13: What Your Digestion is Trying to Tell You in Perimenopause

Introduction: The New Year New You Trap

Hey, it’s Megan. Grab your coffee and let’s have a convo.

Stop buying gut health supplements for just a second and hear me out. If you’re dealing with gas, bloating, reflux, and that uncomfortable “why can’t I digest salad anymore” feeling that just showed up sometime in your 40s, I need you to know something. This might not just be a gut problem. It could be how you’re eating. And it’s definitely not your fault.

We talked all about gut health in our gut health two-parter, but one thing that is related to gut health that we didn’t talk about is digestion. And I know what you’re thinking. Aren’t they the same thing? They’re not. And understanding the difference is about to help you figure out what’s actually going on.

Gas, bloating, burping, reflux, and other discomfort can be caused by gut issues, but they can also be caused by digestion issues. And in perimenopause, when everything feels like it’s breaking all at once, it’s often both. But the digestion piece is the one that we can actually control most directly.

The Lucy and Ethel Chocolate Factory Chaos

Let me paint you a picture. When I was a kid, I used to watch reruns of I Love Lucy. There was this one episode where she and Ethel were supposed to be working in a chocolate factory on a conveyor belt wrapping chocolates. Only they couldn’t wrap them fast enough to keep up with the chocolates barreling down the conveyor belt. So they started stuffing them in their mouths and in their dresses so that they could hide their slowness.

I want you to think of your digestion like a conveyor belt. If anyone at the beginning doesn’t do their job properly, the whole system gets off track and then we have chocolate candy going everywhere.

But here’s what’s actually happening in perimenopause. The conveyor belt isn’t running smoothly anymore. Sometimes it stops, sometimes it lurches forwards, sometimes the chocolates pile up at one station while another station is sitting empty waiting for work. The whole system becomes inconsistent and inefficient.

And that’s when Lucy and Ethel start panicking and shoving chocolates everywhere. That’s your digestion in perimenopause. Not faster, not slower, just unreliable.

How We Used to Eat (And How We Eat Now)

This may surprise you, but most people are not thinking about how they eat food. It’s one of those autopilot things your brain does, and you probably haven’t thought about it since you were two years old and learning to use utensils. But here’s the difference.

At two, you were probably sitting in a high chair at a table with adults who had smashed up the food you were eating and encouraged you to take small bites and chew before you got any more. You were probably playing and putting down your fork. Okay, it’s you, you were probably throwing it across the room, you rebel. You weren’t checking email. You weren’t standing up. You weren’t watching Netflix or the news. You were totally relaxed with humans who cared about you with nothing else on the docket but the next delicious bite of whatever they were giving you. Pretty sweet digestive situation if you ask me.

Fast forward to now, you’re probably having meals on the run, on the go, rushed in the morning trying to get everyone out the door, or sitting at your desk while checking emails or watching a show. And dinner, does anyone eat at the dinner table anymore? Do you shovel food in your mouth like you’re trying to keep the person next to you from being able to steal a bite? Do you gulp down air while you’re chewing? Do you eat when you are stressed out?

Our modern life is busy and our bodies have not caught up to the times. We can’t thrive very well on completely processed diets. We can’t go days without sleep and we really can’t avoid stopping for food because that’s just not how our bodies work. Sure, there are people doing the one meal a day, OMAD thing, but the ones thriving are few and far between. And really, where’s the fun in that?

Our world has changed so quickly over the past few generations. We aren’t eating the majority of our meals with our families. We don’t live in big communities of people, and we have access to screens, phones, and distractions that we never had before. It’s a lot to take in. No one is arguing for going back in time or wanting to forget technology. But we do need to acknowledge that we’ve built a food culture that is fundamentally at odds with how our digestion really works.

And then perimenopause shows up and exposes every single little crack in that system.

If this Lucy and Ethel chaos sounds familiar, share this episode right now and send it to a friend who’s dealing with the same thing. Text them: “This explains why vacation is the only time I don’t feel bloated,” because chances are she needs to hear this too.

The Perimenopause Matrix: When Regulate Meets Fuel

So why does this matter so much in perimenopause? Well, my peri-friend, I am so glad you asked. This is where the Perimenopause Matrix becomes essential, because what’s happening isn’t just a Fuel pillar problem—it’s about how your Regulate pillar and your Fuel pillar interact. When one is struggling, the other can’t function properly. Let me explain what’s actually changing.

One of the biggest changes that women notice in perimenopause is a change in stress resilience. This is a dysregulated HPA axis, or as I like to call it, the anxiety creep. As in, it starts to creep into everything. Your Regulate pillar—the system that manages stress, cortisol, blood sugar balance, and your nervous system—is under pressure in perimenopause.

