About
If you have ever sat in a doctor’s office and been told your labs are normal, your stress is the problem, and maybe you should try an antidepressant — this episode is the class you never got. Dr. LaKeischa Webb McMillan is a hormone specialist, Amazon bestselling author, and the kind of practitioner who will tell you exactly what is happening in your body, why standard testing often misses it, and what you can actually do about it. She is also refreshingly honest about her own story, her ADHD-wired brain, and the come-to-Jesus moments that changed her health from the inside out.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Dr. LaKeischa walks through the real definition of menopause (12 consecutive months without a period — nothing more, nothing less), what perimenopause can look like for up to 15 years before that, and why feeling anxious, exhausted, foggy, or just “off” in your 40s is not stress — it is real physiology with a real chemical explanation. She covers the organ system cascade that happens when estrogen and progesterone start shifting, why progesterone is the hormone most doctors overlook, and why your adrenals, thyroid, gut, and brain are all part of the same conversation.
She also goes somewhere most clinical conversations never reach: the physiological consequences of unresolved stress, what grounding in the grass actually does to inflammation in the body, how a sympathetic nervous loop gets trapped in your trapezius muscle and what releases it, and why her celebratory song is Walking on Sunshine. This episode delivers real education with real warmth. "Donna" — and every woman who has been dismissed, handed a prescription she did not ask for, or told her labs are fine while she feels anything but — this one is for you.
What You Will Learn
- Why feeling anxious, exhausted, or unlike yourself in your 40s is a real clinical presentation rooted in changing hormones — not stress, not aging, and not something you are imagining — and the specific medical language to use at your next appointment to be taken seriously
- How estrogen and progesterone affect the brain, adrenals, thyroid, and gut in a cascade that creates symptoms from brain fog and anxiety to weight gain and insomnia — and why there is no silver bullet, only a multi-layered, whole-body approach
- Why normal lab results do not mean optimal hormone function — how inflammation pulls cell receptors inward so hormones cannot enter the cell even when blood levels look fine — and how to advocate for deeper testing that reflects how your body is actually using its hormones
Dr. LaKeischa Webb McMillan is the author of the Amazon bestseller The Other PMS: Your Survival Guide for Perimenopause and Menopause, a concise, accessible guide to understanding this stage of life written like a girlfriend who happens to be a doctor. Through virtual consultations at talkhormones.com, she helps women make sense of symptoms, identify next steps, and get personalized support for hormone health. She practices functional and integrative medicine, combining lifestyle, supplementation, hormone therapy, gut protocols, and advanced testing to create layered, individualized care. She encourages every woman to think of herself as the CEO and expert of her own body.
Book: The Other PMS: Your Survival Guide for Perimenopause and Menopause
Virtual consultations: talkhormones.com
Social media: @DrLakeischaMD on all platforms
Additional ResourcesThe limited-series podcast Christian Women and Menopause teaches what the Bible says about stress, anxiety, health, and confidence in midlife. Listen here:
