Why Am I So Stiff? The Perimenopause Symptom Nobody Can Explain

If you're in perimenopause or approaching menopause and your body has started feeling tighter, drier, less resilient, or just different in ways you can't quite explain — this episode is for you.

Most conversations about the menopausal transition focus on hormones. And yes, estradiol is changing, and that matters. But in this episode I make the case that the tissue changes so many women experience during this transition aren't just about hormones. They're about the condition of the body those hormones are communicating with.

The stiffness, the tightness, the guarded feeling — these aren't simply the inevitable result of estrogen declining. They're the result of hormones changing within an ecosystem that has been quietly adapting to decades of stress, sleep disruption, nutrient depletion, gut dysfunction, and the demands of modern life.

In this episode I cover:

— Why two women can go through the same hormonal transition and have completely different experiences of it
 — How estradiol influences connective tissue, fascia, collagen turnover, and the gut lining — not just reproduction
 — Why the body can't rebuild what it doesn't have — and what that means for tissue quality during this transition
 — The connection between gut health, the microbiome, and the fascial tightness women describe but can't explain
 — What the estrobolome is and why it matters for hormonal metabolism during perimenopause
 — Why this transition sometimes reveals what the body has quietly been compensating for — and what to do about it
 — Why I named my program Minerals & Microbes, and how both relate directly to this conversation

I also reference my earlier episode on methane dominance and its connection to tissue tightness — check that one out HERE- to go deeper on that specific pattern.

This is the first episode in a series on perimenopause through an ecological lens. Future episodes will go deeper on minerals, the microbiome, connective tissue, and what it actually takes to create a body that's more adaptable — not just during this transition, but through every season of life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Well, hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to the Rewilded Wellness Podcast. I'm your host, Lydia Joy. Guys, we are officially about halfway through summer here. And I don't know about you guys, but I am banking all the solar energy I can get. And I am absolutely loving it and just eating it up. I'm feeling that transition of the descent of the sun. And I'm like, okay, eventually winter will be here. So I am just going for it. And I probably spend close to half or more of every day outside these days. I can do a little bit of work outside, I have a little workstation, or I can do more things outside, which is really nice, as well as enjoy my garden, work in my garden, and so on and so forth. Now I wanted to share, like for those of you who don't know, so I have a big garden transition this year. Um I decided not to rejoin my CSA. Okay. I love my CSA. I've been a part of a CSA for two different CSAs for many years now. But this year I said, you know what? I'm ready. I wanna, I want to replace my own CSA in my garden. So it was, it was a, you know, it's been a big undertaking because I had to add in more space to be able to grow enough of what I need. So I'm kind of in that sweet spot now where all that planning, all the infrastructure, all the layers of the things that we're, you know, you have to do to get a garden going are like really paying off. And instead of like the constant like building phase, I'm kind of settling into a steady, enjoyable daily harvest phase. And right now it's just like so incredibly satisfying. And one of the things about the garden that I've been really loving this year is just like having this opportunity to view it as an ecosystem, right? Like observe this specific ecosystem that I'm in like really intimately. Um, you know, um day after day, I'm like really like observing my garden every single day. I'm watching it shift. I'm watching how it responds to different conditions, uh, the, you know, the the weather, the light, the rain, all the things, right? Um, and everything is responding to the conditions, always. So it's always like, okay, what conditions is this creating this and that, and yada yada. And as you probably know by now, I I really love this as one of the best metaphors we have for understanding the human body and the terrain of the human body. And another thing I want to talk about today in particular is one of the things that I've been noticing in my own body this particular year, uh, especially over the last several months, is something that I wasn't actually expecting. And it took me a little while to kind of like really figure out what was going on. Now, just for some context, I'm about four months away from officially reaching menopause. I turned 52 next month. I haven't had a menstrual cycle since December. Okay. And, you know, I'm not having the nightmare symptoms of this. Like I'm not having hot flashes, night sweats, or any of that stuff. Um, that's not really been my experience. But I'm fascinated by the condition of my tissues and what my experience is, is that my body feels tighter. And I've always had plate pockets of tightness and they tended to be more around stressful periods where I was like hunched down at my desk or I was in the middle of some major stress or whatever. Like I would definitely have tightness in my body, tension, right? But this, like, I've been experiencing like where my body has been more guarded long term, right? And I'm not necessarily experiencing like some any kind of chronic pain or