Decoding Menopause: Eat the Rainbow for a Healthier, Balanced Transition with Deanna Minich, PhD

[00:00:00] Dr. Deanna Minich:  There are all these women, they're scrambling now because they feel like they have been wronged and they weren't told the information about HRT. Now let me hurry up and get on HRT, but then there's so much context and HRT in its way may not be great for every woman at every certain time of her life. I mean, there's just so much nuance.

[00:00:20] Dr, Melinda Ring: This is Next Level Health. I'm your host, Dr. Melinda Ring, Director of the Osher Center for Integrative Health at Northwestern University. On this show, we explore ways to take actionable steps towards optimizing our health with leaders in the integrative, functional, and lifestyle medicine fields who believe in science backed and time tested approaches to well being. Let's take your health to the next level. What if the secret to better health, balanced hormones and a brighter mood lies in the colors on your plate today? On next level health, we're diving into the fascinating signs of eating the rainbow and how phytonutrients and colorful plant foods can do everything from support mitochondria health to ease menopause symptoms and even elevate your emotional wellbeing. Our guest today, Dr. Deanna Minich is a renowned nutrition scientist. Certified functional medicine practitioner and teacher and author of the new book, her seventh Consumer Book, the Rainbow Diet.She spent over two decades exploring how food influences not just our biology, but our psychology, our energy, and even our spiritual connection to health. Deanna, you and I share a deep belief in the healing power of food, especially when it's vibrant and beautiful and rooted in evidence. So for our listeners, if you've ever wondered how to use food to level up your health, balance hormones or simply just feel more alive, you're in the right place. Um, Deanna, I'm so happy to have you here. Are you ready to get into it?

[00:02:00] Dr. Deanna Minich:  I am ready. I've been looking forward to this conversation, so let's dive in.

[00:02:04] Dr. Melinda Ring: Let's dive in. So, menopause perimenopause having its moment, you know, Oprah's all over it now even. Um, so with all this attention that's happening on healthy aging and hormone balance, how do you think colorful foods can help women, especially in life stages like menopause, feel more vibrant and well?

[00:02:27] Dr. Deanna Minich:  I love that question. You know, one of the things that I talk about in the new edition of the Rainbow Diet is how every color has an association in the body with a function. And when I think of menopause and perimenopause, I start thinking of inflammation. I start thinking of hormone balance. And also nourishing the brain and the colors that correspond with those respective functional signatures are red for helping with inflammation and immune response orange for helping with healthy hormones.And I'll talk a little bit more about that. And then blue Purple Black for helping with mood and brain health. So some of the interesting research on orange foods, and not many people know about this, but I actually did. One of my graduate degrees at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and it was on carotenoids. So I spent three years studying plant pigments and the kind of pigments that make plants look pretty. So typically they are red, orange, or yellow. And the orange compounds would track to compounds like betacarotene, which I'm sure most people have heard of alpha carotene and another compound called beta cryptoxanthin, which sounds kind of cryptic, but it actually is well recognized if you look at the science for women's health. So there are a few studies here, and one of them that comes to mind as per your question is that the. This study was looking at women and looking at ovarian reserves and looking at when women were going into more ovarian decline and they found that for women eating more orange colored fruits, rich in that beta krypto xanthin, they tended to have less ovarian decline than their counterparts, or at least they had a little bit of a buffer or reserve compared to other women. So if we look at the ovaries, the ovaries coincidentally do localize and concentrate 13 to 14 different carotenoids. So you actually have these colorful plant pigments in the ovaries. And they have a functional job there. They're helping with healthy ovulation. So when we think of the corpus lium, the yellow body moving into corpus albicans, right? The whole process of ovulation, what that is connected to is the presence of retinol. Retinol is vitamin A and vitamin A comes from these carotenoids. But aside from vitamin A, it seems like some of these carotenoids are very supportive for the fat soluble tissues of the body, like the ovaries. So ladies, what I would say is aim for those orange fruits. Things like tangerines. I know not many people like persimmons, but tangerines, mangoes, persimmons, oranges, um, and try to aim for when they are in season. And I know in the Midwest, you know, we don't always get, uh, oranges. Well, we get them through the year, but they're not always in season. But I think bringing them in occasionally is a really good idea to ensure that we get enough of those carotenoids that are nourishing the ovaries.

