Episode notes
If your gut has gotten harder to manage in perimenopause — the bloating, the constipation, the reflux that appeared from nowhere — this episode is the explanation you were never given.
Most gut health content treats digestive symptoms as a food problem. This episode goes upstream. Miriam walks through four specific physiological shifts that happen during hormonal transition and directly affect how the gut functions — none of which have anything to do with what you're eating.
What we cover:
→ Why stomach acid drops in perimenopause — and what that costs your digestion, your nutrient absorption, and the symptoms you've been blaming on your diet
→ How progesterone affects gut motility and why constipation in midlife is hormonal, not personal
→ What cortisol does to the gut-brain axis when the HPA axis is dysregulated by estrogen decline
→ What the estrobolome is and how your gut microbiome connects directly to your hormone metabolism
→ The one practice that works at the nervous system level — upstream of all four shifts — before you change a single food
This is not a protocol episode. It is a reframe. And for a lot of women, it is the conversation that ends the self-blame and starts the right questions.
Take the free Gut-Hormone Pattern Quiz to identify which hormonal pattern is driving your specific symptoms: nourish-n-flow.com/gutquiz2026-556098
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 One listener's story, named out loud
02:00 What she's been told vs. what's actually true
05:00 The central reframe + about Miriam
08:00 Shift 1: Why stomach acid drops in perimenopause
11:30 Shift 2: Progesterone, motility & why constipation is hormonal
14:30 Shift 3: Cortisol, the HPA axis & the gut-brain connection
18:30 Shift 4: The estrobolome & hormone-gut metabolism 22:00 The permission slip — putting down the self-blame
26:00 One practice: the state before the plate
30:00 What comes next & the quiz
#Perimenopause #GutHealth #HormoneHealth #MenopauseSymptoms #GutHormoneConnection #WomensHealth #FunctionalNutrition