anything, it's just tightness. And it's like it's it isn't, I'm not gonna lie, it can't, it can be annoying, but it's just so different. And at first I assumed it was because, you know, first of all, I live in zone 7B, Southeast PA. We had a pretty intense winter. Um, we had some pretty heavy snows, which kept us inside. So, like my winter was a little more sedentary than I would have liked. I was a little indoor bound because we literally couldn't even walk in the snow because it was so high. Like it was so, so okay, so the winter happens, all that happens, then it's March hits, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can finally get out there and do all these things in the garden. So I busted my butt and I built massive infrastructure. I was doing it all by myself, moving rocks for borders and you know, hauling soil and mulch and all the things, right? And I thought, okay, maybe I'm feeling this tension because of all of that physical labor, right? And I was like, but I shouldn't feel like I should be able to move my body and do these things and not feel this tight. It doesn't make sense. So it definitely was not that. It was like, I'm in a new tissue state. Like this is a new normal for me now. What is going on? And I realized, um, oh, okay, well, I'm in this hormonal transition. And turns out a lot of women can experience these musculoskeletal symptoms. Some are kind of intense, like frozen shoulder and all these different things. Um, so I realized, okay, this is what my body is revealing as I'm in this transition, right? Now, the question is to me always why? Why? Now, I'm gonna be clear, it's I'm definitely in a major hormonal transition, right? Like we can call this like reverse puberty. Um, right? We're on the other side, we're heading into a completely different hormonal transition. Um, and one of the defining biological changes of the menopausal transition is that the or the ovarian uh hormone signaling is um it's being reorganized, right? So estradiol, it's one of our body's major um regulatory hormones, is the hormone that's becoming more variable in this phase, and it's eventually settling into a much lower level than it was during our reproductive years. And this matters because estradiol isn't just involved in reproduction, it actually also helps regulate our collagen turnover, our tissue hydration, even our blood flow, um, connective tissue remodeling, even some of the inflammatory signaling, um, the behavior of fibroblasts, which are those cells that are responsible for building and maintaining a lot of our connective tissue. And of course, there's more. But here's a question I couldn't stop thinking about. Like, all right, so if this hormonal transition is a normal part of a woman's life, why does it affect women so differently? Because I was literally not expecting my own experience, like what I my experience was. I was grateful to not have any other things really occur at all, much if at all. Right? So the question is like, all right, well, why does one woman move through this transition with extreme things or relatively few changes? Um, or maybe someone feels tight and stiff and guarded, right? Like, like she's living in a completely different body. So I don't think that the answer is found by looking at hormones in isolation ever. I think we also have to ask about the condition of our bodies as they are receiving these new hormonal signals, these changing hormonal signals, right? Like, okay, I have a whole story, right? Coming into this era, you know, what went on in my muscles and my connective tissue, and so do you, right? So what's the quality of these things? Like, what's going on with our muscles, right? Um, what's going on with the health of our fascia, our circulation? Where are we at in the nervous system continuum? Like, what phase of cell danger is our body still responding to, right? Like, what's going on in our gut and our microbiome? Do we have, you know, dysbiosis to the point where it's creating these fires in our system, or do we just have some infrastructure issues in our microbiome, right? Because none of this ever operates independently. Everything's always communicating with each other, adapting to each other, responding to the conditions, right? And this could be going on for decades or a whole life, right? Because we all have patterning, right? Like of we have behaviors, we have things that we've done, like we can be shaped, right? And so to me, I oh, I'm like, okay, well, obviously there's a hormonal change, but that's not the only thing. Like, what has determined to this point the condition of my tissues as this, you know, major regulatory hormone is starting to shift? Um, because I don't want it to revolve only around that one piece, like the hormonal piece, right? It's just part of the story. And that's the conversation that I want to have today. Not just what's changing hormonally speaking, but how the ecology of our body influences the way we actually experience this transition, this change. Um, okay, so I'm not sure we spend enough time appreciating our bodies, to be honest. Like our muscles aren't static, neither is our fascia or our tendons or our ligaments or our blood vessels or our skin, our bones, like even the lining of our gut, not static, right? All of these things are living dynamic tissues, and they're constantly breaking down, repairing, remodeling, and they're always adapting to the conditions they're living in. So, like we're our body isn't one fixed structure that's just like, oh, you're slowly wearing out, right? Like it's doing the best with what it has to rebuild itself every day, right? So every day your connective tissue, for example, is going to be responding to what