Midlife Advice | Perimenopause, Hormones and Midlife Women’s Health

Jessica Long | Helping Overwhelmed Women Over 40 Feel Fully Alive Again
  • 4.9 (65)
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You're a woman over 40, you're in the thick of perimenopause or menopause, and lately you keep coming back to the same thought: I just don't feel like myself anymore. You're doing everything right. Showing up for your family, your work, everyone who needs you. But you feel exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't fix. Work feels harder and less fulfilling than it used to. Your relationship feels distant. Your body is changing. You’re overwhelmed with the neverending decisions. And no matter what you do, you just feel off. Disconnected from yourself.  Midlife Advice is the podcast for intelligent midlife women who are ready to stop white-knuckling through life and feel next-level good. Each week, host Jessica Long brings you honest conversations about navigating perimenopause and menopause, hormones, overwhelm, relationships, confidence, and the identity shift nobody warned you was coming. Not as a patient. Not as a problem to be solved. As a woman who deserves to actually feel GREAT again. Jessica is a holistic health coach, certified menopause coaching specialist, breathwork facilitator and fellow midlife woman navigating all of this right alongside you. If you've ever searched: Why am I so exhausted all the time?Why does work feel so hard lately?Why do I feel so disconnected from my partner?Why do I have low libido and will it ever come back?Why don't I feel like myself anymore?Is this perimenopause or something else? This podcast was made for you. 💌 If you’re a midlife woman navigating perimenopause, hormone shifts, personal growth, and just not feeling like yourself, you’ll fit right in to my community. Join my email list where I share personal stories, nervous system regulation tools, favorite products, high-protein recipes, book recs and exclusive discounts. I’ll send you my FREE 10-minute breathwork session to get better sleep tonight to get you started! ✨For more midlife advice on perimenopause, hormone health, nervous system regulation, and living with purpose in your 40s and 50s follow me: @midlifeadvicepodcast | @heyjessicalong ⚡️Ready to feel f*cking GREAT again? Learn more about working together at belongwellness.com. 

  1. 1d ago

    Why Am I So Tired All the Time? The Mitochondria Connection

    Why am I so tired even when I'm doing everything right? If you sleep reasonably well, eat pretty well, move your body, and still hit a wall every afternoon, there might be a piece of this nobody's mentioned to you yet: your mitochondria. My guest today, Chris Burres, a research engineer and the founder and chief scientist of MyVitalC, is here to talk about the part of the fatigue conversation that almost never comes up: the tiny power plants running inside every cell in your body, and what happens to them as you get older. Chris breaks down what mitochondria actually do, why they tend to lose efficiency with age, and what oxidative stress really means once you strip away the wellness-buzzword version of it. Then he gets into the molecule he's spent over three decades working with, ESS60, and how it can help you feel more energized and sleep better. What we get into: What mitochondria actually are, and why they're connected to your energy, your mood, and even your hormone productionWhy mitochondrial function tends to decline with age, and what that has to do with the fatigue you're feeling in your 40s and 50sWhat oxidative stress really means, and why it isn't automatically a bad thingESS60: what it is, how Chris's lab has worked with it since 1991, and what it's tied to in longevity researchWhat the actual evidence shows, and doesn't show, when it comes to ESS60 and human energy or sleepHow to run your own honest experiment on something like this, and what to track before deciding if it's doing anything Connect with Chris Burres:  myvitalc.com/jessica | @myvitalc | Book: Live Longer and Better | Podcast: Live Beyond the Norms I want to hear from you. Send me a text or voicemail! Jessica's freebies and resources: 😴 Sleep better tonight with my free 10-minute audio breathwork session. (https://your.belongwellness.com/sleep) ✨For more midlife advice on perimenopause, hormone health, nervous system regulation, and living with purpose in your 40s and 50s follow me: @midlifeadvicepodcast | @heyjessicalong

