Third Spark Health

Three Habits for a Nervous System in Grief

You can’t think your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. You have to help your body feel safe again, on its own terms.

1. Lengthen your exhale. A longer exhale than inhale (try inhaling for 4, exhaling for 6 or 8) directly signals your vagus nerve to shift out of fight or flight. Do this for even 60 seconds when the wave hits.

2. Let your hands do something. Folding laundry, kneading dough, gardening, knitting. Repetitive, physical tasks are grounding in a way that thinking never will be. Grief that has nowhere to go tends to sit in the body. Give it somewhere to go.

3. Say it out loud to one person. Not a group. Not the internet. One trusted person, in person or on the phone, hearing you say the true thing. Co-regulation, being witnessed by a calm nervous system, is one of the fastest ways back to safety that we have.

For more, click here for the gut-brain science behind loss, and two downloadable worksheets to help you regulate through it.

Affirmation

Your nervous system doesn't just respond to what happens to you, it responds to what you tell yourself about it. The words you repeat become a signal your body listens to, a cue for whether it's safe to soften or whether it needs to stay braced. Choosing gentler words isn't denial. It's one more way of helping your body come back down. So as you carry this month forward, here is your reminder:

Count Your Wins

Shawna Robins — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:03:17 GMT

The one free, simple habit that will change how you talk to yourself

If I asked you to give me one habit that will dramatically improve your health, what do you think it could be? Hint: it doesn’t come in a bottle, pill, or wearable. It is simple, free, and available to anyone at any time. It’s a subtle mindset shift. Okay, don’t roll your eyes. It works, I promise.

It’s a daily habit called counting your wins. Why does this matter? Because it is a choice to focus on daily successes and progress, not failure or perfection.

It’s about showing up for yourself. Supporting yourself. Loving yourself.

Sure, we all screw up. Oftentimes we hold the bar so high over our own heads that it starts to feel more like a noose. We forget to call back a friend and then run into them awkwardly. We overlook an important meeting, say something we shouldn’t have, eat a bag of chips or cookies (or both), drink too much, say yes when we’re already exhausted or resentful, stay quiet to avoid upsetting our partner, boss, kid, or neighbor. This is just life. We are all humans having an imperfect experience here in this tough as hell Earth school.

So instead of focusing on all of the hard, what if we just noticed the easy?

Into the Woods

Recently I took a solo journey in the Berkshires after my mom died, to make space for grief I hadn’t been able to feel or process at home. I literally flew 4,500 miles away from my house just to feel my own feelings. When I arrived, I took a walk in a nearby forest and noticed a ropes course high up in the trees. It looked like something Peter Pan and the lost boys might’ve built: swinging bridges, dangling ropes, ladders, wooden pillars hanging mid air. My first thought was holy shit that’s high. My second thought was how fun.

As a recovering alcoholic, my mother always told me that in AA they had a saying: wait for the power of the second thought. For her, the first thought was always her addiction craving, thinking, scheming about her next drink. But when she paused and waited, the second thought was something more constructive, rational, and supportive.

So I decided my second thought would be the one I’d follow.

I contacted the owner of the ropes course and set up a two hour window to experience it with a guide. After he showed me how to use my carabiners and we ran through the safety demonstration, up we climbed, fifty feet in the air. My brain started screaming, “what are you trying to kill yourself?!”

I watched my guide shimmy and jump from one swinging platform to another and felt waves of nausea and fear. My heart was racing, my hands sweating. “Jump”, he yelled. Hell no, said my mind.

“Don’t think, just do,” he yelled.

So I closed my eyes and told my brain to go. I jumped and made the first platform. Only eight more to go…

By the time I finished the first level, I opened my eyes. My guide was waiting with both arms outstretched and a huge smile on his face. “Fuck yes!” he yelled at me.

With sweat dripping down my face, I beamed with pride. Fuck yes.

Every time I finished a section, we’d both yell it. FUCK YES! It felt so good to do something scared and then celebrate it. It felt freeing to yell my proud moment into the quiet forest for all the birds and occasional hikers to hear. I started thinking about more ways I could celebrate myself.

Drinking 60 oz of water. Fuck yes.

Getting 7 hours of sleep. Fuck yes.

Asking for help from my sister, my kids, my friends, my husband. Fuck yes.

Getting out of bed on a hard day. Fuck yes.

Making myself a nice meal. Fuck yes.

Staying calm while my teenager rage baits me. Fuck yes.

Taking a walk alone without my phone so no one can bother me. Fuck yes.

Practicing the Mindset

A few ways to start celebrating your own wins:

Write them down. Keep a simple daily list of three good things you did or experienced. They don’t have to be big. Drank your water. Answered the hard email. Said no to something that would’ve drained you.

Stop and pause. When you finish a task, take five seconds to tell yourself “good job” before rushing to the next thing. We are so quick to move the goalpost. Let yourself stand at it for a second first.

Look back. Reread your past wins on the days you feel like you’re not making progress. Proof has a way of quieting the voice that says you’re behind.

Your mind will try to convince you that you could have done it better, faster, cleaner, with less mess. Don’t believe everything you think.

That voice is just the first thought.

Wait for the second one. It’s usually kinder, and it’s usually right.

So today, however small the win, however unglamorous, however invisible to everyone but you: fuck yes.

The Metamorphosis

Shawna Robins — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:03:35 GMT

Grief is rarely neat and tidy. It’s messy, raw and harsh.

It wakes you up at 4 am, melts you into tears in odd moments, makes your brain foggy, your stomach hurt and your body ache.

Whether triggered by the loss of a loved one, the end of a marriage, a major career shift, an empty nest, or the loss of health, grief dismantles the world as you once knew i…

Why Grief Feels Like a Stomachache

Shawna Robins — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:03:59 GMT

Grief doesn’t only live in the heart. It lives in the gut, too.

That knot in your stomach when something changes. The appetite that disappears, or the one that won’t stop. The exhaustion that sleep doesn’t seem to touch. It’s your nervous system doing exactly what it’s built to do when something big shifts.

And this is your reminder that grief isn’t only for losing a person. It can show up after a breakup, a diagnosis, a move, a job loss, a miscarriage, an empty nest, or any version of life you thought you’d have that changed shape. If any of that is you right now, this one’s for you. And if it isn’t, this is still worth understanding.

Why grief shows up in your gut

The gut and brain are in constant communication through the vagus nerve, the longest nerve in the body, running from the brain stem down through the throat, heart, lungs, and intestines. This is why grief so often shows up as a physical gut experience rather than just an emotional one. A knot in the stomach. Loss of appetite. Nausea. Constipation. Or the opposite, a stomach that won’t settle. The phrase “gut wrenching” exists for a reason.

When the nervous system is under stress, digestion is one of the first systems to be deprioritized. Stress hormones slow or speed digestion, alter the gut microbiome, and can make existing gut issues worse. Supporting your nervous system during grief is, in a very real way, supporting your gut.

The states grief moves you through

Grief can move a person through several nervous system states, sometimes in the same day.

Fight or flight shows up as agitation, restlessness, irritability, or a racing mind.
Freeze shows up as numbness, fatigue, brain fog, or feeling disconnected from your own body.
Fawn shows up as over functioning for others, caretaking, or staying busy to avoid feeling.

None of these states are wrong. They’re the nervous system doing its job of trying to protect you. The goal isn’t to force yourself out of any of them. It’s to build enough support so your body can move through them and eventually find its way back to a calmer state, what’s sometimes called “rest and digest.”

If you are in the middle of grief right now and wondering why you cannot focus, why you are so tired, or why you feel unlike yourself, please know this: your brain is not your enemy. It is your guardian.

Everything you are experiencing, the fog, the anxiety, the exhaustion, is your brain’s way of trying to keep you safe. It is managing a trauma it does not yet understand. Brain scans of people grieving show activity in the same pain centers that light up during physical injury. Your body isn’t overreacting. It’s responding to something real.

So be gentle with yourself. Feed your body when you can. Rest when you need to. Cry when you must. Healing in grief is not something you think your way through. It is something your whole system must live through, mind, body, and soul.

Everything you are experiencing (the fog, the anxiety, the exhaustion) is your brain’s way of trying to keep you safe. It is managing a trauma it does not yet understand.

So be gentle with yourself. Feed your body when you can. Rest when you need to.
Cry when you must. Healing in grief is not something you think your way through. It is something your whole system must live through — mind, body, and soul.

A few ways to support yourself

You don’t need to do all of these, and you don’t need to do them perfectly. Even one small practice, repeated, sends your body a signal that it’s safe.

Extended exhale breathing. Inhale for a count of four, exhale for six or eight. A longer exhale activates the vagus nerve directly.
Humming or toning. The vagus nerve runs through the vocal cords. Humming, sighing loudly, or singing along to something in the car stimulates it.
Orienting. When you feel numb or far away, slowly look around the room and name five things you can see.
Gentle movement. A slow walk, some stretching, or a few rounds of cat and cow on the floor.
Temperature shift. Splash cold water on your face or hold a cold glass against your wrists.
Rest, on purpose. Legs up the wall for five to ten minutes, or simply lying down with your eyes closed. Resting isn’t giving up, it’s part of the process.

Wherever you are in it, however long it’s taking, you’re allowed to be exactly there.

To check in with what state you’re in, click here to take the quiz.

Your worksheet

I’ve put together a companion worksheet for this one. Inside you’ll find the science in plain language, a gentle check in to help you name what you’re actually carrying right now, and all six of these regulation practices laid out so you can come back to them anytime.

Click here to download.

Grief Lives in Your Gut Too

Shawna Robins — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:03:34 GMT

The experience of grief is often described only with emotions like profound sadness, longing, anger, or emptiness. But grief is also a deeply physical experience. It is common to feel a heavy "pit" in the stomach, experience sudden nausea, long-term brain fog or struggle with a complete loss of appetite.

The physical symptoms of grief are not just "in your head," nor do they represent a failure on your part to cope. Instead, they are the direct biological consequences of how intense emotional stress alters the gut. As women, we are deeply attuned to our gut feelings and intuition. So, the loss of a loved one and the stress that creates on our body, mind and spirit, often causes an overload that affects gut health.

As my mom’s primary caretaker for the past eight months, I noticed that as her health declined so did my digestion. I started to get bloated and gassy after meals. I had diarrhea almost daily. My metabolism changed and my sleep was restless and sporadic.

As a Gut Health practitioner, I should have known that it was the intense stress and anticipatory grief I was experiencing as I watched my mother slowing die. But my mind didn’t equate the two. I only looked at my diet and exercise, both which had not changed. But caregiving was taking its toll on my insides because the female body has a unique interplay of hormones, nervous system sensitivity, and anatomy, which makes us highly susceptible to grief-induced digestive distress.

When Grief Talks, Your Gut Listens

Your gut is the largest endocrine organ in your body. This means that your gut makes more hormones there than anywhere else in your body. And all these important hormones and neurotransmitters need to leave the gut to be circulated around your entire body. The connection between emotional trauma and digestive health lies in the gut-brain axis, a bidirectional communication network linking the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) to the enteric nervous system (the “second brain” in the gut). This pathway relies heavily on your vagus nerve.

After you experience a profound loss, your brain perceives a severe disruption to your safety and routines. So, it activates your sympathetic nervous system—the “fight-or-flight” survival response. During caregiving and before and after the death of a loved one, your blood flow is redirected, because your body prioritizes survival, diverting blood away from the digestive tract and toward the heart and muscles. This can cause digestion to slow down or speed up.

Because the body is not focused on processing nutrients, gastric emptying can stall (leading to nausea, acid reflux, or bloating), or the intestines can spasm (causing cramping and sudden diarrhea). Your stress hormones surge, which can alter gut motility, reduce digestive enzyme production, and promote inflammation along the gut lining.

The Female Gut Under Siege

The correlation between stressful life events and physical health has been studied extensively over the years and led to the development of the Holmes and Raye Stress Scale, which is now used by physicians and scientists to determine if the most stressful life events can predict future illness.

