The Hotflash inc podcast

🌿 Pre-order now: The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy — A Journalist's No BS Guide to the Lay of the Land Five videos, five PDFs, and a bonus guide on talking to your doctor. Launches June 15th for $47. 👉 https://go.hotflashinc.com/hottruth
After six years researching hormone therapy – interviewing more than 250 practitioners, following the money, tracking the influencers, and regularly reading the research – I've still had moments of being completely bamboozled.

In this solo episode, I break down something I've been mapping for years: the 12 distinct belief systems around hormone therapy, from hormone maxxing through to the Estrogen-Free camp and finally, the groups that don't believe hormone therapy is required or even recommended. They're not just different opinions – they're entire belief systems, and most of them are convinced they are right.
This episode is the clearest lay of the land you're going to find – and it's the foundation of my new guide, The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy. Whether you're newly curious, deep in the weeds, or a practitioner trying to understand what your clients are navigating, this one is for you. Pre-order the guide now at https://go.hotflashinc.com/hottruth.
Highlights
3:10 – The commercial forces shaping the HT conversation 4:30 – Research gaps: less data than hormone therapy in cows
5:50 – Why OBGYNs leading the charge is complicated
7:15 – The 12 belief systems, explained
16:20 – Why testing is a minefield
17:45 – Progesterone-forward prescribing and why it's been ignored
23:15 – Traditional medicine systems: TCM, Ayurveda, homeopathy
24:30 – The problem with tribalism inside belief systems 26:00 – What women actually need: a map before a decision
Quotable "I think everyone just has pieces of the puzzle. Very few people have the whole picture." — Ann Marie McQueen, journalist and founder of Hotflash Inc
Resources mentioned
Dr. Felice Gersh episode: The Hormone Therapy Revolution You've Never Heard Of
Dr. Neal Barnard episode: Dr Neal Barnard is a Soy Man
The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy guide: https://go.hotflashinc.com/hottruth
Connect with Hotflash inc TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause Instagram: @hotflashinc X: @hotflashinc YouTube: @hotflashinc Facebook: @hotflashinc LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen
Disclaimer This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

🌿 Grab my new expanded and improved free Fix It Fast Perimenopause List.
🔥 Get on the waitlist for The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy: A Journalist's No-BS Guide to the Lay of the Land (in Under 3 Hours) – it drops June 15.
Luce Beaulieu is a certified menopause coach, researcher-turned-guide, and founder of the Midlife Temple community. She came to this work from the design and business world after being hit simultaneously with menopause, a traumatic breakup, and a toxic workplace in her late 40s, all during COVID. She clawed her way through, found HRT, healing practices and a 4,000-year-old myth called Inanna — and now she helps women do the same.

If you like what you hear, lucky you! Luce has opened the doors to Portals of Liberation, her 4-week guided deep dive into the four thresholds your body is already asking you to cross. Don't wait! It starts June 22.
Highlights
04:30 – Menopause as the most impactful event of Luce's life 05:02 – Why treating it as "physical deterioration" misses the point
05:27 – Grasping for resources beyond the purely medical 08:00 – Leadership, peak career, then menopause hits like snakes and ladders
08:30 – Ageism: from sought-after to invisible
10:21 – 20–30 hot flashes a day, no sleep, depression, suicidal ideation
13:16 – Why she'd assumed she wouldn't "need" hormones
20:30 – The U-shaped descent
23:13 – Getting back into the body through somatic work
29:57 – The missing archetype between mother and crone 32:24 – What a spiritual awakening actually feels like
Connect with Hotflash inc TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause Instagram: @hotflashinc X: @hotflashinc YouTube: @hotflashinc Facebook: @hotflashinc LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen
Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

🌿 Grab the free Fix It Fast Perimenopause List so you can make sense of what's happening and what to do about it. 👉 http://go.hotflashinc.com/fix-it-fast
🔥 Join the waitlist for The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy — the only in-depth guide that looks at all the approaches so you can make an informed decision for your body. Out June 15! 👉 http://go.hotflashinc.com/hottruth-waitlist
Dr. May Hindmarsh is a Canadian-trained family medicine doctor who — along with her husband, also an MD — has been questioning the medical establishment long before it was fashionable to do so. Their podcast, BS Free MD, was born from decades of clinical experience that didn't match what the pharmaceutical reps, the government, or the studies said it should. May has seen it all and she's landed on team what actually works for each individual woman.

