Maureen Benkovich (00:02.956)
Hey everybody, welcome to Sober Fit Life. You know, here on Sober Fit Life, we talk a lot about reclaiming your health by releasing habits and beliefs that no longer serve you. And I try to do that by providing science and medical research and experts to help you understand so you can make informed choices. And that's why today I am so excited that you're gonna get to hear from Kristen Johnson and Maria Klaps.
two experts in women's midlife health who are not afraid to speak the truth that women need to hear. They help us understand the powerful link between hormones, metabolism and lifestyle. They are the authors of The Great Menopause Myth, a book that cuts through the sea of confusion around midlife and HRT. And I have to tell you, I'm going to read this quote to you because it would stop me in my tracks. And this is what, you're ready. Here it is on page
Kristin Johnson (00:52.17)
Maureen Benkovich (00:56.104)
On page 108, as a midlife woman, this is quote, quote, as a midlife woman, if you were considering hormone therapy, you need to choose between your cocktail and your hormones. The association between the combination of hormone therapy and alcohol consumption with poor outcomes is so strong that we unapologetically caution midlife women against it.
And that bold truth is the very reason I invited them on Sober Fit Life and I'm so glad they accepted. I'm excited to speak about this to women who are not afraid to proclaim the facts that we need to hear to make empowered decisions. And so they're going to expand on that quote today and much more. But let me give you a little background. Kristin is a board certified holistic nutritionist and functional nutritional therapy practitioner and a recovering corporate attorney.
Maria is a certified health coach and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. Together they've developed a clinical specialty in perimenopause and menopause that blends science, lived experience and deep compassion. So Kristen and Maria, welcome to Sober Fit Life.
Maria Claps (02:04.706)
Thank you.
Kristin Johnson (02:05.634)
Thank you.
Maureen Benkovich (02:06.86)
Yeah. Reading your book, I got to tell you, I felt like a breath of fresh air because like so many women, I faced the overwhelm of navigating this phase of life and just I didn't do anything for years because I didn't know what to do. I just started HRT a few years ago, but your book, and I showed them this before we started, brings real clarity. I've got like it taped and dog-eared and highlighted and I highly recommend getting it because you guys are so thorough. You cover everything in this book.
Kristin Johnson (02:35.886)
Thank you. I tried.
Maria Claps (02:36.942)
Thank you.
Maureen Benkovich (02:37.228)
Yeah, so you really did and in such a great way, easy to understand way. So I want to ask you both what inspired the great menopause myth and the message you felt women in midlife most needed to hear.
Maria Claps (02:54.594)
I would say, I think I can answer for both of us, our own journeys, our work with our clients. I would say that that's it. Looking around and just collectively seeing how women on a whole are aging. That's.
Maureen Benkovich (03:09.664)
Mm-hmm.
Kristin Johnson (03:11.01)
Yeah. And I mean, there are plenty of books in this space, we'll be honest. There's plenty of books and, you know, we're honored that you chose ours. We just didn't think that anyone really was honest with women. And there's a lot of constraints around some authors because of their licensure or their medical affiliations and products that they sell and things like that. so sometimes you're only getting part of the story or sometimes you're getting a very kind of distinct lens that
doesn't have a lot of disclosures to the women to understand why that lens might be slightly biased. And, you know, sure, you could claim that Maria and I have our bias too. We're huge fans of HRT. We're loud about it. And we're, you know, thinking that the vast majority of conventional providers right now are doing it wrong. So that's just, that's our bias. We'll own that. But at the same time, what we tried to do is say, look ladies,
Maureen Benkovich (03:45.985)
Mm-hmm.
Kristin Johnson (04:04.524)
there's so much that you need to know. And so we're just going to try and deliver everything here. And we're not going to tell you what to do. We're going to tell you everything that you need to make the decision to do for yourself, because what I choose is probably different from what you choose, Maureen. So we needed to honor that and not force women down a certain path. And, you know, in the United States, we have different options than even our Canadian neighbors and definitely different than our friends in Europe. And so that needed to be recognized. And we just wanted to kind of
Maureen Benkovich (04:28.62)
Mm-hmm.
Kristin Johnson (04:34.382)
Put it all out there.
Maureen Benkovich (04:35.976)
let's take a step back first and for some women who maybe don't understand where all this confusion came from, there was a study done called the Women's Health Initiative, right? And that kind of really threw everything off and scared medical practitioners and women and all of us from going on hormone therapy. So can you talk a little bit about that and then how it's starting to get debunked or and that's what you've done in this book, The Menopause Myth.
Kristin Johnson (05:01.432)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the women's health initiative was one of the largest scale efforts to examine HRT. The problem is, is it was coming after decades of pharmaceutical sort of shaping of the HRT landscape. And so the HRT that we have today is not the HRT that was used in the study. It was predominantly, you know, big pharma, synthetic.
Maureen Benkovich (05:10.86)
Mm-hmm.
Kristin Johnson (05:28.396)
different hormones than what we actually produce, different hormones than what our body isn't used to seeing, et cetera. But the goal of the study at the time, the stated goal was to apparently look at the effects of HRT on women's aging and women's health. The problem is, is they chose women who already had aged without hormones, who already were unhealthy without their hormones. And then they gave them these foreign hormones, these chemicals.
Maureen Benkovich (05:48.043)
Right.
Kristin Johnson (05:54.57)
And then there were some bad outcomes. And so they pulled it all back and they said, see, it was the hormones. They're dangerous. They're a bad thing. And one of our mentors loves to say, it's like you gave a child a bag of Skittles. got a cavity. And then you said, see, raspberries are bad because there were raspberry flavored Skittles. Like that makes no sense, but that's essentially part and parcel with the WHI did. And the fallout
Maureen Benkovich (06:01.665)
Right.
