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You are listening to Ichi and Bichi, a podcast that provides answers to your many health questions.

On a recent episode, I talked about ways to support brain health and improve your memory,

and today I want to talk specifically about the brain and menopausal women.

There is a wonderful article about this topic in the Atlantic by Deborah Coppacan.

I think she describes very well the symptoms that develop when someone enters menopause.

Deborah says, I've been keeping a Google doc of all my words, my 53-year-old brain hasn't been

able to remember. The list has grown long. It might have grown twice as long, but often I forget the

word I've forgotten between forgetting it and rushing to the computer to write it down.

Is this sounding familiar so far? Also, she says, next to the missing word in question,

I note the description I used instead, such as the thing that blows, that would be wind,

or the kind of shirt that soft and plaid, flannel.

Some of these jeopardy reading descriptions are surprisingly if accidentally poetic,

such as the time bugs kept smashing against my car's windshield, and I called my partner on the phone

to say, there are so many dead bugs on the piece of glass between me and the world.

She continues to say, when I couldn't remember Grill, I called it a cooker thing.

The word reincarnation became that word Buddhist used for the next life.

More recently, my daughter and some of her college friends saw me gussied up for a party and asked

where I was going. It's a, you know, a party for I stammered. What is the thing when you're trying

to raise funds? A fundraiser? Her friend said, laughing. It is truly like that. Don't you think she

describes it well? So many women, when they start moving into menopause, start wondering if this

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