You are listening to You Are Not Broken, the only podcast that combines science, medicine, and psychology to re-educate your brain and help you live your best love life. And I'm your host, board certified female urologist, Dr. Kelly Kasperson.

Hey friends, it's Kelly, and I'm so excited. I'm wrapping up the 2022-ish-wish conference, and I have a new kindred soul friend, and her name is Dr. Stryker, and she is a menopause expert. She works in Chicago. She is a prolific author. She loves writing, which is always amazing to me because I find it very painful. But I love talking, and she's also very good at talking. So welcome to my podcast.

I am so happy to be here and talking. And talking. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I love it. So I just was at this

lecture. We'll start with, you're such a hormone expert. I was just at this lecture talking about

the hormone fluctuations in perimenopause, and perimenopause is so under discussed. And

in social media right now,

I see so many influencers around the age of 48, 51, and they're all talking about, oh, my gosh,

I've had untreated ADHD my whole life. And I'm looking at them through my menopause hormone

lens. And I'm like, are we just under treating their perimenopause, you know,

brain fog, mood changes, energy fluctuations? And it's trendy to call it ADHD. Any opinion about that?

Well, absolutely. Because what happens in the perimenopause, of course, is they are in the

perimenopause hormone roller coaster and it's up and down and all over the place. And most doctors, quite frankly, don't know a lot about perimenopause hormone roller coaster and it's up and down and all over the place.

And most doctors, quite frankly, don't know a lot about perimenopause.

So when a woman goes to her doctor and says, I think I'm in perimenopause and he or she will

say, well, let's do some hormone tests.

And they'll do an estrogen level and it comes back perfectly in the normal range and the high normal

range and she's told well you're not in pari menopause when in fact the woman was right and the doctor

was wrong because they just caught her on a day when her estrogen level was high if they had

checked her hormone levels a week later it would have been low but then she's left, well, if it's not pari menopause, it must be something because I know things aren't right.

And then you go in search of a diagnosis. And that's one of the ones that will pop up when you put

in the symptoms of, I can't focus, I can't sleep, I can't function, I can't think clearly. And you think, okay,

it's either early onset Alzheimer's, a brain tumor, or ADHD. Totally. Yeah, and I was actually

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