conditions? Like, are you moving that day? Like, are you moving consistently? Like what is your nutrition? Um, how is your circulation, right? Do you have a lot of inflammation? Have you slept well for any amount of years in your life? Like, it seems like nobody does. What level of stress has affected your life? You know what I mean? Like, are you in a hypervigilant survival pattern like modern life has kind of pushed many of us into, right? Um, and then even like, you know, what's the microbial community living inside you doing? It's it's constantly adapting to everything, right? So it's always like this ongoing conversation between all these things, right? So even if, you know, you'll hear people talking about uh the menopause, oh, estrogens declining, right? It isn't simply um reproduction that's now changing in our bodies, right? Um, we have this internal environment all of our tissues have been adapting to for decades, and now suddenly they're gonna change yet again. Okay. And so I personally think yes, we're watching a woman's hormones change, but that's not the only thing. Um, right? Like as I said, it's all these other pieces. And that transition matters, but the condition does too. So I want to kind of like state that up front. The other thing that, you know, as I'm going through the transition, like I, you know, I've been kind of knowing it was coming, right? Like I definitely knew I was heading into it in the last couple years. Um, but it's made me realize like, I don't think that the hormones aren't just change the body per se. I think they like reveal it. Um, it doesn't have to be in a scary way. I think a lot of people are scared of going through this transition. I don't think we have to be. I think it's revealing in an informative way. Um, because sometimes a changing season just exposes what the previous season or seasons had been already maybe quietly or not so quietly compensating for. Now, I see this all the time in my work with clients, and it honestly the same is true whether someone's 25 or 55. I'm always asking the same questions like, what is this person's body adapting to? Like, not just what symptoms are showing up, or even like what diagnosis someone is given, because five people could have the same symptom or the same diagnosis, but not the same conditions shaping them, and therefore not the same path of correction, right? Because we all have that bioindividual, you know, story of our lives. Um, and so every woman as they enter the transition are gonna arrive like totally depleted, right? Like some, some might not. Some are like, you know, actually, I'm feeling pretty good. Somebody might be more inflamed than another. Uh, somebody may have already just like been compensating already. Maybe they had some annoying things, but they just got used to them. But then suddenly they go through the transition and stuff gets louder. You know what I'm saying? Um, so there could be like people needing constant repair in their physiology heading into the transition, and therefore their response might be louder in their body. Uh, there could be people heading into the transition where they don't have any fires anymore. And so this transition is gonna feel different for them. Right? Those are kind of like two very different come from's. And one of the things that I often tell my clients is that you can't rebuild a house while it's still on fire, right? Like, first you gotta put out the fires, right? Assess the damage and then like stabilize and rebuild, right? Um, because otherwise, like, what's the point? You can't rebuild yet. And it's kind of interesting too, like going back to the garden, it's it's kind of reminded me, it's shown me this all this all summer long, like metaphorical fire, meaning like maybe a massive heat wave or like a storm. Um, right, like we've had a couple of pretty big storms come through, and it definitely revealed like places where it broke down things, like maybe plants got broken, or maybe like the stakes weren't strong enough, or there was some erosion somewhere, right? Right. So you clean up, you know, and then you rebuild, right? So point is none of us are entering this from the same starting line, you know. Um like every person that I talk to has such a different backdrop, right? Like they've they've had some type of modern life major stressor, whether it's led to uh really bad sleep, some type of major digestive challenge, um, feeling like just a low reserve and not able to recover from things quickly, like massive inflammation, maybe like sandwich between like a high stress job and caregiving an elderly parent, like, or having been exposed to major environmental things that were challenging to their body, whatever they may be. I think a big one we all probably are familiar with these days is the mold piece of the modern world, right? Or even just simply the pace of modern life, like keeping that fight or flight body going, right? So then we head into the hormonal transition and it doesn't erase all of that. It just shines a brighter light on it. So for the last 12 years, I've been running a hair tissue mineral analysis on myself every quarter. Um, that's just me. Um, I personally love it. It's like a great, like every season changes, right? Like we have changes that we automatically kind of just pivot into, right? So for me, having a hair test every quarter is like, okay, my I feel my body changing. So I want to observe it, right? I want to watch how it's been adapting, what it each test is telling me. It's like telling me a whole new story. And sometimes the story is like, oh, look, we've stabilized this. Like, okay, cool. Or maybe like, oh wow, you have way more capacity now. Like, here's the next layer