Kristin Johnson (06:20.5)
isn't just, gosh, here we are 20 years later having to deal with the fallout. The fallout was massive. The women of our mother's generation had their HRT literally yanked from their hands. They were deprescribed. They were scared crapless. The medical schools changed their curriculum to teach this new messaging that hormones were bad. Physicians were trained, hormones were bad.
Maureen Benkovich (06:26.699)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (06:32.352)
Mm-hmm.
Kristin Johnson (06:45.046)
government agencies, insurance bodies, everyone adapted and responded in a very negative way. And you'd like to say, okay, so women were withheld hormones. There was a human cost to that. They've been able to sort of estimate what the extra deaths are from the lack of hormones. And we're talking like hundreds of thousands. So, it wasn't just sort of a bad study that sort of has this long tail.
Maureen Benkovich (06:47.488)
Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (06:57.483)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (07:03.436)
Wow.
Kristin Johnson (07:10.846)
It truly shaped the health and unfortunate disease situation that we have for the generations that are about one and two in front of us. And it's tragic. Those women should be angry. Yeah. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (07:21.482)
Yeah, I'm angry. I missed many years of this. And when you go into each chapter about how hormones affect every system in the body, really, and helping us to understand why it's so important that we get educated on this, and those of us who missed it, get on it now. I you have a whole chapter on that about how it's not too late for some women. What I love about your book is you really emphasize lifestyle is important.
how we live, what we eat, what we drink, our movement, all of that matters. And then you're looking at HRT, like you're not saying it's a first line of defense, but all of it works together. So can you talk about that? Because I think that's unique in your book.
Maria Claps (07:59.672)
Right? No.
Kristin Johnson (08:07.0)
What is HRT, Maria?
Maria Claps (08:09.228)
Right, right. mean, so to some people, HRT can be the birth control pill or synthetic stuff. Yeah. So we see HRT as as important as we've made it out to be. And we do believe it is. We do see it as an optimizer. And if you put HRT into an unhealthy body, it can definitely go sideways. We have a collection of bacteria in our gut that helps to process, metabolize and even make hormones. And if that's not good, it's going to go sideways.
Maureen Benkovich (08:14.207)
Uh-huh.
Maureen Benkovich (08:25.068)
Hmm.
Maria Claps (08:38.944)
I mean, if you suffer with constipation, poor gut health, it's going to go sideways. Drinking is putting gasoline on a fire in terms of HRT usage. So it creates more estrone and women create estrone. We'll have some, we're always going to have some estrone, right?
Kristin Johnson (08:46.158)
If you're inflamed, high blood pressure, yeah, all the things.
Maureen Benkovich (08:57.056)
Yeah, talk about that. Like, what do mean by that?
Maria Claps (09:08.62)
want a lot of it. So what happens is there are three main estrogens, an estrone, estradiol, and estriol. And so the one that has a balanced effect that the receptor is just estradiol. And we have two receptors. One is like the gas, push on the gas, which is growth, which everyone thinks is bad. estrogen promotes growth. Well, you need growth. You need repair. Repair is growth.
Maureen Benkovich (09:18.838)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (09:35.648)
Right.
Maria Claps (09:37.994)
And then you have breaks, you know, and that kind of puts tamps down on the growth, which you need that as well. Well, estrone primarily pushes the growth receptor. So there's not a lot of balance. so, you know, that's alcohol can just make us metabolize estrogen poorly.
Maureen Benkovich (09:55.596)
So you end up having more free-floating Estrone in your system.
Maria Claps (09:58.466)
You have more estrone, which is going to push on the type of receptor that heavily promotes growth with not a lot of balance on that growth.
Kristin Johnson (10:07.544)
Yeah. And you've got also just the liver that's desperately trying to process and break these things down. That liver, one of the biggest demands we can put on our liver is alcohol. So now you've got these two major needs that the alcohol or that the liver is going to do, and it's going to start to sort of partition its priorities. And unfortunately, you know, they used to call it non-alcoholic fatty liver syndrome or alcoholic fatty liver syndrome. Now it's a more metabolically recognized, and
Maureen Benkovich (10:07.999)
Okay, yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (10:30.176)
Yes.
Kristin Johnson (10:37.388)
that is a huge kind of silent creeping problem. There are so many women walking around with fatty liver, either because of, in association with their alcohol or separately, that you add hormones into that body. That's not going to be a healthy outcome. And that's, you know, we've got to decide what do we want our liver processing? Our alcohol or hormones?
Maureen Benkovich (10:56.702)
Right. And that's called oxidative priority, right? And you go into that in a whole chapter in the book. Okay. I would love you to talk about that.
Kristin Johnson (11:02.168)
That's actually slightly different. So oxidative priority is about fuels. It's about metabolic fuels. And you're right, when it comes to alcohol, that will be the first thing processed. And this is why with a lot of women, when they're trying to lose weight and they're cutting their calories, but they're still drinking, that's where oxidative priority comes into play, because it's going to essentially address the needs of the alcohol to be metabolized by the body and burned off before it's going to address the other things.
Maureen Benkovich (11:18.304)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (11:30.56)
Yeah, because the body recognizes alcohol as a toxin and it prioritizes wanting to get rid of that first. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. So I thought that was really interesting. So, and if you could talk about a little bit more, you just briefly said it, but how alcohol plays that role in metabolism, fat loss and hormone balance.
Kristin Johnson (11:37.056)
that and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kristin Johnson (11:51.628)
Yeah, I mean, you we have a certain amount, we have a certain capacity for the fuels that we can use, right? And so if you overeat, let's say, let's say you have a ton of avocado alongside your lean chicken, the first kind of things to get used, and then you had a glass of wine, right? First, it's gonna kind of go through the glass of wine. Then we sort of have this unlimited capacity for fat and because we can store it, right?
Maureen Benkovich (11:57.505)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (12:12.076)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (12:20.246)
Right.
