Confidence in Complexity: How Practitioners Can Master Perimenopause & Menopause Care

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:00:03 Hi and welcome to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I am so thrilled to have you here. As we dive into today’s episode, as always innovating and integrating in the world of women’s health. And just as a reminder, the content in this podcast episode is no substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your medical or licensed health care team. While myself and many of my guests are licensed healthcare professionals, we are not your licensed healthcare professionals, so you want to get advice on your unique circumstances. Diagnostic recommendations treatment recommendations from your home medical team. Enjoy the episode. Let’s innovate and integrate together. Hi there. Welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, doctor Jessica Drummond. Let’s dive into today’s topic. We’re going to talk about confidence in complexity, how you as a practitioner can master perimenopause and menopause care. Again, welcome back to the podcast. This is the second episode in our Confidence in Complexity series. I want you to really understand what that means so you can start to integrate it into your health or wellness practice.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:01:35 If you felt energized by last week’s Why Now episode, seeing how deep the need is today, we’re going deeper. Today we’re pulling back the curtain on what it actually takes to master perimenopause and menopause care. When every client brings complexity, whether you’re a clinician, a coach, a wellness professional, you’ve probably learned some HRV and nutrition protocols for hot flashes, or how to prescribe hormone therapy. At least the basics. But what happens when your client’s hot flashes are layered with autoimmunity, or insomnia, is tied to both mast cell activation syndrome and perimenopausal brain fog. What about when your perimenopausal brain fog is complicated by endometriosis or dysautonomia? What happens with perimenopausal weight gain is then tangled up with a complicated medical trauma history. These are the real cases we talk about every day. Most programs train you for the simple cases here. Our confidence and complexity framework trains you for the real ones. By the end of this episode, you’ll understand how you can become a perimenopause and menopause expert who clients trust with even their most challenging health concerns.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:03:06 Let’s talk about the challenge of complexity. When women arrive in midlife, they rarely present with just one issue. They come with a history of autoimmune diseases, migraines, digestive disorders, mild head trauma like concussions, chronic pain, trauma, medical trauma, chronic viral infections, and the hormone shifts of this time frame interact with those common chronic illnesses. So if you just treat hot flashes in isolation by other adding estrogen or lowering HRV, you’re not thinking about what else. Either the clients have come into as underlying vulnerabilities or what this time frame can trigger. So, for example, the hormone shifts of perimenopause can trigger symptoms. for example, in a client who had the genetics of hypermobility but didn’t present as such. So she has those genes, but they’ve not been expressed. We also know that Covid infections can trigger the expression of hypermobility genes and symptoms. So now you’ve got a 47 year old woman with unexpressed heterogeneous genetics for mild hypermobility that she hasn’t noticed her whole life. She’s been strong and healthy her entire life, but then she gets a Covid infection, maybe her third or fourth one during a particularly unstable menstrual cycle with lower than normal estrogen levels or big changes in her estrogen levels during that active infection, which is going to impact her metabolic health.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:04:48 This situation is now a super common trigger for the triad of hypermobility syndromes, plus MCAS Mix and pots or other forms of dysautonomia. The genetics were always there, but the perimenopausal hormone shifts in the context of the viral infection were the trigger for the expression of that illness, injury and inflammation. So that’s why our program starts reframing your mindset. Don’t chase symptoms, which I’ve said for 20 years now. Optimize systems. You will learn to look at vulnerabilities throughout your client systems, physiologic systems, and see how midlife or other concurrent challenges might trigger or exacerbate their expression. You often feel unprepared in other trainings because usually they either just cover hormone therapy, prescription or nutrition and fitness. These are simply incomplete. No other program integrates nervous system regulation. Functional nutrition. Tradition, lifestyle medicine, chronic illness. Literacy and. Business and career skills for you. You can’t be treating as a person. Maybe yourself. You’re in perimenopause and you’re exhausted yourself, right? And then all you have is like, oh, estrogen prescribing is my only option.