Dyna Vink's Empowering Guide to Thriving during Perimenopause

Hi everyone. My name is Wendy Manganero and I am the host of the Wellness and Wealth podcast. I'm so happy to have you find us and if you could take a moment and hit that subscribe button, I'd really appreciate it. This is the podcast where we believe when you show up better for yourself as a woman business owner, you show up better for your business. So sit back, relax and learn from the practical to the woo-woo how to best take care of you. Have a great day, stay blessed and leave a review when you're done listening to the show. Thanks so much. Hi everyone. Today's topic and living vibrantly into your 40s and beyond. We're here today with special guest Donna Vink. I'm going to read her bio and then we'll get right into it. Donna Vink is a facilitator, blogger, speaker, advocate and coach supporting women in perimenopause. As a successful marketing communication professional in the private sector for 20 plus years, donna struggled with her own perimenopause, finding little to no help for the medical profession. She turned to the woman's aging research and discovered how to manage her symptoms using holistic approaches. These findings have been used to create a framework that supports women through challenging symptoms and lets them apply their own self-care routine so they can reach and focus. Welcome, dinah. Thanks for being with us.

Thanks for inviting me, wendy.

It's a real pleasure, I appreciate it and, as somebody who's going through the perimenopause stage, that's been a fun experience. So on five, we're doing this topic, yeah.

It's amazing how relevant it's becoming these days. So, yes, suddenly it so is.

I would love to talk to you about what living vibrantly means to you.

It's changed as I age. I found it's a great question because it gives you an opportunity to reflect on how these priorities change and I think, okay, in my 20s it was about adventure and travel, right, and I did a lot of that kind of thing. In my 30s it was about stretching and building my career, which was a lot of fun and I had really the times doing that a lot of I don't know risk taking, but stretching certainly. And then in my 40s, I started looking at self-development beyond my career, right. So I started looking at internal, being aligned with what I do and with who I was, and now it's all about getting back. So I do volunteer work. I became a coach, especially coaching in support of women in perimenopause and beyond, and it meant becoming an entrepreneur, leading the corporate world, becoming an entrepreneur and learning how to set up and run a successful business. So it's a constant learning curve and I wake up each morning knowing that I have things to learn, that I have my self-care to do and that I have people to support. So it's really quite exhilarating.

I love that and what I was thinking about as you were talking. I was like, yes, I've gone through those phase, I so relate. Well, each phase of your life it becomes a little bit different of where you focus. My 40th has been that too, like turning a little bit more inward, and it's amazing because when you're in the midst of climbing the career and all of that, you don't realize that suddenly you're like wait a second, there's going to be an afterlife after this. Maybe I want to learn what I really want within that. So I love that. And when we talk about this idea and I love that you coach women in perimenopause because I'm always big on somebody who has experience usually knows better to help somebody and I think coaches are really important for that factor. So, based on your experience, why is it important for you to help women through?

perimenopause. It's an important topic and not enough people are talking about it, and my experience was a rough one, I have to say. I was in corporate jobs with fairly senior positions and I was having problems and it took me a couple of years to even figure out what it was. I went with a few early symptoms and I was treating it call it on a symptom by symptom basis. I had no idea that any of them were connected and I was distraught because I thought, okay, I've always been so healthy. What's going on here? I've never had any congruent things that are going on to have four or five symptoms happening at once. This is not good. And when I went to the people that I thought were my support people, so I picked a female GP, a general practitioner, just because I anticipated that there could be something happening once I reached the age of perimenopause in men, and she was completely not helpful. She was, in fact, patronizing when I talked about some weight gain and she started saying you better get on that. That's really bad. And then she gave me this completely useless diet which had a lot of processed foods in it and had a lot of sugar and low fat and high carb, and it was very discouraging to get that. I went to the trainer at my gym and I said I've got these different problems, can you develop some kind of a program for me? And he put me on a boot camp and I just about died. That's not what women who are struggling with hormone problems need is to go through a boot camp. And then I talked to a nutritionist and she was back at the same time that my doctor had given me, had no understanding of how the body really works and how some of these ingredients can be very inflammatory and can cause joint pain and weight gain, and completely clued out. So I was really quite stuck and I just I just refused to accept that this was going to be the way I was going to live my life. This was just not an acceptable way to live. So I started diving into the women's aging research and I started to get some answers, but it was piecemeal. Of course, it wasn't a nice platter of here's some things that you can do. It was just a really mishmash of things, and so that I started trying to put those things together and it certainly helped. I won't say that I managed everything beautifully, but it certainly made a difference. And when I reached a certain age, when corporate didn't really want me anymore, then I thought, okay, let's think of something where my age is not a factor, where my age is in fact, a benefit. And I thought back to this experience that I had mastered going through this 13 year period. It was right, it was a lot of menopause, and I thought, okay, this is an area where other people can benefit from my experience and this is an area where I really want to be supporting and I want to be helping women to, especially in the workplace, because they're the stakes are so high. And so not that I wouldn't help women not in the workplace, but that's where the stakes are high and women are not typically that good at putting themselves first. So I figured, okay, the stakes are high, then that's where the need is going to is going to appear, and that's how I went through it, but it's not just me. There's a study that was put out a couple of years ago by the American Association of Retired Persons and they talked to women to ask about their satisfaction in dealing with their GPs and also gynecologists, and the response was staggering. It was 75% of women were not satisfied with the treatment that they got right. They felt they weren't listened to or they were just given an antidepressant or they were basically dismissed. And so then the people doing the study went to the other side, went to the medical professionals, and it was shocking. They discovered that 80% of the medical professionals so GPs, residents and gynecologists were not comfortable dealing with hormonal challenges like perimenopause and menopause, and the rationale for that was that this was not part of their regular medical curriculum, that this was an elective, and that's why so many practitioners didn't really know what to do with it. So I thought that was helpful to understand that it's not that these guys are just idiots, it's not that they're being deliberate in not helping or being obstructive. It's that they don't know and women do need to know what to expect and to how to manage their symptoms. So that's why I thought it was important to help women.