  2. Oct 20

    Does Collagen Actually Work? What a Pharmacist Wants You to Know About Skin Care

    If you've ever bought a tub of collagen, taken it for a few months, and stopped without ever finding out whether it was doing anything, this one's for you. Your skin changes fast once you hit your 40s: drier, thinner, less bouncy than it used to be, and most of us have only ever been taught to fix that from the outside and take some collagen. My guest, Lily Shapiro, is a pharmacist and the founder of ATIKA, a skin longevity brand built around the idea that what you eat matters as much as what you put on your face. She spent years on Wall Street before going back to her clinical training to dig into the actual biology of skin aging, and what she found reshaped how she thinks about collagen, antioxidants, and the supplements sitting on all our bathroom shelves. We get into whether collagen is really worth the money (and what it can't do for you), why oxidative stress matters more than you'd think, what's actually happening to your skin's lipid barrier as you age, and one unexpected bonus a lot of women notice: their hair. We cover: - Why collagen alone isn't enough to protect your skin as you age - What oxidative stress actually is, explained without the science jargon - The four things Lily says your skin needs most: collagen, antioxidants, its lipid barrier, and cellular energy - Why ceramides you ingest do something different than the ones in your moisturizer - The surprising connection between skin supplements and hair thickness Lily Shapiro, PharmD, is the founder of ATIKA, a skin longevity supplement brand built on published clinical research rather than trends. After noticing changes in her own skin in her 40s, she left a career on Wall Street to build a nutrition-first approach to skin aging. atikawellness.com | @atika.wellness I want to hear from you. Send me a text or voicemail! Jessica's freebies and resources: 😴 Sleep better tonight with my free 10-minute audio breathwork session. (https://your.belongwellness.com/sleep) ✨For more midlife advice on perimenopause, hormone health, nervous system regulation, and living with purpose in your 40s and 50s follow me: @midlifeadvicepodcast | @heyjessicalong

  3. Oct 13

    How People Pleasing Keeps the Patriarchy Running (And How to Stop)

    People pleasing feels like a personality trait. The over-explaining. The softening. Carrying everyone’s worries like it’s your job. But what if it’s also the thing keeping the patriarchy running? That’s the idea clairvoyant and energy worker Christine Agro brings to this conversation. She has spent almost thirty years helping people clear old patterns, and about a year ago she started seeing a deeper one underneath all the people pleasing.  She calls it patriarchal encodement: the program that tells us everything is our responsibility, and that stepping out of line isn’t safe. Her take is that the patriarchy can’t keep running if we stop running this program inside ourselves. And no, that doesn’t mean any of this is our fault. We get into where it shows up in everyday life (your voice, your mental load, even whether you let yourself sit down), why so many capable women still feel it after years of personal growth work, and why understanding it in your head doesn’t change it.  What we get into: How people pleasing keeps the patriarchy running, and why that isn’t about blameWhat patriarchal encodement is and how it differs from cultural conditioningCarrying other people’s emotions, worries, and lessons, and how to tell what isn’t yoursWhy knowing about a pattern doesn’t change it, and what doesWhy “sitting down is not doing nothing,” according to ChristineWhere to start if you want to stop running the programAbout Christine Agro: Christine Agro is a clairvoyant, master energy worker, and founder of the Intrinsic Energy Institute, where she teaches her method, Intrinsic Energy Work. With a background in naturopathic medicine and master herbalism, she leads De-Encode, a program focused on clearing patriarchal encodement. christineagro.com | @christineagro | christineagro.substack.com Patriarchal Encodement Workbook: christineagro.com/peworkbook I want to hear from you. Send me a text or voicemail! Jessica's freebies and resources: 😴 Sleep better tonight with my free 10-minute audio breathwork session. (https://your.belongwellness.com/sleep) ✨For more midlife advice on perimenopause, hormone health, nervous system regulation, and living with purpose in your 40s and 50s follow me: @midlifeadvicepodcast | @heyjessicalong

  4. Oct 6

    How to Start Investing After 40 (When You've Only Ever Saved)

    If you're great at saving money but nervous about investing it, this episode is for you. How much should you actually keep in savings? Should you pay off debt or invest? And how do you find a financial advisor who's on your side? Financial advisor and wealth manager Lisa Clements spent twenty-four years in corporate at companies like Meta and Accenture before starting Clear Springs Wealth, where she works mostly with women. She sees the same thing over and over: disciplined women with tens of thousands of dollars sitting in savings, earning very little, because investing feels too big and too risky to touch without a finance degree. (You don't need one. Lisa's clear about that.) We get into the simple way Lisa decides how much to keep in savings, why your home equity counts as part of your portfolio, the interest-rate rule she uses for debt, and exactly what to ask before you hire an advisor. Plus the first thing to do this week if you've been avoiding your finances altogether. What we get into: - How much to keep in savings if you're single vs. partnered - Why "near-term" money (a house, a big trip) stays out of the market - How advisors use risk scores, and splitting your money into different risk buckets - Pay off debt or invest? How the interest rate decides it - Where to learn investing basics without feeling lost (Investopedia, brokerage education centers, free consults) - What "fiduciary" and "assets under management" mean, and the fee structures to understand - Why you should ask any advisor about their "why" - The first step: taking inventory of every account you have About Lisa Clements: Lisa Clements is a financial advisor and wealth manager who helps women build financial confidence without the jargon, judgment, or sky-high fees of traditional firms.  clearspringswealth.com | @clearspringswealth This episode is for educational purposes only and isn't personalized financial advice. I want to hear from you. Send me a text or voicemail! Jessica's freebies and resources: 😴 Sleep better tonight with my free 10-minute audio breathwork session. (https://your.belongwellness.com/sleep) ✨For more midlife advice on perimenopause, hormone health, nervous system regulation, and living with purpose in your 40s and 50s follow me: @midlifeadvicepodcast | @heyjessicalong