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:06:16 But my client also has Ehlers-Danlos or MCAS or migraines or mitochondrial dysfunction. Like where do I start? I have brain fog just thinking about this, right. Our solution is structure. We give you the clear frameworks that help you prioritize patterns, prioritize care, prioritize pacing even when the client case feels overwhelming. So let’s talk about our foundational maps frameworks. The maps framework is our answer to that complexity. Instead of memorizing hundreds of protocols, which I don’t believe in because we have to think about each case as an individual. We use this system of maps. There are multiple maps in each of the physiologic systems. So for example, in the nervous system we have to think about underlying trauma. We have to think about the impact of progesterone on the brain and what happens when progesterone levels decline. We have to think about the impact of dysautonomia from an acute viral infection. Right. So all of these issues impact the nervous system. So our map systems also look across the physiologic systems like mitochondrial health immune health musculoskeletal health cardiovascular health.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:07:41 These maps are organized into frameworks based on the most common clusters of presenting symptoms, so that it starts to clarify these seemingly complex case systems for you. There are currently in the program six hormone maps and eight chronic illness maps. You get all 14 maps in module one of the Perimenopause and Menopause certificate program. Confidence in complexity. For each map, you’ll receive a complete guide that includes our symptom clusters and overlaps to help you quickly spot patterns and utilize the benefit of your pattern recognition. You’ll also get mechanisms and pathways so you can understand why these symptoms occur. Assessment tools and referral red flags to know when to refer when to co-managed with other colleagues. We teach you exactly how to support your client to build the right team and where you fit into that team. Depending on your scope of practice, then you’ll also learn the foundations. Foundations for me are so important because even the kind of well-known medical centers tend to skip these. So foundations are your core day to day activities that your clients will implement into their daily schedule.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:09:08 These foundations are essential, but again are usually skipped. You know, when I work with clients that are like, I’ve been everywhere, I’ve seen the Mayo Clinic, I’ve been to Stanford, no one has stopped for a minute and said, how well are you sleeping? How are you breathing? What stresses in your life can we mitigate that? How much nature exposure compared to phone exposure? Are you getting? What are you eating? Right? Will help you get those foundations right from the beginning because it changes how everything else works. Also, in the maps you’re going to get milestones. You can see how improvements should are expected to progress, and you’ll get the structure for kind of which map to go to next. So you can help organize and prioritize care over time to help your clients achieve their goals. So these frameworks give you structure while still allowing for individualization. Instead of chasing down every symptom, you’re going to start to see which systems are dysregulated. You’ll see. Does that brain fog come from the nervous system, from hormone dysregulation, from energy deficits, from immune system dysregulation? The maps help you organize that into a clear, step by step plan.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:10:29 The maps help with efficiency. You’ll be able to more quickly spot patterns. No more chasing symptoms, making your intake sessions shorter, your priorities clearer, a lot less overwhelm for you and your clients. You’ll also have clarity about which system to address first. Oftentimes, if someone isn’t improving immediately, it’s like, give them more. Give them more when really we often have to step back. Stand in our confidence, which is what we’re going to give you these tools as well and know where to begin first. That’s why so many practitioners and even you know the best well known clinics skip the foundations. They don’t feel like it’s cool enough, right? It’s not a complicated supplement stack. It’s not the newest drug. It’s like, what are those foundations of health that your clients are skipping? All right. So the maps frameworks tell you where to look. But then I’m also going to teach you the seven step women’s health system, which teaches you how to implement with each and every client, no matter what you’re addressing.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:11:44 What overlaps there are there’s a high level overview of how we use this seven step system. Step one is always nervous system regulation. And I was just having a conversation yesterday with one of our graduates who really has gone deep into this work. That’s essentially her entire practice now is helping people regulate their nervous systems, which is so, so important. Chronic stress, trauma, chronic pain, chronic digestive issues. Dis regulates the autonomic nervous system and the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. We teach you a wide variety of ways to assess this system, and then different tools and strategies to implement in your practice that will help each and every client. Different people resonate with different ones of these tools. Some really like nature exposure, others like certain kinds of music breathwork. There are thousands of ways to implement day to day nervous system regulation, but we have to align that with what really resonates with the client. So you’re going to learn all about that. That’s foundational. Then step two is what even are your client’s goals? What even are your goals right.