Making Moves in Midlife: Denise Pines on The M Factor 2, Wellness, and Taking Up Space
Show Snapshot:
Midlife women are done whispering. The runaway success of the menopause doc The M Factor proved it — millions of women were starving for a conversation nobody was having. Now Peabody Award-winning filmmaker and wellness powerhouse Denise Pines is back as co-producer of The M Factor 2: Before the Pause, dragging perimenopause out of the shadows and into the spotlight where it belongs. A busy multi-hyphenate, she's also launching her game-changing Hot Flash Tea into Target stores soon. Plus, Denise reveals the time management and mindset secrets that keep her making films, running companies, sitting on medical boards, and building a tea line — you know, basically unstoppable. Get ready to take notes, beauties — this one's pure fuel.
Show Links:
Follow Denise:
The M Factor Film:
Quotable:
“Women suffer about six years with perimenopause before they identify it as perimenopause — that was the critical inflection point we had to focus on.”
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty0:03
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. I'm your host, Katie Fogarty. Beauties, before we dive into a power-packed show, I want to take a minute to ask a favor. I am looking to boost our Apple Podcast and Spotify show reviews. So if you have learned something on A Certain Age Podcast, if you enjoy popping in your AirPods and meeting a fabulous new woman every week, if you've ever nodded your head in agreement or thought, "Wow, I never knew that," please let me know in an Apple Podcast or Spotify review. Reviews help other women find the show.
Now on to this week's episode of A Certain Age. Today we welcome a guest who refuses to let critical stories about women's lives remain untold, and her newest project is unfolding on screens all across the US, from Tampa, Florida to Juneau, Alaska. Denise Pines is a Peabody Award-winning filmmaker and a creative force. Most recently, she teamed up with top menopause advocate Tamsen Fadal and former Today Show producer Jo LaMarca Mathisen to co-produce the original M Factor film. Now their latest film, The M Factor 2: Before the Pause — Perimenopause, is shining a bright light on why perimenopause is a fundamental inflection point in women's health.
Denise is also a producer of 13 impact-driven documentaries, including award-winning PBS projects Birthing Justice and Push Out: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools. She's the founder of Wise Pause Wellness, a platform dedicated to pro-age health and education. She is the creator of the Menopause Recognition Awards and the entrepreneurial force behind Tea Botanics, which offers herbal remedies for menopause symptom relief like their Hot Flash Tea. Plus, she is the President of the Osteopathic Medical Board of California and a past president of the Medical Board of California. Denise has a long career shaping healthcare policies and practices. I am excited to hear all about the new movie and her work at the intersection of storytelling, health advocacy, and entrepreneurship — plus, if we are lucky, maybe she'll share her time management tips, because this busy lady is doing it all. Welcome to A Certain Age, Denise!
Denise Pines2:30
Thank you, Katie. I'm so happy to be here.
Katie Fogarty2:34
Well, I am so honored that you found time because your calendar is jam-packed. You are up to so many interesting things. You truly are working at the intersection of storytelling, advocacy, and building cool products for the midlife woman. I am thrilled to have the time to explore this with you. But let's start with the M Factor film. The first M Factor film was a sensation. It was widely shown in midlife circles all across the globe. You had screenings almost everywhere. When did you realize that the story wasn't over and a second film was needed?
Denise Pines3:06
Well, you know, I look at menopause as not being a moment. We keep hearing that it's really a health inflection point, right? It's like, "Hey, I've gotten all the way up to this point in my life, and if I haven't been eating well, or whatever I've been doing, perimenopause knocks you in the head and makes you recognize something's happening to my body." So the M Factor was really about breaking the silence around menopause, because at the time when we were producing the film, we really weren't hearing people talk about it. The sequel, The M Factor 2: Before the Pause, is looking to shift the lens earlier — right to perimenopause. Perimenopause can start in women as early as their mid-30s, definitely in their early 40s, and this is a time when she's often at her peak career or leadership capacity and growing. So most women find they don't really know what's happening. I've been hearing about women having migraines and brain fog and anxiety and sleep disruption, and of course the irregular cycles, and they constantly get misdiagnosed. What we want to do with this film is to get women in their 20s and 30s to know about perimenopause, so that when they start having some of these symptoms, they're not instantly thinking, "What's happening to me? Is it only happening to me? I think I'm going crazy. I'm going to doctors and they can't diagnose me." They can go, "Is this perimenopause? Let me look into this a little bit more," and then reach out and talk to their physician.
Katie Fogarty5:00
Yeah, the conversation does need to happen earlier, because I agree with you — most of us get walloped by late-stage perimenopause and finally start just researching for answers. There's a wonderful, active menopause community now. There are phenomenal books and resources out there. The conversation really should begin earlier, and that's what you're looking to do.