Kristin Johnson (12:20.406)
otherwise we'll burn the other things. And so this is where women need to sort of understand how they're choosing their meal templates and the drinks that they have alongside of them, how that's going to impact their metabolic fuel usage and therefore their ability to lose fat or gain muscle or whatever it may be. And so we kind of walk through all the different scenarios for different fuels that the body sees, which is gonna get burned first, which has a big storage capacity.
you know, we try and give women this information so that they can understand like, gosh, maybe it's not what I'm eating. It's how much of each thing that I'm eating. And then they're able to sort of change their plate template to match that.
Maureen Benkovich (13:01.228)
So when you work with women in your practice, do you first try to get them to modify their lifestyle and make these improvements and then go on HRT? What does that look like?
Maria Claps (13:09.678)
We do. mean, you we don't think you have to be perfect. And even if someone has, you know, gut dysbiosis, we try to get her to have like a six week head start, which is really what they're going to be kind of waiting for a, you know, practice, then they're not going to necessarily get like a doctor's appointment right away. So yeah.
Kristin Johnson (13:23.81)
provider.
Maureen Benkovich (13:28.234)
Right.
Kristin Johnson (13:29.772)
Yeah. mean, the fact is, is HRT, when we're hormonally deficient, and this was, kind of hinted at it, but you know, what we like to kind of hammer at home with is that most of us were taught in school, our sex hormones are related to our menstruation, our fertility. What we're trying to make the point in the book is that's like one tiny part of it. There's so much more. And when women understand that like our superpower, it's not our menstrual cycle, because plenty of us didn't have great ones when we were younger.
Maureen Benkovich (13:44.608)
Yeah, I was.
Maureen Benkovich (13:56.48)
Right?
Kristin Johnson (13:57.206)
It's the fact that it's giving us drive. It's giving us motivation. It makes our skin pretty. It's remodeling our bone. It's keeping our heart healthy. It's clearing cow proteins from the brain. Like there's so much going on with those sex hormones driving the ship on those things. So to that end, when we're hormonally deficient, not only does all that genomic signaling and those processes become impaired or slowed down, we also can lose our drive, right? We can lose the motivation to get out of bed and get sunlight and work out and
put down the alcohol. Let's face it, alcohol's kind of a nice little sedative boost, whatever, to some people. And so it's easier sometimes to go for the alcohol, go for the chocolate than it is to maybe go for the walk, right? So yes, while we'd love everyone to get a head start, yeah, why we'd love everyone to get a head start on lifestyle optimization before they do HRT.
Maureen Benkovich (14:43.562)
Definitely, that's why people do it.
Kristin Johnson (14:52.194)
Marie and I are willing to recognize that sometimes HRT needs to be brought into the picture in order to give women the motivation, the drive, et cetera, to make those changes and to make better decisions.
Maria Claps (15:00.046)
for sleep sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (15:04.928)
Yeah, like the chicken or the egg kind of scenario. You have to take a look at each individual person and decide which way it might be the best. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I was really surprised to see the statistics on heart health and how much hormone replacement therapy helps women's heart health. Can you talk about that? Because I don't think a lot of people know that.
Kristin Johnson (15:10.518)
Yes, for sure. Yeah, yeah.
Maria Claps (15:26.678)
It's the number one killer of men and women worldwide, right? And it has a lot to do with inflammation, right? And so when we don't have estrogen, we are losing like nitric oxide capacity, which helps keeps our cardiovascular system healthy. Our blood vessels become stiffer. So, you know, that blood pressure goes up, things like that. So, yeah, it's incredibly important. And yet medical societies refuse to like understand
current ones right now refuse to like pay heed to estrogen for cardiovascular system. But when you look at the physiology of what estrogen does, and we've got receptors, that's the thing we've got receptors for estrogen on the blood vessels. And you know, when the role that it fills like, you age healthier with it, you have a healthier heart, it just makes physiologic sense.
Maureen Benkovich (15:57.929)
Right.
Kristin Johnson (16:22.254)
Well, so many people think that, you know, it's men who have the higher rates of heart disease and it is until age 55. But then we ladies catch up and by the time we hit the 60s, we actually start to exceed. mean, is the... So many women walk around scared crapless of breast cancer. Heart disease should be your bigger concern. That's what's killing women more than anything.
Maureen Benkovich (16:26.795)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (16:31.68)
we start to catch up.
Maureen Benkovich (16:41.868)
Hmm.
Kristin Johnson (16:44.494)
The thing that frustrates us is that it's not like there was a magic switch and at 55, you went from having great cardiovascular health to suddenly boom, the bottom falls out. It's a slow creep. And when it starts is actually perimenopause that kind of, know, five to 10 year period prior to your last menstrual cycle. Well, who at 41 as a woman is all that concerned about her heart health? She's thinking, I'm young, I'm working out, I'm doing my crossfit, I got this, that.
Well, guess what, sweetheart, your hormones are also going down. And as those hormones are going down, it is well documented that some of the first changes are brain and heart. And so it's not that suddenly you cross some magic threshold and at 55 or your post-menopausal, boom, you're at risk. You were at risk the moment those started to go from your pre-menopausal years to anything less than that. And that's when...
Maureen Benkovich (17:14.614)
Mm-hmm.
Kristin Johnson (17:39.746)
the remodeling in the arteries starts to happen. That's when the heart muscle starts to change. That's when the stiffening happens. That's when we have immune responses and we start collecting plaques and different kind of inflammatory processes and things like that. That's happening in our forties. That's happening before we ever hit that post-menopausal moment. And that's the piece that we think no one's talking to these girls about because
Maureen Benkovich (17:58.752)
Mm.
Kristin Johnson (18:07.328)
If you're a 43 year old and you've got a changing cycle or God forbid you have a hot flash, because let us tell you that is one of the first signs that you're having some cardiovascular damage. If that's happening to you, you should be starting hormones now. You don't wait until your bottom down. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (18:17.505)
Mmm.