  5. Sep 29

    Why You Can't Enjoy It When Things Are Going Well (And How to Train Your Nervous System to Hold More Joy)

    Ever notice that when things are finally going well, you can't fully enjoy it? You feel good for about five minutes, then you're either moving the goalposts or bracing for something to go wrong. This solo episode is about why your brain does that, and how celebrating small wins trains your nervous system to hold more joy. Celebrating isn't just for weddings, graduations and birthdays. The more you celebrate the small stuff, the more reasons you find to celebrate. I share why this lesson from my mentors felt so counterintuitive to a lifelong goalpost-mover like me, and what's shifted since I started practicing it. Then we practice together. I'm celebrating two big things: Midlife Advice landing in the top 2.5% of all podcasts globally (thank you!!), and the official launch of my new 6-week group breathwork program, the Keep Your Cool Collective.  And before you head off into your day, I'm asking you to find something of your own to celebrate. What we get into: Why your brain resists joy when life is going well, and what "waiting for the other shoe to drop" is really aboutHow moving the goalposts keeps you stuck in hustle, head-down modeWhy celebrating the action you took, not just the outcome, is importantSimple ways to celebrate in five minutes or less How breathwork expands your capacity to handle everyday triggers, like hearing "Mom!" for the 47th timeI want to hear from you. Send me a text or voicemail! Jessica's freebies and resources: 😴 Sleep better tonight with my free 10-minute audio breathwork session. (https://your.belongwellness.com/sleep) ✨For more midlife advice on perimenopause, hormone health, nervous system regulation, and living with purpose in your 40s and 50s follow me: @midlifeadvicepodcast | @heyjessicalong

  6. Sep 22

    Where Your Body Stores Stress (And How to Release It)

    You used to be able to handle so much more stress than you can now. Work, kids, travel, hard conversations, not enough sleep, and you kept going. Now your neck is always tight, your digestion is off, you're wired at 11pm and exhausted at 3pm, and you can't figure out what changed. Hormones are part of that. But there's a second thing happening, and almost nobody talks about it: your body may be carrying the physical residue of decades of stress it never got to finish processing. Dr. Carli Axford, a chiropractor with more than 30 years of clinical experience (who has never cracked a back!) and the founder of the Spinal Flow Technique, is here to get specific about what "the body stores stress" actually means. Not metaphorically. Physiologically. Where it goes, what it feels like under a practitioner's hands, and why it tends to surface in your 40s and 50s after years of you managing just fine. Carli explains why women who come in with digestive problems often have stored emotions higher up in the spine, how she can tell the difference between chemical stress and emotional stress by touch, and the one question that tells you whether that knot between your shoulder blades is from your workout or from something you have been carrying for years.  What we get into: What "storing stress" actually means physiologically, and why the spine is where it landsThe three kinds of stress, emotional, physical, and chemical, and how each one feels different in the bodyWhy women who come in with digestive issues often have an older stress pattern sitting higher in the spineWhy your capacity for stress drops in perimenopause, and what fluctuating estrogen and progesterone have to do with your nervous system's resilienceHow to tell whether that knot in your back is a pulled muscle or a pattern you have carried since childhoodWhat you can do at home, in a few minutes, to move your body out of fight or flightDr. Carli Axford is the founder of the Spinal Flow Technique, a healing modality now practiced by thousands of certified practitioners worldwide. She is recognized internationally for her work on stress, trauma, and the body's capacity to heal itself. Her book Awaken Your Spinal Flow is forthcoming from Hay House in May 2027. Connect with Dr. Carli Axford: drcarliaxford.org | @dr.carli.axford I want to hear from you. Send me a text or voicemail! Jessica's freebies and resources: 😴 Sleep better tonight with my free 10-minute audio breathwork session. (https://your.belongwellness.com/sleep) ✨For more midlife advice on perimenopause, hormone health, nervous system regulation, and living with purpose in your 40s and 50s follow me: @midlifeadvicepodcast | @heyjessicalong