So here's my big question. I know getting the first film made was not easy, right? Despite the fact that there are hundreds of millions of women in menopause around the world — I've interviewed Tamsen on the show, I've been to both of your movie screenings, and I've heard all three producers say we had to really struggle to get that first movie made because people thought there was no audience for it. Ha! But was it easier to get the second film made after you so brilliantly made the case for the audience in the first?
No? So it tells me, still, people aren't investing in — I'm just going to say it — older women. You would think the phenomenal success that we had with this film, not just domestically but globally, that it would have just been easy when I started calling up organizations — I'm going to call them companies — that have targeted products towards this woman, that they would have been jumping to support this work. And they were not.
Denise Pines6:10
Everybody was interested, and everybody could tell me about the film — they saw it and how great it was, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah — but when it came down to
Denise Pines6:21
releasing the dollars to help us produce this film, and really what was a sprint — in terms of timeline — we weren't able to get that support. So the people that did support us, we are definitely highlighting them and making sure that people know who those organizations are, because those are the people that stepped up.
Yeah, they put their money where their mouth is.
Katie Fogarty6:45
And you used the word "sprint." Talk to us a little bit about the velocity with which this project came together, because the M Factor was just last year and you've already got the M Factor 2 out. It's not easy to turn movies around. Walk us through a little bit about how you pulled it all together.
Denise Pines7:00
I mean, it was crazy, right? The film released in October of 2024 — international World Menopause Day — and boom, it just took off. We really, honestly, even though we had a team of five people behind the scenes doing things, we could not keep up with the amount of requests that people had around the world to want to screen this film. And women were turning screenings around in like three weeks.
So we got towards the end of the year, and I did probably the last screening in Atlanta, and there were women lined up to talk to me, and they said, "When's the next one?" And I was like, "The next one?" So I just sort of honestly placated them — like, we were really working on something — and I was like, "Yeah, you know, we're sort of noodling on some ideas about another film." And they were like, "Oh, great!"
And Tamsen and Jo had been telling me — because they were on the road with the film more than I was — they were telling me this was happening. People were asking for another film. And so we got together at the very end of that year, in December, and just said, "Yeah, let's talk about it in January." So we got together formally with our other partner and talked: if we were going to do a film, what would it be?
We knew that there were things we left out. We knew we didn't talk about heart. We knew that we dropped the ball on cancer. We knew we didn't talk about bone health. So we knew there were some other things, and we knew we wanted to bring men into the conversation. And then we looked at what is the really critical inflection point. This really came to our realization when we did a pre and post survey at most of the screenings around the country, in the US and globally, and what we found was that women suffer about six years with perimenopause before they identify it as perimenopause. So we realized that was a critical point in time, and we thought, let's focus on perimenopause as the next film.
And then we had to figure out the storyline, how we're going to tell it, the experts, and trying to get new experts. And we wanted to put in lived experience stories. We looked at what are the top professions that women are in — healthcare, education — so we wanted to make sure that we had a teacher. We tried to get a nurse. And then we thought, what are the professions no one ever thinks about? Firefighter, right? A female firefighter. And so we wanted to bring some of those stories in as we strung along, telling and getting women to understand this ecosystem of their body and what starts to happen as our hormones are decreasing, the things that start evolving with our health that we didn't know about. And then, of course, it was finding the money.
Katie Fogarty10:00
And could we get a distributor? Could we get streaming? Could we get PBS to broadcast this again?
Denise Pines10:05
And so we ended up getting PBS to say yes. We ended up getting our funders. We ran out shooting all over the country — all of us taking a piece of the pie of shooting everywhere. And then we worked with these amazing editors who were a brother and sister in their early to mid-30s, and so it was great to kind of have a different lens — people who are not the story, even though the story will impact them at some point in their lives.
Katie Fogarty10:37
And it has been a sprint —
Denise Pines10:41
— and a successful one!
Katie Fogarty10:43
So I was able to attend your New York screening of the M Factor 2, which was terrific. It felt like the menopause universe was in one room. It was a really wonderful turnout, which was such a testament to the community of experts and voices and enthusiasm that you've built around this type of storytelling. And I love that you just shared that featuring lived experiences was an important part of this film. I enjoyed hearing the teacher share about her experiences navigating hot flashes and brain fog while trying to manage a classroom — how it gave her more empathy for the hormonal soup that her middle school students go through. It just felt very relatable. And the firefighter was another great snapshot.
Tell us — who are some of the voices and experts that viewers get to meet in the M Factor 2?