[00:05:53] Dr. Melinda Ring: Can I just follow up on that because I do a lot of work when in menopause also, and clearly you know what you're talking about. Is how it's so important really I think in, for me, it sounds like for fertility and the reproductive years, kind of like nourishing the ovaries, nourishing our reproductive system is, is there still the same benefit after menopause when really, you know, we're not shooting out that egg every month where, um, women are maybe dealing with different issues or, or at that point, would you be like, no now let's shift to the, you know, the blue purple ones that are gonna help with your brain health and those sorts of things. Do you, do you see a phased kind of approach to what color we should be having in different phases of our life?

[00:06:42] Dr. Deanna Minich:  I get your question. It's a great one. Uh, the short answer is we don't know. We don't know the orange compounds that we have with beta krypto, xanthin, beta-carotene. They're not only for the ovaries. They can help to support the other tissues of the body as well that are higher in fat. So if we think about a menopausal and even post-menopausal woman, where is she getting a lot of her estrogens from? A lot of her progesterone, A little bit from the adrenals, but the majority is coming from the fat tissue, right? Adipose tissue becomes a huge depot. Well, what protects the adipose tissue and what do you find sinking into the adipose with all of that fat, you find the carotenoids there. And I think that that's a good thing because the carotenoid helps with oxidative stress and inflammation, and we know that adipose tissue, as Dr. Jeff Bland would say, you can have happy fat and you can have angry fat. and what he means by that is the angry fat is more inflamed and we're cranking out a lot of these inflammatory cytokines through the adipose tissue. So not such a great thing. And that's where things like carotenoids that sink into fat tissue would be protective. And if women are thinking about their skin, I always get this question about skin and menopause and people ask me like, oh, you know, what products do you use? I actually think that skin comes from within. And the carotenoids, there was a study on this specifically, and it was on a different set of carotenoids, so not the orange ones, but more the yellow ones, like lutein and zeaxanthin, that when people were taking a supplement of this, it helped with the healthy hydration of the skin. So if you think of the skin as essentially you've got subcutaneous fat, you wanna be protective of that tissue, especially if you're out in the sun and you don't wanna wear a lot of sunscreen. You know, I do think that bringing in those carotenoids helps not only with healthy ovaries, but healthy adipose tissue, healthy brain health, because this is also very lipid rich, healthy skin. So healthy breasts too. There have been some studies on looking at carotenoids and breast tissue. Then I also get the question, Melinda, about, you know, do I take a supplement or do I aim for food? You know, the data are a little bit tricky on supplements because when you just hammer on one carotenoid and you take a high dose of it, depending on your body and what else is going on, it could also switch into being a prooxidant. So my premise is aim for food. You and I are very much in the same camp. Colorful foods and diversifying those colors. So for women throughout peri menopause and then post menopause, what I would say is aim for actually the full spectrum. I know we wanna like typically hone in on a color. The one, the one color that most people don't get enough of is purple. And I can just tell you that from surveys and you know, whenever I have people fill out food logs, I'm looking at color. Purple is hard to get. It's a very seasonal color. So typically we see blue, purple, black, more in the autumn and closer into the winter months and less, yeah. So it's more seasonal, but that's the color that people fall, fall short on. And we do know that those purple blue compounds, like from blueberries, figs, grapes, and raisins. Even, uh, I just posted on my Facebook today. I found purple broccoli at the store. I always love when purple broccoli is in season, and I'm always like, I, to me, that's like you're getting so much additional value because

[00:10:27] Dr. Melinda Ring: And the purple sweet potatoes too.

[00:10:29] Dr. Deanna Minich:  Yes, the purple sweet potatoes, the purple cauliflower, anything purple. Purple is precious. So when people see purple at the store, go for purple. Go for that purple variety because that will be the color that far and away that people have very difficulty, a lot of difficulty getting in their daily diets.

[00:10:48] Dr. Melinda Ring: Are the same sorts of concepts applicable to men when they think about aging and their testosterone and the way, you know, men have central fat and testicular function declines with aging? Do you have different approaches when you're talking to men versus women?

