I'm here to encourage you to try and try again, because you can always start again. What we don't want is for that moment to spiral into, oh well, what the heck, and suddenly it's another cinnamon bun the next day and the day after that. The truth is, pastries, as delicious as they are, aren't likely to get you feeling better or bring the results you're looking for. Instead, you start again by simply choosing to get back on track with food choices you know will nourish your body and support your biochemistry. If you can change how you think about that cinnamon bun mistake in inverted commas, and instead tell yourself I only have to be nearly perfect, not perfect, then that's when you create the opportunity to reframe your mindset, allowing you to remind yourself that I can falter sometimes and then begin again the next day or the next hour. When you do begin again, those renewed intentions and small actions start to take root. Over time they become habits and eventually a part of your lifestyle. So I say fail, fail fast, mute your inner mean girl and get back on track. Microchanges matter. When we delve into the hierarchy of healing in part two, we'll explore each of these three pillars with a mindset of nearly perfect, with an understanding that you don't need to change everything you're doing all at once. I encourage you to replace the all-or-nothing approach with a willingness to embrace microchanges. Finally, as you go through the healing protocols, remember to be gentle with yourself. If you do choose the cinnamon bun as you should on occasion, then with no inner critic involved, choose to simply start again. As a reminder of what I said earlier, what I want most for you is to have a healing protocol that is customized to your biochemistry to follow 80% of the time. For the other 20% of the time, whether it's a cinnamon bun or a margarita on the beach with the love of your life, I want you to enjoy it. Then begin again.

The Real Timeline For Cellular Repair

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Impatience with your body's healing timeline. Just like healing needs to happen in a certain order, there's also a timeline. What I see in my clinic so often is what I describe as the wheels fall off during week three of the protocol. Why? A woman comes to see me. We do the proper blood testing to help identify the issues that are the root causes of her symptoms. She's fueled by excitement because there's finally a plan in place, a solution she's been searching for. She prepares to implement the hierarchy of healing. She's cleaned out her pantry, she's replaced all processed foods and gluten products with nutrient-dense foods to nourish her body. She has the ideal food recipes ready. She's purchased her plant-based medicines, and for a week or two she's over the moon because she begins to see results. She feels clearer and the kilos may have started to fall away. She begins to feel better. Then, usually in week three, she'll ask the inevitable question, how long is this going to take? Meaning, her impatience to be completely healed has set in. I understand. You've waited so long for a solution that gives you results. It's human nature to want it all right now. But for your body to heal, it needs to happen in your specific cellular timeline, based on your unique biochemistry. Simply stated, your healing will happen according to a timeline that comes from a cellular perspective. I blame much of this impatience on the mainstream diet culture that bombards women daily with quick results promises. Drink this special drink and lose five kilos in seven days. Or take this one pill and drop three dress sizes in two weeks. But as you and I both know, these results are neither realistic nor sustainable. The hierarchy of healing is designed to give you the exact opposite results. It is meant to restore your energy and vitality for good, meaning in a way that is sustainable. But this involves a cellular repair timeline that might not be your perfect timeline. In my process, patience is essential. Patience with your cells and patience with your biochemistry. The changes you make must be consistent. And you need to allow time to first repair your gastrointestinal tract. While the gut lining may regenerate every three to five days, if you suffer from chronic dysbiosis and inflammation damage, meaning the bad microbes have been in charge for too long. Full repair may take up to 12 months. I often ask my patients, how long did it take for you to get to this place? Then I have them take that number of years and apply my general rule of healing. In my clinical experience, for every one year of chronic illness, a person may need approximately one month of dedicated healing. For example, if you've had chronic inflammation for 10 years, you may need to follow the protocols in the hierarchy of healing for up to 10 months. Healing at a cellular level is a comprehensive process that requires time, patience, and consistency. But I promise you, as you make the changes, do so with the trust that your body wants to heal. Quite often we just need to get out of our own way, stop overthinking and simply stay the course. Most importantly, when you have patience with the repair, rebalance, and reclaim protocols, and stay the course, we can take you from where you are now to a very different place, moving you steps closer to the results you most desire. A loss

