You likely have either a strong opinion, a fear, or curiosity about HRT for women. Let me assure you that this episode isn’t referring to something you take as a pill, a cream, a trochee, a shot, a pellet, or a patch.    Said like that, this is much simpler! Like my friend, and community favorite, Magdalena Wzelaki of Hormones Balance has directed for years, you can cook and eat for hormone balance. As another podcast guest, Dr. Mindy Pelz, and friend Cynthia Thurlow share, you can eat within a certain window of time for hormone balance… you too can use strength training and other exercises to create hormone replacement solutions.    Let me say this… you could be using or abusing exercise and its effects on muscle. Stay tuned to this episode. My hope… it’s empowering. So that no matter what your choice or why on HRT for women, or yourself, you have an option right now.  Questions I Answer in this Episode  Why the simplest solution for HRT for women is overlooked (men too) How muscle functions “as if” it were an endocrine organ  What influence muscle has on insulin, cortisol, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone and thyroid  To a lesser extent in this episode, how those hormones also influence muscle  Muscle is HRT. The way to muscle is through strength training. Strength training is HRT. Strength training and exercise overall can be done in a way to support your hormone balance. Yet, it’s important to say, you can also experience what women often do starting HRT, and that is the frustration of testing, trying, and testing again to get the “cocktail” of replacement right. When your status changes, all the integrated parts change. Your stress, your sleep, your diet, your habits, your exercise… or the peri to post menopause transition… all alter the effectiveness of your hormones.    Still listening/reading? Good… let’s do this.    Once a woman doesn’t have the same level of estrogen and progesterone she did, building muscle makes a big difference in the way she ages. If you’ve been lifting weights, you’re already aging better than your non-lifting peers. Look around you, can you see it?    Weight lifting takes up where estrogen left off, if you: Lift to fatigue Recover between (including the rest and the protein and sleep)    By exchanging endurance exercise (chronic cardio) for strength you offset cortisol.  Cortisol has an uptick when estrogen falls. That means, women no longer have the muscle-stimulating effects of estrogen AND they have the deleterious effects of cortisol breaking down their muscles further. When you do chronic cardio, cortisol rises during exercise WITHOUT the subsequent fall that we associate with feeling better, reducing stress levels. So you’re potentially causing muscle wasting.  When you lift weights you don’t have this cortisol response. For a minute or less elevate cortisol. Then you put the weight down and recover. It’s a perfect use (and no abuse) of cortisol. The same is true for high-intensity interval training.    No Muscle More Fat Loss of muscle means a gain of fat. A midlife woman’s body is already easily producing more fat to produce more hormones.] By default, even if fat isn’t gained, the percentage of body fat goes up. But in minutes- or so it seems for many women – your metabolism slows (not because it must… but because she may have this first wake-up call that she hasn’t been eating enough protein, sleeping enough, or doing enough or the right kind of strength training. She will gain fat. Even if her false golden idol scale says she hasn’t gained weight, she has changed her body composition such that she doesn’t have metabolically active tissue anymore. She will gain weight, and it will be 100% fat.    Many women haven't thought about it like this. Have you?    HORMONES & Muscle | The Exercise Role Estrogen and progesterone levels play a big part in glucose regulation. A high percentage of women become less insulin sensitive or said otherwise- insulin resistant because they’re ea