[00:11:07] Dr. Deanna Minich:  Many times it's about the individual, right? So you kind of have to see what they're taking in and if they're really high on brown, yellow and white, which most people are. There's a lot of opportunity there for the rest of the spectrum, but I can tell you just separately from people's daily diets and just looking at the scientific literature, what men would most need, would I, I would say would be the red and the green, and I'll tell you why. Red usually tracks with adrenals with prostate health. I think of the carotenoid. Lycopene, which many people already know about. In fact, part of my master's thesis was bringing in, we did a study specifically on lycopene and oxidative stress. and even for men that are in their fertile years, I would say that lycopene can be protective and good for sperm health. You know that the head of the sperm is actually very rich with a lot of different carotenoids. So when I think about fertility. Men and women, I do think that these carotenoids are really important. However, for men, I think that the red is just a little bit more important. And then when I'm thinking of men and later in life and I'm thinking about prostate health, I'm thinking about heart health, kind of that prostate heart access. I do think that bringing in some of the greens green is the color of the heart in my system, of the rainbow diet. So leafy greens that would be rich in nitrates, like the healthy nitrates that the body converts into nitric oxide and opens up the blood vessels. And also, folates. Which are also important for methylation, which is important for keeping homocysteine low. Magnesium also really important. So if we just look at heart health and men and prostate and healthy testosterone, you know, I would say these are some of the things to be focused on. I also look at Maca. Maca is a tuber. It's a plant that is native to Peru and there are certain colors of Maca that tend to be better for men versus women.

[00:13:21] Dr. Melinda Ring: let me go back for a minute to this idea of, you know, our, our nutrients and their relationship to fat. You know, we all have some fat, we all need some fat. It's an important storage. And we're in an era where a lot of people are losing their fat quickly with the help of GLP one medications. And there is, I know in, you know, our integrative functional medicine world, this concept of. Well, you know, we also store toxins in our fat and what happens to those toxins when people are losing weight rapidly? Um, and, and I know I have it on my shelf back here. You're, you know, you've also written books on detoxification, healthy ways to detoxify. What's your take on, you know, this concept like it is weight loss associated with a risk of toxin release. And if so, is there something that, that people who are losing weight or taking these GLP one type medications or doing something else to lose weight, need to be thinking about, to avoid harm from the toxins that are released?

[00:14:35] Dr. Deanna Minich:  That's a really good question. Very topical, and you're connecting a lot of dots, right? So you're thinking through it a little bit more because many of these toxins from the environment are fat soluble. So back to the fat tissue, right? Another good reason to have carotenoids in our adipose tissue to protect us from some of the inflammatory effects of these pesticides, insecticides, herbicides that get trapped in our fat. So to answer your question, yes, we do need to be thinking about it. Much will depend on the degree of toxin load for that individual. Their portals of elimination, meaning how much are they urinating? How often are they having a bowel movement? How often are they sweating? Are they active? Are they hydrated? There are many different variables here. And what I would say is that while there isn't any literature that I have come across to look at people on GLP one agonists and looking at rapid weight loss and the liberation of these toxins into the systemic circulation, what we can draw upon is some of the literature that has been done on people that did bariatric surgery. And there are some studies showing that there were, there was a, at least one study that comes to my mind, it's kind of an older one now, but essentially even a year out from all of that rapid weight loss, there was still an exponentially high increase of toxins in the the blood in, in the overall body system. Now you could say, well, but what about those people? Were they very healthy? Were they eating fruits and vegetables? And did they, um, you know, have nutri nutritional density, uh, just in their daily diet, that sort of thing. There are many different variables that people can be thinking about. So one of the things that we teach in functional medicine is that metabolic detoxification requires nutrition. So a little bit of withdrawing from food in the evening hours, I think can be good, kind of like a two to three hour timeframe before we go to bed. But for the most part, during the day when we are in our active hours, really important to me to be including protein quality, protein, healthy fats, and fiber in every meal as much as possible. And if we have difficulty doing that. Stacking the deck with a smoothie that is chock-full with all of those things, like earlier in the morning or as a snack, you know, loading that up with a diverse blend of fibers and making sure that we've got our omega threes and that we bring in that protein. Protein is getting a lot of attention lately, as you have seen as well. And I, while, you know, we do need to look at the context of that and the individual, I do think that having a bit higher protein, or at least meeting ones protein needs are really, that's really important for ensuring healthy detoxification, and part of the reason for that is because detoxification is an enzymatic process, and enzymes are built from proteins, the different amino acids that we take in, right? So if we think of, um, the gut liver, the brain, the lungs, the skin, a lot of these different body systems are all detoxifying. So what can somebody do? If they are embarking upon, maybe they're already on, um, a GLP one agonist and so they're having this weight loss. I would say to work with somebody like you, somebody trained in integrative functional medicine, that can help them to be looking at their labs, to be looking at whether or not certain markers have changed. You know, things like GGT would be one simple one that could be on a,