Back in 1967, researchers Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe found that a strong correlation between health and stress did indeed exist. This prompted them to rank stressful situations on a scale from most to least stressful, indicating which life stressors place individuals at a higher risk for becoming ill. The #1 stressor that they determined is loss of a spouse or child. Their list also includes divorce, martial separation, death of a family member, moving to a new home, a job dismissal and retirement.

While grief affects everyone, women are statistically twice as likely as men to experience functional gastrointestinal disorders, such as chronic heartburn, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and flare-ups of IBD (like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis), which are deeply tied to psychological distress.

Several biological factors explain why a woman’s digestive system is especially vulnerable during times of mourning.

First, the female gastrointestinal tract is highly sensitive to the sex hormones estrogen and progesterone. The gut lining is densely packed with receptors for these hormones, which directly regulate gut motility (which is how quickly food moves through the digestive tract) and visceral sensitivity (how keenly you feel pain or bloating in your abdomen).

Second, grief-induced stress disrupts the reproductive system, causing fluctuations in estrogen and progesterone. When estrogen levels drop or fluctuate erratically under stress, the gut’s barrier function can weaken. This can lead to increased intestinal permeability, often referred to as “leaky gut,” allowing inflammatory particles to cross into the bloodstream and trigger systemic discomfort and create auto-immune diseases.

Third, studies also suggest that women tend to have a more sensitive gut-brain response to emotional stimuli. Under the weight of grief, the signaling pathways between the brain and the gut can become hyper-reactive. This means normal digestive processes—like gas or mild muscle contractions—are registered by the brain as intense cramping, pain, or bloating.

Structurally, a woman’s colon is typically longer and more “tortuous” (containing more twists and turns) than a man’s, fitting into a smaller pelvic cavity alongside reproductive organs. This natural anatomy already predisposes women to slower transit times and bloating. When stress hormones slow down digestion further, it is much easier for women to experience severe, painful constipation.

The Microbiome on Mourning

The trillions of bacteria living in your digestive tract, known as the gut microbiota, are highly sensitive to emotional states. Research indicates that emotional distress and bereavement can shift the balance of the microbiome in a matter of days.

During grief, the loss of appetite or a shift toward simple, highly processed comfort foods can starve beneficial bacteria. Stress itself also reduces the diversity of the microbiome, allowing pro-inflammatory microbes to multiply while depleting anti-inflammatory strains.

Because approximately 90% of the body’s serotonin (a neurotransmitter crucial for mood regulation) is produced in the gut, a disrupted microbiome can create a painful feedback loop. A compromised gut environment sends distress signals back to the brain, which can intensify feelings of anxiety, sadness, and fatigue, making the emotional processing of grief even more difficult.

Small, Kind Things You Can Do Right Now

When you are emotionally depleted, complicated dietary regimens or intense wellness routines are often unrealistic and exhausting. Supporting your gut-brain axis during grief requires low-energy, compassionate steps.

Here’s both, so you have the full picture:

Revised bullet list for “Small, Kind Things You Can Do Right Now”

Prioritize Easy-to-Digest Foods: If your appetite is low or your stomach feels tight, avoid heavy, raw, or highly processed foods. Opt for warm, simple, and soothing options that require minimal digestive effort, such as bone broths, well-cooked vegetable soups, stews, or warm oatmeal.

Stay Hydrated: Dehydration is common during intense crying and periods of low appetite, and it directly contributes to constipation. Keep a glass of water, herbal tea (like chamomile or ginger to soothe the stomach), or electrolyte-rich fluids nearby and take small sips throughout the day.

Get Out of Your Environment: Even a short change of scenery — sitting outside, a walk around the block, a few minutes in the sun, can interrupt the body’s stress loop. I felt this firsthand on my trip to the Berkshires; nature has a way of loosening what grief tightens.

Sit With Yourself: Set aside five minutes with no phone, no task, nothing to do, just noticing what your body wants. Grief often gets buried under busyness; sitting still, even briefly, gives it somewhere to land.

Treat Yourself Like a Child: Grief regresses us. Ask what you’d offer a child who was hurting, a nap, a favorite food, extra softness, and offer yourself the same.

Practice Gentle Somatic Regulation: You don’t need rigorous exercise. A few minutes of slow, deep breathing can help stimulate the vagus nerve and signal to your nervous system that it’s safe to shift out of “fight-or-flight” and digest. I’ve found breathwork and Qi-gong especially grounding during this time, more on the ancient roots of these practices in a future post.

Remove the Pressure of “Perfect” Eating: Be compassionate with yourself. If all you can manage to eat is toast or a simple meal, accept that your body is doing its best. Eliminating the stress of trying to eat “perfectly” is, in itself, beneficial for your gut health.

The Business of Death

There are plenty of major studies that show how intense, long-term caregiving can shorten a caregiver’s lifespan by four to eight years and significantly increase overall mortality risk, particularly for older spouses. After years of mental health strain, neglected personal health, and high stress levels that all lead to accelerated aging, I can attest to it all being true, after I watched my mother care for my father who suffered from frontotemporal lobe dementia for 12 years.

But what about the “business of death” after a person dies? No one prepared me for how deeply stressful this time would become. After almost a year as the full-time caregiver for my mother, I thought her death would give me a break, a moment to breathe. But within an hour after her final breath, the tasks began again. Cremation, hospice paperwork, death certificates, calling the list of family and friends, securing the church for a funeral date, closing her bank account, closing her credit cards, calling on the life insurance policies, picking up her ashes, getting an urn, selling her car, cleaning out her closets and her desk. The list is endless.

When do I get to rest and cry? When does my grief get its own space? The business of death is a painful and lonely time where you must slog through all the decisions, sometimes all alone, when all you want to do is escape to close your eyes for a little while and feel like a human again.

What I Want You To Know

I’m not quite sure how to move forward yet. But I did just take a solo trip to the Berkshires for a few days, and something in me, and in my gut, began to loosen. Nature, early nights, food my body actually craved, my phone on do not disturb. It wasn’t a fix. It was just enough space to breathe.

If you are grieving any loss, I hope you’ll hear this: the physical symptoms you’re carrying are not a failure, and they are not “just in your head.” Your mind and body were never separate. They never will be. Your gut is responding exactly as it was built to under this kind of weight.

So be gentle with the parts of you that feel off right now. The bloating, the appetite that disappears, the sleep that won’t come easily, none of it means something is wrong with you. It means you’re grieving, and grief moves through the whole body, not just the heart. Let that be permission to rest, to eat what feels manageable, to ask for help with the parts of this no one prepares you for.

You don’t have to carry this alone, and you don’t have to have it figured out yet. Neither do I.

Brave Isn't About Fighting

Shawna Robins — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 14:52:21 GMT

No one ever prepares you for what a last breath looks like.

For me, it was so deeply peaceful. Gentle. Calm. After sitting next to my mother’s hospice bed for 4 days and nights watching her body fight so hard to stay alive, it was a bit of a shock to see how graceful death can be.

But not dying. Dying is a battle of epic proportions.

The gasping, the throttle, the rattling in her chest. The fight to survive is so raw and uncontrollable. Every cell in my mother’s body seemed hell bent on staying on course. But her brain was slowly letting go. There was no conscious awareness or choice on her part. Not like my grandmother who made the decision one warm summer afternoon that she had had enough of life. That the next UTI she got, there would be no antibiotic treatment. She announced it to everyone, called hospice herself, settled all the paperwork and waited for the next inevitable infection to come.

And it did.

She lasted 3 days.

I wasn’t told about her decision to die until she was already almost gone. I remember yelling at the hospice nurse to give my grandma some goddamn antibiotics. I called her cruel and heartless (I later apologized to the poor nurse who said she had been told much worse). No one had informed me of my grandmother’s choice to refuse medicine and die. This made witnessing her choice something respectful, almost brave and powerful, I thought.

To choose to be done with life. To say thank you and now I’m ready to go.

But it was different for my mother. She was a fighter.

She hid her dementia for years with fake excuses like stomach aches to cancel last minute on me when we had plans. She covered up the minor car accidents and lost routes home with stories of always running late or having a meeting that went on too long.

I knew she was struggling to sleep.

I knew she was lonely after my dad died. She started taking solo trips which I thought were adventurous and admirable. But now I think she just wanted to put space between us so I would not see the changes in her. As she got sicker, she refused to eat the healthy food I brought her. She refused to let me help her up or hold her arm as she walked downstairs. She didn’t wait for me to help her out of the car. She refused to let me pour her a glass of water or get her medication. So I hired a caregiver. Maybe it was me she was fighting against. Turns out that fighting was just how she was wired. After a bad fall which resulted in a brain bleed, she kept on fighting. Fighting to wash her own hair, fighting to wear her pretty underwear instead of Depends, fighting against being spoon fed anything. She refused a walker, a cane and a wheelchair.

Her neurologist told me that her brain bleed would most likely result in a coma within 24-48 hours. Nope. The next week she got up out of bed every day, walked to the dining room and ate a club sandwich. For over 50 years I watched my mother fight her demons, her own hunger cues, her Afib, arthritis, insomnia, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. She denied her terminal illness, her bleeding brain and her weakening body. She would cry through the pain saying “all beautiful” while she held her aching head. Mind over matter. This was her mantra.

Believe it is true and it will be.

She lived for 15 days after her fall and brain hemorrhage. As I held her left hand, my sister held her right, and my brother kissed her head, she took one final breath. Peace at last. No more fight. Just let go. Her bravest act of all.

Life without her has no color, like living in a black and white film. My grief is so hauntingly deep. But remembering her last breath brings me so much joy that I cry tears of gratitude for seeing her with so much grace.

Her skin was soft with no wrinkles, her hair combed, her hands folded on her chest with her pretty pink nails freshly painted the week before. She looked like Sleeping Beauty. Waiting. Soft. Open. Relaxed.

Turns out the biggest lesson she taught me is how power can be quiet. Strength can be calm. Brave isn’t about fighting battles; it’s about accepting the ones you cannot win.

Facing the final battle, she was her most powerful self.

No one warned me about morning grief.

For me, the mornings are the worst. I wake up after a peaceful sleep only to remember that she is not here. That she is never coming back. The pain in my chest is unbearable. My pillow is wet with tears, my body sobs until it has nothing left. I want to close my eyes and go back to sleep but instead I wait for the sunlight to enter my room.

I’m exhausted all day. Foggy. My brain doesn’t seem to work right. My neck hurts, my energy is gone. So is my appetite. Grief feels like I’m rucking with a 50 lb. bag of rocks on my back all day.

Grief shows up in different ways.

Image from The NY Times

Maybe you haven’t lost someone the way I lost my mother. But maybe you’re grieving the world right now, the way it feels less safe or less kind than it used to at times. Maybe you lost a job that was part of your identity. Maybe a friendship has ended and no one sent flowers for that, even though it hurt just as much as a breakup or divorce. Maybe you’re grieving a version of yourself you don’t recognize anymore.

Or maybe you’re grieving someone who is still here. Still breathing, still in the room, but already gone in the ways that mattered. If this is you, I really feel for you. It is a pain I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Grief doesn’t ask permission and it doesn’t care what kind of loss earns it.

And whatever kind of grief you’re carrying, I want you to know something: you don’t have to have it all together. God knows I don’t. Grief lives in the body, not just the heart. It might show up as exhaustion you can’t sleep off, as a fog that won’t lift, as an appetite that disappears or a hunger that won’t quit. In this immense grief, however you’re feeling it, you’re thrown into an abyss.

Grief has made me take a pause. Forcing me to halt all of it, my workouts, my routines, the things that were supposed to make me feel like myself.

Grief has made me show myself grace. Because we can’t have it together all the time.

Grief has made me soft. I cry in grocery stores, when I hear a song playing at the doctor’s office, or when I see a humming bird or a dragonfly (both were my mother’s favorite animals). I cry when hear a song she loved. I meltdown at the thought of her missing my daughter’s graduation.