that can be actually dealt with now, right? Um, and that's how I think healing actually works, right? We it works in layers, right? Seasonally over time. Like sometimes we have more seasons where we have to do a lot more repair. Sometimes we have seasons where you have to stabilize longer. And then sometimes that leads to, you know, being able to truly deeply rebuild and then repeat because maybe in that season you have a little repair here and there or whatever, right? So once we understand that our tissues are constantly repairing and rebuilding, and the next question becomes obvious to me like, well, what are they rebuilding themselves from? Right. Um, so again, every day your body's repairing, doing all these things, healing things that you maybe you don't even know about, right? And that work requires an incredible orchestra of like raw materials all working together, right? Like we've got like amino acids from proteins that we eat, like healthy fats, eventually become part of our cell membranes and do all these other cool things, you know, vitamins and minerals. They they do a lot of cool things, but they also allow thousands of enzymes in our body to do their jobs, um, including the enzymes responsible for building uh cross-linking and maintaining collagen and connective tissue, right? And then, of course, we've got it to get oxygen, right? Water. Um, we need it to go into our body and genuinely hydrate us throughout. Uh, we need to have healthy circulation that actually delivers all the materials to all of the tissues that need them, right? We could go on and on. And here's what I find so interesting about the stiffness and tightness that I myself and many other women experience during this transition is like we could assume now suddenly it's purely hormonal because the estrogen drops and the tissue's just like, I don't know, we're just gonna be dry, dry old ladies, right? It's like, but I think what we're often actually seeing is that okay, this is revealing the body that has been quietly running through its connective tissue reserves for years or never able to truly, you know, keep them robust or rebuild them, or maybe they weren't robust in the first place when we were kids, right? Like, and so suddenly the changing hormonal environment is finally making that way more visible. Um, so if you think about minerals, they aren't just involved in bone health or energy production. They're gonna be directly involved in the many, many processes that keep our connective tissue pliable, right? Um, that keep our that keep us resilient and even capable of remodeling. So, you know, if your reserves are low, um, or your body has just like been burning through them faster than it's been able to like even hold on to them and keep them, you know, in reserve, likely because of like chronic stress or poor digestion or maybe even inadequate um uh nutrition in the first place, um, or just some type of like accumulated demand on the body to the extent that it's draining more than it's gaining, you know what I mean? And so the tissues will lose some of their capacity to be able to truly repair and renew themselves at the way that the way that they're designed to. Okay. And so when estradiol, which has been helping regulate some of those same tissue maintenance. Processes begin to decline, the gap between what the body needs and what it has available becomes way harder to ignore. And that's one of the reasons I love looking at a hair tissue mineral analysis during the season of a woman's life. Um, because it gives me a window into how her body has been adapting and where her nervous system is kind of hanging out and where her reserves are genuinely low. And like, is her body even have good motility and metabolism and therefore, you know, flow of circulation and right. So it really helps give us some idea of the tissue environment and what it looks like beneath the symptoms. And it's definitely going to be asking a much bigger question beyond just like, well, what's going on with your estrogen? Right. Like, obviously that's important and that is a piece, but it's really asking if this person's body has what it needs to keep rebuilding itself through this transition. Right. And if the answer is, uh we don't, obviously, like, or maybe we're running on a lower reserves than we realized, we we shouldn't be surprised when our tissues start feeling tighter or less resilient or slower to recover. That's just, you know, telling us something important about our um our capacity, our reserves, right, our voltage, all those terms, right? And that brings me to what I think is another one of the most important and most overlooked pieces of this conversation. Um, because like if we think about like, all right, maybe many of you are already eating a lot more nutrient-dense food, um, right? We can do that. And we can eat all the healthy food, like proteins, collagen, you know, try to eat mineral-rich, get all the good, healthy fats, all the things. But then we have to think about how those raw materials only really genuinely help us if our body can actually access them. And to me, that's where the gut and the microbiome become central because we're not just thinking, like, okay, this is breaking down my food. It's also helping me utilize it. Um, but the microbiome is also like a very much an active participant in our tissue health. Right. So, like a lot of people think of like, I don't know, what maybe you think of your digestion and your gut as like mainly where you digest your food, right? I actually think of it as the place where our body decides what actually becomes a part of us. Like what actually gets used and absorbed, what actually feeds ourselves, what what actually