And here’s what that means for digestion. When you’re stressed out, your body is not actively prioritizing digestion because if there’s a bear, who cares if you digested lunch? But if the bear is actually your emails, your boss, the news, then that can be a really big problem because you’re going to encounter a lot of those far more often than a bear—unless you work in a nature preserve and then you probably just aren’t as stressed out as the rest of us.

The drop in hormones affects how quickly food moves through the digestive system, which can cause gas, constipation, bloating, and loose stools. And as we talked about during our gut episode, the microbiome changes with the decline in hormones, which can make the barrier less effective and then the diversity drops. Lower diversity is associated with the regular gas, bloating, constipation, and loose stools, but also poor mood and sleep.

But here’s what I see in practice all the time. You could have both gut issues and digestion issues happening at once. Maybe your microbiome is struggling, but you’re also eating every meal standing up while checking email in a completely stressed out state. So which one is the problem? Often it’s both, but the digestion piece—how you’re eating—is usually the easier one to address first.

Ever notice how you digest better on vacation? That’s not because the food is magical or because your gut magically healed. It’s because you’re actually sitting down, relaxed, eating slowly, maybe even with other people. Your Regulate pillar finally got a break, and suddenly your Fuel pillar can do its job.

How the Digestive Conveyor Belt Actually Works

So let’s talk about how this conveyor belt is supposed to work and where it’s breaking down. The first step to digestion happens when your brain sees food and anticipates that food. If you ordered food, then your brain may already be thinking about it. This is important because your mouth needs to produce enzymes and saliva to help digest your food. If you’re stressed out and your brain is preoccupied with a bear and not thinking about food, then your mouth is not getting the signal to start preparing. This is the first station on that conveyor belt. And if the station doesn’t turn on, everything downstream struggles.

Being in rest and digest is incredibly important for your digestive system to work. If you’re super stressed out, it might be wise to push back the meal until after your stress levels have come down. You can also take time to do some box breathing or a quick 4-7-8 breath to bring yourself to a more relaxed state. Even exhaling longer than your inhales will help and this only takes a few minutes. You can do it at your desk and nobody would know.

Before you take your first bite, think about your eating situation. Are you sitting? At a table? Eating off a plate with utensils? With other humans? Proceed! Are you standing or sitting at a desk while reading emails, watching a show or reading the news? Eating out of a takeout container you are bringing to your mouth so you can inhale it faster? Let’s take a second to talk through this.

As always, if you’re not having any digestion problems, are pooping like a champ and feel like a million bucks after eating a sandwich while running between meetings, by all means, keep on keeping on! But, if you are not, let’s think about meal hygiene. There are lots of ways to think about this but the biggest thing to remember is you need to be relaxed. That matters the most.

Things that make you relaxed are friends and family to eat with. Community—we humans actually love people and connection despite your grouchy self hating the world because it’s Wednesday and everyone is annoying. Sitting makes us digest better—again, if you are standing your body is confused about what it should be doing. Plates, bowls and utensils make it feel like more of an event and often with utensils you can set them down between bites. Or if you have a plate you can put your sandwich or wrap down between bites. This slows down how much food you are putting into your system, no overloading, no rushing, and allows for talking if you are with other people.

Solo meals are a thing and it’s not always comfortable to eat alone but you do not want to be watching something stressful like the news or a documentary that is upsetting. Watching can be distracting, so we aren’t always as mindful and may miss fullness cues if we’re really absorbed in the show. There are many ways to create a relaxing environment to eat in that literally break all of these suggestions. But in general, this covers a lot of the stressful ways that people are eating. The bottom line is your body should be relaxed when you are eating food.

Chew Your Food (Yes, Really)

When you take bites, you’re supposed to chew until the food in your mouth turns to liquid. Seriously, liquid. You are not a cat. Your digestive system is not built to swallow chunks of food. You have a very big set of teeth that allow you to tear, chew, and grind. Use them.

I’ve had clients with terrible gas and burping. We talked through habits and discovered that they are chunking their food and force swallowing after only a handful of chews. It takes some serious work, but they get there and most of their digestive issues resolve by changing their eating habits.

Hydration is also really important for digestion. If you’re dehydrated, it’s hard to make saliva and digestive juices. Ever tried the saltine challenge? Well, then you know how hard it is to swallow and chew with a dry mouth. Having some water with your meal can help with hydration and lubricating your mouth.