Maureen Benkovich (18:22.742)
Wait, let's pause on that. You just said something I don't know. So a hot flash is the first sign that you're having cardiovascular damage?
Maria Claps (18:29.773)
Yes.
Kristin Johnson (18:30.658)
Well, it is a contributor to cardiovascular damage, hot flashes. Marie and I didn't have hot flashes, so like not everyone does. We need to recognize that. But if you do, you need to understand that there's vascular damage that occurs with hot flashes.
Maureen Benkovich (18:39.596)
Right.
Maria Claps (18:46.028)
And by the way, that goes for women on HRT that are still having hot flashes, which some women, some women continue to struggle with hot flashes on HRT.
Kristin Johnson (18:51.373)
Enough.
Kristin Johnson (18:56.046)
because their HRT is... Correct. Yeah. Yeah. But that's the thing is we focus so much of our health on how we feel and that's important. Lived experiences are relevant, but you don't feel your arteries stiffening. You don't feel your bones slowing their remodeling.
Maureen Benkovich (18:56.268)
And does that, that's what I was gonna say. Does that mean they need to have it properly dosed or? Yeah.
Maria Claps (18:58.24)
underdosed.
Kristin Johnson (19:21.686)
And this is why we're so frustrated and tried to be really loud in the book is to say, look, all of these systems are being affected. How it manifests in Marine versus versus Maria versus in Kristen may each one be different, but the vast majority of us aren't going to feel the things that we're most concerned about.
Maureen Benkovich (19:41.248)
Right, the things you're talking about are insidious. It's very quiet that it's happening. And in Western medicine, it's not until we have the heart attack or diabetes or all those things that they take a look at it. So are you now educating younger women on, if you start entering perimenopause, come see us or we need to talk about getting on HRT? Yeah, with this book, guys.
Maria Claps (19:44.076)
Yeah, correct.
Kristin Johnson (19:44.91)
Correct. Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (19:49.324)
It's not until the bottom falls out. Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (20:02.51)
We're trying to. mean, yeah, here's the thing. And I think we just can all be honest about it is that there's a stigma and I don't mean a stigma in talking about menopause. mean, there's a stigma along with aging, right? And if you're a 41 year old, do you really think that the 41 year olds can see 55 year old Kristen or 57 year old Maria and think like, we have the same concerns?
Maria Claps (20:03.79)
We're trying.
Kristin Johnson (20:29.006)
Because over their dead bodies, do they want to be seen as a 55-year-old postmenopausal woman? Not them, they're young and virile at 41. We're like, sweetheart, you're headed to the same place. And by the way, if you get in front of it, you're going to have a hell of a better outcome than some of the stuff that we went through. And that's what we're trying to get across to these ladies.
Maureen Benkovich (20:36.16)
Mm-hmm.
Maria Claps (20:37.838)
You
Maureen Benkovich (20:49.292)
Yeah, I really resonate with this because I was in that window that missed taking hormone replacement. I stopped drinking about three and a half years ago, but in my 40s, I was, you know, working out and drinking and thinking I was invincible. And here I am almost 60 and I just got diagnosed with osteopenia, even though I lift weights all the time. I just started the hormone replacement therapy just two years ago. And I want to go down this road because I started with something called pellets because I didn't know what I was doing. And I went to a whole...
Kristin Johnson (21:00.834)
Yeah. Yeah.
Maria Claps (21:08.056)
Mm-hmm.
Maria Claps (21:17.676)
You know now.
Maureen Benkovich (21:18.832)
Yeah, I've read your book and I've been telling my friends, wait a minute. So can you talk about that? then some of us look for these holistic doctors and then we go down this whole road of not knowing what we're doing and getting pellets and still not feeling any benefit.
Maria Claps (21:32.514)
Yeah. And yeah. And, you know, some holistic doctors holistic is this, there's, it's not a guarantee that you're going to get the right thing. You may get pellets from them. You may get bias from them. So I'm sorry, Maureen, did you want us just to get into pellets now or?
Maureen Benkovich (21:41.525)
Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (21:48.02)
Yeah, so, well, two things. So I guess I was saying I was one of those women in my 40s who was like, I'm invincible. I don't need anything like that. yeah, exactly. And then when I did start looking into it, I went down a whole road of not really understanding what I was looking for and into the pellet road. So I guess those are two separate kind of questions.
Maria Claps (21:53.314)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (21:54.102)
Yeah, it doesn't apply to me because I still have a cycle. Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (22:07.79)
Well, at least you got the pellets and not the birth control pill, because that's typically what's the number first off it. Yeah. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (22:12.736)
I've heard of people, yeah. But the pellets, for instance, they're not regulated, right? That's sort of the problem. Or can you explain what is the issue?
Maria Claps (22:20.014)
Well, what do you mean by regulated? They're not absolutely approved, but that's not necessarily a mark against it. Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (22:25.134)
Right, right. They're compounded. The issue is the dosing. The issue is, so here's the thing. Every single, again, we talked about, every single one of us has a different optimal sort of hormone level, different optimal approach, et cetera. Pellets are a one size fits all, right? Like I might be able to take 200 milligrams Advil and kill my headache, you might need 600, right? But with pellets, we're pretty much gonna get this dose and then you're stuck with it. It gets inserted inside of you.
Maureen Benkovich (22:25.354)
Okay, what is the issue?
Maureen Benkovich (22:30.668)
Okay.
Maureen Benkovich (22:42.656)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (22:46.518)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (22:52.33)
Right.
Kristin Johnson (22:54.07)
And God forbid you have an adverse outcome. What if it makes your heart race? What if it makes you super anxious? What if you have a histamine response? This is becoming more and more of a problem with a of ladies. If you have any sort of adverse response to those pellets, A, tough luck, they're not coming out. B, how do you know which hormone it was? Sometimes you're getting a multi-hormone pellet. Well, which hormone is affecting you? C, how do you adjust it?