Relearning Body Literacy And Rhythms

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of understanding of your own body. As women, many of us have lost touch with understanding our own bodies, their natural rhythms, or, as we've discussed, our body literacy. We often know our children's, our husbands, and even our dogs' needs better than we know our own bodies' needs. To regain your body literacy requires learning to interpret and respond properly to the signals your body is sending you through your symptoms. In our busy modern lifestyle, we've lost the capacity to pay attention to or understand our own bodies, so much that we no longer know how to live in harmony with our natural biorhythms. One example is how we consistently disrupt our circadian rhythms. Each of us lives with a darkness deficiency and affects our melatonin and sleep, and we suffer a lightness deficiency because we don't go outside often enough to receive the light of sunrise. Instead, we spend too much time indoors in a false environment of fluorescent lighting, screens and zoom calls. Whereas when you're camping under the stars, far from the city lights, without your laptop or phone, your body naturally begins to follow the rhythm of the sun, falling asleep at sundown and waking with the sunrise. In nature, without distractions, you can listen to and follow your body's natural sleep wake cycle. You begin to notice its signals, understand more clearly what it truly needs, and respond accordingly. Reconnecting with these natural rhythms goes beyond sleep. It's also about understanding the powerful cycle that influences every woman's hormones, energy, and mood every month. Your menstrual cycle. For example, if I were to ask you what day are you on in your cycle and what that means for your body, could you answer accurately? If not, that's okay. The majority of women don't know. Yet there's great importance in knowing where you are in your cycle because your body and your hormones are doing very different things in each phase. A woman's hormonal cycle spans approximately 28 days if that is her cycle length. Within that time there are three distinct phases the filicular, the ovulatory, and the luteal phases. By contrast, a man's hormones complete this reset every 24 hours. So, which of us is more complex? I'll let you decide, but I think we both know the answer. To understand how beautifully intricate your cycle is and the delicate balance of the hormones at play, let's start at the very beginning. Day 1. Day 1 of your cycle is the first day of a full bleed when you haven't fallen pregnant, causing your hormone levels to fall. This decrease in hormone levels triggers the breakdown and release of the innermost layer of your uterus. However, if you should fall pregnant, your hormones behave very differently. At the start of your cycle, your body is preparing to become pregnant, stimulating follicle growth and the release of an egg, which means an increase in estrogen. After ovulation, in order to prepare your uterus for a fertilized egg, your progesterone levels rise. For now, what I want you to understand is that depending on what day you're on in your cycle, it has a specific impact on your hormone levels and your biochemistry. When you're in the storm of perimenopause, the timing of the symptoms you may be experiencing is often directly related to where you are in your menstrual cycle. One tool I share with the women in my clinic to help track their cycles is my perimenopause symptom tracker. You can find this in the resource section. The symptom tracker helps them then connect the dots and better understand the relationship between their symptoms and their hormonal shifts. As you begin to track your cycle and your biorhythms, you start to discover exactly what works for your body and your biochemistry, when and why. Over time it will become second nature and you will find yourself moving through each day knowing how to eat, sleep, move, think, and connect as your body needs. You've become the expert of your own body. And what I want is for every woman to have this knowledge and insight, so she can live as her own sovereign being, deeply attuned to what nourishes her body so she feels her most vibrant self. This is when you know you've become unconsciously competent, meaning you've achieved body literacy. You have an understanding of exactly what works for your body and your biochemistry, when and why.

Cravings, Microbes And Real Hunger

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Are you really hungry? As women, at times, many of us have been guilty of using food for things other than to fuel our bodies. Yet, fueling and nourishing our bodies is the main purpose of food, right? This challenge circles back to body literacy and understanding exactly what our bodies need to nourish and support them in the right way. Let's start at the cellular level. What if I told you your body hosts as many microbial cells as human ones? In her incredible book 10% Human, How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Your Health and Happiness, Alana Collin explores a concept that has since been refined by researchers. Our bodies are more than skin, tissue, muscle, bone, blood, and brain. We are also bacteria and fungi. More recent research has confirmed that microbial cells exist in roughly equal numbers to our human cells. There's a vast and complex ecosystem living alongside you. Here's the caveat. Many of these microbial cells are beneficial to our health, but many are not. The major food source for unbenicial bacteria is sugar. So when you have a craving for foods that deliver sugar, it might not be because you're hungry. More likely, it's the bacteria demanding their food source. However, when we repair the gut, when the bad microbes are no longer in charge, their signaling to the brain stops, and so does your craving for sugar. Living craving free allows you to listen to your body and understand when you're actually hungry. The other piece of this hurdle can be revealed by asking, are you getting what you need? Do you know what your body needs? That is body literacy. When you don't have the understanding of how to fully nourish your body in the way that will best support it according to your biochemistry, you might think you need a frappuccino latte, when it might just be the bad bacteria craving their food source. When your body actually needs protein or it needs fiber, love, connection, sunshine, and time in nature. We all live in mammalian bodies, and yet so often this gets lost in translation in the busyness of this modern world. Are you really hungry or are you lonely, tired, frustrated or anxious? Repair the first phase of the hierarchy of healing will teach you how to work according to your unique biochemistry and the way your body is meant to function.

