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Summary
In episode 687 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, Coach Allan talks with Tamsen Fadal, an Emmy award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker, and menopause advocate known as social media’s midlife mentor. After more than three decades as a television news anchor, she pivoted her career toward women’s health advocacy and built a loyal social media audience of more than three million. She is the creator, producer, and co-executive producer of the PBS documentary The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause, holds a certificate of holistic health coaching from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, and serves on the national board of Let’s Talk Menopause. She lost her mother to breast cancer in 1990.
Fadal discusses her book, How to Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life, and Feel Even Better Than Before, which gathers a range of menopause experts rather than relying on her own promises. She explains that menopause is not one-size-fits-all, that women are too often left alone, afraid, confused, and gaslit, and that most doctors receive little to no menopause training in medical school and must re-educate themselves to serve this demographic.
She shares her own experience, from severe anxiety and sudden sleeplessness to weight gain and erratic periods, and describes how hormone therapy helped her. Fadal encourages women to know their bodies, advocate for themselves, and come to appointments informed but not defensive, while acknowledging that some women, particularly those with a breast cancer history, may need non-hormonal options.
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Key Takeaways
- The book’s promise comes not from Fadal alone but from a whole crew of menopause experts she gathered, reflecting her journalist’s approach of elevating smart platforms that teach and help spread a message.
- Among the things she wishes she had known before menopause: you’re not alone, you’re not crazy, you will get through it, and there are far more options available than most women realize, with new ones emerging all the time.
- The book references 34 symptoms, but newer research suggests there may be as many as 103; symptom trackers are meant to build awareness, not to imply a woman will experience all of them.
- Rather than playing whack-a-mole with new symptoms in your late thirties or forties, start with someone educated in or comfortable talking about menopause to get a baseline and rule out anything more serious.
- Most doctors were not taught menopause in medical school, so patients should advocate for themselves by coming armed with information and asking about options, without being defensive or accusatory toward the doctor.
- According to most major organizations, hormone therapy is the most effective way to treat the bigger symptoms of menopause; for Fadal it was a combination of estrogen, progesterone, and added testosterone, though a small but important list of contraindications exists.
- A 2002 study left many women fearful that hormones cause breast cancer, but on re-examination it did not increase the rate of death from any cause in that age group and showed no significant difference in heart disease.
- Menopause care must go beyond hormones to include fitness, diet, nutrition, and lifestyle, because women are 360-degree people, and feeling confident about yourself is one of the most attractive things you can do.
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Episode Notes
Podcast: 40+ Fitness
Episode: 687
Published: 2025-03-25
Host: Allan Misner (aka Coach Allan), author of The Wellness Roadmap
Guest(s): Tamsen Fadal, an Emmy award winning journalist, documentary filmmaker, and menopause advocate, How to Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life, and Feel Even Better than Before
Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube (audio only)