Maureen Benkovich (23:11.744)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (23:21.558)
Good question.
Maria Claps (23:22.062)
Yeah. With pellets, you're good for like, when you're overdosed for a month, then you're like maybe in a sweet spot for a month. And then you're, you know, losing your butt for another month. It just it's that's not it's
Kristin Johnson (23:24.12)
How do you know?
Maureen Benkovich (23:30.251)
Yes.
Kristin Johnson (23:31.778)
decision.
Yeah. And they're pricey. mean, we get it. They hurt, you know, there is a slight incision, whatever. I'm sure the pellet doctors are like, no, they're not freaking out right now. you know, the sad thing is, is when you're seeing, let's say, estheticians handing out pellets, we have a problem, okay? Hormones are super powerful. We recognize their power when we're trying to get pregnant, when we're regulating periods and having painful cramps and all these things like,
Maureen Benkovich (23:38.86)
and they hurt.
Maureen Benkovich (23:47.948)
you
Kristin Johnson (24:04.908)
We see the power of the hormones then, but suddenly we're just going to put them in the hands of, I don't know, a dermatologist who's going to shove a pellet in your butt cheek. And then what? Right? What's going to happen when you have that adverse response? That dermatologist, that esthetician, they are not hormone doctors. You need to go to someone who is hormone savvy, who is well-trained and who can troubleshoot. Nobody can troubleshoot a pellet until it's out or, you know, done sort of thing. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (24:33.292)
So who is hormone savvy these days? Who do we look for in our areas?
Kristin Johnson (24:37.518)
There's a lot of people claiming it.
Maria Claps (24:38.552)
Well, yeah, you, okay. So here's a really, this is a fundamental problem. Women, a lot of women hear about HRT and then they're like, I want it. And then they don't put any time into learning about it or learning what their options are exactly. that's, you and the women like you or who used to be you are exactly who we wrote the book for, right? But we want, we hope, you know, not everyone is curious about their health, but we hope that you are curious enough
Maureen Benkovich (24:52.428)
You
Maureen Benkovich (24:57.28)
You. Yeah.
Maria Claps (25:06.872)
to want to learn. You do need to kind of go in with a little bit of knowledge. Otherwise, you are beholden to that practitioner's favorite way of doing HRT.
Kristin Johnson (25:17.486)
Yeah. And we like to say just because you have a script pad and you can write a prescription for hormones does not a hormone provider make, right? And it's sad because most of us, if any of us were asked maybe five, 10 years ago when we didn't know things or for me and Maria 10, 15 years ago, who was the first person I would turn to for hormones? OBGYN.
Maureen Benkovich (25:26.134)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (25:38.956)
ecologist.
Kristin Johnson (25:39.874)
Right? Yeah. OB-GYN, absolutely. know, the person who delivered my babies, you've got a relationship with them. They're doing vaginal checks on you every year. You've got a little intimacy there. Okay. Guess what? OB-GYNs are not trained in menopause and hormone therapy. They're not. The same thing as you can't go to your OB-GYN for fertility problems, you go to a fertility specialist, right? So it's unfortunate that women don't have this obvious path within their regular care team to get the,
Maria Claps (25:40.748)
Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (26:08.232)
age appropriate care that they need for their hormones. It's not going to happen without you seeking someone out. So how do you seek someone out? there's Maria just said, know, holistic, functional, integrative, those are all kind of diluted terms now, you know, lot of people can go to kind of some weekend certification and become functional, even if they're an MD. So that's not necessarily your greatest thing.
Maureen Benkovich (26:22.401)
Right?
Maureen Benkovich (26:26.486)
Mm-hmm.
Kristin Johnson (26:32.212)
many of them are focused on symptoms because they've gone to like one medical society's training, which is the North American menopause society or the menopause society. call themselves now. their focus is symptom management. Their focus is osteoporosis and hot flashes. That's pretty much it. Well, that's not really going to help the vast majority of women because you don't know you have osteoporosis till you have it. And if you don't have hot flashes like me and Maria, you don't qualify. So.
Maureen Benkovich (26:49.068)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (26:56.993)
Right?
Kristin Johnson (27:01.486)
you know, finding someone that's committed to what your goals are is the first thing, but that requires you to know your goals. Do you want to just lubricate your vagina so you have better sex or do you want to make sure that age 70, you're not breaking a bone when you slip off the sidewalk, right? what would...
Maureen Benkovich (27:19.724)
But that's why the education is so important that's in your book because what you just said about the heart starting in your 40s, if people, if more women would know that, and that was in the forefront of their mind, then they would know that goal is what they're looking for.
Maria Claps (27:31.278)
That's right.
Kristin Johnson (27:32.366)
Correct. So it's know your goals, understand what's able to meet the needs of your goals, right? A tiny little patch can get rid of your hot flash. A tiny little patch can't necessarily protect your heart and your bones. So again, it's you have to go in with your own sort of toolkit already supplied, and then you're trying to find a provider to match. So it's gonna take women to get past the white coat syndrome,
to ask questions, interview them, know, ask them, do they understand that hormones can help in chronic disease prevention? If they don't understand that, or they don't agree that they're probably not the person for you. Yeah, so it's the issue is in our society today, everyone wants an easy button. They also love shiny objects. And so they get distracted and they go with the quickest, fastest, easiest thing they can get. Unfortunately, that's usually gonna be what you got, pellet.
Maureen Benkovich (28:02.945)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (28:28.523)
Yes.
Kristin Johnson (28:32.471)
right? Or they're going to maybe get a patch and some progesterone. And that's it. And we're trying to sell everyone in the book. There's so much more than just that.
