Mini-Ep 404: The Body Can Be A Real Bitch Sometimes

Doree and Elise commiserate about hurting body parts and answer listener questions about navigating a friend's divorce when the kids still get along, at-home beauty remedies, a brain game to put you to sleep, and a good book rec.

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Transcript

 

Doree:                Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.

Elise:                   And I'm Elise Hugh. And we are just two friends who like to talk a lot about serums,

Doree:                And this is a mini episode where we hear from you, we share your comments and your thoughts, and we answer your questions to the best of our ability. And our ability does not extend to the realm of actual professional mental health or medical care. So sometimes we will refer you to someone who can help you in that regard.

Elise:                   We love to hear your questions.

Doree:                We do

Elise:                   And your thoughts.

Doree:                And you can call or text us those at 7 8 1 5 9 1 0 3 9 0, and you can email us at Forever five Podcast at gmail com. So Elise, how's it going?

Elise:                   It's going well. I have been texting with my brother about our knee problems, so that's the age group that I'm in. My brother turned 40 this year, and so now he has joined me in our forties. And as you know, and some listeners know, I've been having trouble with my right knee. It's been very painful to lunge and squat, and so it just speaks me. But when I'm running or walking, just doing daily things, I don't notice it. It's just when I put more weight on it or I try to exercise when I try to, God forbid, exercise, my knee doesn't like it. It's like, no, don't do this. It's bringing me pain. And so I texted my brother about it. He's always been the athlete out of the two of us,

Doree:                And

Elise:                   I was like, do you have any knee issues? And he is like, yeah, dude, I have patella tendonitis. You probably do too, because dad has it and dad has a titanium knee or whatever. And I'm like, what?

Doree:                Oh, wow.

Elise:                   So it might be a whole family affair. So

Doree:                Did you know that your dad had a titanium knee?

Elise:                   I knew he had a titanium hip. I didn't realize he had knee surgery too, but my dad's a big racket sports player. He has played tennis basically as long as I've known him. And then my brother Killer, he has a Ben Shelton serve, and so I thought maybe he might be beset with knee issues, but yeah, he was just very straight up about it. He is like, yeah, I wear a brace. You don't notice.

Doree:                That's really funny. Yeah, it's funny. I feel like every time I get one injury under control, something else flares up. So just when I was like, oh, my tennis elbow seems to be doing so much better, my right knee was like, remember me. It's not bad, but I feel it a little more than I feel like I should be. So I've been trying to strengthen because I do think my understanding is that a lot of knee issues are caused by weak glutes.

Elise:                   Yes. That's what I'm told by my physical therapist.

Doree:                He

Elise:                   Was like, you need to do more clamshells

Doree:                Because

Elise:                   Your whole back chain is weak.

Doree:                So trying to do more glute and leg workouts on the Peloton app essentially.

Elise:                   Okay. I was staying in a house when we went on our national parks trip that had a Peloton and a whole set of little Peloton shoes, but I didn't know if as a guest of the house, I could also just hop on the Peloton. Do you have to be the owner of the system and have the app?

Doree:                No, you just need a login, which I think, I don't

Elise:                   Know anything about this stuff.

Doree:                Yeah, I think, well, although I think you would need to be paying for a Peloton subscription in order for your login to work, or you could turn it on and see if someone was logged in, although they might be annoyed by that, although they could delete the workout.

Elise:                   Yeah, I don't know anything about it. I did not get into on the whole Peloton bandwagon during Covid, and I feel like I missed that whole wave because now Peloton is in decline and its instructors are quitting and all of that. So maybe I just missed the cultural moment for that.

Doree:                Yeah, I mean, not to make this about Peloton, but I did jump on the Peloton wave during Covid. I don't really use it that much as a bike anymore. I take the classes, I take the strength classes and the yoga classes and some of the other classes. Some I probably could get away with just having the app, which you can use on your iPad and is much cheaper than having the bike subscription. But I haven't given it up yet, I think because I'm like, well, maybe I'll go back to the bike, even though that doesn't seem to be happening. But I think their strength classes are pretty good.

Elise:                   Okay. Yeah, I could always use that.

Doree:                So you could check that out. There's also, I don't think they sponsor the podcast anymore, but Aloe Yoga was sponsoring their app specifically was sponsoring the podcast for a while. We were like, can we get some aloe yoga? We were like, can we get some aloe yoga clothes? And they were like, no, that's not the part of the company that's sponsoring you. We were like, oh, alright. But their app is also quite good.

Elise:                   Okay. Yeah, I have heard that from some of my mom friends.