  7. Sep 15

    Why Am I So Anxious All the Time? It Might Not Be What You Think

    Breathwork for anxiety sounds almost too easy. Too obvious. But the mechanism behind it is measurable. This episode explores anxiety as a body problem, not a mind problem, and the way you're breathing all day might be what's keeping it going. Sigmar Berg is the founder of Lovetuner, a breathwork and sound healing tool featured in CNN, the LA Times, and Buzzfeed, and he has spent over a decade studying the intersection of breath, nervous system regulation, and frequency healing. In this conversation, he explains why shallow, fast, chest-level breathing keeps the nervous system locked in fight-or-flight mode, what one conscious extended exhale actually does to your physiology, and how adding sound at 528 Hz amplifies the effect. If anxiety has been creeping in, especially in your 40s and 50s when hormones can make it so much worse, this conversation gives you a framework and a practice you can use the same day. What we get into: - Why anxiety often starts in the body, not the brain, and what's happening physiologically when it does - How shallow, fast breathing sends a danger signal to your nervous system even when you're just sitting at your desk - What makes the extended exhale so effective for calming the nervous system fast - Whether specific breathing patterns like box breathing or 4-7-8 actually matter, or if we're overcomplicating it - What 528 Hz is, why Sigmar built a tool around it, and what the science actually says - How to start a breathwork habit without a 30-minute practice Connect with Sigmar Berg: lovetuner.com | @lovetuner528hz on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube | Book: One Journey I want to hear from you. Send me a text or voicemail! Jessica's freebies and resources: 😴 Sleep better tonight with my free 10-minute audio breathwork session. (https://your.belongwellness.com/sleep) ✨For more midlife advice on perimenopause, hormone health, nervous system regulation, and living with purpose in your 40s and 50s follow me: @midlifeadvicepodcast | @heyjessicalong

  8. Sep 8

    The Surprising Reason Women Over 40 Don't Feel Like Themselves

    If you've caught yourself thinking "I don't feel like myself" and you can't quite put your finger on why, this one's for you. Hormones play a role. Being stretched impossibly thin plays a role. But there's a third factor that I think is fundamental, and it's one I never hear anyone talking about: interoception. Interoception is your ability to sense and interpret what's actually happening inside your body (like hunger, thirst, stress, emotion). When it's working, you catch yourself before you're hangry, before you snap at your kids, before you're running on fumes. When it's not working, and for so many of us in midlife it's not, you don't know you're stressed until you're yelling, or so numb you're running the whole day on autopilot without feeling a single thing. I'm breaking down exactly how chronic stress shuts your interoception down, what that actually looks like in daily life, and the somatic practices, including breathwork, that bring it back online.  Stick around to the end, because I'm inviting you to two free virtual breathwork sessions where you can feel the shift for yourself instead of just hearing me talk about it. What we get into: What interoception is and how it worksThe specific ways chronic stress shuts your body's signals offWhy you might feel completely numb one day and completely overwhelmed the nextThe research on interoception and stress, explained in plain languageHow breathwork helps you tune back in and hear your body againTwo free virtual breathwork sessions happening soon  Resources: PubMed article: Interoception and Stress I want to hear from you. Send me a text or voicemail! Jessica's freebies and resources: 😴 Sleep better tonight with my free 10-minute audio breathwork session. (https://your.belongwellness.com/sleep) ✨For more midlife advice on perimenopause, hormone health, nervous system regulation, and living with purpose in your 40s and 50s follow me: @midlifeadvicepodcast | @heyjessicalong

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You're a woman over 40, you're in the thick of perimenopause or menopause, and lately you keep coming back to the same thought: I just don't feel like myself anymore. You're doing everything right. Showing up for your family, your work, everyone who needs you. But you feel exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't fix. Work feels harder and less fulfilling than it used to. Your relationship feels distant. Your body is changing. You’re overwhelmed with the neverending decisions. And no matter what you do, you just feel off. Disconnected from yourself.  Midlife Advice is the podcast for intelligent midlife women who are ready to stop white-knuckling through life and feel next-level good. Each week, host Jessica Long brings you honest conversations about navigating perimenopause and menopause, hormones, overwhelm, relationships, confidence, and the identity shift nobody warned you was coming. Not as a patient. Not as a problem to be solved. As a woman who deserves to actually feel GREAT again. Jessica is a holistic health coach, certified menopause coaching specialist, breathwork facilitator and fellow midlife woman navigating all of this right alongside you. If you've ever searched: Why am I so exhausted all the time?Why does work feel so hard lately?Why do I feel so disconnected from my partner?Why do I have low libido and will it ever come back?Why don't I feel like myself anymore?Is this perimenopause or something else? This podcast was made for you. 💌 If you’re a midlife woman navigating perimenopause, hormone shifts, personal growth, and just not feeling like yourself, you’ll fit right in to my community. Join my email list where I share personal stories, nervous system regulation tools, favorite products, high-protein recipes, book recs and exclusive discounts. I’ll send you my FREE 10-minute breathwork session to get better sleep tonight to get you started! ✨For more midlife advice on perimenopause, hormone health, nervous system regulation, and living with purpose in your 40s and 50s follow me: @midlifeadvicepodcast | @heyjessicalong ⚡️Ready to feel f*cking GREAT again? Learn more about working together at belongwellness.com. 

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