Denise Pines11:20
Ooh, let's see. Vonda Wright — bone health. I love Vonda. She's amazing, and you've had her on your podcast.
Katie Fogarty11:25
She's been on four times! Oh my gosh, she's a superstar.
Denise Pines11:28
Well, you'll come back when you do other things, but this is your first time with us — and Vonda has been on four times. She's phenomenal. She's a force. Kelly Casperson, who's just amazing — she's able to take really complex issues and sensitive issues like sex and really get us to want to know more about how our bodies work in all kinds of different ways, and definitely around our sexual health. Dr. Jane Morgan — she is a world-renowned cardiologist. It was amazing to have her. I mean, we all have this girl crush on her. When she comes around us we're just like, "Oh my God, it's Jane! It's Jane!" Because she's so beautiful and she's just so wise. She was really exciting to work with.
Who else do we have? We have Hadine Joffe out of Harvard, who's done a lot of research in women's health. She was really exciting to have. She talked a lot about mental health. And then, of course, Lisa Mosconi — the queen of the brain. She has such a gentle voice, and when you hear her in the film she's talking about something that we're all scared about, right? We're all scared about how our brain changes, but she gives us this incredible hope. It's not doomsday, and there are people out there studying this for us. So yeah, she's amazing.
Katie Fogarty12:30
Yeah, it's truly a wonderful, star-studded, power-packed panel of clinicians, researchers, and practicing doctors — really the top voices. Dr. Lisa Mosconi has written two New York Times bestselling books: The Menopause Brain and The XX Brain. And Vonda Wright's own book was an instant New York Times bestseller as well — Unbreakable: How to Age with Power. So the movie really features some of the top voices.
I want to ask you: you've produced 13 documentaries, so you're no stranger to amazing storytelling, and you've done it across topics ranging from menopause and perimenopause to Birthing Justice to the criminalization of Black girls in schools. What is the storytelling thread that connects all of this work? Talk to us a little bit about the power of storytelling to advance social equity and health equity, and why you got into this space.
Denise Pines13:10
Oh, sure. So for me, storytelling — at least in the way in which I do it — is about changing the narrative to demystify or to clarify what you might believe and how people are experiencing something, right? And then people can have empathy and then compassion. I try to get people to have compassion, because compassion tends to generate an action
Denise Pines14:32
moment, right? So I see something, I'm compassionate about it, I make a decision — I'm going to do something about it. So even with these films, we find that when women come, there are women who will come up to us at the end and say, "What can I do? I want to do something." And I'll find out — well, where are you? What do you do? Are you in a particular profession? Because then I can guide you in a particular way. If not — if you're just an everyday
Denise Pines15:00
woman who just wants to do something — then it's: talk to your friends, get them to watch this film, go to our website, we have a lot of resources, listen to this podcast, right? So the action and the compassion that you can generate from filmmaking is unparalleled to anything else, really, that I've seen.
Katie Fogarty15:15
We're heading into a quick break right now. When we come back, I want to talk again about how this movie galvanizes action. We'll be back in just a minute.
Katie Fogarty15:31
Denise, we're back from the break. When we went into it, you were talking about how documentaries have the power to really stir us — to make us feel compassionate, to make us feel engaged, to ask the question: "What can I do around this problem? How can I help solve it or be a part of the equation?" Talk to me about the community engagement piece of the M Factor film. You've had community screenings with this film, you've got workplace roundtables. How are you taking the movie from film and bringing it into our workplaces, our communities, in real life?
Denise Pines15:50
Yeah. So we are touring the country in 10 cities to meet with employers in these sort of intimate settings — about 20 to 25 employers — to talk to them and really make employers care. I'm going to be honest: they just care about the bottom line. So the worst thing to happen with an employer is that you lose your talent, right? And again, when this happens to women, they're at the peak — entering into or at the peak of their career years. That is the worst employee to lose in an organization. They have history, they have knowledge, they know how everything works.
Katie Fogarty16:42
And older people are going to stay longer than younger people in the workforce, so you might have another 15 years of this employee — but you could lose this employee if there's not any support in the workplace. And all of a sudden they go from being a really great employee...
Denise Pines16:58
We had an example of this in Atlanta that was so scary, because I actually knew this woman, but I didn't know this part of her story. She shared how she had been with this organization for nine years — I have even spoken at her organization. She went into perimenopause, and suddenly her work performance — this high achiever — her work performance wasn't the same. And she went to her boss and explained, "I think I'm going through perimenopause." And his answer was to put her on a PIP — a performance improvement plan. And she knew that was the beginning of the end.