Doree:                Totally. Totally. I did an evening yoga class last night. That was great. It's a good calm down I find, and a good way to stretch a little bit before bed. I'm just getting creaky in my old age.

Elise:                   Age stretching could probably help with my knee problems.

Doree:                There we go.

Elise:                   Maybe this is all connected. Maybe it's all connected. Elise, I'm a real genius over here.

Doree:                You're really putting it all together. I mean, no, in all seriousness though, I do hope you get that figured out. There's certain things where you're like, oh, these are the proverbial chickens coming home to roost. Kind of like when you haven't taken care of certain aspects of your body, mind, soul, whatever. You can kind of get away with it for a while and then years in it's like, yeah, remember when you decided you weren't going to do X, Y, Z?

Elise:                   Would you say Doree? Would you say that the body keeps score?

Doree:                Elise? I would say that actually, and the body can be a real bitch sometimes. Could you cut us some slack body? I know.

Elise:                   Just don't want to be in chronic pain.

Doree:                Yeah. I had a similar realization the other day. Someone had posted something about Nora Frons, I feel bad about my neck. And they pointed out that she started feeling bad about her neck when she was like 42. I always thought of her as super old. Well also because the book came out when she was in her sixties I think.

Elise:                   So

Doree:                It seemed it was like, oh, she's old. But in actuality she writes about how she started feeling bad about her neck in her early forties, and I was like, oh, right there it is. There, it's there. And some of these things I'm kind of joking around, but some of these things are just about getting old. There's no chickens coming home to roost of my neck. Not much. Our bodies are constantly evolving. Our bodies are just evolving and changing and it is what it is. But yeah, it's humbling to start having to think about things that you did not have to think about before.

Elise:                   For sure. And it's very bonding between my sibling and me though too,

Doree:                Because

Elise:                   We certainly have never talked about our various knee injuries.

Doree:                Interesting. My brother has gout, which my grandfather also had, but no one knew that,

Elise:                   Oh, you didn't talk about it.

Doree:                You didn't talk about anything. So my

Elise:                   Brother, yeah, there was some shame about it.

Doree:                It took him a year to get diagnosed because how would he have known that it might run into family? Would he known? No family history. And he was pretty young, so he kept getting given anti-inflammatories and just sent on his way and then finally it came out. Oh no, actually it's

Elise:                   Like there's family history.

Doree:                Yeah. Can we talk about this? Yeah, that's like when I first got into running 15 years ago, I got a stress fracture and when I got X-rays and all that stuff, they were like, do you have any osteoporosis in your family? And I was like, no. And then I'm telling my mom about this stress factor. She's like, oh, Nana has osteoporosis. Just like, could we just get a printout? Like, okay, if someone had cancer or someone had had a heart attack, I probably would know. But it's these other sort of chronic illnesses or chronic diseases that don't always get talked about.

Elise:                   And then it's like surprise. Everybody has tendonitis in the knee. What

Doree:                I do think it's generational for sure, but still I maintain we should get a printout of any sort of chronic condition that anyone in our immediate family has.

Elise:                   It'd be good while dating too, because if the dating turns into courtship, which turns into a longer committed relationship and then you relationship procreate, it'd be good to have that full list to hand off to your kids.

Doree:                Exactly. It

Elise:                   Could be really forward thinking.

Doree:                Yeah. Alright, well Elise, we should take a break. Before we do that, I know we already said how people can get in touch with us, but they can also visit our website Forever35 podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mentioned on the show. We are on Instagram at Forever35 podcast. We have a newsletter at Forever35 podcast.com/newsletter, and we are going to take a short break right now.

Elise:                   We'll be right back.

Doree:                All right. We are

Elise:                   Back. And dot, one thing that I have had a lot of fun doing this summer is just popping in on the Patreon every day. Our Patreon community has been rocking.

Doree:                Love a Patreon.

Elise:                   Yeah,

Doree:                Super fun.

Elise:                   And we're doing all sorts of fun stuff for the Patreon patrons too.

Doree:                Totally. I have been exploring the chat function, so this is separate from the Discord. There's a little built in chat. I think you can only access it through the app. I don't think you can get to it through the website. And I shared that. I don't think I've even told you this. I have

Elise:                   To do my daily pop-in. Now.

Doree:                It sounds like I shared a recent Costco purchase.

Elise:                   Yes. Okay.

Doree:                Which was a hundred ounce water bottle.

Elise:                   Does anyone need that?

Doree:                Okay, two things. Number one, I have been playing tennis in the hot middle of the day, heat, and I've been bringing two 40 ounce

Elise:                   Water

Doree:                Bottle. So I was like, well, this would just knock everything out. So that's number one. Number two, it was only 1999.