feeds our microbial population community, what actually can get cleaned out. And I think that distinction matters enormously when we're talking about tissue quality and the kind of like stiffness and guarded feeling so many women describe during this transition. Now, earlier on this year, I ran my own BiomeFX, which is a microbiome test that I do. And it really helped me connect some important dots about what's been happening in my own body. Not all of them. Um, I'm still working through some of what I found as well. But what became clear is that, you know, like for me at that time, there was such a connection to my structure, if you will, like my tissue state, like how it was affecting me, versus just like, oh, you know, my digestion, right? I knew that intellectually, but my body was showing it much more, much more in real time because it was directly influencing the tissue environment. And I think that becomes especially relevant when estrogen is changing like it is. And here's why your microbiome, which is basically like the uh community of organisms living throughout your gut, it isn't just there, it's not like passive, it's actively producing compounds that influence inflammation throughout your entire body. So it produces these things called short chain fatty acids that nourish the cells that line your colon. And then they help regulate our the signaling of our immune system. So immune signaling, right? They also transform the foods that we eat into metabolites that our tissues can actually use. And the microbiome also influences how much systemic inflammation your body is dealing with on a daily basis. And inflammation and tissue quality are deeply connected. Okay. So when uh inflammatory signaling is chronically elevated, even if it's just like a lower level, it's gonna interfere with the normal repair and remodeling processes that keep the connective tissue and fascia healthy and resilient. So a microbiome that's like struggling, say it's low in diversity or it's not producing the compounds it's supposed to produce, that's not just a digestive problem. It now becomes a tissue problem and then therefore a recovery problem and could become a tightness problem as well. Um, and there's also some really cool research um on what's being called the gut fascia relationship. So, you know, the fascia, our connective to living connective tissue network, it's like runs through our whole body, it surrounds our muscles, our organs, our blood vessels, our nerves. Um, it's really sensitive to inflammation. So when the gut microbiome is diotic or the gut barrier is compromised, it tends to drive like this systemic low-grade inflammation. And that chronic inflammatory signaling appears to directly affect uh fascial tissue. And this can then contribute to the like widespread tightness and stiffness and even loss of resilience that so many women describe during this transition and can't quite explain. So it's not just that the fascia is reacting to lower estradiol, it may also be reacting to an inflammatory environment that the gut is either contributing to or failing to regulate. And those are two very different problems with two very different kinds of solutions in a way. Um, so just like to me, this is like something I don't think we're we're asking enough uh when it comes to this phase of our lives, right? Um another thing is there's a subset of gut bacteria called the astrobolum. And this is like a network of organisms that help metabolize and recirculate estrogen in the body. So when this particular piece of the microbial community is disrupted, it can actually affect how estrogen is processed and cleared, which just adds another layer of complexity to um an already shifting hormonal picture. So it can mean that estrogen is being cleared too quickly or recirculated in less favorable forms. And then, of course, that's going to contribute to the hormonal, the hormone, oh my word, the hormonal um variability that makes this transition feel so unpredictable for so many women. And then the other thing about the microbiome is that it also influences neurotransmitter production, including GABA, um, the calming neurotransmitter that helps the nervous system like be able to stand down and relax and allow our tissues to even do the same. Um, so there's a part of our GABA that is produced in our gut. And I really haven't seen anyone with um a good population of this in their test. So, I mean, I haven't seen thousands or anything yet, but um, it's been a pattern that I've seen. And so when we're not producing enough of those calming signals, then you know, the nervous system will just stay a little bit more activated, right? So then, of course, it's gonna be a little more guarded, and then of course the tissues are gonna reflect that. Uh, that's actually one of the ones I have low on my test, just FYI, is part of why I'm, you know, my tissues are a little more on guard. And so, you know, that's another piece of the conversation that's almost entirely missing from how we talk about the menopausal transition. Because if the hormones are changing and the connective tissue is trying to adapt and our fascia is like losing some of its resilience, you know, like the health of the ecosystem that's responsible for managing our inflammation and delivering all our raw materials to where they're supposed to go, and then even like supporting our hormonal metabolism becomes just more important than ever, right? It's one of the reasons why I named my program minerals and microbes. I don't think those are the two things that matter only, obviously, but they represent such a foundation of what the body needs to actually repair and rebuild, right? So that the raw materials in our ecosystem