In this episode of Peri & Pause - The Podcast, the second in the “Meet the Nurse Practitioner” series, the host interviews nurse practitioner Nancy Chen about her path from studying exercise physiology at Meredith College to working as a personal trainer, then becoming a nurse and moving into critical care, urgent care during the pandemic, and traditional primary care. Nancy explains how limited appointment times and “moral injury” pushed her toward specializing in perimenopause and midlife women’s health, after seeing patients struggle with symptoms, chronic disease changes, and feeling dismissed due to gaps in training. She emphasizes the importance of education, validation, realistic expectations, individualized treatment, and helping women feel heard and hopeful, including reviewing complex medication and supplement “cocktails” and supporting women through the fluctuating “moving target” of perimenopause.

00:00 Meet Nancy Chen

00:53 Exercise Physiology Roots

01:24 From Trainer to Nurse

01:52 Critical Care Wake Up

03:11 NP Path and Pandemic

04:22 Primary Care Time Crunch

05:58 Midlife Symptoms Puzzle

07:32 Personal Perimenopause Realization

09:42 Hormones and the Care Gap

15:23 What Patients Need First

16:22 Follow-Up Wins

16:59 Building the Foundation

20:59 Grace in Perimenopause

24:08 Finding Your Care Team

24:33 Medication Cocktail Reset

25:35 Message to Midlife Women

27:17 Thanks and Disclaimer

In this episode of The Peri and Pause podcast, Jamie Gallagher launch the “Meet the Nurse Practitioner” series by introducing Kristen Nawyn, a board-certified adult gerontology nurse practitioner and Menopause Society–certified menopause specialist. Kristin shares her path from ICU nursing through the pandemic to palliative care interests focused on goals, values, and quality of life, and explains how a family medicine preceptorship revealed the gaps in menopause care and shifted her career. She discusses limited menopause education in graduate school, her oncology research on chemotherapy-induced early menopause in premenopausal cancer survivors, and how sudden induced menopause differs from natural menopause. Kristin describes common “loss of self” experiences in perimenopause, the biology of hormonal fluctuations, the need for anticipatory guidance, and how she builds trust with patients, addresses long-term hormone therapy concerns, and advocates for whole-person, time-rich menopause care.

00:42 Podcast Intro and Guest Spotlight

02:08 Kristin’s Nursing Origin Story

03:10 What Palliative Care Really Is

04:35 From ICU to Nurse Practitioner

05:52 Discovering the Menopause Care Gap

08:43 Graduate School vs Real Menopause Care

10:37 Thesis on Chemo Induced Menopause

13:04 Losing Your Sense of Self

15:05 Natural vs Induced Menopause

16:52 Better Care for Cancer Survivors

17:46 Staying On Hormones

18:57 Risks Of Stopping

21:02 ICU Lessons On Aging

22:50 Earning Patient Trust

25:52 Midlife Women Carrying It All

28:24 You Are Not Crazy

29:00 Whole Person Menopause Care

30:43 Emotional Weight And Guilt

32:36 Closing Thanks And Wrap

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This podcast exists to normalize, explain, and elevate the midlife healthcare conversation—so women feel informed, believed, and empowered to demand better care for their bodies and lives.

Visit https://periandpause.com for more info

Jamie, founder of Peri & Pause—the Menopause Center—and a board-certified nurse practitioner, explores why many women feel dismissed during perimenopause and menopause, emphasizing it’s often rooted in history and training rather than lack of care. She explains how menopause was long framed as a “normal” transition not requiring intervention, despite wide-ranging effects on brain, sleep, mood, metabolism, and cardiovascular health. Jamie highlights limited menopause education in medical training and how normal lab results can lead clinicians to default to stress or mood explanations. She details how the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative study—often misinterpreted, focused on older women and specific hormone formulations—drove widespread fear of hormone therapy, shaping practice for decades. She notes newer, more nuanced evidence is slowly changing care and previews upcoming episodes introducing the clinic’s nurse practitioners.