Elise:                   Wow. That is much cheaper than a Stanley.

Doree:                Exactly. Or a Hydro Flask or a Yeti, any of those. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to try this. Anyway, I shared that in the chat. People are sharing pesto recipes. I mean, there's a lot happening.

Elise:                   It's been fun. And one of the responses that we got from y'all who took the Patreon survey that Doree put out just during the host transition was that you don't want more social platforms to hang out in. So we have kind of leaned away from the discord because we don't want y'all to feel as though you're overloaded with places to have to log into. And so I think that my, and tell me how you feel about this story, but we haven't really explicitly talked about it with the listeners yet, but I'm leaning towards just keeping a lot of our conversations right on Patreon because you are getting alerts when we have fresh episodes on there. Anyway. And then it's a great way to, you can comment in the comments and we can be in conversation with you there.

Doree:                And then the chat is fun just for casual casual chatting.

Elise:                   Totally.

Doree:                I don't think we're going to get rid of the discord, but there has been a steeper learning curve on it than I think we were anticipating, and people are still having trouble connecting to it, and it just seems like maybe it's not like the platform, but I think we're going to keep it going.

Elise:                   It just might be more quiet over there. So you're going to see more of me and Doree on the Patreon page. It's also where you can get the ad free episodes if you are at the $10 a month subscriber level. And we are having a lot of fun with the monthly pop culture recommendations, which we hope you like.

Doree:                Yes.

Elise:                   June is already up there now. Okay. Oh, we should mention it's at patreon.com/forever three five.

Doree:                Oh yeah, that too.

Elise:                   We're really awesome at selling ourselves.

Doree:                We are so good at it. We're so good at it. Elise, we got a text that is for you. I will read it for you.

Elise:                   Okay.

Doree:                Elise, since you volunteered yourself as the divorce correspondent law, I love that we have divorce representation, by the way on the show. I know. How can I best navigate friends who divorced, especially as our children are all still friends. I've made an effort not to take sides, but not everyone in our friend group has been that neutral. They don't seem to communicate well. So even play dates and birthday parties require parallel communication essentially. I want to be fair and kind to everyone involved. Any thoughts?

Elise:                   I feel like this totally has. This is something that Rob has run into because he and his ex don't talk, so they don't co-parent very well. And as a result, he's having to arrange a play date with other parents.

Doree:                And

Elise:                   Those same parents are also having to deal with the mom sometimes, but then have parallel conversations as this texter is describing.

Doree:                So a lot of duplicative efforts

Elise:                   And sometimes depending on the way the co-parenting or the divorce went, you are just going to have to duplicate.

                             You're going to have to give the address twice or share the food sensitivity twice or the instructions to get wherever you need to go twice, because it really does vary. Couple to couple divorce to divorce, I'm sorry about it, but it's only fair to the child that there is this communication going on. So I don't really have any great tips or wisdom except that it sounds very compassionate that you aren't taking sides because there are many sides to every story and many sides to these relational breakups. And to the extent that you do hang out with either parent, just be a good listener, be willing to listen and engage. I think that's something that really hurt Rob in particular after his breakup and was that there were some of his friends who just felt uncomfortable talking to him about it or asking about it, and it made him feel even more sort of stigmatized or lonely or isolated as a result. And so just if you are good friends and your friends are going through a relational change or their family is shape shifting, then certainly feel open to hearing and listening to them talk about it and just being a board.

Doree:                That's a very empathetic response. Thank you, Elise.

Elise:                   Sure. Sorry about all the extra communication you're having to do though.

Doree:                Alright. This is an email we got on a different topic. Hi, Dawn. Elise, I've loved the pod since the beginning and you truly got me through the pits of the panini healthcare worker. I could go on and on about the ways you all have helped me to improve over the years, skincare, reading, mental health, et cetera. Elise is a wonderful addition to the show. Thank you for the pivot and not just ending it. Well, you're welcome. Anyway, sleep tip. I learned from fancy Nancy, Allie, ward's mom from the pod, not personally the alphabet game. Pick a category and go through the alphabet example, fruit, apples, blueberries, cherries, and so on. I've always been a good sleeper, but this has helped to focus my thoughts before bed instead of thinking through all the dumb things I said that day. Also, not all of wards start with K. I hope you find your Zs soon. I have played this. Have you tried this? I have played this game and it does work. And how well does it work for you? Does it does

Elise:                   Work? Okay, great.