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:13:08 It’s so important that you are not pouring from an empty cup. I mean, raise your hand right now if you’re like, I am already burned out from the work I’m doing, how can I level up this level of complexity? Well you don’t. You’re actually going to find that this is going to be easier than what you’re doing now. Because for you module one, week one, we’re going to get super clear on your work your practice goals. Do you want a hybrid practice. Do you want to be able to be flexible? Do you want to work from anywhere? Do you want to recover from burnout? Do you want to create a burnout free practice? This is important. Then you’re going to learn exactly how to hold your client’s goals. Then in step three, we’re going to start collecting data. We’re going to listen to your client’s story in a way that’s empowered by really high level health coaching communication skills, because figuring out exactly what your client’s health goals are are going to really keep both of you on track to help them step onto what we call the upward spiral of healing.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:14:17 It’s more and more and more health over time, but in the direction of your client’s unique goals. Then in step four, we’re going to figure out using assessment tools, things like wearables, everything from continuous glucose monitors to aura rings to HRV tracking to functional lab testing. You’ll start to look at symptom and data clusters like low progesterone, high cortisol plus MCAS. What does that mean? Right. You’re going to start looking at these underlying conditions Using lab biomarkers, using wearable data, and probably most importantly, learning how to interpret your client stories that really help guide their next step. What’s working? How to empower them. Then, in step five, collaboratively, you and your client and potentially the rest of the team are going to design integrative day to day plans. This is where your clients are going to be empowered to get up in the morning and have that healing morning routine to eat a functionally nourishing breakfast in alignment with the particular nutrients that are limited that they need more of. Stress management how to exercise.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:15:41 How to recover. How to mitigate stress. How to balance stress. How to eat to improve hormone levels. How to collaborate with prescribing professionals. We have prescribing Professionals in our community. In fact, we teach you in some of the advanced modules exactly how to prescribe hormone therapies and peptides based on peer reviewed research. The top guidelines and how we actually work with clients. I work with a really brilliant nurse practitioner in this area, doctor Dawn Allen, and she’s going to be deep diving all of that for you. So even if it’s not in your scope of practice, you want to understand how that’s done so you can slot everything else around it the nutrition, the sleep, the mindfulness, all of it. Step six we’re building a sustainable system. Our program teaches you sustainable business models. We make sure you have your financial foundations, your tax and legal foundations. And we have started to collaborate with really integrative and Innovative health companies that are doing telehealth options that are integrating with AI driven apps. There’s a lot of excitement going on in the world of complex chronic illness, because one of the things that I think AI is really good for and is becoming even better at, it’s taking the mountains of research we have on complicated chronic illness presentations, especially in this environment of really shifting chaotic hormones and helping people design more efficient plans.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:17:30 Here’s the reality if you are a health or wellness practitioner in 2025 and beyond, you have got to understand how to work with AI. And we’re going to teach you that in this program. You have to evolve. You have to learn how to integrate. Otherwise you’re going to be stuck in a system that is literally Really declining. So I’m going to be teaching you AI tools that align with your goals and your client’s goals, so that you are going to learn how to build the kind of practice that allows you to expand your skill set and more and more quickly integrate the new research that we have in these areas of complexity. Because right now that research to clinical delay is 17 years, and this is what AI is going to help us with. So this is a key part of the program. I want you to learn how to use these tools. And I want you to work with these really innovative companies. They’re excited to hire our graduates and more. So I want you to create the exact kind of work environment that you want to.