[00:18:23] Dr. Melinda Ring: Just part of a metabolic panel order.

[00:18:26] Dr. Deanna Minich:  easy one.

And even the high level of GGT could designate that there is a, um, a bit more in the way of things like persistent organic pollutants in the body that the liver is responding to. So I do think working with a practitioner to, and it's just like, let's just go back to the conversation with perimenopause, right? So many women just venture into hormone replacement therapy without being cognizant, that hormones also go through detoxification. The body is running them through the same process, the same pathways that something like an environmental toxin would go through. So when women start to embark upon what do I do as part of my menopausal journey, do I take HRT or not? First, making sure as much as possible working with a practitioner who's skilled in the art of looking at estrogen metabolism and figuring out her gene variance as it relates to estrogen metabolism, right? Because otherwise we could be embarking upon a longer term, I would say, influx of unhealthy estrogen metabolites that could be potentially carcinogenic. It just depends on the ratio and it depends on the person and so many different things. Of course, I.

[00:19:43] Dr. Melinda Ring: Yeah, I agree. I, I, you know, I, I'm a huge advocate. I always have been of using hormones. Um, the bioidentical form and they can be the FDA approved. I think that's great. Uh, it doesn't have to be compounded. I think a lot of women really benefit from the hormones, but it's not in a vacuum. You really, you know, now out of, I think out of desperation, so many women are just finding clinics online. That prescribe it through telemedicine. And then, and then I'll see these Facebook, um, groups of people saying like, why am I having this? Why am I having this? And it's like, well, you know, you need somebody who's really looking at you as a whole. And that idea of that estrogen detoxification, the importance of the liver, you know, I personally love to do those kinds of tests. You know, like a Dutch test or one of those kinds of tests. But, um, unfortunately there are hundreds of dollars and they're not covered by insurance. So sometimes we need to look at some of the other markers and a woman's symptoms just to see how, how she's doing. But I, I agree, like information is power for, for women. So I think that's just something to keep in mind. Great. That more doctors and practitioners are getting trained in menopause. But they may be getting trained in a very conventional way and missing the importance of making sure you're methylating properly and detoxifying properly. So, yeah, I know I'm speaking to the, you know, I know you and I are like eye-to-eye on this.

[00:21:17] Dr. Deanna Minich:  jumping up and down inside. I want people to see you, and practitioners like you, because this to me is the more optimized way to do it because just like you said, there are all these women, they're scrambling now because they feel like they have been wronged and they weren't told the information about HRT. Now let me hurry up and get on HRT, but then there's so much context and HRT in its way may not be great for every woman at every certain time of her life. I mean, there's just so much nuance. One thing I, I hear what you're saying about the cost of laboratory tests and I think some of the very skilled clinicians can tease out from symptoms as to,

[00:21:58] Dr. Melinda Ring: Yeah,

[00:21:59] Dr. Deanna Minich:  this is probably, you know, I, I don't think labs are just hands down a requirement,

[00:22:04] Dr. Melinda Ring: it is something I tell people a lot, you know, 'cause I'm trained in functional medicine also. And, uh, you know, patients will come in and they'll, they'll have a laundry list of all these tests that they wanna do, and I'll be like, you know, they. Let's do, let's be thoughtful and we'll use the ones that make the most sense, because you can get an overwhelming amount of information and then it's just, you

[00:22:25] Dr. Deanna Minich:  Yeah,

[00:22:26] Dr. Melinda Ring: too too

[00:22:27] Dr. Deanna Minich:  that, it can be confusing there. There's one thing, let me ask what you feel about an Omega-3 index, because I kind of feel