That is so interesting. You say that because I actually I finally found a gynecologist here because I moved and I went to the initial appointment and I was telling her my symptoms and she said we have a specialist. We have one person in the office who now specializes just in perimenopause and I had my appointment with her this week and he said I can give you another blood test, but it will probably come back normal. It was actually having me do a live a test four times during the day to really see where my cycles are. But she said to me we don't get taught this, this is not what we get taught. And as somebody who worked in the profession, she said I went through my own story and that's the reason why I started to specialize and really find out information to help women. But I was like that's crazy something to deal with the woman's body. But I guess so much of it is put on motherhood and that part of our transition that after that work like just dropped okay. So it was really interesting to me to hear because I literally that's what she just she says we don't spend any time in school. If you want to know information, we have to go learn it afterwards.

Yeah. So if you're doing studies in endocrinology, for example, then obviously you would learn about it. But unless people decide that they're going to specialize, then this whole business of women's midlife health is basically not listened to. And of course this has consequences, particularly for osteoporosis and heart disease, because when you have the drop in estrogen it has an impact on your body and it's not just your reproductive cycle, it's all over your body. You've got estrogen receptors all over the body. That's why we have so many symptoms. Clearly, without that knowledge, it means that that diagnosis are missed and that symptoms are not recognized. And you know the research bears that out. So it is quite serious.

I was surprised that she was telling me this. She said really, I understand it. And it seems like that's what ends up happening. As you get so frustrated because you do, you're like what is wrong? You start to wonder what is wrong. Why am I like this? I had so much energy in my 20s and suddenly I'm like, yeah, I'd rather take a nap, that kind of thing. But I think the more that we talk about it and normalize it so that women know I have enough self-care to be like if I'm not like my doctor, I'm going to keep going to find somebody else that I'd like. I have no issues with that or finding out information that'll work for me. But I've had women on the show that talk about that's not the normal. So most women are taught to. It's okay. They must know better because they are a doctor, than I know. And it really starts to. It can never mind the physical symptoms on a self-esteem level. It starts to affect you because you go maybe it is, maybe there isn't anything wrong.

And that's an important factor in the workplace right when your confidence is shaken, then, like in my case, I didn't go for a promotion because I was so uncertain about my abilities, and I think that's a pretty common story and I do think that's very common too, because you start to doubt yourself People who've done something for their career, the whole entire life, and suddenly you're like I don't know if I can handle this, I don't know if I have enough energy.

Or, and it's really, it takes away from the fact that we have so much knowledge to be able to give out when we don't suddenly feel confident in our self, based on and again it almost it's so played hand in hand like you don't physically feel well, then you start doubting yourself and then you start taking risks for another that lack of a better word that you would have taken even five or 10 years before, because it's also combined in one thing For me, the promotion I didn't go for, is my company was acquired by Elcatel and I was leading the DSL marketing and the DSL headquarters was in Belgium.

So the natural thing to do would be to move to Belgium, right, and to continue my work there, because my job was a headquarters function and I just couldn't see myself doing it. I just couldn't. I just thought, oh my, I just can't see myself uprooting myself and moving and living in a new country with a new language, whereas before it would have been sign me up, right, let's start those language training courses right away.

I'm there, but yeah, it was just too risky. So, from your experience, what are the warning signs that a female entrepreneur may be starting to go into parry menopause? Because that's the other thing is. I kept blaming it on everything else.