So things started to get worse, and she ended up going on medical leave to give herself time to figure out: let me go to the right doctors, and also let me try to find work somewhere else, because it's clear that I'm no longer seen as this high-achieving, performing woman. And so when we say that one in four women leave the workplace — she was that one in four woman. Here's this woman: high achiever, successful, stars all the time. Boom. She goes into this perimenopause phase, and now she's looked at as not being a successful person for the company.
And that's why we're doing it. That's why we're touring — to get companies to have things in place so that no one else should have to go through that. She should not have had to leave her company. Her company should have said, "Here's what we have in place for this. We understand. These are the things we recognize that we need to support women like you. Let's first start with what kind of healthcare are you getting? Did you know we have this benefit over here? Take advantage of it. Maybe we need to alter your work hours. When are you having anxiety — is it in the morning? Maybe we can do some flexible work hours for you."
These are the kinds of things when a company understands that they have perimenopause and menopause women working for them, and that things may happen that might change how they have been performing — don't you want a super performer? Of course you do. Recognize that you can help that person still be the successful person they've been at your company. Why would you not want to do that?
Katie Fogarty19:10
Yeah, talent retention is such an important economic imperative for companies. I mean, not only that — what did it cost that company when she went on medical leave? You want to invest in your team members so you can retain that talent and avoid a brain drain.
One of the things I think is also important that the movie highlights is that perimenopause is a liminal space. We move through it and we come out into menopause, and things still need to be managed — but things like brain fog and some of the other
Katie Fogarty20:00
symptoms that you see profoundly during the true hormonal roller coaster of late-stage perimenopause — they settle down, and you can move through it and feel better on the other side of this. And I think that's an important part of the education piece that needs to happen as well. Not just for the woman, not just for the patient, but for the people surrounding her — in her workplaces, in her homes — to recognize that this is potentially a vulnerable moment in time, but it's only a moment in time, and this person can move through it and return to being the performer that she was.
Denise Pines20:20
Exactly, exactly. And when you think about it — we prepare girls for puberty, right? We start talking to them: "Your body's going to start changing, and you're going to start having your period." And we prepare women for pregnancy — we've got tons of books, we tell them what they need to do with their bodies, and during pregnancy they're seeing their doctor on a regular basis. But when it comes to perimenopause: nothing. No preparation. Just bam — you hit the wall. And in the past, most women started to think it's only happening to them. I mean, it's this fascinating thing that happens to every woman, but nobody was talking to each other about it, suffering in silence around it.
Katie Fogarty21:00
Yeah. That is completely shifting. So we have the M Factor, which focuses on menopause, and perimenopause with the M Factor 2 — which is such a natural prequel that we really needed to add. Where do you see this franchise going? Are you going to continue to explore other parts of women's health through the M Factor film series?
Denise Pines21:20
I would love to do a film on longevity and women's specific longevity, right? I was at a conference called the Edge of Science, and there was a researcher who talked about how women have three chromosomes — two X's and a Y — and one of the X's lays dormant until midlife. And when that woman said that, suddenly I went, "Oh my God, this is how we get the superpower to be able to handle the transition of our children going into college and at the same time do our high-powered career, or whatever the heck we're doing at that point, as well as suddenly dealing with our parents." I was like, "This is where we get the extra boost — and is this the boost that lets us live longer?" Because why are we living longer when we actually have more stress than men? We should not outlive men by that logic. We have more stress than men, right? Because women carry a lot. A lot of people hand us a lot of balls. We're carrying a lot, we have a lot on our plate.
I tell people this all the time: I don't care if you are a billionaire — a female billionaire — you are still responsible for everything. You could have a nanny for all five of your kids, but you're still responsible for coordinating the nannies. It still falls on the woman to take care of things. I have two brothers, and when it comes to sharing in aspects of taking care of my dad, for the most part everything really comes back to me — the coordination of everything with regards to his health. My brothers will pop in. I've got one brother who makes a lot of money, so I'm like, "You know what? You're cutting the checks for everything, right?"
Katie Fogarty23:31
"We're dividing this up by ways that I see fit" — that is exactly hysterical! Well, no — women do have a lot on their plates, and they manage. The data shows they manage a lot in their home lives and their work lives, and they handle statistically more than men. If they're in a heteronormative relationship, they're probably doing more of the emotional labor and more of the caregiving.
So, Denise, you've been doing these workplace roundtables in ten cities. You're doing these community screenings. Have you created other content or resources that women can access to help get their perimenopause and menopause care beyond the information in the film?