Doree:                It's like counting sheep. It's like any sort of repetitive mind trick game

Elise:                   That

Doree:                You might play at bedtime, but I've sort of forgotten about it, so thank you for the reminder. There are some Ks, there's kiwi, and then kumquat. Kumquat. And then if you're doing vegetables, there's kale. Of course.

Elise:                   Yes.

Doree:                So you're usually asleep by the time you get to tricky things like X. But yeah, this is a good

Elise:                   One. Who knew this episode was going to be such a brain teaser,

Doree:                Such a brain teaser. Well, I do love a puzzle, so it kind of makes sense. All right. Well Elise, let's take another short break and we'll be right back with a couple more questions and comments. We'll be right

Elise:                   Back.

Doree:                All right. We are back

Elise:                   And we have an email. We

Doree:                Do. Would you like to read it?

Elise:                   Okay. It says, hi Doree and welcome, Elise. I am so enjoying this season of the pod. Wherever it pops up on my feed, it's the first thing I listen to.

Doree:                Thank you.

Elise:                   A question for you both. Do you use any beauty related home remedies? I am South Asian and the women in my family taught me to use ingredients like turmeric on my face and coconut oil in my hair. I have found that items from my kitchen sometimes work better for me than expensive beauty products. Curious if you've had similar experiences. Thanks. Yes. A lot of my South Asian friends use coconut oil in their hair still because it's passed down from their parents and their grandparents. I put oatmeal and milk into my baths.

                             I do the old oatmeal and milk baths. It's probably cheaper. When I was little, I remember maybe I read it in a teen magazine or 17 about mayo in the hair as a hair conditioner or as a hair mask. And I did try that before too, but I didn't stick with it because it felt too greasy. But I have experimented with that before. And then we do do the cucumber slices on our eyes in the morning. The girls do it sometimes they get very swollen eyes if they've been crying right before they go to bed. And then we go usually in a fight with each other. What about you do?

Doree:                I don't really have any. I feel like, I mean, I don't know. My family was not, there were no home beauty things that were passed down in my family, so I don't really have anything along those lines. I think the closest would be the Clinique three-Step skincare.

Elise:                   Oh yeah. Well, growing up with the three-step skincare, you would always get a gift if you got it at a department

Doree:                Store. Yes.

Elise:                   And so my mom was always about getting Clinique products so that we could get travel sized soaps and moisturizers and toner for trips.

Doree:                Not to mention the bags.

Elise:                   Yeah, really cute pouches.

Doree:                Look, I love a gift with purchase. I love a gwp, and you just don't see them that much anymore. It's a real shame,

Elise:                   Right? It is a shame. It is a shame because my collection of pouches that came as Gifts with purchase is vast.

Doree:                Yeah,

Elise:                   There should be a little museum for them.

Doree:                RIP. Yeah. Okay. We also got a text that just said, Doree Elise. I think y'all would be really into Catherine Newman's Sandwich, which is a book, great book about aging parents slash young adult children slash midlife stuff.

Elise:                   Oh, thank you. I still need to read Margot's Got Money Troubles, which is a Doree recommendation, and a lot of folks have been actually talking about it. So after you recommended it to me, the buzz somehow reached me as well. And now this Catherine Newman Sandwich recommendation.

Doree:                So this is a book that I have also been seeing quite a few people I know on social media sharing it and saying how great they thought it was, including my friend Joe Piazza, who I think has an

Elise:                   Excellent author,

Doree:                Excellent author, and great taste in very readable, but well-written novels.

                             So I had clocked this when she recommended it and was like, I want to check this out. So I feel like now, have you ever heard that thing when I feel like this was something that people told me when I was trying to promote various books that I've written, is that people need to see or hear about your book, I think at least three times in three different ways. So it's like they read the New York Times Review and then they're like, oh, okay. And then they see it on Facebook and they're like, oh, all right. And then a friend is like, Hey, I've been reading this book. And then they're finally like, oh yeah, I've been hearing so much about this book.

Elise:                   Yes, I got that tip too from the marketing people. But then I ran into this reader at a happy hour sometime, and she goes, oh yes, your book, I've heard about it. Or I've heard radio, so many radio interviews about it that I was like, okay, I get it. I get the gist now. I don't need to get it. I don't need to buy the book. So what is this perfect place in which you are saturated enough but not oversaturated that I have yet to figure out?

Doree:                Yeah, that's tough. That's tough.

Elise:                   But Catherine Newman's Sandwich is probably in that magic spot, that sweet spot, because I am very excited and interested in giving it a look.

Doree:                Yeah, same. Alright, well thanks everyone for listening and we will talk to you soon. Bye-Bye. Bye.

 *Transcripts are AI generated.

 
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