I have always been the tough, strong, productive, type-A, eldest daughter but grief is reshaping me into someone new. I’m entering my soft girl era. And for this I’m grateful.

Your Brain Is Not Set in Stone

Shawna Robins — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 11:47:11 GMT

You know that jolt of low-grade panic when something familiar suddenly isn't where it should be? Ever find yourself at your local grocery store and the workers have reorganized the location of all your favorite foods? What used to take you 10 minutes to drop in and grab what you like now takes a frustrating amount of time to scan aisles, locate brands, find your choice, and get to a register in a new pattern. It can be maddening, especially if you don't expect it. But it's a great exercise for your brain.

The same is true with anything in our normal routine that changes unexpectedly. A road closure, a move to a new neighborhood, a new traffic pattern, a sudden gate change at the airport. All of this small chaos can send your nervous system into a low hum of alarm — a flicker of "wait, something's wrong" before you even know why. The symbols and keys have shifted. Change feels scary because your brain is in overdrive trying to quickly code a new algorithm.

It was once thought that the adult brain was a static, slowly degrading organ (hello, depressing!) According to previous neuroscience beliefs, when humans reached adulthood, our neural pathways were locked in place, and our cognitive capacity could only decline with age.

Thank goodness, modern neuroscience has completely debunked this assumption.

Through the discovery of neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections and even growing new neurons (neurogenesis), we now understand that the brain remains dynamic and adaptable throughout our entire lives.

Reshaping the brain in older age does not require superhuman effort. Instead, it relies on providing it with the right inputs. A mature brain retains a remarkable capacity to change, learn, and heal in response to our experiences, behaviors, and environments.

Growing A Healthy Brain At Any Age

If you’ve been following along on here, you know that both of my parents died of dementia, so a few years ago I made a promise to myself: I was going to get a brain map done, just to check for any lurking neuroinflammation or damage left over from a traumatic brain injury I had as a kid. My neurologist had been recommending this neurofeedback center in town, so I finally booked it. And then — of course — my son gets a concussion, literally days before my appointment. So the specialist looks at us and goes, "why don't you two just come in together."

Nothing says quality time like mother-son brain mapping.

What I learned about my brain was fascinating.

First, the good news: no long-term damage from the TBI I got as a kid. I slid into second base during a pickup baseball game in the park. Except "second base" was actually a stone drinking fountain. I hit it hard enough to fracture my skull and needed 8 stitches in my forehead. I had headaches for over a year after. And yet, decades later, my brain map shows it's completely healed.

Second, I have no signs of pre-dementia, which was a big relief. My dedication to lifestyle choices of consistent daily exercise, eating healthy brain food, a strict 10 pm bedtime to get 8 hours of sleep each night and using meditation/ breathwork for stress reduction really has made a difference so far in the health of my brain. And it feels validating!

Lastly, I learned that my amygdala, a small almond-shaped part of the brain that is well-known for its role in generating feelings of fear, anxiety, and aggression, is very overactive, most likely due to unresolved childhood trauma (Click here to see my article on ACE Scores). When this happens, it’s like you live with a crocodile inside your brain with its jaws wide open and ready to snap at anything that moves.

So I started a series of 20-minute neurofeedback sessions. I sit there watching nature videos while wearing a cap that monitors my brainwave activity, and slowly — session by session — it teaches my brain to shift out of my amygdala's constant fight-or-flight state.

It's exhausting.

Every time, I want to curl up and nap afterward; my brain just wants to shut off and rest. But after only a few sessions, I noticed real changes: more patience, clearer thinking, and a body that finally felt settled, calm, and peaceful.

The 4 Pillars of Neuroplasticity

Neurofeedback isn’t for everyone. It can be expensive if your insurance doesn’t cover it and might be hard to find in your location. So let’s cover four easy ways that you can support your brain vitality at any age.

1. Movement: The Secret-Sauce for Brain Growth

Physical activity is perhaps the most direct way to stimulate the biological mechanisms of neuroplasticity. When we move our bodies, we are not just strengthening muscles; we are directly nourishing our brain cells.

Why is exercise so important?

It’s not about how you look in your jeans, it’s deeper and more fundamental to your overall wellness, happiness and longevity. Exercise triggers the release of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), a protein often referred to by researchers as “fertilizer” for the brain. BDNF supports the survival of existing neurons and encourages the growth of new ones, particularly in the hippocampus, the region of the brain critical for learning and memory.

Doing some form of cardiovascular exercise increases blood flow to the brain and also delivers essential oxygen and nutrients while helping to maintain the integrity of the brain’s blood vessels.

Remember: You do not need to train for a marathon or do crossfit 3 times a week to reap these benefits. Consistent, moderate activities like brisk walking, swimming, dancing, or cycling have been shown to promote positive structural changes in the brain. Everyone is different, so it’s about finding what works for you and your body.

2. Sleep: The Architect of Memory and Maintenance

While movement stimulates the potential for new neural connections, sleep is where those connections are integrated into the brain’s existing network.

During sleep, particularly deep slow-wave and REM sleep, your brain replays the experiences of the day, moving information from short-term storage (the hippocampus) to long-term storage (the neocortex). Without adequate sleep, the neural pathways associated with new learning cannot fully stabilize.

Getting 7-9 uninterrupted hours of sleep allows your brain’s glymphatic system to become highly active, essentially washing away metabolic waste products that accumulate during waking hours. This includes beta-amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Make sure you prioritize a consistent sleep schedule. The same bedtime and wake time every day can do more than you realize. Things like creating a dark and cool sleeping environment and avoiding all screens 1 hour before bed are also simple but powerful ways to protect this vital restorative process.

For more info, click here to check out my book: Powerful Sleep- Rest Deeply, Repair Your Brain and Restore Your Life.

3. Novelty: Building Your Cognitive Reserve

Your brain is highly efficient; when we perform familiar tasks, it relies on well established, energy-efficient pathways. To build new pathways, we must challenge the brain with two things: novelty and difficulty.

Engaging in novel and complex activities (like finding a new route home without google maps or navigating a new grocery store) builds “cognitive reserve” which provides a buffer of alternative neural pathways that helps the brain resist age-related decline or injury. Think of it as a backup drive for your main hard drive. You might not ever need it, but if your hard drive crashes, all your information will be safe.

In the age of AI, this might be asking a lot. We’re a species wired for comfort and routine, and now more than ever, the world is engineered to remove friction from our lives, AI drafts our emails, GPS tells us where to turn, algorithms recommend what to watch next. Choosing difficulty on purpose goes against the grain. While routine activities like crossword apps and Wordle are enjoyable, they often rely on existing skills. True neuroplasticity is stimulated when we engage in “productive frustration” or the feeling of trying to learn something that does not come easily.

For me, this is dancing in any form that’s not ballet. It could be line dancing, salsa or Zumba, I suck at all of them. It’s really embarrassing how I literally fall over my own two feet. My brain feels all mixed up trying to follow the steps and the beat. But I know that I’m building new neuropathways. Every time I show up to class, face my shame storm, learn something new and improve my cognitive reserve (plus my confidence as an added bonus).

So try learning a new language, taking up a musical instrument, painting, or even navigating a new neighborhood on your commute home from work or school. All of these choices forces your brain to adapt, map a new territory, and forge entirely new synaptic connections.

4. Social Connection: The Ultimate Brain Workout

Human beings are wired for connection, and as it turns out, maintaining a rich social life is one of the most cognitively demanding activities we can perform.

Engaging in conversation requires a massive amount of real-time brain power. It’s a complex cognitive load. We must listen, interpret tone and body language, recall memories, regulate our emotions, and formulate appropriate responses. All within fractions of a second. This process activates multiple, widespread regions of the brain simultaneously.

Meaningful social connection also increases the hormone oxytocin which naturally lowers levels of chronic stress and cortisol. If cortisol is elevated over long periods, it can damage the hippocampus and inhibit neuroplasticity.

Consider volunteering, joining a club, mentoring others, or simply making a habit of calling a friend or loved one can provide the emotional and cognitive stimulation necessary to keep neural networks active and resilient.

Loving Your Brain is Real Self-Care

Your cognitive future is not entirely predetermined by your genetics or how old you are. Instead, it depends on the simple, small, powerful daily choices you make — how you move, how you rest, what you choose to learn, and who you connect with. These are direct inputs that shape the physical structure of your brain.

While we can’t stop the aging process, we can actively participate in the renewal of our minds — building a resilient brain that can learn and adapt at any stage of life.

Progress over perfection is the goal.

So — what’s one thing you can do today to support your brain?

Monthly Spark: Brain Health

Shawna Robins — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 13:03:18 GMT

Dementia is a women’s crisis.

It’s one of the most significant, yet frequently overlooked, disparities in modern healthcare. And the statistics are startling. Nearly two-thirds of Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease are women. A woman’s lifetime risk of developing Alzheimer’s at age 65 is roughly 1 in 5 (compared to about 1 in 11 for men). A woman in her 60s is twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s during her remaining lifetime as she is to develop breast cancer.

What is it about women and brain health?

Women are the ones getting sick, women are the ones taking unpaid leave to care for our parents, women are the ones carrying this disease in disproportionate numbers, and it’s not talked about enough.

Last week my mother died, only eight months after her formal diagnosis of frontotemporal lobe dementia.

I couldn’t save her. No one could. There’s no cure, no medication, no treatment. Just “go home and get your affairs in order.” There is no medically assisted death allowed for dementia patients like other terminal illness patients have, so you sit and wait for the disease to slowly take your thoughts, your words, your memories, and everything that makes you you.

I watched it happen twice. First my father. Then my mother.

And here’s the truth I keep coming back to: women have to worry about this so much more than men do. It’s not fair. None of it is fair, not the odds, not the burden of care that falls on us, not watching someone you love disappear a little more each day. But we do have a choice. We can’t undo the unfairness of the statistics, but we can choose ourselves. We can choose to protect our minds now, while there’s still time.

So this month on Substack, I’m laying out everything I’ve learned about keeping the brain healthy — the small, steady things that seem to matter most. Dementia is often the harvest of seeds sown 20-30 years earlier, and that’s part of what makes this so hard. It’s also what gives me hope. There’s still time. Sleep a little more. Move a little more. Let go of a little more sugar, a little more wine. Small things, chosen again and again, add up to something lasting.

Let my parents’ legacy guide your way. No one is coming to save us — it’s our own effort, and our own self-love, that make the difference in the long run.

In honor of my mother, Laurie McKinley, a beautiful vibrant, talented soul. Gone too soon.

With love,

Shawna

A Bit of History

For a long time, the story around the aging mind has been about inevitability.

Forgetfulness, slowing down, losing the sharpness you once had. It’s treated as a fixed timeline, something that simply happens to you. But research is telling a different story, one where cognitive resilience in your 40s, 50s, and beyond is shaped far more by daily choices than most people realize. Memory is not a fixed resource that quietly runs out. It is closer to a muscle. It responds to how it’s used, fed, rested, and challenged.

Tending to your mind is not vanity. It is preservation. And it is one of the most quietly radical forms of self care there is.

History of the Brain & Memory

In ancient Greece, orators and philosophers developed the method of loci, a memory technique built by mentally walking through a familiar place and attaching ideas to each room. It wasn’t a party trick. In a world before the printing press, the mind itself was the archive, and training it was treated as essential craft.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, mental clarity is tied to the health of the kidneys and the flow of vital essence through the body. Practices like tai chi, qigong, and specific breathing patterns were never separated from mental sharpness. The body and the mind were maintained as one system, not two.

Image from Claremont Graduate University

Among West African griots, the role of oral historian was not a side skill, it was the community’s living archive. Griots and griottes carried centuries of genealogy, song, and history in memory alone, trained deliberately from a young age to hold what would otherwise be lost.