[00:22:35] Dr. Melinda Ring: index. Okay. But you, you know, I'll tell you, that's one that actually I can now order through Northwestern's lab. Or an Omega check. so we have ways to do that. So it's an interesting thing. 'cause what, what I have seen, and I'm sure you have too, is that. Labs that used to only be in the functional medicine world. For example, um, testing the inflammation marker calprotectin in the stool that's been in functional medicine stool tests for decades.And now it is standard of care in gastroenterology as a monitoring tool for inflammatory bowel disease homocysteine levels to as a marker of methylation. Um, Omega-3. That's another example. Like these Omega indexes. No, used to only be you had to pay out of pocket again. No. Now they can get billed through insurance. They get ordered through usual labs. So it's an interesting and I think positive thing when we're starting to see these tests be more accessible.

[00:23:36] Dr. Deanna Minich:  Absolutely. Absolutely. And what we can learn just from the tests that we would get just through mainstream, uh, just these lab tests, what can you infer? I. From that, right? So I think that there's a lot to be made from what we can already gather. But yeah, I like the Omega-3 index. You know, my PhD research was on essential fatty acids, which is, so when I think of, you know, across the board, women, men, different stages of life, I mean, if there's one thing that could be very empowering. I just feel that getting that Omega-3 index, right, because I have even seen that when people supplement relatively healthy people in their, let's just say thirties to forties, they're supplementing their Omega-3 index is still low. Then I'm thinking, you know, either they're not absorbing, they're metabolizing, they're excreting. Those levels are not high enough and there's a lot more data coming out on that now. Even like the Omega-3 worldwide map, how the, just, even the United States as a country just falls short collectively in something as basic to our inflammatory, anti-inflammatory potential like omega threes. So. I just wanted to toss that into the mix as a lab and also as just something to think about because Omega threes couple very nicely with those carotenoids because of the fat soluble nature. Yeah.

[00:24:58] Dr. Melinda Ring: Yeah. So, and you know, the Omega-3 is just for listeners who are not in so familiar, those are those essential fatty acids. That are found in fish oil. There, you can also get some versions in plants, like in flaxseed, chia seeds. But uh, you know, I think the omega index or the omega check tends to really focus on these compounds like EPA and DHA that are primarily in, in the fish forms. Um, unless I'm Yeah, you agreed. Okay.

[00:25:29] Dr. Deanna Minich:  You're right, but they have more extensive tests where you can get more fatty acids. But I think for our purposes, what we really wanna know is, are you at 8% E-P-A-D-H-A? That's kind of like the benchmark, right? So the test is about $50 and you can do it at home even. And, you know, so many people ask me like, what supplements do I really need to take? And I keep taking these omega threes. I don't know if they're doing anything. So that's why I, I like to kind of draw that correlate, if you know the, the adage of. Don't guess. Try to test when you can. Yeah. Especially with a supplement that is costing you money. Um, but of course we can get it from the diet as well. You just gave a lot of, uh, different dietary sources. So, but I do think it's an

[00:26:13] Dr. Melinda Ring: I think the testing is also important because what I see is that, uh, you know, a study will come out in a cardiology journal gets a lot of news. Oh, fish oil does not to access and then, you know, which always, uh, drives me a little crazy because of course these studies are focused on a single condition, uh, and don't apply to our whole health. And when we look at that big study that came out recently about omega threes being associated with longevity. I'm like, yeah, that just goes to show you we're not just looking at your heart. Omega threes decreasing inflammation does stuff throughout the whole body. Um, so when I recommend omega threes and somebody goes to their cardiologist and they say, oh yeah, that doesn't work. You should stop taking it. It always, you know, it is a little hair pulling there.

[00:27:08] Dr. Deanna Minich:  Well, I just go back to a and p. Anatomy and physiology. I mean, look at the basics. Every cell membrane has fatty acids in it, so the ability of that cell to perform well, to transport, to release toxins, to get nutrients in is all dependent, even your neurotransmitters, how they move from neuron to neuron, it's all dependent on the composition of that cell membrane to a large degree. So getting the foundational elements of our anatomy and physiology in, in place with those omega threes and looking at the prostaglandin synthesis cascade. I mean, this is like textbook stuff, so it just feels like it's just one of the good starting places, I think for people to go from.