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:18:37 So our Perimenopause and Menopause Certificate program, Confidence and Complexity, is a 12 month mastery program for certified and licensed health and wellness professionals, physicians, PT, OTS, nutritionists, mental health professionals, dieticians, midwives. Acupuncturists, herbalists. Chiropractors. Fitness professionals. Yoga teachers. If you are a licensed or certified health and wellness professional, this program is for you. The curriculum includes 16 modules and all 14 maps frameworks for both hormonal shifts and chronic illness challenges. What we’re going to talk about in module one and the orientation modules, we’re going to lay the foundation. We’re also going to start adding more community focused events so you can know your classmates better, know your faculty better. We’re going to introduce you to those maps. Then I’m going to teach you exactly what is perimenopause and menopause. I think sometimes we forget that looking at the detail of that, like, what exactly does that mean? What exactly is happening with the hormones? When does it happen? How fast does it happen? What’s the variability among different people? Then I’m going to teach you all of the different maps and how to use them.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:20:02 And these are related to all kinds of chronic overlapping things that happen. Everything from brain fog, headaches, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, etc., etc., etc. if you’re seeing it in your clinic, we’re going to be talking about sexual health issues, and I’m going to teach you the skill set of health coaching, communication, learning how to mindfully listen, and learning how to help people overcome their barriers to change is key to mitigating your burnout and optimizing your client success. Then we’re going to talk about lifestyle medicine, foundations and functional nutrition. Evidence based nutrition plans. Nutrients. Supplements, stress modulation, exercise recovery, all of the things that lay the day to day foundations of health. And we’re going to put that in the context of who do you want to work with? What is the goal of your career? Because so many people who join this program, and we’ve had hundreds of students in it already who are practitioners in their own journey of perimenopause and menopause. You’re somewhere between 35 and 60, and you feel like your health is not optimized.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:21:27 And part of that is because you’re working in a system that is designed to treat you more like a computer or a robot than a human being. And so your skills are being overused at a level of stress that is not being well supported. So we’re going to give you that Mentorship and that community to show you what else is possible. So many of our students are thriving, making much more money than they ever made in the traditional health system and actually helping more women. When we do this together in community, both the practitioners improve and the clients. Because your clients are exhausted by working with burned out professionals, they don’t want to show up. After waiting six months to see you to an office that feels traumatizing. Literally. I want you to feel well-rested, confident, supported if you have a complex case. Right here, we have live calls three times a week. We’re going to help you navigate that. You’re going to feel rested and ready. You’re going to know how to prioritize your clients care.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:22:44 You’re going to know how to pace that. You’re going to know how to get them involved in their case. You’re going to understand lab values, wearable values. You’re going to understand how to integrate data with your unique clients story and provide trauma informed, culturally competent care across populations. You’re going to build a trusted reputation in your field and in your community as the go to person for perimenopause and menopause care. You’re going to pair clinical mastery with business tools and a sustainable practice or career flexible models. Most of our students and graduates want flexibility, and they want purpose. They want independence. They want to feel confident no matter who walks through their door. And they don’t want to feel burned out by trying to rush. See ten clients a day. You know, I want you to feel calm and organized with these frameworks. I want your work to feel fun. Other programs train you for the simple cases. We train you for the real ones. So let me tell you a little bit about Stephanie. She is one of our graduates who is a pelvic health physical therapist.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:24:09 She’s dedicated, passionate, great pelvic PT, but exhausted by her rigorous schedule. After completing this certification, she built a thriving, flexible consulting practice that doubled her income. Plus, she finally found calm, confidence and control in her career. We have graduates doing so many unique things. Varsha. She’s working in a doctor coach model with a functional medicine physician. Pamela, who is leading the way in her home country of the UK working with Corporations. We talked about last week how so many corporate guidelines are shifting to meet the needs of women in menopause. There are so many places to go to expand how you work with women. Rose works in women’s sexual health. This is such an underserved need. We have so many mental health professionals who are working with women’s mood dysfunction and brain challenges. We’re going to have a whole case on that next week. So if you want to be one of those leading edge practitioners and yet have the calm and confidence of the frameworks that we teach you in this program. Download our free training how to build a flexible and fulfilling perimenopause and menopause career.