🌿 Join us for the Emotional Fitness Retreat

Transform Perimenopause into Power

Wilson4Q x Hotflash inc

Menla Mountain Resort, New York

June 4-7 2026

Sign me up!

🔥 Need help right now?

Grab my free Fix It Fast Perimenopause List for quick, practical non-hormonal relief options, and get on the waitlist for The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy, a clear + comprehensive guide to understanding the entire landscape of options and empowering you to make your best decision.

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When I first heard Janice Taylor describe Emotional Fitness Intelligence, something clicked. It felt like the through-line of 15 years of therapy, books, experiments, backstops, progress and questions. Janice is the founder of Wilson4Q, and what she’s building – Emotional Fitness Intelligence – is her attempt to define, measure, and teach something many of us have been trying to figure out the long, hard way. It also happens to land right at the heart of midlife.

Quotable

"The moment you give anything power outside of yourself, you are operating from your emotional injury." – Janice Taylor

Connect with Hotflash inc

TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause

Instagram: @hotflashinc

X: @hotflashinc

YOUTUBE @hotflashinc

Facebook: @hotflashinc

Linked in: Ann Marie McQueen

Disclaimer

This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

Emotional Fitness shouldn’t take 15 years

In this solo episode, Ann Marie shares a deeply personal story from her years in breaking news journalism and how unprocessed trauma shaped her internal world well into midlife. She explores why perimenopause can surface long-buried emotional patterns – and why traditional approaches often fall short. This is a conversation about awareness, nervous system reality, and finding a more complete path forward.

Highlights

• The TV character that mirrored my internal reality
• The moment at a crash scene I’ll never forget-
• What adrenaline does in trauma – and what happens after
• The coping patterns I didn’t understand at the time
• Why I thought something was wrong with me
• “How long have you been like this?” – the question that shifted everything
• How perimenopause cracked open deeper self-inquiry
• The “messy beach” and what hormones reveal
• Why emotional fitness might be the missing piece

🔥 Need help right now?

Grab my free Fix It Fast Perimenopause List for quick, practical non-hormonal relief options, and get on the waitlist for The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy, a clear + comprehensive guide to understanding the entire landscape of options and empowering you to make your best decision.

🌿 Join us for the Emotional Fitness Retreat

Transform Perimenopause into Power

Wilson4Q x Hotflash inc

Menla Mountain Resort, New York

June 4-7 2026

Sign me up!

Connect with Hotflash inc

TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause

Instagram: @hotflashinc

X: @hotflashinc

YOUTUBE @hotflashinc

Facebook: @hotflashinc

Linked in: Ann Marie McQueen

Disclaimer

This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

Naturopathic doctor and menopause specialist Dr. Kirsten Smith unpacks why perimenopause and menopause symptoms can feel so intense, where hormone therapy helps, where it gets overpromised, how stress, lifestyle, blood sugar and inflammation shape the experience, and why midlife often becomes a reckoning we aren't ready for.

Highlights

05:47 – Why midlife demands radical responsibility

08:46 – The deeper root cause: self-worth, self-criticism, and women’s relationship with themselves

11:10 – Menopause as sovereignty: freedom, boundaries, and becoming more yourself

16:41 – Hormone confusion on Instagram, soy panic, and how nutrition advice gets distorted

23:19 – GLP-1s, blood sugar, inflammation, and why this conversation is much bigger than weight loss

33:59 – Dr Smith’s own frozen shoulder experience, hormone therapy, and what this reveals about oversimplified menopause messaging

43:02 – Why hormone therapy can be valuable without being a cure-all

Fact check: 3 studies referenced

Cleaning at home and at work in relation to lung function decline and airway obstruction. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. doi:10.1164/rccm.201706-1311OC; Oxalate (dys)metabolism: Person-to-person variability, kidney and cardiometabolic toxicity. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes14091719 MGLP-1 receptor agonists for weight loss for perimenopausal and postmenopausal women: current evidence. doi:10.1097/GCO.0000000000001015

Connect with our guest

Website: drsmithnd.com

Instagram: @drkirstensmithnd

🔥 Need help right now? Grab my free Fix It Fast Perimenopause List for quick, practical non-hormonal relief options, and get on the waitlist for The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy , a clear + comprehensive guide to understanding the entire landscape of options and empowering you to make your best decision.

Connect with Hotflash inc

TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause

Instagram: @hotflashinc

X: @hotflashinc

YOUTUBE @hotflashinc

Facebook: @hotflashinc

Linked in: Ann Marie McQueen

Disclaimer This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.