00:00 Why Women Feel Dismissed

02:14 Menopause Is Natural Not Simple

05:40 Training Gaps In Menopause Care

07:43 Defaulting To Stress And Labs

09:46 WHI Study Changed Everything

10:50 Who WHI Actually Studied

12:24 Hormone Types And Nuance Lost

14:05 Breast Cancer Risk Explained

15:31 Aftermath And Reassessment

19:23 Where Menopause Care Is Now

20:24 Next Series Meet The NPs

The episode explains that while stress in midlife is real, many symptoms blamed on “stress” are actually driven by perimenopause physiology. The speaker describes how perimenopause and menopause affect far more than periods and hot flashes, impacting brain function, sleep, mood, energy, focus, and emotional regulation. She reframes perimenopause as a neuroendocrine transition, noting estrogen’s role in brain energy, neurotransmitters, sleep regulation, stress response, metabolism, and glucose use, and explains that early progesterone changes can worsen mood and sleep. Common experiences include unfamiliar anxiety, brain fog, word-finding issues, emotional reactivity, rage, and fatigue. She emphasizes that “normal” labs can be misleading due to hormonal fluctuations, and encourages symptom-based care, self-compassion, and preparation to advocate in healthcare in the next episode.

00:00 Stress vs Physiology

01:08 Band-Aid Advice

02:17 Perimenopause Brain Shift

03:43 Early Symptoms Explained

04:35 Reframing Stress Tolerance

05:12 Why Labs Look Normal

06:11 Symptom-Based Support

06:50 Recalibration Not Breakdown

07:46 Closing and Next Steps

In the first episode, Jamie Gallagher, a nurse practitioner certified in menopause care, introduces a podcast focused on thoughtful, non-flashy conversations for women who feel something is off—especially those exhausted, confused, or told their labs look normal while they don’t feel normal. She describes common midlife experiences she sees in clinical practice—fatigue unrelieved by sleep, brain fog, weight changes, mood shifts, anxiety, and feeling unfamiliar in one’s body—and explains why these symptoms can feel scary, especially with family health histories or misinformation from online searches. Jamie emphasizes that not everything is menopause, that good clinicians listen and evaluate thoroughly, and that midlife women need context, language, validation, and clear explanations. She shares how gaps in her own medical training led her to research and synthesize scattered, sometimes contradictory information on menopause, shaping her clinical work and inspiring the podcast to widen access to these conversations. The show will cover perimenopause and menopause topics like hormones, brain health, metabolism, sleep, sexuality, identity, and emotional shifts, along with relationships, parenting, aging, grief, loss, finances, and empowerment, featuring solo episodes, colleagues, trusted experts, and real stories. She clarifies the podcast is educational and not personal medical advice, encouraging listeners to advocate for themselves, and closes by reframing midlife as a transition that deserves guidance and inviting listeners to subscribe, review, share, and follow the show on Facebook and Instagram.

00:00 Welcome: This Podcast Is for the Women Who Feel “Off”

00:55 What I Hear in the Exam Room: “I’m Doing Everything Right—So Why Do I Feel Like This?”

01:36 Dr. Google, Real Risks, and Why Not Everything Is Menopause

02:30 Why This Podcast Exists: Context, Language, and Being Heard

03:37 Meet Jamie: Menopause-Certified NP + Why I Started Digging Deeper

04:35 The Research Rabbit Hole: Scattered Science, Nuance, and Listening to Women

05:28 What This Show Is (and Isn’t): No Fixing, No Trends, No Panic

05:49 What We’ll Cover + Who You’ll Hear From

07:05 Important Disclaimer: Education, Not Personal Medical Advice

07:31 Midlife Isn’t Failure—It’s a Transition That Deserves Guidance

08:10 Your Invitation + Closing: You’re Not Alone, You’re Right on Time

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This podcast exists to normalize, explain, and elevate the midlife healthcare conversation—so women feel informed, believed, and empowered to demand better care for their bodies and lives.

Visit https://periandpause.com for more info

Welcome to Peri and Pause, the podcast where midlife women get real answers about their bodies, their health, and what's actually changing because every woman deserves this conversation.