Image from Alamy

The thread running through all of it is the same. The mind was never meant to be left idle. It was meant to be exercised, fed, and trusted. Somewhere along the way, modern culture started treating memory loss as something to brace for instead of something to actively work against.

To Read

Why Alzheimer’s Is a Women’s Disease (And Almost No One Is Talking About It)

Nearly two out of three Alzheimer’s diagnoses in the United States are women. For years, that gap was explained away by the simple fact that women live longer. But newer research points to something more specific: hormonal shifts during perimenopause and menopause, differences in how the female brain metabolizes glucose, and genetic risk factors like APOE4 that appear to affect women more severely than men. This is not a footnote. It’s a call for research, and care, that actually accounts for half the population.

Your brain is the last one to know it’s exhausted

If you have slept for six hours a night for years, and feel totally used to it and function just fine, then listen up.

The truth is that you aren’t actually adapted. You’ve just lost the ability to measure your own decline.

In classic sleep studies led by Dr. David Dinges at the University of Pennsylvania, researchers restricted participants to six hours of sleep per night for two weeks. Within days, their objective cognitive performance (attention, reaction times, memory) steadily decayed.

Three Habits, One Sharper Mind

You don’t need a lab coat or a supplement stack to start protecting your memory. Some of the most well supported habits are also the simplest.

1. Wake up at the same time every day.
Your brain runs on rhythm, not willpower. A consistent wake time anchors your circadian clock, which in turn regulates the deep sleep stages where memory consolidation actually happens. Sleeping in on weekends and staggering wake times during the week (also known as social jet lag) has been linked to worse cognitive performance, even when total sleep hours stay the same. Same time, every day, weekends included.

2. Move your body, especially before noon.
Aerobic movement increases BDNF, a protein that supports the growth of new neurons and strengthens the connections between existing ones. It doesn’t need to be intense. A brisk 20 minute walk counts. Morning movement also helps set that circadian rhythm from tip one, so the two habits reinforce each other.

3. Learn something with no practical use.
Not a skill for work. Not a task for the to do list. Something purely for the challenge of it: a language, an instrument, a new route through an unfamiliar part of town. Novelty forces the brain to build new neural pathways instead of coasting on old ones, and that kind of cognitive reserve is one of the strongest predictors of resilience against age related decline.

Small, repeatable, boring in the best way. That’s what protects the mind long term.

Affirmation

The words we repeat to ourselves are not just thoughts, they shape the way we move through the world. Research in neuroscience and psychology consistently shows that positive self-affirmation activates the brain’s reward centers and can genuinely shift the way we perceive our own capabilities over time. It is also an act of love. So as you close this out, I will leave you with this to carry into the rest of the month.

Meet Your Estrobolome: The Gut Bacteria Quietly Running Your Hormones

Shawna Robins — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:02:14 GMT

It’s so easy to blame your mood, low energy levels, and sleep problems on stress or just the byproduct of “getting older.” But so often, the real story is that we’ve stopped listening to one of the most important sources of information we have: our gut, our intuition, our bodies.

You have an internal regulator for everything related to your health. The OG girl boss. And she lives inside your gut and is made up of trillions of microorganisms residing in your digestive tract.

Photo Credit: Unknown, if known please let us know.

Your microbiome does far more than just break down food. It serves as a metabolic control center, directly communicating with your brain, regulating your hormonal cycles, and shaping your sleep patterns.

Hopefully this isn’t new information for you, but if you need a refresher, check out my Gut Health Month on Substack. (Click here)

Understanding how your gut microbiome influences your neurotransmitters, hormones, and sleep can help you cultivate a life of joy, ease, fun, and well-being. Respect your gut and she will always have your back.

The Chemistry of Your Moods

The connection between the gut and the brain—often called the gut-brain axis—is a bidirectional highway primarily navigated by the vagus nerve and chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. Research suggests that a significant portion of the body’s neurotransmitters are produced not in the brain, but in the gut.

Serotonin, often referred to as the “feel-good” chemical, regulates mood, anxiety, and sleep. Studies estimate that up to 90% of the body’s serotonin is synthesized in the gut. Certain gut microbes, such as species of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, play an important role in stimulating cells in the gut lining to produce this essential neurotransmitter. When your brain is feeling clear, happy and good then you know you have enough serotonin. Without it, the dark clouds descend, thoughts spin, or anxiety winds up to a high level.

GABA (Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid) is another important neurotransmitter which acts as the brain’s natural brake pedal, promoting feelings of calm and reducing anxiety. Specific gut bacteria, particularly from the genus Bacteroides, are known to produce GABA.

Because female physiology experiences cyclical hormone fluctuations, women are particularly sensitive to shifts in serotonin and GABA. During the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle (the week or two before a period), progesterone and estrogen drop, which can naturally lower serotonin levels. If the gut microbiome is compromised, a state known as dysbiosis, neurotransmitter production may drop further, potentially exacerbating symptoms of PMS, PMDD, and anxiety.

Your Bestie: The Estrobolome

One of the most profound discoveries in women’s health is the estrobolome—a specialized collection of gut bacteria capable of modulating and recycling estrogen. Your gut also contains more endocrine cells (cells that secrete hormones) than any other single organ in the body, which is part of why it’s often described as one of the body’s largest endocrine organs.

Under normal circumstances, the liver processes circulating estrogen, rendering it inactive, and sends it to the intestines to be eliminated from the body. However, certain bacteria in the estrobolome produce an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase. This enzyme reactivates the bound estrogen, allowing it to be reabsorbed back into the bloodstream. This recycling system must remain in careful balance — if the gut has an overgrowth of beta-glucuronidase-producing bacteria (such as certain strains of Clostridium or Escherichia), then too much estrogen is recycled. This can contribute to estrogen dominance, which is associated with heavy periods, severe PMS, endometriosis, and fibroids.

But if these bacteria are lacking, estrogen is excreted too quickly, leading to low systemic estrogen. This is particularly relevant during perimenopause and menopause. When natural ovarian estrogen production declines, a healthy estrobolome is critical to recycling what little estrogen remains. An inactive estrobolome can worsen symptoms like hot flashes, brain fog, vaginal dryness, and bone loss.

So Why Can’t I Sleep Anymore?

If you have hit midlife and find it a struggle to fall asleep or stay asleep, the root cause might lie in your gut. Science now points to a bidirectional relationship between sleep quality and the composition of your gut microbiome. So if your sleep is a struggle, look at your gut for answers.

First, let’s start with melatonin synthesis. Melatonin is the hormone responsible for signaling to the body that it is time to sleep. While it is synthesized in the pineal gland of your brain, melatonin and its precursor, L-tryptophan, are also produced and regulated inside your digestive tract. If your gut is not converting L-tryptophan into melatonin efficiently, you may struggle to fall asleep and stay asleep.

Next is your circadian rhythm. Just like human cells, your gut microbes appear to have their own circadian rhythms that fluctuate between day and night. When your microbiome is healthy, these microbial rhythms tend to align with our sleep-wake cycles to support stable sleep architecture (including deep and REM sleep). If your microbes are out of sync, your sleep may become disjointed and erratic.

Finally comes inflammation and sleep disruption. When you have gut dysbiosis, this can weaken the intestinal barrier, leading to mild systemic inflammation throughout the body. This inflammatory response releases cytokines that can cross the blood-brain barrier and disrupt the brain’s sleep centers, potentially resulting in fragmented, light sleep.

Probiotics — specifically beneficial bacteria like Akkermansia and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii — produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) like butyrate, which research links to gut lining integrity, lower systemic inflammation, and better sleep quality.

Practical Ways to Nourish Your Gut Microbiome

Supporting gut health does not require overnight, drastic changes. Consistent, daily habits can gradually shift the microbial ecosystem toward balance.

1. Eat for Your Estrobolome To support healthy estrogen metabolism, incorporate cruciferous vegetables (such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, and kale) into your diet. These vegetables contain compounds that aid the liver’s detoxification pathways, working in tandem with the gut to keep estrogen levels balanced.

2. Prioritize Diverse Fibers and Prebiotics Gut bacteria thrive on complex carbohydrates. Aim for a wide variety of plant foods each week to feed different bacterial strains. Focus on prebiotic-rich foods—such as garlic, onions, leeks, asparagus, and sweet potatoes—which serve as fuel for beneficial, SCFA-producing microbes. My favorite challenge is to find one new food each week at the store or farmer’s market that I have never eaten before. It helps to feed my microbes and keep my diversity up, which helps my REM sleep and moods stay consistent.

3. Integrate Fermented Foods Regularly consuming small amounts of fermented foods introduces live, beneficial bacteria to the digestive tract. Some good options include:

Unsweetened kefir or yogurt
Sauerkraut or kimchi
Miso or tempeh

4. Practice Circadian Eating Try to eat meals at consistent times each day and avoid heavy meals 3 hours before bedtime. This gives the gut microbiome a designated fasting window, allowing it to complete its nightly restorative processes and support your body’s natural melatonin production. As I always say, if your body is digesting then it cannot be resting.

5. Manage Stress Mindfully Your nervous system and your digestion are not separate systems; they are one conversation. Chronic stress elevates cortisol, which can directly alter the gut’s environment, reduce microbial diversity, and weaken the gut barrier. Integrating simple stress-reduction techniques such as deep breathing, daily walking, or NSDR (non-sleep deep rest) can protect both your nervous system and your gut health. Even gratitude journaling, prayer, and walking in nature can lower stress levels to help protect your gut health, promote great sleep, and help protect your brain as you age.

Maria Shriver put it well in a recent piece on women’s brain health:

Women’s health is brain health, and brain health is the core of women’s health. The two are intertwined inside your body.

Take care of your gut and it will take care of your brain.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider regarding any health-related concerns.

Why Alzheimer's Is a Women's Disease (And Almost No One Is Talking About It)

Shawna Robins — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 12:01:25 GMT

The statistics are startling.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease are women.

A woman’s lifetime risk of developing Alzheimer’s at age 65 is roughly 1 in 5, compared to about 1 in 11 for men.

A woman in her 60s is twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s during her remaining lifetime as she is to develop breast cancer.

The most common explanation for why more women have dementia sounds simple: women live longer than men, and age is the primary risk factor for cognitive decline. But epidemiologists and neurologists agree that longevity does not fully account for the disparity. Something else is going on.

Recent studies suggest that women’s brains may be more vulnerable to certain risk factors, meaning the path to dementia involves distinct biological and lifestyle mechanisms for women compared to men.

The Biological and Genetic Disparities

For decades, clinical research largely ignored female biology as a variable, leaving a gap in our understanding of how dementia develops in a female brain. Today, scientists are uncovering several key differences:

The APOE ε4 Gene: Everyone carries some version of the APOE gene, which normally helps the brain clear away cholesterol and fat particles and repair itself after damage. Most people carry a version called ε3, which is considered neutral. But some of us carry a different version, ε4, and it's the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer's, likely because it's less efficient at that cleanup job. Here's what surprised researchers: it does not affect men and women equally. Research indicates that having one copy of the gene increases a woman's risk of developing Alzheimer's about four-fold, whereas men with one copy show almost no increased risk. Two copies can increase a woman's risk up to ten-fold, compared to only a four-fold increase for men.

As a 54-year-old woman, I was devastated to find out that I am a double APOE 4 carrier (one copy from my mother and father). It took a few weeks before I could really process what this risk meant for me, my family and my future. Now I am acutely aware that my brain health and longevity depend on every choice I make - from prioritizing quality sleep, eating whole, real food, using bio-identical HRT and daily exercise, to eliminating alcohol, ultra processed foods, sugar and lowering my daily stress levels. My long-term commitment to myself and my family is to take care of myself as best I can in midlife. No one is coming to save me until science hopefully has some answers for me. So I am responsible for taking care of myself.

**If you want to learn more, or want some support, guiding you through more of this, leave a comment below or message me. I’m here for you.