So remember that conveyor belt idea? Your brain has to do its job and turn on the saliva and enzymes. That’s the Regulate pillar supporting the Fuel pillar. Then you have to do your job and chew completely and not overload the system. And then, your stomach is going to break down all of that liquid food that you’re swallowing. That’s its job. But if you then send down big chunks of unchewed food, your stomach has a real hard time going about its business.

Your Stomach: First Line of Defense

Your stomach is part of the first line of defense for your immune system. It needs to be able to get the pH very low so it can kill any bacteria or other organisms that might be pathogenic. If your stomach can’t get the pH low enough, it can’t kill off the invaders. It also can’t extract B12, which is extremely important for your body because it can’t make it.

If this is a place where you’re having trouble, first think about whether you’re stressed when you’re eating, which can sometimes be hard to distinguish, but is often why people who have digestive issues feel better on vacation. Sometimes it’s going someplace that has really high quality food, but a lot of the times it’s not being stressed when they eat.

This is a place where digestive enzymes and bitters can be useful. If you know you’re going to be working on a really stressful project and you get digestive issues, you can preemptively take digestive enzymes with your meals to support you during that stressful time. You can also use bitters in water before a meal or after if your stomach is upset. This is also a really great travel trick.

From Intestines to… Well, You Know

Next, all of this goes into your intestines where it finishes getting broken down and then gets absorbed. If your stomach can’t kill off pathogens, then your intestines take over. They do have a lot of immune cells so they can defend your body. Your intestines break all that you’ve eaten down into even smaller bits where it can then be absorbed and taken up by the bloodstream for your body to use. Then all the leftovers—fiber, water, dead cells—get moved into the large intestine and that is what we call poop.

Speaking of poop, are you having a bowel movement every day? You should be. This is important for your health. There are of course exceptions to every rule, but generally speaking, every day is a healthy cadence. Consistent meals help to trigger the movement in our guts—peristalsis—to start moving things along because more food is coming. The volume from a meal helps to trigger the movement as well.

This is why our body likes routine. Then it knows when to expect meals, it can prepare, and it makes the digestive process more efficient on autopilot. Remember, your body loves efficiency. The less energy and bandwidth it needs to do daily tasks, the better, and routine makes that easier.

The Interconnected Nature of the Perimenopause Matrix

This is why the Perimenopause Matrix looks at all six pillars—Fuel, Move, Recharge, Regulate, Connect, and Clean—because you cannot optimize one pillar in isolation. Your digestion issues aren’t just about what you eat or even how your gut processes it. They’re about stress resilience, nervous system regulation, eating in community versus isolation, and how all of those intersect with declining estrogen and progesterone.

Think about the conveyor belt again. In perimenopause it’s running at inconsistent speeds, sometimes stopping, sometimes lurching forward because of hormonal changes. Yes, but also because of how those changes affect your stress resilience, your sleep, your ability to sit down and eat a relaxed meal. When your Regulate pillar is compromised by anxiety creep, your Fuel pillar can’t run smoothly even if you’re eating all the right foods.

This is the interconnected nature of the Perimenopause Matrix. When I work with clients in the Matrix Lab Review, we don’t just look at where symptoms show up. We look at which pillars are actually breaking down and how they’re affecting each other. Because trying to fix Fuel when Regulate is broken, or assuming it’s all gut when it might be digestion, means that you’re spinning your wheels on interventions that were never gonna work in the first place.

What You Can Do Right Now

So what can you do right now? This doesn’t need to be a huge overhaul, but bringing awareness to the way you eat. Over the next 24 hours, pay attention. Do you have digestive symptoms after your meals? Do you rush? Eat standing up? Inhale your food? Be aware, and then pick one thing that you might implement to help where you feel you need it. If you’re inhaling your food, perhaps you want to put down utensils between bites. If you are completely distracted, maybe you want to try a meal with no screens.

We just need to be more intentional about how we build our default autopilot habits. You have the chance to pick your defaults with some practice.

If you want a simple starting point, before your first bite of each meal this week, take three deep breaths. Not to fix your digestion, but to notice. To bring awareness to where your Regulate pillar actually is. Are you relaxed or tense? Sitting or standing? About to inhale your food? Or do you have space to actually taste it? This isn’t about being perfect. It’s about gathering data on what’s actually happening.

And if you’re realizing that your digestion issues might be part of a Regulate problem, part of a Fuel problem, and you’re not sure which pillar needs to be fixed first—that’s exactly where the Matrix Lab Review comes in. We look at where your pillars are actually breaking down and how they’re affecting each other, not just where symptoms show up. Because that’s the difference between throwing supplements at a problem and actually understanding your perimenopause picture.

You can find a link for the lab review in your show notes. Until next time, take care of yourself. You deserve meals that nourish you and not stress you out.