Is It Brain Fog or Just Dopamine?
It Started with a Glitch: Tracking the Midlife Chemistry Shift No One Talks About
🧠 Inside the Playbook: August Edition
Welcome to My Health & Fitness Playbook - a private log of what I’m testing, noticing, and learning in real time. This is my space to document the shifts no one prepares you for, and the protocols I’m using to stay grounded, sharp, and fully present in midlife.
If you are reading this, you are part of the most engaged corner of this community and I’m deeply grateful to share this space with you.
It started with a glitch.
Not a dramatic collapse but more like just a lag, like my brain was buffering mid-sentence. I’d sit down to write and the words would hover somewhere behind a curtain, refusing to step forward. My mind, usually quick and hyperlinked, felt… muted.
I wasn’t exhausted. I wasn’t burned out. But I wasn’t entirely myself either.
So I called in my best detective: my doctor, who happens to be brilliant at functional health for midlife women. We decided to run the full investigation.
And when I say full, I mean full.
I spat into tubes at awkward hours. I peed into containers (refrigerating them, which my family loved). The phlebotomist drew enough blood to keep a vampire happy for a week. I was pricked, prodded, and handed a bill to match. Sadly, none of it covered by insurance.
We checked everything: hormones, nutrient levels, inflammatory markers, neurotransmitter metabolites. We were looking for clues in the chemistry.
When the labs came back, the patterns were there: estrogen trending in a certain direction. Dopamine regulation shifting just enough to explain why motivation and mental fluidity felt a shade slower.
It made sense of what I’d been feeling but couldn’t quite put words to. In women, estrogen quietly fine-tunes the brain’s dopamine circuits - the same ones that drive focus, motivation, and reward1. When it starts to fade in midlife, that fine-tuning slips… and the spark you used to take for granted can feel just out of reach.
My female longevity stack grew from there. Some pieces came directly from my doctor’s recommendations; others are tools I’ve layered on after digging into the science myself and weighing what’s worth testing. It’s an evolving framework that’s rooted in data, and shaped by my curiosity.
One part of that stack and the focus of today’s post is the dopamine regulation layer. It’s where I decided to start, partly out of curiosity, and partly because the shifts here are quieter, harder to pin down… which makes them all the more interesting to track.
Here’s what I’ve been testing—and why. ↓
Why this post is behind the paywall
Most of my writing is free, because I believe knowledge especially about the business of women’s health should be shared widely. But this series - My Health & Fitness Playbook - is different.
It’s deeply personal. I’m sharing what I’m actually trying in my own body: the shifts I’m noticing, what I’m experimenting with, and what I’m tracking in real time. That kind of honesty requires a more intentional space.
And it’s built for trust, not scale. It’s a living record of what it means to stay sharp, grounded, and clear through a high-functioning midlife and that’s something I want to share with the most engaged part of this community.
If you’re not ready to upgrade, no pressure. The rest of my writing will always be free. But if this work resonates and helps you feel more seen in your own journey, thank you for supporting it.