The Estrogen and Menopause Connection: Estrogen is not just a reproductive hormone; it is a metabolic driver in the brain. Think of it this way: the brain runs on glucose for fuel, and estrogen helps deliver that fuel to brain cells. Estrogen plays a protective, metabolic role in the brain, supporting glucose levels and protecting synapses.

During perimenopause and menopause, estrogen drops rapidly, and some brain regions may essentially go through a fuel shortage, what researchers call a “bioenergetic crisis.” This can potentially trigger the accumulation of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, the sticky protein buildup that damages brain cells, decades before any symptoms appear. In some women, this drop in brain energy may leave the brain more vulnerable to that plaque accumulation. Using MHT (menopause hormone treatment) is an important piece in protecting your brain as you age.

Brain Connectivity: Neuroimaging studies show that the structural and functional connections in women’s brains may allow tau pathology, those same protein tangles, to spread more rapidly across brain regions than in men’s brains. In practical terms, this may mean that once symptoms start, the disease can progress faster in women. This is especially important in midlife when “brain fog” and forgetfulness are considered signs of aging and told that these are “just things we must just accept,” instead of red flags that should be taken more seriously. If something feels off or different, make sure you find the right care team to support you immediately.

The Diagnostic Blind Spot

It was a warm summer evening in 2023 when my mom called me out of the blue.

“Hi sweetie,” she said.

“Hi, mom. What’s up?” I thought she was out of town, so a red flag immediately went up for me.

“I can’t find my words,” she said cautiously, with a hint of fear behind her voice.

I asked her about her sleep. She wasn’t sleeping well. Her mental health. She was feeling very down and grieving a lot after my father’s death. Her daily exercise. Not happening, because she was so tired. Her diet was a steady supply of diet coke, chips, salsa, parmesan cheese and rotisserie chicken.

We decided to contact a neurologist, who did some initial testing, then recommended an MRI to check for strokes. We waited. Then we got a second opinion, and went through the whole process again: more cognitive testing, another recommendation for an MRI to look for active or new strokes. More waiting.

Finally, the MRI results came in. No strokes. For a moment, that felt like relief. But it wasn’t the answer we needed. Six months later, my mother was diagnosed with frontal temporal lobe dementia.

How and why was her condition missed?

Because historically, women tend to perform better than men on tests of verbal memory, such as remembering lists of words, even when pathology is present in the brain.

While this “verbal reserve” is a cognitive strength, it can act as a mask, allowing women to perform “normally” on the standard diagnostic MoCA (Montreal Cognitive Assessment) test even as the disease progresses. As a result, women are often diagnosed later in the disease cycle, missing the window for early interventions or clinical trials.

My mother lived for only 8 months after her diagnosis. Had she known earlier what was happening in her brain, she could have made important choices to prolong her life, create a care plan, and preserve her quality of life.

The Caregiving Crisis and the “Double Hit”

Women face a dual burden: they are more likely to develop the dementia, and they are overwhelmingly the ones caring for those who have it.

Over 60% of unpaid family caregivers for people with dementia are women.

Daughters are twice as likely as sons to step into primary caregiving roles.

Caregiving frequently disrupts women’s careers during their peak earning years. Approximately 19% of female dementia caregivers have had to quit working entirely, and many others reduce their hours, exacerbating the gender wage and retirement savings gaps.

Chronic stress from intensive, unpaid caregiving elevates cortisol levels and increases the risk of depression and sleep deprivation, both of which are independent risk factors for cognitive decline.

Here is the part that stops me every time I think about it: caring for a relative with dementia can increase a woman’s own long-term risk of developing the condition. The double hit isn’t just a figure of speech. It’s a real, physiological cycle.

After 15 years of caring for both my parents with frontal temporal lobe dementia, the impact on my health is deep and has taken its toll. I’m still working to rebuild my sleep, gut health, cardiovascular and mental health. I must be clear, dedicated and intentional about my own self-care so that this horrible disease doesn’t steal away my mind, body and spirit.

Closing the Gap

Addressing this issue requires a shift in how the medical community, policymakers, and society approach dementia.

We must mandate gender specific clinical trials, so women have equal representation and sex-disaggregated data analysis in pharmaceutical and preventative trials. This will help to create medication options that do not currently exist.

We must recognize that lifestyle interventions such as diet, exercise, sleep apnea treatment, hormone replacement and stress management need to be tailored differently for women to maximize their cognitive protection. No more “bro wellness influencers” telling women what they need to do for their bodies. We know what we need. We need community and support that makes us feel seen, and evidence-based information so we can advocate for ourselves in a medical system that doesn’t see us.

We must build caregiver support systems: paid family leave, respite care subsidies, and mental health resources to alleviate the physical and economic toll of care. We need to support our friends and family members who are caregivers, to rest, exercise, take days off, ask for help and receive whatever support we can offer them. Just knowing that my mom had someone to watch over her so I could take a trip or be with my daughter at a volleyball tournament or school event was a big weight off my shoulders.

Acknowledging that dementia is a distinct challenge for women is the first step. But awareness alone won’t change the numbers. It will take researchers willing to ask different questions, clinicians willing to look past a normal-looking test score, and a healthcare system willing to fund the studies that have been missing for decades.

In the meantime, we don’t have to wait for the system to catch up to start protecting ourselves and each other. If you are caring for someone with dementia, or worried about your own risk, or just starting to ask these questions for the first time: this is a safe space for you. Leave a comment below or Message me. I am here for you.

Your Brain Is the Last One to Know It's Exhausted

Shawna Robins — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 12:03:50 GMT

“I function fine on five or six hours of sleep.”

This is what I hear every time I meet with a new client who is struggling with weight gain, depression, anxiety, brain fog, thyroid problems, libido issues and low energy.

As women we tend to white knuckle through poor sleep, exhaustion, adrenal burnout and chronic fatigue. Believing that you can function perfectly on six hours or less of sleep is one of the most common badges of honor in our modern culture.

And it’s a big, fat lie.

Sleep science tells us that the brain is the worst judge of its own exhaustion. It’s often the last to know when it is operating under a deficit.

Are You Actually Adapted, or Have You Just Stopped Noticing?

If you have slept for six hours a night for years, and feel totally used to it and function just fine, then listen up.

The truth is that you aren’t actually adapted. You’ve just lost the ability to measure your own decline.

However, when asked how they felt, the participants insisted they had “adapted” and felt fine.

Operating on chronic six-hour sleep is like driving with a slow leak in your tire. You don’t notice the drop in performance because it happens gradually, but you are still driving on a flat.

Don’t rely on your subjective feelings of “tiredness” to decide if you’ve slept enough. Instead, track objective markers:

Do you find yourself re-reading the same email three times?
Are you misplacing keys?
Do you rely on a second cup of coffee just to survive the 2:00 PM slump?
Are you too tired to exercise?
Do you feel raw and short tempered more than usual?

If you answer yes to any (or all) of these, then lack of quality sleep could be the cause.

Why Does Everything Feel Like a Crisis When You’re Tired?

When you are tired, even minor annoyances feel like existential crises. You probably just tell yourself that you are stressed, overwhelmed, hormonal or unmotivated. But poor sleep is a real issue.

When you are well-rested, your brain’s rational center (the prefrontal cortex) acts like a set of brakes on your emotional alarm system (the amygdala).

Neuroimaging studies show that sleep deprivation frays this connection, causing a 60% increase in amygdala reactivity.

Imagine you are driving an emotional vehicle with a highly sensitive gas pedal and broken brakes. An annoying email from a colleague or a minor traffic delay doesn’t just bother you, it triggers a primitive “fight-or-flight” stress response. Your patience evaporates, and your capacity to handle daily frustrations diminishes.

If you find yourself snapping at family members or feeling unusually anxious about routine tasks, stop trying to analyze the psychological “why” first. Ask yourself: have I accumulated a sleep debt this week?

Often, emotional resilience is restored not by overthinking, but by going to bed 45 minutes earlier.

Why Do Your Worst Decisions Feel So Good at 11 PM?

Sleep-deprived brains are drawn to risky bets and poor habits. Chronic short sleep starves the prefrontal cortex of glucose. When this area is underpowered, your brain struggles with “cognitive flexibility,” the ability to pivot when plans change or to learn from negative consequences.

According to research on risk-taking, sleep-deprived individuals consistently fail to utilize negative feedback. They become overconfident, focus heavily on short-term gains, and downplay potential negative outcomes.

This is why you agree to unrealistic project deadlines late at night, make impulse purchases you regret later, or convince yourself that “one more episode” of your favorite Netflix show won’t hurt. Your brain literally loses the neural bandwidth required to say: “Wait, this is a bad idea in the long run.”

I recommend adopting a personal rule to never make major financial, professional, or relationship decisions after 9:00 PM. It’s important to sleep on your choice first, especially if you are running on a sleep deficit. Your prefrontal cortex will thank you in the morning.

Is It Really an Obesity Epidemic, or a Sleep Crisis?

I remember when my publisher and I were discussing a title for my first book. She told me to call it “Sleep: the new weight loss drug.” I laughed at her advice and ended up calling it Powerful Sleep instead. Now, with the GLP-1 craze taking over every conversation about weight, I realize I probably should have listened to her.

Because we don’t have an obesity epidemic. We have a sleep crisis.

Why? Because sleeping six hours or less at night physically alters your metabolism and starves your brain cells.

Just a few days of sleeping six hours or less reduces your body’s overall insulin sensitivity by 16% to 30%.

This means your cells struggle to absorb glucose from your bloodstream. Because your brain runs primarily on glucose, this metabolic “lockout” starves your neurons of steady energy, manifesting as acute brain fog.

To compensate for this energy crisis, your brain releases hunger hormones (elevating ghrelin and suppressing leptin). It screams at you for the fastest, most concentrated fuel source available: simple sugars and highly processed carbohydrates (candy, chocolate, bread, cookies, chips, soda, energy drinks, sweetened coffee drinks).

So no, it’s not your willpower. It’s your biology.

Your afternoon craving isn’t a moral failing; it is a direct physiological cry for help from a starved brain.

If you are trying to manage your weight, lower inflammation levels and stabilize your focus, 7+ hours of nighttime sleep is your leverage.

So next time, instead of beating up on yourself over your ability to resist sugar, switch your focus to getting past the 7-hour mark for nighttime sleep. It automatically balances your appetite hormones and will naturally reduce sugar and carb cravings.

Can You Really Make Up Lost Sleep on the Weekend?

Are you someone who tells yourself, “No harm done. I’ll make up for my lost sleep on the weekend when I have more time?”

If the answer is yes, I want to burst your bubble of irrational thinking. Let’s look at what happens when your brain misses its nightly cleaning cycle.

Your brain has a specialized waste-removal system called the glymphatic system. During deep, slow-wave sleep, your brain cells physically shrink, allowing cerebrospinal fluid to rush through the tissue and flush out toxic metabolic waste, including beta-amyloid and tau proteins, the same ones that lead to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

This cleaning process is reduced by roughly 50% when you are awake. If you cut your sleep short, you cut the cleaning cycle short. There is no make-up time on the weekend or vacation for this. When it’s over, it’s over.

In the brain, this toxic buildup accelerates biological aging.

MRI studies show that chronic suboptimal sleep correlates with an accelerated brain age of 1 to 3 years.

Think of sleep as an active, biological cleaning service, not passive “downtime.” Every hour of sleep you shave off is an hour of self-cleaning your brain misses.

How to Transition from 6 Hours to 7.5 Hours (Without Stress)

If you have spent years averaging six hours of sleep, trying to jump to eight hours overnight will likely result in you staring at the ceiling in frustration. Instead, try a 15-minute micro-shift:

Week 1: Move your bedtime up by just 15 minutes. If you usually sleep from 11:30 PM to 5:30 AM, aim to be in bed by 11:15 PM.
Week 2: Move it up another 15 minutes.
Week 3: Move it up another 15 minutes.
Week 4: Move it up another 15 minutes.