Maureen Benkovich (28:42.72)
good news is in this world of being able to now see people virtually, we can seek out people like Kristin and Maria. So how would people do that? How do you treat people virtually online? What happens there?
Kristin Johnson (28:48.79)
Yeah.
Maria Claps (28:57.868)
Yeah, I mean, we work with them to improve their nutrition, their gut health. A good amount of the tests that we use are at home, but we can also requisition blood work. So we use LabCorp. another thing, we didn't speak about this, but that goes hand in hand right alongside HRT is looking at your thyroid and thyroid health. So we can look at that.
Maureen Benkovich (29:07.819)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (29:20.266)
Yes, thyro pause, think you called it.
Maria Claps (29:27.614)
And so again, nutrition, lifestyle, looking at different body systems, coaching you, helping you identify your goals, and then matching you with one of our providers who also does telemedicine. So we basically help you be a healthy host for your HRT.
Maureen Benkovich (29:30.934)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (29:43.19)
Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (29:48.0)
Yeah, and that I got that all throughout the book, all about the host, us, has to be healthy through our lifestyle choices and the way we eat. Yeah, yeah, that's such a holistic way to approach this. And so I think, like I said, unique. I do want to go back to this point because this is the Sober Fit Life podcast. And you did say in this quote that the hormone therapy and alcohol consumption, the poor outcomes are so strong. What are the poor outcomes that you're
Maria Claps (29:54.646)
Have the best experience.
Maureen Benkovich (30:17.718)
talking about the links, the correlations that you see in these studies.
Kristin Johnson (30:22.574)
Well, you have the conversion of your good hormones into not optimal hormones as Maria kind of went through that estrone, right? You're going to have more production of estrone from even taking your estradiol. So there's that. You're also, burdening the liver. So you are creating some metabolic issues. You could end up with higher triglycerides, which is almost always part and parcel of what we see with women who drink. Triglycerides are going to drive more inflammation and plaque deposition and immune response essentially in the vascular system.
Maureen Benkovich (30:29.653)
Right, Estrone.
Maureen Benkovich (30:49.046)
Mm.
Kristin Johnson (30:51.95)
You can increase clotting risk. So increase your stroke risk. There's just, you know, there's again a whole system approach. mean, at the end of the day, alcohol is a toxin. mean, people don't love to hear that. You can tell me all you want about the stupid polyphenols in your red wine, but that's a side thing, right? So, you know, it's definitely it's having system-wide effects that are then creating an unhealthy environment for those hormones.
Maureen Benkovich (31:03.286)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (31:08.214)
Right? Yeah, yep.
Kristin Johnson (31:20.066)
So A, it turns your hormones unhealthy, but B then it's creating this unhealthy environment for the hormones, right? So yeah, for that healthy host piece. And that's why we always tell women like, pick your poison. you gotta either choose your hormones in your healthy aging or you choose your nightly glass of wine.
Maureen Benkovich (31:25.515)
the environment.
Maureen Benkovich (31:40.234)
Yeah. you know, alcohol is a drug. It's addictive. Do sometimes people say, you know what, I'm going to choose my wine. Do you ever experience that?
or those clients just disappear.
Maria Claps (31:51.534)
I think plenty of our clients still drink, whether or not they save it for once in a while, occasions, weekends, it's up to them really. So we can't police what they're doing for sure. We think the less the better to be perfect with this. Kristen mentioned the things that are happening, the physiology, but then you have women are like, I'm bloated or.
Maureen Benkovich (32:04.106)
Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (32:08.93)
Yeah, really educate.
Maureen Benkovich (32:09.108)
Yeah. Yeah.
Maria Claps (32:18.924)
know, I wish my hormones helped my skin better. Well, you keep drying it out and reducing your nutrients by drinking. Or, you know, I have anxiety or why why am I swelling and things like that? Like, you know? Well, right, the big one. So those Yeah, that just that just really moneys the waters. Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (32:31.15)
Or my sleep is disrupted. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (32:34.508)
It's all alcohol. Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (32:40.012)
And it's a trickle, right? If you don't have good sleep, you're going to have an impaired metabolic, you know, kind of function the next day. You're probably not going to feel all that great about working out, or if you do work out, it's actually more catabolic because you're doing it in a stressed body that's under slept. I don't make great food choices when I'm tired. I don't know about you, you know, and it just becomes kind of this vicious circle. And so, you know, is that serving you? And I think that sometimes, I mean,
Maureen Benkovich (32:55.04)
Mm. Right?
Kristin Johnson (33:05.294)
for anyone out there who still drinks and, you know, thinks, gosh, I was going to work with you, but not now. I mean, we're not judging. We just want you to make really good decisions and at least make informed decisions. If you still want to have your nightly cocktail or your six glasses of wine on the weekend or whatever, we try and tell women, know, can you keep it to one or two glasses a week? You know, that's not like, you're not starving there, you know, like you're still getting a little bit of hit, but if that's what you want to do, that's fine. Just do it with the understanding.
Maureen Benkovich (33:10.38)
Right.
Yes.
Kristin Johnson (33:35.222)
of the possible consequences. That's all we're saying. But to be dismissive and think that it's no big deal because it hasn't affected you yet, we will call BS on you to your face time and time again. A, you do not know that it hasn't caused problems. Let me do a whole metabolic blood workup on you and I guarantee you'll find a problem. And then B, even if you got away with it, is that how you want to age? Because it's going to catch up with you.
Maureen Benkovich (33:35.391)
Right.