that determines whether they get where they need to go, right? Like it's it's just gonna be so helpful to see uh what the inflammatory environment is allowing, you know, the body to even be able to do in this moment, right? I wanted to mention one more thing that's been a part of my own picture. This isn't gonna apply to everyone, by the way. It's just one thing. I just wanted to name it because it could resonate with some of you. It's just, I can say probably 30-ish percent of my practice affecting those women. Um earlier this year, I did a deep dive into a gut pattern I call methane dominance. I did a whole episode on it. If you want to go deeper, it was called When Your Body Feels Tight, Dry, and Unpredictable, the methane pattern nobody's explaining. So, you know, when methane is elevated in the gut, it actually slows the intestinal transit. Um, and then it increases the smooth muscle tone and it affects our fascial tension. So that itself can like drive a particular kind of tightness and dryness in the body that isn't explained by hormones alone. So for me, as estrogen has begun shifting, I believe this pattern has become more pronounced. Um not because the hormonal transition caused it, it was already there. It's actually been improving um dramatically for me personally, but it's still there. Um, and those changing hormonal signals are just interacting with it all the more. Like it's, you know what I mean? Like the two pieces kind of create a more complex tissue picture than either one alone. All right, so I didn't want to send anyone down a methane rabbit hole and if they don't need it, but you know, um, if it sounds familiar to you, you know, and you want to check that out, especially if like nothing you've tried has quite reached it, it could be worth asking whether there's a gut motility piece underneath the hormonal piece that deserves attention. All right. So if there's one thing I hope you take away from what I'm sharing today, it's this is like the menopausal transition isn't some isolated thing, right? Okay, it's not just your hormones, it's happening inside the whole of your body. Um, you know, and there's a lot of communication going on around how you have adapted over time. And honestly, I know that can sound like too much, but I think it's hopeful because we obviously can't stop the biological transition itself. I don't think we need to, but we can influence the conditions under which that transition ends up unfolding. Okay, we can support ourselves, we can support our gut, we can nourish ourselves, we can, you know, help our microbiome, you know, uh become more resilient, we can restore our mineral reserves, we can even build muscle and improve our sleep and you know, um, help our nervous system so that it can transition better, right? Like I think that's the big thing is like a lot of people is like go from one extreme to another, and you know, that's what feels so destabilizing. And of course, reduce unnecessary inflammation, like, you know, spend time outdoors, move often, you know, eat diverse food, like do all the things right. None of those things stop the transition of menopause, but they can create a body that's more adaptable and go through it much with much greater resilience. And when I look at nature, like adaptability is almost always what determines resilience. Um, and that's to me what I'm always trying to build. I'm not trying to go back to a younger version of me. Um, I'm trying to become more resilient in all ways. And so if this resonates with you, you know, if you've at any point felt like this is me, this is my body, or, you know, something's changing, or I can't quite put the pieces together, you know, this is like exactly the work that I love to do. Um, inside my minerals and microbes program, we don't just chase symptoms or jump around all over the place like throwing spaghetti against the wall. We take a step back, we look at the whole of you and your ecosystem through these lenses of the hair test and the and the biome. So we can look at your um mineral patterns, your microbiome, your nervous system, how you live your life, right? All the things going on. Um, I don't want to like, I'm not here to help people just survive a pending transition that could be really hard. I I would much rather people get more connected to their bodies to understand how their body's functioning as they move through it, to identify where repair is still needed, to recognize, you know, even where rebuilding is finally possible, to create a plan that's actually appropriate for your body, not someone else's, because you know, you could go on the internet and the narrative about menopause is like kind of intense and extreme, right? Um, so, anyways, if you'd like to explore what that could look like, you can find the information in the link in bio. I'm sorry, not the link in bio in my show notes. And, you know, if you have ever wondered what it's like to work with me, check that out. And I really appreciate you guys being here. If you're still here with me, I appreciate you staying through to listen. If this is a topic that had is interesting to you and you want me to expound on it in future episodes, um, you can certainly go to the first link and the text me link and you know, share any of your takeaways or thoughts or what you'd love to hear more about. Um, you know, and just text me directly so we can chat about, you know, going deeper with this conversation. But until next time, I hope you guys keep getting outside, keep banking your solar energy, um, you know, because your body's always adapting to the conditions that it's living in. So um let's make those conditions worth adapting to, shall we? All right, guys. Stay well.