Yeah, so did I, and it's a sneaky start, right. It really is very insidious the way it starts and of course, many women are also in denial about it, because there's this societal idea that if you're in menopause you are not desirable, you're past it. There's all this negative kind of connotation with it, so women don't want that. So that's the initial context of how it starts. But something to bear in mind is that this can start with women as early as age 36. And it can go on until the early 50s. So there's quite a variable range of when it can start, and I think a lot of women think automatically it's 50s, but it's not the case, unfortunately. So this can start a lot earlier and then your perimenopause can last up to 15 years. So that's the actual transition. Once you reach menopause, there can still be symptoms and it doesn't automatically mean that you're finished. You can have different symptoms of each fit. The first signs are easy to brush off, so there'd be that fatigue, interrupted sleep, some joint pain being a little more irritable than usual, which was something that I certainly had and started snapping at my team for no reason when I thought what is this, where did this come from? And trouble concentrating. So it's sneaky and you can just, like you said, you can blame it on a whole number of things Stress or family, or some big project coming up and we're not getting a project approved All kinds of things could be connected to that. But then the symptoms can start to pile on it right, with digestive problems, with headaches, with weight gain, and that's when you think your body is falling apart, like what is going on, and you know it starts to become harder to just brush it off and it's common at this point to treat each symptom individually, which is not clearly the way to go. But for me it took me over two years to realize that I was in perimenopause, and it wasn't until the hot flashes started and libido dropped and then it becomes clear that it's perimenopause. Here you've got a whole bunch of these little things that have been piling up, but who knew that there were so many symptoms? There are over 30 symptoms that women can get as part of perimenopause and, like I said, it can last up to 15 years. So the early, the beginnings of it are really quite insidious that you, especially if you have this notion in your mind that menopause is just about hot flashes and changing periods, which was certainly the way I thought about it. Then all this other stuff, it like it, falls in a different bucket. You think it's something else, when it's not.

Yeah, and it's so funny because for the longest time all the conversations with my mom's side of the family about this has been like I had my period One day and then I didn't, and there was no discussion of anything. And I was like that's going to happen to me and I was like, okay, but I was talking to them and they were like it sounds to me like you're going through perimenopause and I was like what if I had no idea that there was even stages? I'm like how did I go into my 40s and not realize there were stages to this?

It's a good question. You have well-educated women and they just have no idea. I had a conversation with my mother too and she said, oh, it really wasn't so bad. Then I look back on it now with the knowledge that I have. She had big problem with hair loss, she had weight gain, she had osteoporosis and then she got dementia. So she certainly had issues that she didn't even connect with that change of life.

I think that's what happens, is that we just don't connect it. I think that's what it is, that there is so much fine into put into the years we go into motherhood, changes of our bodies so that we can, and then you're out of motherhood. Even that conversation around that is okay. So we want to have a baby before we get too old and we go into some stage that we can't, but it's still not talked about as fair and menopause it's like this I can have a baby, I can't have a baby. It's a crazy way that we even got that, because it's so wrapped on motherhood, not even about what's going on with our bodies.

That's a big issue, but for me it was framed as declining fertility, without any real explanation of what that meant. But yeah, I was told that after 35, it would start declining and after 40, it was pretty risky and I thought, okay, that doesn't. But that's the extent of the discussion that I was privy to.

It's just, it's so funny. So this is why this was so important. But I'd love to know from you what's the first step in finding help for one's child. So sometimes I didn't even know where to start. Like you said, it was symptom B. So just one point symptom.

Yeah, in fact, calculating your symptoms, being able to identify the symptoms, is probably a good first step, because there isn't really a test for perimenopause. There is a test to confirm you're in menopause, but in menopause is when you've been a year with no periods. At that point it probably isn't a big surprise. It's not all that helpful to be diagnosed being in menopause. Once you reach that, it's just if you're not tracking your period at all and think, oh, has it been a year? Maybe then it's helpful. But a great way to find out would be to sign up for a free perimenopause assessment. That's something that I offer, and the research tells us that 20 to 30% of women have symptoms that are really quite debilitating, and so that's a serious thing, and it's something like 86% of women have been shown not to do anything about their symptoms. So whether that's because they don't know how, which is likely or because they just can't be bothered is fun glare, but that's a significant number of women that aren't doing something about this, and they could be In this assessment. What we do is we review the perimenopause journey that the women are going through with a number of questions that I draw from a lifestyle approach framework, and this involves the kind of self-care that you do, the kind of food that you eat, the kind of sleep that you get, the kind of movement that you put yourself through and the kind of mindset and mental support that you give yourself. And so this assessment then highlights the positive habits that women are carrying out and also some opportunities for enrichment so that they can bring their A-gain to their workplace and to their family life. So it's basically a bit of an audit, in a sense. So this allows women to be heard, first of all, because most women have never been heard cool are we in most cases and not by their doctors. And they also want to know that they're not alone and that this is a normal thing that goes on. It's just that nobody's talking about it, unfortunately. So it's a great way to find out more about perimenopause and just to get some quick tips on how to improve their quality of life, and then, if they want, they can go on for a coaching session, coaching program, with me, if that's of interest. There's really no need to struggle and to feel unsupported. And that's the long and the short of it.

Yeah, I agree with that. So I want to thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about it. I will make sure that I have the link to your assessment. It'll be in the show notes if you're looking for it. But I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking about this because it's such a relevant sort of a relevant topic. In my life it's a light on the little selfish side, but it is a relevant topic for so many women that we need to discuss, so I want to thank you for that.

Terrific. Thanks so much for having me, wendy. It was a real pleasure talking with you.

Thank, you, and so if you loved this show, please make sure that you leave a review and also subscribe to get more self-care tips. In the meantime, have a blessed and abundant day.