The Hotflash inc podcast

Dr. Adrienne Bitar has a PhD working on food studies scholarship and is the co-founder — along with pharmacist Dr. Jenny Han — of Seen Nutrition, a food-first bone health company born out of two very personal experiences with osteoporosis. Dr Bitar brings a deep understanding of how diet culture, food history, and the stories we tell about women’s bodies have shaped everything from how we supplement to when we get screened.

Highlights
03:42 – Deconstructing the narrative of inevitable bone decline
05:40 – How personal osteoporosis stories built Seen
08:22 – The calcium confusion: what’s actually going on
12:30 – Types of calcium — what to look for, what to skip
13:40 – The “food matrix effect” explained
15:13 – Are there calcium supplements you shouldn’t take?
18:00 – The cardiovascular risk debate, debunked
27:50 – Balance and fall prevention — the other half of fracture risk
28:42 – Strength training and bone health
30:27 – How menopause accelerates bone loss
35:17 – Why waiting until 65 for a DEXA is too late
39:45 – Why third-party testing should be non-negotiable
44:45 – Why so much of the supplement market is gross and hard to trust
49:32 – DCE: three things to do for your bones this week

For citations check the comments or this podcast episode on Substack.

Connect with Dr. Adrienne Bitar & Seen Nutrition
Website: www.seennutrition.com
Instagram/TikTok: https://www.instagram.com/thecalciumqueens / https://www.tiktok.com/@thecalciumqueens
Facebook Group: Osteoporosis Nutrition and Supplementation
Phone: 607-216-8722

🔥 My long-awaited digital guide to hormone therapy is live — The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy. Five short videos, five PDFs. Unbiased, BS-free, and you can get through it in under three hours. Practitioners, doctors, and women who want real information are already buying it.

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.

🌿 The Hot Truth About Hormone Therapy digital guide is here.
An unbiased, birds-eye view of what's happening that will help you cut through the confusion and have a real, informed conversation with your doctor about HRT. Get it now: go.hotflashinc.com/hottruth
Anne Poirier is a nationally recognized body image expert, certified intuitive eating counselor, and author of The Body Joyful, where she traces her own path from self-loathing to self-acceptance. She's also a pioneer in the body neutrality movement – a middle ground that's often misunderstood but, as this conversation shows, might be exactly what so many of us need in midlife.

Highlights
01:39 – How Anne's eating disorder started in 7th grade gym class
05:42 – Working in fitness while struggling with her own body image
07:28 – The cultural pendulum swinging back toward thinness
10:39 – How she quieted her own food noise without medication
14:31 – Why perimenopause can also trigger eating disorders
15:45 – Body positivity's origins vs. body neutrality
17:34 – Exhausting wellness trends: protein, heavy lifting, vibration plates
20:52 – Listening to her body instead of outside rules
25:15 – Why she refuses to weigh herself
27:00 – Where to begin
28:47 – Your body as "the vessel you get to experience your life in"

Connect with Anne Poirier
Books: The Body Joyful, Not a Fat Annie, The Body Neutrality Playbook

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.

🌿 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.