Over a month, you will painlessly reclaim an extra hour of sleep. Observe how your afternoon brain fog, irritability, and sugar cravings begin to stabilize.

If you need more support, download my book, Powerful Sleep or consider becoming a subscriber, I dive deep into monthly themes and the consistent underlying theme I always come back to is sleep.

Repairing your sleep is one of the best ways to protect your brain, improve your quality of life and support your overall health and wellbeing.

The health metric nobody talks about — and why it predicts almost everything

Shawna Robins — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 03:32:33 GMT

If you’ve ever had to ask someone to open a stubborn jar lid, you probably laughed it off as a minor annoyance. But in the medical and research worlds, poor grip strength is no laughing matter. Increasingly, scientists are calling it a functional vital sign of how well multiple systems in your body are aging. For women, who naturally carry less muscle mass than men and experience rapid hormonal changes during menopause, monitoring and maintaining grip strength is incredibly important.

The research connecting grip strength to cardiovascular health, cognitive decline, metabolic function, and overall longevity is seriously eye-opening. Here is a breakdown of why this simple metric matters so much.

Longevity: The Ultimate Biomarker

It is easy to think of grip strength as just a hand measurement, but it is actually a proxy for your overall skeletal muscle mass and neurological function. As we age, we gradually lose muscle mass and quality (a process called sarcopenia) unless you are lifting heavy weights a few days per week (see my last Substack post for more about this).

Recent research underscores this link. A study published in JAMA Network Open tracked over 5,000 women between the ages of 63 and 99 over an eight-year period. The researchers found that physical strength was a major indicator of survival: every additional 7 kilograms (about 15.4 lbs) of grip strength was associated with a 12% reduction in mortality risk.

Put simply, keeping your muscles strong is one of the most effective ways to preserve your independence and protect against early death.

A New Take On Cardiovascular Health

We usually associate heart health with cardiovascular exercises like running, swimming, or cycling. While those are great, your muscles play a massive role in how your cardiovascular system functions.

In a landmark, large-scale global study (the PURE study published in The Lancet), researchers found that a decline in grip strength was actually a stronger predictor of cardiovascular death than systolic blood pressure. For women, this becomes especially critical post-menopause. The drop in estrogen and testosterone during menopause often accelerates muscle loss and increases cardiovascular risk. A strong grip is a sign of healthy, active muscle tissue that is well-oxygenated and receiving adequate blood flow, which takes the pressure off your heart.

How To Spot Cognitive Decline

It sounds bizarre that squeezing something with your hand could tell you anything about your brain, but the two are intimately connected. For your hand to squeeze with maximum force, your central nervous system has to rapidly recruit and coordinate thousands of motor units. If there is a “communication” issue in the brain or nervous system, grip strength is often the first thing to falter.

Longitudinal studies have shown that poor handgrip strength in midlife is associated with a significantly higher risk of cognitive decline, memory problems, and even vascular dementia 10 years later. When grip strength drops, it is often an early warning sign of a loss in white matter integrity or general nervous system decline.

Insulin Resistance and Poor Metabolic Function

Skeletal muscle is your body’s largest “metabolic sink.” When you eat carbohydrates, your muscles are responsible for soaking up and storing the majority of that glucose.

If your muscles are weak or are being replaced by fat, your body’s ability to manage blood sugar takes a massive hit. Studies consistently show a direct link between low relative grip strength (your grip strength adjusted for your body weight or BMI) and an increased risk of insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes.

Keeping your muscles strong ensures your metabolic engine is running efficiently.

Squeezing a Stress Ball Won’t Fix It (But This Will)

It is important to note that grip strength is a correlation to poor health, not the root cause. Squeezing a stress ball or grip trainer all day might make your hands a little stronger, but it won’t magically lower your risk of cardiovascular disease or dementia because it doesn’t address overall systemic muscle health issues.

To build genuine, longevity-boosting strength, you want to focus on these 4 important physical habits:

Lift relatively heavy things: You don’t have to become a bodybuilder, but resistance training—using free weights, machines, or bands—at least three days a week is key to preserving muscle mass. Exercises like deadlifts, squats, and chest presses help build full-body strength.

Carry heavy things (also called Farmer’s walks or Farmer’s carry): Pick up a pair of moderately heavy dumbbells or kettlebells and walk with them for one minute. That’s it. This is one of the absolute best functional exercises for overall core stability and grip strength. I find this one really challenging to do. All year it has been my goal to be able to carry half my body weight for one min. I have been working my way up and still can only carry two 30 lb. dumbbells. I keep looking for small wins by increasing the carry weight and length of time just a little bit each week. Slowly I am improving, but it just takes time. Sometimes I feel impatient that such a small task is so hard for me to do.

Hang from a bar: Just finding a pull-up bar and hanging from it for 10 to 30 seconds does wonders for your shoulder health, spinal decompression, and grip. This is another one that is really hard for me. At about 20 seconds of a dead hang, I just want to drop. My mind starts to scream to let go. So now I have a song that I hum to keep my mind preoccupied so my body can continue the hang time. The mind always gives out before the body. This exercise is great for helping build mental toughness to do hard and uncomfortable things.

Prioritize protein: To build and keep muscle, your body needs the raw materials. Aim to get high-quality protein distributed throughout your meals. It can be animal or plant based, whatever you prefer. Just make sure that it is a whole food, unprocessed source of protein. Stay away from textured vegetable protein, processed soy, bacon, lunch meats, salami and all fast food. Focus instead on edamame, tempeh, wild caught salmon, pastured raised chicken and eggs, grass feed beef, bison, humanely raised pork, beans, lentils, almonds, nut butters, and full fat dairy products. Protein powders are fine if they are third-party tested and free of lead, mercury and arsenic. I like to add protein powder to my chia seed pudding, overnight oats, smoothies and yogurt.

Test yourself this week

You don’t need a fancy dynamometer to get a sense of where you stand. Pick one:

The dead hang test: grab a pull-up bar or sturdy beam and hang with straight arms for as long as you can. Under 10 seconds is a signal worth paying attention to. 20+ is solid. 30+ and you’re in great shape.
The carry test: grab the heaviest dumbbells you can comfortably hold and walk for one minute without dropping them or losing your grip.

Either one will tell you more about your trajectory than a number on a scale ever will.

A simple, concrete goal for your long-term health isn’t just a focus on the scale or how long you can run on a treadmill. Instead, reprioritize strength as your overall marker of health. Aim to get strong enough to carry your own groceries, open your own jars, and lift your own body weight.

Strength isn’t vanity. It’s not about how your arms look in a tank top. It’s the thing standing between you and a future where someone else has to open your jars, carry your bags, and catch you when you fall. Train like your independence depends on it — because it does.

What Building a Strong Body Actually Looks Like in Midlife

Shawna Robins — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 13:03:49 GMT

I remember looking through Seventeen magazine in the mid-80s. I was an awkward teenager with muscular legs (from soccer and swimming), larger hips and tiny breasts. When I saw Kate Moss in Calvin Klein ads, I looked at her ribs, her bony hips and thin cheekbones, and felt immediately jealous. I wanted what she had and spent the next ten years trying to recreate that waif look by skipping meals, drinking Slimfast shakes and eating grapefruit to “fill me up” before every meal.

For decades, the cultural narrative around women’s fitness focused almost entirely on shrinking. We were told to strive for “skinny,” a goal achieved through calorie restriction, endless cardio, and light weights.

Let’s call that what it was: disordered eating, dressed up as discipline. And it wasn’t a personal failing. An entire generation of women were handed the same script and told it was health.

But you can’t blame the way you learned to see your body forever. At some point the unlearning becomes yours to do. Not because you did something wrong, but because you get to choose something better now.

Midlife isn’t the moment the old tricks stop working. It’s the moment you stop needing them to.

Shifting the Goal: Strength over Skinniness

A strong body at midlife does not look like a 20-year-old’s body, nor should it. It looks structurally sound and resilient. It has visible, functional muscle that supports the joints, holds the spine upright, and provides metabolic stability.

It is a body built to carry loads, protect against falls, and sustain consistent, daily energy.

Strong over skinny. I say this all the time. Because you have to pick your hard.

The shift starts in your head before it shows up anywhere else. For decades the only question most of us asked was how do I make myself smaller. That question has to retire. Replace it with ones that actually serve you:

Can I carry my own groceries, my own suitcase, my own kid or grandkid, without help?

Can I get up off the floor without using my hands?

When I picture “strong,” am I picturing capability, or am I still picturing a smaller version of myself in disguise?

That last one matters. Strong is not skinny with better PR. It is a completely different target, and it asks something different of you: heavier weights, more food, more rest, more patience with a body that is changing shape as it gets more capable.

Pick that hard instead. It’s the one that’s still paying off in twenty years. It’s the one delving deeper into loving your whole self.

The Biological Barriers of Midlife

During perimenopause and menopause, hormonal shifts change how your musculoskeletal and recovery systems operate.

Estrogen is often thought of solely as a reproductive hormone, but it is actually a primary driver of muscle quality and repair in women. It helps regulate muscle stem cells, which are responsible for repairing and rebuilding muscle fibers after exercise.

As estrogen levels decline, women experience a degree of anabolic resistance. This means your muscles become less sensitive to the signals that typically trigger muscle building and repair.

You can perform the exact same workout you did in your 30s, but your body requires a more robust stimulus to achieve the same muscle-repair response.

Joint Pain and MSM (Musculoskeletal Syndrome of Menopause) also become a new reality after age 40, because estrogen also helps maintain joint lubrication, collagen elasticity in tendons and ligaments.

During menopause, estrogen drops and many women experience joint stiffness, aching knees, hips, or lower back pain. This cluster of symptoms is sometimes referred to as the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause (MSM). This pain makes traditional high-impact exercises feel punishing rather than therapeutic.

To add insult to injury, midlife is marred by disrupted sleep and insomnia. Both will significantly impact your energy levels, making a workout feel impossible at times. Without proper nighttime sleep, high-intensity workouts drive you further into systemic fatigue, leading to burnout rather than fitness gains.

What Actually Works: An Evidence-Based Blueprint

The stone-cold truth is this: You must create a new way to approach your training, nutrition, and recovery strategies if you want to stay strong and vibrant as you age. Here are some non-negotiable changes that I recommend must be a part of your midlife longevity and quality of life blueprint.

Before Any of This Works: Change the Goal You’re Measuring Against

None of the strategies below will stick if you’re still chasing them with the old goal hiding underneath. You can do every set, hit every gram of protein, and still be running the same restriction script you ran at 25, just wearing workout clothes instead of a Slimfast shake.

So before training, before nutrition, before any of it: define what healthy actually means to you now. Not smaller. Not a number. Capable. Resilient. Strong enough to live the life you actually want, alone if you have to. That redefinition is the work, and it has to happen first, because it’s what determines whether everything else you do is building you up or just restriction with better branding.

This choice is yours. So ask yourself:

When you picture “getting healthy,” is the picture still about disappearing?

Are you eating enough to fuel the muscle you’re asking your body to build?

If no one ever saw or commented on your body again, would you still want to be strong?

What would you do with your body if capability, not appearance, was the only metric?

What kind of hard are you willing to pick, today and ten years from now?

Redefine Resistance Training

A woman’s life expectancy is seven years longer than a man, so chances are, you will be alone at some point in your life. This means to preserve bone density, your bones and muscles need to lift a heavy load to maintain carrying your groceries, walking up and down stairs, lifting laundry and heavy pots & pans, taking out trash cans, cleaning out closets, lifting luggage and everything else you must be prepared to do alone.

Resistance training is an investment in your quality of life. Approximately 30% of women who suffer hip fractures die within a year.

Stop focusing on being skinny and start prioritizing moderate to heavy resistance training. Always make sure you modify it for joint safety. If you struggle with joint pain, avoid high-impact jumping or heavy spinal loading and focus on movements like split squats, single-leg glute bridges, and single-arm dumbbell rows which will challenge your muscles while keeping your joints in a safer, more stable alignment.