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:25:38 I’m going to go ahead and put the link in our show notes, so you can learn more about how your career in this work can be so much calmer for you, and you can feel so much more confident when you have a clear vision for what that career looks like for you. Are you practicing three days a week? Are you practicing in a hybrid model? Are you practicing fully telehealth? Are you practicing one day a week, hands on in the clinic? Like there’s so many options. I also have a free workshop called How to Build a Thriving Perimenopause and Menopause Health Coaching Practice. You can find that right on our website at Integrative Women’s Health institute.com under Free Resources. It’s the first one there. You can also just join the movement. Just hop in. Join our next cohort of the Perimenopause and Menopause Certificate program. Confidence and complexity. We are now enrolling. Apply today to secure your place and take advantage of our scholarship opportunities that are available for a limited time. In fact, the earlier you apply for the program.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:26:49 The more scholarship options that we have at the beginning of each cohort, you’ll meet first with our career coaching team to map out a flexible and future ready practice plan. Like, I want you to have a real vision about your own career. You have the power to become the practitioner that women trust most with their midlife journeys. They all are complex, but that does not have to be overwhelming. In fact, it can feel easy and fun. And then you’re finally going to be the place where it’s safe for women to go. Instead of being just push around the health care system that literally doesn’t care about them or the professionals that they’re seeing in that system, you’re going to have the confidence through the Maps frameworks to help women that have the brain fog, the anxiety, the sleep disruption effect. Next week, we’re going to walk through a case about exactly how we do that. So this week, your homework is to slow down in your work and just start to get curious. Would having a framework when a client comes in with a level of complexity really helped me as a practitioner to feel calmer, to feel ready to dig in with them about what their stressors are.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:28:10 I think a lot of times practitioners are so afraid of opening Pandora’s box when women come in with multiple challenges at once and they’re like, oh no, no, no, we can only talk about this. I recently was at a gynecology appointment and I was just there for an annual checkup, and I was like, oh, and I have some hormone prescriptions I want renewed. We moved to a new area. I want to talk to you about some other ones. And they were like, oh no, no, no, no, we can’t talk about hormones and breast health in the same visit. And I’m like, what? Women are tired of just being thrown around the system. Ignored. Gaslit. It takes hours and weeks and months to get what they need. I want you to be that grounded place where they can show up with all of themselves, all of their complexity, including the financial stressors they’re dealing with, the relationship, stressors they’re dealing with, the work stressors they’re dealing with, and you have the confidence in that level of complexity to help unravel the brain fog.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:29:20 That is not just about a progesterone deficiency or an estrogen deficiency, but about everything else that’s going on in their lives, their endometriosis pain, their teenager, the medical trauma that they’ve dealt with. I want you to build the kind of practice that nourishes you and them, because it has to be like that. That practitioner who said to me, oh, I can’t talk about breast health and and hormones in the same visit. Like she’s wiped out. She had to see probably 25 people that day, maybe more. She can’t slow down and listen. She doesn’t have the capacity. That’s why women’s health care is not good. So get curious today in your practice, in your life, in your own visits as a patient and say, how could I be the solution to this problem if I had the right support, the right education, and the right frameworks to be confident for and with any client who shows up in my practice, I can’t wait to see you as a part of our community. I can’t wait to help you reach your goals of feeling calm and confident and flexible.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:30:49 Literally a billion women are searching for you right now on Google. So join us. It’s time for each and every women’s health professional to feel confident in the midst of any complexity that walks through her door. All right. I’ll see you next week. Have a great week.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:31:15 Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. Please share this episode with a colleague and if you loved it, hit that subscribe or follow button on your favorite podcast streaming service so that we can do even more to make this podcast better for you and your clients. Let’s innovate and integrate in the world of women’s health.