Denise Pines23:55
Yes. So one of the things that happened last year as we were touring the film — people would come to us and say, "Do you know a doctor in my area?" And if I was in Minnesota, I'd say, "No, I don't know a doctor in your area." But it was consistent. This would happen all the time — meaning that women went from thinking they should suffer to then believing they deserve to have care. And so we decided to create a menopause care directory, and that's exactly what it's called: MenopauseCareDirectory.com.
Denise Pines24:37
Because we didn't want any woman to feel like she could not get help, right? So we are getting that directory populated now. We've also partnered with Alloy Health, which has telehealth for those women who really are in remote areas where there's no one for them to go to. And we wanted to make sure women had comprehensive,
Denise Pines25:00
evidence-based providers. So we created something called the M Verified designation, which means that doctor's license has been checked and is active, and they have submitted their CME proof that they can actually treat menopausal women. So if you don't see "M Verified," it doesn't mean that they can't do it — it just means they didn't submit any evidence to us that we could follow up on.
Katie Fogarty25:30
Yeah, yeah. And you can check by — you have all these filters — so you can put in your symptom. If you want to just drill down to, "I just want to make sure somebody can help me with my sleep disorder," or whatever it is, you can search that. If you want somebody who speaks Spanish, you can filter for Spanish. If you want somebody of a particular religion, you can filter through religion. And it's not just for doctors — it's for anyone who has some kind of training around understanding menopausal women. So that could be a nutritionist, a yoga person, your fitness expert, your pelvic floor specialist. And dentists — we had a partnership with Delta Dental last year, and they are working to educate dentists so that they can be more aware around the changes that occur orally in a woman's mouth at midlife.
I spent some time on the MFactorFilm.com website prepping for this. I see that you have 7,000 verified providers in that directory in all 50 states, which is phenomenal. Twenty-five different languages supported. And you do have that smart matching option, where you can search by zip code, but you could also find people who connect to your cultural background, your language, and offer the range of services that you want, from OB-GYN to pelvic floor, et cetera. It's really such a robust and wonderful resource.
So that is phenomenal for the individual woman. What can we do, and how is the film helping to shift the conversation more across a landscape? We need the health systems to be on board, we need insurance to be on board, we need our government and our research dollars to be on board. How have you seen the film move that needle?
Denise Pines27:00
How we've seen it move the needle is that a lot of legislators around the country have been introducing bills and using the film with their stakeholders to validate the reasoning for the bill they're putting forth. So in California, we had an Assembly member who had several screenings — we attended some of those screenings — and she put forth a bill that addressed what you just talked about: a mandated CME for healthcare providers who have patients who are age 40 and above, as well as an insurance component that insurance providers would have to cover the treatment protocol that a physician puts forth for their patient — including, in our state, Medi-Cal (everywhere else it's called Medicaid).
So that bill ended up passing twice in the state Assembly, and then when it reached the governor's desk, the governor didn't sign it. But holy heck broke out — the governor followed some of that online. And Halle Berry got into it — yes, she got into it! And in the recent budget the state put forth, he line-itemed a provision of care — treatment and care for women. The downside is we still didn't get the mandatory CME put in.
Katie Fogarty28:30
And remind our listeners what a CME is.
Denise Pines28:33
A continuing medical education course. So every doctor has to take 40 hours of continuing medical education courses over the course of two years. Every two years, physicians, nurses, PAs, DOs — you name it — have to renew their license and take educational courses. Twenty of those hours have to be in their specialty, and another 20 hours are optional, which allows them to do a menopause course or anything else they want to learn about. So making a mandatory, say, one-hour or 90-minute course would fit right into their extra 20 elective hours. Making it mandatory is really great — I mean, that's where we really are. In the film, Kelly Casperson says: at one point you may be more educated than the doctor you're going to see. But hopefully, eventually, that will change.
Katie Fogarty30:00
That's a continuing theme I've heard on the show, Denise. I've had doctors come on the show — multiple doctors over multiple years — who've said their menopause education was slim to none when they went through medical school. And science changes; education needs to catch up. I don't know who's tackling the pipeline issue, right? We have a current practicing issue — the women going to see doctors now — and then we have a pipeline issue, which is what you're talking about, where there's still very little education on menopause, maybe 45 minutes or an hour lecture. And this is something women are going to be navigating for 30 to 40 years of their lives. So this is unacceptable.
Now, I've had program directors say to me, when I've tried to work with them to increase their educational curriculum around this topic: "Well, what do you want me to take out?" And I'm always like: it's not about taking out anything. It's about incorporating this throughout the entire thread line. No matter what you're talking about — whether it's her heart or her brain or any other part of the curriculum — perimenopause and menopause need to be part of the conversation throughout, not as an isolated component. Menopause impacts every part of your body, so the education about how you care for every part of her body should reflect that.