Remember: the slower the better. Controlling a weight (including your body weight) slowly on the way down strengthens tendons and ligaments, helps stimulate muscle growth, and causes less joint impact than explosive movements.

Focus on Targeted Nutrition For Your Muscles

Because your body is less efficient at processing protein and building muscle at this stage, your daytime nutrition choices require more intentionality. First, optimize protein intake to 1.2 to 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. Distributing this evenly across 3 to 4 meals (aiming for roughly 30–40 grams per meal) will help trigger muscle protein synthesis.

Consider adding creatine monohydrate into your daily diet. Although this supplement used to be targeted for bodybuilders, creatine has emerged in clinical research as highly beneficial for postmenopausal women. Studies confirm that women who take 3 to 5 grams of creatine daily, when paired with resistance training, significantly improve their lean muscle mass and lower-body strength compared to training alone. It also shows promise in supporting cognitive function and mitigating menopause brain fog. Creatine is easy to drink and can be added to a water bottle within an hour before or after a workout for best results.

Change Your Mindset About Cardio Workouts

As I mentioned in my last Substack (click here to read), women in midlife need to change their mindset when it comes to their workouts. Now is the time to swap chronic, high-intensity cardio sessions, which can elevate cortisol and exacerbate weight gain and sleep problems, for a mix of Zone 2 cardio and resistance training.

Why?

Because Zone 2 plus weight training supports mitochondrial health and active recovery without overstressing your nervous system. And nervous system regulation is a key component of staying healthy as you age.

Don’t forget to schedule intentional rest days from exercise. You don’t have to push it hard every single day. If you feel sore, have low energy, or are deeply fatigued, taking 2 to 3 rest days between intense strength sessions is often more beneficial than pushing through. Muscle growth happens during rest, and at midlife, your body simply requires more time to complete the repair process.

Always make sure to listen to your body.

A strong body at midlife is built on strong bones, muscle and quality recovery. I always tell my clients to “pick your hard.” Do you want to restrict your daily calories, focus only on cardio workouts or use GLP-1 drugs to stay thin or be able to lift your groceries, travel alone with your luggage and continue to live a vibrant life when you are 80?

This choice is yours. What type of hard will you pick?

Monthly Spark: Built to Last

Shawna Robins — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 13:02:59 GMT

Before I get into this month, I have some very exciting news to share with you all! I just signed a publishing deal with She Writes Press on my next book! This is my third book and will be a collaborative project with over 30 experts focusing on solving insomnia for women during midlife. I'm beyond thrilled and extremely grateful to my book coach, Toby Neal, and my family and friends for all their unwavering support. Writing a book takes a strong village. Plan to see it on your local bookshelves in early 2028!

Now, let’s get into this month and why it’s so important right now.

Over the years, working with so many of you, I have noticed something. There is a quiet pressure that follows us as we age. A message, subtle but persistent, that we are supposed to get smaller. Move less. Expect less. That slowing down is just what happens, and that we should make peace with it.

I don’t believe that. And the science doesn’t either.

What I have seen again and again, in my clients, in the research, in my own life, is that strength is not a young person’s story. Longevity is not about luck. And the body is not something that happens to you. It is something you are in conversation with, if you know how to listen.

This month we’ve been going deep on that conversation. We are talking about the research that has been done on men and largely applied to women as if we are the same. We are talking about the link between leg strength and brain health, which still stops me every time I think about it. We are talking about what it actually means to build a body that lasts, not one that simply gets through the year.

There is so much noise out there about what health should look like. So many images of what a “healthy” body is supposed to be. I have watched people exhaust themselves chasing something that was never the right target to begin with. This month, we are shifting that target entirely.

Strong is the goal. Lasting is the goal. And you deserve the full picture to get there.

I hope this month gives you something that sticks.

xo
Shawna

Strong not Skinny

For too long, the story around aging has been about subtraction.

Eat less, take up less space, expect less from your body as the years go on. It is a story that has been sold to us so consistently that many people have stopped questioning it. But the research tells a different story entirely, one where strength built in your 40s, 50s, and beyond is one of the most powerful investments you can make in your brain, your mood, your independence, and your life. Paying attention to what your body is telling you is not indulgence. It is intelligence. And even deeper, it’s a form of self love.

The idea of strength and longevity is not new. It’s ancient.

In ancient Greece, Spartan women trained their bodies with the same seriousness as men — running, wrestling, building physical endurance, because their culture understood that a strong woman was the foundation of a strong community.

In Okinawa, Japan, home to some of the longest-living women on earth, daily movement is not exercise in the modern sense. It is woven into life itself, tending gardens, sitting low to the ground, walking, carrying. The body stays capable because it is never asked to stop.

In Ayurvedic tradition, a woman’s vitality is considered sacred and cyclical, something to be tended with intention across every season of her life, not spent quickly and never restored.

And across many West African traditions, the elder woman is the keeper of knowledge, physically and spiritually present at the center of her community.

The thread running through all of it is the same. Strength. It was meant to be maintained, honored, and passed on. Somewhere along the way, modern culture lost that thread.

Your legs might be keeping your brain alive
New research suggests that leg strength is one of the most powerful predictors of long-term brain health — with the potential to lower dementia and Alzheimer’s risk by up to 47%. It turns out the work you do from the ground up matters more than anyone told you.

Tested on men. Prescribed to women.
For twenty years, a commonly prescribed drug was dosed incorrectly for women because the research simply never included them. That is not an isolated story — it is a pattern. And it deserves a real conversation, not just a label change.

Click here to shop the list.

Shawna’s Picks

Building a strong foundation does not have to be complicated, and it does not require a gym membership or a full rack of equipment. These are some of my personal favorites — the things I actually use and recommend to clients who are ready to start investing in their strength. From protein and creatine to support muscle building and recovery, to weights that will grow with you as you get stronger, this list is designed to meet you where you are and take you further. Strength is built in the small, consistent moments — and having the right tools at home makes showing up a whole lot easier.

Affirmation

The words we repeat to ourselves are not just thoughts, they shape the way we move through the world. Research in neuroscience and psychology consistently shows that positive self-affirmation activates the brain's reward centers and can genuinely shift the way we perceive our own capabilities over time. It is also an act of love. So as you close this out, I will leave you with this to carry into the rest of the month.

Your legs might be keeping your brain alive

Shawna Robins — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:04:55 GMT

Photographer unknown. Know the source? Please tag us.

If you knew a specific physical habit could increase the physical volume of your brain’s grey matter and preserve your memory ten years from now, would it be treated as essential medicine?

What if I told you that it would significantly lower dementia and Alzheimer’s risk by up to 47%?

It is not a supplement, pill, vitamin, device or superfood. Surprise. It’s heavy, progressive lower-body resistance training.

Unfortunately for decades, the cultural conversation around women’s strength training has been heavily dominated by aesthetics. Midlife fitness advice often targets “toning,” weight loss, or defying the visible signs of aging. However, a compelling body of scientific research shifts the focus entirely from how the lower body looks to how it functions—revealing a direct, profound link between leg strength and cognitive longevity.

The facts are clear: maintaining strong legs is an investment in your future self.

Photographer unknown. Know the source? Please tag us.

The Science of Leg Power

The strongest evidence linking lower-body strength to brain health comes from a landmark 10-year study led by researchers at King’s College London. Published in the journal Gerontology, the study followed 324 healthy female twins between the ages of 43 and 73.

Researchers measured a variety of health and lifestyle factors, including “leg Power” which is the speed and force with which the lower limbs can push. Ten years later, they tested the twins’ cognitive abilities (such as memory and processing speed) and performed brain scans.

The results were striking. Leg power at the start of the study was the single best predictor of cognitive aging and brain structure a decade later. Because the study focused on identical twins, researchers were able to control for genetic variables and early life environments. The twin who had stronger legs at the baseline of the study maintained significantly better cognitive function and showed far fewer brain changes associated with aging (such as loss of grey matter) than her genetically identical, weaker sister.

Photographer unknown. Know the source? Please tag us.

The Mind-Muscle Connection

Why do the legs, specifically, hold such sway over our cognitive reserve? The relationship is driven by several distinct biological mechanisms:

1. The Myokine Signal: When the large, powerful muscles of the lower body (such as the quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes) contract against heavy resistance, they act as endocrine organs. They release chemical messengers called myokines (such as irisin) into the bloodstream. These compounds can cross the blood-brain barrier, triggering the release of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF). Often described as “fertilizer” for the brain, BDNF supports the survival of existing neurons, encourages the growth of new ones, and enhances synaptic plasticity.

2. Systemic Metabolic Health: The glutes and thighs are our largest “glucose sinks”. Strengthening these muscles improves insulin sensitivity and helps regulate blood sugar. Poor blood sugar regulation and insulin resistance are deeply toxic to the brain, contributing to chronic inflammation and a significantly higher risk of cognitive decline.

3. Cerebral Blood Flow and Nervous System Stimulation: Moving heavy lower body loads require a massive amount of neural coordination. The feedback loop between the motor neurons in the spinal cord and the brain during a lower-body movement stimulates the nervous system. Furthermore, intense lower-body exertion significantly increases cerebral blood flow, delivering oxygen and vital nutrients directly to the brain.

The Resistance Training Gap in Midlife

Midlife, especially the transition through perimenopause and menopause, is a critical window where fluctuating and declining estrogen and testosterone levels accelerate the loss of muscle mass and bone density. Yet the fitness landscape has not always met women here with the right tools.

Most midlife women have been guided toward cardio-first routines. Activities like HIIT, CrossFit, running, hiking, and biking deliver real cardiovascular benefits, but they do not provide the mechanical tension required to build leg power or halt muscle wasting.

According to CDC data, while many adults meet aerobic guidelines, only about 23.8% of women aged 45 to 64 meet federal guidelines for muscle-strengthening activities at least twice a week. Nearly three-quarters of midlife women are not getting enough resistance training, and the fitness industry bears significant responsibility for that gap.

For decades, fitness spaces marketed low-weight, high-repetition exercises to women under the guise of staying "lean" and avoiding "bulk." That messaging left a lasting imprint. Many women were never encouraged to pick up heavy weights, perform deep squats, or use leg press machines, which are the very activities that recruit the motor units necessary to signal the brain.

Photographer unknown. Know the source? Please tag us.

The Case for Aesthetic-Free Strength Training

When we decouple strength training from physical appearance, we change our entire relationship with exercise and brain health. Leg day is no longer about changing the shape of one’s thighs; it is about building cognitive armor.

By shifting away from a number on a scale or a clothing size, women can adopt a brain-first approach that measures success by strength, power and capability, like the ability to stand up from a low chair without using your hands, carry heavy loads upstairs, or catch yourself during a fall.

1981 Women’s Powerlifting Championship

Physical frailty and cognitive decline are deeply linked. When lower-body strength fades, mobility decreases. A sedentary lifestyle accelerates brain atrophy, creating a compounding loop of dependence and decline.

If you are a woman in your 50s, 60s, or beyond, I invite you to step away from the mirror and onto the floor. Squats, lunges, deadlifts, and leg presses are a direct, scientifically proven investment in keeping your mind sharp, resilient, and fully present for the decades ahead.

Start where you are. Three, five, or eight pounds. Bodyweight squats while the kettle boils. Sit-to-stands from a chair, then eventually from the floor. Small, consistent effort compounds into something profound. Your doctor is always a good first call if you have any concerns, but if you are wanting more in-depth guidance, comment ‘STRONG’ below and I can send over options for one-on-one sessions.

But here is what I want you to really hear: women were not designed to simply survive aging. We were built to lead, to carry, to move through the world with power and presence. For too long, we have been handed fitness advice built around shrinking, softening, and staying small. That era is over.