Maureen Benkovich (33:46.796)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (33:55.222)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (34:02.117)
It definitely ages you fast. Yeah. But maybe you don't realize how rare this is that you're being so outspoken. I think you're just thinking it's so important because I used to say to my doctor back when she'd be writing me another bottle of antidepressant, I'm like, I think I'm drinking too much. And she's like, you're healthy, you work out, you're fine, you're in your 30s and that's all I needed to hear. So that's why I love that you're
Kristin Johnson (34:04.034)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kristin Johnson (34:11.117)
Hahaha
Maureen Benkovich (34:29.386)
You're saying this, you're going out on a limb, but you're backed up by science. You just said you could run a whole metabolic panel and show people. And that's what I'm about on here too, is helping people make informed choices. So that's just why I just applaud your, as you said, unapologetically stating.
Kristin Johnson (34:44.696)
When we put our money where our mouth is, I haven't had a drink in 34 years. Maria, you've been how long? decade? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not like we're out here, you know, having tossing one back every week ourselves. I mean, we've made a distinct decision. And look, my husband's a musician. He's in a band. spent a lot of time in bars. I'll get up on a stool and dance. Like, I think sometimes we as women think that there's that, you know, you're a little bit more uninhibited.
Maria Claps (34:50.675)
five or six years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (34:59.37)
Yes.
Kristin Johnson (35:13.486)
when you have alcohol, et cetera. And I always love to challenge people and like, I'll dance on the table with you. Let's go. Let's go. You don't need this. You don't need it for social interaction. You don't need it to like get rid of your stress for the week. Fun fact, alcohol is actually a stressor to the body. So you're just compounding it. You know, the lies that we've told ourselves around alcohol are so strong. And we just want to kind of challenge women to be like, try it. Just try it.
Maureen Benkovich (35:34.305)
Yes.
Maria Claps (35:40.91)
Yeah, and it's also another thing that just I keep coming back to, and that is like, we have certain inherent risks for breast cancer, right? Being a woman and having a birthday every year, basically growing older and having boobs makes you at risk for breast cancer, those two things alone. then, you know, alcohol's a known risk for breast cancer. It's like, to me, it's putting gasoline on the fire doing it.
Kristin Johnson (35:53.326)
Thank
Maureen Benkovich (35:53.718)
Right.
Kristin Johnson (36:09.07)
Yeah, I can even imagine. I I had breast cancer last year. I do not have breasts any longer. I haven't had a drink in 34 years. So I get it when women are like, but it still happens. And I'm like, yeah, but it's like a ticket just to the front of the line. If you're going to continue with your alcohol, you know, like I did everything I could and I still ended up with it. You know, was it partially genetics? Was it exposure? You know, my mom died of breast cancer, whatever. But if I had continued drinking,
Maureen Benkovich (36:09.492)
It is.
Maureen Benkovich (36:14.954)
Is that right, Kristin?
Maria Claps (36:24.406)
Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (36:37.742)
I probably would have been diagnosed a hell of a lot sooner than I was, and that's not worth it.
Maureen Benkovich (36:40.256)
Mmm.
Maria Claps (36:42.773)
Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (36:42.826)
Yeah, I know someone who recently actually just had some cancer removed from their breast and she's still drinking. And I just said, do you understand the link? And she said, yeah, but they cut it out. And I didn't even know what to say to that. Yeah. Yeah. so this helping people be more informed in your book will help people make a much better informed choice. So I just love this. So,
Maria Claps (36:57.932)
Yeah, that's it. Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (36:58.902)
It's really sad. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (37:10.484)
I always ask people on my podcast and tell me what you both do now that I know you both don't drink. What do you do to be sober fit? What do you do in your life? It can be mental, physical, spiritual or all.
Kristin Johnson (37:23.982)
Gosh, I mean, I haven't drank in so long to be perfectly honest. When I stopped drinking, I turned 21. I had drank for almost a decade prior, if that tells you anything. So I have my own past relationship with it. I think I used it as a crutch. I use it for that inhibition factor. Use it to kind of, I don't know, claim that it's like my reward at the end of the week. I never quite understood that, but I use that excuse and trope all the time. For me, it is...
Maureen Benkovich (37:33.13)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (37:53.794)
you know, putting away the devices, it's getting outside, it's raising my oxytocin with my dogs, it's listening to good music, it's sitting down with my husband, et cetera. It's the things that matter. And, you know, I grew up in an environment in which alcohol separated my parents from kind of being present. And I never wanna not be present for my kids and my family. So...
Maureen Benkovich (38:01.93)
Love it.
Maureen Benkovich (38:14.475)
Yes.
Kristin Johnson (38:19.01)
That's the thing is like, you're gonna get the best of me. My kids might sometimes wanna be like, God, it would be great to have you muted for a little bit, mom, tough, you're gonna get all of me. And so I just look at it like that. we've moved, my husband and I have moved many times. And let me tell you, when you move as an adult and you're trying to make friends and you're going to the neighborhood party, you're hosting people or whatever, and you don't have alcohol to offer, let alone to consume.
Maureen Benkovich (38:25.068)
you
Maureen Benkovich (38:29.291)
I love that.
Maureen Benkovich (38:37.27)
Yes.
Kristin Johnson (38:45.966)
it can be awkward for people. And so I'm out there. I'm like, oh, we haven't drank in 30 years. Feel free to bring your own, know, whatever. Like I'm not going to judge. have no problem being around it and not some tea totaler or whatever, but it's just, I just tell them like, this is just my choice for me, whatever. And the funny thing is, is that when you live your truth and people start to see, they'll be like, God, Kristin, you're the one in the group that doesn't have these health issues. You're not dealing with pancreatitis or you're not whatever. And I'm like,
Maureen Benkovich (38:55.83)
Right.
Maureen Benkovich (39:14.894)
There's a reason.
Maria Claps (39:15.054)
you
Kristin Johnson (39:15.566)
You know, I mean, maybe your 500 bottles of wine that you consumed during COVID maybe had something to do with it. So I just try and like not judge, live who I am and be totally open and upfront with it because it's really, you disarm the whole topic if you just own it. And I'm like, I don't drink. We don't drink, you know, whatever. Totally. I've got a wine cooler downstairs full of wine bottles because everyone still gives it to us for Christmas. I haven't figured that out.