May is also speaking as a patient who spent three years convinced something was catastrophically wrong with her, while she was already on hormone therapy and working with hormone specialists.
Highlights
02:04 – Training as scientists vs. trusting pharmaceutical reps
12:39 – Practicing before the Women's Health Initiative — what Mai actually saw clinically
17:47 – How the WHI hit her practice and why the data didn't match what she was seeing
20:25 – Her own perimenopause begins: libido tanks, testosterone at zero, migraines spike
26:17 – When things started to go wrong
35:40 – MTHFR, COMT, and why genetic variations change everything
45:06 – What mast cells actually are and what histamine does in the body (way beyond allergies)
51:22 – Why nutraceuticals can be just as overwhelming as pharmaceuticals
53:11 – Why "just optimize more" culture is so harmful
57:06 – What she's doing now
1:01:14 – Why you have to trust yourself over your practitioner
Connect with Hotflash inc
TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause Instagram: @hotflashinc X: @hotflashinc YouTube: @hotflashinc Facebook: @hotflashinc LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen
Disclaimer
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

Grab the Fix It Fast Perimenopause List: http://go.hotflashinc.com/fix-it-fast
Get on the waitlist for: The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy: A Journalist’s No-BS Guide to the Lay of the Land (in Under 3 Hours)
https://go.hotflashinc.com/hottruth-waitlist
Dr. Maria Luque is a health scientist, fitness expert, and menopause coach – for Halle Berry no less — and the author of New Moves in Menopause.

We talk about body image, exercise addiction, the pressure to "fix" yourself, and what it really looks like to build a movement practice that's sustainable and joyful, and actually yours.
Highlights

02:20 – The slow erosion of identity through life's demands
03:10 – What "I want my 20-year-old body" really means
06:25 – Why community is the biggest tool you have
08:08 – Letting go of the lifelong self-improvement project
10:10 – Grey rocking the body image monster
12:12 – How the fitness industry makes body image worse
13:15 – Having a child as a turning point for body kindness
15:00 – The Valley of Neutrality — and why it's the goal
16:28 – GLP-1s, peptides, and people selling you a magic map
17:15 – Maria's take on supplements and products she won't promote
19:38 – How fear-based menopause content crosses a line
26:41 – Integrity as a core value, full stop
27:08 – Consistency over perfection: why 10 minutes beats 60
30:16 – The truth about heavy lifting (and who actually needs it)
32:23 – Meeting women where they are with equipment they have
34:07 – Maria's own hormone therapy journey — what's worked and what didn't
Get Dr. Maria Luque's 📖 New Moves in Menopause: www.newmovesinmenopause.com
Connect with Hotflash inc TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause Instagram: @hotflashinc X: @hotflashinc YouTube: @hotflashinc Facebook: @hotflashinc LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen
Disclaimer This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.

🌿 Get the free Fix It Fast Perimenopause List — your quick-start guide to feeling better now. → http://go.hotflashinc.com/fix-it-fast
🔥 Want to understand the full hormone therapy landscape in under three hours? Get on the waitlist for The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy. → http://go.hotflashinc.com/hottruth-waitlist
I don't say this lightly: Andrea Donsky's new book Nourishing Menopause is the best menopause book I've read. And I've read a lot of them. What makes it different is that Andrea actually bridges the gap — the one between "go see your doctor and get hormones" and "go natural and avoid everything." Most women don't even know that gap exists. Andrea lives in it, and she wrote an entire book from there. With a foreword from a naturopathic doctor and a foreword from a board-certified OB-GYN and former president of The Menopause Society, this book doesn't pick a side. It just tells you the truth.
Highlights
00:29 – Why Ann Marie called this the best menopause book she's read
01:31 – In perimenopause for 14 years without knowing it 06:57 – Do supplements actually work? The evidence they won't tell you about
10:30 – Artificial sweeteners, seed oils, and why research supports everything
11:35 – Why we need to start listening to our own bodies again
12:41 – 17 reasons women gain weight in perimenopause 13:12 – The Gen X diet culture PTSD we all carry
14:45 – Why the self-blame has to stop
18:46 – What misinformation actually looks like
22:20 – Phantom smells, itchy ears, and why the symptom list needs to grow
24:46 – How to actually evaluate research you see online 26:45 – Why Gen Z kids are already menopause savvy
Connect with Hotflash inc
TikTok: @hotflashinc.menopause Instagram: @hotflashinc X: @hotflashinc YouTube: @hotflashinc Facebook: @hotflashinc LinkedIn: Ann Marie McQueen
Disclaimer
This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your treatment, supplements, or lifestyle.