Strength is not a side effect of youth. It is something you build, protect, and choose at every age. Your legs are the foundation of your independence, your memory, and your future. Train them like the vital organs they are.

Progress, not perfection. Always.

You are not training for a season. You are training for your life.

**Disclaimer: For informational purposes only. Shawna Robins is not a medical doctor. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your health routine.

Tested on Men. Prescribed to Women.

Shawna Robins — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 17:31:16 GMT

Between 1977 and 1993, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held a policy that strongly recommended excluding women of childbearing potential from all Phase I and early Phase II clinical trials.

This was largely a reaction to the thalidomide tragedy of the 1960s, where an anti-nausea drug given to pregnant women caused severe birth defects. As “well intended” as it might have seemed at the time, what followed was an entire generation of prescription drugs brought to market with dosing, safety profiles, and metabolic data built on one subject: young, white men.

Because scientists wrongly assumed female bodies would react identically to male bodies, millions of women were heavily prescribed drugs that were fundamentally optimized for male biology.

Hard stop. WTF?

Because here's what that actually means. It means that for decades, women went to their doctors with real symptoms, received real prescriptions, and trusted a system that had never actually studied them. It means side effects that were dismissed, doses that were wrong, and bodies that were blamed for not responding the way they were supposed to.

In reality: the research wasn't built for you. And nobody told you.

The Problem With Gender Bias Medication

Ambien

As a sleep expert, I often see highly popular prescription sleep aid, Ambien (also known as Zolpidem), cause intense problems for women who are desperate for something to fix their chronic, debilitating insomnia. Because the initial pharmacokinetic testing was overwhelmingly based on men, the FDA approved a standard starting dose of 10mg. It was later discovered that women end up with blood concentrations of the drug nearly 50% higher than men, because they clear it significantly more slowly.

Valley of the Dolls, 1967

The consequences were not abstract. Women were found roaming streets at 2am in their underwear. They were getting into car accidents they had no memory of. They were becoming addicted to a drug they trusted their doctor to prescribe safely. None of this was a mystery or bad luck. It was entirely predictable, and it should have been caught in Phase I and II trials. It wasn't. For over 20 years, women were essentially overdosing on Ambien, and no one connected the dots.

In 2013, the FDA finally stepped in and mandated that the recommended dose for women be cut in half, to 5mg. But even that is still too much for some women, because each body is different and no two women metabolize it the same way. If you want to go deeper on this, I dedicated an entire chapter to it in my first book, Powerful Sleep - Rest Deeply, Repair Your Brain and Restore Your Life.

Twenty years of a drug being wrongly dosed for women deserves more than a label change. It deserves a real conversation.

And Ambien is just one example. But before I dive into another medication, there’s a statistic that more women need to be aware of here:

Heart disease is the number one killer of women in the United States, responsible for 1 in every 5 female deaths. It kills more women than all forms of cancer combined. And yet, because cardiovascular disease was historically viewed almost exclusively as a ‘man’s disease,’ the early testing and clinical trials for heart medications were built almost entirely around male patients.

Digoxin

Digoxin, a medication used to treat heart failure and other cardiac conditions, is a perfect example of how badly that assumption failed women. The drug was proven to successfully reduce hospitalizations in men. It was prescribed to women on that basis. It was only through a massive post-hoc analysis of clinical trial data that a devastating disparity emerged: digoxin actually increased the risk of death in female patients.

Beta-blockers

Beta-blockers are another class of heart medications that women need to know about. Drugs like Propranolol are commonly prescribed to manage abnormal heart rhythms, high blood pressure, and anxiety, and many of my coaching clients over 60 have been put on them without a single conversation about how these drugs affect a female body differently.

The problem is straightforward: women generally have a higher body-fat percentage and clear beta-blockers through their kidneys more slowly than men do. Because the dosing was established on male physiology, women routinely ended up with significantly higher concentrations of the drug in their blood, and with it, far more severe side effects.

I watched this happen to my own mother. When she was prescribed beta-blockers to manage her Afib, she became so dizzy she could barely stand without help. That dizziness led to a fall. That fall caused a traumatic brain injury. A drug meant to protect her heart ended up changing the trajectory of her health entirely.

This is what it looks like when dosing data doesn’t include you. It doesn’t always show up as a statistic. Sometimes it shows up as a phone call you never wanted to receive.

So before you fill a prescription, ask the question nobody told you to ask: was this drug actually tested on a body like mine?

What About Over The Counter (OTC) Medication?

If you thought the problem was limited to prescription drugs, it isn’t. The same pattern of male-only testing runs straight through your medicine cabinet.

Seldane was the first non-drowsy antihistamine, approved in the 1980s and taken by millions of people for basic allergy relief. What drug trials failed to account for was how the medication interacted with the electrical activity of the female heart. Female physiology naturally features a longer QT interval, the time it takes for the heart muscle to recharge between beats. Seldane triggered a fatal arrhythmia known as Torsades de Pointes, and it occurred predominantly in women.

The FDA pulled it from the market in 1997.

Fifteen years after it was approved.

Propulsid followed the same script. Approved in the 1990s for severe acid reflux, it caused sudden cardiac arrest and fatal arrhythmias almost exclusively in women. A Government Accountability Office report later confirmed it was one of several drugs that posed a disproportionate threat to female patients. It took another decade to pull it from shelves.

Two drugs. Decades of harm. Both entirely preventable if women had been in the trials from the start.

And then there is Aspirin, the most ordinary drug in the world. The 1989 Physician’s Health Study, the landmark research that established daily low-dose aspirin as a tool for heart attack prevention, enrolled 22,071 participants. Every single one of them was male.

For more than 15 years, doctors told women to take a daily aspirin to prevent heart attacks based on that data. It wasn’t until the Women’s Health Study was published in 2005 that the medical community discovered daily aspirin does not prevent initial heart attacks in women the way it does in men. For women, aspirin is only beneficial for stroke prevention, and only for those who have already experienced a stroke or TIA.

**Important note: Please do not take a daily low-dose aspirin without speaking to your cardiologist first.

What You Can Do Right Now

I believe modern medicine has a role to play in health and longevity. But as women, we have to walk into that system with our eyes open, because it was not designed with us in mind. That includes the current hype around GLP-1s, peptides, supplements, and whatever the wellness world is pushing this month.

The same questions apply everywhere.

Here is the truth that the medical system has never volunteered: women have only been required to be included in clinical trials since 1993. Every drug approved before that, and hundreds of generics still prescribed today, were grandfathered in from an era where female biology simply did not exist in the research.

The system was not built to see you. Which means you have to see yourself.

Ask questions. Push back. Do your own research. Trust what your body is telling you, because no dataset, no standard dose, and no physician who spends twelve minutes with you knows your body the way you do.

You have always been your own best advocate. Now you know why that matters more than you were ever told.

If this resonated with you, there's a lot more where this came from. As a paid subscriber you get full access to everything in the archive, including deeper dives into the research, the exact questions I give my clients before they accept a new prescription, and how so much of what affects women's health, from sleep to mood to metabolism, traces back to the gut and thyroid. If you want to walk into your next doctor's appointment feeling fully prepared, this is where that starts.

I Don't Want a Summer Body

Shawna Robins — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:02:45 GMT

Photographer unknown. If this is your work, I'd love to credit you properly.

Summer is almost here. And with it comes a particular kind of pressure that nobody really names out loud but everyone feels. The pressure to eat less, drink more, stay out later, skip the movement that actually makes you feel good because it’s 90 degrees and the couch is right there. The pressure to fit into last year’s clothes the exact same way last year’s version of you did. The pressure to look skinny in a swimsuit.

I’ll be honest with you: I don’t love summer.

Crazy thought, I know.

The loss of routine when my kids get out of school, the disappearance of the quiet hours I need to recharge before I can show up for anyone else, the humidity that makes sleep feel like a battle every single night. I am a spring and fall person. I like the gentleness of a shoulder season, the softness of transition. Summer doesn’t do gentle. It’s loud and hot and relentless, and it has a way of amplifying everything that was already hard.

Turns out I'm not alone. Crime statistics consistently show that murder rates spike in summer months. Make of that what you will. Personally, I think it's the sleep deprivation.

Right now, a lot is hard. The culture around bodies has gotten darker and more aggressive. GLP-1 medications have handed a new generation the tools to chase the same dangerous “skinny” ideal that defined the 80s and 90s, and it’s showing up everywhere: eating disorders, over-exercising, body dysmorphia, an obsession with shrinking that gets dressed up as “health.” The language has gotten more clinical, more optimized-sounding, but the core message is the same tired one it has always been.

Take up less space.

Photographer unknown. If this is your work, I'd love to credit you properly.

And that’s before we even get to what’s happening in our food supply and our environment. Glyphosate on produce. PFAS in workout clothes. Lead and arsenic in toothpaste. Microplastics collecting in our organs, our brains, our breast milk. The systems that were supposed to protect us from this aren’t doing the job, and now a lot of us are left trying to make sense of it on our own. That weight, on top of everything else, is genuinely hard to carry. It makes it difficult to feel safe in the world, let alone in your own body.

Somewhere along the way we got very far from the things that actually work. Plants. Sleep. Movement that builds you up instead of wearing you down. Real connection.

Photographer unknown. If this is your work, I’d love to credit you properly.

This is not a detox. It’s not a summer reset plan or a 30-day challenge or another repackaged version of “new season, new body.” This month, I’m focused on something that actually lasts: building strength. Not the aesthetic kind, not a number on a scale, but the kind that comes from taking care of yourself like you mean it. Strong bones. Strong gut. A nervous system that can handle what life hands it. A body you feel at home in, whatever size and shape that is right now.

We’re going back to what has always worked: whole food, quality sleep, movement that energizes you, and a slower, more deliberate relationship with the noise. I’m going to talk about longevity in a way that makes sense for real people with real lives, not biohackers with $10,000 supplement budgets.

The earth has been doing this for a long time. Plants, stars, seasons, roots. There is something steadying in remembering that.

That the oldest answers are still good ones.

That the goal was never to shrink. But to live a long life as your best, strongest self.

XO,

Shawna

The Autoimmune & Hormone Connection, Hormone Month Recap, Q&A

Shawna Robins — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:46:27 GMT

More than 80% of autoimmune diseases are diagnosed in women. That number tends to land like a surprise, but once you understand the biology, it starts to make complete sense, and it stops feeling like something to fear and starts feeling like something to work with.

This was the conversation from my final Substack Live of May, and I wanted to put it in w…

The Autoimmune and Hormone Connection: What the Research Says and Why It Matters

Shawna Robins — Thu, 28 May 2026 21:03:03 GMT

Nearly 80% of people living with autoimmune disease are women. For conditions like Lupus, Sjögren’s syndrome, and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, that ratio climbs to 9 to 1.

That is not a coincidence. And it is not a mystery.

Your hormones, your genetics, the way your body moves through pregnancy, perimenopause and menopause, all of it shapes how your immune sy…

Does Estrogen Cause Breast Cancer?

Shawna Robins — Mon, 25 May 2026 13:03:38 GMT

Recently, I listened to Dr. Avrum Bluming and Dr. Sharon Malone speak to a group of women about why estrogen was effectively blacklisted in 2002, following the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) findings, which claimed a now-debunked link between estrogen and breast cancer.

Resource: Estrogen Matters - by Dr. Bluming. Highly recommend.

As I listened, I thought of my mother, and of all the women in her generation who are now living with neurodegenerative diseases, heart disease, hip fractures, and recurrent UTIs that may have been preventable.

A little history

In the early 1990s, Bernadine Healy became the first female director of the National Institutes of Health. As a cardiologist, she recognized a critical gap: medical research was almost entirely conducted on men. The rationale was that you could test a drug on men and extrapolate the findings to women, as if women were simply “almost men, but not quite.”

This thinking is often called “Bikini Medicine” aka the belief that the only meaningful biological differences between men and women were the areas covered by a bathing suit. It shaped nearly every clinical trial before 2002.