[00:27:48] Dr. Melinda Ring: I wanted to talk about one other, phytochemical, I guess you'd say, and hormone that you've been into a lot lately. You've been publishing a lot and it's very relevant to women and men and just aging in general because sleep is such an issue and that I'm sure you're guessing because you cannot use melatonin. And so, yeah, I know you, I, I can tell you are like all over melatonin. So what can you tell us about Melatonin both through diet, through its importance to our health. You know, like what do we, what do we need to know about melatonin?

[00:28:25] Dr. Deanna Minich:  Well, let me just, um, help your listeners to fall in love with it like I have. So, uh, if we just back up a little bit as to what is melatonin? Melatonin is an ancestral molecule. It's everywhere. It's in nature. So that's my first premise is the molecule nature derived, like do plants contain melatonin? Yes, they do. Do our bodies contain melatonin? Pretty much every organ system of our body has melatonin except for hair and nails. Like things that aren't like living, they're right. So like our immune system is connected to melatonin. Our mitochondria is connected, are connected to melatonin. Our brain, obviously the pineal gland, so melatonin there are many different, you know, we produce melatonin, but we produce it from different parts of the body in response to different functions. So the one thing that most people think of when they think of melatonin is sleep, which is kind of a pigeonhole. I would say the function of melatonin, it actually isn't really responsible for sleep. What it's responsible for is circadian rhythm synchronization, right? So as our eyes perceive dim light through the course of a day moving into nighttime, I. There are certain cells in the eye and the eyes are part of the brain. There are certain cells that are looking for the absence of blue light, and when that happens, that sends a signal to a certain part of the brain, like this cluster of neurons in the brain, super chima nucleus, which then sends a signal to the pineal gland.This little gland, like in the middle of our heads, that will then secrete. Melatonin throughout the body. So that master clock of that schematic nucleus is saying, okay, let's get all of our cells in rhythm. It's a beautiful philosophical process if you think of it, right, because it's almost like when we are out of balance with nature.We have a built-in mechanism to get us back on track, and it is through melatonin. Now, how do, how does our pineal gland make that melatonin? If we back it up biochemically, we see that it comes from tryptophan. Tryptophan is an essential aromatic amino acid. Meaning it comes from protein, so things like Turkey and, you know, a variety of different plant and animal sources in which we can get tryptophan, but our bodies need that tryptophan so that we can then convert it to serotonin and onto melatonin.So if we. Get enough tryptophan, we will be potentially good with creating more of that melatonin. But just naturally through our life cycle, much like menopause andropause, there is melatonin pause. So when, when child, if we look at the peak of melatonin, endogenously from the pineal gland, it's highest for children.So children, in my view. They're set on melatonin. Like if they're doing all the right things and not having devices at night and distorting that, that, um, perception of light by the eyes, they're gonna be good in melatonin for the most part. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, whatever you had as a child was probably your highest level of endogenous pineal melatonin.Then when somebody goes through puberty. Just, I would say there's kind of this downward slope, just like we would see with most hormones, and so what we see, like our colleagues like Dr. David Perlmutter and people in the neurology space are starting to, in fact, I was on his podcast twice talking about melatonin because there's interest there as it relates to looking at risk for neurodegenerative diseases. Right? One other function well. Melatonin has multiple functions. Um, but one function that I'm gonna be presenting on in a month or so is the role of melatonin in the glymphatic fluid flux. So what that means is that when we are sleeping, one of the reasons why we sleep. Is in order to allow the brain to clear itself of toxic metabolites, like our brain is really busy. Like right now, you and I are talking, our brains are working. We are, you know, changing protein expression and neurotransmitters. We've got a lot of metabolic activity. So when do we get a break? When do we need to clean the house? That's when we're sleeping. And if we look at the peak between two and 4:00 AM this is when melatonin is at its highest. And this is also when glutathione is peaking. Glutathione peroxidase, I. Superoxide dismutase, catalyst, a lot of these antioxidant defense enzymes, and if you look at some of the preclinical work, what you see is that melatonin seems to be an important agent for helping with that removal of those toxic metabolites from the brain. Now melatonin's not the only thing. You know, omega threes have been talked about, coincidentally just bringing them up again. Um, also like the sleeping position that you're in, sleeping on your side, especially your right side, would be helpful for that glymphatic fluid circulation because you know the space in the brain, the interstitial space is expanding by 60% when we sleep, in order to allow convection into that fluid. So then the glimpse, the lymphatic system around the glial cells starts to collect into the lymphatics. So in the morning, back to detoxification, we wanna be urinating, we want a bowel movement, we need to drive that stuff out of the body, ultimately. Right. And not recirculate it. So I gave you a long-winded answer on melatonin, but