Food Triggers And Two Clinic Stories

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Food triggers. The simplest definition of a food trigger is a food you're eating that fails to support your unique biochemistry and in fact works against it. In most instances you're not even aware. To better understand what I mean, meet two women who successfully identified their specific food triggers and worked to overcome them. Mary Ann Mary Ann came into the clinic because she struggled with what she thought was irritable bowel syndrome. She experienced chronic constipation, chronic eczema, and psoriasis. Yes, two of her symptoms were skin conditions, but we'll explore the gut skin connection more in chapter eight. When we dug a bit deeper into Mary Ann's diet, we discovered that she was very sensitive to the nightshade plant family, which includes, among others, tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, peppers, chilies, and even tobacco. In her case, we attributed this sensitivity to the naturally occurring alkaloids in nightshades. Plant compounds that can affect cell membranes and in susceptible people with a fragile gut barrier may irritate the nervous system and trigger inflammatory responses. So the very foods Marianne was eating were trigger foods that didn't support her unique biochemistry, and, in fact, worked against it. Once Marianne eliminated nitrate foods from her diet, her skin conditions improved and some of her digestive issues dissipated. Carla came to me desperate for a solution after following a happy hormone program she found online. This program recommended a high fiber diet, which primarily consisted of cheer seeds, flaxseeds, lentils, and chickpeas. Carla followed the protocol to a T, yet the only results she saw were weight gain, joint pain, and constipation. It was no surprise that her question for me was, why isn't this working? The first reason was that she has an endomorph body type, which tends to carry more body fat and is more prone to insulin resistance. This suggested that a high carbohydrate diet wasn't supporting her metabolism and was, in fact, working against what her body needed. For most women with this body type, a way of eating built around lean proteins and plenty of green vegetables, with more mindful use of carbohydrates is far more supportive. In addition, her suggested diet of grains and legumes was high in lectins. Lectins are proteins found in many plants that bind to carbohydrates and in some people can irritate the gut lining and contribute to inflammation, especially when the gut barrier is already fragile. Once we identified lectins as a major food trigger for Carla, we removed the highest lectin foods from her diet, which finally gave her gut a chance to heal. As her digestion settled and inflammation came down, her joint pain disappeared and the kilos began to fall away, because the foods Carla was now eating truly supported her biochemistry. Both Carla and Marianne were unaware of their food triggers that worked against their unique biochemistries. When each of them eliminated those specific foods, their symptoms resolved. The way I work with women in my clinic is to identify food triggers through a process of eliminating certain foods from their diet. We then reintroduce those foods to see what works with their bodies, what works with their distinct biochemistries and what won't trigger their systems. We will talk more about it in detail in chapter 9.

Reclaiming Vitality And Small Moments

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Repair. Although these obstacles and challenges may sound daunting, trust me, the protocols you will learn in the hierarchy of healing work to overcome each one, including the perimenopausal physical challenges and symptoms we discussed earlier. Finally, a reminder of the beauty that awaits you as you work to reclaim your vitality and remove the obstacles standing in your way. When you are healed, you will have beautiful hair, skin, and nails. Your energy levels will be through the roof so you can do whatever it is that lights your heart on fire. You will sleep beautifully. You will have a zest for life. You will also enjoy a reawakened libido. Once you work through my repair, rebalance and reclaim protocols in the hierarchy of healing, the tools to stop fighting your body and start understanding it, it is possible to reclaim your most vibrant self. For a moment, imagine what it can feel like when your body is nourished, your foundational health is restored, and you've fallen back in love with your life. You will want to wake up early, treat yourself to your favorite coffee, go for a walk at sunset. Wear what makes you feel confident and beautiful. Listen to your favorite music and dance in the kitchen. Plan a date under the stars with the love of your life. These and more are the small moments I wish for every woman who listens to this book to live the life you desire and deserve. Beautiful, what small moments would you want to add to live the life of your dreams?