I do think that Kelly Casperson is right — women are increasingly smarter and smarter patients. Becoming a podcaster has taught me so much more about my health than I ever learned going to a doctor initially. So I made changes; I'm working with doctors who get it. And I encourage every listener on the show to do the same — really find yourself a medical support team. The provider directory that you've put together on MFactorFilm.com is a great place to start.
Denise, I want to switch gears a little bit now because you have your fingers in so many pies, as I said — and I'm not kidding. By the end of the show, you're giving me some of your time management tips, because I need to see your calendar and how you're making it all happen. But you also run the Wise Pause Wellness platform, which is a whole ecosystem around menopause education, advocacy, supporting founders that are developing products and services to serve this market. There is a big pro-aging thread that runs throughout — it's sort of menopause and beyond. Talk to us about why you're focused on pro-aging health, and why is that framing so important?
Denise Pines31:30
Because when we talk about aging, we talk about it in the anti-aging framing — like we're not trying to get there. Why are we using that language? We're going to age. Everybody's going to age. So let's just be proactive around that, right? Let's look at what do I need to do to continue to be an active, operating human in society as I get older, and reframe the things we have fixed in our minds about, "Oh, I'm too old. I can't do that."
My mind changed when I read an article about a man — I think he was in Monte Carlo — and he was a cyclist, and he was 100 years old. And if you saw photos of this man, you would not have believed it. He looked like he was 68 years old. They wanted to see if they could train him and his body to perform at a higher level. They trained him, he did the Monte Carlo bike run, and they measured his VO2 before the training and his VO2 after the training. They could not believe the level of increased performance that this man had. And that was the moment my mind changed about aging — that we can physically be better if we work on it. We can physically be at a higher level than the level that we currently believe we're stagnant at.
So I look at everything as: we can be better than we are. Mentally we can be better. We already have life experiences, so we can fast-track things. You asked me how it is that I'm able to do what I do — it's because I know how to make fast decisions. This has just come over time. I can see something and make a really quick decision. I don't need a lot of time to think about things anymore. And I can — I can't say the word either, right? Compartmentalize. You did it! You got it. I am a master to-do list writer. I have a physical agenda, I have sticky notes, and on both I have: these are the things I need to get done. I use my calendar, my computer calendar,
Denise Pines34:55
and I know what my peak time of working is. So if I've got to write or think —
Denise Pines35:00
— whatever is really important, I've got to do that in the morning. I know that about myself, and so I don't tie myself up with things that aren't productive to me in that way. I don't work after 6 PM. I am done. I feel like I have already put those decades of working like a dog behind me. So every time I do something, I say: "How am I smarter about what I'm doing?" And because I have a lot of relationships, if there's something I don't know, I can call an expert, right? I can be like, "Hey, how do you solve this?" "Okay, great — this is how I'm going to solve it."
Katie Fogarty35:25
Yeah, we have an external and internal Rolodex. You can consult with the people in our lives who we've built relationships with, but we can also consult with ourselves. I love your fast decision-making analogy — I think that's so smart. Knowing yourself well so you can work at your best time. I'm nodding my head in agreement to all of this. I think we get to midlife and we are just sort of primed to put it all together, to pull all the disparate threads and experiences together and really accelerate — if that's something that we want. Or not, because I also feel like getting to midlife teaches us we know ourselves. And if we want rest, if we want relationships, if we want different, edited choices, that's on the menu as well. We get to midlife and we know ourselves.
So speaking of menu choices — this is a funny segue — you have built an entire company around tea: Tea Botanics. And I want to make sure we cover this, because I'm always fascinated by people who see a white space in the market and say, "Let me create a product to meet that need." Catch our listeners up: what is Tea Botanics? Tell us about the Hot Flash Tea. And how did you go from filmmaker and policy advocate to creating these physical products?
Denise Pines36:20
It's like crazy. So Tea Botanics — I mean, this whole thing of how I got into this space — because I was in entertainment. I wore two hats: entertainment and medical regulation, and that was my space. And then one day I get a hot flash. And I'm a runner. I compete. I've done half marathons, triathlons, 5Ks, 10Ks — I do that stuff all the time. And I eat pretty well, right?