[00:34:07] Dr. Melinda Ring: Yeah. Yeah. And even, you know, I didn't even, I, you didn't even get into, which I, I know is another huge area is the antioxidant effect and how it's being used in oncology as an adjuvant treatment and. Yeah, so I, but I've learned a lot of other reasons to love melatonin. I do think it's interesting that it peaks at two to four, because that's when women typically in perimenopause have their awake period. Is that a melatonin deficiency that's happening for them?

[00:34:37] Dr. Deanna Minich:  Here's my hypothesis, we don't know. The short answer is we don't actually know that for sure, but because it's so involved in the rejuvenation and repair processes, if a woman is going through menopause, she could have more inflammation. So more neuroinflammation even she could have, now we start to look at toxin load and maybe there's just more physiologically and metabolically to accommodate. So there's just more activity at that time if we're trying to repair. Right. The other thing I wanna mention is melatonin, some people when they take melatonin, they report that they have vivid dreams and they don't like that.

[00:35:14] Dr. Melinda Ring: Yes. Yes.

[00:35:15] Dr. Deanna Minich:  But it's actually, I think it can be a very good thing. It's extending the REM state, the dream state, and during menopause, you know, a lot of things come to a head in our lives when we enter into perimenopause, right? We start looking at our lives more thoughtfully. You know, maybe the, we're empty nesters, we're looking at our jobs, we're looking at our meaning and purpose. Like there are some things psychologically that are gonna come to the surface, and sometimes that happens in our dream state. I think that melatonin, if I look at it, I call it the molecule of consciousness. You know, the very yin, um, and I also call it the mother molecule because it's so closely tied to the mitochondria, which is maternal, maternal in, in the way of its genetic origin, right? So I think that dreaming, if we have vivid dreams, bad dreams, you know, I feel like it's good to get into that space and if we can work with people. To kind of take us through that process, especially through the menopause, when a lot is gonna come to the surface. It's almost like we just need a full spectrum team. I mean, you're trained in integrative health as well, so looking at all different aspects of a person, like physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, energetic, you know, not just physical. There's so much more to who we are.

[00:36:35] Dr. Melinda Ring: Yeah, I could not agree more.  I'm gonna just ask one last question. So if you could leave the listeners with one piece of wisdom to help them reach their next level of health, what would that be?

[00:36:46] Dr. Deanna Minich:  Eat colorful foods. Live a colorful life. Really connect to color in the way of make eating enjoyable, artful and soulful. You know, I mean, I know we touched on labs and numbers and counting, but then there's also this other aspect of that, that life and healing is an art, and how do we bring more of that joy into our everyday lives? So that's what I would leave everybody with.

[00:37:11] Dr. Melinda Ring: Yeah, join play. That's great. Thank you so much. Well, from phytonutrients to personal healing, Dr. Minnick reminded us today that food is information and inspiration. So if you're ready to add more color to your plate and your life, check out her new book, check out her studies, check out her website, and all kinds of information. If you love the episode, please take the time to rate and review us. It helps more just listeners discover Next Level health. Make sure to hit subscribe. You can also follow me on Instagram at Dr. Melinda Ring. I'll share integrative tips and sneak peeks of the upcoming guests. And don't forget again, to just live a, live a colorful life.

[00:37:56] Dr. Deanna Minich:  Thank you so much.

[00:37:57] Dr. Melinda Ring: Thank you. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Next Level Health. I hope you found some inspiration and practical insights to enhance your wellness journey. Don't forget to leave a comment on YouTube or review on Apple Podcasts. I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for future topics or speakers. Be sure to follow Next Level Health with me, Dr. Melinda Ring, as we continue exploring the path to healthier, happier lives, together.