Maria Claps (39:21.582)
You
Maureen Benkovich (39:31.222)
Yes. Yep.
Kristin Johnson (39:41.536)
And so I just tell them like, this is great. Next time you come over for dinner, you can go get your own bottle of wine out of my fridge.
Maureen Benkovich (39:45.834)
You can have your own wine. Yeah, I think that's important what you're saying because what I do when I coach people is I help them relearn how to do those things, socialize without alcohol, be okay with the discomfort. You will learn, you know, how to get through those 10 minutes of social anxiety if that's what you have.
Kristin Johnson (39:55.34)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kristin Johnson (40:04.258)
The vast majority of the time, if someone has an issue with you not drinking, it's an issue they have with their own drinking. So I have no problem just being like, you know, people are going to respond to the situation the way you invite them to respond to it. So if you act timid or act embarrassed or act sort of like sketchy, know, cagey about, I don't drink or not tonight, or I'm taking the weekend off or whatever, and you're kind of covering for this choice that you've made in your lifestyle, that's going to bring back exact
Maureen Benkovich (40:10.86)
100%.
Kristin Johnson (40:33.978)
the reaction you're trying to avoid. So if you just be like, I gave up drinking 34 years ago, wasn't a good fit for my life, but hey, let's have a good time. And I've got stuff downstairs if you want it. Meanwhile, I'm going to have my poppy, you know, and we'll call it a day. It becomes a non-issue. It's just a non-issue. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (40:51.08)
Yeah. Yeah. I love how you said that, you know, just no longer serves you. You made a choice for yourself and you're setting a great example, especially as a health practitioner. It's so important, I think. And Maria, what about you? What do you do to be sober fit?
Kristin Johnson (40:54.594)
Yeah. Yeah.
Maria Claps (41:03.912)
you know, when I gave it up about five or six years ago, it was sort of like it was hanging on very minimally, maybe one drink a weekend, every other weekend. But I just do remember like going out to dinner with my husband, maybe having a glass of wine and then having like a, a sweet dessert. think it was, the custard, the big custard with anyway, I'm just thinking about that. And like between the alcohol and the sugar and then, and the very like waking up the next day, I was.
Maureen Benkovich (41:11.148)
Mm-hmm.
Maria Claps (41:33.166)
pretty depressed. And I said to myself, this has to be food. know, the sugar probably not so good, but probably much less bad, you know, if I hadn't had the alcohol as well. And it was just, it kind of hung on for a while. And I think I said to myself, like, what are you doing? Like, you're kind of miserable the next day. And like I said, this was like one drink, one drink, literally just one.
Maureen Benkovich (41:37.814)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (41:57.472)
Yeah.
Maria Claps (41:59.918)
You didn't sleep good. You kind of like a feeling in the morning and I was like what what the hell are you doing? So I just stopped and I I just do not miss it. In fact, honestly, I'm just very lucky. I just I would I repel it like I want nothing to do with it even sometimes I'll just watch TV and you see people in movies or whatever getting drunk or and I and the one thing that drops into my mind is like Now I think I just said this to my husband last night
one drink for most people or for some people, fine, enjoyable, whatever. But then it's like you cross over that line and you're just F'd, right? It's just, it's got so much ability inherent in it to be so damaging, whether it's to relationships or to health. So I really just do not miss it at all.
Maureen Benkovich (42:38.401)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (42:49.388)
You got it.
Maureen Benkovich (42:52.992)
Yeah, that is so good for the audience to hear.
Maria Claps (42:55.02)
I just find joy in, like I do find joy in the work that I do. I do find joy in my family. I love to be, I'm an outdoors person. Those things make me happy, so.
Kristin Johnson (43:05.472)
And I'd rather eat the chocolate cake. So it's gonna be that chocolate cake. So yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (43:05.6)
Yeah. You're right. Me too. Me too.
Maria Claps (43:07.522)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (43:12.98)
Yeah, I love that both of you really, really excellent modeling and sharing. Thank you. So where can listeners find you online, follow you and learn about your book, anything else you want to share?
Maria Claps (43:23.032)
So they can follow us on Instagram, wiseandwell. We try to be really very, very educational forward. Not a ton of selfies, once in a blue moon, but not a ton of memes, once in a blue moon. But we try to really educate people, like what's going on in the endothelium, what are just different things, like breast cancer. We speak about all these things. And then wiseandwell.me is our website.
Maureen Benkovich (43:32.873)
You
Maureen Benkovich (43:50.134)
Mm-hmm.
Maria Claps (43:50.188)
And then our book is at Barnes and Noamals, Amazon, probably a bunch of independent book sellers. think it's available Australia, Canada, internationally. It's being published in French and Spanish, I think.
Maureen Benkovich (44:02.742)
Congratulations.
Kristin Johnson (44:03.598)
This 2026 or five, I forget.
Maria Claps (44:06.286)
And then in 2027, it's coming in Mandarin, which is amazing. Yeah, in China.
Maureen Benkovich (44:10.431)
Wow.
Kristin Johnson (44:10.594)
Yeah. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (44:13.706)
Yes, so you're really spreading this information across the world. That's incredible. Yeah, yeah. Well, it is just so well written and I am already thinking of what are my goals when I reach out to Kristin and Maria because I definitely need some guidance here and I'm so glad you shared so openly with the audience today and it was a pleasure speaking with both of you. Thank you.
Kristin Johnson (44:16.718)
Trying to, yep, yep.
Maria Claps (44:17.41)
We hope, yeah.
Maria Claps (44:34.712)
Thank you.
Kristin Johnson (44:34.83)
Thank you. Thanks for having us.
Maureen Benkovich (44:39.881)
Okay, we did it.
Yes, sir.