Denise Pines37:12
But menopause completely blindsided me. And I'm a natural remedy seeker, and I wanted non-hormonal support. I thought I could start there. I felt like the vessel of my body was such that — hey, if our ancestors have managed for millions of years to survive this stage, was there something out there? And so I partnered with my doctor, who is a functional medicine tea specialist, and we co-created Hot Flash Tea. He had told me some years prior about a tea he had discovered that had hormonal balancing properties. And it was funny — at the time he told me about it, I said, "Oh, that sounds good. You should do something with that,"
Denise Pines37:59
not thinking —
Denise Pines38:01
— it's going to be me! Like, I'm going to need that hormonal tea balancing property thing. And boom. So it worked. He gave me the tea. And here's what happened: I had severe hot flashes. I was that person — you know, I talked about compassion earlier — I had no compassion for my friends. I have like seven best buddies, and three of them are about eight to ten years older than me, and when they started going through perimenopause and having hot flashes — I had no empathy. I would be like, "Nobody's hot but you! Go find a fan. Open a window." No compassion. I didn't get it. Clearly.
And so when I got hot flashes, I got severe ones — every hour through the night. That really woke me up to this issue. And then when that tea worked — I mean, I took it for five days and they reduced by half. By the 11th day I was having maybe one hot flash a day. And I said, "It cannot be quite this easy." I called my doctor, talked to him about what this was. We flew to Taiwan, where the tea is grown. We met with all the experts. I got to understand the science behind how it all works. And fast forward — we are now going into Target stores in May of this year.
Katie Fogarty39:10
Congratulations! That's a big bucket-list retailer for reaching a wide number of consumers.
Denise Pines39:15
Yeah, and we just wanted to make sure that for people who are natural remedy seekers, they're not left out of this solution, to be honest. Not every woman... And in both films we talk a lot about hormone replacement therapy and bioidenticals, and I'm all for
Denise Pines40:00
you using what you believe is going to work for you. Now, trust me — if this tea had not done a thing for me, I probably would have taken bioidenticals. There was no way I could continue to sweat every hour. It was completely disruptive to my health, my focus, and my attention to get work done. So yeah, I definitely wasn't going to suffer.
Katie Fogarty40:10
Yeah, no. I mean, I think midlife care has a big toolkit, and you can put lots of different things in it. You can have HRT if that works for you and your particular needs with your doctor. You can do alternative remedies like you just outlined. There are also other types of traditional medicines that can address things like hot flashes, brain fog, and libido loss. And there's a whole variety of things, plus lifestyle choices — working out, how you eat, dietary choices. I just did a wonderful podcast episode with Dr. Amy Shah, who came on to talk about a food-first protocol for managing your hormone havoc — that's the name of her new book. I also interviewed Dr. Jen Salib Huber, who wrote a great book about managing your menopause with food choices — a really wonderful cookbook full of recipes. And we can manage it with fitness and bone health and working out, et cetera. So there's a big toolkit. We just want to make sure women are given the tools — that they hear about them, that they know about them.
So, Denise, you built this incredible tea brand, Tea Botanics. It's coming into Target — congratulations! When did you launch the company? Is it growing because it's going into Target? Do you market in other ways? How can people learn about it?
Denise Pines41:00
Sure. I mean, you can go to TeaBotanics.com and learn more about our teas. We have four different ones: Brain Fog, Hot Flash, Night Sweat, and Happiness. And what's interesting is that when I exhibit at the largest trade show for people who are in the natural food and beverage space — it has over 125,000
Denise Pines41:59
people who come — 40% of the people who come to our booth are men, and I'm serving Hot Flash Tea and Brain Fog Tea. And most of the men come to the booth and drink it. They'll ask me first, "Can I drink this? Is this good for men?" And I'm like, "Yeah, we don't have any estrogen-supporting herbs in there, so yeah, you can drink it." And they'll drink it and go, "Oh, this is really good," and they're drinking it for themselves.
So we don't, in society, even let men as they age talk about weaknesses they have around their brain and other parts of their body, right? We only deal with men from the standpoint of their sexual health. But their energy drains. They get brain fog. They get hot. It's been a disservice to both genders as we've aged that we don't really talk about this enough.
Denise Pines42:55
And it is also cute — when they walk by, they'll walk by, and then they'll come back. And those guys are telling me, "Can I take one of these tea bags for my wife?" And then they'll tell me a whole story about, "I'm not sleeping in the same room anymore." And I will go, "That's not a good idea. Let's get her — here, I'm going to give you some more tea bags. Let's get those hot flashes under control so you can go back into the bedroom."
Katie Fogarty43:15
Oh my gosh, that's fascinating!
Denise Pines43:18
Yeah, I become like a psychiatrist for them. And just being able to share that — because a lot of times I'm thinking, this is the first time this guy has probably ever talked to anybody about what he's experiencing alongside his wife. And I think your film touched on that, because you had a great panel of four — I think it was four or five — hysterical men. They were so sweet and so vulnerable sharing their stories.
Katie Fogarty43:40
I've seen that as well. On the board of Let's Talk Menopause, they host an annual Menopozium once a year in a different city around the country, and men come to that and support their wives and talk about how they want to be supportive partners. So you're so right that men need to be part of not just the menopause conversation, but the aging conversation in general. And I love that that sort of vulnerable, safe space was created at your booth. But we need to create that conversation for the men in our lives — our husbands, our partners, our brothers, our co-workers, everybody. I love it. Thank you for sharing that, Denise. I agree.
So, Denise, looking across all of your work — your films, your advocacy, your entrepreneurship — we can see the through line clearly: it's making a difference for women, telling the untold stories, giving women what they need to thrive. What keeps your cylinders firing? You walked through some of your time management stuff, which I love, but the biggest thing, I think, is managing your mojo and mindset. How do you keep yourself moving forward with all these different projects?
Denise Pines44:50
So I'm a prayerful person, and I start my day off with prayers. Before I get out of bed, I don't look at emails, I don't do anything until I set my mind
Denise Pines45:00
straight and go: "Universe, let me be receptive to what's going to happen in this given day." And it's hard sometimes, because sometimes I wake up with a running list of what I've got to get done. But then I go, "I've got to center myself," because if I run with the list that's ruminating in my brain, I could miss an opportunity, right? I can miss something I'm supposed to be doing or someone I'm supposed to be helping. So I try to center myself first. Then, first thing in the morning, I work out. I run about four or five times a week. I'll go run, and then I'll come in — I'm a breakfast person, so I'll eat my breakfast — and then I sit at my desk and I'm good, and I just simply say, "I'm ready," and I click on the emails, right? And that's just how I've been doing things. And it works for me.
It works for me — not having anxiety. And it doesn't mean... you're right, I do a lot of things. I sit on a bunch of boards, I lead some of those boards. And so there have been times where, yeah, sometimes I feel overwhelmed. And I have to just say: "Go for a walk. You feel overwhelmed right now, and that's not really how you need to feel. So what are you feeling overwhelmed about? Figure out what you really have to get done in this next moment and do it. Not everything has to happen at the same time." And doing things simultaneously... so I'm always looking ahead. Each Sunday I'll look and go, "What's going on this week? Oh shoot, I've got this. Oh, I've got to go to this awards thing. Oh, this, this, this." Because it's also — I live in LA and I'm in entertainment, so I've also got to figure out: "What am I wearing to this thing? Do I have something in the closet? Or do I have to go get something?" It was funny — if my friends heard me say, "Do I have something in the closet?" they would go, "Oh my God." If you saw her closet, she always has something in the closet.
Katie Fogarty46:49
There's sort of that social part too. And then there's the: "I want to take time off. I don't want to work past this point in time." Fridays I try to keep really light. I rarely book any calls or meetings on a Friday — I just try to have an easy day. And if I put something on a Friday, it is about a new idea — meaning if I have a call, it's about a new idea, right? So I try to make Friday a fresh reset for myself. Friday fun: new things, new people, new conversations, new thoughts.
Denise Pines47:10
I love it. What a great way to head into your weekend.
Katie Fogarty47:13
Denise, this has been so much fun. I really loved connecting and hearing about your wonderfully varied career and some of your time management tricks. I'm going to take some of them on and see if I can launch some kind of tea company or make a movie out into the world. But I'm inspired by everything that you've created, and I'm grateful that you carved out time with me today. Before we say goodbye, though — how can our listeners keep up with all things Denise? I'm going to link out to MFactorFilm.com, obviously, but put them to work. Where should they go to find you and follow more of your work?
Denise Pines47:45
Sure. I mean, it's funny — I don't have, like, one real destination. I need to work on that. But for Wise Pause it's WisePause.com,
Denise Pines48:06
Katie Fogarty48:08
What else?
Denise Pines48:10
I think that's it. I think those two places you can find me. You can always find me on LinkedIn, of course. If people want to send me a note, I think I have my email on there. But yeah, I'm findable.
Katie Fogarty48:20
You're findable! Well, I will link out to everything in the show notes. Thank you so much, Denise.
Denise Pines48:25
Thank you, Katie.
Katie Fogarty48:29
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. I love hanging out every week with a new, incredible woman. If you enjoy tuning in, meeting somebody new, taking away their tips and tools and ideas for thriving in midlife, please let me know in an Apple Podcast or Spotify review. Reviews are really important — they help other women find the show, they help sponsors recognize that the show is worth supporting, they help other guests decide that the show is worth spending their time on. I read and see each review. I truly appreciate them.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini, who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time, and until then — age boldly, beauties.